These pages will include information on the descendants of Joshua Fredenburg and Ruth Freeman of Jefferson County, New York. If anyone ever figures out who their ancestors were, I will include that information as well!
A Story for the Grandchildren?
The following was published as part of a biography of George H. Lyttle in volume III, page 271 of A History of Cleveland and Its Environs, The Heart of New Connecticut, The Lewis Publishing Company: Chicago and New York, 1918. George was Joshua's grandson, and Joshua lived with George's parents in his later years. I have discounted this story from the moment I first read it and still think it is more a story concocted for the grandchildren than a true relation of events. Or perhaps it is a misremembering by the grandchildren of stories told when they were young.
One of the problems with the story is that the battle of Oriskany was in August of 1777 and Joshua's birth date, according to his gravestone, was 14 March 1783. Another is that the admittedly incomplete records of the participants in the Battle of Oriskany do not give any candidates for his father. Never-the-less, some elements of the story may have a factual base. The earliest firm document we have of Joshua is in the records of the Reformed Protestant Dutch Church of German Flats (which is on the Mohawk River in the general area of Herkimer and Little Falls). George, Joshua's oldest child, is recorded being baptized in 1805 at the home of Georgio & Anna Rosencrantz. George Rosencrantz's mother was a sister to General Herkimer, so there is some basis for supposing that the families, if not related, at least knew each other.
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