![](https://i0.wp.com/chriscarosa.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Wyoming_Forts.jpg?resize=300%2C288&ssl=1)
Wyoming Forts A-Fort Durkee, B-Fort Wyoming or Wilkesbarre, C-Fort Ogden, D-Kingston Village, E-Forty Fort, G-battleground, H-Fort Jenkins, I-Monocasy Island, J-Pittstown stockades, G-Queen Esther’s Rock Source: Lossing, Benson, The Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution, Harper & Brothers, Publishers, January 7, 1859, p. 353
In many ways, the life of Abraham Parrish wasn’t that different from any other person participating in the formative decades of the grand American Experiment.
In other ways, he lived a unique life that exposed him at an early age to the rarified frontier air that existed when Western New York emerged from its dense terra incognita forest. He witnessed firsthand nearly all the major personalities of our region and saw how they forged this thickly wooded region into an industrious civilization.
But let’s not get too far ahead…
Zebulon Parish represents a typical American story. He was born on February 12, 1726 in Windham, a town in the eastern half of the Colony of Connecticut between Hartford and the Rhode Island border. He not only shares a birthday with Abraham Lincoln, he shares something else – his descendants were active in the abolition movement.
There was a very good reason Zebulon’s family joined the fight against slavery – his grandfather, John Wattles, came to America as a slave.
Our story, therefore, begins in Scotland…Continue Reading “The Story of Abraham Parrish, Mendon’s First Tavern Keeper (Part I)”
The Back Roads Of
MoroccoGreater Western New YorkImagine The Awe That Filled Sullivan’s Soldiers As They First Set Eyes Upon The Fertile Flats Of The Genesee River Valley
I left early for Jamestown last week. But not too early. I couldn’t leave until I finished my weekly State of Greater Western New York Show. If you like trains, check it out at https://stateof.greaterwesternnewyork.com/ under Travel and Leisure. It’s an interview with Otto Vondrak, President of the Rochester & Genesee Valley Railroad Museum in Rush.
After quickly packing up the car, I left shortly before 1pm. Before departing, I plugged my destination into my route finder. Since I was going to Jamestown to pick her up, Betsy wasn’t in the car to complain about my insistence on doing this, even though I know exactly how to get to her father’s house. If she was there, I would have told her what I have told her many times before, “Google Maps tells us if we need to reroute because of an accident.”
This was one of those times.
Continue Reading “The Back Roads Of
MoroccoGreater Western New York”