Vital Records, Oxford, NY, August to November 1814

 Oxford Gazette, Oxford, NY

Marriages

On Wednesday evening last in this town [Oxford, Chenango Co., NY], by Ransom Rathbun, Esq., Mr. Lyman C. Beebe to Miss Persis Hacket.  [Aug. 2, 1814]

In this village [Oxford, Chenango Co., NY] on Thursday evening last, by the Rev. Mr. Thorp, Mr. Philo Judson to Miss Charity Bradley. [Oct. 1, 1814]

Deaths

In Albany, of a short but severe illness, Ebenezer Foote, Esq., aged 41 years, an eminent Attorney and Counsellor at Law. [Aug. 2, 1814]

On the 13th ult at the house of Spencer Coleman, Esq. in East Broomfield, Ontario Co. [NY] Polydore B. Wisner, Esq. of Geneva [Ontario Co. NY], in the 49th year of his age. [Aug. 2, 1814]

In Coventry, Con. Mr. Alexander Kenney, aged 106, the number of is descendants are about nine thousand. [Nov. 12, 1814]

On the 25th of July near London, the famous Dibden, the author of twelve hundred songs, many plays, etc. all tending to excite the best affections of the heart. [Nov. 12, 1814]

Died, on the debtors' limits in the village of Norwich [Chenango Co., NY], at 6 o'clock in the afternoon of the 7th inst. Henry William Ludlow, Esq. AEt, 38 years.

There is in the delicacy of honor, a kind of feather edge, which bristles from the soul like that on a new honed razor - unnoted by the eye yet felt in the beard of the sentiment.  It is this feather edge of honor playing against the current of every vice with its wakeful vibrations like a pike's fin in the stream, which guards the moral flock from all impurities.  Mr. Ludlow possessed it, and with it a lofty and steadfast integrity united to the most clear and intuitive view of social duty and manly obligation.  Aut mors, aut vita decora, [either death or life is beautiful], being his maxim, as it was the motto on the breech of his pistols.  Mr. Ludlow possessed not the thrifty talents of the ardent and enterprising money lover.  Neither did his early habits lie in the path of accumulation.  It is not therefore a matter of much surprise that when he was incarcerated for the sum of 280 dollars, his mental or practical expedients should fail him.  He lay 18 months confined for this debt, and finally, perished in despondency.  Every ligament and fiber which knit him to life, having been fretted, and rasped, and chafed to a gossamer, by pride long abused, and hope sickening in pursuit of the fair pictures of youthful promise and florid expectation.  Snapped at last, and left him in Eternity, buoyant on his virtues.  His eyes were closed by strangers, strangers mourned him, and he lies buried in a stranger's field.  Stat enunibus hora. [The burden waits for an hour.]

Mr. Ludlow, the deceased, was the eldest son of that Mr. Thomas Ludlow, of the city of New York, who can boast a fortune of 250,000 Dollars, with two surviving children only to share it.  A man with an unbending heathenish stoicism, which leaves him unjaded by the officiousness of parental affection, domestic attachments, or social obligation.  A man who having outlaid his destined period on earth,     [-?-] to eternity, with his heels to the stlt, striving for a noisome foot more to his "ropy chain of rheoms" like a tared boer in a rope walk, at the end of his tether.  A man whom Perius has described as one:

...who doffs his coat / To save a farthing in a ferry boat, / Ever a glutton at another's cost, / But in whose kitchen dwells perpetual frost. /  Born with the curse and anger of the Gods, / And that indulgent genius he defrauds. / To a short meal he makes a tedious grace, / Before the barley pudding comes in place, / Then bids fall on; himself, for saving charges, / A peel'd slic'd onion eats, and tipples verjuce.

[Sept 17, 1814]