Dr. James E. Stetson is a retired physician and capitalist of New Haven and outside of the city is well known as a sportsman; in fact, his name is a familiar one in connection with gun meets throughout the country. His interest in the sport is a natural sequence of his early training, for in his youth he was connected with gun manufacturing establishments.

A native of Northampton, Massachusetts, he was born July 24, 1844, a son of James Alexander and Dolly (Wetter) Stetson. The ancestry can be traced back to Robert Stetson, an ensign of the Plymouth colony under Miles Standish. For service Robert Stetson was awarded by the colony two hundred acres of land, which is still in possession of the family. Upon that tract he built a flour mill which he operated for many years. He was also an active factor in politics of that day and became a member of the colonial legislature. From him are descended all of the Stetsons in the United States, all belonging, as the Doctor expresses it, "to one family." His father, James A. Stetson, was born in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1801, and became a carriage maker, beginning work at that trade in 1824. At the time of his death, which occurred in Brooklyn, Connecticut, in 1893, he was the oldest manufacturer of carriages in this state. His wife, who was born in Brooklyn, Connecticut, in 1807, died in 1899, in the same house in which her birth had occurred and which she had always occupied. She, too, was a descendant of one of the members of the old Plymouth colony.

Dr. Stetson, the ninth in order of birth in a family of ten children, attended the district and village schools in his youthful days and afterward spent three terms as a pupil in an academy at Hampton, Connecticut. He then began to learn the gun maker's trade in Northampton, Massachusetts, taking up the work in December, 1861, and completing his apprenticeship, in 1864. Through the following year he engaged in contract work for Eli Whitney in manufacturing guns and later he took up contract work with the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. He remained with that company for twelve years and gained expert knowledge not only of gun manufacture but of the use of firearms.

Deciding, however, to study medicine, he entered Yale with that end in view, being graduated from the medical department with the class of 1881. He opened an office in New Haven, where he entered upon a highly successful professional career that covered thirty-one years. He retired in 1912 to enjoy the fruits of his former toil and of his wise investments, for during the years of his active practice he had invested his earnings in New Haven real estate and now has valuable property, yielding him a most gratifying income. He still holds membership with the American Medical Association, the Connecticut State Medical Society, the General Medical Association, the New Haven County and the New Haven Medical Societies and was one of the organizers of the Yale Medical Alumni Association. He belongs to the Yale Alumni Society, and the breadth and nature of his interests are further indicated in the fact that he has membership with the Worcester Lodge of Masons, with the Chamber of Commerce, with the New Haven Colony Historical Society, the Young Men's Christian Association, the Union League Club, the Race Brook Club, the Amateur Athletic Association and the Nonantum Fish and Gun Club.

In 1873 Dr. Stetson donated the prize given for the first military shoot ever held in the state of Connecticut and thus encouraged marksmanship in the military bodies of the state. Later the state adopted the rifle practice system for the army and today the general army rifle ranges are the outgrowth of the movement instituted by Dr. Stetson. He was appointed on the staff of Colonel Smith, of the Second Regiment, as inspector of arms in 1875 and was promoted to inspector of the brigade staff, continuing in that capacity from 1875 until 1881. The Doctor is an enthusiastic sportsman and hunter and there is hardly a district in the country in which game exists that he has not hunted over. Although he hunts game as a sport he does so in true sportsmanlike manner and believes in the conservation of game.

On the 1st of May, 1865, Dr. Stetson was married to Miss Carolina A. Burrett, of New Haven, a daughter of Daniel and Caroline (Mansfield) Burrett. They had but one child, who died in infancy, and Mrs. Stetson passed away at New Haven in 1909. Dr. Stetson now resides at the Union League Club.

In politics he is a republican and from 1867 until 1869 he served as city alderman. He is one of Connecticut's self-made men in the truest and best sense of the term. Starting out in life empty-handed, he was actuated by a spirit of laudable ambition and progress, stimulating him to the exercise of his best efforts in the attainment of success. Gradually and persistently he advanced and when he felt that the professional field could offer him still broader opportunities, he abandoned the line of his trade to enter upon the general practice of medicine. Thirty-one years of capable service were given to his fellowmen in that connection and today he is enjoying a rest which he has truly earned and richly deserves.