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From: "Pauline Manosh" <>
Subject: [VT-L] "Capt. Phineas Walker" Weston, Mass and Strafford, Vermont Orange County by George Walker of Chicago
Date: Sun, 2 Jan 2000 16:57:45 -0500

>From Hemenway's Vermont Historical Gazetteer:
pg. 1074 -1075Vol. 2 (By George Walker, of Chicago)
Strafford, Vermont Orange County
Capt. Walker was born of Puritan parents in the town of Weston, Mass; March,
1738. When he was 10 years of age his father, Nathaniel, who was a
house-joiner, moved with his family to Sturbridge, in the same State, and
took a farm adjoining and north of a beautiful pond, which still bears his
name. Being an active, enterprising man, he soon erected a dwelling that is
a specimen of good workmanship to this day--the writer having recently seen
it--with the same shingles on its sides that were at first put on, and which
are yet in good order. In this town Phineas learned the blacksmith trade of
" Squire Freeman," and soon after settled in Woodstock, CT; where he married
Susannah, daughter of Timothy Hyde, of the same place, in 1763. They had 7
sons and 2 daughters. He went to Strafford, Vermont without his family,
about the year 1778, and purchased a tract of land lying on branches of the
Ompompanosuc, from 1 to 2 miles north of the village, and entered heartily,
with several hands, into the laborious work of clearing off the large timber
with which the valley abounded.
One season his son Leonard, who was then 13 years of age, "did the
house-work" for them. At that time there was no "clearing" north of them, up
that valley. He built a saw-mill, and was expecting to become a permanent
inhabitant. But the brother of his wife, Asa Hyde, exchanged his farm in
Woodstock for a part of this purchase, and then took Mr. Walker's place as a
settler in 1787. When Mr. Walker was making his first purchases in Vermont,
he had 1000 silver dollars in his saddlebags, for which he was offered the
whole town of Peacham. But at the same time the colonies were struggling for
existence in the war of the Revolution, and were sorely in need of means.
His patriotism had already been tested by a term in the old French war, and
in the then present war at the battles of Ticonderoga and Crownpoint, where,
besides fighting, he had done good service as armorer. But as he was not now
in the field, he chose to serve his country, by lending to the Government
those 1000 silver dollars, for which he received, in the course of time, a
lot of land on a hill contiguous to his purchase, worth about $50., and on
which John Rowel afterwards settled.
At the commencement of the war he had two apprentices by the names of Scott
and Luther, about 18 years of age, to whom he gave their time, on condition
of their enlistment. They both did good service, and returned after the war
was over, to rejoice with others in their freedom from a foreign yoke.
He was a man of sterling principle--kept up remarkably with the probress of
the age--was public spirted, a devout Christian, a strong temperance
man--abhorred tobacco, and died in the full possession of all his mental
faculties, in 1829, in the 92d year of his age.
His wife, who had been blind over 40 years, and who was remembered and loved
by all the children of the neighborhood as "blind grandma," survived him 9
years, and died in 1838, aged 95.
He had 6 brothers (most of whom were, like himself, in the old French war
and war of the Revolution) and 5 sisters. The average age of 11 of them was
83 years. Benjamin, the youngest, died at the age of 22, after returning
from the Revolutionary War.
Polly

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• [VT-L] "Capt. Phineas Walker" Weston, Mass and Strafford, Vermont Orange County by George Walker of Chicago by "Pauline Manosh" <>