Joseph Austin (1789 - 1846)

Born 15 Sep 1789 in Coventry, Kent, Rhode Island

Husband of Abigail (Woodward) Austin — married 5 Jan 1815 in Brooklyn, Windham, CT

Descendants

Died 20 Jul 1846 at age 56 in Sempronius, Cayugua, New York

Problems/Questions Profile manager: Caroline Bristol [send private message]

Biography

Birth

Birth:

Date: 15 Sep 1789

Place: Coventry, Kent, Rhode Island^[1]

Birth:

Date: 15 Sep 1789

Place: West Greenwich, Kent, Rhode Island^[2]

Death

Date: 20 Jul 1846

Place: Sempronius, Cayugua, New York^[3]

Burial

Place: Free Church Cemetery, Moravia, NY^[4][5]

Residence

Residence:

Date: 18 Sep 1815

Place: admission as freeman at Brooklyn, Connecticut.^[6]

Residence:

Date: 1830

Place: Sempronius, Cayuga, New York^[7]

Residence:

Date: 1840

Place: Moravia, Cayuga, NY^[8]

Note

Note: Reminiscences by Emily Waite Austin Hawke, 1885.

Printed in A genealogy of the descendants of Robert Austin of Kingstown, Rhode Island, by Edith Austin Moore, pp. 591--593.

When Joseph, my father was 7 yrs. of age he was bound to a man and his wife in the town of Sterling, R.I., by the name of Isaac and Mary Gallup, who were people of sterling character, they never had children of their own, were farmers and like most New England people had very strict habits of industry, frugality and integrity.

I do not know their religion, but probably they were Presbyterians for father always leaned that way though he never united with any church till he was of middle age.

He always asked a blessing at meals and that with the family standing by their places.

I remember when in my early childhood that he always prayed standing before he went to bed, but after he went to farming he did not, probably did not have the time.

With those people he was taught to work on the farm, went to common school winters, studied the branches of reading, writing and arithmetic (Dabolts) that was considered all the education necessary for a farmer.

When I went to school I used the very same slate and arithmetic he had used, and I think they went nearly through the whole family.

When he was 21 years of age he graduated with a brand new suit of homespun for a Sunday-go-to-meeting suit.

That was everything he owned except the old clothes which he had formerly worn, but he had health and industrious habits. He went into Conn. and found a situation as an apprentice with a good carpenter, contracting his whole time for two years, to be taught all the man was master of himself, or make him master of his trade.

He clothed himself by doing little jobs of work after his day's work, which was after nine o'clock at night. A day's work then was from early morning till 9 o'clock at night.

At 23 years of age he graduated, a fine mechanic. It was more to be a carpenter then that at the present day, everything was taken in the rough, no planed flooring, no factory made sash, panel doors or mouldings of any kind, everything made by hand: Heavy timber all had to be scored and hewed with a broad ax, and I do think, the work was much smoother and finer than I see these days, done by machinery

At 25 he was married to Abigail Woodward of Brooklyn, Conn., Jan. 5, 1815.

She remained in her mother's family, he working at his trade till one year from the first of April when he bought a house at "Brooklyn Green" and there they set up housekeeping and lived 6 years, from whence he moved to the village of Westfield in the adjoining town of Killingly, adjoining R.I. on the east.

Here he followed his trade two years, from there he went to Danielsonville, a manufacturing village in the same town, situated on the Quinnebang River: the boundary between Killingly and Brooklyn.

Here he worked in the machine shop of a cotton manufactory two years.

In the autumn of 1825 he went to Sempronius, Cayuga County, N.Y.

He purchased a farm of 60 acres of Jeremiah Fuller, and another of 40 acres joining it on the south, of Aaron Chatterton, and returned home as far as Albany on the Erie Canal, (the most wonderful enterprise of the age.)

It had just been finished. When the canal was first projected many men said they did not want to live any longer than to see that completed, thinking it could not be finished in a lifetime.

In March 1826 he started with his family (his mother almost 76, his wife and 6 children, the youngest, Harriet 7 months old) and in company with Joseph Chandler and his family, consisting of four, making a family of 13 persons in all, took passage on a sloop at Norwich.

When he got as far as New York we were detained by head winds and had to lay there several days and it was during that time that I made my first and last visit to a museum. Father and mother went, took sister Mary and myself along to see the sights.

He had supposed that on our arrival in Albany, the Canal would be opened, but it was not and, after waiting there a week he decided to leave his goods to be shipped by canal and with his family to stage it to the nearest point to their destination which was Onondaga Hill, within about 40 miles of it.

