JACOB CONKLIN BIOGRAPHY, COLUMBIA CO., NY

Copyright (c) 1999 by Bonnie Bunce (bmbunce@juno.com).

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Excerpt from HISTORY AND DIRECTORY OF YATES COUNTY, NEW YORK by Stafford
C. Cleveland published in 1873 in Penn Yan, New York, pages 491-95 in the
chapter on the Town of JERUSALEM.
            JACOB CONKLIN.

    About twenty years later than John Race, came Jacob Conklin to the same
locality, and Jacob was also a character.  He and his wife Catharine
Brazie were also reared under the life of the lease system of the
Livingston Manor, of an ancestry moulded by 
generations inured to that condition of social existence.  They were 
natives of the Copake Pond or Lake vicinity, and near the Livingston
Manor seat.  "Uncle Jake" was a favorite with his Manor Lord, receiving
special favor and liberal bounties for obsequious compliance with his
demands and attention to his wants.  He made frequent visits to the Manor
house with generous contributions of game and fish which his cunning
craft had procured from the surrounding hills and mountains and the
prolific waters of the 
Lake; and often accompanied the younger members of the family as guide
and director in their hunting and fishing excursions.  He was therefore
quite a lion among the Copakes, and thus being in the good graces of both
the landlord and tenantry, it seemed that he might be most content of all
his associates, but such was not the fact.  Like Norval in the play who
had heard of wars, he had heard of the country of "the Lakes" and longed
to breathe their free air and angle in their limpid waters, and own free
from landlord's claim for rent the soil on which his domicile might stand
and his children should sow and reap their daily bread.  The title to
their Copake home was fast running to its end in the uncertain lives of
two old 
people just ready to step into the grave, and he and his good wife 
"Catarene" held frequent and deeply interesting consultations upon the
subject of leaving their early and long cherished home and friends to
seek their heart's desire in that "far distant west" among the Lakes of
New York.
    Their first born son, "Cornalus," as the father always called him, had
already accompanied some of their adventurous neighbors to that country,
and sent back glowing reports of its rich soil, beautiful waters and
game-stocked hillsides.  They pondered well and long, and finally
determined to cast their fortunes into the scale and try what emigration
would do for them.  Hence the homestead farm bordering the famed "Copake
Pond," and within view of the rugged sides and tops of old "Tagconic,"
was 
offered for sale and brought the full sum of five hundred dollars for 
their right and title to one hundred acres of "Lease Land," with the 
improvements of a hundred years.  This point reached and the crisis
passed of selling and starting, they soon wended their way by the Erie
canal and partly by wagon, with their family of eight children, to this
country.  Stopping for a short season on Ketchum's Point on the Keuka
Lake, they soon purchased what was known as the "Father Townsend farm,"
on the Lake road, just two and a half miles south of Penn Yan, on lot 50,
then pretty well cleared, with a double log house, orchard in bearing,
with a narrow front of some fourteen rods on the Lake, and extending west
to the next road, with a width to contain 114 acres, for the sum of one
thousand dollars.  This was 1828.  Since, 25 acres has been sold and the
balance is still in the family, and by will belongs to the oldest son of
his son Peter, he being a namesake of the grandfather.  Thus did he
practice the odious system of entail, a part and parcel of the tenantry
system that he so hated as to flee from at the sacrifice of early home
and life long associates.  And here did this old couple with their
offspring plant themselves and long rejoice in their escape from the
thraldom of lease land tenantry.
    Uncle Jacob was never suspected of having an undue attachment to the
labors of the farm, and therefore contented himself to wear out the debt
which he incurred in its purchase by the annual wages on hire, of his son
Peter, while he and the younger members endeavored to feed and clothe the
family from the products of the farm and what could be gleaned from his 
fishing and hunting recreations.  His love for those sports clung to him
through life, and nothing suited him better than to share them with his
many friends.  He therefore spent much time with his gun and skiff; and
the old homestead shows to this day the influence of early and long
established habits, descending from father to son, in its dilapidated and
antiquated appearance, and it must await the promised energies and
modernized views of his grandson when he shall come into possession to
redeem it from the Van Winkleism of the tenantry system.
    Uncle Jacob was a man over six feet in his stockings, broad shouldered 
and rather bony than muscular in his build; his gait was that of a man
never in a hurry, and in his hunting excursions he preferred to watch the
runway rather than follow the track of the game.  On the Lake he rejoiced
in still fishing rather than trolling and well did he know the bedding
places of the salmon trout and the white fish that so richly abound in
the waters of the Keuka.  Most heartily did he curse the splashing
paddle-wheels of the 
first steamer that disturbed her placid bosom, for in that, to his
prophetic mind was foreshadowed the dispersing of the best schools of his
finny pets that he had long fed and bated in certain localities known
only to himself, and from which he could promise with great certainty a
splendid fry to his special friends on short notice.  Penn Yan was a
favorite resort and often during the week he could be found of an
afternoon seated in a bar room or on the more cheery front steps of some
social resort, surrounded by eager listeners as he recounted in his
good-natured and rollicking style the adventures of the past, with his
predictions of the future, in which would be lost as he verily believed
and taught, much of the valuable knowledge of his day and generation.
    But Jacob Conklin's was not a murmuring spirit--far from it--for he and
his good wife Catharine always seemed to think that their lives were cast
in happy times and pleasant places, and that they were specially favored.
 They were therefore always thankful, and their anxieties for those who
were to follow them were tinged rather with apprehension than envy.  It
was here that the mother died leaving eight children, Cornelius, Mary,
Peter, John, Hannah, Elias, James and Helen.
    Uncle Jacob married a second wife, Hannah Anderson, widow of Beecher
Anderson, of Jerusalem.  She died some five years previous to his death,
and he died in 1853, aged seventy-eight years, and with his wives lies
buried in the cemetery at Penn Yan.
    Cornelius married Ann Bevins, at Copake, and preceded his father to this
Country, stopping in Potter for a time but finally settling near his
father in Jerusalem, where he died leaving six children, Isaac, James,
Jacob, Catharine, Cornelia and John, most of whom reside out of the
County.  Catharine married Osborne Moore, and resides at Kinney's
Corners, in Jerusalem.  They have two children, Orman and Frederick. 
John married Jane Stevens, of Milo, and resides there.  They have several
children.
    Mary married John Benjamin, of Copake, N. Y., and settled for a time in
this Country, but emigrated to Illinois with their family of nine [sic]
children, Sally, Porter, George, Emily Catharine, Helen, Adelaide and
Mary J.
    Peter married Lavina Shriner, of Penn Yan.  They reside on and have a
life interest in the homestead, and have eight children, Jacob, Henry,
John, William, Charles, Catharine, Emma and Mary.  Jacob, the eldest son,
is sole heir by will to the homestead from the grandfather.
    John died single.  Hannah married Jeremiah Conklin, and went to Flint,
Michigan, where they now reside and have three children, Walter, Elias,
and George H.
    Elias married Lydia Finger, of Penn Yan, and both are dead, leaving two
children, James and Frank.
    James married Lydia Carr, of Jerusalem, and resides in Penn Yan.  They
have two sons, Charles O. and William H.
    Charles married Mary Mantel, of Milo, and resides there.  They have one
child.
    Helen married John Whitbeck, of Copake.  He died in the hospital of the
Federal army in Virginia, and she has since died leaving two children,
Foster and Conklin.