USA > Pennsylvania > Bradford County > History of Bradford County, Pennsylvania, with Illustrations and biographical sketches > Part 90
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He was not active in political matters, opposed human bondage, and adopted the principles of the Whig party. He was plain, unassuming, and free from any ostentation or show. He died April 10, 1845.
Mrs. Cranmer survived her husband some twenty-two years, and died in March, 1868. She lived a faithful wife, a devoted mother, was baptized and united with the church on the same day as her husband, and so instructed her children as to impress upon their minds a mother's love. Her many virtues still remain as stars in the memory of her long and useful life.
To Deaeon and Mrs. Cranmer were born six children,- Nancy Ellen, Amanda Elizabeth, Louisa Malvina, John Morris, Festus Carlos, and Martha Rufina. All are living but Amanda, who died June 7, 1848, leaving three children. Nancy Ellen married Wm. Maynard, of Rome, who died leaving a wife and six children ; Amanda married Lemuel Maynard, who survived his wife only three years; Louisa first married David M. Wattles, of Rome, who died the 17th day of June, 1849. For her second husband she married, May 17, 1871, Deaeon Bela K. Adams, of Springfield, Bradford Co., Pa. He was third son of Gaius Adams and Cynthia Kent, both natives of Massachusetts. Gaius Adams is supposed to be a descendant of John Quincy Adams, and of English de- scent. Deacon Bela K. Adams was born Aug. 20, 1813. They reside on the old homestead of Deacon Cranmer. John Morris Cranmer has been for the last twenty-eight years away from the land of his birth ; was in the Mexican service and in the War of the Rebellion, and now resides in Montana. Festus Carlos married Miss Henrietta Spalding, Jan. 16, 1845, has four children, and resides in New Jersey ; Martha Rufina married Mr. M. W. Warner, of Rome, Oet. 2, 1854. He enlisted in the War of the Rebellion, Aug. 16, 1862, and was killed May 6, 1864, in the battle of the Wilderness.
JOSEPH SEELY.
The subject of this memoir was born in Walton, Dela- ware Co., N. Y., Feb. 1, 1804. He was the eighth of a family of nine children of Sylvanus Seely and Mary Hoyt, both natives of Connecticut. His father was a privateer in the navy of the United States during the Revolutionary war, was taken prisoner after three months' service, and released after three months more, at the elose of the war. He was a farmer by occupation, and died September, 1819, aged fifty-five years, in Delaware Co., N. Y. His mother's father was a colonel in the English army during the war between the English and French, which was terminated by the battle of Quebec, 1759; was a farmer, and died at up- wards of eighty years of age. His mother died in Dela- ware county, at the advanced age of eighty-nine years.
Joseph worked on the farm at home during his minority, having a very limited opportunity for obtaining an educa- tion, but his subsequent life elearly shows that one's edu- cation is not all derived from books.
At the age of twenty-three, in the year 1826, Oct. 24, he married Miss Julia, daughter of Isaac Jackson and Jane Purvis, of Tompkins, Delaware county. Her father was of Woodbury, Conn., and her mother a native of England. His wife was born March 7, 1808.
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HISTORY OF BRADFORD COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA.
Two years after their marriage they removed to Virgil, Cortland Co., N. Y., where they remained for some nine years, and in the year 1838, May, he removed with his family 'and settled in the township of Rome, Bradford Co., Pa., purchasing one hundred acres of woodland, to which he has added since some sixty acres. Most of this land he has, with the assistance of his sons, cleared of its forest, and, in place of the rude log cabin, erected a commodi- ous residence, and surrounded it with fruit-growing and ornamental trees, a view of which, with the portraits of himself and wife, will be found on another page of this work, showing the result of nearly a half-century's labor and toil.
