INTO THE WILDERNESS - PAGE 2
PAGES 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 HOME

- INTO THE WILDERNESS -


Axtell - Condit - Dilley

PAGE 4.

politics, and raise a large family of which I am the tenth and last. The intermittent journey "into the wilderness" was a calculated adventure for more land for more children, for better living, in which they were in the end relatively successful.

Lest we give the impression from the foregoing that WE are THE Axtells, Condits, Dilleys and Dodds, or their only or principal descendants we should be reminded that in most cases only a few of the more adventurous migrated from each region to the next, for reasons as varied as the persons themselves, but usually involving the promising prospects of acquiring more land more cheaply or better for ever increasing families, the possession of land being one of the most evident indications of well being. Many stayed behind.

Thus there were Axtells left in Mass., descendants of whom still live there, ditto in N.J., in both Washington and Mercer Cos., Pa., and Warren Co., Ill., as well as many from other lines of the family who are now to be found in most of the states of the Union. While Condit is predominantly a N.J. family, they too are to be found in many States. The Dilley and Dille families are found widely scattered and in most cases do not know or recognize distant kinsman but nearly all lines trace their origin "back to N.J. in the 1700's" and almost everyone I have contacted here in N.J. should trace their origin back to John Dilly of Woodbridge. The Dodds and Lindleys, much inter married between themselves and with the Axtells, some with the Condits and Dilleys, and some few with our own line, are wide-spread and have well defined Family Books - the Dodds even spread to several foreign lands as missionaries. They are both strong in N.J.

But it was the ancestors like John Dilly, Daniel Axtell and William Pratt (and their wives and daughters like Thankful Pratt Axtell), Demas Lindley and Jacob Cook, Rev. Thaddeus and Daniel Dodd, Daniel Axtell and Price Dilley and Dille cousins (Rev. War ancestors), David and Jonas Condit, William and Samuel Dilley, Simeon and Minerva (Condit) Axtell, and lastly Henry Clay and Durilla Loretta (Dilley) O'Hara, who pioneered the western expansion "into the wilderness", - all of these were made of the stuff which has made America large and great and strong, and of whom all of us, their descendants, should know more and be proud, of them, of what they did, and the country they helped materially to establish.