Elizabeth Hart Jarvis

Elizabeth Hart Jarvis was born in 1826, the daughter of Reverend William Jarvis (1796-1871) and Elizabeth Miller Hart (1798-1881) of Middletown, Connecticut. She was one of nine children, including her sister Hetty Hart Jarvis (1828-1898). On 5 June 1856, she married Samuel Colt (1814-1862), who founded Colt's Patent Fire Arms Manufacturing Company in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1847. They made their home, Armsmear, in Hartford as well. The Colts had five children: Samuel Jarvis (1857), Caldwell Hart (1858-1894), Elizabeth Jarvis (1860), Henrietta Selden (1861-1862), and unnamed (1862 stillborn). Caldwell Hart Colt was the only child to survive infancy.

Elizabeth H. J. Colt's legacy of philanthropy, art patronage, and institution building earned her a reputation as a visionary civic leader. In 1905, she bequeathed to the Wadsworth Atheneum a collection of nearly 1,000 objects, artworks, and documents. She also provided a fund to build the Colt Memorial, the first American museum wing bearing the name of a female patron. Elizabeth H. J. Colt died in 1905 at Heartsease, the home of her niece and godchild, Elizabeth Hart Jarvis Beach Robinson in Newport, Rhode Island.