Robert Austin, the immigrant ancestor, was born in England and settled in Kingstown, Rhode Island. His name appears under date of Sept. 15, 1661, in a list of sixty-five persons, residents of Newport, Portsmouth and Kingstown mostly, who were to have lots at the new settlement of Misquamicut (Westerly). The lots were twelve rods by eighty, and each man was to pay seven pounds. Austin had lot twelve, but never settled at Westerly. He died before 1687.
Children:
Jeremiah, lived at Kingstown and Exeter, Rhode Island.
Edward, mentioned below.
Joseph, a blacksmith at Kingstown.
John, lived at Kingstown.

(II) Edward, son of Robert Austin, lived at Kingstown, and died about 1731.
Children:
Edward, mentioned below.
John (?), married Priscilla Weathers.

(III) Edward (2), son of Edward (1) Austin, died beforfe 1749. He married Isabel, daughter of William and Priscilla Hardy. Edward was complained of by his mother-in-law Dec. 28, 1730, saying that she could not live peaceably with him.
He sold land April 20, 1742. He died before April 24, 1749, when his widow Isabel, with two sons, Thomas and Jedediah, were ordered to appear before the town councils, as the sons were to be bound out as apprentices.

(IV) Jedediah, son of Edward (2) Austin, was born about 1730-35. The records give no account of his family The birth records of but a comparatively small part of the family are found in the town books. The only characteristic name preserved in the family was Jedediah. He was apprenticed young, and may have named his children for his wife's family or for the family in which he was brought up.

(V) Silas, believed to be the son of Jedediah Austin, was born in Kent county, Rhode Island, in 1753. The name Silas came from the Greenman family, and it is almost certain that his mother was a granddaughter of Edward Greenman, son of John Greenman, the immigrant. John had two sons, David and Edward, and a daughter, Content Greenman. Edward Greenman had two grandsons named Silas.
Silas Austin was a soldier in the revolution.
He married Sarah, daughter of David Crandall. Austin removed to Little Hoosick, Mass., and thence to Dutchess county (N.Y.) where he lived several years and reared a large family. He removed from Dutchess county to Harrisburg, Lewis county, N.Y., in 1805, and resided there until his death in 1813 of the prevailing epidemic, black erysipelas. He was buried at Copenhagen, N.Y.
His widow, Sarah Crandall Austin, born in 1754, died in 1829, aged seventy-five years, and was buried in the Austin cemetery in Denmark, N.Y. She had a kind and benevolent disposition and was beloved by all who knew her.
Children:
Grinman, mentioned below.
Silas, Sarah, Beriah, Agrippa, Elizabeth, Mary and Eunice (twins), Lucy and Alva.

(V) Jonathan, brother of Silas Austin, born in March 1755, in Kent county, Rhode Island; married April 13, 1783, Mercy Goodspeed, of the same town. He removed to Dutchess county, and about 1804 to Harrisburg, N.Y., where he raised a large family. He was a soldier in the revolution and drew a pension late in life.
Isaac, Jonathan, Jedediah, Eda, Nathan, Hosea, Mercy, Freeman, Elenor, Cynthia, Nehemiah and King.
Silas and Jonathan Austin had two sisters, born and married in Rhode Island. Jonathan Austin died Oct. 13, 1842, aged about eighty-seven, and was buried in the Austin cemetery; his wife, Mercy, died Aug. 30, 1838, aged aboaut seventy-two, and was also buried there.