He has been active in politics during his day, first voting with the Whig party, and ardently supporting the platform
of the Republican party after its formation. He has always taken a deep interest in school matters, and any other in- terests looking to the building up of good society and the education of the rising generation, not placing such a pecu- niary value upon the time of his children as was customary in his early days. He and his wife are both members of the Presbyterian church of Rome, having in early life taken a deep interest in religious work.
To Mr. and Mrs. Seely have been born eleven children : George Newton, Silas Edson, William Henry, Warren Erasmus, Jane Adeline, Charles Edwin, Mary Rebecea, Joseph Sylvester, Julia Celestia, Elissa Iszilla, and Isaac Jackson. All are living except George Newton (supposed to be dead) ; Warren Erasmus, died April 12, 1850; Julia Celestia, June 27, 1853; Elissa Iszilla, Feb. 18, 1859.
SHESHEQUIN.
THE name of this township is said to have been derived from the word Tschetschequannink, which was an Indian term, signifying " the place of a rattle," according to Zeis- herger.
Judge Bullock thus describes the natural features of the valley of Sheshequin, in the Athens Gleaner, in 1870.
" In early life I read a hook entitled ' Rasselas and Dinarhis,' and the beautiful valley of Sheshequin has frequently hrought to my mind ' the happy valley,' in which those imaginary happy persons were located hy the writer. Extending along the Susquehanna river on the west, as supposed, about seven miles, and with mountains on the east, and varying in width of one to two miles, it has a fertility of soil seareely exceeded in the United States. The average width of the township is about five miles; and the settlements, which for many years were confined to the valley, have extended throughout its boundaries, in which there is not at present an aere of 'unseated land,' and the farmers, with very few exceptions, are highly prosper- ous and free from debt."
EARLY SURVEYS.
The present town of Sheshequin includes a little more than half of the Susquehanna company's township of Ulster,-an aceount of the grant, survey, and allotment of which can be found in the account of Ulster, and need not here be repeated,-but was included in the purchase of 1768, and its broad plains were eagerly appropriated by the friends of the Proprietaries. Accordingly there were grants made by the Penns, covering all the township lying on the river. Beginning on the south, the warrants were laid in the names of Samuel Nichols, Charles Klugh, Robert Smith, at Horn creck, Isaac Stille, Nicholas Tatemy, Alexander Anderson, Peter Kuntz, Christopher Zorn, Jacob Wallis, Charles Harrison, and John Dicks. These lots averaged about three hundred acres each, and covered all the level land bordering on the river throughout the township. Some of the farms in Sheshequin to-day trace their title to these
proprietary grants ; others of them lapsed, and the land was sold for taxes, or the occupants held it on a possessory right.
SETTLEMENT.
The first settlement in the township was made May 30, 1783. The party of settlers which then established their firesides in the forest were led by Gen. Simon Spalding, who removed from Wyoming. This party of pioncers eon- sisted of Gen. Spalding and his family, consisting of his wife, Ruth Shepherd, and the following children : John, Ruth, Rebecca, Mary, Anna, and George (Chester Pierce Spalding was born the next year, 1784) ; Joseph Kinney and his wife (Sarah Spalding, eldest daughter of Gen. Spalding), Benjamin Cole, Col. Fordham, Col. (then Ser- geant) Thomas Baldwin, and Stephen Fuller.
Gen. Simon Spalding was a son of Simon Spalding, of Plainfield, Conn., and was born January 16, 1742, and died January 24, 1814.
Gen. Spalding emigrated from Connecticut to the Con- necticut lands at Wyoming, about 1774, and settled in Stand- ing Stone in 1775.
He was in command of a company of troops during the Revolution, and was in Gen. Sullivan's expedition in 1779, and as it passed through Sheshequin valley, he was so favorably impressed with its appearance and location that he then resolved to make it his future place of residence. He first purchased of the Susquehanna company the Connecti- cut title, and farms were allotted to himself, his sons, and his sons-in-law, in the upper part of the valley, extending from the river back to the mountain. When the settlers first eame (as Gen. Spalding himself said) the Indian grass upon the flats was as high as his head as he sat on his horse. These pioneers set fire to the grass, when a confla- gration such as no one present ever saw before transpired.
