Tri-Counties Genealogy & History by Joyce M. Tice Holcomb Cemetery, LeRoy Township, Bradford County, PA Bradford County PA Chemung County NY Tioga County PA

Tri-Counties Genealogy & History Sites How To Use This Site Warning & Disclaimer LeRoy Township Page No Commercial Use Say Hello to  Joyce  Photo  by Matt Carl

Joyce's Search Tip - December 2007 - Do You Know that you can search just the Bradford County Cemetery Records on the site by using the Cemeteries -Bradford button in the Partitioned search engine at the bottom of the Current What's New Page? If you use that partition follow these steps to search just one cemetery.  1. Choose Cemeteries - Bradford.  2. Enter part of the cemetery name [ie Ballard or Berrytown] AND a surname. 3. Choose the Find ALL Words option. Then it will find just the pages with that surname in the one cemetery you indicated.  See also - Bradford County Cemetery Addresses

There are said to be unmarked graves in this cemetery. Some stones are simple rocks turned upright. In some cases, people have placed these to mark where the grave of a certain person probably is. There are several stones in the front of the cemetery that only indicate initials or first names. It is the opinion of the reader and of local citizens that these mark the graves of babies or children who died young.

Most of the people buried here are connected to Eli Holcomb, son of Truman Holcomb (who is a brother of Hugh and Sterling Holcomb, the first settlers of LeRoy). A story was related to the reader which indicated that the John Davies grave was moved from the Barclay Cemetery by orders of his wife, prior to her death. It is also said that John Davies body, after having been removed from the Barclay Cemetery, was found to be petrified.

Holcomb Cemetery had no official cost for having a plot here, so people such as the Davies family are said to have most likely been buried here for this reason.

Directions to the Holcomb Cemetery (located in Bradford County):
Take Rt. 414 East from Canton (8 miles), or West from Monroeton (13 miles) to LeRoy. Turn onto Mill Street (located next to the LeRoy General Store). Follow until it intersects with Southside Road. Turn left. The cemetery is located about 100 yds ahead on the left. It is set back away from the road next to a creek, and it may appear that one has to cross the neighbors lawn to get there. However there is a right-of-way, and the readers family are the neighbors.

Despite being neglected and overgrown for several years, the cemetery is now maintained by LeRoy Township, and is nicely maintained.

Hopefully this information is useful.

Sincerely,
Matt Carl
LeRoy Heritage Museum

Subj:  Eli Holcomb
Date:  04/29/2004 8:18:55 PM Eastern Daylight Time
From:    landlw@earthlink.net (Landgraf)
Reply-to: landlw@earthlink.net (Landgraf)
To:    JoyceTice@aol.com

Hi Joyce
I have greatly enjoyed reading through parts of your extensive web site. Congratulations on a great job it shows a labor of love.
I am sending you and article I researched and wrote for our Barkhamsted historical Society publication the Squire's Tavern Quarterly. I am also the president of our historical society. We are involve in a major project of restoring and learning the story of a historic tavern which will be the home of the society. Three years ago we knew nothing about the people who owned and lived on this site. We have discovered a lot but there is so much more to find out. good back ground as to who we are and what we are doing can be seen on our web site at barkhamstedhistory.org
 
