USA > Pennsylvania > Bradford County > History of Bradford County, Pennsylvania, with Illustrations and biographical sketches > Part 92
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The records show a deed from Simon Spalding to William Spalding for "lot 11, in Ulster, on the east side of the river, in a place called New Sheshequin," excepting one acre for a burying-ground. Also, a deed from William H. Spalding and Simon Spalding to William Snyder for lot 11, which is the lot on which William Spalding resides, ad- joining Jabez Fish on the north, Harry Spalding on the south, Susquehanna river on the west, and to extend east two miles.
Daniel Brink came to Sheshequin from Stroudsburg about 1790-1. He owned a place next above the Tuttle farm. His father, Benjamin Brink, was a Revolutionary soldier, and owned the place where David Horton now resides. . The Brinks went west about 1855.
Abel Newell was a very carly comer to Sheshequin, but the exact date of his settlement cannot now be fixed. He was from Springfield, Mass. He married a daughter of Ethan Wilcox. She had a brother killed at the battle of Wyoming. Abel Newell owned the farm now occupied by
his son, Stephen Newell, next above the Arnold Franklin farm. David Horton married a daughter of Mr. Newell. Mr. Newell died at about the age of seventy-four years. His family, except Stephen, are all dead, or removed from the county.
George Murfee was born in Esquire Depew's barn, on the Delaware, near Stroudsburg, Sept. 30, 1778. James Bidlack was born at the same place. The fathers of each of these boys were killed at Wyoming, and their mothers fled with the fugitives to the Delaware. Murfee's mother was a sister of Judge Gore, and when George was seven years old he went to live with the judge, and remained there until he was twenty-one. He carried the mail from Tioga Point. Stephen Morgan lived on the place now occupied by Obadiah Gore, son of Avery Gore, and Daniel Curtis was on the place before Morgan, and built a small log house on it. Matthew Rogers was among the early settlers also. Henry Hiney, a German, came, via Canada, to Sheshequin in 1789, and made a beginning on the same farm.
COLONEL JOSEPH KINGSBURY
was one of the prominent men of Bradford County. He was born in Enfield, Conn., on May 19, 1774, "just as the eradle of liberty began to rock," as he used to express it. His father, Lemnel Kingsbury, was a farmer of that town, and Joseph was bred to the same occupation, but received, nevertheless, a good education for the times, and familiarized himself with the rules of surveying. He was in the family of his paternal grandfather, for whom he was named, muclı of the time, who was a rigid Presbyterian, and who offered to send him to Yale college if he would prepare himself for the ministry ; but the offer, tempting as it was, had too heavy conditions attached for the young man, who looked, as all people more or less did, upon a minister as little less than a demi-god, and felt that he was not of that material of which gods were made, and the offer was declined. At nineteen years of age he left the friends of his youth, and with a horse, a small sum of money, and a compass, he turned his face towards the Susquehanna, to find a home and employment. He arrived at Sheshequin in the spring of 1793,* on the very day he was nineteen years old, and resolved to make it his home, and which became so for the remainder of his life. He engaged at once with Gen. Simon Spalding as a surveyor, and began a career that cul- minated in his appointment as agent for the vast landed estates of Vincent Le Ray de Chaumont, known as the Le Ray lands, Count De Chastelleux, McEwen and Davidson, the Bank of North America, and other tracts granted by the government to liquidate the payment of money loaned to carry on the War of the Revolution. Upon the death of Gen. Spalding, whose daughter, Anna, he had previously married, Col. Kingsbury became the owner of that portion of the old homestead upon which the original mansion stood, where he and his amiable wife reared a family of ten chil- dren to manhood and womanhood, and lived to see them all married and well established in life.
His biographer says of him, "Col. Kingsbury was a man of marked characteristics. Possessed of more than
. Another authority says 1794.
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HISTORY OF BRADFORD COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA.
ordinary ability by nature, he had brought to the store- house of his information large additions by thought and reflection, gained from extensive reading and observation. In the field of political discussion he was an adversary of acknowledged force. He was bold, terse, and argumenta- tive as a writer ; modest, timid, and reserved as a speaker. In disputes among the early settlers he exercised an exten- sive influence, and, by individual appeal as agent, he was instrumental in getting the interest abated from their land contracts, by the foreign owners, three several times prior to settlement. He became connected at an early day with the Masonic fraternity, and held a leading position in the order. Without giving special attention to politics, he was taken up as a candidate for congress, contrary to his wishes, and received, in a district strongly opposed to him politically, a vote nearly sufficient for an election. From an early period to his death he was a member and generous contributor to the religious denomination of Universalists. Exercising charity to all, and inculcating principles of morality and integrity in all around him, he strove to lay the foundation of good principles in the community, and among those who with him had opened up the forests to the sunlight and let in its genial rays upon the hearts and homes of the pioneer settlers."
