ELISHA PLANK

Elisha Plank was born on 8 January 1767 in Thompson Windham County, Connecticut.    He was a Triplet.  Elisha married Ruth Metcalf in Sangerfield, Oneida County, New York.  Ruth was born on 19 April 1769 in Vermont; her parents were Oliver and Sarah Hammond Metcalf.  Elisha died at the age of 85 years 8 months and 17 days old and is buried in the Park Cemetery, Wolcott, Wayne County, New York.  Ruth died at the age of 87 years 9 months

 

Elisha and Ruth had the following children:

 

1.  Lewis Plank was born in June 1795 and died 1 November 1814 in Wolcott, Wayne County, New York.

2.  William Plank was born on 2 October 1796 and died on 27 December 1886.

 

Elisha moved to Wolcott, New York from Sangerfield, New York in 1810, and on May 21 purchased 467 acres on lots 381, 383 and 385, for which he paid $4.25 per acre.  He built a saw mill and grist mill on Mill Creek, about one mile north of the village. Elisha and Ruth Plank were among the First Presbyterian Church of Wolcott members to organize a  society on July 13, 1813. Elisha was one of the church trustees, in the summer of 1826, when, the first church edifice of the society was raised and enclosed, on West Main Street and it wasn't until 1832 that it was finished inside.

 

HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY, NEW YORK, page 207 --  ELISHA PLANK, son of William Plank,  was born in the town of Thompson, Windham county, Connecticut, in January, 1767.  Soon after the close of the Revolutionary war, in company with others of his native town, he emigrated to Oneida county, in this State, where he soon after married Ruth Metcalf, a native of Keene, New Hampshire.  In the spring of 1813, with his wife and two sons he removed to Wolcott, and located about a mile north of the present village.  Within a year he built and put in operation a grist-mill and saw-mill on the Wolcott creek.  And now misfortunes fathered thick around him; the mills were destroyed by a flood, in the autumn of 1814, in which his oldest son lost his life, and he himself was nearly killed.  The next spring his house was burned, and all his personal effects destroyed.  He was a man of uncommon physical endurance and power, with a vigorous, active mind, and remarkable powers of member; and largely given to the friendliness and hospitality of those early days.  He assisted in organizing the First Presbyterian society of this place, was one of the original members of that society, and a ruling elder in its during his life.  With the late Thomas Armstrong and others, he was a commissioner appointed to survey and fix the boundary-lines of the present towns of Wolcott, Butler, Huron, and Rose, when theywere formed form the old town of Wolcott.  He died from injuries received from a fall, September 25, 1852.  

 

WOLCOTT - EARLY SETTLERS -  HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY, NEW YORK, page 198  --  In the spring of 1813, Elisha Plank, with his wife and two sons, came from Oneida County and settled on lots 382 and 384.  Mr. Plank came to Wolcott to erect mills on the stream running through lots 382 and 384.  He put up a comfortable frame house, and went to work collecting material for the mills, which were completed and in running order early next summer.  On November 1, 1814, heavy rains having swollen the creek and the mill-dam not being well settled, the latter gave way, and with a crash the grist-mill followed, bearing with it Mr. Plank and his oldest son down the stream.  The noise was heard, an alarm was given, and in the darkness the neighbors hastened to the scene of the catastrophe.  It was a terrible occasion.  There was the tumult of waters, the hallooing of the men, anxious to learn if the miller was alive, the darkness of night, and a harrowinnng suspense.  A cry of suffering was heard, and Mr. Plank was soon found, wedged in among a mass of timber so close that he could not move.  He was extricated with much difficulty, and besides other had injuries, was found to have an arm broken.  Nothing was found of the son till daylight, when his body was taken from the stream.  Misfortunes came not singly, for during the next summer, while Mr. Plank and family were at church, their house was burned with all its contents, including about forty dollars in silver which had been laid by for farm payments.  Kind neighbors came to their aid and a log house was built and a mill, of which but the mud-sill and floor remain the vestiges to mark the spot.  Elisha Plank had built one of the first frame barns built on the Port Bay Road in Wolcott, New York.