SAMMIS, SILAS, SR. (1700 or 1701-1779). Associator, Huntington Articles of Association (1775). Silas was born in Huntington, New York, to Silas Sammis (born 1676) and Martha Cory Sammis. The family grew to include siblings Martha, Elizabeth, Jeremiah, David, and Timothy, according to several genealogical sources via Find A Grave.
In 1729, Silas married Ruth Alexander Bryan. Together they produced at least seven children: Silas Jr (see), Ruth, Jesse, Deborah, Alexander, Phebe, and Mary. Silas was mentioned in the Huntington Town Records of 1757 as one of a company of about twenty men chosen to oversee highways.
Silas is listed as a signer of Huntington’s Articles of Association in Inhabitants of New York, 1774-1776: 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.
A grandson, David Silas Sammis (see), born in 1761 to Silas Jr., eldest son of Silas Sr., and Ruth, served in Colonel Josiah Smith’s 1st Regiment of Minutemen in the 2nd Company of the Huntington Militia.
Silas died in 1779 and was buried in the Huntington’s Old Burying Ground, along with at least nine other individuals carrying the Sammis name, including his wife Ruth, who is buried beside him, according to Cemetery Inscriptions from Huntington, Long Island, New York, by Josephine C. Frost (1911).
