Ebenezer Pennock

From the Madison County, NY, Times - July 1896

It occurred Sunday morning - A Pioneer of Sullivan - There are but Few Men like Him. Farmers and Farmhands will miss him. A large funeral.

Ebenezer Pennock died in this village, Sunday Morning between the hours of 11 and 12 o’clock. He had been sick for several months and was gradually growing worse, though hopes were everywhere expressed that he might recover and again be seen making his daily trips among the people he has for so many years travelled in his daily toil.

Ebenezer Pennock was born in the Town of Hebron, Washington County this state Dec 23, 1820 and had he lived until next Dec would have been 76 years. His parents came to this state from Connecticut, and when Mr. Pennock was yet a lad moved on a small farm just south of Perryville. When He was 20 years he gave his father $100 to release him of his time and went to work for Captain Cady on the farm now owned by Smith Cady. He was industrious and a manager, and about 1842 bought the farm now occupied by Wm. Jones at Bolivar. In those days there was along the canal, farmers who did what was known as “tripping for the line” furnishing horses to tow a boat from one station to another, and Mr. Pennock did this.

Then he commenced to expand in land owning and gradually his land possessions went north and eastward throughout the Town of Sullivan until they extended over thousands of acres.

His ownership at the time of his death being 3,600 acres, though there were times when he owned many more acres and in addition many tax sale lands until he was the largest land owner in central New York, if not in the state. When the New York Central Railroad used wood instead of coal Mr. Pennock cleared lands north of the Depot and sold them wood and the better goods for ties. This work he has continued and it has been of great assistance to hundreds of labouring people in the town.. In addition to the large weekly payroll, Mr Pennock has had some 36 families interested with him in farm work and onion growing and it is largely due to his labour that all the lands north were developed into onion and celery lands. Mr Pennock has been interested in enterprises other than farming, being for some time president of the Chittenango Cotton company and later owner of the mill property. He was also a director in the Canastota National Bank. He was a firm believer in democracy and wielded an influence in the politics of this locality. He hunted up the needy and gave him work and it is said that among the things that worried him at the last was the large number of labourers and their families whom he felt needed his assistance and his guidance. No man in Sullivan will be missed by the labourers and merchants as much as Ebenezer.

Mrs. Pennock died in 1877. There survives a son Charles, a grandson to whom he was greatly attached and two sisters, Mrs. Reuben Carpenter and Mrs Butterly, the latter dangerously ill at her home north of the village, and a brother Simon at Chittenango Stn and a brother in Oswego County.

The deceased was a type of that element which meets duty with courage, views disaster undismayed, and is sustained by the unwavering conviction that success is a certain result of earnest endeavour.

He was a pioneer of the Town of Sullivan and his name is interwoven with the transition of its productive acres from the reign of the forest to the fertility of the present.

Note: Ebenezer Pennock's widow was Ann (Coats) Pennock