He also owned and cultivated one of the choicest and most beautiful farms in the valley of Sheshequin, and his home was the seat of a most generous and refined hospi- tality.
He was for many years the colonel of the militia of his district, and postmaster of the town till near the close of his life. He died at his residence, in Sheshequin, June 22, 1849, in his seventy-fifth year, leaving behind him a devoted wife, who died September 18, 1864, in her eighty-sixth year, in the house where she was born.
Col. Kingsbury's family consisted of five sons and five daughters, viz. :
Mary, the eldest, married Allen Smith, and settled in Steuben Co., N. Y., where she gave birth to three children, -a son and two daughters. She now resides in Towanda, with her daughter, Mrs. Chester Spalding, and has reached the age of eighty years.
Almira, the second daughter, married Charles Comstock, and settled at Athens, in this county, having had one daughter and four sons born, all of whom reside away from the county of their nativity ; the mother making her home principally with her daughter, in the State of New York, having attained the age of seventy-seven years.
Byron, the third, and oldest sou, married Wealthy Ann, daughter of Avery Gore, and moved, in 1824, to the farm now in the borough of Towanda, upon which his widow and remaining family still reside. " His ready wit and genial humor made his society much sought after, while his knowledge of human nature rendered his quaint portraiture of men and ineidents, coming under his observation, en- livening topics of social intercourse." He died in 1859, at the age of fifty-six, leaving a widow with two sons and two daughters, out of a family of nine children.
Burton, the fourth child, and second son, married Row- ena, the daughter of Judge Scott, and settled in Towanda as a merchant, where he remained till his death, in 1868.
They had three sons and one daughter, who, with the excep- tion of one son who volunteered in the Rebellion, and died in Kentucky, are living, but not residents of the county. Mrs. Burton Kingsbury is still residing in Towanda.
Eliza, the fifth child, married Ira H. Stephens, who sub- sequently became sheriff of Bradford County, and a prom- inent citizen of his day. They had five sons and one daughter, of whom but three sons are living. She died in Towanda in 1867, aged sixty-two years.
Ilenry, the sixth child, married Matilda Clisby, and settled on a farm in Sheshequin, from which he removed in 1854. Himself and wife are now living in Towanda, never having had any children.
Joseph, the seventh child, married Matilda, daughter of .Col. Hiram Mix, became a merchant in Towanda, and con- tinued in that business for a number of years, subsequently receiving the appointment of deputy collector of internal revenue, which he held for fifteen years. He and his wife reside in Towanda, having reared seven children,-four sons and three daughters,-of whom all survive but one son.
Marion, the eighth child, married George Sanderson, a lawyer for many years of Towanda. He was also State senator, and is at present a banker in Scranton, Pa. They had five children,-three daughters and two sons,-four of whom are living, but none are residents of the county.
Helen, the ninth child, married M. C. Mercur, lived for a short time in Towanda, and died in 1840, leaving a son, who resides in the west.
Lemuel S., the tenth child, married Sarah Osborne, and resides upon the homestead farm in Sheshequin, in the house refitted from the old mansion occupied by Col. Kings- bury, and originally by Gen. Spalding. They have three children, all daughters. The eldest married Orrin D. Kin- ney, grandson of Joseph Kinney, one of the first pioneers of Sheshequin. They live in Towanda. The other daugh- ters, one married, live with their parents on the homestead.
W. Wallace Kingsbury, son of Byron, and grandson of Col. Jos. Kingsbury, is the present secretary of the His- torical Society of Bradford County. He has been a resi- dent of nine States and one Territory, twice a member of the legislature, once a member of a constitutional conven- tion, and a delegate to congress from the Territory of Min- nesota. He has also been a contributor to the political literature of his county, and until recently was somewhat active in politics. He is now living in Towanda, in the house where he was born, on the farm given by Avery Gore to his mother a few years subsequent to her marriage with his father, Byron Kingsbury.
A. H. Kingsbury, also a son of Byron, is married, and has four children, and has always resided upon and worked the farm of his mother.
On a gravel knoll on this farm, near the banks of the Susquehanna, numerous Indian arrow heads and pieces of pottery were gathered in earlier days than now, the former being used by the settlers for gun-flints.
