Person Page - 4

     The death of Mrs. Lucretia Waggoner in Seneca, Lenawee County, Michigan, on the 27th of October 1872, has already been announced, but her personal history, her character, and her extreme age suggest something more than formal mention of the event.
     Lucretia Buck, the daughter of Francis Buck, was born in western Massachusetts, April1, 1787. and when nine years of age removed to Bennington, Vermont and soon after to Shaftsbury, Vermont, which was her home until April 1, 1807 when she accompanied her brother Abel Buck to western New York, he having located in the township of Hamburgh, Erie County, where he helped erect the first dwelling, the second being his own. The trip from Vermont was made in a sleigh. The deceased stopped first at Batavia, then a mere hamlet, with but one dwelling between it and Buffalo (40 miles). This single dwelling was on what was known as "the transit line" and within the "Holland Purchase," which consisted of some 5,000,000 acres of land lying west of Steuben County, including the rich "Genesee Country" which had been sold by Massachusetts at 16 ½ cents per acres, and resold to a company of capitalists in Amsterdam, Holland.
     Subsequently, her brother, dying, deceased went to Buffalo, and was for some time in the family of Ebenezer Waldren. There she married Peter Lake, and remained until the commencement of the war of 1812.
     When her husband entered the service of the government, she went to Northeast Pennsylvania, near Erie, a country then entirely new and very sparsely settled.
     Here she remained until 1813 when she returned to Vermont on a visit. It was at Northeast that she experienced her first severe trials. With two young children, located in the wilderness, several miles from a post office, supplied by weekly mail, her husband away and subject to the dangers of war, and herself near an objective point of the enemy’s fleet (Erie) and the entire region in constant alarm - it is easily seen that her condition was anything but safe and far from agreeable.
     One incident will indicate something of the situation. Her husband had returned dangerously ill; their sole dependence for living was his meager pay. This was drawn at Erie, 14 miles distant, and must be receipted in person by either him or his wife. She left her sick bed and made the journey alone on horseback, but had to spend 24 hours awaiting her turn with the paymaster. At last receiving the stipend after nightfall, her extreme solicitude for her husband and family drove her to undertake the lonely journey through the dense forest amid darkness so intense as to make her horse’s head invisible, she the meantime subject to the mercy of the beasts of prey which prowled the wilderness. But at last the trip was accomplished in safety.
     She was at Northeast during the great excitement and alarm attending the construction of Perry’s Fleet at Erie, which was constantly threatened by the British; and in due time she shared in the joy of deliverance brought by the victory of that fleet Sept 10, 1913.
     Mr. Lake owned 80 acres of land between Buffalo Harbor and Cold Spring which is now within the city of Buffalo. This he sold for a small sum, and the war having closed the previous winter, he removed his family to Northern Ohio, landing at the mouth of the Huron River July 6, 1815. The trip occupied two weeks and was made in a boat of about ten tons, the passengers stopping each night to camp upon the beach. A few families then lived at Huron, but the comers passed at once up the river, to what was known as the "Flemond Place," some three miles from the lake. Here, then resided Mr. Flemond, a French Canadian, by whom Mr. Lake and his family were received with the cordiality which welcomed most immigrants to the western settlements at that date. It was the design of the family to locate permanently in New London, Huron County, but the prevalence of the fever and ague and there extreme suffering from that disease changed this plan and they remained the following fall and winter in such quarter as the circumstances afforded - the ague in the meantime them prostrate and almost helpless.
     The next year they removed to what had been the county seat of Huron County, alias Abbotsford, about three miles below the village of Milan.
     Here Mr. Lake died, and in 1819 the widow married Israel Waggoner, a farmer residing a mile below Abbotsford.
     On this farm the family remained about nine years. The experience there was not essentially different from that of other early settlers of that region.
     Social and religious privileges were very limited and life was but a succession of cares and toils intermitted by few opportunities for meeting friends and neighbors. That staple plague of the time - the ague - was a most reliable attendant, alternating now and then with bilious fevers and other severe maladies.
     At that time the forest was filled with wild animals including some bears and more wolves. The latter were ferocious and caused much havoc among the small flocks of sheep.
     The writer has often heard the deceased speak of penning the sheep next to the dwelling and having them attacked even there, she being compelled at times to go out at night on a bank overlooking a gully and blow a horn to frighten the wolves away.
     In April, 1928 the family removed to Milan, then a village of some 300 inhabitants where the parents remained until the decease of the husband in May 1857, the widow continuing here residence there until June 1869, when she went with her daughter to the place of her death in Michigan.
     The deceased was the mother of nine children, Sophia, Elisha, Francis and Susan Lake, and Clark, Ralph, Mary and Susan Waggoner. Of these now remain Lucretia (Mrs. Thomas Thompson of Van Lue, Hancock County, Ohio), Francis Lake of Winona, Minnesota, Clark Waggoner of Toledo, Ohio, Ralph Waggoner of Green Springs, Ohio and Mary (Mrs. R. H. Kinney of Seneca, Michigan). Two brothers Ira Buck of Adrian, Michigan and Hiram Buck of the state of New York, and two sisters Mrs. William Cook and Mrs. Ira Bellows of Rochester, N.Y. survive her.
     She was buried on the 29th ult. In the family lot at Milan, Ohio, the funeral services taking place in the Presbyterian Church of which society she was for forty years a member, the pastor Rev. J. W. Walters, officiating.
     The remains were attended to the grave by a goodly number of old neighbors of the deceased, including some of her earliest Ohio acquaintances, besides several friends from Michigan.
     It is with much embarrassment that the writer avails himself of the privilege of speaking the life of the deceased. While the child is liable to partial views of the parent's character, it is evident that such testimony is proper or the Sacred Word would not hold out, as an incentive to faithfulness in the mother, the assurance of that, if faithful, 'her children shall rise up and call her blessed.'

Eulogy by her son, Clark Waggoner.¹