Chapter 40. - Our Hall Family Ancestors

My 5th great grandfather, Benjamin Hall, was born in Cheshire near Wallingford, Connecticut in 1736 and he died at the age of 50 in the year 1786. He was 40 years old when the Declaration of Independence was signed and it should be safe to assume that he was a patriot soldier during our War for Independence. In fact, we listed him as one of my Revolutionary War ancestors in Chapter 15 of this blog although we admitted at the time of writing that it was difficult to find any definitive information about him in the history records other than the mention of his name as a Connecticut soldier. When we decided to write a chapter on my Hall family ancestors, we spent a lot of time focusing on my 5th great grandfather hoping to narrow down his actual experiences during the war.  At first we became excited when we discovered that a Benjamin Hall from Connecticut was present during the Lexington Alarm in Massachusetts in 1775.  We than began to find his name listed multiple times in various regiments over the course of the war.  Our story was just beginning to develop when quite unexpectedly we came across a record of a Benjamin Hall again from Connecticut, who was an avid Tory, a British sympathizer. Could this man have actually been my 5th great grandfather, a Tory? Before we get to far ahead of ourselves and our story of our Hall ancestors, let us return to the beginning.

My 9th great grandfather was a man named John Hall who was born in England around 1605 and emigrated as a young man to America around 1632. Fortunately we find that much has been written about our John Hall although unfortunately at the same time much of what has been written is contradictory. Even in these early years of our country with a small population, the name John Hall was fairly common and perhaps it should not be surprising to discover that two of the earliest settlers of Hartford, Connecticut both were named John Hall and their histories have been somewhat intertwined. That said, what we are about to write is what we believe is the accurate story of our 9th great grandfather, John Hall.

John Hall was 21 years old when he married my 7th great grandmother Mary Lyman on the 8th day of December in the year 1692. Some believe that John Hall sailed from Downs, England on the ship Griffin which arrived in the Boston Harbor on 4 September 1633 carrying around 200 passengers including the well known religious dissenters, Thomas Hooker and John Cotton. The only real hint that John may have been part of this group is that in 1636 he followed Thomas Hooker and a group of around 100 other individuals, mostly Puritan followers of the Rev. Hooker, on a wilderness trip into Connecticut where he and the others helped found the new settlement of Hartford on the Connecticut River. In Chapter 29 of this blog we go into a rather detailed description of the founding of Hartford which we will not repeat in this chapter particularly since it appears that by 1640 John Hall had already sold his land in the new community of Hartford. We suspect that our John Hall may not have been ready to settle down when he first arrived in Hartford in 1636.  His name does not appear on a 1636 lot map listing the original settlers of Hartford and then on a later 1640 map of Hartford his name appears as follows: "John Hall sold (land) to William Spencer."  Apparently he had already sold his land by 1640 and had moved elsewhere.  In 1640 John Hall was around 35 years old and unmarried and perhaps not ready to settle down or at least not settle down in Hartford. There are some historians who believe that our John Hall was part of an early group of explorers led by a man named John Oldham who traveled extensively throughout Connecticut as early as 1633 to trade in furs with the local Indians. This might of course suggest that when John later traveled with the Thomas Hooker group in 1636 he may have been serving as their guide. This is of course, pure speculation but it might help to explain why he did not ultimately settle in Hartford.

We know that in 1637 John Hall served in the militia during the Pequot War probably volunteering and serving with other men from Hartford. Without going into a lot of detail about the war and its causes, it should suffice to say that the Pequot were an Indian tribe who lived in southeastern Connecticut who along with their Dutch partners were in an intense struggle with the English to control the fur and wampum trade.  The first military action against the Pequot Indians followed the killing by the Pequot of John Oldham, trader and possible former partner of our John Hall, in July of 1636.  It was not however, until a large force of Pequot warriors attacked English settlers in Wethersfield on the 23rd day of April 1637 and killed nine men and women that the Colony of Connecticut declared war on the Pequot tribe on May 1st. Ninety soldiers from the towns of Hartford, Wethersfield, and Windsor formed an expedition to attack the major Pequot villages.  Our John Hall was undoubtedly one of these ninety men.  The war from this point ended quickly for on May 26th the English soldiers along with some of their Indian allies attacked a fortified Pequot Indian village known as Mystic Fort and killed around 400 to 600 Pequot old men (the younger men were not there), women, and children which effectively ending the war and the Pequot Indian tribe.  Only two English soldiers were killed in the brief battle. While some tribal members continued to fight in other locations without much success, the war officially ended on the 21st of September in 1637 with the signing of the Hartford Treaty. The Treaty stipulated that the Pequot tribe was to be no more.  No Pequot Indians were present at the signing to protest the terms.

It is not obvious why John Hall decided to leave Hartford in 1640 and move to the new settlement that was to be called New Haven.  If John had been a fur trader as some believe, this would have meant that his job required him to be away from home for long periods and therefore he may have spent little time at his small log cabin home in Hartford. Thus when he had the opportunity to sell his property in Hartford, he took it. Again, if John Hall had been a trader, New Haven's location near the Great Bay (the Long Island Sound) was an excellent choice to relocate since it opened up the possibility of his being able to readily ship his goods to the other colonies and to England. That, plus the original settlers were for the most part newly arrived and well financed merchants from England and not primarily farmers as they had been in Hartford. New Haven it would appear was "founded to be a commercial town." If John Hall was indeed a trader it was probably a good move on his part.


Sketch of early New Haven

Perhaps after his move to New Haven he realized that at the age of around 35 it was about time that he found a wife and start a family. It was in fact somewhat unusual to find a single man in his mid-30s during these early colonial years. We are not certain as to the date of John's marriage to our 9th great grandmother Jeanne Woolen, although we suspect that it was not long after his arrival in New Haven and certainly no later than early 1644 as he is listed as already married in court records in July of 1644. Jeanne Woolen was brought to America in 1633 by William and Abigail(?) Wilkes and it is believed that she was possibly the niece or cousin of Mrs. Wilkes. In exchange for the cost of her passage, my 9th great grandmother agreed to work for the Wilkes for a period of at least five years or possibly longer essentially working as Mrs. Wilkes maid-servant. She was to receive for these services a small annual allowance plus 10 English pounds when she married. They apparently immigrated on the ship Griffin and if this is the case it is possible that Jeanne Woolen had met her future husband, John Hall, during their voyage and they had spent a short time together while both were living in Boston.  The Wilkes family along with Jeanne Woolen moved to the new settlement of New Haven probably in the spring of 1638 along with the other new settlers.  If John Hall and his future wife Jeanne Woolen had met each other previous to John Hall's move to New Haven, that might explain in large part John's motivation to move from Hartford to New Haven in or around 1640.  This is however, but pure speculation.  What is known based on court records is that when John and Jeanne married, William Wilkes refused to give her the 10 pounds that he had promised and then sometime later in 1644, William Wilkes probably for business reasons, returned to England where he is believed to have died.  His wife returned to England in 1646 and she too unfortunately died when her ship was lost at sea. John Hall, very much angered by the Wilkes' failure to pay his wife the 10 pounds she was promised, sued the Wilkes' estate in 1647, and after a long drawn out court battle the Halls were awarded the 10 pounds that they were owed.

John Hall spent thirty years living in New Haven.  Based on the amount of land that he accumulated he was fairly successful at what he did for a living (whatever that was) although he was not by any means a wealthy man.  During their time in New Haven, John and Jeanne Woolen Hall raised seven (7) children, five boys and two girls, including their third child, Samuel Hall, our 8th great grandfather, who was born in 1648. Despite the fact that John Hall's name was found in the historical records on a number of occasions we still have learned very few details about his life. While he did sign the New Haven Planters' covenant, the Fundamental Agreement, that created the new settlement of New Haven on 4 June 1639, he was considered an "after-signer" in that he signed the document at some unknown later date, and consequently we do not really know the exact year that he moved to New Haven.  Another confusing item is that if he married Jeanne Woolen in late 1643 or early 1644 as is generally assumed and their first child John Jr. was born sometime in 1644, why then did John and Jeanne wait until 9 August 1646 to have their first two children, John Jr. and Sarah, baptized in the First Church of Christ. This church was organized six years earlier back in 1639 but the first reference to John Hall as a member in their records was not until the 1646 baptisms. Since being a recognized citizen in the plantation of New Haven and belonging to the church were synonymous and inseparable, either the Halls were not permanently living in New Haven until a few years after their marriage or the church records are simply missing.  Even if there are missing records, this still does not explain the delay in having their children baptized.  We suspect here again, that John Hall continued as an active trader both with the Indians as well as with merchants in the settlements north of New Haven. It is possible that this would have required him to travel a great deal perhaps even with Jeanne, his new wife. It is also a possibility we suppose that he did not permanently settle in New Haven until after the birth of their daughter Sarah, at which time they formally joined the church and then had both of their young children baptized.  This explanation conflicts of course with why he was granted land on Mill River in New Haven on 17 January 1641 and that he took an Oath of Fidelity in July of 1644. Both of these occurrences suggest that he was living in New Haven and was likely a member of the church. Some of the fun of studying the history of our ancestors is that we occasionally encounter these types of mysteries that we know will never be solved no matter how much time we spend looking through the records.

In 1670 John's and Jeanne's three oldest sons, John, Samuel, and Thomas, ages 25, 23 and 21 respectively, moved to the new community of Wallingford located about 14 miles north of New Haven up the Quinnipiac River (then referred to as "the east river.")  Wallingford had just been formed a year earlier and sons John, Samuel, and Thomas undoubtedly eagerly signed their names to the founding covenant.  Moving to a new community such as Wallingford gave the young men a chance to own their own land, build their own homes, start up new businesses, and raise their families without having to share everything with their parents and siblings.  Both John and Samuel were married and their wives moved with them.  Their father and mother were also to moved to Wallingford, only a few years later and even then for a few more years John and Jeanne Hall maintained homes both in New Haven and in Wallingford.  In 1665, John Hall Sr. had turned 60 years old and as a result his obligation to serve in the militia had ceased and we suspect that his business, perhaps at that point as a store owner and merchant, may have either been sold, closed, or turned over to one of his two youngest sons to manage.  It seems apparently in any case, that John Hall Sr had slowed down somewhat since in 1675 in Wallingford he agreed to serve on a committee of thirteen men along with his sons John Jr. and Samuel to formally establish a church. There are no records of John Hall in the past ever finding the time to serve on committees and in fact, in New Haven in 1669 he had actually turned down a request to serve as a constable.  Some of the biographies of John Hall state that he served as one of the 1st deacons of the church in Wallingford and as a Selectman although we believe that it was in fact his son John Jr. who served in these rolls. My 9th great grandfather John Hall died somewhat unexpectedly at the age of 71 in early 1676.  We believe it was unexpected simply because he left only a verbal will and despite his modest wealth he had not anticipated his death. The death was probably caused by illness that took his life rather quickly.  Not unexpectedly, my 9th great grandmother, Jeanne Woolen Hall married, not long after John's death, a widower named John Cooper whom she had known in New Haven.  Jeanne died in 1690.  Some believe that John Cooper's first marriage was to Jeanne Woolen's sister Mary Woolen although we found absolutely no evidence to support this claim.  John Hall was in the end a good man.  He worked hard during his life providing for his family and clearly he had set a good example for his sons for they all were successful in their own lives after their father's death. 




