Ichabod Blackman, son of Elisha Blackman, of Wyo- ming valley, came from Lebanon, Conn. He was in the Indian battle, but, escaping, the family returned to Con- necticut. Ichabod came to Sheshequin in the spring of 1794, built a log house just by the road to the ferry, and
Photo. by J. Moray, Rome, Pa.
EBENEZER SHAW.
The subject of this sketch, Ebenezer Shaw, was born Sept. 5, 1771, a subject of the tyrant king, George III. As a child he listened to the talk of his father and the neigh- bors, down in Rhode Island, about the illegal and unjust taxations imposed, and the degree of resistance that was justifiable and expedient. The tea bait he saw spurned ; he heard the fearful booming of the coming Revolution from the fields of Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill ; and his boyish hurrahs may have mingled with the rejoicings over the Declaration of Independence. He heard, during seven years, the ebbs and the flows of the battles of the war for independence, and, most welcome of all, the news of peace.
Israel Shaw, the great-grandfather of our subject, was born at Little Compton, in the province of Rhode Island, in the year 1660, twenty-four years after its settlement by Roger Williams. Jeremiah Shaw, his grandfather, was born in the same place, in the year 1700. Jeremiah, Jr., his father, was born at Little Compton, in the year 1730, and our subject, as previously stated. In 1772 the family of Jeremiah, Jr., removed to the east bank of the Hudson, and in 1786 came to Sheshequin, making the journey via Stroudsburg, the valley of the Lehigh, crossing the moun- tains to Wyoming valley, and thence up the Susquehanna to Sheshequin, arriving there April 1. His father's fam- ily consisted of ten children, five boys and five girls, our subject outliving them all, and at the centennial celebration, held at the residence of his daughter, Mrs. Obadiah Gore, in Sheshequin, every branch of this numerous family were represented, except that of Phebe Bartlett. There were five generations present, the last being a daughter of Mrs. De Kelley, who was formerly Anna Powell, the daughter of B. F. Powell, formerly editor of the Bradford Argus ; her mother was a daughter of Sidney Bailey, who married a daughter of Ebenezer Shaw. Mr. Shaw was married to Cynthia Holcomb in 1801 ; the fruits of this union were nine children, five of whom are living. He came from a long-lived ancestry ; his father died in 1815, at the age of
eighty-five; and his grandfather and great-grandfather lived to very advanced ages. He inherited a physical organiza- tion the most powerful and enduring. His life labors were ever in the open air, and those of his early days were such as to develop a strong and vigorous constitution. His habits were the most regular, and his food plain and simple. He never used tobacco in any form, and for the last forty years of his life wholly abstained from the use of stimula- ting drinks. He was genial, jolly, and happy, fond of fun, frolics, and jokes, allowed no cares to worry and weigh him down, and had no reflections of wrong-doing to annoy and disturb his hours of rest. Such were the conditions which prolonged his life to fiveseore years. It was his pride and boast that he voted for General Washington at his second election in 1792, and at every presidential election up to the date of his death. In 1801 he joined Rural Amity Lodge, No. 70, F. and A. M., at Athens (Tioga Point), and at the date of his death was probably the oldest Mason in the Union. He held varions offices in his lodge from time to time; first as Tyler ; then eight years as Senior Deacon ; Junior Warden, three years ; and Treasurer, fifteen years. And the records show that during those twenty-nine years there was rarely a meeting that he was not present. Brother Shaw also received in the chapter then working in Athens the degrees of Capitular Masonry. Jan. 21, 1813, he was exalted a Royal Arch Mason. May 27, 1847, at the re- institution of the lodge, he was present as an acting offieer of the Grand Lodge, with Col. Kingsbury and others of the old members. His name appears as an attendant until the younger officers were fully instructed, when his presence became less and less frequent; and well it should, for he was then upwards of seventy-five years of age. Mr. Shaw, in the declining years of his life, was tenderly cared for by his daughter, Mrs. Obadiah Gore, near his former resi- dence. He died Dec. 17, 1871, over one hundred years of age. A large concourse of Masons followed him to his last resting-place.
JESSE BROWN.
MRS. JESSE BROWN.
JESSE BROWN.
