LORAIN (LAURA) SEDGWICK PARSONS

B6.
Loran, Lorraine, Lorene and, as a development, Laura Sedgwick, 6th child of Deacon Benjamin Sedgwick (B) and Ann (Thompson) Sedgwick, was born in 1755, gravestone record, at Cornwall, Conn. She married before 1773 Jacob Parsons, a merchant of Richmond, Mass., and Stockbridge and later of the Chenango Valley, N.Y. In 1762, according to researches by Jacob's great-granddaughter, Mrs. Oscar Evans of 1770 Sonoma Avenue, Berkeley, Cal., he was associated with Samuel Brown, Jr., in buying land from the Stockbridge Indians and re-dividing it. He and his wife are in the Richmond, Mass., Town Records in 1773 when their daughter, Lorrain (Lorraine) was recorded as born and they appear in Tioga County, N.Y., later Broome County, in the 1800 census when Tioga County was divided.

Jacob Parsons was one of the sixty members of the "Boston Purchase of Ten Towns" which is described as follows in the Historical Gazetteer of Tioga County, N.Y., W.B. Gay, pp. 19-22, as follows:

"Townships were granted by that state (Mass.) and approved by the Governor November 4, 1787. Ownership was confirmed by act of the New York Legislature November 3, 1780. Nearly all of the grantees resided at the time of the purchase in Berkshire County and in the Town of Stockbridge. They bought nearly 250,000 acres in Tioga and Cortland Counties. Captain Parsons and his wife, Lorene, and seven children made the trip from Massachusetts to New York in 1794 by ox team."

Miss Rhoda Williston, granddaughter of Lorraine (Sedgwick) Parsons and Jacob Parsons, wrote in a letter dated August 11, 1886:

"Jacob Parsons went at the first call to arms and served through the (Revolutionary) War. He was a man six feet or more, a fine looking man with a huge, broad forehead and gray hair curling around, as I remember him. He was a gentleman of the old school. He was a merchant of Berkshire County, Mass. He kept his store running through the War, lost much through credit and, after paying his debts, had not much left except a large number of children."

Jacob and Lorraine came to the wild land in Broome County and are buried at Whitney Point. He was a member of the Boston Land company. The tombstone inscription follows: