Map detail showing the land near Canadice Lake in Ontario County, New York where Jabez Darling and his family lived and where his son Ezra was born.
I have located where — the actual farmstead — my ancestor Ezra Darwin Darling was born in Ontario County, New York in 1830. The land is at the southern end of Canadice Lake on the eastern side. His father, Jabez Darling, appears to have settled there in 1829, residing only for a year. On the map, the owner is listed as P. C. Swarts.
“In 1829… Jabez DARLING settled the Peter C. SWARTS farm. At the expiration of a year, Reuben HUFF bought him out. Then came Silas REYNOLDS, Horace WINFIELD, Albert McINTYRE, Floyd RICHARDS, and Joseph WINFIELD.”
Some of the Northrup clan lived nearby. (Ezra married a Northrup.)
“Jabez NORTHRUP, with a family numbering 13, settled on the farm now occupied by Stephen MILLER. NORTHRUP was a carpenter, and erected a frame house; it was better and larger than those of his neighbors. Here he lived till 1837, when he died, aged 74 years. Before his death, his children, once 11 in number, had so settled about him that the conch shell could call all the living to their dinner. The family not only cleared the homestead, but 300 acres in the neighborhood. Anderson NORTHRUP, Dr. CAMPBELL, J. HEWETT, McCROSSEN and COLGROVE, were successive owners.”
So New York “values” Trump and Hillary? Little surprise there. Two egotistical, greedy, self-important nut jobs. How fitting.
New York ain’t the center of the universe, no matter what the Establishment types may think. New York City is just a big, overcrowded city. There’s lots of those.
And those “values” are liberal, very liberal, despite whatever the Trumpsters say now.
By the way, did I mention that I don’t think highly of New York and its big city?
This is a Dutch newspaper, published in Amsterdam.
Since I have some Dutch blood in me, I have set about to learn more about the place and the people.
Before the British took over, the Dutch had a thriving colony spreading from what is now Jersey to New York. They called it Nieuw-Nederland, or, in English, New Netherland.
Multiple branches of the family — the Van Notes, the Coursens, and others — lived there, immigrating from the Old World before the English takeover in 1664.
Well, that’s what I’m thinking. Unfortunately, I haven’t found it yet.
The first Jabez died during the American Revolution. He was caught up in a nasty back-and-forth between the colonists and the Brits and their Native allies.
Before the Revolution, there was conflict between the colonists in the Wyoming Valley, a region in northeastern Pennsylvania. Connecticut had claimed the northern part of Pennsylvania as its own. Of course, Pennsylvanians thought otherwise. Hence, a series of skirmishes known as the Yankee-Pennamite Wars ensued, which were interrupted by the Revolution.
Jabez Darling was on the losing side, though he may not have lived long enough to feel the repercussions. Most of the Connecticut settlers, the Yankees, lost their land.
In 1778, the British, their redcoats and their Indian allies, swept through the Wyoming Valley, burning and killing and scalping along the way. When word of the first killings reached the civilians, most of them fled in what was described as the Great Runaway. Those who remained stayed to fight and protect what was theirs. Jabez was one who stayed behind. He was killed on July 3rd, 1778, just two years after the Declaration of Independence was drafted in Philadelphia, during an attack on Forty Fort, not far from Wilkes-Barre and Scranton.
Another branch of the family, on the Hill side, was there, too, at the time. Martin Tidd, future father-in-law of James Hill, witnessed the same events. He probably knew the Darling family and Jabez Darling in particular. Both the Darlings and the Tidds had come from Connecticut, making them Yankees. Yankees didn’t come from New York. They were from New England.
Martin Tidd, like many of the Darlings, ended up in Ohio, thanks, at least in part, to Congress intervening and settling the land disputes in favor of the Pennsylvanians. Connecticut claimed land in the Ohio country, too, what was called the Northwest Territory.
A portion was set aside for Connecticut known as the Western Reserve. Part of the Western Reserve was for those who had lost property by fire, intentionally set by the British and their allies to terrorize the citizens, during the Revolution. Thus, the term Fire Lands was used to describe this area.
Many of the Connecticut settlers of the Wyoming Valley took advantage of the opportunity and left for what would become the state of Ohio. Martin Tidd did so. He was among the first settlers of Youngstown in 1797, a small band which included his daughter Sarah Tidd and her husband, his son-in-law, James Hill.
Another Jabez Darling, my ancestor who was apparently named after the Jabez who was killed in 1778, went to Ohio, too, after having lived in New York for decades. There he died, in 1836. Who his parents were is unclear, though I am convinced there is a connection to the previous Jabez who died in 1778 during the Revolution.
Another connection is David Darling, a longtime resident of Seneca County, New York, who shows up at Jabez’s youngest son’s farm in Washington County, Iowa in May of 1871. Jabez’s son, Ezra Darwin Darling, had married one of his boss’s daughters in New York and then left for Iowa after the well-to-do father didn’t take it well. I’m guessing that David Darling is an uncle of Ezra and brother of Jabez the Younger.
Now, I just have to prove it. I have some digging and poking around to do. Hopefully, I can piece it together, finding a clue here or there.
I’ve been going through some of my old artwork, mostly prints I made in a class last year and a few from before. I’ve been scanning some of them. I love this one of my great-great-great grandmother, Caroline Northrup Darling.
A visitor to the blog, Ann Keen, has written about her great grandfather and his brothers in response to a post about Camp Mills on Long Island. I’d discovered a postcard of men dancing with some ladies. She thinks one of the men may be her great grandfather.
My great-grandfather and great-uncles were at Camp Mills and I have pictures and post cards with their pictures there. I also think that the man dancing in the above picture on the far right may be my great-grandfather. My great uncle Heath was attached to the 168th as a 1st or 2nd Lt. and was killed in France in the end of July of 1918.
This was in fact used as a postcard, and is of the genre known as “war postals” which sometimes had postcard printing on the back and at other times did not. Camp Mills was a mobilization camp near the Port of Embarkation at Hoboken, NJ from which a large percentage of troops of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) were shipped to France. The likelihood is that these women were members of a service organization such as the YMCA which had the mission of helping to maintain morale.
During World War I, my great uncle, Leslie Warren Darling, and his unit, the 168th Iowa Infantry, were stationed at Camp Mills on Long Island, the staging and training area of their division, the 42nd — The Rainbow, before shipping out for Europe.
AARON HILL’S NOTEBOOK 