JOSEPH LONGLEY
1794 - 1870
Joseph Longley (8), Ezekiel (7), William (6), William (5), John (4),
William (3), William (2),
John (1).
The son of Ezekiel and Mary (Swan) Longley, was born at
Shirley, Massachusetts on Oct. 29, 1794, and died April 5, 1870 in the Town
of Sullivan, Jefferson County, Wisconsin. He married 1. Before 1818, Vermont, Mary
_____, d. 1848; married 2. Clarissa _____, born Vermont; died Nov. 13, 1869,
Wheatland, Monroe County, New York.
Joseph and Mary Longley had ten children:
1. Ivory, b. Sept. 14, 1818, Vermont; d. Oct. 26, 1820, Wheatland, N.Y.
2. Charlotte, b. prob. Vermont, 1820; m. John (Jared) Blackmeer.
3. Ivory, b. Dec. 9, 1821, Wheatland, N.Y.; d. mar. 29, 1891, Ottawa, Waukesha Co.;
m. 1. Monroe Co., N.Y, Elsie Cheever; m. 2. Mary E. Riddle, Sullivan, Jefferson Co., Wis.
4. Warren, b. Feb. 18, 1824, Wheatland, N.Y.; d. Nov. 22, 1889, Sullivan, Jefferson Co., Wis.; m.
1. Caroline _____; m. 2. Oct. 10, 1867, Euphemia Meracle.
5. Clarissa, b. 1826, Wheatland, N.Y.; m. Norton Blackmeer; moved to Wamego, Kansas.
6. Hamilton, b. Dec. 29, 1827, Wheatland, N.Y.; d. Oct. 21, 1878, Sullivan,
Wis.; m. Elsie Osmond (Osmyn).
7. Mary, b. 1830; d. 1832, Wheatland, N.Y.
8. Mary, b. 1832, Wheatland, N.Y.; d. 1857, Sullivan, Wis.; m. Charles
Collier.
9. Edson, b. 1834, Wheatland, N.Y.; moved to Missouri.
10. Austin, b. 1837, Wheatland, N.Y.; m. Rachel Day; moved to Wamego, Kansas.
Blacksmith Shop
The fourth son of Ezekiel and Mary Longley was a child when he was bound to
a blacksmith named Phelps. We do not know if that was in Lancaster, where
the family moved shortly before his mother's death, or in Chittenden,
Vermont, where his father moved after her death.
In the History of the Town of Wheatland, Schmidt, p. 240, is a short
paragraph pertaining to Joseph: "There was a cobblestone blacksmith
shop on the north side of Harmon Road next east of the Shirts-Harmon house
in the 1830's. Who built it and occupied it before 1849, is not known, but
Joseph Longley, who came to Wheatland as early as 1820, bought it in 1849.
He conducted the blacksmith shop until 1869 when he sold it and moved to Wisconsin.
Longley lived in a house on the south side of Harmon Road, across the road
from his shop, and has long since been torn down. The cobblestone blacksmith
shop was razed by Eugene Harmon in the 1890's."
Mary Longley's Grave and Sign at the Entrance of Belcoda Cemetery
Mary Longley died in 1848 and she and three of her children are buried in
the Belcoda Baptist Church Cemetery, which is located a short distance from
their home. Joseph then married Clarissa and, after her death in 1869, he
sold the blacksmith shop and moved to Wisconsin where his other children
had emigrated to before 1844.
I do not know if I should believe a story told by one of Joseph's descendants,
but I will tell it anyhow. It had been said that when Joseph came to Wisconsin
he lived with his son, Warren first. He couldn't get along with his daughter-in-
law so he then lived with his son, Ivory, and couldn't get along with that
daughter-in-law either. Warren and Ivory sent him back to New York but he
returned. Fact or fiction? We'll never know. But, when you give the matter
some thought, at that time Joseph was 75 years old. In his lifetime he lost his mother
when he was very young; was transplanted from Massachusetts to Vermont; moved to western
New York State; had buried two wives and two children; and the rest
of his children had moved to Wisconsin. He had nowhere else to go.
Joseph Longley died April 5, 1870 and is buried in the Hardscrabble Cemetery
in the Town of sullivan, Jefferson County, Wisconsin.
 
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