This week, our topic is “Strength”. I picked Rachel Kilburn [Kilbourn] Barber, my fourth and fifth-times great-grandmother (my great-grandparents were second cousins). I talked about her in our week one topic about ancestors we would like to meet. To briefly recap my genealogy research, 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.

Rachel’s husband, died in Skaneateles, Onondaga County, New York, in 1815, and is buried there. Alexander and Rachel had purchased approximately ninety-five acres of land in Western New York sometime after 1810. It was  located in what is now known as Elba, Genesee County, New York (about thirty-seven miles northeast of Buffalo). They had stopped there due to Indian unrest in the region. Rachel and her children continued westward once it was safe.

Rachel and family built a home and farmed the land. The Barbers were one of the 300 settlers needed to incorporate the Town of Elba. I think how strong she must have been, moving from what she knew to the unknown, She is widowed at the age of 38, her oldest child was around 20 years old, and the youngest around 5.  Still, she pressed onward with this dream, to this land she and Alexander had purchased. I realized how important completion of this dream was to her by the epitaph to her husband on her headstone.

Rachel lived until 1868, and is buried in a beautiful, peaceful cemetery not far from where she lived in Elba. A picture of her headstone is below. Barber land stayed in the family for over 100 years; it’s where my grandfather and his siblings worked as children and young adults.

I thank her for the gift of strength she has passed down to her descendants. Until next week, when our topic will be “Newest Discovery”.  Have a wonderful week!