Zephaniah Chase: Patriot, Whaler, Carpenter
Zephaniah Chase
Zephaniah's brother Benjamin was a sea captain, and he had been on several whaling voyages, with him, although he was a joiner or cabinet-maker by trade. Seeing no prospect for his boys but a seafaring life, he determined to find a place where land was cheaper and rear his boys on a farm. One of his relatives owned a large tract of land near Binghamton, New York, and offered to give him a farm if he would begin a settlement there. He owned some real property at Vineyard Haven, on Martha's Vineyard, which he sold for two hundred and fifty dollars preparatory to his seeking a home in the western wilds. With the proceeds of his property he took his second wife, Love, and their son David, then a little more than a year old, and his sons by his first wife, Benjamin, aged thirteen, Joseph, aged eleven, and Thomas, aged nine, and started on his long and dangerous journey. He reached Hudson, New York, probably by means of a slow sailing sloop from Martha's Vineyard. From a document in the possession of Judge Emory A. Chase, it appears that they were in Hudson, August 1, 1787. At Hudson they learned that the difficult part of the journey lay before them, a journey through forests infested with bears, wolves, panthers and other wild animals, and that there was only a crude road through the forest. Indians yet roamed the forests of eastern and southern New York. Zephaniah purchased a yoke of oxen and a lumber wagon and started on his journey to Binghamton, taking his wife and children and such tools and personal property as he had with him in the primitive conveyance. How he crossed the Hudson river, tradition does not disclose, but it was probably by boarding some sailing vessel and landing at Catskill, New York. From Catskill to Binghamton the road led over the Catskill mountains, and the entire journey was through an almost unbroken forest, with only a few settlers' cabins along the way. They proceeded to the valley of Batavia-kill, west of the eastern range of the Catskills, and, while resting near a well-known high rock, standing within what is now the village of Windham, at a cabin built against said rock, in which lived an early settler, a man who had come from Binghamton on foot informed them that, owing to an unusual wind, many trees were blown across the road, and that it would be impossible to get through with a wagon. While waiting, somewhat undetermined what to do, he met one Thomas Harriot, who offered to sell him his farm situated on the Schoharie-kill at a point ten miles up that stream from the junction of the Batavia-kill with it at a point ten miles below where they were at what is now Prattsville. He concluded to buy this farm and agreed to give, upon reaching the farm, the oxen as part payment for the same. How they reached the farm is told hereinafter. The house the settlers found was only two logs high, covered with bark, but a blockhouse was in course of erection, and this Zephaniah and his sons finished before the cold of winter, and here shortly afterwards their son West was born, the first Chase born in the Catskills. There was no saw mill within twenty miles of the farm at which logs could be sawed into material adapted for use in completing the house and from which to make furniture, so all such materials were made by Zephaniah and his sons by hewing the logs into blocks or splitting them and shaving or planing them into boards by the use of axes and other tools brought from Martha's Vineyard. Some of the furniture made by Zephaniah is in the possession of his descendants. The deed from Thomas Harriot is dated August 19, 1787. Here the family continued to live, and they cleared away the forest which covered the valley, as well as the high lands, and here all of the children of the second marriage, except David, were born. Zephaniah subsequently built a more pretentious house, which is still standing. The homestead farm in 1787 was in the town of Woodstock, Ulster county, New York. It was subsequently included in the new town of Windham and in Greene county. In subsequent divisions of the territory it became successively a part of the town of Lexington and of Jewett. It is now a part of the town of Jewett, Greene county, and the postoffice is Jewett Center, New York. Zephaniah was a Baptist, but few of his descendants are of that faith, many being Methodists or Presbyterians. He was a soldier in the revolutionary war. In the record of revolutionary soldiers for the state of Massachusetts in the state library at Albany is the following: "Chase, Zephaniah, private, Captain Smith's (Seacoast Company), service from September 1, 1776, to November 21, 1776, two months and twenty days." He died in Lexington, New York, May 30, 1828, in his eighty-first year, and is buried in the family burial plot in the cemetery on the hill north of the house which he built and which is known as the "Chase Cemetery."
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