CONKLING, CORNELIUS (1727-1791). Captain, Suffolk County Militia; associator, Huntington, New York. Cornelius Conkling was born on May 28, 1727, in Huntington, New York. Family genealogical records show his parents as Captain John A. Conkling II (1704-1757) and Mary née Platt (1710-1759.) His father’s parents were John Conkling (1672-1751), who was born and died in Huntington, but whose parents were from Salem, Massachusetts, and Mary Brush Conkling (1678-1749), also born and died in Huntington. The Conkling name has also been spelled as Conklin, Conckline, Conkling, and Concklyne in parish records and by the individuals themselves. Even members of the same family, such as a husband and wife, used alternate spellings of the Conkling name, according to Frederic Gregory Mather in The Refugees of 1776 from Long Island to Connecticut (1913).
Baptismal records of the First Church in Huntington, Long Island, 1723-1779, show that Cornelius was baptized there on May 28, 1727. Cornelius had several siblings, all born in Huntington, as listed in genealogical records on Ancestry.com: Hannah Conklin Ketcham (1729-1784), Joseph (1731-1778), Sarah (born in 1732), Mary Naomi (or Naomy) Conklin Lewis (1733-1775), John III (1735-1780), and Ruth Conklin Brush (1738-1792.)
Cornelius married Elizabeth Rogers in Huntington on January 7, 1748, per the records of the First Church in Huntington, although other later records show the year of marriage as 1747.Their children were Richard (1748-1818) and Esther (1754-1755.)
According to “A Brief Biography of Some of the Huntington Patriots,” by Wendy Polhemus-Annibell (2024), Cornelius was a signatory to the Articles of Association at Huntington in 1775, protesting British oppression. On May 8, 1775, 403 men, most of them Huntington residents (a few were from Islip), “shocked by the bloody Scene” that had occurred just weeks before at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts, where patriot Minutemen and British regulars had engaged in a bloody armed struggle, put their signatures on Huntington’s Articles of Association. Only 37 Huntington residents, either Loyalists or those wanting to stay out of the fray, refused to sign. The Articles noted that the signers affirmed their “Love to our Country,” agreed “to whatever Measures may be recommended by the Continental Congress; or resolved upon by our Provincial Convention, for the Purpose of preserving our Constitution, and opposition to the Execution of the several arbitrary, and oppressive Acts of the British Parliament,” and prayed for “a Reconciliation between Great-Britain and America.” The actions of these associators were seen by both patriots and the British as a step towards rebellion. The fact that these men signed these Articles, placing themselves in danger of British retaliation, including imprisonment, seizure of their property, and exile from Long Island, is proof of their patriotic service. And, as recorded in a memoir by General John Lamb published in 1857, Cornelius also was a leader of the Sons of Liberty. He also commanded a company in the Suffolk County militia.
In 1776, just days after the British triumph at the Battle of Long Island, and as their forces moved to consolidate their control across Long Island, including Huntington, Cornelius fled his Huntington home for Connecticut, rather than submit and take the oath of allegiance to the King. From Connecticut, Conkling commanded a privateer boat on Long Island Sound, attacking both British forces and loyalists. On January 7, 1780, apparently in hopes of voting in Connecticut, an area largely controlled by patriot forces, he petitioned the Connecticut General Assembly for relief from the poll tax, as stated by Mather in The Refugees of 1776 from Long Island to Connecticut (1913). In October 1780, he was captured by the British with Major Jesse Brush during the “Smithtown whaleboat incident,” one of many attacks in which he participated. He was of such importance to the patriot cause that Major General Samuel Holden Parsons wrote to General George Washington, on February 17, 1781, in a letter that survives in the National Archives, founders.archive.gov., informing him that the two men were sent to the notorious Provost Prison in New York City’s City Hall Park. In his letter to Washington, Major General Parsons wrote of Cornelius and Jesse that “these Gentlemen are Persons who deserve the Attention of every Friend to his Country,” and urged a prisoners’ exchange. According to “The Men Who Never Surrendered” section of Huntington Town Records, Including Babylon, Long Island, N.Y., 1776-1873, by Charles R. Street, 1889, Cornelius’s farm was evacuated upon his banishment, and was seized by Joseph Hoit during the British occupation of Huntington.
Returning to Huntington at or near the war’s end, Cornelius died there on September 11, 1791, as carved on his old brownstone gravestone in The Old Burying Ground. His wife, who died in Huntington in either 1803 or 1809, is also interred there, as are generations of Conkling/Conklin relatives. The Conkling’s two children, Richard Conklin and baby Esther, who died before reaching two years of age, as well as Cornelius’s father and his father’s parents are all interred in The Old Burying Ground, as are Hannah Conkling Ketcham and Naomy Conkling Lewis, two of Cornelius’s sisters. Son Richard’s wife and some of his children, grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren and some of their children are also interred there. Charle Egbert Oakley, a descendent of Richard Conklin, who, according to his will in New York, U.S., Wills and Probate Records, 1659-1999, enlisted in the New York Volunteers for Mexico, died in Vera Cruz, Mexico, during the Mexican-American War, and is also interred in The Old Burying Ground.
