By Jeff Richman
BRUSH, JR., JESSE (1752-1800). Associator, Huntington, New York. The Department of Veterans Affairs headstone for Jesse Brush, applied for by Huntington Town Historian Rufus Langhans in 1973 and placed in Huntington’s Old Burying Ground soon thereafter, describes a man who was a vehement and very active patriot, as well as a leading target of the British, with an inscription specifying that he was a 1st major of a regiment of Suffolk County Minutemen during the Revolutionary War. However, there were two Jesse Brushes who were born in 18th century Huntington, and there has long been confusion over which one was the major. As discussed below, it is likely that the Jesse Brush interred in Huntington’s Old Burying Ground was not the major but rather was a signer (associator) of the Huntington Articles of Association, and therefore a patriot.
The Jesse Brush who is the subject of this biography had life dates of 1752-1800; he was born on either April 14 or October 2, 1752, in Huntington, according to “Long Island Surnames,” the database archives of Long Island Genealogy. This 1752 birth is confirmed by records kept by the Reverend Ebenezer Prime, patriot pastor of the Old First Presbyterian Church in Huntington, who baptized the younger Jesse Brush—the subject of this biography—on October 25, 1752. Reverend Prime also had baptized his cousin, who would become Major Jesse Brush. The younger Jesse Brush was the son of Thomas Brush and Temperance née Denton, born in Huntington and Jamaica, Queens, respectively. His siblings were Temperance Brush Ketcham (1740-1803) and Thomas Brush (1741-1803).
The Jesse Brush who is interred at the Old Burying Ground is often confused with his cousin, also named Jesse Brush, who was born earlier (1736 or 1737), and who served as a major with the local militia. Indeed, Frederic Gregory Mather, in his The Refugees of 1776 from Long Island to Connecticut (1913), details the Revolutionary War actions of Major Jesse Brush, but then mistakenly attributes the younger Jesse’s wife and father-in-law to the major. According to a Daughters of the American Revolution application by a descendant of Major Jesse Brush’s son Elkanah, Major Jesse Brush was born in Huntington in 1737 and died in Rye, Westchester County, New York, about 1790, a decade before the man interred in Huntington’s Old Burying Ground passed away and was interred. It is thought that the older Jesse may have been interred in Westchester since there is no grave listing for a Jesse Brush born and dying in those years for Huntington’s Old Burying Ground. Additionally, an editor’s note to the Huntington Historical Society’s Vignettes of Early Huntington, published in 1976, states: “There were two citizens of revolutionary Huntington named Jesse Brush” and “Major Jesse Brush, the Patriot soldier (not to be confused with his cousin, Jesse Brush, the Loyalist) . . . .” However, this characterization of the younger Jesse Brush as a loyalist appears to be incorrect. As of 1911, there was indeed an Old Burying Ground gravestone for the Jesse Brush who is the subject of this biography: in Cemetery Inscriptions from Huntington, Long Island, compiled by Josephine C. Frost in 1911, she recorded the inscription on his gravestone as “Jesse Brush, Died July 12, 1800. Age 48 years. (A Revolutionary War soldier).” While it is unclear whether Frost was noting “A Revolutionary War soldier” as part of the gravestone inscription or was adding that note as her own comment or as common local knowledge, this seems to be some evidence that the Jesse Brush interred at the Old Burying Ground was in fact a patriot.
On January 5 or 6, 1774, the younger Jesse married Dorothy (or Dorothea) (see) Platt, in Smithtown Church. Dorothy was born on July 27, 1754, the daughter of Zephaniah Platt and Anna Smith. It appears that she is interred next to her husband, the younger Jesse Brush, in the Old Burying Ground; Josephine Frost lists her gravestone inscription right after that of Jesse, as follows: “Dority (sic), wife of Jesse Brush, died December 16, 1835. Age 84 years, 5 months.” The couple had many children: Job, Thomas, Zephaniah, Temperance, Jeremiah Platt, Samuel Sammis, Charles, Jesse, Jonas Platt, and Sarah Brush.
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 possible rebellion. Jesse Brush, the subject of this biography, was a signer (also called associator) of the Articles of Association. See Genealogies of Long Island Families, by Henry B. Hoff, 1987, Volume I, page, 246. According to that same source, until after the Revolution he was referred to as “Jesse Brush Jr.;” that name appears on the list of signers of the Association. Both of Huntington’s men named Jesse Brush signed the Association; “Jesse Brush Jr.” and “Jesse R. Brush,” are listed as signers. See Mather, page 1062. The former is the subject of this biography; the latter is the major.
Three years after Jesse Brush signed the Articles, in 1778, his name appears on the first list of those who took the Oath of Loyalty to the Crown. As per Genealogies of Long Island Families, Volume I, page 246, “He was detailed from Capt. Conklin’s company (British service), on 18 May, 1778, to work on Fort Franklin at Lloyd’s Neck. Again, on November 5, 1782, he was detailed to work on Fort Golgotha in Huntington. His name appears on several other rolls of men called out by the British.” It should be noted that many locals—whether patriots or loyalists—were similarly impressed into service on these fort-building projects. And it was Captain Philip Conkling of the Huntington Militia who routinely was assigned by the British to make sure the locals appeared to work for the British. This calls into question the above “British service” and “loyalist” comments; though the quoted text could be read as stating Brush was serving in a British loyalist regiment, it appears the more likely correct reading is that he was a member of Captain Conkling’s militia company, and therefore subject to mandatory call-up of locals for service to the British.
Jesse Brush’s father-in-law, Zephaniah Platt, was imprisoned by the British on a ship off Brooklyn for suspicion of harassing British ships off the Long Island coast. Dorothy, Jesse’s wife, went, alone to the British forces’ commander to demand her father’s immediate release. Sadly, her father died a short time after he was freed, at the age of 74.
On a tax list of January 8, 1783, Jesse was assessed £500. His claim against the British that year totaled over £155—a substantial sum. After the war, it appears that he was the Jesse Brush who sold a 180-acre farm along Huntington Bay on West Neck to Thomas Seaman on March 14, 1785. On September 27, 1786, he “entered his earmark” to direct funds in the legislature in Huntington.
The federal census of 1790 shows that the Brush household contained one male over 10 years of age, five under 16, three females, and two enslaved people. When Jesse died of dropsy on July 12, 1800, he was living at West Neck, Long Island. His will, dated July 3, 1800, and probated on October 7, 1800, named his wife Dorothy, sons Thomas, Zephaniah, Jeremiah, Samuel Jesse, Charles, Jonas, and youngest daughter Sarah. Dorothy Brush, Jeremiah Platt, and Stephen Kelsey were appointed the executors.
It appears that, even soon after his death, Jesse Brush was often confused with his cousin, Major Jesse Brush, who had perished a decade earlier. Vignettes of Early Huntington has a section on Major Jesse Brush’s grave, which was in the “ancient cemetery on Main Street, at Nassau Road, in Huntington,” the Old Burying Ground. The account states that “his grave is marked by the Huntington Sons of the American Revolution who place a flag there each Memorial Day in his honor.” It may be that the flag was placed to mark the younger Jesse Brush’s grave, understood to have been a patriot, knowing that it was not Major Jesse Brush’s grave.
Following Jesse’s death, his widow, Dorothy, married Richard Conklin, a widower, in 1805. Richard, who died in 1818, is interred in the Old Burying Ground, as is Sarah Brush Kelsey, the youngest child of Jesse and Dorothy, who was born in 1797 and died in 1817. Dorothy died on December 16, 1835.