Of the original 38 families who were assigned lots in Wallingford in 1669, three of the eight acre lots were granted to sons of John Hall.  Lot number 5 went to John Hall Jr,; Lot number 15 went to Thomas Hall, and lot number 3 was given to my 8th great grandfather Samuel Hall.  This small acquisition of land by Samuel was only the beginning of his land acquisitions for it is said that by the time of his death in 1725 Samuel had become a large landowner.  His ability to acquire all of this land was obviously a result of his successful business career as a "dishturner." He had constructed in Wallingford on the east river (the Quinnipiac River) a water mill that powered a saw for cutting lumber.  From the cut lumber he manufactured wooden dishes, cups, and possibility furniture which were all in high demand during this period of history when china, copper, and silver dinnerware was not yet readily available nor affordable. My 8th great grandmother's name was Hannah Walker, daughter of John and Grace Walker who are believed to have been good friends of Samuel's parents and settled near them in New Haven.  Hannah and Samuel married in New Haven in the year 1668 shortly before they moved to Wallingford.  Their first child, John Hall (1670-1730), my 7th great grandfather was born shortly after their move to Wallingford in 1670. Obviously Hannah was pregnant while Samuel Hall labored to build them a new home in the wooded wilderness land on the hillside above the Quinnipiac River. In total, Samuel and Hannah were to have seven children.

Samuel Hall was not only a good business and family man but he also played an active role in maintaining his civic responsibilities.  As with most men his age in Colonial America, he was a member of the local militia.  He not only served during the King Philip's War of 1675-1676, but by 1696 he was listed as a lieutenant of his "trainband" (groups of local men who were trained periodically to fight to protect their community) which probably meant he was second in command of the local Wallingford militia, and then by 1704 (during the Queen Anne's War) he was promoted to the rank of captain (first in command of his militia unit) which would have been quite an honor and showed that he was highly respected in the community both for his military training skills as well as for his leadership ability. What is not really clear in any of the history records that we reviewed is whether or not Samuel Hall and his small militia unit ever actually engaged in any direct battles with the Indians. The constant threat of an Indian attacked however, existed during Samuel's entire life and therefore constant military training was an essential and important feature in all early American communities. The threat of Indian attacks continued long after Samuel Hall's death in 1725 for the French and Indian War did not even begin until 1752. Besides his military duties, Samuel Hall also served for many years as a Deputy to the General Court where he and the other selected deputies worked to determine the laws and taxes within the various local towns.

We also know that in 1716 Benjamin Hall was made a Deacon of his church an honor that was immortalized on his gravestone after his death at the age of 76 on 5 March 1725.  There is also a record that Samuel served as one of the "selectman" in his town, a position that basically works with the other selectmen to manage the town's affairs. Samuel Hall's appointments as a captain in the militia, a deacon in his church, and one of the town's selectmen, clearly shows the respect that his friends and neighbors had for my 8th great grandfather. He helped found the settlement of Wallingford in 1670 which began as a community of 38 families consisting of around 100 men, woman and children living in mostly small log homes. By the time of his death in 1725 Wallingford had more than tripled in size and a number of other nearby communities had been organized and were growing rapidly.

As we researched our Hall ancestors it quickly became apparent that most members of the Hall family in these early generations were all hard working and successful individuals and my 7th great grandfather, John Hall, was no exception.  He was born in Wallingford on the 22nd day of December in the year 1670.  His birth home was probably a new log cabin that his father had just finished constructing.  As Christmas was approaching there may have been a roaring fire in their new stone fireplace and quite possibly snow was laying on the ground surrounding their home.  We have to believe that shortly following his birth, his uncles John and Thomas Hall along with Uncle John's wife Mary, and possibly even his grandparents John and Jeanne Hall stopped by the home to welcome the newborn baby and congratulate the new parents. In their house on this 22nd day of December there were three John Halls, a fact that helps explain the confusion that historians have had when researching the life of my 7th great grandfather.  The problem is further compounded when we add another John Hall to the list, a son of Uncle John and wife Mary who was born in 1678 and as it turns out lived in Wallingford during the same time period as his cousin.

John Hall married my 7th great grandmother Mary Lyman on 8 December 1692.  Mary was the daughter of John  and Dorcas (Dorothy) Lyman of Northampton, Massachusetts which immediately begs the question as to how did John Hall of Wallingford meet his future wife Mary Lyman of Northampton. While today these two communities are only about a one hour drive apart, in 1692 the 60 mile trip might take as long as two long days.  While we do not really know how they met, we have a theory.  Mary's older sister by two years, Dorothy Lyman married a man named Jabez Brockett who was an early settler of Wallingford.  Jabez Brockett was born in 1656 and was 35 years old when he married 26 year old Dorothy.  Jabez Brockett was known to be a militia soldier during the King Phillip's War and it is possible that during the war which took place in 1675 and 1676 that he may have met Dorothy and Mary Lyman's father, John Lyman, who was known to be a lieutenant during this Indian war.  Whatever the case, Jabez Brockett and Dorothy Lyman were married in November of 1691 and shortly thereafter she became pregnant.  Since Dorothy knew few people in her new home in Wallingford, we suggest that she may have invited her sister Mary, who was two years her junior, down to Wallingford to help her through her pregnancy. While Mary was in Wallingford she met John Hall and they fell in love.  Her sister's baby was born on 17 September 1692 and John and Mary were married less than three months later on 8 December 1692.  This makes for a great story and it makes sense.

John and Mary Lyman Hall's first child, John Hall, Jr., was born on the 13th day of September 1693 only nine months and five days after his parents' marriage.  Together my 7th great grandparents were to have seven children (who were alive at the time of John's death and mentioned in his will) including my 6th great grandfather Benjamin Hall who was born in 1704.  John Hall's life was eulogized at his funeral in 1730 by the Reverend Samuel Whittlesey, pastor of John's church, who fortunately hand wrote his eulogy on paper so that today we can still see the words he used to describe the life of our great grandfather.  Some of these words tell us quite a story: "Skillful and righteous judge," "Wise and able Counsellor," "Extended foresight," "Truly fitted for government and public service," and finally, "excellent talents." We also see in many of the historical narratives describing John's life where he is referred to as the Honorable John Hall, and based on his civic activities during his life time it is quite easy to see why he was so respected. In his Will it reports that he distributed to his sons almost 1,000 acres of land that he owned so obviously what ever John Hall did for a living in addition to the work that he did in government, he was successful enough to be able to acquire land.  Like his father before him, John Hall was elected to be the Captain in the local militia and while we do not know whether he directly participated in any of the Indian wars, what we do know is that he lived during tumultuous times when the colonies were in a state of constant excitement and alarm and it is therefore probable that he faced on numerous occasions situations where military action was necessary.

My 7th great grandfather, John Hall, was also prominent in public affairs. The early colonial government of Connecticut was very special in our country's history as its "Fundamental Orders of Connecticut" established in 1636 was one of the first written democratic constitutions that established a representative government and it is generally accepted by most historians that it formed the basis of the later United States Constitution. It was modified slightly with the Connecticut Charter of 1662 which merged all of the colonies within Connecticut under one government and perhaps more importantly, the new charter gave the colony a legal basis and the approval of the King of England.  The governmental structure of the colony of Connecticut within which our John Hall participated was organized as follows:  At the head of the government was an elected governor and a deputy governor. Below the governor was another elected group referred to under various names including the Governor's Council or Assistants or the General Court which consisted of a group of elected magistrates to advise the governor, to make the laws, and to act as the justices of the court.  The final group was known as the General Assembly which was composed of elected deputies from each of the towns. Our understanding is that our John Hall served first as one of the town's deputies in the General Assembly and then from 1722 until 1730 he was elected and served on the Governor's Council as an Assistant and as a justice of the Supreme Court of the Colony.  The title of "Honorable" often seen proceeding the name John Hall would certainly be appropriate for a man who served as a judge. John Hall's service in the government of Colonial Connecticut was cut short when he died at the relatively young age of 59 in the year 1730.  One final observation worth mentioning before we explore the life of our 6th great grandfather Benjamin Hall, is that John Hall was the grandfather of a man named Lyman Hall who was the son of John Hall's oldest son John Hall Jr. Lyman Hall was only six years old when his grandfather died. He is important in our country's history not only because he was a governor of Georgia but also because he was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Lyman Hall is my 1st cousin, 7 times removed.

All of the sons of John Hall were successful and prominent in their lives including my 6th great grandfather, Benjamin Hall, who was born on 17 December 1704 in the Town of Wallingford, Connecticut. Benjamin was 22 years old when he married my grandmother Abiah Chauncey. Abiah Chauncey was descended from a very well known and religious family.  Her great grandfather, Charles Chauncy (1592-1672) was an early pastor in Plymouth Colony and he was later elected to be the second president of Harvard College in 1654.  Her grandfather Israel Chauncy (1670-1745) is credited with being one of the founders of Yale in New Haven, Connecticut.  Her father, Charles Chauncey (1668-1714) graduated from Harvard in 1686 and served as a pastor at his church in Stratford, Connecticut for nineteen years.  The story of my Chauncey ancestors is told in Chapter 3 of this blog. Abiah Chauncey's mother's name was Sarah Walcott and they also were descended from a well known, respected, and somewhat wealthy family whose story is told in Chapter 16 of this blog.

Benjamin Hall's father died in 1730 and in his will he left Benjamin and his brothers a lot of land including a large landholding on the Mill River over in Cheshire just west of Wallingford, where Benjamin and Abiah moved along with their three children who had been born prior to the move.  It was undoubtedly due to the fact that Benjamin came from a wealthy family, was a large landowner, and was probably respected for his apparent leadership traits, plus the fact that his older brother Samuel was pastor of the local church, that he was elected in 1733 to be a Representative to the Assembly by the town of Cheshire and then in that same year and even greater honor was bestowed on him when he was commissioned to be not only a Magistrate in the Governor's Council/General Court but also a captain in the local trainband, the militia.  Benjamin was only 29 years old and still a young father when all of this occurred.  Despite being very busy for the next two decades, traveling, serving his legal duties as the local magistrate, and being head of the local militia, Benjamin and Abiah managed to raise nine children including their sixth child and my 5th great grandfather Benjamin Hall Jr. who was born the 27th of September 1736.

