My Genealogy Hound

HIRAM BURCH, a substantial farmer of Portland and a Union soldier of the late civil war, is a son of Oliver W. and Mary S. (Tower) Burch, and was born on the farm on which he now resides, in the town of Portland, Chautauqua county, New York, December 15, 1831. In the town of Wells, Rutland county, Vermont, in the year 1766, was born to Jonathan and Eunice Burch, a son, who, in accordance with a time-honored custom of New England, was given his father’s name, Jonathan. This Jonathan Burch, Jr., the grandfather of Hiram Burch, at twenty years of age (1786) married Sally Hosford and settled in Herkimer county, where, after a residence of a few years, he removed to Chenango county. He served and was a major in the war of 1812. In January, 1813, he settled on lot 62, twp. 4, in the town of Portland, and his farm is now owned by the subject of this sketch. He died in 1838 and his wife passed away in 1845, aged sixty years. They had five sons and five daughters: Eunice, wife of Heman Ely; Olive, who married Zeri Yale; Jonathan, who married Maria Yale; Powell G., who married Lovina Palmer; Polly, wife of Jared Taylor; Sally, who married Erastus Cole; Oliver W. married Mary S. Tower; Chauncy, who married Nancy Cole; Stephen S.; and Matilda, who died at eighteen years of age. Of the sons, Oliver W. (father) was born in Herkimer county, and about 1825 purchased his father’s farm, on which he resided until his death, in 1883, at the ripe old age of eighty-two years. On March 8, 1825, he married Mary Sprague Tower, daughter of John and Lucy (Munson) Tower, of Oneida county. The Towers were descendants of one who came over in the “Mayflower.” To Oliver W. and Mary S. Burch were born six sons and three daughters: Lucy, Olive, Hattie, Walter, who served in the 49th New York, for ten months, and was discharged on account of typhoid fever; Newell, served about two and a half years as a member of the 154th New York — was captured at Gettysburg and held prisoner for twenty-one months at Belle Isle and Andersonville; Rollin, a soldier in the 7th Iowa, and a prisoner for two months —he then re-enlisted and served to the close of the war; Hiram, was in Iowa at the breaking out of the rebellion; Horace and Ransom. After Mrs. O. W. Burch’s death, March 2, 1851, at forty-three years of age, Mr. Burch married, on November 30, 1884, Arminda Sunderlin, who still survives.

Oliver W. Burch, although young, remembered well the excitement caused by the British burning Buffalo.

Hiram Burch was reared on the homestead farm and received his education in the common schools. He has followed farming ever since leaving school, and is now engaged to some extent in the culture of the vine. He owns the homestead farm of ninety-seven acres, which is located three miles northeast of Westfield. In 1861 Mr. Burch enlisted in Co. I, 9th regiment, Iowa volunteers, but soon caught a cold that settled in his eyes and caused his discharge from the service, after being in about four months.

On March 17, 1870, he married Louisa, daughter of Frederick Miller. They have one child, a son, Clarence G., now in his twenty-first year.

Hiram Burch is a republican in politics and a strong advocate of the temperance cause. On Thursday, August 22, 1889, there was a re-union of the children of O. W. and Mary S. Burch at the old homestead farm. All of the nine children were present, of whom the eldest was sixty-two years of age, and the youngest over forty-two years. At this re-union Rev. Knight read an interesting history of the Burch family from 1700 to 1890, which was carefully prepared by one of the children. One of its concluding sentences was: “But as our feet diverge from this home of our childhood, as we again go forth into the world, let us not forget the duties we owe in all charity and love to one another.”