OLD HENRY FRANCISCO


According to Family History and Documented History from libraries and Historians; the following different dates are listed concerning Henry and will list both if later found one to be more correct than the other.

Date of Birth - May 31, 1686 / June 11, 1686.
Date of Death - October 10, 1820 / October 25, 1820.
Place of Death - Sales, New York / Salem, New York / Whitehall, New York.
Second Wife's Name - Ruth Wilson / Ruth Fuller.

Service as Soldier 1777/1778, served as Soldier in Colonel Phillip Van Cortlandt's Albany County, New York Regiment.

Service as Soldier - enlisting as Private January 15, 1777, in Captain Jeremiah Burrough's Company, Colonel Seth Warner's Regiment, Continental Troops. Discharged April 20, 1778, on Dr. Washburn's recommendation.

Historian information states Henry moved to England via Holland where he enlisted in the British Army as a Drummer Boy; beating the drum at the coronation of Queen Anne in 1702. Information states he came to America during the French and Indian Wars when he was carried prisoner to Quebec after Braddock's defeat. His military records list his name as Henry Francis Sisco. Information states that when he died it was from ague and fever. (Chill or fever due to malaria.) Not from old age.

The following is taken from the 3rd volume of the Western Review, published in Lexington, Kentucky, by William Gibbs Hunt, in 1821, and is an abstract from remarks made on a short tour between Hartford and Quebec in the Autumn of 1819, by the author, Professor Silliman / Sillman, of a journal of travels in England, Holland, and Scotland. New Haven printed and published by S. Converse, 1820, Pp. 407, 12 mo.

The old man of the age of Louis XIV, whom Mr. Sillman interviewed, has very recently died on October 25, 1820. The longevity is so remarkable and the circumstances so striking that we shall be excused for copying the statement of our author:

Two miles from Whitehall, on the Salem road to Albany, lives Henry Francisco, a native of France and of a place which he pronounced Essex, but doubtless not the orthography, and the place was probably some obscure village which may not be noticed in maps and gazetteers.

Having a few hours to spare before the departure of the steamboat for St. John's, Canada, we rode out to see probably the oldest man in America.  He believes himself to be 134 years old, and the country around believe him to be of this great age. When we arrived at his Residence, a plain farmer's house, not painted, rather out of repair and much open to the wind, he was upstairs at his daily work of spooling and winding yarn.  This occupation is auxiliary to that of his wife who is a weaver, and although more than 80 years old, she weaves six yards a day, and the old man can supply her with more yarn than she can weave.

Supposing he must be very feeble, we offered to go upstairs to him, but he soon came down, walking somewhat stooped, and supported by a staff, but with less apparent inconvenience than most persons exhibit at 85 or 90.  His stature is of middle size, and though he is rather delicate and slender, he stoops but little even when unsupported.

His complexion is very fair and delicate, and his expression bright, cheerful, and intelligent; his features are handsome, and considering that they have endured through 1 1/3 part of a century, they are regular, comely, and wonderfully un-disfigured by the hand of time, his eyes are of a lively hue, his profile is Grecian and very fine, his head is completely covered with the most beautiful and delicate white locks imaginable - they are so long and abundant from the crown of his head, parting regularly from a central point, and reaching down to his shoulders.  His hair is perfectly snow white except where it is thick on his neck; when parted there shows some few dark shades, the remnants of a former century.

He still retains the front teeth of his upper jaw; his mouth is not fullen in like that of old people generally, and his lips, particularly are like those of middle life, his voice in a strong and sweet toned manner speaks, although a little tremulous, his hearing is very little impaired, so that a voice of usual strength, with distinct articulation, enables him to understand.

His eyesight is sufficient for his work, and he distinguishes large print, such as the title page of the Bible, without glasses. His health is good and has always been so; except that he has now a cough and expectoration. He informed us that his Father, driven out of France by religious persecution of the French Protestants or Huguenots in the latter part of the reign of Louis XIV, fled to Amsterdam. At Amsterdam his Father married his Mother, a Dutch Woman, five years before he was born, and before that event, returned with her to France.

When he was 5 years old, his Father again fled on account of de religion, as he expressed it, for his language although very intelligible English is marked by French peculiarities. He says he well remembers their flight, and that it was in the winter, for he recollects that as they were descending a little hill that was covered with snow, he cried out to this Father, O Fader, do go back and get my little earicle (sled).

From these dates we are able to fix the time of his birth, provided he is current in the main fact, for he says he was present at Queen Anne's Coronation, and was then 16 years old, the 2lst/3lst of May, Old Style.

His Father, as he asserts, after his return from Holland, had again been driven from France, by persecution, and the second time took refuge in Holland, and afterwards in England, where he resided with his Family.

At the time of the Coronation of Queen Anne in 1702, this shows Henry Francisco to have been born in 1686, to have been expelled from France in 1691, and therefore to have completed his 133rd year on the 11th day of June, 1819. Of course he is more than three months advanced in his 134th year.