Before and after the French and Indian War

The French and Indian War in America which began in 1754 was actually a war between the British and the French with both sides using Indians as allies. The war itself, at least in America, was about throwing the French out of territory claimed by the British, namely the colonies including all land east of the Mississippi including upper New York and Vermont, and even eastern Canada. By this point in his life Benjamin Hall was now a colonel in the militia and he could hardly avoid playing an active role in the war against the French and the Indians. It is estimated that upwards of 16,000 men in the Connecticut militia participated from time to time during the war years of 1754 through 1764.  Although there are not a lot of records that have survived that describe Benjamin Hall's role during the war, we do find his name mentioned on a few occasions. As a colonel in the 10th Regiment we know that his regiment helped to restore and garrison an abandoned French fort at Crown Point on Lake Champlain in 1755.  In 1756, he commanded a regiment that was sent north up to the St Lawrence River but whether they engaged the French or Indians during this campaign we could not determine. In 1757, his regiment was sent to Fort William Henry to help protect the fort against a French attack but their company arrived to late to protect the fort's capture by the French. As late as 1759 there is mention of Col Benjamin Hall's war activities as well as copies of his war correspondence in a history book entitled History of Cheshire, Connecticut written by Joseph Perkins Beach in 1912. The capture of Quebec in 1759 and Montreal in 1760 pretty much ended the war as far as the Connecticut militia was concerned.  Whether Benjamin Hall was present at either of these victories we could not determine although it would appear likely.

Benjamin Hall's active political career continued into the 1760s.  He was not only a judge (magistrate) on the General Court but he served on the House of Assistants under then Governor Thomas Fitch.  Unfortunately Benjamin Hall's political career ended abruptly in May of 1766 as did Governor Fitch's and several other of his Assistants when they all were voted out of office for having supported the notorious Stamp Act.  The Stamp Act, which was essentially a tax assessed against the colonies by the British Parliament to help raise money to pay the cost of British troops in America, angered the majority of Americans and was one of the many causes leading up to the American Revolution. As a result of his vote, Benjamin Hall's career abruptly ended at the age of 62 and for the remaining six and a half years of his life until his death on 1 January 1773 he lived in retirement and obscurity.

Benjamin Hall 1736-1786

This now brings us back to the beginning of our story of our Hall ancestors and Benjamin Hall (1736-1786), son of Benjamin Hall and Abiah Chauncey, and our initial quandary as to whether my 5th great grandfather was a Patriot or a Tory during the American Revolution.  Benjamin Hall was 36 years old when his father died and he must have been very much aware of his father's British sympathies in his support for the hated Stamp Act.  Benjamin Hall graduated third in his class from Yale in 1754 and he obviously was an intelligent and perhaps even a very opinionated individual when considering his minority status as a British sympathizer. My 5th great grandfather married my 5th great grandmother, Hannah Burnham, in 1767 and together they had four children including my 4th great grandfather, William Burnham Hall, who was born in 1774.  Their youngest son who was born in 1784 near the end of the American Revolution, they named Edmund Fanning Hall.  This is very significant for their son Edmund was named after an infamous and hated American named Edmund Fanning who had joined the British Army and fought against the Americans during the War. In 1783 he and other Loyalists moved to Nova Scotia.  The fact that our great grandfather named his son after a well known Loyalist is pretty clear evidence that he did not support the American cause for liberty. At least following the war he did not choose to relocated to Nova Scotia although it is possible that his early death at the age of fifty in 1786 may have prevented an otherwised planned departure.

William Burnham Hall was just under 12 years old when his father died and while we do not know for certain, he probably continued to live with his mother at his parents' home until her death in 1797 when William was only 22.  At that point what we believe is that he like so many others during this same time period moved westward, and eventually settled in Seneca County, New York in the Town of Fayette located between Cayuga Lake on the east and Seneca Lake on the west. Here he met his future wife and my 4th great grandmother, Rebecca Meekins Boardman, and they married sometime around 1797.  Rebecca was only 14 years old when they married.  She was only around five years old when she had left her birth home in Hubbardton, Vermont in 1788 and moved with her parents and two older siblings to central New York State.  Her father, Benajah Boardman, our 5th great grandfather, was a soldier during the American Revolution and he is credited with being a sergeant in a company under the command of Col. Ira Allen, brother of Ethan Allen.  The company under which he fought has been called the Green Mountain Boys.

William and Rebecca were to have only three children before her early death in 1805 at the age of 22. Unfortunately of their three children only one survived beyond childhood and that was my 3rd great grandmother Elizabeth Boardman Hall who was born on the 15th of April 1801.  Unfortunately, we found very little about the life of our great grandfather.  It seems that he remarried a woman named Lucinda shortly after Rebecca's death but his new wife also died in the year 1808 also at the young age of 22.  William was only 34 years old when his second wife died so it is probable that he remarried for a third time. We did find US Census records for the years 1810, 1820, and 1830 for a William B Hall in Fayette which is undoubtedly our great grandfather that would suggest a third marriage and at least one additional son and possibly two additional daughters.  We also found an 1812 voting record for Seneca County giving the results for the election of an assemblyman to the New York State Assemble.  William B Hall was listed as one of the candidates for the position however, he received only one vote out of several thousand which probably reflected the fact that he voted for himself.  Clearly our 4th great grandfather, William Barnham Hall was not as highly regarded as his forbearers.

The only other historical information that we could find about William Hall was that he was one of three purchasers of a large parcel of land in the Town of  Fayette in Seneca County in 1807. The size of William's land was 163.9 acres and what is interesting about the land is that it was part of a larger section of land purchased from the Cayuga Indian tribe in 1795.  What is interesting about this is that the Cayuga Indians have been trying to claim ever since their original sale of their land, including filing a recent lawsuit that began in the 1980s, that they are entitled to be compensated for their land.  Their argument is that the original agreement was never ratified by the US Congress as they claimed was required under the terms of the original sale therefore they still owned the land.  Had the Indians won their suit which they did not, the poor current owner(s) of William B Hall's land would have had a very clouded title to their property. On the map to the right our grandfather's land would have been part of the reservation land immediately to the west of Cayuga Lake. We could not learn the exact date of William's death although he does not appear in the 1840 US Census so he may have died prior to that date.  Some of the family trees on Ancestry.com have William dying in 1842 although we could not find any records to confirm this date.

It appears that Elizabeth Boardman Hall was still living with her father and her father's third wife in 1820 as she is listed as the oldest daughter in the 1820 US Census.  We do know however, that she married Mosely Hutchinson on 22 March 1822. Mosely was originally from Ithaca, New York but he had moved to the Village of Cayuga which was only a few miles from the Hall homestead in the town of Fayette when considering that in the year 1800 a bridge had been built that crossed Cayuga Lake connecting the Village of Cayuga directly to Fayette.  It is not clear how they actually met although in 1822 Mosely Hutchinson, then 26 years old, was already a successful farmer and undoubtedly some of his travels had taken him across the bridge and into Seneca County and the Town of Fayette.


Elizabeth's marriage to Mosely was long and prosperous.  Mosely became an attorney, and for a period a judge and a State Assemblyman. Together they had seven children including my great, great grandmother Mary Rebecca Hutchinson who was born on the 24th of April in 1825.  We are related to the Hutchinson and Hall families through my mother's grandfather, Eugene Hutchinson Ferree, whose grandparents were Mosely and Elizabeth Boardman Hall.  We have visited the graves of my great grandparents Eugene Hutchinson Ferree and his wife Marian Coapman Ferree, and his mother Mary Rebecca Hutchinson Ferree, and his grandparents Mosely Hutchinson and Elizabeth Hall Hutchinson who are all buried near one another in the Lakeview Cemetery in the Village of Cayuga, New York.  The Hall family tree was a wonderful ancestral line to explore and write their story, as once again we have discovered more of our ancestors who played strong roles in our country's history.

Chapter 39 - Our Degraff Family Ancestors

The Huguenot Cross

The powerful influences of religion have played a profound role in the lives of many of our early American ancestors particularly with respect to their decisions to escape religious intolerances and persecutions in their homelands by emigrating to America.  The Pilgrims in the 1620s and the Puritans in the 1630s are perhaps the best known of our early American ancestors who came to America to find religious freedom. Another less well known group of religious freedom seekers were the French Protestants known as Huguenots, who began leaving France for other more religiously tolerant countries beginning in the late 1500s. The exact number of Huguenots who left France between the late 1500s and the mid-1700s is believed to be as high as one-half million including the many thousands who emigrated to America. One of George Washington's 3rd great grandfathers, a man named Nicolas Martiou, was a French Huguenot who arrived in Virginia in 1620.  There are at least eight U.S. Past presidents who are known to have Huguenot ancestors. Paul Rivere's father, Apollos Rivoire, was a French Huguenot who arrived in America in 1716. In Chapter 6 of this blog, we outline the lives of our early Ferree ancestors, who were French Huguenots who escaped religious persecution in France by emigrated to America via England in 1708. In Chapter 1 of this blog we tell the story of our Rappleye ancestors beginning with Joris Rapalje who arrived in America in 1624 and who is recognized by the National Huguenot Society as a French Huguenot. We have a number of other French Huguenot ancestors on our family tree including our 9th great grandfather Jean LeComte who arrived in America in 1674.  This chapter tells the story of Jean LeComte and his family and what he and the thousands of other French Huguenots had to face during this tragic period in French history. 

The progenitor of our DeGraff family in America was a man named Jean LeComte who was born we believe sometime in the late 1630s. His birth location is usually listed as Picardy, France although there is no confirmation that we could find as to its accuracy.  The first actual record that has been located lists Jean LeComte as a member of the Dutch Protestant church in Middelburg in the province of Zeeland in the Netherlands and marrying Marie Laurens on 12 December 1660.  A subsequent church record dated 13 March 1661 records the baptism of their son Moses LeComte.  After that, the only other confirmed record of Jean LeComte and his wife and son is when they landed in New Amsterdam in America in October of 1674. What needs to be examined at this point is why did Jean LeComte leave his French home and move to the Dutch controlled Netherlands, and then why did he subsequently move to America. Unfortunately the most common answer is that his moves were a result of the persecution of the Huguenots by the French authorities, and while this is certainly true, it does oversimplify what actually happened.

Before the year 1500 all of Western Europe and England was Catholic. In the early 1500s however, with the dissentions of Martin Luther in Germany followed by the teachings of John Calvin in France beginning around 1630, the rise of a new form of church government began which ultimately lead to the Protestant faith and church. In 1534 King Henry VIII of England made an abrupt change by declaring himself the head of the church in England effectively throwing the Roman Catholic Church and its hierarchy out of England.  The Protestant Church in France later to be called the Huguenot Church grew rapidly in the early 1500s and by 1560 there were over 2,000 churches and as many as two million members which represented upwards of 10% of the French population. The largest concentrations of Huguenots were in the south and central areas of France. At first, the French government under King Francis I and later his son King Henry II welcomed the Huguenots as many of its members were wealthy nobles who played an active role in the government and its finances. This quickly changed however after the death Henry II in 1559 when clashes between the Roman Catholics and the Huguenots rapidly increased culminating with the St Bartholomew's Day Massacre in 1572 that resulted in the death of thousands of Huguenots.  The French Wars of Religion between the French Catholics and the Protestant Huguenots spanned the period of 1562 through 1598. Finally in 1598 the French King Henry IV signed a document known as the Edith of Nantes which essentially restored civil rights back to the Huguenots.

