Harris D. Colt

Harris Colt nearly reached the century mark. At ninety-eight he was Yale’s oldest living graduate and had been a New York lawyer for more than seventy years. A year before his death he was still practicing. He had outlived nearly all of his Centurion friends.

Colt’s ancestors had been in America since the landing of the Mayflower. His grandfather, Elisha Colt, had fought in the Revolution as a member of the Eighth Company of the Eighth Regiment of the Connecticut Continental line. Harris Colt carried on the military tradition by joining the original Troop A—the nucleus of New York’s Squadron A—and he was before his death its only surviving member.

He graduated from Yale at the age of twenty-three in 1884. After receiving his law degree at the Columbia Law School, he worked with Lord, Day and Lord until, in 1896, he became a member of the firm of Stearns, Curtis and Colt, later Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt and Mosle. He was an estate and trust specialist.

He was at one time a vice-president and trustee of the Sevilla Home for Children in New York and a trustee of New York’s Society for the Relief of Half Orphans and Destitute Children.

In point of membership Colt had seniority in the Downtown Association (of which he was Honorary Member), the University Club of New York, and the Yale Club.

He was a Centurion for forty-five years. He used to come often to the Long Table for lunch but in later years gave it up on account of deafness.

Roger Burlingame
1960 Century Association Yearbook