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Samuel Seely: Connecticut/New York

Samuel Seely (b. 1687, d. ca 1779) had Puritan ancestry, being the grandson of Obadiah Seely, one of the first settlers of Stamford, CT in 1642-3.[1]   When Samuel was growing up, although there were a few Quakers and other religious minorities, Stamford was still a typical New England Puritan town of several hundred people with its central Congregational Meeting House, town commons, and town meetings.   By 1709 it probably had close to a thousand people.   This was the cultural environment into which Charlotte brought her two small boys when she married Samuel in 1709.

At the beginning of the 18th Century, Orange Co., New York (running southwest from the Hudson River around Newburgh and West Point to the New Jersey border) had virtually no white inhabitants.   A 1702 census showed only 54 white males over 16--almost all of them Dutch.   In 1703, 12 Indian Chiefs granted a patent, called the Wawayanda Patent, to 12 patentees then residing in Haverstraw, New Jersey. Covering some 150,000 acres (parts of the later towns of Warwick, Minisink, Goshen, and Hamptonburgh), it was essentially a speculation and the speculators began to buy and sell interests, mostly to each other, without anyone actually settling on the land.  For several years they had an office in New York City where they exhibited maps and drawings and offered lots, but further speculators were few and prospective settlers fewer still.  It appears that no actual settlements were made before 1712.  The town of Goshen was laid out in 1714 and Samuel Seely and family were among the first handful of settlers there.  Several other related families came from Stamford; they probably went out together.[2]   Samuel’s land purchase indenture, dated 31 July 1714, indicates that he bought for £20 "all that certain undivided two and thirtieth part of one equal thirteenth part of a certain tract of land in Orange County called Wawayanda".[3]

The two Popino boys were now the oldest in a growing family. By 1714 John Popino would be about 9 or 10 and Peter about 8, and there were already three younger Seely children.   Charlotte subsequently bore five more.  Think of John and Peter Popino as Seely stepchildren, since they never really knew their father and were raised in this English colonial environment.  Samuel was an important member of the community.  In 1722 he was one of seventeen citizens who signed an indenture providing 200 acres to support the first Presbyterian minister in Goshen.[4]   Samuel's name later appears on a tax list for Orange Co. in 1755, showing personal assets of only £0/11/6.[5]  This would suggest that he was retired, probably a widower, and living with one of his family. In 1757 he was listed in the account book of the minister of the Florida NY Presbyterian Church.[6]  He probably was living with his stepson, John Poppino, or one of John's children.  He is last mentioned in the 1779 tax list, suggesting that he lived to be 92 or more.[7]