57
PHOTO. BY G. H. WOOD
GEORGE C. GORE.
THE GORE HOMESTEAD, SETTLED BY JUDGE OBADIAH GORE IN 1783. SHESHEQUIN, BRADFORD CO., PA.
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HISTORY OF BRADFORD COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA.
It ran from one extreme of the intervale to the other, a distance of about four miles.
When the settlers took possession of Sheshequin there were a few Indian families resident on " Queen Esther's" flats, and one family on the same side of the river, but none of any note among them. They proved friendly, and the next year mostly moved off to the west.
General Spalding was a captain in the Revolution, and was made a general of militia after the war closed. His son, John, known as Col. John Spalding, was a fifor in his father's company, though but fourteen years old when his father marched with Sullivan, in 1779, through Bradford, to the chastisement of the southern Iroquois. The general was a large man of an imposing and pleasing appearance. He sent an invitation to Judge Obadiah Gore and family to attend the wedding of his youngest daughter and Col. Joseph Kingsbury, late of Sheshequin, which reads as follows :
"February ye 1, 1797.
" DEAR SIR, -- This evening I expect to have my last daughter married. Could you and Mrs. Gore and Mr. Avery aod wife make it convenient to call down between sundown and dark ? I shall esteemn it a great favor.
" Your humble servant,
"SIMON SPALDING.
"Obadiah Gore and family."
He entered the army Sept. 11, 1776, and remained during the entire war for American independence. He was at the battles of Germantown and Brandywine, and also had a command in " Mud fort" on the Delaware river, during the long-continued and severe cannonading of that point by the British in October, 1777.
The Spalding genealogy is as follows :
Gen. Simon Spalding married Ruth Shepherd April 15, 1761. Their children were as follows: Sarah, born Jan. 31, 1763, married Joseph Kinney; John, born Nov. 14, 1765, married Wealthy Gore, Oct. 1, 1783; Ruth, born July 2, 1771, married - Hutchins; Rebecca, born Dec. 16, 1773, married William Witter Spalding; Mary, born July 20, 1776, married Moses Park, of Stonington, Vt .; Anna, born April 21, 1779, married Col. Joseph Kingsbury, Feb. 1, 1797; George, born Sept. 5, 1782, died May 26, 1800; Chester Pierce, born June 18, 1784, married Sally Tyler, 1806.
Joseph Kinney was born in Plainfield,* Conn., about the year 1755. He was a Revolutionary soldier. His first en- gagement was at Dorchester heights, about March 2, 1776, which resulted disastrously to the British troops. He was wounded in the leg on Long Island, captured, and was a prisoner three months in the old Jersey prison-ship, and suffered its horrors, paralleled only by Salisbury and Ander- sonville in the war of the rebellion. He limped home on foot, and was at the battle of Saratoga, Oct. 17, 1777, where Burgoyne surrendered, when he returned to Plainfield, and remained until about 1778, when he settled at Wyoming, Pa. There he married Sarah, t the eldest daughter of Capt.
(afterwards Gen.) Simon Spalding, and with that gentleman and others removed to Sheshequin, in 1783, which there- after became his permanent home. He was a school-teacher in Wyoming, but changed his occupation to that of a far- mer in his new home, a calling in which he prided himself, executing his work in an exceedingly tidy, and in some re- spects peculiar, manner. He was not only a great reader, but was also a close and logical reasoner, and analyzed thoroughly everything offered before he stored it away in his memory as knowledge. He was particularly apt in theological themes, and had many a gusty bout with the preachers of the day ; but his biographer (G. Wayne Kin- ney), from whom the facts here given are principally taken, says that Mr. Kinney and Moses Park, when sent to oppose and confound Mr. Murray in his first seed-sowing of the doctrines of universal salvation, at Athens, "went wool- gathering and came home shorn," after a three days' pro- tracted effort. Mr. Kinney's house was the home of all the itinerants of the gospel in his day.
