(1751-1808). Lieutenant, Colonel Josiah Smith’s Regiment, 1st Regiment Suffolk County Minutemen, Huntington Militia. According to the United States Revolutionary War Burial Index, Isaac was born in 1751. This differs from a family tree on Ancestry.com which details that Isaac was born on February 11, 1752, in Huntington, Suffolk County, New York, to Charity née Carll and Nathaniel Ketcham. He was the third of five siblings; he had three brothers and one sister. On some official documents his surname is spelled as Ketchum and his given name is denoted as Carle, Caril and Carl Isaac.
As per the family tree on Ancestry.com, Isaac lost his mother on November 29, 1754 when he was only two years of age and he lost his older brother, Abel, during September of 1770. In 1772, at the age of twenty, Isaac married Hannah Wicks and they lived in Huntington, New York. Between 1776 and 1784, he and Hannah had four children, two sons, John and Alexander, and two daughters, Sarah and Bathsheba. Isaac’s father, a lieutenant, passed away in 1779 and his brother, Alexander Ketcham, also a lieutenant in the Revolutionary War, was captured and killed in October 1780.
Isaac’s participation in the Revolutionary War is documented in Frederic Gregory Mather’s book, The Refugees of 1776 from Long Island to Connecticut (1913). There are two biographical entries: Ketcham, Carll and Ketcham Isaac Carll:
KETCHAM CARLL ( ) – From Huntington to Norwalk; whence, on January 7,1780, he petitioned the Connecticut General Assembly for relief from the poll tax. On November 9, 1776, the New York Committee of Safety paid him for bringing prisoners from Long Island to Norwich, and thence to Fishkill. On October 24, 1780, permission was given to his wife Hannah to go to Long Island and leave the two children. He served in the 2nd Westchester. Hannah, wife of Carll, died January 29, 1805, in her 53rd year.
KETCHUM CARLL ISAAC, LT. ( ) – From Huntington. He served in Colonel Smith’s Regiment. He signed the Association, in 1775, as Isaac Carll Ketcham….Thus it is possible that what has been stated, above, of Carll really belongs to Lieutenant Carll Isaac; and that they were one and the same.
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.
In addition, Isaac is enumerated in New York in the Revolution as Colony and State, Volume 1, as a lieutenant. Another sourcedocumenting Isaac’s role in the Revolutionary War is the United States Headstone Application for Military Veterans, 1861-1965, submitted on August 2, 1973 by Rufus B. Langhans, Town of Huntington Historian. The request states that Isaac was a lieutenant in Colonel Josiah Smith’s 1st Regiment of Suffolk County.
As per Frederic Gregory Mather, Hannah, Isaac’s wife, passed away in 1805. There are no records specifying that Isaac and Hannah divorced as records from Ancestry.com and New York City Compiled Marriage Index indicate that Isaac married Phebe Smith in Smithtown in 1784. The couple resided in Huntington and had three children, two sons, Jesse and Eliphat, and a daughter, Hannah.
The 1790 and 1800 United States federal censuses document that Isaac and his family resided in Huntington, Suffolk, New York. In 1790, there were nine members of the household and in 1800 there were seven. Isaac’s occupation is not indicated on either of the censuses. The New York, United States, Tax Assessment Rolls of Real and Personal Estates, 1799-1804 records that in 1799 a Carll Ketcham’s real and personal estate were valued at $925 and $90 for a total worth of $1015, while Isaac Ketcham’s total assets were valued at $980. Similar to the conundrum that Mather relates between Carll and Issac Ketcham during the Revolutionary War, it is possible that the two Ketchams listed on the tax records are really one and the same.
As per the United States Revolutionary War Index, Isaac Carll Ketcham was a lieutenant in the Suffolk County Militia, First Regiment of Minutemen, who was born in 1751, passed away on April 16, 1808, and is interred in the “Old Huntington Cemetery.” The cemetery is commonly called the Old Burying Ground. Isaac’s will designated Israel Carll, Abel Ketcham and David Ketcham as executors and was witnessed by James Nostran, Oliver Snedecor and Hannah Snedecor. Isaac willed his furniture and a third of his money to his daughters, Sarah and Bethsheba, $10 to his son, Alexander, two-thirds of his money and apparel to his sons Alexander, Jesse, and Eliphalet, and directed that his land on Cedar Island be sold.
According to Josephine C. Frost, who compiled Cemetery Inscriptions from Huntington, Long Island, New York in 1911, Issac Carll Ketcham’s gravestone in the Old Burying Ground noted that he died on April 16, 1808, at the age of 57 years. His grave is now marked with the Department of Veterans Affairs gravestone obtained in the 1970s.
