Notes, Historical, Genealogical and BiographicalWritten in 1895. Page 91 Nathan Armstrong, the pioneer, was born about 1717, near Londonderry, in the province of Ulster, Ireland. He was a weaver by trade, a Scotch-Irishman by race, and a Protestant by religious faith. At the time of his emigration he was unmarried, and about twenty-three or five years of age. He lived several years in the central part of New Jersey; about 1744 he went to the northwestern part of the province, to a section known as the Hardwick Patent, and worked at his trade near the present village of Johnsonburg. Here he married Uphamy Wright, a Scotch-Irish maiden. Their oldest child, Elizabeth, was born March 12, 1747. He bought a tract of uncleared land of Col. Jonathan Hampton, and built on it a log-cabin; he moved on his plantation May 17, 1748, and became a farmer. At this time he was thirty-one or two years of age. The old Homestead is one mile northwest of Johnsonburg, in the township of Frelinghuysen, county of Warren, New Jersey. Here he spent the remainder of his life - twenty-nine years of health, industry and thrift. During the panic of 1755, caused by Indian outrages on the Jersey frontier, Nathan took his wife and children to Marksboro every evening and passed the night in a block house that had been erected at that place. He was interested in local affairs, held several offices in the township of old Hardwick, and was a member of the Board of Justices and Freeholders of Sussex County. He was a member of the Church of England, and took an active part in the organization and establishment of Christ Church at Newton, New Jersey. The parish was organized October 20, 1769; its charter bears date August 15, 1774, and contains the name of Nathan Armstrong, as one of the original incorporators. He died on Monday, August 11, 1777, and was buried on the farm of Samuel Page 92 Green. He made his will during his last sickness. Uphamy died on Saturday, January 12, 1811, at the age of eighty-six, and rests by the side of her husband. Having given this outline, I propose to speak concerning the derivation of English surnames, the Armstrong clan of Scotland, the origin of the Scotch-Irish people, and the condition of Ireland during Nathan's youth; I shall describe life on the old Homestead in early times; I shall add some biographical items concerning Nathan's children and a few of their descendants, and close with genealogical notes concerning some associated families. English surnames came into use during the eleventh century, and indicated the occupation, parentage, place of residence, or some personal characteristic of the individual on whom it was first bestowed. In illustration of trade names may be cited Shepherd, Skinner, Tanner, Fisher, Smith, Wright, Turner, Mason, Thatcher, Miller, Carter, Potter, Weaver, Dyer, Brewer, Baker and Cook; examples derived from the name of an ancestor are Albertson, Richardson, Peterson, Williamson, Stephenson, Johnson, Anderson, Wilson, Thomson, Dickson and Harrison; original dwelling-place is indicated by Field, Brook, Ford, Pool, Lake, Pond, Well, Beach, Marsh, Moor, Heath, Meade, Lane, Park, Wood, Grove, Glen, Peak, Mount and Hill; among terms of physical description are Whitehead, Armstrong, Cruikshank, Small, Short, Stout, Strong, Tallman and Longfellow. The first family answering to the name of Armstrong lived on the bank of the Liddell River which, flowing Westward, separates England and Scotland and empties into Solway Firth. The Armstrongs were a Lowland Border clan, and were an influential factor in the affairs of Liddesdale so early as 1350. Living in an age when the golden rule was to steal from nobody except from those who stole from you, and situated between the contending armies of England and Scotland, pillaged by both and protected by neither, the clan acquired those characteristics which enable it to play with success the role of typical free booters. They gradually extended their territory until by 1500, their domain included Eskdale, Annandale, and a large portion of the Debateable Land. An estimate of the military strength of the Border Clans, made by the Earl of Northumberland in 1525, states that the Armstrongs could muster over 3,000 horsemen. Three years later, 2,000 English soldiers under Lord Dacre tried to capture Giltknock Hall and other towers along the Esk belonging to the clan, but were easily driven off. Page 93 Under the leadership of John Armstrong, a chieftain, celebrated in the wars of the Scottish Border, the clan levied tribute far and wide, and by their exploits incurred the displeasure of Henry VIII. of England and James V. of Scotland. King James resolved to break their power, and accordingly, in May, 1532, assembled at Edinburgh an army of 10,000 men, mostly Highlanders. Accompanied by deerhounds, this formidable force advanced to the Border under the pretext of a hunting expedition. A proclamation was made in the king's name that the lives