Abraham Brown of Westchester County, NY, Scranton, PA, and Newfield, NY

My hubby finished a 94 page monograph on his Abraham Brown line early morning on January 24, 2021. A couple of hours later, while working out on his Nordic Track, hubby collapsed and was gone. My life changing event. We'd been married 52 years. One of the things I knew I had to do was to finish the monograph that he'd worked so hard on for years. The 94 pages is only the body of the document. There is also an appendix of all the obituaries and society notes. It has taken me a few months to be able to concentrate enough to tackle this project. I'm doing that now. When I finish indexing, the documents will be printed, bound, and sent to the usual respositoties. In the meantime, I thought I would share some of Ray's writing on this family through this blog. Abraham Brown was born in Westchester County, NY in 1772 before moving to the Scranton, PA area. From there his family moved north and settled in Newfield, New York. Here is an excerpt from that chapter. According to his sons, Abraham came north by horse and stone boat in 1809. He surely followed the Susquehanna River and perhaps took the Chemung River to what is now Waverly or perhaps Elmira, NY, before following the valley trails north towards Cayuga Lake. Land records indicate he first settled in the Town of Lansing but soon moved to what is now the Town of Newfield and was one of the first families to settle there. Their last two children, Adonirum and Holden Tripp, were born in New York and Abraham and Susannah remained in Newfield the rest of their lives. Running southwest from today’s village of Newfield, NYS Route 13 goes to Elmira through a valley locally known as Poney Hollow. The valley was originally called Saponey Hollow in reference to the Saponey Indians, members of the Iroquois confederation. By the mid-1800’s the valley was heavily inhabited with descendants of Abraham and Susannah Brown. Abraham’s homestead was located on what is now known as Sebring Road, just south of the intersection with Test Road . The barn still stands on the eastern side of the road and, according to Marc Whitney, who grew up in the Cape Cod style house across from the barn, the foundation stones from the original house are incorporated in the basement . According to the Agricultural Census of 1850, Abraham Brown’s farm consisted of 160 A., of which 70 A. were considered improved. His farm was typical of family farms of that time. He raised a variety of animals including milk cows and sheep and grew wheat, rye, oats, buckwheat and Indian corn. The Cash Value of the farm in 1850 was $7,000. Although an active farmer, Abraham Brown also established and managed a hotel located along the highway running between Ithaca and Elmira. Pictured below, the hotel was apparently quite successful. As noted in The Landmarks of Tompkins County, his youngest son Holden Tripp Brown said his father kept a hotel for thirty years. “His first hotel was a log house, but soon he built a frame house, and had a large patronage, often having twenty teams and their occupants to provide for at once.” The building is now a private residence located at the intersection of Sebring Road and NYS Route 13. Ray left organized files on this family, so if there are anyone researching this line and needs help, between Ray's paper files, and digital files, I should be able to answer.