The subject of this sketch was born in Wyalusing, April 25, 1797, and is the second son of Daniel and Mary Brown, who were among the pioneer settlers of said township. At the age of twenty-five, Mr. Brown was united in marriage to Maria, daughter of Jabez Fish, of Sheshequin. The fruits of this union were two daughters, Ethlin A. and Mary Elizabeth, the former born June 28, 1823, the latter July 27, 1828. Ethlin A. married Elijah A. Parsons, of Towanda (proprietor of the Argus, the oldest paper in the county, and at present controlled by himself and son), and died May 14, 1877. Mary Elizabeth married Levi Wells, of Susquehanna county, and died some seventeen years since. Mrs. Brown, wife of Jesse, died July 16, 1847, aged forty-nine years three months and thirteen days. For
his second wife Mr. Brown married Sophia, daughter of Guy and Betsey Wells, of Wyalusing, Feb. 27, 1849. Mrs. B. is a member of the Presbyterian church, with which she has been connected fifty-eight years, and has ever been a faithful attendant until stricken down with paralysis some time during the spring months of 1877. Mr. Brown is a member of no church, though his sentiments are with the Methodists. He has been successful in life as a farmer, having accumulated a large property, and at present is in possession of some three hundred acres of fine and fertile lands in the valley of Sheshequin. We pre- sent in this connection the portraits of himself and wife as a memento to their relatives and friends of Bradford County.
365
HISTORY OF BRADFORD COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA.
afterwards built a hewed log house on the upper end of the farm now owned by Franklin Blackman. Ile came up on a boat with Judge Hollenback, and brought the first eart used in the township. His wife was Elizabeth, daughter of Jonathan Franklin ; she was born in 1770, and was eight years old at the time of the battle. After the battle she stopped in Goshen, N. Y., living with a family named Carpenter, where she was married. Ichabod Blackman was a shoemaker, and frequently made a pair of shoes at night after the severe labors of the day in the forest were over. His excessive toil told seriously on his constitution, making him subject to epilepsy. In the month of April, 1798, he was drowned while crossing the river one very dark night, falling out of the canoe, as was supposed, in one of the attacks of his disease. IIe was about thirty- five years old at his death. Mrs. Blackman married, as her second husband, Timothy Winship, a Hartford merchant, who bought the Connecticut title to nine thousand acres of land in Herrick for twenty-five cents per acre ; but Le Ray holding the Pennsylvania title, Winship lost his venture. Mrs. Winship died in 1809, when her husband moved into the Mohawk valley, where he died in 1812. He never recovered from his loss.
Ichabod Blackman had three sons, Franklin, Elisha, and David S. The former lives on the old homestead, Elisha at Pittston, and David is a Presbyterian minister. Franklin Blackman, known as Col. Blackman, gained his title in the militia service, being lieutenant-colonel in 1832. He was justice of the peace under the new constitution (1838) for ten years, and was succeeded by his son George W. for the next ten years. He was born Sept. 1, 1787.
William Furguson came to Sheshequin about the same time that Ichabod Blackman did. He married Patience, a daughter also of Jonathan Franklin. He lived for a short time near the Fanning place in Wysox, and then bought and settled on the place now owned by widow Smith. He brought it up from the wilderness to a fine farm, and died there. Hezekiah Smith bought the property about 1845, and Mrs. Furguson and her two sons moved to southern Illinois.
Ebenezer Franklin, a son also of Jonathan, lived for two or three years with his brother Arnold and with Ichabod Blackman, and then went to Indiana, where he died.
Joseph Franklin, another son of Jonathan, came to She- shequin and taught school for a year or two, but being con- sumptive, he took a sea-voyage by advice of his physicians, and died unmarried, on shipboard.
Hugh Rippeth, an Irishman, came to Sheshequin about the time the Blackmans and Franklins came. He lived where Mr. Patterson now lives, near the lower end of Breakneck. His wife was Huldah Franklin, a daughter of John and a niece of Jonathan Franklin, and cousin of Arnold. He lived and died on the Patterson farm, his death occurring about 1805. He had two sons and two daughters. William, the oldest son, died on Shore's hill ; one of the daughters married Salmon Beardsley.
Elijah Horton came to Sheshequin about 1794, and lived where Edward Brigham afterwards lived. His sons, William, Joshua, Elijah, Jr., Stephen, and Gilbert, came with him. His son Richard came from Stroudsburg about
1796, and bought Arnold Franklin's place. Elijah Horton, Sr., gave a family party in 1815, at which eighty grand- children were present. This has been a large, respectable, and well-known family ; many of their descendants are now living in the lower part of Sheshequin, and many of the old members have attained great age. Richard Horton bought 100 acres of No. 11, of Arnold Franklin, by deed dated December 12, 1799; Gilbert and Elijah Horton, of Hugh Bippeth, March 11, 1801.
Josialı Tuttle first settled in Ulster, and came over into Sheshequin about 1798, and lived on a place he bought of Josiah Newell, a relative of Abel. Newell moved to the head-waters of Towanda creek, where he died. Tuttle died on his purchase.