would be spared all who would come in and submit themselves to the king. Relying on the king's honor, the leader of several Border clans rode unarmed to the royal camp, and were immediately seized and hanged. Their bodies were afterward taken down from the trees and buried in Carlinrig churchyard. The meeting between the sovereign and his subjects is thus graphically described by the early historian, Robert Lyndsay, of Fittscottie, in his Chronicle of Scotland: "After this hunting he hanged John Armstrong, Laird of Gilnockie, and his complices, to the number of thirty-six persons. For the which many Scottishmen heavily lamented, for he was the most redoubted chieftain that had been, for a long time, on the Borders either of Scotland of England. He rode ever with twenty-four able gentlemen, well-horsed; yet he never molested any Scottishman. But it is said that, from the Border to Newcastle, every man, of whatsomever estate, paid him tribute to be free of his troubles. He came before the king with his foresaid number, richly appareled, trusting that, in respect of the free offer of his person, he should obtain the king's favor. But the king, seeing him and his men so gorgeous in their apparel, with so many brave men under a tyrant's commandment, frowardly[?] turning him about, he bade take the tyrant out of his sight, saying, 'What wants that knave that a king should have?' But John Armstrong made great offers to the king. That he would sustain himself, with forty gentlemen, ever ready at his service, on their own cost, without wronging any Scottishman; secondly, that there was not a subject in England, duke, earl, or baron, but, within a certain day, he should bring him to his majesty, either quick or dead. At length he, seeing no hope of favor, said, very proudly: 'It is folly to seek grace at a graceless face. But, had I known this, I should have lived on the Borders in despite of King Harry and you both; for I know that King Harry wold downweigh my best horse with gold to know that I were condemned to die this day'" Page 94 We find that William Armstrong, of Kinmonth, a relative of John, and known in Border minstrelsy as Kinmont Willie, had made himself so obnoxious to the English by his enterprise, that they did not hesitate, in 1596, to violate the sanctity of a Border truce in order to get possession of his person. They confined him in Carlisle Castle, sentenced him to death, and fixed the morning for his execution, and would have carried out the purpose, had not the Scottish warden organized a rescue party of two hundred clansmen, broken into the castle through the roof by night, and carried off the prisoner, fetters, handcuffs and all. Four of Willie's seven sons were in the rescue party. When Lord Scroope reported this counterstroke to the privy Council of England, Queen Elizabeth "stormed not a little" and instructed her ambassador at the Scottish Court to threaten war unless the warden were punished. Who were the Scotch-Irish? They were Lowlanders who, with their families, emigrated from Scotland and settled in the north of Ireland; they thus differed both in blood and in religion from the Celtic-Irish. The struggle between these two races, the Scotch-Irish and the Celtic-Irish, has been long and bitter. Under what circumstances did the Scotch settle in Ireland in such large numbers as to be able to maintain themselves as a separate people? After an insurrection of the Celtic-Irish had been suppressed, the English Crown, in 1610, confiscated the estates of those who had taken part in the rebellion, and seized half a million acres of fat land in North Ireland. The policy adopted by the English government was bold, far-reaching, and successful; it decided to form a large settlement from which the Celtic-Irish were to be strictly excluded; it divided the newly-acquired land into small farms and issued an invitation to settlers. Multitudes were attracted from Scotland by the low rents and fertile soil. These Scotch Lowlanders, who had originally been Saxons with same Gaelic and Norman blood, became Ulstermen when transplanted. They came to Ireland and laid out homesteads and villages, built mills, improved agriculture, constructed roads and bridges, organized schools and churches, and raised Ulster far above the other provinces of Ireland in wealth and intelligence. In their new home they absorbed a few incoming Puritans, Quakers and Huguenots; but no intermarriages occurred with the Celtic-Irish until after 1740, and so thoroughly Scotch were these settlements that the Scottish dialect lingered on the lips of their descendants for four and five generations. Page 95 Such was the origin of the Scotch-Irish, a people who made the Ulster Plantation a brilliant success and who have also contributed in no small degree to the settlement and development of the American Colonies. In 1610, and at subsequent periods, a number of families by the name of Armstrong left Eskdale and their ancestral