I have learned many things from your site but there are questions I would like to follow up on.
What was the date of the first Eli Holcomb deed in you area?. Was it his intention that this first property would be a good saw ill site? This is very important to us as we do not know for sure what he did in Barkhamsted as aline of work.His first property here was on the river and in the area where future saw mills were located. I am also very interested in Miles Oakley Identified on pape 2 Of Rev. David Craft's history of Leroy on your site. Where it mentions that he settled on the Minard farm in 1799. We have a Miles Oakley who was married to Eunice Bennet the daughter of Daniel Bennet to whom Eli sold his land in Jan. of 1795.  Miles and Eunice sell their land in August of 1798 and he applies to run a farm for the Forbes of Canaan, CT in Oct. of 1798. He does not appear to take this farm and disappears from our area and we do not have a record of him again until he shows up in 1800s in Ohio and Eunce has passed away  and he has married a girl from Fairfield, CT. Miles was a Revolutionary War vetren. Your Miles may be ours just on his way west. It would be a reat help if we could located a  deed or farm lease that may tell us where miles came from and more information about him, I also noticesd there were Bennets in Craft's article. We are looking for Abraham Bennet Eunice's brother. If it looks like this is the same Miles Oakley I could send you my write ups on Oakleys and Bennets.
I hope you find some of this of as much interest as I do and I hope we can talk back in forth to further our groups research.
I would also like to reach other people or groups in your area that may have interest and information on these  people.
 
Thanks  Walt Landgraf.
 
Eli Holcomb—Land Consolidator July 2002

by Walt Landgraf

As we continue our series examining the lives of the past owners of the property at 100 East

River Road, we next turn to Eli Holcomb.  This early Barkhamsted settler’s legacy is the consolidation of property that would become the Squires Tavern, and later the Ullmann Farm.  Coming west from the Simsbury/Granby area, he bought five adjacent parcels from five different owners over the course of nine years, forming a 226-acre farm that he ultimately sold to Daniel Bennet as the 18th century drew to a close.

 Eli Holcomb was born April 13, 1742.  He was the 13th child of David and Mehitable Buttolph Holcomb of the Salmon Brook section of Simsbury and present-day Granby.  According to Simsbury and Granby town histories David Holcomb, who had served in the French and Indian Wars, was a farmer and innkeeper.

 David’s seventh son Eli married Hannah Crofut, of the Danbury area, on October 3, 1764.  A Holcomb descendent, Atwood Hull, reports the existence of a letter Hannah wrote to her son Hugh in 1803, upon his second marriage in Bradford County Pennsylvania.  In that letter, Hannah writes that she is a Pequot-Christian Indian, and she has tried to play this down to save the family embarrassment.  Robert William of RI presently owns this letter.

Simsbury land records show that Eli first bought land on April 29, 1772 from Peter Holcomb.  Two years later, on March 31, 1774, he purchased property with a house, as well as several other land purchases in 1774.

In 1775, Eli sold all of his property in Simsbury, including what appears to be an early inheritance from his father.  That same year, according to Massachusetts records of the Revolutionary War, Eli was a private in Captain John Parker’s company from New Ipswich, Hillsboro County, New Hampshire.  Later, he enlisted with Capt. Isaac Colton’s company of David Brewer’s Regiment.  He served that Company as a Corporal and fought in the battle for Bunker Hill.  Later in 1775, he was a Captain in Putnam’s 9th Company of Brewer’s Regiment, for which he was awarded a bounty coat (or its cash equivalent) by order issued in Roxbury on December 22, 1775.

Before purchasing land in Barkhamsted, Eli and Hannah Holcomb had eight children.  Their first son, Eli, was born October 20, 1765.  Selah was born on September 4, 1767, Truman on August 10, 1769, Hannah on April 3, 1771, Alury in February 1773, Hugh on October 14, 1774, Sterlin(g) on October 10, 1776, and Alpheus on January 10, 1779.

 In 1779 Eli Holcomb made the first in a series of Barkhamsted land purchases that would, in large part, make up the holdings of the future Squires farm/tavern.  On July 21, he purchased 52 acres, with appurtenances, from Benjamin Newbury of Windsor for 354 pounds.  This land is up-river from the Squires Tavern and was composed of two lots that were laid out to Jedadiah Eggleston and Nathaniel Pinney, Jr. in the fourth proprietor’s division in 1760.  Joseph Newbury purchased the rights to these two lots in 1732 and passed them on to his son Benjamin.  The price Eli Holcomb paid for these lots is many times the amount paid for similar land at this time. <<Begs the question: Why?>>
 

On October 24, 1780 the town of Barkhamsted submitted a “memorial” (petition) to the state legislature, with James Weed and Eli Holcomb as listers asking for tax relief, as Barkhamsted was a new and struggling town.  Around this time, Hannah and Eli had two more children, whom we assume were both born in Barkhamsted:  Jared (born November 4, 1780) and Cynthia (born March 17, 1783).  It is interesting to note that Barkhamsted vital records list all the children born to Hannah and Eli, as well as their marriage, and is the only source in the state to do so even though the older children were born in other towns.

