Orsamus Holmes

A Sketch of Him and His Family – Also of Some Others Early of Sherburne.

Among the pioneers of Sherburne, Orsamus Holmes stands out a typical character upon the pages of its early history. In fact, those pages, as they appear in the town records, are his own calligraphy he having been chosen Town Clerk at the first Town Meeting, held at the house of Timothy Hatch, not far from the Wiley residence on the west side of the river, on the first Tuesday in April, 1795, and was his own anccessor for nine consecutive terms from 1795 to 1803, inclusive. His name appears in the list of jurors for 1793, and as one of the incorporators of the Sherburne Federal Library, January 10, 1800.

His name also appears as one of the School Commissioners for the town of Sherburne in the report for the winter of 1795-6, the original of which, bearing his autograph, is now at hand. So it will be seen that he was a prominent of the new settlement. His name is on the old map of the Proprietors as the owner of Lot Nos. 13 and 15 containing together 139 acres but he does not seem to have lived upon either of these tracts of land. Mrs. Amanda Gray Lee writes that “Orsamus Holmes lived near the (Quarter) school house – across the “Brook,” and the scholars always went to his spring for water.” And the Hon. Abrahm Dixon, late of Westfield, N.Y. in an old letter speaking of the early times, says: “In the summer of 1794, when I attended the school, it was kept in the barn of Orsamus Holmes.” That was unquestionably just across the Handsome Brook on the road leading north past the Newton homestead, and on the east side of the road, where there is still a house, and a spring to this day. There was the residence of Mr. Holmes, on a part of the Joel Northrup allotment. And there the location of the first Town Clerk’s office of Sherburne.

Orsamus Holmes was born, as his distinguished grandson, the late Orsamus Holmes Marshall, of Buffalo, wrote Elial T. Foote, date of February 23, 1852, (we copy from the orgininal) “in old Plymouth, Mass., on the 11th of October 1757. He was the son of Hezekiah Holmes, who was born in Plymouth County, Mass., February 5, 1728; he was the son of William Holmes who was born in the same County. His father emigrated from England. Orsamus Holmes, my grandfather, moved from Springfield, Vermont, in March 1793, and settled in Sherburne, Chenango County.”

Source: Un-cited newspaper article (1884-1892) provided by Joseph A. Holmes, III