possessions, and settled at different places on the Scotch Plantation in Ulster, whence their descendants in turn have emigrated to various parts of the United States and Canada. The soil and climate of Ireland produces the finest flax in the world, and many of the holdings were small, so that it was customary for the tenant whose time was not entirely occupied in tilling his few acres, and whose crop was insufficient to support his family, to provide himself with a loom, and thus profitably employ his spare time in the manufacture of line, for which the demand was firm and constant. This combination of farming and weaving was common among the Scotch-Irish peasantry, and it is possible that Nathan grew up under such circumstances, and was familiar with both the cultivation of the soil and the management of the loom. The quarter of a century following the year 1717 includes the period of Nathan Armstrong's life in the province of Ulster. If we glance at the condition of Ireland during that time, we may be able to ascertain the probable cause of his emigration. It was a period of famine; hunger drove thousands to the New World; three poor harvests in succession brought on the famine of 1729, and in one year three thousand Scotch-Irishmen left Ulster and settled in West Virginia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Being at that time a lad of twelve or fourteen years, he must have heard the question of emigration discussed and re-discussed again and again in all its phases until he himself joined the westward current. "Five or six famines in the course of twenty years," writes the historian, "culminated in the dire famine and its accompanying pestilence, or fever-hunger of 1741, in which four hundred thousand persons perished." It is said that in some parts of Ireland the highways were lined with the dead and the dying, and that in several baronies every man, woman and child perished. Although Ulster probably suffered less than any other province, Nathan must have felt the effects of this lack of food, have seen more of it, and have heard still more of it; so that the ghastly horrors attending those periods of suffering and death may, with a high degree of probability, be assigned as the primary cause of his decision to try his fortune in a strange land. The exact year in which he crossed the ocean is not known, it Page 96 may have been as early as 1740. Hugh Armstrong came from Londonderry, Ireland about 1740, and settled at Short Hills, Essex County, N.J. Hugh and Nathan were closely related, and if Nathan did not accompany his kinsman, he followed him within a year or two. Nathan lived several years in the province of New Jersey before he moved to the northwestern frontier; and it is possible that Short Hills was the place of his abode during this interval. He moved to the Hardwick Patent about 1744. The original township of Hardwick, as erected by royal patent about 1713, contained 135 square miles, a block nine miles by fifteen, since carved into six townships and one borough, viz: Green, Stillwater, Hardwick, Frelinghuysen, Independence, Allamuchy and Hackettstown. This tract was a part of Burlington County, then of Hunterdon, and then of Morris; and now lies in Sussex and Warren. Rev. Casper Schaeffer, M.D., of Philadelphia, in an unpublished history of the Schaeffer family written by him in 1855, thus describes an interesting period in Nathan's life: "About the year 1745 there resided in the lower part of the township of Hardwick an industrious and thrifty son of the Emerald Isle, pursuing the humble and laborious calling of a weaver. There resided also in the same neighborhood a respectable farmer by the name of Green, who married his wife in Somerset County, probably not far from Somerville. Now it so happened that the younger sister of Mrs. Green was on a visit with her, having traversed the mountain and wilderness for that purpose; and during the young lady's sojourn here, the young Hibernian aforesaid became acquainted with her and paid his addresses to her, and the attachment being reciprocated, they were in due time united in the bonds of matrimony. Thus commenced the married life of Nathan Armstrong and Euphemia Wright, my grandparents on my mother's side." The Kittatinny and the Allamuchy are parallel mountain ranges; the intervening basin is fourteen miles wide, and is subdivided by a line of hills known as the Ridge into two valleys, drained by the Pequest River and the Paulins Kill. Nathan bought land of Colonel Jonathan Hampton on this central watershed. It was wild and uncultivated, unplowed and unplowable until the settler's ax had done its work. The soil rests partly on Hudson River slate and partly on Trenton limestone, with numerous outcrops, and is sprinkled over here and there with hardheads or bowlders of reddish Medina sandstone and coarse-grained Oneida conglomerate transported from the Kittatinny Mountain by ice during the glacial period. Page 97 He commenced to make a clearing, built a log cabin, and moved into his new home, with his wife and infant daughter, during the third week of May 1748. At that time there was not a single cabin on the ground now occupied by Newton and Belvidere. Trenton was larger than Newark, and yet Prof. Kalm, of Sweden, who was in 1748 making a botanical excursion through New Jersey, tells in his book how the innkeeper with whom he spent the night at Trenton boasted that their "town had near a hundred houses." There was not a single printing press within the limits of New Jersey. At that time there were only three post-offices in New Jersey, viz, Burlington, Trenton and Amboy, the last named was the nearest to Log Gaol and was forty-six miles away as the crow flies. Between New York City and Philadelphia the mail was carried once a week in summer and once every two weeks in winter; but in 1764 postal facilities were increased, and letter-carriers conveyed the mail between the two cities in twenty-four hours and made three trips a week, the mail being carried in canvas bags on horseback by express riders who changed horses every twenty miles. In 1772 a coach conveyed passengers from Jersey City to Philadelphia in two days and was called the Flying Machine. The printing press and post-office were distant luxuries; but the flour-mill was a necessity. In 1735 the Quakers from their settlement along the Pequest took their grain to Kingwood, Hunterdon County, to have it made into flour; and the scattered settlers in the valley of the Paulins Kill had to take their grain along an Indian trail over the Kittatinny Mountain to Flatbrookville, where stood a pioneer mill. But matters improved before the Homestead was purchased; for, about, 1744, Casper Schaeffer erected at Stillwater the first grist-mill ever built in the valley of the Paulins Kill. It had a three-foot run of stones, and ground four bushels a day; rather primitive, but it was a real blessing and saved the settlers miles of hard travel and contributed not a little to the prosperity of the community. This log mill with its water-wheel and low dam of cobble stones was an object familiar to the farmers of Hardwick, and the story is often told how the grists were carried on horseback. In 1770, the Moravians built a mill at Hope. Wolves and panthers troubled the early settlers a great deal. There was a bounty of 20s, for a full-grown wolf, 5s. for a whelp not able to prey, and 15s. for a panther; afterward the bounty was raised to 60s. for a wolf and 10s. for a whelp. In the two years, 1754 and Page 98 '55 Sussex paid £ 120 for bounties, which represented a slaughter of 10 panthers, 6 whelp and 36 wolves. The early county collectors generally recorded only the total sum paid for bounties; but the accounts during 1769 and '70 are given in detail, and I observed several entries reading, "By cash paid Nathan Armstrong for one wolf's head." Nathan made his own plows. He selected a block of wood with winding grain for the mould-board and then planted it with old horseshoes. During the Revolutionary War plowshares made of wrought-iron began to be used. When these became dull they were taken to the blacksmith shop to be sharpened; and when at the close of the century, cast-iron plows were introduced, it was alleged that they poisoned the soil. He carried on farming for nearly thirty years, yet in that time he never raised an acre of clover timothy or Indian corn; for these crops were not introduced into Sussex until after his death; and at first he gathered his wheat and rye with a sickle, for the grain cradle was not used until about 1755 or '60. Flax was an annual crop, although it is now an unfamiliar plant in that region. One mile from the Homestead there was an inn kept by Jonathan Pettit, and the village that grew up around this tavern was first called Log Gaol and afterward Johnsonburg. Sussex was set off from Morris in 1753, and the voters of the newly-organized county were soon authorized to meet and select a place for the erection of a gaol. This meeting was held at the dwelling house of Samuel Green and was continued three days; it was decided that the gaol should be built near Pettit's tavern. Samuel Green on whose premises the gaol was located, gave a bond in the penal sum of £500 proclamation money to secure to the county of Sussex an uninterrupted liberty and privilege for the use of the ground where the gaol was built while the court continued there, and the liberty of taking away the iron in the said gaol whenever it was thought fit so to do. Jonathan Pettit was appointed to finish the iron work, and Richard Lundy, Jr., to agree with the workmen to finish the back and chimney and to secure two pairs of handcuffs and shackles. The total cost of the building was £41, of which £30 were paid for iron and blacksmithing and the remainder for logs, boards and labor. "It may well be imagined," says Benj. B. Edsall, Esq., in his address delivered at the first Sussex