Local History - Levi Gallup, an Early Jefferson Settler

With contributions from Bonnie C. Dailey, Jefferson Historical Society & Historian of the Town of Jefferson

JEFFERSON — During this year’s 250th anniversary celebration of our country, the Jefferson Historical Society is honoring the veterans of the American Revolution who settled the area in the years after the war. Those first pioneers began arriving in the 1790s, and a short time later, in 1803, Jefferson officially became the seventh town in Schoharie County.

The vast majority of those early settlers in Jefferson were New Englanders such as Levi Gallup, his wife Abigail, and their six children. Born in 1760 in Connecticut, Levi had served in the Connecticut Line during the American Revolution. On September 6, 1781, he participated in defending against the attack on Fort Griswold and New London by British troops led by Benedict Arnold. Many American soldiers lost their lives in that engagement, but Levi survived. After the war, in 1785, he and Abigail were married.Their six children were all born in Stonington, New London County, Connecticut, where Levi himself had been born. 

In about 1792, Levi and his family relocated to Albany County, New York. Sometime before 1810, the family moved again, to the frontier town of Jefferson in Schoharie County, New York, where Levi and Abigail would spend the rest of their lives. They were buried in what we now call the Old Jefferson Burying Ground. Their children—Abigail, Levi, Lucy, Nathan, Ezekiel, and Silas— also lived in Jefferson. Each of them was buried in Jefferson, four in the Old Jefferson Burying Ground, and two in other cemeteries in the town.

The following account of the Gallup family’s move to Jefferson was printed as part of grandson David W. Gallup’s entry in the Biographical Review, Otsego County, 1893, p. 80. 

[Levi Gallup and his family relocated from Berne] to the town of Jefferson, Schoharie County, making the removal with horses and wagon, cooking and camping on the way. The journey was made in the month of February, and at Blenheim the Schoharie Creek had to be ferried in a dugout canoe. The creek was much swollen by floods, and it was no small task to get his family over in safety. The household effects were the first taken across, then the wagon which had to be taken to pieces. The horses swam the stream, icicles forming on them as soon as they climbed the bank. Loading their goods, they drove on through a dense forest twelve miles and stopped at their nearest neighbor’s, then located on their farm, cleared it, and made a home, and on this place Levi Gallup lived until his death.

Levi Gallup, pioneer settler of Jefferson and veteran of the American Revolution, died February 18, 1850, in his 90th year.

For additional information about Levi Gallup and the other Revolutionary War Patriots who lived in Jefferson, contact the Jefferson Historical Society at historicalsocietyjefferson@gmail.com or visit the Nicholas J. Juried Museum of Jefferson History located in Judd Hall, 163 Main Street, Jefferson, this summer. To contact Jefferson Town Historian Bonnie Dailey, email her at historiantownofjefferson@gmail.com.