Jerahmeel Cummings

Also Lt. Jerahmeel Cummings · Jerahameal Cummings · Jerathmel Cumins · Jerathmel Cummings

Lieutenant of the Vermont militia in the Revolution, born in New Hampshire in 1750, probably a son of Leonard Cummings of Litchfield and Londonderry, who died when he was about eight. He married Deborah Kendall of Dunstable in 1771, lived first at Amherst and by 1781 at Windsor, Vermont, where his wife's nephew Amos Kendall, later Postmaster General, visited the family. Probably the father of Joseph Cumins.

Family tree →Migration map →
01

Life

  1. 1750
    Born
    20 Sep 1750

    Kith and Kin has 20 Sept 1750, "in Londonderry (?), New Hampshire"; Mooar gives the year 1750 only. His descendant Ella Browne's DAR application has "born in Nottingham, N. H., 1749," and WikiTree 23 Sept 1749 at Nottingham.

    compiledprobable
    Sources· 2 found
  2. 1771
    Married Deborah Kendall
  3. —
    Died
02

Family

Father
Leonard Cummings 1714–1758

When Leonard Cummins died at Londonderry, N.H., in 1758, Joel Parkhurst was appointed guardian of his children "Jerahmeel, Rachel and Silas" (Mooar, from the probate).

compiledprobable
Sources· 3 found
Mother
Jane

"His wife's name was Jane and appears to have been of Dunstable" (Mooar); "Jane, surname unknown" (Kith and Kin). WikiTree gives her 1717-1806.

compiledprobable
Sources· 2 found
03

Pedigree

documentedcompiledinferred
04

Notes

Father of Joseph Cumins, and a lieutenant of the Vermont militia in the Revolution. He was one of the children of Leonard Cummins of Litchfield and Londonderry, New Hampshire, who died in 1758, when Jerahmeel was about eight; their guardian was Joel Parkhurst, who married his sister Betty in 1762 (source). His unusual name was already in the Cummings family of Groton, where Samuel and Elizabeth (Shedd) Cummings named a son Jerahmeel in 1711.

He married Deborah Kendall of Dunstable in 1771 and lived first at Amherst, New Hampshire, where a record has two children born “to Jonathan (Jerahmeel may be) and Deborah Cummings”: Deborah (28 Mar 1772) and Leonard (June 1773). By 1781 the family was at Windsor, Vermont, where Joseph was born. Kith and Kin, written by a great-grandson: “JERAHAMEAL CUMMINGS … of Amherst, New Hampshire, and Windsor, Vermont … He was First Lieutenant, in 1781, of a company of Vermont Militia under Capt. Samuel Stow Savage, 3rd Regiment, Col. Ebenezer Hood (see ‘Vermont Records’, pp. 351 and 359)” (source). His descendant Ella (Chapin) Browne joined the DAR in 1900 partly on that service (source). The eleven children Kith and Kin lists were Deborah (1772), Leonard (1773), Jane (1777), Jerahameal (1779), Joseph (1781), John (1782), Asa (1784), Bera (1786), Hannah (1787, Mrs. Joel Hinckley), Polly (1789) and Fanny.

The Ascutney climb. His wife’s nephew Amos Kendall, later Postmaster General under Andrew Jackson, walked over from Dartmouth College to “Windsor, Vt., West Parish, where lived a Mr. Cummings who married a sister of his father,” and two of the Cummings sons took him and a classmate up Mount Ascutney. The students set out on foot “With a lunch and a bottle of rum,” fell asleep on the summit, and had to be helped down by the cousins, Kendall concluding “that rum is not always the safest restorative of exhausted strength.” On a later visit one of the cousins tried his divining-rod for ore on the mountain, and in August 1809 Kendall spent several days “at the residence of his uncles, Cummings and Wilkins” (source).

Research: research/hatten/Browne_Chapin_Cumins.md.

Open questions

  • His death: Windsor, Vermont (Kith and Kin; the DAR line), or Champion, New York, on 20 July 1817 (WikiTree)?
  • His service record (Vermont Records, pp. 351 and 359, as cited by Kith and Kin) has not been seen.
BeginEnd