Somerville (Irish) and sons, John, Samuel, Archibald and Thomas; John Richards (Welsh surveyor). Assemblyman and Member of Congress from Warren county, and supervisor from Johnsburgh many years; Levi Hitchcock and family, Jeremiah Harrington and family, Calvin Crawford, Ebenezer Fish and family, Lemuel Humphrey and family, Henry Allen and family, John B. Gage, Stephen Scripter, Silas Harrington, Enos Grover, Enos Grover, jr., Daniel Stratton, Benajah Putnam, Silas 'Sheffield, John G. Brewer, Andrew Weaver and family, William Weaver, John Weaver, Jonathan Barney, Archibald Wilcox, Joseph, Isaiah and Jacob Wilcox, James Parker and family, Daniel Robertson and Alexander Robertson (Scotch), Alexander, Nathaniel and Norman Trumble, Samuel Barber, J. P.; John Williams, Charles Wilson, Benjamin L. and Charles C. Thomson, Hiram, Elisha and Elijah Ross, Josephus Lee, Jeremiah Bennett, Nathan Raymond and family, John Monell and family, Norris Hopkins and family, Abiram Galusha (a Revolutionary soldier) and family, Job Wood, Nathaniel Barber, Martin Gillett, M. D., the first physician in town.
The first religious societies in town were of the Baptist and Methodist denominations, the New England settlers being for the most part Baptists, and the English and Irish portion Methodists. The first Baptist preachers who visited the town were Elder Jehiel Fox, of Chestertown, and Elder Bateman At this time the Baptists were the most numerous denomination in town. Although this people for the last seventy years have had most of the time a pastor settled here, yet they erected no house of worship until within three years they built a neat little chapel at North River. Their present membership is less than it was forty years ago.
David Noble, a local preacher, and father of the first Methodist family in Johnsburgh, was the son of Archibald Noble, of English descent, and Eleanor (Jamison) Noble, of Scotch extraction, was born in Ireland in December, 1734. The Noble family were Episcopalians, or members of the English Church, as it was then styled. When a young man David Noble was converted under the preaching of John Wesley, who, in his early ministry, often visited Ireland, and together with his sons and daughters united with the Methodist societies. In 1795 he, a widower, and his four sons and three daughters, all adults and unmarried, came to America and settled in the city of New York, where, with his eldest son Archibald, he labored as a stone and brick mason. The family attended the old John street Methodist Church. In 1798, under the persuasive influence of John Thurman,[1] he came to the wilderness lands of Thurman Patent, now Johnsburgh, and purchased four hundred acres in a body—one hundred for each son—and, in 18oo, moved upon the tract and began to clear the land. He put up log buildings near Beaver Brook, which intersected each of
- ↑ The story is told of Thurman that in his efforts to colonize his patent he was in the hahit of exhibiting beech nuts to the natives and immigrants in New York and observe that that was the kind of buckwheat that could be raised on Elm hill. Let the reader weigh the probabilities of the story for himself.
