RUSCO, JR., DAVID MATTHEWS (1754-1805). Private, 1st Regiment of Minutemen, Suffolk County Militia; signer of the 1775 Huntington Articles of Association. The son of David Matthews Rusco (1723-1815) and Jemima Scudder (1728-1799), David Matthews Rusco Jr. was born in Huntington, Suffolk County, New York Colony, on July 5, 1754. While David’s father had also been born in Huntington, his mother was born in Northport, Suffolk County. David Jr. was baptized in Huntington on August 18, 1754, at the First Church of Huntington, as related in Wendy Polhemus-Annibell’s “A Brief Biography of Some of the Huntington Patriots” (2024). Cemetery and genealogical records show that David’s paternal grandparents were Amini Ruhamah Rusco and Penelope Foster (Wood?), both born in Southampton, Suffolk County, New York, while his maternal grandparents were Captain Timothy Scudder Jr. and Mary Whitehead, both born in Northport, Suffolk County, New York.
Eighteenth-century birth records are often inaccurate, so we are not certain about the exact number of children in the Rusco (also spelled Ruscoe) family. There may have been as many as a dozen children in the family, but there were certainly at least eight, including Jemima (1750-1826), Mary (1752-1830), Nathaniel (1756-1844), Hannah (1759-1773), Sarah (1759-1762), Elizabeth (1763-1830), Silas (1765-1811), and Phebe (1765-1830), based on the Geneanet genealogical website and other genealogical sources. It appears that David was the eldest son.
Since both men share the same name, either David or his father (or perhaps both) was a signatory to the Articles of Association in Huntington, as listed in Huntington Town Records, 1776-1873, Vol. III. 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.
However, the same Huntington Town Records includes the name of David Rusco on a list of “Persons Who Took the Oath of Loyalty and Peaceable Behaviour” in the Township of Huntington before Governor Tryon in Suffolk County, Long Island, 1778. Robert C. Hughes, Huntington Town Historian, wrote on the huntingtonhistory.com website in a May 8, 2025 posting, “Huntington and the Articles of Association,” and affirmed that many who signed the 1775 Association also took the loyalty oath to the British Crown three years later, after Long Island was occupied by British forces. They risked losing their property, paying fines, and exile if they refused to sign that oath.
A David Rusco enlisted in the First Regiment of Minute Men, Suffolk County Militia, as recorded in New York in the Revolution as Colony and State, Vol. I, A Compilation of Documents and Records from the Office of the State Comptroller (1904). As per Frederic Gregory Mather’s The Refugees of 1776 from Long Island to Connecticut (1913), either David Rusco Jr., or his father, David Rusco Sr., served in Colonel Josiah Smith’s First Regiment, and in Connecticut. “Either of them may have signed the Association, in 1775. In the absence of proof, it is probable that the Military service was that of the younger David.” David’s younger brother Nathaniel also served as a private in the First Regiment of Minutemen, Suffolk County Militia, from May 8, 1775, to June 10, 1776, according to cemetery records and New York in the Revolution.
In Henry C. Platt’s 1876 “Huntington Address,” he recalled that “David Rusco and Silas Rusco, sons of David Rusco Sr., were forced to work on the Forts, and to cart wood for the British.” He continued that “David Rusco (son of David Sr.) played a trick upon some British soldiers, who came to steal hay from him, during the Revolution, and had to hide himself in a cave in the woods to escape their vengeance, until he found his way across the Sound to Connecticut, where he remained during the War.” Henry Onderdonk Jr. in Revolutionary Incidents of Suffolk and Kings Counties (1849) relates that, on May 23, 1782, in Huntington, David Rusco Jr., among other men, received and weighed “the hay and straw delivered on Lloyd’s Neck, for the use of His Majesty’s troops.” According to Wendy Polhemus-Annibell, David lived as a “refugee in Connecticut and may have served under Colonel Enos as an ensign in 1777.”
According to Mather, Polhemus-Annibell, and Ancestry.com, David was married to Hannah Platt on March 31, 1778. Reverend Ebenezer Prime (see), a prominent rebel leader, officiated for the First Church of Huntington. Born in 1754 in Huntington, Hannah was the daughter of Captain Jesse Platt and Mary Brush. It is believed that the couple had five daughters and one son: Mary, born in 1780; Polly, born about 1782; Nathaniel, born about 1782; Sarah (Sallie), born in 1787; and Amelia, born in 1788 or 1789. Genealogical records show that Polly was born in Connecticut, but other such records indicate that the other children were all probably born in Huntington. Again, birth years may not be exact for this next generation of Rusco children.
After the war, David was living in Huntington and was very active in town government. Huntington Town Records show that David was elected a Huntington town trustee on April 5, 1785, and again on April 4, 1786. He continued as a town trustee and overseer of the poor from the 1790s until his death. Elected a commissioner of schools in 1786 and for several years thereafter, David also served as supervisor of intestate estates for the Town of Huntington. Tax Assessment Rolls of Real and Personal Estates for 1800 in Huntington exist for both Senior and Junior David Ruscos. The 1800 federal census shows David Rusco Jr. living in Huntington, with seven other household members. A female age 26 through 44, presumably his wife, lived in the household and the rest, all under 25, were probably their children.
Gravestones and cemetery records, show when David, his parents, and his wife passed away. His mother died in 1799 in Huntington. David died on January 10, 1805, in Huntington, while his father outlived him, dying in Huntington on October 12, 1815, at age 91. Hannah died in Huntington on February 2, 1820. They are all interred in Huntington’s Old Burying Ground, as are at least two of David’s siblings, Sarah and Silas, as well as his Rusco paternal grandparents.
