Cowden » Family Findings

Ada L. Howard

Sep 272006

This is a transcription of the Ada L. Howard biography from New Hampshire Women: A Collection of Portraits and Biographical Sketches of Daughters and Residents of the Granite State, Who are Worthy Representatives of their Sex in the Various Walks and Conditions of Life, The New Hampshire Publishing Co., Concord, NH, 1895, page 29.

Ada L. Howard

MISS ADA L. HOWARD, the beautiful woman whose skilful hand guided Wellesley College the first seven and most difficult years of its existence, is the daughter of William Hawkins Howard and Lydia Adaline (Cowden) Howard, and was born in Temple, December 19, 1829. Three of her great-grandfathers were officers in the War of the Revolution, and one of these was an officer in the siege of Louisburg. Her father was a fine scholar, an able teacher, and a scientific agriculturist. From him she inherited marked characteristics, and also from her mother—a gentlewoman whose sweetness, strength, and high womanhood illuminated and unified the home. Miss Howard received her education from her father, in private schools, New Ipswich Academy, Lowell High School, Mount Holyoke College, where she was graduated. Post-graduate study followed under private teachers. She was, for several years, teacher at Mount Holyoke, the Western, Oxford, O., and the accomplished and beloved principal of the Woman’s Department, Knox College. Illinois, and of Ivy Hall, her private school at Bridgeton, N. J., whence she was called to the presidency of Wellesley College, founded by Mr. and Mrs. Durant. She was the first woman president of a college in the world. Mr. Durant said, “I have been four years looking for a president. She will be a target to be shot at, and for the present the position will be one of severe trials. I have for sometime been closely investigating Miss Howard. I look upon her as appointed to this work not by the trustees, but by God for whom the college was built.” Miss Howard wisely furthered the plans of the founders, and held the position with great success till health failed in 1882. She retains her love and enthusiasm for the college, and every good work. In appreciation of her life at Wellesley, in 1890 the alumnae placed in the art gallery a life-size portrait of their first president. In her honor a scholarship has been given for Wellesley College, called the Ada L. Howard scholarship.

Cambridge, NY

Gazetteer of the State of New York (1860) No Responses »

Aug 202006

This is a transcription of the Cambridge, NY section from Gazetteer of the State of New York: Embracing a Comphrehensive View of the Geography, Geoloy and General History of the State and a Complete History and Description of Every County, City, Town, Village and Locality, with Full Tables of Statistics by J. H. French, Syracuse, N.Y: R. Pearsall Smith, 1860.

CAMBRIDGE–was incorp. by patent,¹ July 21, 1761. It was formed as a town² in Albany co. March 7, 1788, and annexed to Washington co. Feb. 7, 1791. White Creek and Jackson were taken off in 1815. The surface of the town is hilly in the N. and rolling in the S. The summits of the hills are 200 to 300 ft. above the valleys. The E. part embraces a portion of the valley of Owl Kil, which is celebrated for the beauty of its scenery. Upon the w. of this alley are high undulating hills, the broad sweeps of which show alternate patches of green woodland and cultivated farms; and upon the E. rise the Taghkanick Mts., rough and broken, while the valley itself is very smooth and level. The other streams are Wampecack Creek, Whiteside Brook, and several other small brooks. The soil is generally a gravelly and sandy loam. Flax is extensively cultivated. Cambridge (p. v.) contains 100 houses and the Cambridge Washington Academy; Center Cambridge (p. v.) 13 houses; North Cambridge (p. o.) 10; and Buskirks Bridge³ (p.v.) 15. The first settlers consisted of 30 families, who located in 1761, ’62, and ’63 and who each received 100 acres of land as a gift from the proprietors.⁴ Phineas Whiteside,⁵from Penn., settled 8 mi. w. of the Colerain Colony, in 1766. The expedition against Bennington, under Baum, passed through the town Aug. 13, 1777; and the remnant of the fugitives returned on the night of the 16th. The first church (Asso. Presb.) was organized in 1789; Rev. Thos. Beverly was the first pastor.⁶

Footnotes

1 This patent embraced 31,500 acres, and was nominally conveyed to 60 persons, most of whom resided in Hebron, Conn. The real owners were but 6 in number, and of these 3 only were mentioned inthe charter, viz.: Isaac Sawyer and Edward Wells, of Conn., and Jacob Lansing, founder of Lansingburgh. The other three owners–Alex. Colden, Wm. Smith and Geo. Banyar–were connected with the Colonial Government.

2 The town included a portion of the Hoosick Patent.

3 Named from Martin Van Buskirk, who built the first bridge.

4 The patent was conditional to the settlement of 30 families within 3 years; and to meet this requirement the most inviting portion was surveyed, and 100 acres offered as a gift to each family that would remove thither. These lots lay in a double row, on both sides of Owl Kil, from below the “Checkered House” into the present town of Jackson. They embrace several village precincts from Davis Corners to near Stephensons Corners. Among the settlers were Jas. and Robt., sons of Ephraim Cowan, Jas. and John Cowden, John McClung, Samuel Bell, Col. Blair, Geo. Gilmore, Geo. Duncan, David Harrow, Wm. Clark, John Scott, and Thos. Morrison. A son of the last was the first child born of civilized parents in town. Hugh Kelso, a son of Col. Blair, was the first person who died in town. It is recorded that of these 30 families (who were for a time the most thrifty in town) all but two lost their property and died in poverty, mainly from intemperance. They were mostly from Colerain, Conn.