Centenary, "that a building thus cheaply constructed was not very well adapted to the safekeeping of prisoners; and so it proved in the sequel. Escapes from Page 99 it were frequent, notwithstanding it was guarded from time to time by a watchman, who was paid the sum of 5s. for every twenty-four hours he was on duty. During the nine years it was used as a place of public detention the county became responsible, on account of the flight of imprisoned debtors, to the amount of nearly £600, or fourteen times the sum expended in erecting it." Log Gaol was thus temporarily the county seat. Here the courts of justice were held until they were removed to the residence of Thomas Woolverton at Huntsville, in February, 1756. Indians, rattlesnakes and mosquitoes were the three stock arguments used by people in Great Britain to dissuade their friends from emigrating and settling in the province of New Jersey. Comparatively few outrages were perpetrated by the Indians on the settlers in Sussex, but no account of those early times would be complete that omitted to mention the alarm inspired by the Indians during the earlier part of the French and Indian war. All of New Jersey and the eastern part of Pennsylvania once belonged to the Lenape, or Delaware, Indians. The Minsies were a subtribe whose totem was a wolf and whose domain extended from Easton to Lackawaxen. A tradition handed down by the Minsies says that Warren County was the original seat of their power, that their chief town was called Kittatinny and was situated in the valley of the Paulins Kill, and that their council fire was afterward removed to an elevated table-land not far from Milford, Pa. In the State of New York dwelt five Indian nations who formed a league known as the Iroquois Confederacy and conquered the Lenape, and as victors owned all the land of Sussex and Warren Counties, but they allowed the defeated Minsies to remain on it. Thus the pioneers who settled in the valleys of the Paulins Kill and the Pequest found a broken and disheartened tribe, who made no resistance, but sullenly abandoned their homes and sought refuge among the Wyandots on the banks of the Susquehanna. Broddock's defeat in July, 1755, was the signal for an outburst of Indian passion that vented itself in massacres committed upon the English colonists everywhere. The pioneers of Sussex prepared to defend themselves; several families would unite and build a stockade around one of their cabins, and here they would all assemble toward evening and pass the night together. New Jersey took energetic measures to protect her frontier; she voted £10,000, erected a blockhouse at Belvidere, another near Columbia and three others along the Delaware between the Water Gap Page 100 and the New York State line; she enlisted 400 men and distributed them among the block-houses, furnished the officers with twenty guides to lead scouting parties, and with fifty "good, large, strong and fierce dogs," to be used in discovering any savages that might be lurking in their secret retreats among the swamps, rocks and mountains. Yet a band of Minsies crossed the Delaware, revisited their haunts in the heart of Sussex County, captured Thomas Hunt in sight of the spot where the Yellow Frame now stands, shot Mrs. Swartwout and induced her husband to surrender by promising to spare his life, then tied him to a tree and tomahawked him. The savages escaped unpunished and carried Hunt and the Swartwout children to the Minsi settlement near Wilkesbarre. In recrossing the Delaware on a raft one of the Indians lost his gun by letting it slip between the logs. Hunt was taken to Canada and sold to a French officer, and remained in captivity nearly four years. Nathan's nearest neighbor towards Blairstown was Mr. Andrew Rice, who owned the VanCamp farm, and George used to tell how he and his brothers, when there was a hard storm, would go over on horseback to see how the Rices got through, a visit inspired perhaps quite as much by a longing to relieve the loneliness of a life in the woods and to discuss community affairs with other boys, as it was by any dread that a neighbor had not weathered the storm successfully. By the side of the road near Federal Spring there is a small conical mound, on top of which a cedar is growing; this is pointed out as the spot where stood a pioneer log schoolhouse. It would seat about twenty-five pupils; it was burned in 1822. Log Gaolers claim that it was one of the original eight that existed within the present limits of Sussex and Warren Counties in 1765; if so, we may be sure that Nathan's younger children sat on its slab benches and warmed themselves by its large old-fashioned fireplace while striving to master the three R's. For three years, 1759-'61, Nathan Armstrong represented Hardwick township in the Board of Justices and Freeholders of Sussex County. I copy from the old record at Newton a portion of the minutes of two meetings, one in 1759 and one in 1760, held while