Seth Bailey, son of Isaac Bayley Bailey, married Rebecca Loomis, daughter of Israel Loomis and Rebecca Bingham, on January 26, 1799 in Whitesboro, Oneida County, New York. Their Children are:
1. Andrew S. Bailey
2. Israel Loomis Bailey
3. Rebecca Bailey
4. William Hammond Bailey
5. Althea Bailey
6. Esther Bailey
7. Pamilia Bailey (1806-1888)
8. Seth Bailey, Jr.
9. Malinda Bailey
10. Isaac Newton Bailey
11. Isaiah Loomis Bailey∼Remains relocated to Brookside Cemetery.
Find A Grave Memorial# 15927991
______________________________________________________
SETH BAILEY

The subject of this sketch was born in the town of Lebanon, Conn., January 22, 1773, and lived in his father's family until he was of age. From that time until he was married, in 1799, he devoted portions of his time to boating on the Connecticut River, by which laborious employment he acquired a hardy constitution and some little cash capital to begin his married life with. He came with his wife into this state, and settled in the new town of of Exeter, in Ostego County, where he had purchased land in the fall before, and on which he had erected a log cabin. He soon became distinguished for those traits of character which shone so conspicuously in later years. The title of Captain in the Militia he earned by running up through the grades of Military Commission to the command of a Company, in his town of Exeter.

In 1804 he came to this county, which was beginning to elicite attention from the young men who were swarming into this State from every part of the old Eastern States. He located in Whitesville, in the Town of Rodman, for the time being, and built a small distillery there; but in 1805 he changed his mind, and as soon as he could find a purchaser for the Whitesville property, he sold and came to this village and purchased the lot on the corner now occupied by the Washington Hall block of buildings, and set about building a two-story framed house, for a hotel. Before it was finished , however, he sold out to Capt. John Paddock, who finished it off, and occupied it as a tavern for a time, and then rented it to others.

Capt. Bailey then turned his attention again to the subject of a grain distillery, and also a brewery for beer, and in the company of Col. Gersham Tuttle, purchased the grounds that have since been owned and occupied by Newell & Haas, near the lower bridge. Their brewery was built on the site of the present one,owned by Mr. Haas, and was later burned after it came into the possession of Capt. Newell. This brewery was managed by a man by the name of Pierce Downer, who is still living somewhere in the west, and a Mr. Gillespie as Chief Brewer. The distillery was built on the river side of Newell Street, and was afterwards burned down and not since rebuilt. In the same summer of 1805, Capt Bailey erected the framed house which he soon afterward sold to Judge Ten Eyck, on Court St., where the Judge lived for so many years.

In the spring of 1806, Bailey & Tuttle purchased the water property now owned by Gen. Angel in Pamelia, of Mr. Le Ray, upon which Messers Harger & Macomber had erected a dam and a flume, under a contract with Mr. Le Ray and where they had proceeded to build a saw-mill, and put it in operation. In The course of the next season they set about building a large grist-mill, which for the times was a very respectable building, and it became a very strong competitor (with Jesse Dodge, Abraham Bailey, and Benjamin Austin for millers) with Mr. Cowan's mill which had been in successful operation for some four years.
Cloth dressing and carding was soon added to the business done at that part of the river and "Bailey's Mills",as they were called, enjoyed an immense patronage in all the varieties of business that which were conducted on that flume. The carding and cloth-dressing was conducted by Eli Watson, and it was in that shop that William Usher served his apprenticeship.

A turning-lathe, for turning out chair frames was put in operation by John Hathaway, in a room in the basement devoted to that purpose, and also a lathe for turning wooden bowls and trays. Nail works were also put into operation by parties who rented rooms for that purpose in the block of buildings, so that the hum of machinery was fully equal to any other place in Northern New York.
Capt. Bailey was Under-Sheriff, under Dr. Sherman, from 1805 to 1807, inclusive, and performed most of the duties of that office. Most of the business was done on foot, particularly on the north side of the river, where the few inhabitants were very much scattered, and the roads almost impassable in the summer for dumb beasts. He also served as Overseer of the Poor for the Town of Brownville, when the Town covered half of the county on that side of the river; and he was also Town Collector for that town, in which several capacities he had frequent occasion to travel over that large town in every direction. He also had frequent occasion to visit Whitestown, in Oneida County, for the purpose of conveying prisoners there for safekeeping in the Oneida County jail, until the jail in this county was prepared for their reception, in 1809.