(VI) Grinman, son of Silas Austin, was born in Richmond, Rhode Island, Oct. 29, 1773. His personal name in undoubtedly from the surname Greenman, a family living in the same town with the Austins in Rhode Island and doubtless connected by marriage. Grinman married Sarah, daughter of Joseph Holley, of Beekman, Dutchess county, N.Y., where she was born March 10, 1777. Grinman Austin came from Dutchess county to Denmark with his family in 1807, and located on a tract of land, then a wilderness, which he cleared, and on which he erected suitable buildings. His farm was two miles wouth of the village of Denmark, on the hill on the road leading to the No. 3 road, and is now (1910) owned in part by C. J. Twining and Judson Lasher.
Grinman was for several years engaged in making potash and pearlash, which at that time were aout the only articles of commerce sold by the settlers. He had a fair education and taught school while living in Dutchess county. His wife, Sarah, died in Denmark, May 17, 1813, of black erysipelas, aged thirty-five years, six months. She was buried in the Austin cemetery.
He married (second), Aug. 28, 1784, [transcriber's note: if his first wife died in 1813, he couldn't have married again in 1784; but this is the birthdate of his second wife so the original typist made a boo-boo] Catherine Skuyver, widow of Hiram Burr. She was born at Johnstown, N.Y., Aug. 28, 1784. Grinman died Sept. 21, 1834, aged nearly sixty-one years; his wife Catherine died of apoplexy, Aug. 9, 1872, aged eighty-seven years, eleven months, and both are buried in the Austin cemetery, a short distance from their old home.
Children of first wife, born at Beekman, Dutchess county, N.Y.:
1. Joshua, Jan. 7, 1797, mentioned below.
2. Betsey, April 6, 1798.
3. Jarvis, Feb. 23, 1800.
4. Nursilla, Dec. 11, 1803.
5. Seneca, Aug. 22, 1805.
6. Crandall, Aug. 6, 1807.
7. Harrison, July 22, 1809, at Denmark.
8. Sarah, Jan. 24, 1813, at Denmark.
Children of second wife:
9. Silas, born May 26, 1815.
10. Fanny, March 28, 1817.
11. Hiram, March 29, 1819.
12. Alva, May 6, 1823.
13. Jane, July 1, 1821.
14. Martin, Feb. 5, 1826.

(VII) Joshua, son of Grinman Austin, was born at Beekman, N.Y., Jan. 7, 1797, and came to Denmark with his family when he was ten years old. He worked with his father in clearing the farm and building the house and barns. He was employed for a year or more by A. M. Norton, a prominent merchant of Denmark, then by Albert Vedder, who conducted a hotel on the farm now (1910) owned by H. E. Cook. This was during the exciting period of the war of 1812, when companies and regiments of soldiers were constantly passing through the town with heavy ordnance and other munitions of war.
He married Feb. 28, 1828, Irene Anderson, born in Cummington, Hampshire county, Mass., Aug. 12, 1801, daughter of Joseph and Hannah (Packard) Anderson, of Denmark. Her father was born in Hingham, Plymouth county, Mass., April 12, 1755, and enlisted in the Continental army when he was but eighteen years old. He was in the command of Colonel Ethan Allen, May 10, 1775, when Fort Ticonderoga was surprised and taken, was in the siege of Crown Point, and in the battle of Bunker Hill, and was in service throughout the war and present at the surrender of Cornwallis in 1783. He was a private in Captain Posey's company, General Wheeler's division. Anderson came with his family from Cummington in June, 1804, and settled in the wilderness on No. 3 road, a mile south of what is now the village of Copenhagen. At that time he had eleven children, Irene being the youngest. His brother-in-law, John Scott Clark, who married his sister, Celia Anderson, in Cummington, came at the same time and settled on the farm since owned by Hon. Nathan Clark, on the West road.

