Aunt Jane Port

Last week after I took the barn quilt pictures I wandered out to Rt. 12 and went north to Kattelville Cemetery. My mission was to look for some very old Kattel graves which I didn't find.

Instead my eyes wandered to the monument of Jane Collins Port. Aunt Jane, as she was called, directed her heirs to place a very larger monument on her gravesite. She wanted the monument to be the largest in the cemetery so people would know 'she was somebody.' It is the tallest in the cemetery.

Jane Collins Port died at the age of 90. She shares her plot with her husband John Port and her daughter and infant grandchild.

As I was taking the pictures I thought about Collins Hall of New York and Arizona who I met when he came back to New York to live several times in the 80s. He would stop at my office and take me to lunch and reminise about his family and people he knew here.

Collins was a descendant of Dennis Hall who died about 1848 in Barker and is reputed to have been buried in the dooryard of what was much later known as Strawberry Valley Farms on Route 79. Dennis was married second to my great great grandmother Permelia Gaylord Lyon.

Dennis and Permelia had two sons John and Charles Hall who both died in Andersonville Prison, Georgia, in 1864, just seven days apart.

My great grandmother Caroline Lyon Young is one of Permelia's children by her first marriage to John Adams Lyon.

Collins was the grandson of 'Old Doc Hall', Collins Hall, who is buried in Riverside Cemetery in Whitney Point.

Kattelville Cemetery is the burial place of many members of the old families of the area, Palmer, Smith, Bishop and Fuller and just to mention a few names.

I hope my readers are able to keep cool and hydrated this week as we endure this sweltering weather. I'm wearing shorts and have both air conditioners turned on. I plan to stay inside.

Chris