The Curse of the Naramores - Part 3

Some twenty years separated the births of Asa Naramore and his younger brother Samuel, who was only a young boy when Asa struck off on his own for Vermont.  The rest of the family, meanwhile, headed west over the border into New York state, eventually landing in the town of Coeymans in Albany County.  Here, Samuel was apprenticed to a prominent local miller by the name of Archibald Stephens, but the relationship between master and apprentice evidently was not a happy one.  Samuel expressed his dissatisfaction with the arrangement by running away in the summer of 1800, while the miller's disdain for his errant apprentice was eloquently expressed in the short advertisement he took out in the Albany Gazette, forbidding all persons from harboring or trading with the runaway.  Offering all of a one cent reward, it advised that anyone returning him would "have the above reward, but no charges nor thanks". 
 
The facts are lacking, but it appears that it was at this time that Samuel left Coeymans behind forever and joined his long-sundered brother Asa in Charlotte, Vermont.  There, he married (his wife's name is unknown, although it may have been Catherine) and found work as a hired hand on the Pierson place in Shelburne.  The Piersons had been among the earliest settlers in the area, and it was the fortified farmhouse of the family patriarch, Moses Pierson, that had been the focus of what is sometimes called the Battle of the Shelburne Block-house in 1778.  Moses and his two older sons, Ziba and Uzal, all took part in the fight, helping to successfully defend the farmhouse and the local settlers it sheltered against a large raiding party of Tories and Indians.  Later that same year, Ziba and Uzal were captured by yet another raiding party and carried off to Canada, but they were able to escape and eventually made their way back to their family.  By the turn of the century, when Samuel would have arrived there, that family was quite extensive:  the 1800 census for Shelburne shows, in addition to the father Moses, four of his sons (Ziba and Uzal, along with younger brothers William and Samuel), all raising large families in Shelburne.

If Samuel's former choice of employer in Coeymans had been unfortunate, his new choice proved to be fatal.  It seems that two sons of one of the younger Pierson brothers had gotten involved in some misdemeanor or other; the details are lost to history, but it was enough to warrant an upcoming court appearance, at which Samuel was expected to be called on to testify against them.  To prevent this, so the story goes, William and Samuel Pierson decided on a drastic course of action.  They sent a fellow named Hugh Clyd to Samuel Naramore, telling him that his wife, who was at the Pierson place, was very ill and that he had better get over there quick.  Samuel headed off in that direction with Clyd - and was never heard from again.  Although not convicted in a court of law, the court of public opinion rendered a different verdict, and Clyd and the two Pierson brothers soon left the state. 

A nineteenth-century history of Charlotte at this point in the narrative adds the colorful detail "and, it is said, became vagabonds".  While probably not true (except perhaps in the case of Hugh Clyd), William, at least, had a bumpy road on the way to his final destination.  According to a published genealogy of the Pierson family (which makes no mention of the murder suspicion), William dabbled in alchemy, and was always experimenting with methods for turning base metals into gold. After leaving Vermont, he settled briefly in New York state, but left for Indiana in 1811 after his neighbors, suspicious of his "conjuring", burned him out.  According to the same source, his brother Samuel also went to New York state, settling in Cayuga county in about 1811.

From all of the above, it appears that Samuel's death must have occurred between 1800 and 1810.  It should also be noted that Asa had a son whom he named Samuel (the father of Truman Naramore) in 1806; on the theory that he was named for his murdered uncle, this would argue for Samuel's death having occurred in, or shortly before, 1805.

• Thomas (ca. 1640 - ca. 1690) -> Samuel (ca. 1680 - ca. 1754) -> Samuel (1706 - 1789) -> John (1735 - ca. 1815) -> Samuel (ca. 1780 - ca. 1805)

In Part 4, we'll look at the gruesome death of another Samuel Naramore, the son of Asa and Samuel's youngest brother, Joshua.