Page:History of Delaware County (1856).djvu/173

DELAWARE COUNTY. 149 near where she died, and without any monument to mark the . ' place of her rest — which to this day remains unknown. Sub- sequently Judge W. married again, and (what is quite unu- sual for a man of his age who had become reduced in his property,) he acquired a handsome competency before his death. His remains were deposited in the grave-yard -jaear where he died, and a respectable marble tombstone has been erected to his memory. For a length of time before the organization of the town of Franklin, Judge W. was one, if not the only acting justice of the peace, in this portion of the then town of Harpersfield ; and at the first town meeting ordered by the legislature " to be held at the house of Sluman Wattles,^' in April, 1793, for the organization of the town of Franklin, he was elected Super- visor, and was often chosen to that and other offices of trust in after years. After the organization of the county of Delaware in 1797, he also held the office of county judge. During the active period of a long life, though much engaged in public and private business, his integrity was sel- dom called in question; and his public duties requiring so much of his time and attention, that he could hardly be expected to amass property except by unfair means, and his failing to do so, and having been at times in reduced circum- stances, a fair inference is, that in * his day there may have been such a thing as an individual being too honest to he inch ! For a long period he was the local agent of different pro- prietors of wild lands in this region, and no doubt his sympa- thy for, and the lenity of his disposition towards actual set- tlers upon the same, who were commonly poor, may have been, and was one, if not the chief cause of the serious pecu- niary embarrassments and losses which he afterwards suffered. As the pioneer settler, and one who for so long a time occupied a conspicuous position in the public business and 13*