These civil rights initially included political rights, military rights, and religious rights. Unfortunately by the 1620s the French government pretty much destroyed the private armies of the Huguenot nobles and gradually removed any Huguenot influences within the government. While the Huguenots still retained their rights to worship as they pleased, where they worshipped and how many churches they could build was gradually brought under the control of the government. We do not know the exact year that Jean LeComte moved out of France and into the Dutch controlled Netherlands.  We also do not know if he was moved by his parents when he was still young or he moved alone or with friends or relatives around the time he became an adult in his late teens or early twenties. Finally, despite the fact that almost all writings about LeComte state that he left France to escape religious persecution, we do not really know the real motivations behind his relocation.  Frankly, if Jean LeComte moved to the Netherland sometime between 1648, when the Protestant Dutch regained control of the Northern Providences of Netherlands from Spain, and 1660, the wholesale persecution of the French Huguenots was not taking place at least not to the extent that it did during the late 1500s before the Edith of Nantes or after 1685 when King Louis XIV revoked the Edith of Nantes and went after the Huguenots.

Here is what we believe about Jean LeComte's move to Middelburg in the Dutch controlled area of Netherlands. We have to believe that as Jean LeComte reached the age where it was necessary that he support himself,  he may have had difficulty finding a decent job.  He was after all a French Protestant living in an area in France, the northeast, where Huguenots were in the distinct minority. While he undoubtedly faced pressure to convert to Catholicism, he was a fervent Protestant and the option to relocate to better his life was a strong and probably his only real option. Middelburg in the province of Zeeland was an obvious choice to relocate.  First it was the closest Dutch Protestant area to is home in Picardy although to get there he needed to pass through the Spanish controlled Netherlands which is now mostly Belgium. Secondly, many other Huguenots from Picardy had previously settled in this area and more were being welcomed both by the political leaders and by the church.  Most importantly however, there were jobs available for young men of the Protestant faith. One of the largest employers was the Dutch East India Company that was headquartered in Middelburg. We do not know what Jean LeComte did for a living but the fact that he was able to afford to take his family to America certainly implies that he had accumulated money during the 14 year period of his marriage and life in Middelburg.  Jean LeComte most likely moved to Middelburg between 1658 and 1660.



King Louis XIV of France

Jean LeComte as it turns out got out of France at the right time.  While King Louis XIV became King of France at the age of only five in the year 1643, he did not actually begin his personal and absolute control over France until 1661 after the death of his chief minister, Cardinal Mazarin and not long after Jean LeComte had left France for the Protestant Netherlands. Persecution of the Huguenots under Louis XIV began as a mandate that all French Protestants convert to Catholicism and he even agreed to pay those who made the conversion.  When this effort had a limited effect, he continued to make it difficult for Huguenots to get jobs, he closed down their churches, and finally in 1685 he made Protestantism completely illegal.  Besides the outright murder of thousands of Huguenots, hundreds of thousands fled out of France to other European countries, the Americas, and even South Africa. As we have seen however, Jean LeComte had left France before all of these began so why did he leave for England and ultimately to America.

King Louis XIV is noted for many things besides the persecution of the French Huguenots. France during much of Louis reign was the most powerful military nation in the world. One of his actions that was to dramatically effect my 9th great grandfather, Jean LeComte, was when he ordered the French Army in 1672 to invade the Dutch Netherlands (shown on the map as the United Provinces (Dutch). This country is of course where Jean LeComte and many others had moved earlier to get away from the French. Jean LeComte with his wife Marie and his young son Moses made the decision to escape the French by fleeing to England.

As part of this same campaign, Louis XIV ordered in 1673 a portion of his troops to invade Germany including the Palatinate, home to many French Huguenots who had fled to this area and specifically the city of Mannheim in earlier years.  This is significant to this discussion as two families, Nicholas deVaux and his wife Maria Sy, and Maria's father Isaac Sy and his family escaped to England before the invading French army.  Here in England the deVaux family and the Sy family became acquainted with Jean LeComte and his family.  We have seen in writing several times when describing these families that they were all related and while obviously the Sy (sometimes written as See) family and the deVaux family are related by marriage, there is no evidence that Jean LeComte was related to any member of either family. It has also been written that Jean LeComte lived in Mannheim for a period, but here again no one has provided any evidence to support this believe nor does it make any sense.  Why would he have left one Protestant nation where he was able to freely worship, to move to another Protestant nation even further away from his original home.

Exactly how long these families remained in England before they decided to board a ship headed for New Amsterdam in America is not known.  There were many French Huguenot refugees in England at the time and they were for the most part welcomed by their new country. Unfortunately for France, a large portion of the Huguenots who left their home country were literate craftsmen and even in some cases French nobility, so France's loss of some of their country's better citizens was another country's gain. Most historical accounts report that the LeComte, de Vaux, and Sy families came to America on a fleet of ships also carrying the newly appointed English governor of New York, which was until his arrival the Dutch Colony of New Amsterdam. His name was Sir Edmund Andros. The fleet of ships arrived in the New York Harbor on 22 October 1674.

New Amsterdam around 1670

Fortunately for the LeComte family who arrived in New York with few possessions and no friends or relatives to greet them at the dock as they departed their ship, there were many French Huguenots who had arrived earlier and were eager to help new arrivals.  This was particularly important since obviously there were no hotels to welcome the new visitors and empty rental homes were not available. One of the first individuals that the family may have met was a man named Claude Le Maistre who himself was a French Huguenot who had arrived in America more than 20 years earlier back in 1652. Little did Claude LeMaistre know at the time that he was destined to be the future father-in-law of young 13-year old Moses LeComte who was to marry his daughter Hester almost twenty years later.  This of course makes Claude Le Maistre my 9th great grandfather. As a total aside, one of Claude LeMaistre's sons, Johannes Delamater, also is one of my 8th great grandfathers although in his case he is an ancestor of my paternal grandfather as opposed to his sister, Hester, who is my 8th great grandmother on my paternal grandmother's side of my family. One very common occurrence in this still mostly Dutch speaking community of New York was that the spelling of names and their pronunciations were often changed to reflect the Dutch or in some cases the English language.  In the case of the LeComte family, the Dutch locals spelled the name as DeGraaf which means "the Count" in Dutch.  Claude LeMaistre's surname was changed over the course of a generation to the English name Delamater.

Like the early history of my LeComte family, the early history of Claude LeMaistre is also somewhat of a mystery. His birth year is listed as somewhere between 1611 and 1620.  There seems to be a consensus that he was born in the old province of Artois located just north of the province of Picardy in the northwest corner of France and that as a young man he moved possibly with his parents and siblings, to England around the years 1635 or 1636.  They were Protestants and like so many Protestants before and after them they were moving away from the intolerable treatment that they were receiving from the Catholic Church and the government in France. Their move may also have been motivated by the onset of the Franco-Spanish War which began in 1635.  By 1636 the Spanish forces in the Southern Netherlands were conducting raids in northern France where the LeMaistre family and many other Huguenots families lived. Claude was married in 1638 in Canterbury, England to a woman named Louise Quennell who also had come with her parents from France.  Together they had two daughters both of whom died before Claude and Louise subsequently moved to Leiden in the Netherlands around 1643. The English were applying pressure on the Huguenots to join the Church of England which undoubtedly motivated the move. A male son was born to the couple in 1646.  Unfortunately around a year later in 1647, Claude's wife Louise died.  Sometime following his wife's death, Claude moved to nearby Middelburg were he met and married his second wife Jeanne de Lannoy in 1648.  She too died after only two years of marriage in 1650.  Claude LeMaistre married my 9th great grandmother Hester DuBois on 24 April 1652 in the Walloon Church in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Shortly following their marriage Claude and his new 26-year old bride Hester boarded a ship headed for America and the Dutch Colony of New Amsterdam.

Nieuw-Nederland or New Netherland was originally established by the Dutch back in the early 1600s to be a fur trading operation managed by the Dutch West India Company. The earliest settlements were actually not in the New York area but up the Hudson River in what is now the Albany region.  This began around 1613. It was not until 1626 that the first colonists actually began a settlement on what is now known as Manhattan Island and surprisingly the vast majority of these early settlers were not Dutch but Protestant Walloons from the area of the Spanish Netherlands and French Huguenots. At the very south end of the island a fort was constructed that they called Fort Amsterdam and soon after a wall was built along the northern border of this new settlement of New Amsterdam primarily to control the encroachment of the local unpredictable Indians. The location of this wall was along what today is called Wall Street. The original settlement consisted of around 30 families (including my Rapalje ancestors.)  By 1630 the community had grown to around 270 and by the time that Claude LeMaistre and his wife Hester arrived, there were almost 2000 people living in the area of New Netherlands and New Amsterdam.

Claude and Hester LeMaistre originally located in a new settlement called Flatbush (originally named Midwout and now part of Brooklyn) on Long Island where they lived from 1652 until 1662.  During this period they had four children and Claude worked as a carpenter along with operating his farm.  In 1662, they sold their home in Flatbush and moved to a new community in the northeast part of Manhattan Island known as Harlem. Here the couple had two additional children including our great grandmother Hester who was born shortly after the move in 1662. Claude DeMaistre (Delamater) apparently took an active role in his community serving three terms as a magistrate and in 1664 he and Hester joined the Reformed Dutch Church and for a short period Claude services as the Deacon of his church.

It is not really clear how Jean LeComte and his family ended up in Harlem after their ship landed in New Amsterdam in lower Manhattan Island in October of 1674. We have to suspect that since their onboard friends, Nicholas DeVaux and his family and Isaac Sy and his family all moved to Harlem, Jean and Marie LeComte may simply have followed them. It is also possible that DeVaux and Sy may have had old friends that they knew lived in Harlem. One of these friends may have been one David Demarest who while older than both Nicholas and Isaac, he did live in Mannhein, Germany (1651 to 1663) during the same time period as did Nicholas and Isaac. David Demarest also lived in Middelbury between 1642 and 1651 and while we believe that Jean LeComte did not move to Middelburg until the late 1650s, it is possible we suppose, that he did move earlier as a child with his parents and they may have known David Demarest.  Very speculative and therefore very unlikely. Most likely perhaps is that they all believed and were motivated by the opportunities to purchase good farmland in the Harlem area and it was better than in the more crowded New Amsterdam area. Fortunately for my 9th great grandfather Jean LeComte and his family, one of the local Magistrates, David Demarest as it turns out, seeing that the LeComte family had no place to live, took them into his own home until that had a chance to locate or build their own home.  On 13 December 1674 Jean LeComte and his wife joined the Harlem Dutch Reformed Church.  Unfortunately for the LeComte family, Jean LeComte died on 24 May 1675.  He was only in his late-40s and it is quite possible that the illness that killed him may have been easily cured by our modern doctors.  Marie Laurens LeComte was undoubtedly devastated by the unexpected death of her husband.  Unfortunately, although it is not unusual, history has not recorded what happened to my great grandmother after the death of her husband.  Some have recorded that she died in 1687 in Canada however, this is most unlikely.  What is likely is that she remarried and the records of the marriage and her thereafter have been lost. What has been reported if it is accurate is that David Demarest as the local magistrate, presided over the reading of Jean LeComte's will in July of 1675 and that at the court hearing Maria Laurens LeComte, my great grandmother, announced her intentions to marry a Charles Dennison.  She was concerned about her son Moses and his future upbringing. Strangely it would seem, Nicholas DeVaux and Simon Courier were appointed to "care for and educate the child."  What happened to my great grandmother thereafter is unknown.  The lag time between her husband's death and her announcement of her new marriage was less than two months which has to make one wonder if perhaps she was having an affair . . . .

Moses (LeComte) DeGraaf was only 14 years old when his father died. We know nothing about Moses' early life other than he did not live with Nicholas DeVaux or at least he did not move to Hackensack, New Jersey with DeVaux in 1678. We do know that around the age of 18 in 1679/80 he was married in Harlem to a Maria LeBlanck and sometime in 1680 their son Samuel was born. Apparently his wife died as did possibly their son, since in 1683 Moses deGraaf married the daughter of Claude DeMaistre (Delamater), Hester Delameter. We could find nothing more in the historical records about Moses' first wife and their son. Shortly following the marriage of Moses and Hester, they moved to Kingston in the newly formed County of Ulster located about 90 miles north of Harlem.  Presumably they made the voyage to their new home by traveling up the Hudson River.  Hester may have been pregnant when she made the trip or at least became pregnant shortly thereafter since their first child, a daughter, was born in July of 1685.  Over the next nineteen years they were to have eight more children including their second child and first son, Jan, my 7th great grandfather, who was baptized on 6 March 1687.  We could find very little mention about Moses DeGraaf in the historical records. We know that in the years 1685 through 1713 he and Hester are mentioned frequently in the records of the Old Dutch Church in Kingston as witnesses to the baptisms of some of their children, in one case a friend's child, and in 1713 as witness to the baptism of their grandson Moses, son of their son Jan DeGraaf. Moses through his life was undoubtedly a farmer and with his family attended the Old Dutch Church in Kingston and possibly later the Dutch Reformed Church in Marbletown in Ulster County.  We know that Moses may have lived in or near Marbletown in 1715 as he and his 2nd son Abraham are listed as privates in the Foot Company of Militia of Marbletown. Obviously the ever-present threat of Indian attacks were a part of life during this period of history, hence the requirement that all able bodied males must serve in the militia.  Despite having a large family we have to believe that the DeGraaf family lived in a small log cabin, the whole family worked hard maintaining the family farm, and most of their friends whom they socialized with primarily on Sundays were of Dutch and French descent. A very large percentage of the original inhabitants of Ulster County had migrated from other areas of New Amsterdam and were Walloons or Huguenots. Most likely the church records that listed the death of both Moses and Hester have been lost or destroyed.  We do not therefore know the years that my 8th great grandparents passed away or where they are buried.

My 7th great grandfather, Jan DeGraff was born in Kingston County in the year 1687. The spelling of his name in the historical records is interesting in that it was beginning to reflect the trend towards converting the older Dutch names into the English language or at least into the English spellings of the names.  His proper name of Jan was changed not unexpectedly to John.  DeGraff is written in multiple ways from De Graaf as it is spelled in the church records, to De Grave as it is spelled in a 1714 census record, and to De Graeff as it is written in his 1733 Will. Spelling was not a great strength of any of the recording secretaries in the early 1700s but then obviously there probably was no absolute correct spelling of the family surname especially during a time period when most people could neither read nor write.  Jan was around 19 years old when he married Marie Peacock (sometimes spelled Pekok) in 1707 or early 1708.  Together Jan and Marie were to have nine children including their fifth child, Abraham DeGraff, my 6th great grandfather, who was born in 1718.  In 1712 Jan DeGraff is recorded as having purchased land in Poughkeepsie in Dutchess County located near the Hudson River about 20 miles south of his parents' home in Ulster County. Considering that most of my ancestors when they left home moved westward to areas that were less crowded, it is a little unusual to find that Jan and his wife and their three very young children moved closer to New York City and into an area that was already developed.  In 1713 when they actually packed up and moved, Dutchess County had just become its own self-administered County whereas prior to that time, Dutchess had been governed by Ulster County. There is no evidence that this change encouraged Jan DeGraff to move although perhaps the notoriety of the change influenced his decision. In any case in a 1714 census in Dutchess County (their first census), Jan DeGraff (actually scribed as "John De Grave") is listed as living there with six members in the family. It is not clear who the six person was as their fourth child was not yet born by 1714. In 1715, Jan DeGraff is recorded as serving in the Dutchess County Militia. In 1717 there is an historical court record of Jan DeGraff (John De Grave) appearing before the local magistrate apparently for some violation that occurred while he was the owner of a local tavern that sold alcoholic beverages.  He was being fined 5 pounds for something he did wrong, perhaps not paying the proper taxes owed or not charging the required amount for the drinks he served.  The laws governing the sale of alcoholic were very strict and the taxes were high. Fortunately the Magistrate waved the very high fine because he did not think that Jan could afford the fine plus Jan DeGraff was a "great family" man.  His total assets at the time were around 11 British pounds.  Fortunately Jan DeGraf must have been a good business man for his total wealth in 1722 had risen to 30 British pounds and when he prepared his will in 1733, his net worth including the value of the land he owned was even greater.  My 7th great grandfather died in 1735 at the fairly young age of only 48 years old. His son, Abraham, my 6th great grandfather was only 17 when his father died.  My 7th great grandmother Marie remarried shortly after her husband's death but her story thereafter is lost in history.

My 7th great grandfather Abraham Degraff spent his entire life living in or near Poughkeepsie, New York.  On 17 April 1741 he married Marretjen van Wagenen whose great grandfather (my 9th great grandfather) Aert Jacobsen Van Wagenen was born in the Netherlands and emigrated to America around the mid-1600s. Aert is recognized as one of the earliest settlers in Ulster County arriving there in approximately 1661, back when it was still called Esopus.  Abraham and Maria (Marretjen) were to have nine children in total including my 6th great grandfather, Moses, who was born in Poughkeepsie in 1748.  Abraham's occupation was that of a cordwainer or in more modern terms, he was a shoemaker.  He was probably a well liked and respected individual as in 1739 he was listed as being a Deacon of the Dutch Reformed Church in Poughkeepsie.  Abraham died in the year 1775 at the age of 57.  Unfortunately history records have been unkind to women for we do not know what happened to my great grandmother Marretjen after her husband's death.

Researching my 6th great grandfather Moses Degraff proved to be a little confusing in that there were several men named Moses Degraff living in Dutchess County during the same time period. They were understandably all related and all were named after the original Moses LeComte Degraff who immigrated to America with his parents in 1674.  The two men named Moses who caused me the most confusion were actually first cousins.  My Moses Degraff (1748-1828) ancestor was the son of Abraham Degraff (1718-1775) and Marretjen Van Weganen and the grandson of Jan Degraff and Maria Pekok.  The other Moses Degraff (1742-1828) was the son of Abraham's brother, Moses Degraff (1713-1800) and his wife Annetjen Kip, and the grandson again of Jan DeGraff and Marretjen Van Weganen.  There were a few other related Moses Degraffs but these two were the ones who were most often confused.  Incidentally, Moses Degraff, my 6th great grandfather, married my great grandmother Mary Churchill around 1764 and his cousin Moses married his wife Antoinette Van Kleeck two years later in 1766. One has to wonder if they attended each others wedding. Moses and Mary were to have five children including my 5th great grandfather and their second child, Abraham, who was born in 1771.  Unfortunately Mary died when she was around 50 and shortly following her death Moses remarried in 1809 this time to a much younger woman named Elizabeth Tabler and together they had four more children.  Moses was around 60 years old when he married for the second time and we have to hand it to our great grandfather as he undoubtedly must have had a lot of stamina to father four more children after the age of sixty.  He was 80 years old when he died after a long life and nine children. Actually we do not really know much about the life of Moses Degraff.  He was born in Poughkeepsie and sometime during his life he moved to Hyde Park also in Dutchess County, New York where he died and was buried in the

Stoutenburgh Family Burying Grounds along with his second wife. Jacobus Stoutenburgh was one of the original settlers of Hyde Park and his legacy was one of wealth. The fact that our great grandfather Moses Degraff was buried in this family's cemetery speaks highly of his character, stature, and perhaps his wealth in the community.  Based on his last will and Testament it sounds like Moses was financially successful as he left two hundred dollars to each of his children which was a lot of money in 1828 plus he left an annual income to his wife for the rest of her life.  One other very important event in the life of our 6th great grandfather Moses Degraff was that he served in the Dutchess County Militia during the American Revolution.  There are actually two Moses Degraff listed in the Dutchess County Militia records.  In the 2nd Regiment of the Dutchess County Militia we find a Moses Degraff along with a another man, his brother, Simeon Degraff who were both cousins of our Moses Degraff.  Brothers Moses and Simeon were from Fishkill in Dutchess County south of Hyde Park and Poughkeepsie.  In the 6th Regiment of the Dutchess Militia we find the name of our 6th great grandfather Moses Degraff.  Whether or not he saw any action during the War we could not determine and he died in 1828 before the Revolutionary War federal pensions were distributed.

My 5th great grandfather Abraham Degraff was born in 1771 in Hyde Park (which was part of the town of Clinton until 1821) in Dutchess County and he probably spent his entire life living not far from the place where he was born.  He married my 5th great grandmother Elizabeth Tillow sometime in the mid-1790s. As with many of our ancestors living during the earlier years of our country it is not always possible to identify the names of all of the children. Census records prior to 1850 listed only the name of the head of the household and since birth certificates were not issued at this time, and church baptismal records were sometimes lost, we never know for certain the names of all of the children. Based on what records we could find including a review of the later US census records, we believe that the following is correct.  Their first child was John A. Degraff who was born sometime between 1795 to 1798. Their second child was David A. Degraff who was born in 1799. Their third child was Maria Degraff born in 1808 and their fourth child was my 4th great grandmother, Jane Degraff who was born in 1814. Based on the 1820 US Census there may have been another daughter born between the births of David and Maria who may have died young or at least before the 1830 census or she may have married young, left the family home and then been lost to history. Unfortunately, we really know very little about the life of Abraham Degraff although he was undoubtedly a hard working farmer. Abraham died in January of 1832 at the age of 60.  On January 21 of 1832, John A Degraff (Abraham's oldest son) and Jacob Degraff (Abraham's 1st cousin and who was about the same age as his cousin John) petitioned the court to appoint them the administrators of Abraham's estate. Witnessing the petition was Robert Degraff who was Abraham's younger brother. Signing the petition was Abraham's wife Elizabeth and Abraham's son David A. Degraff, and a relative named Abram Degraff whose exact relationship with the family we could not determine. The contents of his will if one did exist, we could not determine although hopefully he left his family and especially his widowed wife with some funds to live comfortably.  Jane was 18 when her father passed away. 