 1785 was a big year for the Holcombs in Barkhamsted with the March 18th purchase (a year after his father’s death on 4 March 1784) of the 99.5-acre Loomis lot from Amasa Loomis of East Windsor for 45 pounds.  This lot is now part of the uppermost section of the fields between the Tavern and the river.  When looking at the comparatively low price of this lot, we must remember that these were the depression years that followed the Revolutionary War.

 Just seven months later, on October 17, Eli purchased 40 acres from Pelatiah Allyn for 27 pounds, and a scant month later, on November 19, he bought another 34 acres with appurtenances from James Pike for 25 pounds.  The October and November purchases are significant because they made up the original Bissell lot, which is the location of the Squires Tavern.  Eli paid considerably more per acre for these two lots than he did for the Loomis lot, and the Pike section is likely the future location of the Tavern.  That lot contained the Wolcott Road teamsters used to move iron from Salisbury to Hartford and much-needed goods back to the small towns on the return trip. 

1785 drew to a close with the birth of Eli and Hannah’s last recorded child, Rachael, on December 17.

Eli purchased no additional Barkhamsted land until June 22, 1788, when he bought, from Danbury’s Ezra Weed, 25 acres on the west side of the river for 5 pounds.  On the same date, Eli sold Ezra 24 acres east of the river for 37 pounds 2 shillings and 6 pence.  This parcel contained the Wolcott Road, and was the lower part of the former Bissell lot.  It was divided off by the unusual jagged line seen today as the south boundary of Peoples Forest near the Tavern.

In a deed unrelated to the Tavern property, recorded 15 October 1788 vol. 1 page 266 in Barkhamsted land records, Eli was identified as the town tax collector.

Eli obtained land in Ulster, Pennsylvania for his Revolutionary War service and moved there on March 11, 1794.  According to Barkhamsted records, he sold 226 acres to Daniel Bennet of Weston, Connecticut for 540 pounds on January 27, 1795.  This was Eli Holcomb’s total land holdings in Barkhamsted and it represented the majority of the future Squires Tavern land.

Documents from the Leroy and Ulster historical societies in Bradford, County, Pennsylvania, show that Eli and most of his sons and sons-in-law, as well as some of Hannah’s relatives, were among the first settlers of these towns before 1803.  The Holcombes—Nation Builders by Hannah E. W. McPherson and a Bradford County history, credit Eli with erecting and operating a sawmill on Cash Creek, which supplied lumber for the area’s first plank houses.

 More than a quarter century after leaving his mark on Barkhamsted, Eli Holcomb died May 10, 1823.  His widow Hannah passed away July 6, 1825.  They are buried with many of their family members in Pennsylvania’s Old Ulster Cemetery, where there stands a monument to Eli‘s Revolutionary War service.

Many of Eli’s sons and descendents were successful farmers in Bradford County, and his son Hugh was also credited with building and operating a sawmill and gristmill.  Interestingly, Hugh’s first wife, Elizabeth Oakley, may have been the daughter of Miles Oakley of Barkhamsted.  Miles Oakley was the son-in-law of Daniel Bennet—the man who bought Eli Holcomb’s Barkhamsted land and is currently identified as the builder of the Tavern.
 

Bradford County PA Chemung County NY Tioga County PA

Published On Tri-Counties Site On 19 MAR 2004 By Joyce M. Tice Email: Joyce M. Tice You are the  visitor since the counter was installed on 19 MAR 2004