RUSCO, SR., DAVID MATTHEWS (1723–1815). Associator; member, War Committee, Town of Huntington. David Rusco’s grandfather, William, was a child when he arrived with his family in Hartford, Connecticut from London late in the 1630s. David’s father, Amini Ruhama Rusco, died when David was five years old and living with his family in Huntington, Long Island.
David married Jemima Scudder in January, 1749, as listed in the records of Huntington’s First Church. The couple likely gave birth to nine children between 1750 and 1765, according to somewhat contradictory family trees posted on the Ancestry website.
David Sr.’s name appears on the list of those who signed the Huntington 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.
According to the Daughters of the American Revolution Lineage Book, Volume 64, David served on the War Committee that was created by Huntington’s Articles of Association.
David’s and Jemima’s two sons were also Patriots: David Junior (see), born in 1754, and Nathaniel, born in 1756, both of whom served as privates in the rebel militia.
David spent his entire life in Huntington, except for what may have been a brief flight to Hartford, Connecticut, to escape the British occupation during the war years. However, he was in Huntington again in 1778, when he signed the loyalty oath to the Crown, likely under duress, given the British and Loyalist military occupations of Huntington.
As per the 1800 Suffolk County tax assessment rolls, David was prosperous; his property was at the higher end of those assessed.
David Matthews Rusco died in 1815, age 91 years and 10 months, in Huntington, and is buried in the Old Burying Ground there. He is interred there, according to Josephine C. Frost’s Cemetery Inscriptions from Huntington, Long Island, New York, with his wife, their two patriotic sons, and two of their daughters who died young.