He was emphatically domestie in his tastes, and hence disliked and refused political positions generally. He was appointed a justice of the peace for Luzerne county, about 1790, then comprising the present counties of Luzerne, Lycoming, and Bradford. He was also one of the first commissioners of Bradford County, but resolutely declined all further preferment. His biographer says,-
" Being of a scrofulous diathesis, which was transmitted to generations after him, he was, no doubt, more or less irri- table. But his wife, Sarah, always mild and forbearing, always generous and conciliatory, never was swerved from the uncrring law of kindness which seldom fails to soothe the morbid passions of humanity. Upon the whole, with the limited education attainable in his day except by the wealthy few, he would be called a man of decided brain- power, strong in his convictions of right and duty, a close reasoner, irreproachable in his integrity, and highly respected by the large circle of his acquaintances."
He died in 1841, in the eighty-sixth year of his age.
Mr. and Mrs. Kinney had thirteen children, eleven of whom grew to man and womanhood, viz. : Ruth, drowned in childhood; Simon, Ruth, George, Charles, Sarah, Lucy, Guy, Welthia, Perley, Mina, Phebe, and one who died in infancy.
Simon Kinney was the first white child born in the present town of Sheshequin. He assisted in the duties of clearing up a heavily-timbered farm, receiving in the mean time a careful moral and intellectual training, and at his majority married Phobe Cash, and removed to a farm his father owned in Scipio, N. Y., and commenced the study of the law. Find- ing his means inadequate to properly complete his studies
# G. Wayne Kinney.
t Mr. Miner has the following :- "On Sunday the 18th of June, 1781, Joseph Kinney and Sarah Spalding were called off, that is, the hanos were published, aod on Thursday the 22d were married. It was an occasion of unusual festivity and joy. The bride was the
eldest daughter of Capt. Simon Spalding, the gallant commander of the Connecticut Independent Company. Mr. Kinney (hrother of Newcome Kinney, known in 1785 as the popular writing school- master of Norwich, afterward member of assembly) was a learned and accomplished gentleman of a peculiarly philosophic turn of mind. He settled at Sheshequin and had a large family. . . I well remember the spirit and ingenuity with which he used to controvert the theory that the sun was a hall of fire. He scouted the idea that it was perpetually wasting itself by combustion, or if it was fire, that its heat could he radiated to give efectivo warmth to the distant planets."
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HISTORY OF BRADFORD COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA.
and procure a library, the farm was sold and the proceeds used for establishing him in business in Towanda. He was a man of unquestioned legal ability, being the compeer of Mallery, Conyngham, Denison, Strong, Williston, Overton, Watkins, and Baldwin, leaders at the bar of Bradford and northern Pennsylvania. He was a member of the legisla- ture for the sessions of 1820-21 and 1821-22. His service is favorably remembered by active participators in the po- litical affairs of the time. Judge Wilmot completed his legal studies in Mr. Kinney's office.
Mr. Kinney's family were somewhat remarkable and noted. He had six children, -Harriet, Henry Lawrence, Joseph Warren, Emily, Sarah, and Anna.
Harriet married Dr. Whitehead, and removed to Peru, Ill. She was a woman of rare intelligence, and acquired accom- plishments of a high order for her day.
Col. H. L. Kinney achieved an enviable celebrity by his dash, courage, and enterprise, which made him at one time quite the lion of the country. He was the founder of Corpus Christi, Texas, and peopled the town by a donation of his lands to settlers ; served in the Mexican war in Gen. Scott's army ; supplied the commissariat with stores from the resources of the country ; and was deemed a millionaire at the end of the war. He spent much of his fortune afterwards in Central American expeditions. During the rebellion, he served in Mexico as colonel of her army, and fought against the French and Maximilian, and was killed at Montercy, while leading a small troop in ferreting out guerrillas in that city. He became one of the finest horse- mnen of Texas, taking lessons of the Comanches, and so far surpassing them that they were, to his mastery, but as initi- ates. He won many victories over them in some of their sharpest fights. He married a daughter of Gen. Lamar, of the " Lone Star" fame.