Joshua Austin settled in 1830 on what is now known as Austin street, and cleared a farm. His wife died Oct. 3, 1865, aged sixty-four years. She was an ideal wife and mother, highly esteemed in the community for her many Christian virtues. She was buried in the family plot in Riverside cemetery at Copenhagen. Joshua Austin died on the farm, Jan. 5, 1871, aged seventy-five. He and his wife were members in good standing in the Methodist Episcopal church.
Children:
1. Curtis Joshua, born at Denmark, Dec. 20, 1828; taught school several years; was a farmer in Pinckney, where he died April , 1886; married Adaline S. Daggett, of Denmark, April 20, 1851; she survived him a few years; their only surviving child is George Austin, a farmer at Rutland, N.Y., who married Jennie Roberts, of Copenhagen, and has no children.
2. Annie Irene, July 24, 1833, in Denmark; died in Lorraine Huddle, Jefferson county, N.Y., Dec. 20, 1856; daughter: Mrs. Brayton Stafford, of Harrisburg.
3. Franklin Duane, mentioned below.
(VIII) Franklin Duane, son of Joshua Austin, was born at Denmark, Dec. 1, 1840. He attended the district school until he was sixteen years old and studied several years in the Carthage and Lowville academies. He graduated from the Watertown Commercial College, Oct. 17, 1866. As a student he showed the greatest proficiency in mathematical science and English composition. He became associate proprietor of the Lowville Commercial College, Oct. 20, 1866, and was instructor in commercial branches at that institution during the succeeding fall and winter.
From 1880 to 1884 he was engaged in growing and selling seeds and vegetable plants. Mr. Austin has been prominent in the temperance movement, and an earnest advocate of total abstinence. He joined the Evening Star Lodge, No. 750, Independent Order of Good Templars, as a charter member, Nov. 11, 1868, was secretary and worthy chief templar several terms, was lodge deputy from Aug. 3, 1871, until Nov. 5, 1873, when the lodge surrendered its charter. He was frequently elected a delegate to gatherings of county and state lodges of Good Templars. He was treasurer of Lewis County Lodge, No. 8, 1872, and has served as inspector and clerk of elections several times. He was appointed a notary public March 31, 1883, and has been reappointed every two years since then, making twenty-seven consecutive years that he has held that office.
He initiated the movement to celebrate the Centennial of Lewis county by petition to the board of supervisors and agitating the subject in the newspapers. The exercises were held at Forest Park, Lowville, and he was appointed town historian on that occasion. He has devoted much time to historical research, and is a recognized authority on the early history of the town and vicinity, and has collected a large amount of valuable historical matter. He has been a member of the New York State Historical Assocation several years. He is the only descendant and representative of two priminent families of Denmark - families who assisted with industry and indomitable courage in clearing the forests where now are fetile fields, and who aided with integrity and patriotism in laying the foundation of business, church, school, society and government in the community.
He has been a staunch Republican, though sometimes constrained to vote against his own party when he believed public interests demanded it. He was one of the vice-presidents of the Harrison and Morton Republican Club, of Copenhagen, in 1888, and secretary of the Republican League Club, of Copenhagen in 1904.
He is well known among the newspaper men of the county. He has been a local correspondent for the Journal and Republican, Lowville Times, Lewis County Democrat, Watertown Post; ; Black River Gazette, Croghan News, Turin Gazette, Lewis County Leader, Carthage Tribune, American Cultivator, , Copenhagen News, Seed Time and Harvest, and the American Agriculturalist. His news items and articles are always reliable, crisply written, and to the point. He has done much clerical work requiring skill and accuracy. He has been a ready scribe and accountant on all occasions, and has kept the books for a large number of cheese factories in this section, and has never been known to make an error. He was appointed census enumerator for his district in 1905 when the state census was taken; also in 1910 for the same district when the federal census was taken.
He has always taken a lively interest in public affairs and in state and national politics, and probably has the most complete library of state and national reports and documents and government publications to be found in Lewis county.

He married, March 13, 1872, Mary Melissa, daughter of Thomas and Louisa (Greene) Murphy, of Champion, N.Y.
Children, born at Denmark:
1. Stanton Duane, mentioned below.
2. Grace Irene, June 13, 1878; married, Nov. 25, 1903, Lynn C. Vary, of Harrisburgh; child: Lyle Edward Vary, born Aug. 22, 1909.
3. Charles Rea, born June 17, 1880; married Oct. 28, 1903, Mary Louisa Clark, of Harrisburg; child: Helen Molly, born May 13, 1906.
4. Clark Emerson, born March 4, 1891; died Oct. 9, 1891.

(IX) Stanton Duane, son of Franklin Duane Austin, was born Dec. 11, 1873, at Denmark, N.Y. He attended the district school until he was fifeen, and the Copenhagen high school several years, was a studious and diligent pupil and made rapid progress, graduating from the teachers' training class Aug. 1, 1897. He taught school several years at Housville, Martinsburg village and other places, was principal of the Hailsboro Union school for two years, and has been principal of the Union high school at Barneweld, Oneida county, N.Y. for the past three years. He was vice-president of the Oneida County Teachers' Association in 1909, and president in 1910. He was a student in the State Normal School at Potsdam in 1906, taking a classical normal course. He has always been especially proficient in mathematics and the natural sciences, and his reputation as a successful teacher is high.

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