Jedediah Burt (c.1780 – 1865-05-21) was my 4th-great-grandfather, with him and his wife Sybil being the parents of Elijah Burt. He was born in Canaan, New Hampshire the son of Benjamin Robert Burts and Mary Fox, and lived most of his life in Chittenden County, Vermont, where he died, in Williston. He worked as a shoemaker and is invariably described as very poor. He had the nickname Crapo.
His children and census records are covered under his wife’s entry.
His age was reported as 67 in the 1850 census and 77 in 1860, which places his birth in 1782 or 1783. The consistency of these is evidence for their correctness, but self-reported ages are often not accurate, and Jedediah, perhaps illiterate, could easily have lost track of his age.
This is relevant particularly because he is not listed among the children of Benjamin in the latter’s war pension file. This absence is hard to understand, but one theory is that he is listed under a different name. Leading candidates would be Seth (* 1783?-03-27) and Jacob (* 1776-06-10), the former due to his possible birth year, the latter due to Jedediah being referred to as “Jacob” in one letter, which might just be a mistake, but could reflect his original name. For example, he could’ve been christened Jacob Jedediah Burts, and gone by his middle name. In support of this theory, Jedediah does not seem to be familiar to the deponents who knew the family in Norwich; if he was born in 1783 he would have been a small boy and likely living with his mother, but if he were older, even 14, he is more likely to have struck out on his own. See Mary Fox for more discussion.
His death record and gravestone merely identify him merely as J. Burt. That could also weakly support the Jacob theory.
His ancestry is not known beyond his parents.
He married Sybil (maiden name unknown) on 1804-07-04, and had eleven children of record with her, which see for the list. His third child and second son was my great-great-great-grandfather Elijah Burt.
He secondly married Connecticut-born Bathsheba Mobbs (c.1795 – 1874-03-09)ref, on 1851-05-02. They had no children. My notes say that she was a widow, maiden name unknown, but I can no longer find why I thought that, and someone on the Internet claims she was the daughter of John Mobbs and Hannah Shepardson.
His son Allen’s poorhouse application lists his father’s occupation as shoemaker.
When his father’s war pension was distributed to the other children, they believed Jedediah to have died. He later appeared seeking his portion of the funds. This partly precipitated the further investigation which led to the discovery of the fraud by his mother’s physicians. It was universally agreed that the family had no guilt or knowledge of wrongdoing.
See Benjamin Burts for the full details of the case.
In 1812 Jedediah Burt, a shoemaker by profession, known by the nickname Crapo, who then resided near the mouth of Platt river, accidentally fell into the stream and was drowned to all appearance, but luckily was taken from the water in time, so that by strong and thorough application of proper means he was reanimated. It so happened that whilst the operation of restoring him was going on that a Methodist preacher came that way, and, when he had recovered his consciousness and speech, questioned him as to his thoughts and feelings whilst in the water drowning, and one question put was: ‘Did you not think when drowning of dying and going into eternity unprepared?’ ‘Yes,’ said Burt, ‘I thought some about dying, but a [damn] sight more about living.’ This was an uncivil and ungodly answer truly; but it is a leading principle in man’s nature. Mankind almost universally reflect but little about dying, but bestow all their thoughts upon living.
— The Vermont Historical Gazetteer, 1868ref