Col. Tuttle sold out his interest in the Mill property to Judge Clark in 1809 and the business continued on under the name of "Bailey and Clark" until 1813, when Capt. Bailey relinquished his interests to Judge Clark, and moved over to the brewery on this side of the river, where he remained for one year, during which time he formed a co partnership with William Smith and William Tanner in building a distillery and putting it into operation, at the foot of the hill on the center road near the residence of the late Asaph Mather. For some reasons not now known, that distillery did not operate but a couple of years, when the business was discontinued entirely and never afterwards resumed.

In 1814, Capt. Bailey sold out his brewery property to Capt. Andrew Newell and purchased a farm of Samuel Fellows, which was the nucleus of his pretty extensive farming operations in after years. He entered with zeal upon the labors of the farm, and it soon became apparent that he had all the qualifications necessary to the prosecution of a large farming business. He enlarged his farm and farming operations by repeated and frequent additions to it; purchasing for that purpose the farms of Justin Weeks, Ambrose Adams, Aaron Keyes, a Mr. Stowell and Seth Otis; all of which together made a farm of 250 acres, a large portion of which was under improvement.
He immediately set about that system of thorough fencing, with stone wall and board fence with red cedar posts, which made his farm the admiration of travelers, and which elicited the Agricultural Society's forty dollar premium, in the shape of a large silver pitcher, in 1819, at the second Fair of the Society.

His hill land had a large amount of limestone mixed with the surface soil, which was admirably adapted to the purpose of farm fences or walls; and he made it his business to replace his old fences with wall, as fast as it became necessary to do so, in order to effect the security of his crops, so that when he gave up the cares of business to his children, he told them he left "full three miles of wall and good post and board fence on the farm".

It was considered for many years as one of the best-farmed portions of the town of Watertown--that little valley where he lived--shut out from observation of the bustling world, surrounded by an amphitheater of hills which faced inwards upon what was known as "Gotham Valley" or "The Woodruff and Sigourney Settlement". In such a neighborhood, with so much of active competition and so much good-natured rivalry, it was not easy to avoid being a good farmer; yet in that neighborhood and with those incentives to a brisk and constant effort to stand in the front rank of successful husbandry, Capt. Bailey suffered nothing in comparison with the most skillful of his competitors.

He was for many years in succession elected one of the Overseers of the Poor in the town of Watertown, without any reference to his party politics; but on account of his supposed or real fitness. He had a set of buildings which he devoted to the people who were under his care, as Overseer; where he not only cheapened the expense to the taxpayers for their maintenance, but where he could make that class of people more comfortable than they would otherwise be.

Politics had very little to do at that day with the selection of men for responsible places, but the question of fitness and aptitude for the particular place to be filled. The only question was ordinarily, "Who is the best man for Supervisor, who for Assessor, for Town Clerk, for Commissioner of Highways, or what honest, capable, and yet poor man can be made collector? As a result we find that Dr. Ives was Supervisor; Stephen Gifford, Town Clerk; and Capt. Bailey, Poor Master; by common consent for a number of years.

A prominent trait in his character was his readiness to assist young men who were desirous of obtaining an education--taking them into his large family and giving them a winter's board, without recompense whatever, except the satisfaction of doing good.

He had a family of twelve children, and generally more than one hired man, and often a dependent relative or more; so that he might have excused himself from such acts of generosity and Kindness, if he had wished; but he never seemed to act as if he felt a large family to be burdensome or undesirable. His moral character was such as to elicit the approval of the most fastidious, and was entirely above reproach, so that he was sometimes quoted as a rare instance of what a man might be , without a "change of heart"; and it would have been strange if he counted somewhat on his correct deportment as a man to his fellow men, when he thought of the investigation which might be instituted in another world. Thus he lived, until his sixtieth year, when a change came over the spirit of his dream.