On 20 October 1835 my 4th great grandmother Jane Degraff married William Reynolds in Dutchess County and not long after their marriage they moved to Elmira, New York along with her brother David A. Degraff and his wife and their mother Elizabeth Tillow Degraff who would have been around 60 years old at the time of the move.  Elizabeth, my 5th great grandmother died at the age of 74 and she is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in Elmira, New York.  The story of my Reynolds' ancestors beginning with the son of Jane Degraff and William Reynolds, David Degraff Reynolds, is told in the preceding chapter 38.

More and more as I explore the lives of my distant ancestors do I begin to understand why my DNA test results revealed that my ancestral ethnicity is 63% western European. With so many French Huguenot ancestors on both my mother's and my father's side of my family, this high percentage of western European ancestry should not have come as much of a surprise despite the fact that my Baker surname is very English.  But then it would seem that my Baker ancestors easily feel in love with French Huguenot women.  Why else did my great grandfather Baker marry a woman with the surname of Rappleye (Rapalje), or my 2nd great grandfather Baker marry a woman named Hannah Harpending, or my 4th great grandfather Baker marry a woman named Sarah Bogart. 

Chapter 38 - My Reynolds Ancestors

Until recently I knew almost nothing about the Reynolds' line of my family tree at least beyond my great grandmother Ella McBlain Reynolds (1863-1935), who is pictured to the left, her father David DeGroff Reynolds (1836-1899), and her grandfather William Reynolds (1805-1870).  All Reynolds family members beyond these individuals were a total mystery despite no lack of effort on my part trying to uncover their identities.  Recently however, I discovered that my 2nd cousin, Liz DuBois, herself a descendant of the Reynolds family, had done extensive research on our Reynolds line and she successfully uncovered the identities of our early Reynolds ancestors in this county.  I must openly admit that Liz's bulldog efforts in this regard prove once again that she is the superior researcher. For this we thank her, particularly since it was because of her efforts that we were able to add this chapter on our Reynolds ancestors to our Baker Family History Blog. Ella McBlain Reynolds is the mother of my paternal grandmother, Helen Spaulding Baker. Ella married my great grandfather, Henry Clinton Spaulding in Horseheads near Elmira, New York in 1886.  Here is a summary of what we have learned of our Reynolds ancestors.

The first of our known Reynolds ancestors is our 7th great grandfather Electious Reynolds who is believed to have been born around 1653 in Massachusetts although there are no birth records to substantiate his birth year and birth location nor have the names of his parents been determined.  The year of his birth was estimated based on later public records as well as his death record which lists his age as 85 in 1738.  It is possible that he actually may have been born in England and come to Massachusetts at a young age with his parents as his name does not appear in any records until he was listed as a resident of Manchester, Massachusetts in 1674 around the age of twenty-one. There were a few Reynolds families living in the Massachusetts area during this time period, however no one has been able to definitively connect any of them to our Electious.  

The fact that Electious Reynolds was impressed into the Essex County militia in December of 1675 at the onset of the King Philip's War suggests that he was probably not a landowner, probably poor, possibly unemployed, and we know that he was not married or at least there is no record of a marriage until he married Mary Pease in July of 1686. From an article in The New England Quarterly published in 1999 concerning the Essex County Militia during the King Philip's War period, they describe the typical soldier as "The worst men, poachers, thieves, and drunkards . . "  or as described in a subsequent paragraph probably more accurately, as "marginal men" meaning men that if they were killed fighting their loss would have a lesser impact on their community.  Apparently as it would seem our great grandfather fell somewhere in these categories. Fortunately for our family, Electious survived the war and the battle known as Narragansett Fort where upwards of 300 Indian women and children were known to have been massacred.  We find him next in the public records this time in Salem, Massachusetts in 1678 where he is credited as having signed an Oath of Allegiance.

For the next eight years Electious Reynolds' name appears occasionally in the public records in Salem including one document that listed him in the tax rolls. There have been no records discovered however, that show that he purchased or owned land during this period. We might therefor assume that Electious may have been just a farmhand or perhaps he may have managed his own farm on land that he leased from others. It was not until he was around thirty-three years old that he met and married Mary Pease, daughter of Robert and Sarah Pease, our 8th great grandparents.  Their wedding was recorded in Salem on 16 July 1686.  Mary was around nineteen years old at the time of their marriage. Their first child, a son James, was born on 15 Jan 1687. Sometime between October of 1689 and 1691 the Reynolds family left behind Salem and Essex County and moved around 60 miles southeast of Boston to the community of Middleborough in Plymouth County. We do not know what motivated the family to move although relocation was a common occurrence during this period and it is likely that Electious hoped that opportunities existed in Plymouth Colony that were not available elsewhere. For a farmer like Electious Reynolds such opportunities most likely consisted of less expensive and more fertile farm lands. There are some family historians who believe that Electious' father was a William Reynolds of Plymouth Colony and that Electious was actually born in or near Middleborough. If this is true although there are no documents supporting this heritage, it might help explain why Electious and Mary moved to Middleborough not long after their marriage.

It is worthwhile at this point to digress for a moment to briefly discuss the parents of our Mary Pease Reynolds for they in a small and brief moment played a role in our country's history. Our 8th great grandfather Robert Pease was only four years old when he sailed across the Atlantic Ocean from England to America on the ship Francis in 1634 with his father Robert and his Uncle John. His mother Marie and his brothers and sisters followed on a later ship and the family united finally in the village of Salem. Unfortunately Robert's father died when Robert was only 15 and his mother not sure of what to do with her young son apprenticed him to a man named Thomas Root for a period of five years. During this period Robert was trained to raise sheep and weave their wool. Robert married our great grandmother Sarah (maiden name unknown) sometime around 1658 and together they had around eight children including of course our 7th great grandmother Mary Pease who was born in 1666. Robert and Sarah lived a rather quiet but typical life in Salem with Sarah raising her children, keeping their home, and managing their small family garden and Robert other than spending some time in the militia in 1675/76 during the King Philips War, operating his small business as a weaver. It was not until 1692 when all Hell broke loose in the Pease family as the result

of an accusation made against Sarah that would change their lives forever. Sarah Pease was accused of being a Witch and she was suddenly caught up in the hysteria in 1692 in what is now known as The Salem Witch Trials. Much has been written about The Salem Witch Trials and we are not going to revisit this history other than to say that clearly it was a shameful period in our country's history. Fortunately we suppose, Sarah's trial and imprisonment occurred towards the end of the hysteria when the population of Salem was beginning to see the foolishness of what was taking place and their sympathies were beginning to turn away from the victims, the accusers, to the accused. Perhaps this was why Sarah escaped death on the gallows, however she was accused of being a witch on Monday, 23 May 1692, arrested the same day, "examined" the following day, and sent to a Salem jail on Wednesday, 25 May 1692. She was not released from jail until May of 1693 after suffering a year of deplorable conditions chained by leg irons in a small, cold, and crowded jail cell that must have been particularly unbearable during the long and cold winter months. Our great grandfather, Robert Pease, as a weaver, earned relatively low wages and with some children still at home requiring support and his wife in jail whom he also had to support, it must have been very hard on the family both financially and emotionally. While both Sarah and Robert lived more than a decade following her release, their lives and their relationships with others must never again have been the same. Sarah was in her mid-70s when she finally passed away. One has to wonder that perhaps towards the end she was thankful that her life was almost over.

There is no way of knowing when Mary Pease Reynolds learned of her mother's imprisonment although the news of the witch trials in Salem must have spread rapidly through the New England Colony and Mary must have learned about her mother's predicament within a month if not within a few weeks.  Whether Mary or Mary and Electious returned to Salem to see if they could help we do not know although in mid-1692 Mary was taking care of three young children including her youngest, a three year old son named Charles, our 6th great grandfather who was born in Essex County in 1689 not long before the family moved to Middleborough. We suspect that what with family commitments and the financial cost of leaving there was no way that Mary and Electious could have returned to Salem. In November of 1692 while her mother was still in prison, Mary became pregnant with her fourth child who was born the following August.  In total, Electious and Mary were to have eight children.  Their last child whom they named Electious after his father was born in 1706.

We know very little about the lives of Electious Reynolds and his family after their move to Middlebourgh.  We can assume that his primary source of income was farming although we did find it interesting to learn of the number of land purchases and sales that he made according to public records during his later life beginning in 1703.  Between 1703 and 1731 he made at least a dozen purchases and sales of land which makes us wonder if he was a land speculator. Some of the land he purchased was occupied by his sons and according to the public records four of his sons inherited land from their father after Electious's death on 19 June 1738.  He was 85 years old when he died.  Mary's death date is unknown although there is some evidence that she was still alive in April of 1730.  Besides land records and records of the birth of a few of his children, the only other mention of Electious Reynolds was that his name appeared in a list of the founding members in 1725 of the Congregational Church in the West Precinct of Middleborough. It is written in the church records that the original founders of the church spent three days per week each helping to build the church. Electious was 72 years old when the church was built and if he helped construct the church he must have been in pretty good physical shape for a relatively old man in the early 1700s. While Electious Reynolds was clearly not an important historical figure in our country's history, we see him as a honest, hard working, and religious man who did his very best to help his family and for these reasons alone we think of him as another one of our important ancestors.

In contrast to his father, we know very little about the life of his third son, our 6th great grandfather, Charles Reynolds.  Charles was born in 1689 in Essex County shortly before his parents moved to Middleborough. In 1714 he married his wife Sarah Smith and together they bore seven children including their 6th child, a son Jacob, our 5th great grandfather, who was born in Middleborough on 8 May 1731. Charles Reynolds died in Middleborough at the age of 76 in 1765.  We did find in a publication of Massachusetts Vital Records for Middleborough County researched by Jack Mack Holbrook and published in 1992, the names and birth dates of the first five of Charles' and Sarah's children although the fact that Jacob as their 6th child was not in the list was disappointing since it would have positively confirmed that he was one of their children. With respect to the life of Charles Reynolds we learned very little. His name was included several times in some hand written records for Middleborough County beginning first in 1737 where he was included in a list of qualified jurors and then again in 1741, 1743, and in 1744 where his name is mentioned as a Surveyor of Highways.  Of all of the public offices available to male citizens of colonial New England it would seem that the position of Surveyor of Highways might have been the least desirable. The individual, Charles Reynolds in our case, was responsible for checking out the condition of the roadways in the community and when they required repair he was responsible for calling out all of the able men in the community to work on the repairs for free under the terms of the colonial law that made such compulsory labor mandatory.  As one might imagine very few of the men in the community looked favorably on a law that forced them to furnish free labor for one or more days per year, and they no doubt also did not look too favorably on the man who called them out and supervised their labor.  Whether or not our Charles Reynolds performed other public services we could not determine.  I believe however, that we can assume that he was primarily a farmer who provided well for his family and lived a long and reasonably successful and satisfactory life.    

