(1752-1829). Private, Colonel Josiah Smith’s Regiment, 1st Regiment of Minutemen, Suffolk County; associator, Huntington, New York. As per the posting on the Find A Grave website, John was born on January 18, 1752, in Northport, Suffolk County, to Stephen Ketcham (1732-1792) and Ann née Titus (1728-1803). The family tree on Ancestry.com spells his surname as Ketchum. Raymond Gould Brush, in his application to the Sons of the American Revolution, which was approved on January 21, 1926, reports that he was a great-great-great-grandson of Stephen, who served as a soldier in Colonel Smith’s 1st Regiment of Minutemen and was an associator in Huntington supporting the Patriots. John is noted in Brush’s application but his military service is not mentioned.
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.
On December 7, 1973, Rufus B. Langhans, the Huntington Town Historian, applied for a United States Headstone (upright marble headstone with no emblem) for Military Veterans citing Ketcham’s service as a private in the 1st Regiment of Suffolk County Minutemen under Col. Josiah Smith, confirming other data. In red ink, that application noted that Ketcham was a private in Capt. Thomas Wickes’s Company. As per the Chronology of Town Clerks, Ketchum served as a town clerk and treasurer from 1781-1804, after the death of Solomon Ketcham (relationship unknown).
Ketcham married Elizabeth Gildersleeve, who predeceased him in 1813. Find A Grave lists ten children as does the online family tree on Ancestry; one child, Titus, died in infancy. They were the parents of: Phoebe (1775-1840, who married Richard Sammis); Silas Titus (1777-1823); Elizabeth (1779-?, who married John Darling); Sarah (1779-1812); Nathaniel Brewster (or Brewester, 1783-1819); Maria (1793-1863, who married Nathaniel Hendrickson); Anna (1788-1847, who married Walter Gould); Titus (1790-1791); Harriet (1792-1861, who married Harvey Bishop); and Stephen (1795-1840).
As per New York, U.S. Tax Assessment Rolls of Real and Personal Estates, 1799-1804 for Suffolk County, John Ketcham is among those listed. He had $3,159 in land and personal estate and owed $3.15 in taxes; he was one of the wealthiest citizens. According to the 1810 census, there were six members of the Ketcham household including two white males over 45, one male aged 10-15, one female over 45, one female 26 through 44, one female 16 through 25. The 1820 census lists a John Ketcham living in Huntington. That census lists one free male aged 26 through 44, two free males aged 10 through 15, one free female aged 26 through 44, one person engaged in agriculture and a total of four persons residing in the residence. A Titus Ketcham, born between 1750-1759, and possibly the subject of this biography, is listed in Heads of Farms at the First U.S. Census (1908) and posted on the American Genealogical-Biographical Index.
John died on December 29, 1829, aged 77 years, 11 months and 11 days, according to Cemetery Inscriptions from Huntington, Long Island, New York, copied by Josephine C. Frost (1911). Find A Grave cites his burial place as the Old Burying Hill Cemetery in Huntington, New York, commonly referred to as the Old Burying Ground. Four of his children predeceased him, including three adult children- Silas, Sarah and Nathaniel. Find A Grave adds that Ketcham is buried in Section 1, grave 69. John’s death is also recorded in the U.S. Revolutionary War Burial Index with the burial site of Old Huntington Cemetery and a reference to Mather’s Refugees.
An exhibition of Huntington’s Legal History, presented by Town Clerk Andrew Raia and Town Attorney Deborah Misir, was held at the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Building in Huntington March-May 2023; Ketcham’s name was among those listed as former town clerks.
