| Archibald Jenkins was born in the Town of Ashland (formerly
Newtown), Nov. 12, 1792. His father, Wilkes Jenkins, youngest son of John
Jenkins, came to that town, about the close of the Revolutionary war, from
the Wyoming Valley, where his father, during the celebrated and bloody
massacre at that place, had a fort of his own, and in which the Jenkins
family remained secure during that terrible onslaught. Wilkes Jenkins settled
in Chemung County while a young man; married, about the year 1780, Sarah
Weair, a native of New Jersey, but a resident of Newtown at the time of
the marriage; settled on the farm where the subject of this narrative now
resides about the year 1799; raised a family of three children, -Zina,
Archibald, and Nancy. The two daughters -Mrs. Henry Baldwin and Mrs. Jonathan
Jenkins - are deceased. The father died in 1838; the mother in 1797.
Mr. Jenkins spent his boyhood days on his father’s farm and at school,
and in the year 1824, Jan.22, married Bethiah, daughter of Stephen Jenkins,
of Wyoming Valley, Pa.
His life has been spent as an active, industrious tiller of the soil,
by which means he secured a sufficient competence for himself and family,
and at one time in middle life owned and carried on some five hundred acres
of land, a part of which he has cleared of its original forest. Quite a
young lad at the beginning of the present century, he has lived to watch
the progress of civilization since the red man contended with the white
settlers for supremacy in the Chemung Valley; to see the various improvements
of the century; to make more easy and almost do away entirely with manual
labor; to see schools, churches, and societies established; and in all
these things has done his part with a liberal hand and a willing mind,
and with that integrity and uprightness that has been characteristic of
him during his long and eventful career.
He offered his services in the war of 1812; but the war closed and he
did no active service. |
 |