While we could find no undisputable proof that Jacob Reynolds was the son of Charles and Sarah Reynolds most of the family trees, but not all, on Ancestry.com show him as their child.  There are a few trees however, that show Jacob as the son of a possible brother of Charles' who was also named Jacob.  This brother Jacob (1692-1755) lived his adult life in New Bedford, Massachusetts where apparently his son Jacob was born. While we have doubts as to whether Charles had a brother named Jacob, we have little doubt despite only circumstantial evidence, that our Jacob, our 5th great grandfather, was the son of Charles and not a Jacob. For one thing, if Jacob was from New Bedford why did he post his intentions to marry his future wife  Martha Padelford in Middleborough where we know that Charles and Sarah lived but not in New Bedford?  Martha Padelford was in fact from nearby Taunton and her future husband our Jacob, as the son of Charles and Sarah Reynolds was from Middleborough. Furthermore, it is generally believed that Jacob had a younger sister named Rachel Reynolds (1732-1804).  While Rachel's birth location has not been definitely established, what is known is that Rachel married Zachariah Padelford, the brother of Jacob's wife Martha Padelford, in Taunton.  If our 5th great grandfather was born and lived in New Bedford as some have shown, it would have been odd that he and his sister would have announced their intentions to marry in Middleborough and then married spouses from nearby Taunton.  We believe that this clearly shows that Jacob Reynolds was from Middleborough and not New Bedford, and that he was obviously the son of Middleborough residents, Charles and Sarah Reynolds.

 

It should not come as a surprise considering how little we know about the birth of Jacob Reynolds, to learn that we also know very little about his life. What we do know is that he was born in 1731 in Middleborough, Massachusetts (Mark A on the above map), that he moved to Taunton, Massachusetts (Mark B) after his marriage in 1751 to Martha Padelford, and he later moved with his family to Killingly, Connecticut (Mark C) sometime after the birth of their 7th child in 1767, and finally Jacob died in East Killingly in 1786 at the relatively young age of 55.  The value of everything he owned at the time of his death according to his will was only a modest 105 English pounds which in American dollars equaled around $511. The inventory value of his will would have included everything that he owned including land, his home, all of the furnishings, farm animals, crops, and any cash and considering that the total value amounted to only 105 English pounds was certainly reflective of the fact that Jacob was not a wealthy man. Jacob Reynolds undoubtedly lived a quiet and somewhat  obscure life which would explain why we find so little about Jacob in the public records.  According to his will Jacob and Martha had ten surviving children at the time of his death including their youngest child, our 4th great grandfather Sullivan Reynolds who was born on 25 June 1777 and was around nine years old when his father died.  Our 5th great grandmother, Martha Padelford Reynolds remarried a man named Phineas Greene not long after Jacob's death and Sullivan may have gone to live with his mother and her new husband.  The marriage was short lived however, as Phineas died in Killingly in 1794.  One other thing worth mentioning about the Jacob Reynolds' family is to note that the family's life spanned the years of the American Revolution.  Four of the sons of Jacob and Martha are credited with serving in the war and their names each come up during a search of the records of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Although Jacob was only in his mid-40s at the beginning of the war and certainly many men his age either served in one of the State militias or they enlisted in the Continental army, we could find no record that he served in any capacity. That is not to say that he did not serve in his local militia for a short period although it is probably a safe assumption that he was never participated in battle. It is also possible of course that Jacob may have had a physical impairment in some capacity that would have prevented him from serving.  Our 4th great grandfather Sullivan Reynolds, born in 1777, obviously did not serve in the American Revolution.

On a website titled the "History of the Old Mill" we are informed that "Authentic records reveal that Sullivan Reynolds, in 1791 moved his family by ox cart from what was then Sidney Plains into the Unadilla Valley. He was the second white man to settle there . . . "  In a history of the Town of Guilford in Chenango County we are also informed that Sullivan Reynolds built the first store and the first mill on the Unadilla River in Chenango County in the year 1791.  The only problem with both of these histories which probably originated from the same source, is that in the year 1791 our 4th great grandfather Sullivan Reynolds was at the most only 14 years old.  We suspect that either the date is wrong or more likely Sullivan was living with his older brother Jacob who helped him with the new store and mill and our historians simply overlooked this fact.  Here is what we believe is correct.

It would seem that at some point after their father's death Sullivan went to live with his brother Jacob who was 20 years older than his younger brother and then the two of them possibly with Jacob's wife moved west to settle the land along the Unadilla River valley in south central New York State that had recently opened up to settlement following the close of the Revolutionary War.  Jacob had served three years in the Continental Army on one of the Connecticut lines and he had probably heard repeatedly from his fellow ex-soldiers about the new lands opening up in New York.  Prior to the Revolution all of the land that was roughly west of the Unadilla River and north of the Susquehanna River was by a 1768 treaty (see the above map) Indian territory but since the majority of the tribes in this region had supported the British during the war and in 1779 been chased off their lands by American troops, the tribes had no choice after the war but to accept treaties permanently removing them from their ancestral homes.  In the case of the land in what later became Chenango County, the Oneida Indians were forced to sell their land to the government under the terms of a treaty that was signed in 1785.  Settlers began to move into the area almost immediately after hearing about the treaty and the now available and inexpensive land.

While a Chenango County history story informs us that Sullivan Reynolds arrived in this new territory as early as 1791, the first mention of Sullivan in the public records that we could find did not occur until the year 1799 where his name appears in the Tax Assessment Rolls.  These records show that Sullivan did not as of 1799 own any real estate and the small amount of tax that he owed was based only on the value of his "Personal Estates" that was valued at only 42 dollars.  Jacob Reynolds on the other hand in 1799 on the Tax Assessment Rolls had real estate valued at $500 and personal property valued at $60 dollars. By 1799 Sullivan Reynolds was a full adult as he was around 22 years old in that year and the tax records certainly did not reflect that he was the owner of a store and grist mill that he built back in the year 1791. Since there is no doubt that Sullivan Reynolds owned and operated a store and a grist mill on the Unadilla River and that the mill was later operated by one of his sons after Sullivan's death, we can only assume at this point that in the early years of his life his brother Jacob was his guardian and helped his brother financially.  One interesting thing that we did not mention earlier was that in his father's will Sullivan was left 1/3 of his father's real estate.  He would not have received any money from the estate until he turned twenty-one and therefore it is conceivable that Jacob was helping out his brother until he received his inheritance.

Inheritance money or not, there is a strong suggestion based on both the 1800 and the 1810 US Census Records that Sullivan was living in his brother's home during this time period and most likely he was with Jacob earlier than 1800.  According to the census in 1800 there were two males and one female in the Jacob Reynolds' household.  One of the males was obviously Jacob; the other male was between the ages of 16 to 25 and this was most likely Sullivan who was 23 years old in 1810.  The woman in the census record was Jacob's wife Sarah.  In the 1810 US Census it would appear that not only was Sullivan still living with Jacob but so was his wife of almost ten years Margery (alternate spellings: Margey, Marchery) as well as their children.  Jacob's wife had died in 1807. We think that Sullivan Reynolds and his wife and children were probably living on land that was owned by Jacob but they were most likely living in a separate house. Jacob's home for most of his life in Chenango County was in a small hamlet that is now called White Store. Today White Store is noted primarily as the location of the White Store Church and the Evergreen Cemetery where both Jacob and Sullivan and Sullivan's wife Margaret are buried. Both the church and cemetery have been designated as a National Historic District. White Store is within the Town of Norwich in Chenango County.  Sometime after 1810 Sullivan and his family moved out of Jacob's home site and moved south around three or four miles where they probably built a home near Sullivan's now busy grist mill and store which were located about a mile north of the community of Mount Upton within what is today Rockford Mills in the Town of Guilford. The small hamlet which contained the Sullivan Reynolds home and their store and mill is today known as Rockwell's Mills named after a Chester W. Rockwell whose brother Erastus acquired Sullivan Reynold's mill on the Unadilla River sometime after Sullivan's death in 1834, reportedly purchased from the Reynolds' family as late as 1849.  It is possible that Sullivan's son also named Sullivan, continued to run the mill after his father's death however when the mill was purchased by Erastus Rockwell in 1849 it was reported to have been closed and in ruinous condition. Today nothing remains of Sullivan Reynold's original mill structure although the remains of one of his successor's buildings has been converted into a restaurant which is named the Old Mill Restaurant (See photograph above). The restaurant's website www.oldmill-mtupton.com includes a link to the history of the old mill wherein it provides historical references to our Sullivan Reynolds.          

Sullivan and his wife Margery were married sometime in the year 1800 although the commonly accepted birthdate of their first child Sally Reynolds, reported to be 28 July 1800, would suggest a marriage in the year 1799. This would of course conflict with our belief that Sullivan was single and living with Jacob and his wife at the time of the 1800 US census. We could not verify Sally's actual birth date and at this point we believe it is probably incorrect at least with respect to the month. Sullivan and Margery were to have eight children in total between the years 1800 and 1821 including their 3rd child and our 3rd great grandfather William Reynolds who was born in November of 1805.  Sullivan was probably delighted that five of his children were sons whom he could put to work in the grist mill as soon as they were old enough to be useful in the mill.  The grist mill was undoubtedly very popular in the local neighborhood where the local farmers could bring their corn and wheat to the mill where large stones turned by paddle wheels in the flowing waters of the Unadilla River would grind the corn or wheat into a flour. The farmers in turn would pay the Sullivan Reynolds family either with cash or other services that probably allowed our Sullivan Reynolds family ancestors to enjoy a rather comfortable life style.  Perhaps as a result of increased competition or simply new innovations, at some point the grist mill was no longer profitable and following its later purchase by the Rockwell family, the original mill was converted and vastly enlarged into a highly successful woolen mill.  Unfortunately, even the woolen mill at some point succumbed to changing conditions and it was forced to close in 1907.  Today on the land originally settled by our great grandparents Sullivan and Margery Reynolds we have a restaurant. We hope that the Old Mill Restaurant offers great food, will continue to honor our Sullivan Reynolds family, and continue to be highly successful for many years into the future.

In the 1860 US Census records we find our 3rd great grandfather, William Reynolds, living in Elmira, New York with his family. His profession or occupation was listed in the census as a "Gentleman" and his age was listed as a relatively young 54 years old.  Since the occupation of Gentleman is probably not a paid profession, we must assume that William was unemployed at least in 1860.  In fact, a review of the other census records where we could find his name and the few other history accounts where we found him mentioned, it is unclear whether or not he ever worked in a paid position unless we count his profession as a "landlord" as mentioned in the 1850 census as an actual job. We found in Wikipedia a definition of the term Gentleman at least in modern usage as follows: ". . that a man has sufficient wealth and free time to pursue an area of interest without depending on it for his livelihood." That is, our William Reynolds had wealth, money, so there was no need for him to be employed or even manage his own business.  If this is true we are completely confused since there is no evidence that he inherited money nor is there any evidence that he earned sufficient money in his younger years so that he could retire early. Unfortunately, there are a number of years before William Reynolds moved to Elmira for which we have little information about his life.  Here however, is what we do know.