A series of meetings was instituted in January of 1833, in the First Presbyterian Church in the village, which was then under the pastoral care of Rev. George S. Boardman, when a friend who was intimate in the family, and whose residence was in the neighborhood of the church edifice, invited him and his wife to come and board in his family during the continuance of the meetings, so as to be able to attend the entire services, without the inconvenience of keeping a team there to convey themselves back and forth every day. The proposal met the approbation of Mr. Bailey and he accepted it in the same spirit in which he did everything else--that whatever was worthy of doing at all, was worthy of being well and thoroughly done.

He accordingly laid his plans for a regular and systematic attendance upon the proposed means of grace, just as he undertook anything else--evidently making up his mind, deliberately, to begin now, at this late date in his history, to seek the blessing of God in the forgiveness of his sins.

As might have been anticipated, the promise which was made by the mouth of the Prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled in this case: "And ye shall seek me , and shall find me, when ye search for me with all your heart". The change produced in him when he trusted that his sins were forgiven and when, in the artless simplicity which characterized him ever afterwards, he could say as Job did, "I know that my redeemer livith"--was such as could not fail of being apparent to his friends. From that time forth, he made it his first , great, sole object to know more of God and to serve Him with all his powers and faculties. He commenced at once a thorough, systematic reading of the Bible, and an attendance on all means of grace. He had before given up the cares of business, and had apparently no other aim in life for the balance of his days than to serve the Lord, Christ. In the fulfillment of this fixed design. he read the Bible from morning until night, excepting when at church or at meals--day after day, week after week, year after year-- until it became apparent that the mind was suffering from the intensity and constancy of the effort. Almost the only respite which he allowed himself was while attending religious meetings, for he could not be made to realize that his habits were injurious to his brain, while his general health continued good; yet such was the fact that, which began to manifest itself unmistakably. By degrees, the process of undermining went on, it being more apparent, until he failed to keep track of time, and of regular appointments for religious meetings in the church This defect increased year by year, until he could not find his way out of the Village at midday, to go home, and at last he lost himself in the sugar bush on his own farm, where he had gone to see the people who were making sugar, and wandered away, traveling through swamps and tangled cedars to the lake shore in the Town of Henderson, and then following the shore to the mouth of the Salmon River, and then up that river to Pulaski, in Oswego, County, in his anxious efforts to find his home.

But we let the curtain fall upon this part of his blank and melancholy closing history, only remarking that however much he was wasted in mind and body, yet as long as he lived he manifested a strong religious tendency and a constant desire to go to the house of the Lord. He continued to waste until February, 1844, when he died at the age of seventy-one years.

Few men among the early settlers had done more to promote the general prosperity of the county than Capt. Bailey, and very few had enjoyed the confidence of all classes of the people more than he.--His character as a businessman, and a successful financier, was second to very few of his competitors.

Perhaps his secret of success in life consisted in the promptitude with which everything was done, at its proper time--done thoroughly and faithfully--and under his own personal supervision, without unnecessary waste or loss; though he was proverbially benevolent, as has been remarked before, to the honest and deserving poor and unfortunate.

The location for the preceeding information was supplied by Mrs. Myrtle Rice Haynes, 219 Selye Terrace, Rochester, NY, a granddaughter of Esther Bailey and Aaron Rice

More About SETH BAILEY, CAPT.:
Burial: Old Cem. on Gotham St. Road, Watertown
More About REBECCA LOOMIS:
Burial: Old Cem. on Gotham St. Road, Watertown
Children of SETH BAILEY and REBECCA LOOMIS are:
2. i. REBECCA9 BAILEY, b. abt 1800, Watertown, Jefferson Co., New York
ii. ALTHEA BAILEY, b. 03 September 1802, Watertown, Jefferson Co., New York; d. 14 March 1865, Watertown, Jefferson Co. NY; m. SOLON JAMES MASSEY, 21 March 1838, First Presbyterian Church, Watertown, Jefferson Co., NY; b. 27 July 1798, Plymouth Twp., Windsor, Windsor Co., VT; d. 12 August 1871, Brownsville, Jefferson Co., NY.
More About ALTHEA BAILEY:
Burial: Brookside Cem., Watertown, Jefferson County. NY