Isaac Booth Sr, Soldier of Revolution

Isaac Booth Sr, a soldier in the American Revolutionary war
Born Nov 23, 1755, Stratford, CT.
Died 28 June 1841, in Ontario, NY.

Isaac married Elizabeth Moss, (1756-1841) in Stratford, CT when he was 21, in 1776.
They had at least 3 children, Legrand Booth (1783-1865), Isaac Booth Jr (1795-1836) and William Lewis Booth (1797-1864). 

(Ancestry also added another William Booth, who died in PA, but I can't find any records that show he even was in this family, and since he would have been alive at the same time as William Lewis Booth, I have not counted him as a son of Isaac at this time.)

Yesterday I posted a little about his mother, Elizabeth Beers.  His father was Zachariah Booth, Jr. (1721 – 1775), son of Zachariah Booth, Sr. (1693 – 1762).  There were no Junior and Senior designations given on census records in those days, so I got really confused with a person named Isaac Booth showing on a census, and didn't count it until I found other substantiating documents (photo copies) to show it was the one born at the right time (1755) to have fought in the Revolutionary War.


This family is all from Stratford, Fairfield County, CT, so here's what I found on Wikipedia about it's origins.  (Sorry, I can't get the links to go away, no matter how I ask the command to cancel them)

Founding and Puritan era

Stratford (formerly known as Cupheag Plantation, and prior to that, Pequonnocke) was founded in 1639 by Puritan leader Reverend Adam Blakeman (pronounced Blackman), William Beardsley, and families who had recently arrived in Connecticut from England seeking religious freedom. Stratford is one of many towns in the northeastern American colonies founded as part of the Great Migration in the 1630s when Puritan families fled an increasingly polarized England in the decade before the English civil war between Charles I and Parliament (led by Oliver Cromwell). Some of the Stratford settlers were from families who had first moved from England to the Netherlands to seek religious freedom, like their predecessors on the Mayflower, and decided to come to the New World when their children began to adopt the Dutch culture and language.

Like other Puritan or Pilgrim towns founded during this time, early Stratford was a place where church leadership and town leadership were united under the pastor of the church, in this case Reverend Blakeman. The goal of these communities was to create perfect outposts of religious idealism where the wilderness would separate them from the interference of kings, parliaments, or any other secular authority.

Blakeman ruled Stratford until his death in 1665, but as the second generation of Stratford grew up, many of the children rejected what they perceived as the exceptional austerity of the town's founders. This and later generations sought to change the religious dictums of their elders, and the utopian nature of Stratford and similar communities was gradually replaced with more standard colonial administration. By the late 17th century, the Connecticut government had assumed political control over Stratford.

Many descendants of the original founding Puritan families remain in Stratford today after over 350 years; for centuries they often intermarried within the original small group of 17th century Pilgrim families. Stratford's original name was Cupheag, but was later changed to honor Stratford-upon-Avon in England. Despite its Puritan origins, Stratford was the site of the first Anglican church in Connecticut, founded in 1707 and ministered by the Rev. Dr. Samuel Johnson. 

Woodcut of 1840 Town green of Fairfield, CT.

Isaac Sr.'s son, Isaac Jr, was the subject of this blog as a soldier in the War of 1812, HERE.

Since both Isaac Sr. and his wife, Elizabeth Moss (supposedly) died in the same year, 1841, in Canandaigua, Ontario County, NY, I've added some information about it from Wikipedia.

The city, (Canandaigua) was the site of the principal village of the Seneca. It was located on West Avenue where the West Avenue Cemetery is today. The city is also the home of one of three areas of Burning Springs in the United States where the water appears to support a flame caused by escaping natural gas.^[3]

The city public high school, Canandaigua Academy, was founded in 1791.

On November 11, 1794, the Treaty of Canandaigua was signed in the town. The treaty was constructed in hopes of establishing peace and friendship between the United States of America and the Six Nations of the Iroquois and is still recognized by the federal government today.

In 1807-1808, Jessie Hawley, a flour merchant from Geneva, New York, who became an early and major proponent of building of the Erie Canal, spent 20 months in the Canandaigua debtors' prison; during this time he published fourteen essays on the idea of building the canal that were to prove immensely influential.

I've been fighting bronchitis this week, so haven't been able to work much with moving my body in any way, as shifting around seems to trigger coughing spells.

I love that typing from one screen to another, copying onto my hard drive the photocopies of actual records of ancestors who lived 200 or so years ago, is easy.  I don't cough.  I feel like I've made progress.