| Notes |
- Thomas Cleland Jr. was born in 1784 in Greenwich, Massachusetts, a son of Thomas Cleland and Lydia Stone. His story follows a westward path through New York into Pennsylvania, traced in deeds, census records, and an unusually candid family letter.
Thomas’s early New York years were spent in Victor, where his parents were early settlers, as were his sister Lucinda and her husband Robert Fisher. Their daughter Lucinda Fisher later married Thomas McMichael, whose letter preserves a memorable glimpse of Thomas’s affairs.
By August 22, 1816, Thomas was living in Pittsford, then part of Ontario County. A deed naming “Thomas Clealand Junior” records his purchase of fifty acres from Joseph Blake of Billerica, Massachusetts, for $400. On December 22, 1820, he sold seventy acres to Warren Davis of Perinton for $700. That property reached the Victor and Perinton town lines and carried a mortgage Davis agreed in part to pay. The differing acreages leave open whether these transactions involved the same land but appear to be possibly inherited acreage added on.
By 1825, Thomas had a working farm in Chautauqua Township. The state census transcription lists two males and two females, sixteen improved acres, four cattle, two horses, twenty sheep, and two hogs. Both women were recorded as unmarried and between sixteen and forty-five. His sister, Anna, then forty-four, could have been one of them, but neither is named. The household leaves Thomas’s marriage date uncertain.
On August 2, 1829, Thomas McMichael wrote from Chautauqua to his brother-in-law Charles Fisher in Victor, urgently seeking money. He wanted Charles to collect outstanding notes and sell the horse, cow, and wagon he had left behind. His explanation was blunt: “I have got to pay T.Cleland $150.00 dollars by the first day of January for he swears by God he will close the mortgage if not paid by that day.”
McMichael had never been so disappointed in a man, he wrote, and had not received a dollar in money since leaving Victor. His potatoes, buckwheat, flax, hay, and a sow with five young pigs lifted his spirits, but could not supply the cash he needed. The letter brings the family’s financial pressures vividly to life. It also preserves only the debtor’s side of the disagreement. Family and geographical connections strongly suggest that “T. Cleland” was his wife’s uncle Thomas, although the letter does not explicitly identify the relationship.
By April 1, 1830, Thomas and his wife were living in North East, Erie County, Pennsylvania. A deed describes them as residents there while selling approximately fifty acres in Chautauqua for $500. It names his wife as Jane Mariah and records her name at its conclusion as Jane Cleland. This fuller name helps connect Jane in the deed with Maria and Myra in later family records.
The 1830 North East census lists Thomas in a five-person household. A man aged forty to forty-nine fits his 1784 birth; the woman was twenty to twenty-nine. James King appears immediately after Thomas—a promising possible connection to Jane Mariah’s family, though proximity alone does not establish kinship.
By 1840, Thomas was in Tionesta, Venango County, Pennsylvania, with a household of nine. The oldest man and woman had each advanced into the expected age group. The next census household belonged to Oliver Cleland, Thomas’s first cousin. Born October 25, 1793, in Plainfield, Massachusetts, Oliver was the son of John and Thankful Cleland; John was Thomas Sr.’s younger brother. Oliver’s age also fits his census entry. The cousins’ consecutive listings strengthen the connection between the Pennsylvania household and the Massachusetts family, suggesting that Thomas moved within a wider network of relatives.
A marker in Fagundas Cemetery records that Thomas Cleland died on July 20, 1850, aged sixty-seven. This appears to mark the end of his westward journey, although the stated age implies a birth about 1783, slightly earlier than the family’s 1784 date. In the 1850 Tionesta census identified in the family research, Maria appears with Bainbridge, Colby, Calvin, and Wayne.
The sons maintained connections on both sides of the state line. In 1865, Bainbridge and Colby were farmers in consecutive Busti households. Bainbridge’s name also appears in land descriptions along Preacher Road in Pennsylvania, where Calvin acquired property in 1871. A Fagundus newspaper column in February 1886 reported, “Colby Cleland is visiting his brother.” Though the brother was unnamed, the notice offers a small glimpse of the family ties that continued after Thomas’s death.
From Greenwich and Victor to Pittsford, Chautauqua, North East, and Tionesta, Thomas’s life was shaped by land, family, and the demands of making a living. His deeds record the business of settlement; McMichael’s letter reveals its human strains. Jane Mariah and their sons carried that family story forward across the New York–Pennsylvania border.
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1784 - 1850 (66 years)
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