According to the 1830 US Census records it appears that neither William Reynolds nor his older brother John were living at home with their parents.  Furthermore we could not find our William Reynolds in any of the 1830 census records although the name was so common that we did find at least 29 other William Reynolds listed as living in New York State.  Unfortunately none of these men matched what we know about our William with respect to age and marital status.  What we do know about our great grandfather William Reynolds, thanks again to research by cousin Liz Dubois, is that sometime before 1835 he moved about 100 miles east of his parents' home in Chenango County to the town of Ellenville in Ulster County and from there he moved again another 40 or so miles east to Poughkeepsie in Dutchess County where he met and later married Jane DeGroff on 20 October 1835.  The only other information that we know about the life of William Reynolds in Poughkeepsie was that he and Jane had a son born there on 22 July 1836 whom they named David DeGroff Reynolds after Jane's older brother David DeGroff.  Why exactly William Reynolds moved to Poughkeepsie and exactly what he did for a living for about a decade before he moved his family to the Elmira area in Chemung County just before 1840, we do not know. In fact, despite spending a lot of wasted time on research we failed to discover exactly what William did for a living for his entire life. We did find a William Reynolds living in Poughkeepsie during the 1830s who was in the pottery business but if this William was our William, his pottery business was essentially a failure.  There was also another William Reynolds in Poughkeepsie during this time period who later became quite wealthy in the shipping business, however this William was clearly identified as the son of a James Reynolds, no relationship as far as we know to our Reynolds ancestors.  Both William and his wife Jane Degroff likely inherited some money from their fathers who died shortly before William and Jane were married, however it seems unlikely that their inheritances would have amounted to much. 

Since we find our William and Jane and one young child listed as living in the village of Veterans in Chemung County in the 1840 US Census, we know that they moved west sometime after the birth of their son David in 1836.  Incidentally, this census lists their child as a girl under 5 years old but knowing how notoriously inaccurate many of the census takers were with the records, it seems likely that the census taker looked at the small child running around the room, assumed the child was a girl, and checked the box accordingly. In fact if we were to rely on census records as our sole source of facts we would be in trouble.  For example, William's age according to multiple census takers was very much in dispute. According to the 1850 census William was born around 1810.  In the 1860 census he was born around 1806, and in the 1865 New York State census they listed him as born about 1807.  Finally in the 1870 census they got the year correctly, listing him born about 1805. There is one other census record error that as it turned out, was somewhat revealing.  In the 1850 US records we find William and his wife Jane living with their two young children in Elmira, New York along with a 72-year old woman named Elizabeth Reynolds who if we did not know better would have been William Reynolds' mother.  In reality, the woman was actually Jane's mother, Elizabeth Tillow DeGraff, who obviously had followed her daughter from Poughkeepsie to their new home in Chemung County sometime after her husband's death in 1832.  Jane's father was Abraham DeGraff (1771-1832).  During further research on Jane's side of the family we learned that Jane's older brother David DeGraff (1799-1868) had also moved to Chemung County sometime before the 1840 US Census was taken which strongly suggested to us that William and Jane and their young son David moved to Chemung County along with Jane's brother and young David's uncle David DeGraff and his wife Hannah.

In the 1850 US Census records in Elmira, Chemung County, New York, we find David DeGroff and William Reynolds living in separate homes however they are both listed as "Landlords" and in David's case he and his wife are living with sixteen other unrelated individuals all of whom are young adults and they are all undoubtedly renting rooms from David.  While William and his family live nearby, there are no renters living in their household.  William's home is valued at $600 whereas the building that David is living in is valued at $3,000.  Since both William and David are neighbors and both list themselves as landlords the suggestion is that the two brother-in-laws were partners.  We might also draw the conclusion since David's and Jane's mother was living with the Reynold's family as of 1850 that more money may have been inherited from Abraham DeGraff than we had originally assumed.  On the other hand, we find in other Elmira public records where David DeGroff is listed as a "merchant" which might suggest that his primary source of income was a business other that just being a landlord. In William's case, we did not find any records that might indicate he had other employment although he was appointed in Horseheads in Chemung County in 1844 to be the Postmaster and in 1854 also in Horseheads he was appointed as one of two Overseers of the Poor. In both cases William undoubtedly served with little or no pay.

As we have previously stated one of the most interesting aspects of the life of our 3rd great grandfather William Reynolds is what is missing. That is, there is nothing in any of the historical records about any of his businesses nor did we learn much about the source of his income.  It is also interesting that at some point he and his family moved to downtown Elmira and lived in what appeared to be a commercial district containing all types of businesses from hotels, offices including those of doctors and lawyers, shops including butchers and grocers, banks, factories, and boarding houses. In an Elmira City Directory dated 1857 we find William living with his wife and family at 39 Baldwin Street at the corner of Gray Street.  William continued to live at this address up until his death in 1872. To show what this district looked like we need only to look at the photograph above of the Rathbun Hotel located about two blocks up the street from the Reynolds' family home. Also on this same street and across from the Rathbun were the offices of coal shipping magnate, Jervis Langdon, father-in-law of Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain).  Clearly during the 1800s zoning laws did not exist as single family homes like where our Reynolds' family lived were located nearby commercial buildings like the six story Rathbun Hotel.

The above map shows the City of Elmira in the late 1800s.  Baldwin Street is the street immediately to the east of the Chemung Canal which runs into the Chemung River.  The Reynolds' family home was located at the intersection of Baldwin and Gray Streets (Gray appears as Gry on the map due to the fold in the paper). 

The photograph to the left was taken sometime during the period that the William Reynolds' family lived in Elmira and it provides us another view of the neighborhood in which the Williams lived.  The street that runs along the bottom of the photo from right to left is Gray Street and although it is hard to tell in the photo, Gray Street is crossing the Chemung Canal shown on the lower left side in the photo.  In the bottom right hand corner of the photo are several house one of which may be the Reynolds' home or more likely, close neighbors of the Reynolds as the first street east of the Chemung Canal and running parallel to the canal is Baldwin Street. It is worth pointing out that other members of our ancestral family from Elmira also lived on streets shown on the above map. John Sly (1767-1856) and his family lived just across the Chemung River on a street named Sly Street after my 4th great grandfather John Sly.  Nearby the Sly home in later years lived Henry Clinton Spaulding (1863-1889) and his wife Ella McBlain Reynolds (1863-1935), granddaughter of William Reynolds.  Henry Clinton Spaulding's grandfather also named Henry Clinton Spaulding (1812-1902) lived on Main Street three blocks east of Baldwin Street.  This Henry lived next door to Jervis Langton, the wealthy coal merchant and father-in-law to Samuel Clemens.  South of the Chemung River on a street just off the map was the home of my grandfather Charles Schenck Baker and my grandmother Helen Mary Spaulding and their son, my father, Charles Asbury Baker. My 3rd great grandmother Jane Degroff Reynolds outlived my grandfather William by almost sixteen years and she died at the family home on Baldwin Street at the age of 82 in the year 1896.  She lived long enough to see the birth of her great grandchild, my grandmother, Helen Mary Spaulding who was born on 24 September 1887.

My 2nd great grandfather and son of William and Jane, David Degroff Reynolds, was in his early twenties when he started his grocery business sometime around 1860 probably with financial help from his father. In the 1860 US census David, still living at his parents home, is listed as having a "Personal Estate" worth $3,500 whereas his father's personal estate is valued at only $1,000.  The $3,500 value is most likely the value of his goods for sale at the store and we have to suspect that he carried a debt against the value of the goods.  Also in 1860 David married 19-year old Ellen Livesay whose father, Joseph Livesay, was a prominent farmer in nearby Big Flats in Chemung County and whose mother, Sally Bennett, was the daughter of Comfort and Abigail Miller Bennett whose families were both early settlers in Chemung County.  Apparently David while still a young man, had quickly became a successful businessman in the area operating his store on Lake Street only one block east from his parents' Baldwin Street home. By 1863, David had teamed up to operate the store with a Albert S. Satterlee who was later to marry David's sister, Mary Jane Reynolds, and who later purchased the business from David along with his brother Elias Satterlee and they renamed the store E.B. Satterlee and Co.

David D. Reynolds' name appears frequently in Chemung County records.  His name shows up in an 1863 listing of Civil War draftees although there is no record of his ever serving in the army and it is possible that he may have found someone else to serve on his behalf. In 1864 we learn that David visited his Uncle John Reynolds up in Pultneyville, New York located on Lake Ontario just east of Rochester and there he invested $1,000 in Star Petroleum Oil and Mining Company stock being offered by his uncle. In 1866 David Reynolds was listed as an alderman in Elmira and in a biography of his life it is reported that he was also a town supervisor. Over the next decade it seems that David Reynolds became more of an investor in companies managed by others as opposed to directly managing the companies himself.  In the later part of the 1860s David moved his family to the Village of Horseheads located a few miles north of Elmira.  In 1868, he invested in a bank in Horseheads that they named Reynolds, Bennett & Company. The other investors were Schuyler Reynolds (no relation to David that we could discover), George Bennett (his wife's uncle), and Joseph Livesay (his wife's father).  We could not determine whether David was an active manager in the bank operations.  Four years later however, around 1873, David invested with a young man named Collins L. Hathaway, a former employee of the bank, in a business dealing in coal, hay, and grain.  They named the company C.L. Hathaway & Co.  In the 1880 US Census records, David D. Reynolds is listed as a "Lumber Dealer" living in Horseheads with his family.  In the 1892 New York State census he is simply listed as a "Merchant."  On the 3rd of November in 1899 David D. Reynolds died at the relatively young age of 62.  Throughout his life he obviously operated as a financially successful businessman and therefore when he finally departed he left his wife and family with financial security.  My 2nd great grandmother and David's wife, Ellen Livesay Reynolds, outlived her husband by 28 years and she was eventually buried in 1917 alongside her husband in the Woodlawn Cemetery in Elmira.  A photograph of Ellen Livesay Reynolds, David mother, appears above.

David's and Ellen's daughter Ella McBlain Reynolds, my great grandmother was born in Elmira, New York on the 22nd day of December in 1863.  She married at the age of 22 the son of a wealthy lumber dealer in Elmira by the name of Charles Henry Spaulding (1841-1875) who was undoubtedly well known by Ella's parents.  The son was my great grandfather Henry Charles Spaulding.  A brief history of my Spaulding ancestors is told in Chapter 4 of this Blog.

Ella McBlain Reynolds and Charles Henry Spaulding had two daughters, Helen Mary and Henrietta, before Charles early death in 1889 at the young age of only 25.  Helen Mary Spaulding (1887-1937), my grandmother married my grandfather Charles Schenck Baker (1885-1952) in 1915.  One year later on 26 June 1916 my father Charles Asbury Baker was born.

And thus we end another chapter on the lives of our early ancestors.