Ancestors

Jane Conkling

Born 22 February 1714 and baptized on 28 March of that year at East Hampton on Long Island, a daughter of David Conkling. On 1 November 1736 she married Henry Sherrill, born 1715, and she was widowed in 1760.

During the Revolutionary War the British attempted to search her house at East Hampton. The family's own account, still being told a century and a half later, is that the spirited old lady, then a widow, seized a fire shovel which lay on the hearth, and bade the red-coated soldiery cross her threshold at their peril; the old lady's pluck gained her point, and the house was not searched. In 1782 or 1783 the family left the island, which was under British control and no fit place for people of their sympathies, and emigrated to Richmond in the Berkshire hills of Massachusetts. She died there on 23 April 1798 in her eighty fifth year, and her stone reads: Mrs. Jane Sherrill, wife of Henry Sherrill, died April 23d, 1798, in the 85th year of her age.

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Cite: Heirology, "Jane Conkling (1714-1798)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/jane-conkling-1714-1798-1e578a.