|
a.
|
Note: Edward served in the Revolutionary War in Capt. Stephen Olney's Company. He was a Drummer Boy. He fought in most major battles of the Revolutionary War from Bunker Hill to Yorktown. Captain Olney won high honors as a leader during the war. His Company of Rhode Island Light Infantry was in the forefront during most significant battles between Bunker Hill and Yorktown. The Company had such a reputation for aggressiveness that General Washington selected them to lead the charge of his Colonial Army at Yorktown. It is said from this that Edward, as the Company drummer, was the first to climb over the breastworks during the charge upon the British at Yorktown. After the War and before 1790, Edward and Mercy moved to Little Falls, New York. Little Falls had been established a few years earlier as a predominantly German community. Edward and Mercy lived in the area referred to as Burt Hill overlooking the town. New homes now occupy this area of the town. Edward's brothers, Caleb, Jabez, and Oliver, followed Edward to New York in the later 1790s with several of the Phetteplace family, but they settled in Chenango County around White Store and New Berlin. White Store is the small community just south of Holmesville, on New York Highway 8, and was called "the Rhode Island Settlement". It served as a way station for freighters coming from the east with large stableing and storage facilities. Among those buried in the White Store Cemetery are many members of the Phetteplace family, Caleb Arnold, Jr. and his wife, Mary. As described in Edward Phetteplace's "Genealogy of the Phetteplace Family", the first settlers to the Chenango County area came in the Fall of 1790 and Spring of 1791. They came from Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, through Albany to the Unadilla River following blazed trees to Avery Power's place south of Norwich. The early settlers encountered great forests. They cleared the forest for farms. The log cabins they built were floored with halves of split logs and the walls were covered with peeled elm bark. Oiled paper covered the windows in the early days. A hole in the roof served as a chimney and the fireplace was often a fire pit in the center of the earthen floored living area. When the first settlers came, there were only Indian trails with branches marked by blazed trees. Samuel Phetteplace , Edward's father-in-law, came to the area on or before 1797, since there is a record of land sale to him in 1797. He bought 109 acres of land near Norwich on Sep 16, 1797, for $266.67. Edward, Mercy, their son, Edward, and Edward Jr.'s wife Christina are buried in Little Falls in Lot 118 of the Church Street Cemetery. Edward's gravestone is engraved with the following epitaph composed by his widow, Mercy. "Died on the 29th of October, 1842, in the 83d year of his age, EDWARD ARNOLD His widow erected this humble stone, to commemorate his private worth, but his nobler monuments are the battle fields of the American Revolution, in letters of blood. These shall perpetuate his public virtues when this tribute of a wife's affection shall have crumbled to dust, and no human hand can point out the spot where the hero sleeps." In 1988, the Neels discovered Edward's tombstone. It had fallen forward and fractured in half. Grass had grown over most of the stone and the stone was easily mistaken for a large rock. The epitaph was barely discernible but it was clear that it was Edward's and for the first time we really knew when he was born. The same day while visiting in the Herkimer County Historical Library, Joyce randomly selected a book from the stacks and found Mr. Benton's History of Herkimer County. In that book, Benton described how he had visited the cemetery reading epitaphs found on the headstones. He copied Edward's and included it in his book. With the epitaph in hand it was easy to read it on Edward's stone. In 1988, while once again on a business trip to Rome, NY, the local mortuary was contacted to have the stone cleaned, repaired and re-set in concrete. At the time, Christina's headstone was the only other marker in the Arnold lot in the Church Street Cemetery. The issue of the local newspaper published just after Edward Jr.'s death published contains his obituary. The obituary states that Edward Jr. was buried in the Arnold plot where his father, Edward Sr., was the first Arnold buried in the Church Street Cemetery. Although the cemetery records indicate that Mercy is also buried in the family plot, we were never able to establish that as fact and no headstone for her exists there. The obituary indicates that Edward was a carpenter and builder.
|