5 William Whiteside acquired the title to 3 lots, of 400 acres each, of the finest land, and settled his sons (John, Peter, Thomas, William, and James) upon large farms near him. These estates are all owned by his descendants at the present day. The remaining lands were mostly leased by the six proprietors at an annual rent of one shilling per acre; but, they being generally willing to sell at a sum equal to the present worth of the perpetual rent, most of the settlers have gradually acquired the fee simple of their farms. The first inn was of logs, on the site of the “Checkered House,” and kept by Jas. Cowden. Philip Van Ness built the first sawmill and gristmill on Gordons Brook, near Buskirks Bridge. This neighborhood was called by the Indians “Ty-o-shoke,” and by them a field of 12 acres had been cleared there for corn. Other early settlers on the Hoosick Petent were Col. Lewis Van Wort and John Quackenbush.

6 The census reports 4 churches; 3 M. E., 1 Asso. Presb.

Introduction

The Men Who Called Dr. Bullions 104 Years Ago No Responses »

Aug 202006

This is a transcription of the inroduction section from The Men Who Called Dr. Bullions 104 Years Ago, written by Rev. John C. Scott, D. D., The Washington County Post, Cambridge, NY, 1911.

Two years ago a box, 16X11X6 inches, containing papers dating from 1792 to 1852, which had accumulated in the hands of the clerks of the old Associate Presbytery of Cambridge, came into my hands for examination. Among these papers was the original copy of the call made to Mr. Alexander Bullions, Minister of the Gospel,” from the Associate congregation of Cambridge (now the Coila church) bearing the date of June 18, 1807, and with it several petitions relative to the call or to other church matters of that day. There are ninety-eight signatures to this call, men only being permitted to sign such instruments at that time, and ten more sign the petition for the call; in addition there are fourteen signatures to contemporary petitions, and the signatures to the call are attested by Rev. Arch. Whyte, a home missionary minister, long a resident in the town of Argyle (born 1755, died 1849), who presided on that occasion. Many of these men were pioneers in this region, for it was then scarcely more than forty years since the first settlements had been made. One reads these signatures almost with reverence when he remembers that the hands that cleared up and made habitable “the forest primeval” which once stood where we now live.

They were a closely related group of men, for church associations were much closed than now. Family relationships and acquaintance had largely influenced settlement here, and their children generally married within the church. They were men of faith and lovers of civil and religious liberty, for which they had suffered much. The older men had lied through the Revolutionary war, and some of them had served in the ranks. They were patriots almost to a man, though but recent emigrants from the mother country. Some of these men are still remembered by our older people, and many characteristic and illuminative incidents of their time yet linger in memory — incidents grave and gay, amusing, pathetic, and even tragic. The material is here for a book no less interesting that “Old Mortality” or “The Scarlet Letter,” if only the chronicler were here to write it. The age in which they lived, with its homespun and log cabins, is strangely remote. We can scarcely understand the conditions of life then, and yet many of the houses they builded are still standing and occupied.

The family history, or genealogy, of these men is an interesting study. Families were then generally large, and some of them have expended into great and widely scattered family groups; others have shrunk up and faded away altogether, or are known only through female descendants. A surprisingly large number of them have descendants living among us, some of the fifth and sixth generations; the descendants of others are scattered from ocean to ocean. Three of them have daughters yet living; George Lourie, father of Miss Ann Maria Lourie, late of Coila, now of Greenwich; David Edie, father of Mrs. Ellen Christie Edie; and Benjamin French, father of Mrs. Charlotte Shear of Putnam. The time of emigration west was then already rising, and within a dozen years a considerable colony from this community had been established at what is Reynoldsburgh, Franklin county, Ohio, a few miles east of the state capital, where the names Coller, Cowden, Crawford, French, Frazier, Graham, Livingston, Maxwell, Strang and others once familiar here are still well known. Other colonies were later located in the western part of our state and in other states farther west.

No detailed history of these men can be undertaken here, though the temptation to do so in many cases is great. A few facts only are set down, and I have indicated their relationship to some living descendants wherever these are known. I have also usually given their ages when this call was signed, that the reader may the better be able to picture himself this company of men gathered, dressed in short breeches, top boots and shoe-buckles, with cocked hats and broad brims, and perhaps in powder and queues, in “the old yellow meeting house” on that June day 104 years ago to start Dr. Bullions on what proved to be his life work.

The call itself is in the form still in use in the United Presbyterian church, and the names appended to it are as follows, spelled as they usually spelled them, and in the order in which they were signed: