Reminiscences from The Life of a Pioneer by Ira Ayer I
Background -- Ira Ayer I
Even though there are several biographies of Ira I in this book I think that it would be appropriate to include a short description of his life here. He was born on December 26, 1802 in Haverhill, Massachusetts. He had three brothers and four sisters and his father owned a farm on the banks of the Merrimac River. When he was eight years old his family sold the farm put everything they owned in two covered wagons and moved out west; that is to Buffalo, New York. His father got a 439 acre piece of undeveloped land west of Buffalo in an area that is now part of the town of Evans. They built a one room log cabin where the family of ten lived for many years.
When Ira was sixteen and his brother Goreham was eighteen they had to return to Haverhill to get the balance of the mortgage payments for their old farm. They were owed $1000 and the round trip was a 400 miles. They had to go on foot (I will not say what happened, you have to read it).
In 1828 he married Julia Mariah Wadsworth and they had 7 children. Julia died in 1861.
In 1827 he was a Lieutenant of the 48th Regiment of Infantry, New York Militia. By 1837 he had reached the rank of Colonel and in 1838 served in the Patriot War. The Patriot War was a war between Canadian rebels and the British Government. The rebels or "Patriots" were mostly American farmers and artisans who were trying to free Canada from British control. The United States Government was officially neutral and to protect that neutrality sent militias to the borders to protect them. Ira's militia was sent to Grand Island near Buffalo and served for four weeks. The Patriots were holding Navy Island which is less than a mile away and part of Canada.
After Abraham Lincoln called for 300,000 volunteers in 1862, Ira, age 59, recruited and trained a Company of men. They were the first to be trained and report for service for the 116th Reg. N. Y. Volunteers and therefore became Co. Al. They served through the entire war, however Ira only served until March of 1863 when his health was failing.
In 1869 he married Bessie Cronkite who was 40 years his junior. They adopted a girl name Lolah. Both Bessie and Lolah survived him when died in 1889.
Ira had been a farmer by trade and according to the censuses in 1850 his farm was valued at $2650 and by 1870 his real and personal estate was valued at $7000.
The original of "Reminiscences" is hand written on all 100 pages of a note book. I have included the original drawings. It was probably all written in the Ira's own hand sometime around the mid 1880s when the Ira was in his early 80s. It includes a portrait of an elderly man sitting down. This is assumed to be a self portrait.
Toward the end he mentions that his sister Sarah is 78 years old. She was born on April 2, 1809. This implies that the passage was written in 1887 or 1888.
He wrote the stories in response to a plea from two of his children. By about 1920 the book was in the hands of Julia Fletcher Ayer Jessup (Ira's granddaughter by his son Ira II). When Julia was planning to move she was going to throw out all her old things. She told her niece Angela Lucia Williams (daughter of Alice Wadsworth Ayer Williams and granddaughter of Ira II) that she could have anything in the attic. Angela found and rescued the book.
In the 1960s Alice Wadsworth Ayer Williams and her sister Clementine Ayer Morse were doing a genealogical study of their family and had the book typed up. The typed version suffered not only from not having any of the original drawings but the typist took many liberties in interpreting the stories. The typed version was full of errors, grammar brought more up to date, and significantly altered facts. Also the first and last section of "Reminiscences" were excluded completely.
Alice or Alice and Clementine added a Forward to introduce Ira Ayer. That Forward is included here.
In this version I tried to be as faithful to the original copy as possible. I wanted it typed for the ease of reading, but I wanted to retain as much of the original flavor as possible. I have included all the drawings with as much of the large hand printed parts as possible. I copied the text is as faithfully as I could. If there was a word I couldn't read I put it in [brackets] with question marks for the letters I did not understand. The last section was the hardest to read and is full of [ ]s. If I thought that something needed further explanation I put a footnote.
The grammar of Ira Ayer is therefore retained but this means that I also included many of his errors.