Page:History of Delaware County (1856).djvu/400

376 HISTORY OF confidence and esteem of his townsmen is sliown, in the fact tliat he has been annually elected town-clerk of that town for the last twenty-five years. William Holliday, aged one hundred and four years^ one month and twenty days, died at Colchester, in this county, on the 21st of February last. Mr. Holliday was born in the town of Rye, Westchester county, in this State, -on the ..26th of December, 1750. He removed to the town of Harpersfield, in this county, in 1791, where he remained until 1795. He then removed to Colchester, where he has since resided. At the time he came to this county, he had to place his movables on the backs of horses, there being no carriage-roads. He assisted in making the first ten miles of road ever made in this county, which was at the head of the West Branch of the Delaware river. Where the village of Delhi now stands, there was but one log hut. Mr. Holliday was a professor of religion, and was a member of the Baptist church for seventy-six years, and for fifty-six years a deacon. He had thirteen children, eighty grandchildren, one hundred and fifty-one great-grand- children, and seventeen great-great-grandchildren — total 261. There are very few, if any persons now alive, who were in the county at the time Mr. Holliday came into it, and he has, after outliving the generations that came on the stage with him, been gathered to those that went before him. The sudden decease of Col. Am as A Parker, at his residence in this village, on the 1st of March, 1855, in full health and vigor of mind, though at an advanced age, has cast a gloom over this community, and left a void that will not soon be filled. He was born at Washington, Litchfield county, Connecticut, October 28th, 1784, and was a graduate of Yale College. He attended the law school at Litchfield, and finished his studies with Peter Van Schaick, of Kinderhook. He came to Delhi