Mordecai Bedient & Mary Rockwell

Mordecai Bedient, Jr. was born in the summer of 1762 at Wilton, Conn. He was barely 15 when his father died at the battle of Mud Island in November 1777.  When he turned 16, Mordecai followed in his father’s footsteps and joined the Continental Army.  As was the pattern at the time, he served several short enlistments before being discharged in the spring of 1781.

In December 1783,  21-year-old Mordecai married 15-year-old Mary Rockwell.  Mary, called Molly, came from Norfield CT.  The young couple settled in Wilton. As the century turned, they moved to Butternuts, Otsego County, New York, along with many families from the eastern US.

They arrived in Butternuts with nine children, and Molly bore a tenth child soon after their arrival. In Nov/Dec 1802, five of the older children and the new infant died of typhoid, as an epidemic swept through the community.

Mordecai became a fine stonemason, and he was followed in the trade by his sons, grandsons and great grandsons. Their handiwork is found in buildings spanning more than one hundred years in Gilbertsville from the Gilbertsville Free Library (1818) to the Major’s Inn (1897-1905.)

Molly died in 1838.  Two years later, 78-year-old Mordecai married Polly Canfield, age 64. Mordecai’s 1843 will gave Polly $100 and the right to live in his house for one year.  In 1852, he amended his will giving Polly “the right to remain and make her home at my house for the term of her natural life if she chooses to do so.”

He died in 1855.