Ancestors

Peter Keesler

Peter Keesler was born about 1799 in the town of Cochecton, Sullivan County, New York, and spent his life there. The 1855 state census records him as fifty-six years old and fifty-six years in the town. He was a farmer who owned his land and voted.

His daughter Sarah, called Sallie, was born at Cochecton in February 1822. Her memorial names her parents as Peter Keesler and Rosanna Leighton. No record made in Peter's lifetime names Rosanna. She was probably his first wife, because the wife living with him in 1855 was someone else.

That second wife was Roxy L., born about 1816 to 1819 in Sullivan County. She had been in Cochecton only fourteen years in 1855, so she came into the town about 1841, and they probably married about 1840. The 1860 census writes her name as Persia. Between them they had at least ten children, born from about 1840 to 1858, the last when Peter was nearly sixty.

Sallie married another Keesler, Charles D., and died at Galilee in Wayne County, Pennsylvania in October 1899. A Keesler marrying a Keesler is the ordinary shape of that country. Cochecton and Galilee sit on opposite banks of the upper Delaware, and the families on both sides had been intermarrying for two generations by the time these two did it.

Peter was still farming at Cochecton in 1860, aged sixty. When he died is not known.

If Peter Keesler is in your family, start your own tree.

Cite: Heirology, "Peter Keesler (b. 1799)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/peter-keesler-1799-83875f.