My Genealogy Hound

Emilius Kitchel Sayre, A. M., LL. B., farmer and stock raiser, was born in Battle Hill (now Madison), N. J., in 1810, the son of Baxter and Elizabeth (Kitchel) Sayre, both of English descent. Her ancestor, Robert Kitchel, one of the first settlers of Guilford, Conn.; he came with Rev. H. Whitfield, in a company of Puritans, in the first vessel that ever landed at New Haven. His son, Samuel Kitchel, was one of the first settlers of Newark, N. J. The father, a descendant of Joseph Sayre, one of the first settlers of Elizabethtown (now Elizabeth), N. J., was born in 1786 in Battle Hill. Moving to New York in 1828, he was one of the active builders of Chatham Street Chapel. He returned to New Jersey after a ten years’ residence in that city. He was a zealous and active temperance and anti-slavery advocate, and a most earnest Christian worker. He was one of the first voters with the liberty party. He moved to Rock County, Wis., in 1851, and died in 1857, on a visit to his birthplace. The mother, born in Hanover Neck, N. J., in 1786, died in Wisconsin in 1854. Her father was Aaron Kitchel, a member of United States Congress, from New Jersey, from 1791 to 1793, from 1794 to 1797, and from 1799 to 1801; voting for Jefferson against Burr, and United States senator from New Jersey, from 1805 to 1809, when, his wife dying, he resigned. Our subject is the eldest of nine children; was educated at the common schools of his birth place, and at the private schools of Moses Smith, in Elizabethtown, N. J. He joined the junior class of Amherst College, in October, 1826, and was graduated in 1828, third in a class of forty-two. He then served for three years as professor of Latin, geography and arithmetic, in Washington Institute, New York. He graduated from the law department of Transylvania University, Lexington, Ky., in 1833, was admitted to the bar there, and remained in active practice, in all the courts, State and Federal until July, 1852. He came to Monticello, in April, 1836, purchased about 3,500 acres of land, and commenced the extensive improvement of it. He moved his family upon it in July, 1852, and engaged in farming and stock-raising. In 1874 he lost his estate by loaning the use of his name to a firm of pork packers in St. Louis. Through the kind and wise providence of his uncle, David A. Sayre, of Lexington, his family now reside upon a part, about 1,500 acres, of his old farm. In 1861 he was a delegate to the State constitutional convention, voting against secession, but for active resistance to the war measures of the Government. In June, 1844, he married Elizabeth Pierson, born in 1823, daughter of Elijah Pierson, of New York, a descendant of Abraham Pierson, son of the first president of Yale College, from whom also her husband is descended through his daughter Grace Pierson, and of Col. Ebenezer Condict, of Morristown, N. J., who died there of small pox in 1779, while in command of his regiment, in active service under Gen. Washington. Their children are Charlotte J., the wife of Thomas H. Boorman, of New York; Elizabeth S., the wife of William Frank Smith, of this county; David E., of Arkansas, who married a daughter of Gen. Joseph Porter; Emilius K., Jr., who died, a member of the St. Louis bar, in 1875; Thomas Dolan, resident of this county, on the old farm; John S., named After his maternal great-grandfather, Dr. John Stanford, of New York, assistant-surgeon in United States Navy; Hannah Meeker, and Farrand, second lieutenant of the Eighth United States Cavalry.