I remember how we 13 piled into the big old stage, 6 adults and 7 children ages ranging from 76 years down to 7 months, two not a year old, traveled nights as well as days. I remember one night how it rained and the roads were horrible such as you will generally see in that country and a new country at that, about the last of March and first of April.

It thundered and lightened and the old stage leaked and mother got sick and the baby cried so that she and father were obliged to stop off and stay till morning, but the rest of us kept on till we got as far as we could go by stage.

Father and mother came on by private conveyance to where we waited for them.

From there we came in a big lumber wagon. Mary and I would get tired being packed in and occasionally would get out and walk.

Everything was so strange to us as we went along, the big woods, rail fences and log houses.

We arrived at Eleazer Woodward's (mother's brother) just at nightfall.

They lived in a log house standing where Charles Stanton's house now stands, with one living room and one bedroom on the ground, and one room above to which they had access by going up a ladder.

They sent their hired man and some of their children to a neighbor's house to stay overnight. The next morning we went to our home, which was a double log house about 40 rods from there and standing above the road from Orville Burlingham's present house.

How funny that house did look. It had in one room three small windows, one outside door and another opening into the other room, a fireplace, which covered more than half of one end of the room, open up to the joists that the floor above was laid on; a great stick called a lug-pole was laid across the throat of it and one or two trammels hung from it to hang the cooking utensils on.

The neighbors very kindly lent them implements to keep house with for they had brought nothing except what came as baggage by stage.

Their goods were miscarried and it was four weeks or more before they got them. Then began their new life, he to be a farmer and she a farmer's wife.

They started a dairy very soon, for which she won a wide reputation as a cheesemaker. Three years from that spring father purchased the farm of mother's brother, lying next to his, 50 acres.

The next year he had the timber hewed for a new house, and piled up to season, and the following winter he drew hemlock logs to the mill for the planks, etc., for you must know that the house was built of three inch planks placed solid together, not a stud or brace in it, and framed into the sills and plates. The next winter he drew his pine lumber from Dryden and piled it up to season; then when he had been there six years the carpenters came to do the work, i.e., to build the house. They had it done so we occupied it the next winter.

The next year, which was the 8th of his living there, he and mother and her brother Ward went over 300 miles with horses and sleighs to visit the old home and friends in Conn., carrying a load of grass seed to defray expenses, etc..

Father was a man of medium height, all nerve, sinew and muscle, no fat, dark complexioned, black curly hair and dark brown eyes. He was very energetic, had strong will, very reticent in his family, but social and jolly with others; was a good provider, but economical, never had time to get acquainted with his children or to make himself companionable to them in any way.

Mother told me a year or two before his death that he had said to her that he could not understand why it was that his children would not talk and consult with him as he saw other fathers and their children associate together. It was a source of great grief to him. I think he was not given to threatening or whipping much but his word was law.

I never saw the day that I could speak freely to anybody in his presence.

He was a man of great integrity of character.

He died July 20, 1846, of congestion.

Edith Austin Moore Notes:

Resided Coventry, 1789-96,

Seertim, RI `1796-1815,

Brooklyn Green, Conn. 1815-1821,

Westfield, RI 1821-1823,

Danielson, RI {Connecticut???] 1823-25,

Sempronius, NY 1825-1846.

EAM Ref., Mrs. Carroll W. Brown, 5414 Little Falls Road, Arlington, VA (Rye

Beach, NH) VR State Library, Hartford, Conn.

LDS Postmortem:

Ref: 27HD-JGZ

^[5]

Photo of his upright tomb stone is on the memorial page.

LDS Postmortem

Baptism: 9 DEC 1955

Endowment: 8 MAR 1956

Sealing Child: 30 APR 1957

Temple: SLAKE

Sealing Spouse: 30 APR 1957 in SLAKE

Source: Rootsweb family tree: Descendants of Richard Hutchinson, b. 1602, Arnold, Notts, England

http://worldconnect.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=dcarlsen&id=I11735

Ancestral File Number: M9QJ-1W

Ancestral File", database, FamilySearch (http://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.2.1/M7JG-XB2 : accessed 2013-02-17), entry for Joseph AUSTIN.

Ancestral File Number: 2CWK-2X3

"Ancestral File", database, FamilySearch (http://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.2.1/M12Y-4Y3 : accessed 2013-02-17), entry for Joseph Austin.

