Silvester Worden in Ontario County, New York

 

     

     There are many trees online for my fifth-great-grandfather Silvester Worden who was born in 1758 in Stonington on the coast of Connecticut, fought in the Revolution, drifted west across New York State over the years, and spent his final days in Auburn, Ohio in the care of his son Henry.  The trees contain names and dates, but most don't have the detail that family historians crave.  So... this blog is going to share some of what I've learned about Silvester once he arrived in Farmington, New York around 1816 give or take a few years, through his last days in Ohio.  First, his name.  In those days before the invention of copy machines, when clerks hand copied documents, Silvester's name was frequently changed to Sylvester.  In the three instances I've seen however, he himself always signed as Silvester Worden with an i, not a y; one signature can be seen below.

     By the time of the 1800 census Silvester and his family had left Connecticut and were living in the upstate New York town of Herkimer on the north bank of the Mohawk River.  Before long however, they were again traveling, this time to Onondaga County where in 1810 they can be found in Manlius, a picturesque town located on the old Mohawk Trail, about ten miles southeast of Syracuse. Their last stop in New York was the Farmington/Palmyra area in Ontario County, those two places being right next to each other.* When Silvester applied for a soldier's pension in 1818 he gave Farmington as his address.

       The name of Silvester's wife is unknown, she was probably the female aged 45 and over enumerated with him in the 1810 census of Manlius.  Silvester is not included in the 1820 census as a head of household, he must have been living with someone at that point.  In August of 1820 he appeared in Ontario County court in relation to his pension, (which was granted at $96 per year), where he maintained he was then a resident of Palmyra, New York who owned no property.  His application contained no mention of a wife, though Silvester did note that he cared for his twenty-two year old disabled son Rensselaer Worden who had no use of his limbs. The 1830 census shows Silvester living alone in Farmington, his son Squire Worden, (my fourth-great-grandfather), is listed directly above him while another son, Justus, is living a few miles away in Manchester.  Justus was in the area as early as 1827, as on 1 January 1828 the Palmyra Post Office had an unclaimed letter addressed to him while Silvester had letters waiting there in 1821 and 1826.

     I found no land records for Silvester prior to 7 June 1828 when he purchased a 105 acre farm on lot 74 in Farmington from Thomas Beals for $1,400.  That very day, Silvester gave Benjamin Howland a deed to the same property for the sum of only $150.  No, Silvester hadn't lost his mind, that was a common way of  taking a loan or mortgage in the 19th century.  The deed specified that if the money was repaid to Howland, transfer of the land to him would be voided, which is what happened.  I'm a bit mystified as to where Silvester found the money to buy the place.  His pension application contains a statement from one of the judges of the Court of Common Pleas describing Silvester's circumstances, "...he is very poor and absolutely stands in need of assistance".  In fact, under the rules set by Congress, the Revolutionary War Pension Act of 1818 extended pensions only to indigent veterans who had served at least nine months in the Continental Army.  It occurs to me, Silvester's mother Rebecca died in late 1827, perhaps he received an inheritance?  However he did so, by some means, Silvester bought himself a farm.  As can be seen on the map below, Herendeen Road ran through the middle of lot 74. Silvester's farm, circled in red, was located at the end of Herendeen where it met Yellow Mills Road. 

      

     While I've come across no further records of the following incident, in 1826 Silvester had a run in with a local man, Joseph Smith.  The same Joseph Smith who would found the Mormon religion.  In 1828 a writ of collection was given in Ontario County Supreme Court on Silvester's property to satisfy a suit brought against him by Smith.  Whether it was ever enforced is unclear, that November Sheriff George Smith returned the writ to the court.  At any rate, Silvester retained ownership of his farm, living there until 1840.  My third-great-grandfather, Paul Worden, child of Silvester's son Squire, was born there on his grandfather's property, "now the Darius Rush farm", in January of 1832 according to Paul's obituary.  The bad blood between Silvester and Joseph Smith remained undissipated  in 1833 when Silvester, along with ten other Farmington residents, signed a statement condemning not just Joseph, but his family as well.  The statement contains another example of his using the letter i to spell his name.

     Silvester was getting on in years by 1840, the census that year showed his son Henry S. and his family residing with him with Henry listed as head of the household.  Around that time a decision was made to pull up stakes and move the family to Ohio.  The town of Auburn in Geauga County, where Henry's daughter Julia and her husband Ezekiel Hull had been living for several years, was chosen as their destination.  Another daughter of Henry's, Huldah, also lived near that place with her husband Leonard Gibson. 

   On 16 September 1840, Silvester sold his farm to Russell M. Rush for $3,150.  A tidy profit of $1,750.  No doubt that money helped finance the family's move.  Silvester wrote his will one week after selling his farm, a concise document devoid of the flowery, religious language his son Henry would employ in his will years later.  In this testament Silvester left monetary bequests to his sons Henry Jr., John, Justus, and Asa.  To his daughter, "Prudence Smith", Silvester left a feather bed.  It's not clear why he referred to his daughter as Prudence Smith.  Prudence had been married to Hugh Clyde for years when Silvester made his will.  Squire Worden, who had by that time moved to South Bristol, New York, was not mentioned in his father's will; Silvester may have given Squire his inheritance before he left the state.  It seems likely the Worden's travelled to Ohio by wagon, Henry's whole family went, probably bringing with them many possessions. 