Nathan was a member of the Board: "At a meeting held this 20th day of September, 1759, at the house of Widow Wolverton in Newtown in and for the County of Sussex, by the Justices and Freeholders of said county for to choose a County Collector and having set up Samuel Lundy and Ephraim Darby to be voted for and the majority of the votes carried it in favor of Samuel Lundy to be County Collector. Page 101 "And at the same meeting it is agreed on by the Justices and Freeholders that the present Gaol be put in good repair and that Samuel Wilson, Esq., and Nathan Armstrong be Inspectors and take care to have it completed and made good and to draw an order on the County Collector for the dischargeing the expences of the same. And it is allowed by the Justices and Freeholders that Judge Nevel's expertise be allowed and paid out of the County's money." The minutes of the other meeting are recorded as follows: "May 14, 1760. At a meeting of the Justices and Freeholders held at the house of Amos Pettit Sen., Newtown in and for the County of Sussex was unanimously agreed that there be raised the sum of One hundred pounds proclamation money to pay for the escape of James Davis and for repairing the Gaol of said County and each Assessor in this County shall assess their several quote at just one fourth of the lowest certainty mentioned in an Act of Assembly entitled an Act for Levying the Sinking Fund and to make out their duplicates and deliver to the several Collectors of the respective Townships of this County within ten days after levyed, and the Assessors and Collectors to receive the same fees as is mentioned in the above recited act." "And the Collectors shall collect the said money and pay it to the County Collector at the same time of delivering the sinking fund that shall be raised this year." "And that the County Collector shall have one shilling per pound for his trouble." I add two corresponding entries from the books of the County Collector: "By cash paid to Solomon Wilets for Smith work done to the Goal as by the Committee's Order may appear, the sum of £2 7s 1d." "By cash paid to Peter Schmuck in order to discharge an Action commenced against him by John Cleves for the escape of James Davis which by the Attorney's account amounts to the sum of £75 18s 2d." The earliest extant records of the township of Hardwick bear date 1774, and show that on the eighth day of March in that year a town meeting was held at the house of Deborah Pettit, Jr. Among those elected at this meeting to various local offices are found the names of George Allen, Nathan Armstrong, Ezekiel Ayers, Sampson Dildine, Gershom Gobel, Aaron Hankinson, Jacob Lundy, Samuel Lundy, Charles Pettit and Peter B. Shaver. Page 102 Among the early settlers of this region were several Episcopalian families. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel with headquarters in London, was acting as a foreign missionary society for the Church of England. Its energy and wisdom were manifested by an effort to gather those of its religious faith into a church organization. The parish of the Christ Church, Newton, N.J., was organized on August 20, 1769. Rev. Uzal Ogden, D.D., was the first rector. Colonel Jonathan Hampton donated twenty-seven acres of land. Services were held in the Court house. The rectory was finished in 1771. In December 1774, the New Jersey proprietors deeded two hundred acres of land to the rector, wardens and vestry of Christ Church. Three years after this the church was incorporated. The original charter bears date August 15, 1774. The parish at that time contained sixty-one Church of England families. The incorporators Stewart, Edward Pigot, William Hall, Nathan Armstrong, Amos Pettit, Thomas Anderson, John Pettit, Charles Pettit, John B. Scott and James Shaw. It may be remarked in passing that John B. Scott was a captain in second battalion of the Jersey line; that Stewart and Scott were members of the Provincial Congress of New Jersey; that Anderson was a member of the state Council of Safety; that the four Pettits were brothers, and of Huguenot descent; that Charles Pettit was a Tory and fled to Canada with his brother Isaac; that Nathaniel Pettit was a patriot, was the first member elected to the Legislature from Sussex, and was afterward a judge, and that the Right Reverend Uzal Ogden, D.D., officiated as rector from 1769 to 1784, when he went to Trinity Church, Newark, N.J., and subsequently published a two-volume reply to Paine's "Age of Reason'" The parish at Newton now included an influential membership, and has a beautiful rectory and a stately church edifice. I give another extract from the manuscript of Rev. Casper Schaeffer: "My grandfather, Nathan Armstrong, is represented to have been a very industrious and prudent man, managing his affairs with such economy and thrift as to be able at his demise to leave each of his three sons in possession of a valuable farm, the daughters in those days coming off