Jacob Kingsbury

     Jacob Kingsbury was born on 6 July 1756, in Franklin, CT. He entered the Continental army under his cousin, Captain Asa Kingsbury, 11 Jul 1775, as a Corporal. After Sep 29 he went to Roxbury, to the camp at Boston. Next he became Sergeant in Capt. Huntington's company, which served at New York in August-September, 1776, and was in the retreat after the battle of Long Island. Later he joined the regiment of Col. Huntington as a private soldier at Camp Connecticut on the Hudson, having procured the money to buy an outfit by going on a privateering expedition from New London in the schooner 'Spy', from May 8 to Sep 26, 1777. He carried a gun only a few weeks when Col. Huntington appointed him an orderly. He was commissioned Ensign April 26, 1780, and marched to Virginia with the picked body of men chosen by the Marquis de Lafayettefor the southern campaign.¹

At the close of the war he was promoted to a Lieutenantcy, and assigned to the western army, where he continued uninterruptedly for fourteen years. During the last nine years of this period, to use his own words, he was 'not absent from military duty one hour.' This frontier service in those days of ambuscade and massacres, when the posts were weak and widely separated, but the foe numerous and ever on the alert, was one of the greatest toil and danger. He here received the well earned promotion of Captain and Major. He distinguished himself by defending Fort Harmar with a small number of men against a large body of Indians.¹ He was a man who apparently never thought much of what he had done, for although he lived an eventful life, during a long and important period, after it was over very few records of his life in detail had been preserved. One is a letter he wrote to his brother from Cincinnati saying that he knew he ought to go East to attend to some of his business affairs connected with his father's estate, but that he could only get 7 months leave of absence, which would only give him time to go and return without having any time for business!!¹ He married Sarah Palmer Ellis, daughter of Benjamin Ellis and Rosanna Thayer, on Sunday, 24 November 1799.¹

After his marriage he fought against the Creek Indians in Georgia. He was made Lieutenant-Colonel and transferred to the Western army and stationed at Mackinaw. Then to the Missouri river at Bellefontaine. In 1809 he became Colonel of the First Infantry. He was in command also at New Orleans.¹ Jacob Kingsbury died on 1 July 1837 at age 80.