Joseph Warren married in Illinois, and followed the for- tunes of his brother in Texas, and acquired considerable landed property. He was accidentally shot, by the explosion of his pistol, in mounting his horse, and died from the wound soon after.
" Emily, Sarah, and Anna maintained the reputation meted out to the family generally by common consent."
Ruth married Warren Brown, a merchant at the time in Towanda. They afterwards moved to Illinois. A son, Joseph Mortimer Brown, was a prominent clothing merchant in St. Louis, and was the father of ten children, all sons.
George Kinney, the second son of Joseph Kinney, was a captain and lieutenant-colonel of the Pennsylvania militia, a justice of the peace hy appointment of Governors Wolf and Ritner, and afterwards by election of the people, and a member of the Pennsylvania house of representatives for the session of 1837-38. He was a frequent contributor to the country press, his nom de plume being " Old Man of the Mountains." He was an active participant in the stir- ring political events of the earlier days of the county. He married Mary Carner, a " person of admirable qualities, and who exhibited superior talents and judgment in providing for a large family with slender means at command." She was the mother of nine children,-Julia Hutchinson, George Wayne, Horace, Newcomb, W. Wallace, O. H. Perry, Mary, Somers, and Lucy.
Julia was subsequently known as a writer and poetess of considerable merit, her love for literature being developed at an early age. She was a passionate admirer of wild flowers, and drew her inspiration " more copiously from nature's first and only edition than from books compiled by human authors." Her contributions to the Saturday Evening Post and Atkinson's "Casket of Philadelphia," over the signature of "Juliet," attracted the attention of Mr. Greeley and others, and she afterwards contributed frequently to the " New Yorker" and the " Universalist" magazines. She married David L. Scott, of Towanda, in 1835, and died in 1842, of consumption. Her writings are noticed in the article in this work on " Books and Authors."
George Wayne left the farm at sixteen years, and went to Towanda, to learn the printing trade of James Catlin, then editor of the Independent Republican. The appren- tice completed his transformation to a "jour" on the Brad- ford Settler, and printed the Anti-Masonic Democrat, at Troy, for O. P. Ballard, under the editorial management of Edward Payne, Dummer Lilly being a fellow-compositor in the same office. At his majority lie spent a year in Con- necticut, as a journeyman printer on a Unitarian paper pub- lished in Brooklyn, Conn., by Rev. Samuel J. May, and on the Witness, an opposition paper to the Hartford Times. At twenty-three years of age, with Dummer Lilley, he inaugurated the Bradford Argus, merging the Troy Argus (Anti-Masonic Democrat) of Dr. Utter in the new publica- tion. Mr. Kinney continued but a year on the Argus, and, as he himself says, " With the exception of incidental daslies with the pen, for local papers, the poetry of his life has been spent upon a farm."
He was elected to the Pennsylvania house of represen- tatives in the years 1866-67. He married, at the age of twenty-five years, Abbey M. Hutchins, of Killingly, Conn., and rcared a family of four children, their only son, New- comb, being killed under Sheridan, in one of that general's fierce campaigns.
Maj. Horace Kinney, the second son of George Kinney, was a large, well-proportioned man, physically (all the Kin- ney boys were about six feet in height), and an active business man. He married Anna P. Sutterly in the outset of his business life, and began in mercantile pursuits, chiefly dealing in lumber. He was public-spirited, enterprising, cultivated, and generous, contributing his full share in all movements for the public good. He died suddenly in the prime of his manhood, and in the midst of his usefulness. His children are Orrin Day, a promising member of the Bradford bar; George, Franklin, Julia, and Anna.