      Silvester didn't live long after reaching Ohio.  Upon his death, Henry filed Silvester's will with the Geauga County Court of Common Pleas.  The case was heard on 27 April 1841, at which time Henry was appointed executor of his father's estate.  Henry's administration account filed a year later was an interesting document.  It appeared all the money from the sale of Silvester's farm was gone by then. The total assets of the estate amounted to only $1,591.87; that entire sum being identified as payment in full of  a mortgage executed by Russell M. Rush to Silvester in 1840.  The exact wording in Henry's administrator's account read:

1842 Feb. 17--  By cash received in full on mortgage of land in Ontario [County] New York executed by Russell M. Rush to Sylvester Worden, dated Sept. 23, 1840 on interest after 16th April 1841 for $1,500.

     So Silvester had held a mortgage on the Farmington property!  That necessitated a look at the Ontario County Mortgage Books available on Family Search where I found the terms of the 1840 mortgage agreement requiring Russell M. Rush to:

...cause to be paid the full sum of $1,500 in the following manner viz. on the sixteenth day of September 1842 five hundred dollars, and on the sixteenth day of September 1843 five hundred dollars, and on the sixteenth day of September 1844 five hundred dollars... with interest to be compounded from the first day of April next.

     Clearly, Rush paid the mortgage off early, with the extra $91.87 being interest.  One set of  four payments, made by Henry on behalf of the estate, totaling $726.88 was puzzling.  It was paid to Hiram Canfield to satisfy a mortgage executed by Silvester to George Sturtevant for $675; afterwards assigned to Canfield.  I found both men living in Auburn, Ohio indicating the mortgage was executed there.  That posed all sorts of questions, why did Silvester take out a mortgage?  Did that mean Silvester owned land in Ohio?  If so why was that land not included in the assets of the estate? 

     After consulting Ohio land records I discovered Silvester did indeed buy land in Ohio.  On 9 October 1840, Silvester Worden of Farmington, New York agreed to pay $725 for fifty acres of land, the west part of lot 22 in Auburn, Ohio.  The grantor was none other than George Sturtevant and his wife Lucinda.  That  same day Silvester executed a mortgage of $675 to Sturtevant.  This explains the payment of $726.88 later found in the administrator's account to Hiram Canfield, to whom the mortgage was assigned by Sturtevant.  It appears only $50  actually changed hands between Silvester and Sturtevant when Silvester purchased the property in Auburn.  See the 1857 maps below:

     

Lot 22 in Auburn, Ohio. West half is only 47 acres
because in 1844, Asa Worden bought 3 of the 50 acres from Henry

     By the time Hiram Canfield and the lawyers were paid, along with $550 to Henry for his services as executor, a mere $218.32 was left to be distributed among Silvester's heirs.  The estate account refers to several "attached vouchers" that could presumably explain in greater detail how the figures contained in it were arrived at, but the vouchers don't appear to be available online.

     Another unanswered question is when did Silvester pass away?  It was without a doubt late 1840 or early 1841, but the exact date can't be determined as yet.  Silvester received a pension payment every year in March and another in September.  I found no payments after September of 1840, and no evidence of a transfer of his pension to Ohio as would commonly have been done, suggesting he was deceased before the March 1841 payment was due.  Indeed, records of the Treasury General Accounting Office show their last payment to Silvester was made in the third quarter of 1840, the September payment, confirming he was not living in March of 1841.  

Though distant, the Albany Agency handled Ontario County pensions

     The matter of the probate of Silvester's will was first heard by the court on 27 April 1841, but that date was predicated on the court's term so too much should not be read into it.  The first sitting of the Geauga County Court of Common Pleas in 1841 did not commence until late March. The previous term had begun in late October of 1840 and ended in November of that year so there may have been a sizeable backlog.*  Silvester was certainly alive on 9 October of 1840 when he purchased land in Ohio, but that is the last day it can definitely be said Silvester was still among the living.  The outlay Henry made from Silvester's estate to Hiram Canfield began with a $90 payment on 19 January 1841, which indicates Silvester had passed before that date.  If I had to make a guess, I would say Silvester went to his reward in December of 1840.

    On 17 June, 1841 Silvester's sons Justus and Asa, in a joint filing, renounced their claim to the Auburn property after each were paid $300 by Henry.  The document gives Justus' residence as New York State, and Asa's as Pennsylvania.  Silvester's daughter Prudence Worden Clyde, "of Chautauqua County, New York", also sold her interest in the property to her brother Henry for $100.  

     Silvester lies at rest in Geauga County.  No payment for a headstone is found in Henry's estate account, perhaps explaining why Silvester's grave has never been located.  Henry and many of his children moved on to Eaton County Michigan after his father's death.  One thing that stood out to me in reading the court documents, while Silvester signed his will, his son Henry used an X to sign his name in official papers as did Justus and Prudence.

     Above is a map of Silvester's lot in Farmington, New York as it looks today.  It now contains only 88 acres, I would bet the original lot included the oddly shaped parcel in the upper right and the long parcel in the bottom left corner.  The house on the lot sits near the piece of land that juts out farthest to the right, roughly where the original house can be seen on the first map.  Ontario County records say the current house was built in 1900, long after Silvester roamed the fields.  As can be seen in looking at the modern map, Farmington is still a very rural place.  The property is only a few miles from my current home, and also about that distance from the one where I grew up.  I've passed it thousands of times over the years, never knowing until I began land research that it once belonged to my fifth-great-grandfather.

* In 1823 Wayne County was created in New York State from parts of Seneca and Ontario Counties. While Farmington remained in Ontario County, Palmyra was annexed to Wayne.

*The Ohio General Assembly passed, An Act to Regulate the Times of Holding the Judicial Courts, on February 4, 1837. This act set the schedule for the Geauga County Court of Common Pleas, then part of the Third Circuit, noting it would hold court during three terms:  A March term commencing on March 21; a June term, commencing on June 5; and an October term, commencing on October 24. 

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