Josiah Clawson
Of Claverack, Columbia County, New York, and from about 1812 of the town of Hunter, Greene County, where a county history remembers him as a hard-working, God-fearing man. Probably the father of Catherine (Clawson) Fairchild, wife of John Fairchild, and of Sally Ann and Jacob. He was dead by October 1827, when a deed named his heirs, if its Isiah Classon is the same man.
Life
- bef. 1827Diedbef. 29 Oct 1827
"Isiah Classon, deceased," in a Greene County deed of 29 Oct 1827 naming his heirs at law, as Gilmore reports it. That the deed's Isiah is Beers's Josiah is inferred.
Family
- Parents
- Children
Pedigree
Notes
Of Claverack, Columbia County, and then of the town of Hunter, Greene County, New York; father of Catherine (Clawson) Fairchild. Beers’s History of Greene County (1884), in the Hunter chapter, tells of a settler who “in 18[1]2, sold his lease-right to a new and poor comer, Josiah Clawson—a hard-working, sterling-hearted man,” and of “The flint-lock musket that the elder Clawson brought with him from Claverack”; “Josiah Clawson, and his son, Jacob, were God-fearing men, plain and unassuming” (source). The book was read only in search snippets, so the year is partly a reconstruction.
Gilmore reports a deed of 29 Oct 1827 in Greene County “in which John and Catherine Fairchild and others are named as ‘heirs at law’ of Isiah Classon, deceased,” and makes John Fairchild’s second wife, Sally (Sarah Ann) Clawson, another of his daughters (source). The “Isiah” of the deed and the “Josiah” of Beers are taken to be one man: both came from Claverack, where Catherine was baptized in 1807. His known children are Catherine, Sally Ann and Jacob.
Research: research/mcmillan/Fairchild_Raymond_Woodworth.md.
Open questions
- His wife, his birth and his death.
- The 1827 deed itself (Greene County land records), which should list all his heirs.
- The Claverack baptism of 1807, which should name Catherine’s parents.