minus; he is said to have died of the natural smallpox, inoculation not being then generally introduced. Living under the old colonial government, under which the law of primogeniture prevailed, he was constrained to make his will on his death-bed Page 103 in order to prevent the oldest son from inheriting all the real estate which by the devise was given equally, share and share alike, to the three sons. "My grandmother Armstrong was a lady of superior mental endowment. She excelled in conversational power. I well recollect in my childhood and youth with what glowing interest and fixed attention I sat and listened to her when she was relating to my mother anecdotes and reminiscences of earlier life. Her piety, calm, consistent and unobtrusive, shone in all her daily walk and conversation. As a mark of the high esteem in which she was held, no only each of her own children named a daughter after her, but the name of Euphemia became a household word in many families in the neighborhood, even where no relationship existed." It may be observed in reference to the terms of Nathan's will, that the division of the land among the sons was in advance of the public law of that period. There is also reason to believe that he [his] will directed certain sums of money to be paid to his daughters out of his estate, but that the value of these bequests was lessened by the subsequent depreciation of the Continental currency. When Nathan died in 1777, his two oldest daughters - Elizabeth and Mary, then Mrs. Robert Beavers and Mrs. Archibald Stinson - had been married several years; and their daughters, Euphemia Stinson and Elizabeth Beavers, aged about six and three were the only grandchildren that Nathan lived to see. Of the five children who were at home unmarried, Sarah, the youngest, was sixteen years and seven months old. The death of the father was followed by the breaking up of the family, not through necessity, but by choice; there were five weddings within three or four years. There were near Johnsonburg two ancient burial places: one was at Dark Moon, by the old log meeting-house; the other was on the farm of Samuel Green, on the right of the road leading from Johnsonburg to the Yellow Frame, a few rods beyond where the road branches to Marksboro and before a land turns down the hill to the right, and here, near the top of a long hill that faces the south and overlooks the valley of the Pequest, were buried Nathan and Uphamy Armstrong. Their graves were marked by monuments of brown freestone neatly carved. All traces of a burial ground at this place have disappeared; in 1878 only the Armstrong tombstones remained standing, and in 1887 they too were thrown down by ruthless hands and broken. Nathan's headstone was three feet high, with an arched top and square shoulders, and had engraved on it a cherub's face, supported Page 104 on each side by an outstretched wing. I give an exact copy of the inscription: HERE Lies ye Body Of the original tract purchased by Nathan Armstrong, the first portion alienated was a section jutting in the direction of Paulina; it afterward formed a part of the Robert Simpson farm, now owned by George Kerr. The suggestion has been made that this may have been a part of William's inheritance. The extend and boundaries of this section cannot at present be determined. Omitting this early transfer, the area of the remainder can be given from recent surveys; Judge John Armstrong secured 334 acres, and his brother George 247 Acres. Judge John's farm passed to his son Jacob; it was diminished to 329 acres by three small sales, viz: the Adam Gray lot, the John D. Rice lot, and a narrow slice which Jacob sold to his cousin John so that John might extend a road through to Cooke's lane. It may be remarked that Cooke's lane, where it bends to the south, does not follow the original division line; the lane was put through straight and the triangles thus cut off were exchanged. The manner in which George's farm was disposed of is interesting as illustrating a method of settling estates that was very much in vogue at one time. At his death, the farm was divided into nine or ten shares. His son John, who inherited one, first rented several others and finally purchased them; David inherited one share, and then in the same way rented and bought the remaining shares; as a result, the land of John and David interlaced in a very inconvenient manner, so that they made a deal, trading several fields. Thus Nathan's Homestead was finally carved into three farms, owned by three grandsons, John, David and Jacob. After having been held in the Armstrong name for three generations (1748-1880, a period of 132 years), the last part of the farm passed into the hands of strangers, the final disposition being as follows: John's farm was sold to Mr. Isaac Read Kerr in 1873, Jacob's to Mr. Lewis Kishpaugh in 1874, and David's to Mr. George H. Harris in 1880. |
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