♂Jahaziel J. Day

Jahaziel J. Day (1 March 1803 – 1 August 1875) was a resident of the town of Norwich, Chenango County, New York, whose will directed that his son George, a marble dealer, be paid a hundred dollars for a monument he had already set up on his father’s burial lot; George witnessed the will and died four weeks later, seven months before his father. He was the younger brother of Thirza Day (born 1802), the great-great-grandmother of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007).

Early life and family

Jahaziel J. Day was born on 1 March 1803 in Chenango County, New York, the son of Thomas G. Day (1772–1849) and Catherine Dey (1773–1850). He married Betsy Randall (1809–1880), a native of Swanzey, Cheshire County, New Hampshire. The couple had six children who are known: a son, George R. Day (1831–1874), four daughters, Betsey A., Emily R., Laura J. and Electa A., and a younger son, Allen E. Day. By the 1870s the daughters had married and were known as Betsey A. Brown and Electa A. Ashcraft, both of Norwich, Emily R. Brewer of Plymouth, and Laura J. Moore of Carbondale, Pennsylvania.

Norwich

The censuses place him in the town of Norwich in 1850, 1855, 1860, 1865 and 1870; by the last of these he and Betsey, aged 67 and 61, were living alone. He appears as a seller of land in the county’s deed index in 1852, and on 20 March 1866 he bought a village lot on Eastman Street in Norwich from Heal G. Hickok and his wife Laura. In 1873 the deed index records a conveyance from Jahaziel J. Day to his son George R. Day; the deed’s terms are not known, so what passed between them is not known.

George had become a marble dealer in the village of Norwich. The census of 1870 gives him that trade, with real estate worth $2,500, and a county directory lists him in the firm of Day & Ashcraft, dealers in monuments and tombstones. His partner was Henry M. Ashcraft, the husband of George’s sister Electa.

The will and the monument

On 2 December 1874 Jahaziel made his will. He left everything he owned to his wife Betsey, whom he named executrix, “after paying my son George R. Day the sum of one hundred dollars for a monument erected by him for me on my burial lot situated in the cemetery at Woods Corners, town of Norwich”. The son who put up the stone for his living father sold stones for a living, and the will treats the hundred dollars as payment for work done rather than as a gift. George signed the will as one of its two witnesses, the other being Silas Brooks of Norwich.

George R. Day died on 30 December 1874, four weeks after witnessing his father’s will, leaving a widow, Harriet L. Day, and one son, Frank G. Day, then a boy of seventeen. Jahaziel died at Norwich on 1 August 1875, aged 72, and was buried that month in Mount Hope Cemetery, Norwich.

The will was proved before the Chenango County surrogate on 24 July 1876, on the testimony of Silas Brooks, “the only surviving subscribing witness”. Six heirs were cited: the five living children, and the grandson Frank G. Day, who stood in his dead father’s place and, being under age, was represented by a guardian appointed by the court. Betsey survived her husband by less than five years and died on 9 March 1880. Her own will, leaving a hundred and fifty dollars to each of “my children” by name, passed over the grandson; she named her son-in-law Henry M. Ashcraft as executor. In 1881 Frank G. Day and his mother, by then living in Mills County, Iowa, sold the Eastman Street lot that Jahaziel had bought in 1866.

Notes

His will places his burial lot, with its monument, in the cemetery at Woods Corners in the town of Norwich, where his father’s gravestone also stands. A memorial record places his grave, and his wife’s, at Mount Hope Cemetery in Norwich, which is a different burial ground. A will’s burial clause states an intention, and the records do not show whether he was ever buried at Woods Corners.

The court citation of 1876 names the grandson twice, once as Franklin G. Day, served in person, and once as Frank G. Day, represented by his guardian. The same court served and represented him in the same way, under the name Frank, at the settlement of his father’s estate later that year, and the two entries are taken to be one boy.

His parentage, and his place as a brother of Thirza Day, rest on a compiled family tree; no record found so far names him as a son of Thomas G. Day. The census takers wrote his unusual given name in several ways, among them Johassel (1860) and Johazel (1870).