Ancestral File Number: 371P-V69

"Pedigree Resource File", database, FamilySearch (http://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.2.1/9MX5-9G8 : accessed 2013-02-17), entry for Joseph Austin.

Ancestral File Number: 39J0-8GM

Pedigree Resource File", database, FamilySearch (http://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.2.1/9SY3-Q7X : accessed 2013-02-17), entry for Joseph Austin.

Marriage

Husband: Joseph Austin

Wife: Abigail Woodward

Child: Emily Wait Austin

Child: Mary Gallup Austin

Child: Ward Woodward Austin

Child: Isaac Gallup Austin

Child: Rebekah Putnam Austin

Child: Harriet Newell Austin

Child: Deidamia Woodward Austin

Child: Henry Kirk White Austin

Child: John Milton Austin

Child: Coralinn Eliza Hemans Austin

Child: Seward Lafayette Austin

Marriage:

Date: 5 Jan 1815

Place: Brooklyn, Windham, CT^[9][10][11]

Joseph was born on 15 Sep 1789 in Coventry, Kent, Rhode Island, USA. He passed away on 20 Jul 1846 in Sempronius, Cayuga County, New York, USA ^[12].

Sources

1. ↑ Source: #S137
2. ↑ Source: #S138
3. ↑ Source: #S30 Page: h t t p : / / sunbeam.rahul.net/~afaoa/cgi-bin/igmget.cgi/n=Robert_Austin_RI?2532009
4. ↑ Source: #S83
5. ↑ ^{5.0 5.1} Find A Grave: Memorial #85604092
6. ↑ Source: #S20
7. ↑ Source: #S136 Data: Text: Ancestry.com. 1830 U.S. Federal Census [database online]. Provo, Utah: MyFamily.com, Inc., 2004. Original data: United States. 1830 United States Federal Census. M19, 201 rolls. National Archives and Records Administration, Washington D.C. Sempronius, Cayuga, New York, roll 88, page 321, image 634.
8. ↑ Source: #S92
9. ↑ Source: #S29 Data: Text: Edmund West, comp. Family Data Collection - Marriages [database online] Provo, UT: Ancestry.com, 2001.
10. ↑ Source: #S20
11. ↑ Source: #S32 Data: Text: Online publication - Ancestry.com. Connecticut Town Marriage Records, pre-1870 (Barbour Collection) [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: The Generations Network, Inc., 2006.Original data - White, Lorraine Cook, ed. The Barbour Collection of Connecticut Town Vital Records. Vol. 1-55. Baltimore, MD, USA: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1994-2002.
12. ↑ Find A Grave: Memorial #85604092

• Source: S10 Title: Edmund West, comp., Family Data Collection - Individual Records
• Source: S136 Title: Ancestry.com, 1830 United States Federal Census M19, 201 rolls. National Archives and Records Administration, Washington D.C. Sempronius, Cayuga, New York, roll 88, page 321, image 634.
• Source: S137 Title: Edith Austin Moore, A genealogy of the descendants of Robert Austin of Kingstown, Rhode Island p. 391 Note: Edith Austin Moore, A genealogy of the descendants of Robert Austin of Kingstown, Rhode Island p. 391.
• Source: S138 Title: Edith Austin Moore, p. 384 Note: Edith Austin Moore, p. 384.
• Source: S20 Title: Barbour Collection Connecticut Vital Records Note: Barbour Collection Connecticut Vital Records, Barbour Collection Connecticut Vital Records.
• Source: S29 Title: Edmund West, comp., Family Data Collection - Marriages (Name: Name: Provo, UT, USA: MyFamily.com, Inc., 2001;;)
• Source: S30 Title: Edith Austin Moore, Robert_Austin_RI Genealogical Database (Name: Name: 1951;;) http://sunbeam.rahul.net/~afaoa/
• Source: S32 Title: Ancestry.com, Connecticut Town Marriage Records, pre-1870 (Barbour Collection)
• Source: S83 Title: Quaker/Free Church Cemetery webpage Note: Quaker/Free Church Cemetery webpage, Quaker/Free Church Cemetery webpage. http://www.rootsweb.com/~nycayuga/cem/cem138.htm
• Source: S92 Title: Ancestry.com, 1840 United States Federal Census (Name: Name: Provo, UT, USA: The Generations Network, Inc., 2004;;)

Acknowledgments

• Thank you to Caroline Bristol for creating WikiTree profile Austin-2701 through the import of ccbristol.ged on Jul 30, 2013. Click to the Changes page for the details of edits by Caroline and others.