PLATT, ZEBULON (1744-1816). Associator, Huntington Articles of Association. Zebulon Platt was born in Huntington, Long Island, to Amos Platt and Zerviah (Whitman) Platt on October 30, 1744, according to three sources on Ancestry.com. His mother, Zerviah, died six days after his birth. Zebulon had at least two older brothers as well as a younger half-sister named for his mother.
In 1772, Zebulon married Phebe Brewster and together they had four children: Brewster (1773); Charity (1775); Phebe (1787), and David, according to Ancestry.com.
Zebulon was an associator—that is, he was a signer of Huntington’s Articles of Association, in 1775. On May 8th of that year, 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.
Zebulon’s name also appears in Huntington Town Records as a signer of the 1778 Oath of Loyalty (Long Island was then occupied by British forces). According to Charles Street, who compiled the Records in 1889, loyalty oaths “were concessions forced from a conquered people.” Another entry in Huntington Town Records, dated 1777, records the appropriation of “one Horse valued at Seventeen Pounds,” taken by Sergeant Dasey of the Second Battalion of Loyalist General Oliver Delancey. The horse belonged to Zebulon Platt.
After the war ended, Zebulon continued to live in Huntington. The 1790 federal census recorded his household of five members: his sons Brewster and David; daughters Charity and Phebe, in addition to Zebulon. His wife, Phebe, had died in January of that year, ahead of the census.
In 1800, Zebulon’s household numbered six, according to that year’s federal census: Zebulon and his second wife, Elizabeth (married in 1793); their daughter, Elizabeth; and three of the children of his first wife, Phebe. His youngest son, Nathan Bryant, would be born at the end of that year, on the 29th of December. By the time of the 1810 federal census, Elizabeth and Nathan would be the only children still living at home in Huntington.
According to Josephine C. Frost, in her 1911 Cemetery Inscriptions from Huntington, Long Island, New York, a gravestone then stood in the Old Burying Ground with this inscription: “Zebulon Platt, died July 23, 1816. Age 72 years. A marble Department of Veterans Affairs headstone was applied for and placed at his grave by the Historian of the Town of Huntington in 1973. The application listed Zebulon as a private in the Army, without enlistment or discharge dates or decorations. A further description, later crossed out, reads: “Pvt Continental Line. Documents in [illegible] shows him being a pensioner but does not show [illegible] unit.” That appears to be the extent of existing information on his military service.
