Walter Darling
Walter Darling was born on 18 December 1808 at Smithtown, on the north shore of Long Island. He was a son of George Darling, whose farm lay on the west bank of the Nissequogue River where it opens into Smithtown Harbor. His gravestone calls him Capt. Walter Darling.
A family account gives his marriage to Eliza Hawkins as 28 December 1830. Their son William Cornell Darling was born about 1831, Edgar F. about 1835 and Lydia A. about 1841.
In 1850 the census found Walter, 41, at Smithtown with Elisa, 37, and the three children: William C., 18, Edgar F., 15, and Lydia A., 9. Lydia Hawkins, 58, born in Massachusetts, lived with them. She was probably Eliza's mother.
That year the family land changed hands twice. On 21 June 1850 Walter and Eliza sold twelve acres on the west side of the Nissequogue to George A. Darling for $500. The piece ran from "the East corner of the said Walter Darlings Garden Fence" to the shore of the river. On 28 September his father sold him thirty five acres next to his own land for $900. The deed names the buyer as "Walter Darling son of the said George Darling". George and his wife Jane had mortgaged the land for $700 to the trustees of the estate of William H. Helme, and Walter agreed to pay that debt with its interest.
In the summer of 1855 the family was off Long Island. The New York state census found Walter, 46, at New Lots in Kings County, farm country then and part of Brooklyn now. With him were his wife, written Hannah E., his sons William C., 23, and Edgar F., 19, his daughter Lydia A., 14, and a young man named James Fitzpatrick. By 1860 Walter and Eliza were back at Smithtown with Lydia. William had married Percillia Cornelia White about 1856 and had a house of his own nearby.
In 1865 Walter and Eliza A. Darling were living alone at Smithtown. In 1870 two men, Horace Smith and Philip Tucker, lived in the house with them. In 1880 Walter, 70, and Hannah E. were alone again.
Walter Darling died on 7 February 1886 at St. Johnland, aged 77. St. Johnland was a church community near Kings Park, founded in 1866 by the Episcopal clergyman William Augustus Muhlenberg as a home for the old and the poor. He was buried in Landing Cemetery at Smithtown, the burying ground of the Methodist church at the Landing. Eliza died a year later and her stone stands beside his. Deeds of the 1890s still described the meadow along the harbor "formerly attached to the farm of Walter Darling", bounded by a line from the post "where the corner of Walter Darlings garden fence formerly stood".
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Cite: Heirology, "Walter Darling (1808-1886)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/walter-darling-1808-1886-11a143.