Friday, October 9, 2009

Veterans in Cornwell Cemetery

Back in May of this year, I wrote about Ebenezer Cheever. Eb is buried in Cornwell Cemetery and like Frederick Van Liew, was a veteran of the American Revolution. When I started to work with the Owasco Chapter of the DAR on verification for the grave marking for Frederick Van Liew, I spent some time at Cornell University in Ithaca NY looking at some genealogical records for Scipio. I also used the NYS Library and the NYS Archives, the DAR website, fultonhistory.com and Footnote.com. It is always amazing to me to see how much information is available that would have been nearly impossible to track down and very costly, not so many years past.

In addition to Frederick Van Liew, I have verified that this little country cemetery includes the following Revolutionary War veterans:

Ebenezer Cheever, Privateer for CT
Samuel Hoskins, Private for MA
Elias Manchester, Private for NY
Caleb Wadham Sr., Artificer for CT
Nathan Webster, Private for CT
Elijah Weeks, Private for MA
Israel Ward, Member, NY Militia
Joel Coe, Member, NJ Militia

In addition, I believe that three more men, Nathaniel Olney, Ezekiel Parker and William J. Cook, are also Revolutionary War veterans but I have yet to verify them.
Some of these men can be found on our Scipio census for 1800, placing them here very early in Scipio's existence. Some of these names are still found in Scipio today. I will be writing more about them in the next month as I explore the Cornwell Cemetery more thoroughly, so stay tuned!

2 comments:

Roger A. Post said...

Hi, Sandie. I just wanted to note that "Caleb Wadham, Sr." may appear as Caleb Wadams in other records, in case anyone enters the latter spelling as a search term.

Also, I got a chance to view the History Corner in the Scipio Town Office recently and commend you for the nice display.

Sandie Stoker Gilliland said...

Good reminder, Roger - many times these spellings vary, depending on the record you peruse. I did not find my grandfather, Byron Hitchcock, in a census record for a year I knew he was in Scipio until I tried searching using just his first name as it was a bit unusual. Bingo! The transcriber had mistaken the handwriting for "Kitchcock" and I would never have thought of that.
Thanks for noticing our display at the Scipio Town Office. We recently had to rearrange our Hsitory Corner and I appreciate knowing how people like it now.