John Mitchell

UPDATE, JULY 2009 - Drove into Cherry Valley to search for John Mitchell's grave this Sunday, but the Plaide Palette was closed, and the kid working at the CV Museum didn't know a thing about Hugh or John Mitchell. :( Tried calling Sue Murray-Miller (607.264.3769), but had to leave a message w/ Edward's cell number.

We decided to drive to Roseboom itself and look around. It is a small town only a couple miles up the road founded in 1840, 100 years after CV, and named after a prominent family. Purely by luck, we drove down a road past the Roseboom Historical Association building - I noticed the sign up front. When we pulled in, we noticed an old cemetery in the back. We searched each tombstone, and many, especially in the section closest to the building, were in the right time frame - 1800's. Unfortunately, though, some of the tombstones were unreadable due to erosion, and we didn't see ANY Mitchell tombstones.

The Roseboom Historical Association building was closed and had no contact info posted - not even an address. I did find a sign on the back gate of the cemetery that had information for the Roseboom Cemetery Association, so I called their President, Dorman Webb (607.264.3658). He was very nice, but he didn't have any records or recollection of a Mitchell being buried there. He said we'd been searching an old Baptist cemetery. He also told me that the Roseboom Historical Association "don't know nothing!" and are just a building for meetings but have no records. He suggested we go into Cooperstown, the county seat, and check the records there. He said he has done that himself for people in his family tree. He said that if John Mitchell was buried somewhere in the county that they would be able to tell us exactly which cemetery.

At this point, we had pretty much accepted defeat for this trip and were going to head back to Fayetteville. Just as we were preparing to make the return drive, though, Sue Murray-Mitchell called us on Edward's cell! She said that John Mitchell's great-grand-niece Anna had definitely seen his grave in the Roseboom Cemetery, and she verified that we had been looking in the right cemetery. She said she would contact the Roseboom historian about John Mitchell and get back to us. She seemed to think John Mitchell was a child of Hugh's 2nd marriage, and that only a daughter or two from the 1st marriage had survived the CV Massacre, but she didn't have any proof or details about that. [I had it in my head - but I don't know why - that the surviving child of the 1st marriage might have been a boy old enough to be away serving in the militia when the CV Massacre happened...] I also asked her to put me in touch with Anna, since we are related, evidently, and she said she would! So I am hoping to be able to get more info this summer - and maybe we will be able to follow up on it next summer, if no one else does it sooner! :) LFB

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John Mitchell is buried several miles from Cherry Valley, NY, at the Roseboom Cemetery - the lady at the Cherry Valley Museum (Sue Murray-Miller, owner of the Plaide Palette shop next door to it & also the author of the FIVE DAYS IN NOVEMBER book about the 1778 Cherry Valley massacre) gave us directions, but we didn't get to his cemetery this summer...

MUST GO THERE ASAP - Can hopefully get info from his tombstone about his dates, places, and relations. Not sure if 1st wife or 2nd wife of Hugh Mitchell is his mom... Not sure of his wife's name...

LFB August 2008