In establishing his claim to lot No. 11 of Claverack, Abiel Newel brought before the commissioners, under the compensation law of 1799, John Strope, who testified that Captain Solomon Strong told him that William Webber was a settler under him, and that Webber came in the fall of 1786. It was shown that John Newell bought of Webber the year after (1787) ; that John was the father of Josiah Newell and Abiel. John Newell sold a part of his lot to Joseph Salisbury, who retained it for a while, and in 1802 sold part to Josiah Tuttle, and in 1804 the balance to Jonathan Stark, and moved into Ontario county, N. Y. Living also in the same neighborhood was an early settler by the name of Eliphalet Gustin, whose lot was adjoining the Newell lot. John, Josiah, and Abel Newell are given in the Claverack list as settlers prior to 1786.
Jesse Smith came from Connecticut about 1802.
Captain Jabez Fish came from Wilkes-Barre to Sheshe- quin in 1809, and moved to the farm next above the church, where his son Jabez now lives. Zebulon Butler and Harry Spalding had a small framed house on the property near the house now occupied by Wm. Snyder, in which they kept a store. Butler sold the farm to Capt. Forbes, and the latter sold to Fish. Butler married Jemima, the oldest daughter of Capt. Fish by his first wife, who was an Avery and a sister to Judge Gore's wife. Butler lived at Sheshe- quin with his family. Mr. Fish came from Groton, Conn.
Capt. Jabez Fish will be recognized as a familiar name to every reader of Wyoming history. Living near him was an old companion in arms and in sufferings, and who came with Gen. Spalding in 1783,-Capt. Stephen Fuller. These two men were pioneers in Wyoming. In a letter written by Judge Stevens, he says that his father, in the month of April, 1773, " moved his family into a house erected on the Wilkes-Barre town-plot, now boronglı. Pre- vious thereto, only two houses had been erected thereon. In one of them resided Stephen Fuller, and in the other Benjamin Clark [afterwards also a neighbor at Ulster]. Near the lower, or southwest, corner of the plot were two more houses; in one lived Jabez Sill with his family [who died in Asylum township], and in the other two brothers, Jabez and Elisha Fish, single men. The above was at that time the whole population of what is now the borough [city ] of Wilkes-Barre." It was remarkable that all these families afterwards became residents of Bradford County. Stephen Fuller lived on lot No. 16 of Wilkes-Barre, and sold it to Thomas McCluer, the deed bearing date June 2,
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HISTORY OF BRADFORD COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA.
1783. He became quite a speeulator in lands under the Connectieut title. Besides receiving a large grant as com- pensation for his losses from the Pennamites, he was owner of another township, and part owner of several others. In one of his deeds he describes as a mason by trade. Of his family we have learned no partienlars. Under date of Feb. 24, 1790, he sells to Reuben Fuller lot No. 8 of Ulster, lying between the lots occupied by Simon and John Spalding.
Elijah Towner and his sons, Enoch and John, settled first where Cyrus Wheeler now lives. They came from Danbury, Conn.
Daniel Moore came from Ireland, and was a soldier of 1812-14. Christopher Avery was a brother of Judge Gore's wife, and a Revolutionary soldier ; for his services in which he received a pension. He probably came directly from Connecticut ; lived with Judge Gore until his death. He never married.
Among the early settlers may be named also the follow- ing: The Kennedys (or Canadas), Peter Bernard, James Bidlaek, whose son Daniel now lives in Ghent; Timothy and Samuel Bartlett, Henry Boyce, the Brokaw family, Lodowick Carner, a very ingenious man, and miller of Gen. Spalding; Silas Carner, a brother of the former, whose sons are Horace and Jay, of Athens; Henry Cleveland, a blacksmith ; John Dietrich, and Christian Forbes, two Hessians (Edward Vought is a grandson of the former) ; Zadoc Gillett, who was a successful physician, and lived in the lower part of the town, had an extensive practice, and whose widow lives in Terrytown : Jerome B. Gilbert, of Horn Brook, is his son ; Freeman Gillett, a superior cabinet-maker and painter, was a noted Freemason also ; William Presher, a millwright, and for a time interested in Judge Gore's mill; Edward Griffin, who made " bull" plows in Centre Valley ; Samnel Hoyt, a carpenter; Isaac S. Low, a blacksmith (1820); Samuel, Thomas, and Josiah B. Marshall, brothers, of whom Josiah went to the Sand- wich islands, thenee to California, finally dying in Corpus Christi; Matthew Rogers, an Irishman and a soldier of 1812 (John S. Rogers was his son); David E. Weed, noted for his deer-skin dress, worn as long as he could get the material to make the same.
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