Newcomb (the third son of George) went to Rockford, Illinois, where he died quite early in life. W. Wallace also went to Rockford, Illinois, and studied medicine, but the "shakes" and the alarming (to a novitiate) febrile symp- toms of the ague proved too much for him, and he returned to Bradford, where he married Elizabeth Chaffee, and settled in Rome. He reared a family of six children, and estab- lished himself in a successful practice of medicine after the homeopathie school. He dicd of consumption in the prime of life, leaving Julia H., Winfield S., Lucy, George, Dell, and Grace, a credit to the family and ornaments (useful ones) to society. Julia (now Mrs. Spalding) is a successful
WILLIAM SNYDER, SR. (DECEASED.)
HANNAH SNYDER .
PHOTOS, BY G. H. WOOD
RESIDENCE OF WILLIAM SNYDER, SHESHEQUIN TP., BRADFORD CO., PA
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HISTORY OF BRADFORD COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA.
homeopathie practitioner, having a wide field of usefulness, and Winfield S. is the justice of the peace of the borough.
O. H. Perry Kinney studied law with Judge Wilmot, was admitted to the bar in 1844, and formed a law partner- ship with E. W. Baird, under favorable auspices. G. W. K. says, " But he had not found his true sphere. He was too conscientious for a lawyer, and too modest for a politician. He had merit which could not be wholly hid- den from the publie. He was elected to the legislature in 1859 and 1860, in which sessions the responsibility of preparing a bill for the adjustment of damages done land- owners and others by the North Branch canal fell upon him. There were so many conflicting interests to satisfy, it was an extremely delicate duty to perform, and one from which he would gladly have shirnnk. He met it, however, suceessfully, and the wisdom of the act has scarcely been questioned."
He purchased an interest in the Waverly Advocate, where his former record found him out, and he was sent to represent his district in New York in the legislature of that State for two successive terms, and was also a member of the last constitutional convention of that State. He is said to resemble mentally the old patriarch, Joseph Kinney, more than any of the name in the vicinity, being especially fond of philosophical, theological, and biologieal discussions, in which he treats those subjects in eonsonanee with the advanced thought of the day. He is elear, concise, forcible, and honest in all his editorial emanations. He married Mary Eggett, and has a family of three children,-H. Greeley, John, and Wallace,-the oldest following closely in the footsteps of his father, and is already an excellent printer, and a young man of much excellent intelleetnal promise. John is an expert in telegraphy, and Wallace has his record all to write yet, being too young to have begun it.
Mary, daughter of George Kinney, married D. S. Bull and moved to Iowa, and reared a large family of children.
Somers, the youngest of the George Kinney boys, was exceedingly enterprising, and his misfortunes seemed to keep pace with his indomitable perseverance. He was de- voted to the improvement of highways, but his health failed him before the consummation of his sebemes in his old home, and he went south. At Corpus Christi, Texas, he conceived and undertook the construction of a ship-canal inland from Galveston to Corpus Christi, involving a heavy expenditure of means. The city was bonded in a heavy sum, and solitary and alone he purchased a dredging-boat at Mobile, which was shipwrecked on Padre island. An endless-chain dredge, procured in New York, was wrecked at Cape Hatteras, and lost. A boat built by a company at Corpus Christi proved successful, but, as the channel was rapidly approaching completion, the Rebellion broke out and broke down the baek-bone of the company, and, like his dredges before him, he, too, was wrecked, with no prospect of salvage. He was a member of the Texas legislature in 1857, and obtained large land grants in aid of his proposed channel improvement. Having graduated as an operator in public works, he went into journalism, and, with his " red- hot" style, became very popular. G. W. K. says, " He evidently aimed to remain neutral during the war. As he was a prisoner on both sides, perhaps he was successful."
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