KETCHAM, DANIEL (1755-1778). Private, Colonel Josiah Smith’s 1st Regiment of Minutemen, Suffolk Militia, Thomas Wickes’s Company; associator, Huntington, New York. As per his family tree posted on Ancestry.com, Daniel was born in Huntington on October 10, 1755, to Solomon (1724-1781) and Hannah Conklin (1727-1784). A public post on Ancestry states that Daniel was christened at the First Church in Huntington on November 1, 1755. Wendy Polhemus-Annibell, the head librarian of the Suffolk County Historical Society, in “Brief Biography of Some of the Huntington Patriots,” dated April 3, 2024, adds that he was baptized by the Reverent Ebenezer Prime (see). The Geneanet website lists these siblings: Philip (1752-1830); Mary (1754-?); Solomon (1757-1851); Conkling (1758-?); John (1763-1773); Sarah (1765-?); Platt (1769-1800) and Hannah (1773-?). Geneanet also names the paternal grandparents as Philip and Phoebe. Find A Grave spells his mother’s surname as Conkling and lists brothers, Phillip, Solomon, Conkling, John and Platt and sister Sarah; sister Hannah is not mentioned. Daniel married Martha Conklin(e) who was born in 1762; the year of that marriage is unknown.
As per Wendy Polhemus-Annibell in her biographical sketch, Daniel was a signatory to Huntington’s Articles of Association. 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.
As per the Sons of the American Revolution (SAR) Patriot Research System, Daniel was a private during the American Revolution. That database credits the Revolutionary War Graves Register and the SAR War Graves Register for that information. As per New York Military in the Revolution, compiled by James A Roberts, Comptroller (1898), Daniel was an enlisted man in Colonel Josiah Smith’s 1st Regiment of Minutemen, Suffolk Militia. Wendy Polemus-Annibell adds that he was listed a private of Captain Thomas Wickes’s Company in 1st Regiment. Further information on Wickes includes a letter he wrote to General George Washington on August 28, 1778, when he was a major and in the woods without candlelight when Huntington’s troops were ordered to move westward. Wickes represented Suffolk County in the New York General Assembly, 1777-1783.
Daniel died on October 19, 1778, in Huntington and was buried there in the Old Burying Ground. His gravestone is inscribed, “In Memory of Mr. Daniel Ketcham, who died Oct. 19, 1778. Age 23 years.”
