Delaware County NY Genealogy and History Site

Forty years ago, after talking to my grandmother about her ancestors, I started to puzzle over the family of my great- great-grandfather, Philip LOCKWOOD. He was supposedly the first Baptist minister in the Western Reserve of Ohio. So I researched in Geauga and Lake counties and was successful in uncovering considerable information about him. Learning that his father was James LOCKWOOD of neighboring Ashtabula County, I began to try to construct a family group for James. Because he died before the 1850 census and because his will made statements such as "I leave to my step-son [name] to share equally with my own children [no names]," this seemed a discouraging task. However, with persistence and the use of a wide variety of available records, I managed to compile a list of 11 children who seemed plausible, based on the evidence I had collected. I did not yet have for all the children a "conclusive" document.

James and Philip had lived earlier in Cortland County, New York. I wrote to the historical society there as a result of which I made contact with a person who had written to the society years before. Her husband was related to the wife of Philip LOCKWOOD, Anna OWEN, and she had access to the family Bible of James LOCKWOOD. After our talk by telephone, she mailed to me a typed extraction of names, birth dates, and marriage dates for James LOCKWOOD and his children. I was elated that the 11 children listed matched the names on my list. I was frustrated, however, to observe that the birth dates for the two oldest children (including my Philip) and the marriage date for James and Elizabeth (his first wife of three, I had supposed), seemed to indicate yet another, earlier wife.

The DAR Library in Washington, D.C. has a photocopy of the original pages from this family Bible. I needed to check the dates. My daughter lived in the area and at my request obtained a copy of the pages. James LOCKWOOD's youngest daughter, Sarah, had married an Amos GREEN, whose father Joseph had served in the Revolution and had also left a family Bible. Sarah, as the youngest, must have inherited the Bible, passing it down to her descendants. The LOCKWOOD Bible pages were in a file labeled GREEN. There were several files with that surname but one of them stated that the locales were New York and Ohio. My daughter, remembering that I talked a lot about needing to visit New York and Ohio, picked the right file and ordered a copy of the James LOCKWOOD Bible record for me.

The confusion in dates occurred because the numeral 4 looked like a 9 in the LOCKWOOD Bible. Once I had determined that, I could see that James and Elizabeth were married in 1784 and not in 1789 as the typed copy showed. James was born in 1764, not in 1769. He had had no earlier wife, and Philip was their second child, born in 1787.

I feel extremely fortunate to have located such an early Bible record relating to my ancestors. I am still seeking to establish James LOCKWOOD's parentage, and hoping that the Stephen born in 1768, who is mentioned in the Bible record, is his sibling and will provide a clue for pursuing the earlier generation.