Week one’s theme prompt is “I would like to meet.” In response, I would like to meet Rachel Kilburn. Rachel is my fourth and fifth-times great-grandmother (my great-grandparents were second cousins hence the clarification). Rachel was born in 1777 in Farmington, Connecticut, the daughter of Richard Kilburn and Mercy Bronson. Rachel married Alexander Barber (born 1774) of Tyringham, Massachusetts in 1794. They had seven children born between 1795 and 1811.

Alexander and Rachel purchased approximately ninety-five acres of land in Western New York sometime after 1810, in what is now known as Elba, Genesee County, New York (about thirty-seven miles northeast of Buffalo). They traveled towards their new home around 1815, when they had to stop in Skaneateles, Onondaga County, New York, as it was unsafe for them to continue due to tense relations between white settlers and Native Americans in the area. Alexander died there in 1815, and the family buried him there. Rachel and her children continued to Elba when it was determined to be safe.

She farmed the land with her children and lived until 1868. Her last will and testament instructed her son to purchase a headstone for her, and one for Alexander’s gravesite, and to divide the estate between her family members. It used to bother me that her headstone seemed devoted only to her husband. As I’ve learned more about my Barber family, I now have great admiration for her. If I could meet her, I would want to talk to her about what that trip was like to their land as a widow and parent of young children. The land would stay in the Barber family for over 100 years. She fulfilled a dream she had with Alexander, and I honor the memory of them both.

There is a beautiful large marble headstone marking Rachel’s final resting place in Springvale Cemetery, located in Elba, Genesee, New York. Elba is a small farming town located about thirty-five miles northeast of Buffalo. I have always loved her headstone because of the size, white color, and the amount of space dedicated to her husband.