It is notorious that about this time multitudes of French Protestants fled on account of the persecutions of Louis XIV, resulting from the revocation of the Edict of Hantes, which occurred on October 12, 1685, and notwithstanding the guards upon the frontiers and their methods of precaution or rigor to prevent emigration, it is well known that for years multitudes continued to make their escape, and that Louis lost 600,000 of his best and most useful subjects.

I asked Francisco if he saw Queen Anne crowned. He replied with great animation, and with an elevated voice, 'Ah, dat I did, and a fine looking woman she was, too, an any dat you will see now a days.' He said he fought in all Queen Anne's Wars, and was at many battles, and under many commanders, but his memory fails and he cannot remember their names, except the Duke of Marlborough, who was one of them. He has been much cut up by wounds, which he showed us, but cannot always give a very distinct account of his warfare.

He came out with his Father from England to New York, probably early in the last century, but cannot remember the date. He said, pathetically, when pressed for accounts of his military experience, 'O , I was in all Queen Anne's Wars, I was at Niagara, at Ostego, on the Ohio (in Braddock's defeat in 1755, where he was wounded,) I was carried prisoner to Quebec (in the Revolutionary War when he must have been 90 years old), I fight in all sorts of wars, all my life; I see dreadful trouble, and den I have thought our friends, turned Tories, and de British too, and fight ourselves. 0, dat was de worst of all. ' He here became much afflicted and almost too full for utterance. It seems that during the Revolutionary War he kept a tavern at Fort Edward, and he lamented in a very animated manner, that the Tories burnt his house and barn, 400 barrels of grain, that his wife said, was the same year Miss M'Crea was murdered.

He has had 2 wives, 21 children; the youngest child is the daughter in whose house he now lives, and she is 52 years old.  Of course he was 82 years old when she was born. They suppose several of the older children are still living at a very advanced age, beyond the Ohio, but they have not heard from them in several years.

The family were neighbors of Miss M'Crea, and were acquainted with the circumstances of her tragical death. They said the lover, Mr. Jones, vowed vengeance against the Indians, but on account of the cost, wisely gave it up.

Henry Francisco has been active all his life, energetic, although not a stout framed man. He was formerly fond of spirits and did, for a certain period, drink more than was proper, but that habit appears to have been long abandoned. In other respects he has been remarkably abstentious, eating but little and particularly abstaining almost entirely from animal food. His favorite articles being tea, bread, butter, and baked apples. His wife said that after such a breakfast, he would go out and work till Noon, and dine upon the same if he could get it, and then take the same at night, and particularly that he always drunk tea whenever he could obtain it, three cups at a time, three times a day.

The old man manifests a great deal of feeling, and even of tenderness, which increased as we treated him with respect and kindness. He often sheds tears, and particularly when, on coming away, we gave him money, he looked up to heaven and fervently thanked God, but did not thank us.  He however pressed our hands warmly, wept, and wished us every blessing, and expressed something serious with respect to our meeting in another world.

He appears to have religious impressions on his mind, notwithstanding his pretty frequent explanations, when animated, of 'Good God' 'Oh My God' which appeared, however, not to be used in levity, and were probably acquired in childhood from the almost colloquial 'Mon Dieu', etc., of the French. The oldest people in the vicinity remember Francisco as being always, from their earliest recollection, much older than themselves, and a Mr. Fuller, who recently died here between 80 and 90 years of age, thought Francisco was 140 years of age.

On the whole, although the evidence rests in a degree on his own credibility, still as many things corroborate it, and as his character appears remarkably sincere, guileless, and affectionate, I am inclined to believe that he is as old as he is stated to be.

He is really a most remarkable and interesting old man. There is nothing, either in his person or dress of the negligence or squalliness of extreme old age, especially when not in elevated circumstances. On the contrary, he is agreeable and attractive, and was he dressed in a superior manner, and placed in a handsome and well-furnished apartment, he would be a most beautiful old man.

Little could I have expected to converse and shake hands with a man who has been a soldier in most of the wars of this country, for 100 years, who, more than a century ago, fought under Duke Marlborough, in the wars of Queen Anne, and who (already grown to manhood) saw her crowned 117 years since.

Who, 128 years ago, and in the century before last, was driven from France by the proud, magnificent and intolerant Louis XIV, and who has lived a 44th part of all the time that the human race has occupied this globe.

What an interview! It is like seeing one back from the dead to relate the events of centuries now swallowed up in the abyss of time.

Except his cough, which they told us had not been of long standing, we saw nothing in Francisco's appearance that might indicate a speedy dissolution, and he seemed to have sufficient mental and bodily powers for years yet to come.

From materials on file at the Library in Whitehall, New York:

"Henry Francisco fought the battle of Saratoga at the age of 91 years. After the campaign, Henry came to Whitehall and lived somewhere on the Comstock Road, south of present incorporation, by Sucker Brook, near the Blinn farmland. From there, he went to the Jackson Farm, on the Granville Road, on the South side of East Creek, or now the Metteeowe River. Lived with daughter Ruth Willson on this farm that included the land of the Allen and Foote Farms."