EBEN WHITNEY CHAFFEE, son of Joshua Bignall and Hannah (Birdseye) Chaffee, was born in Ellsworth, Sharon, CT, January 19, 1824; died in Amenia, ND, October 19, 1892; married in Sharon CT, December 31, 1844, Amanda Fuller, daughter of Cyrus Sackett and Harriet (Skiff) Fuller of that place. She was born in Sharon, August 5, 1825; and died in Amenia, ND, May 22, 1907. Amanda had a dark complexion, black eyes, and was five feet, nine inches in height. Amanda was a sister of Adelia Emma Fuller, who later married Eben's older brother Jerome.

Eben Chaffee was a stockily built man of medium height, with dark eyes and a very dark complexion. As a boy, he attended the South Ellsworth school, as this one-room schoolhouse (still standing) was less than half a mile from his home. His father died without a will when Eben was only eight years old. About a year later a board was appointed consisting of S.E. Everett, Obadiah Shiff (sic) (probably should be Skiff) , and Jeromy Stewart. On May 2, 1833 this board "The distributors of the estate of Joshua B. Chaffee" filed their "Return of the distribution of said estate," which was on that date accepted and approved and ordered to be "recorded and lodged on the files" of a Court of Probate for the district of Sharon. This distribution set to Hannah Chaffee, the widow, about a third of all the property, together with certain rights and privileges as to the use of the dwelling house, other buildings, lots, and the "Pine Swamp Spring". The rest of the property was divided equally among the three sons, Elmore, who was 22 years old; Jerome Seymour, 18; and Eben, age 8. Elmore married Ester Dunbar on February 20, 1834; he died in Poughkeepsie, NY the following August and his wife about five years later. They had no children. Jerome married on October 24, 1839, Arrita L. Stuart of nearby Kent, CT. She was born on Dec. 15, 1812 and died Nov. 26, 1872. After his first wife's death, Jerome married (2) on June 8, 1876, Adelia Emma Fuller, born in Sharon on March 13, 1841; died May 8, 1916 at Leedsville, NY. Jerome moved across the state line and established his life at Leedsville, Amenia, NY, where he was Assessor and Commissioner of Highways as well as a farmer and grain dealer. He had one son by his first wife, James Stuart Chaffee, born October 3, 1846.

On March 23, 1840, the widow Hannah Chaffee married (2) Major Samuel E. Everett also of Ellsworth. After he died in 1870 she came to live with her son Eben, and was with him until her death in 1886 at the age of 95 years.

After public school at Ellsworth, Eben went on to Amenia Seminary, a Methodist church School at Amenia, NY , where he was in attendance in November 1840. He married Amanda Fuller in December 1844 when he was just under 21, and soon after took over his brother Jerome's interest in what had been his father's estate and the operation of the home farm in Ellsworth.

Two daughters were born to Eben and Amanda Chaffee; Alice Rebecca on November 3, 1845; and Florence Adele on Feb. 4, 1849; and after twenty years of marriage, a son, Herbert Fuller, born on Nov. 20, 1865. Alice lived only 2 years, 10 months, and 16 days, dying on Sept. 19, 1848. Eben and Amanda seemed to keep a busy household. In 1858, Eben's mother Hannah Birdseye Chaffee Everett's young niece, Irene Lucinda Birdsey, was boarding with the Chaffees while teaching at the Ellsworth school, and corresponded often with her cousin, Julia Birdsey. On February 10 of that year she wrote a letter to Julia, describing the evening at the Chaffee home. She tells Julia about her Uncle Eben "yawning over the Tribune", while Aunt Amanda "sews briskly by his side." Young Florence Adele, just past her ninth birthday, is "absorbed in A Childs History". Sadly, that was the last letter that Irene wrote to her cousin Julia, for she died 15 days later.

On Sept. 22, 1870, at age 21, Florence Adele married John Horace Reed of Amenia, NY, who soon after their marriage moved to Ellsworth and assisted his father-in-law in the operation of the farm and many of his other duties. Young Herbert Fuller, Bert as he was called, went on to become his father's right-hand man and to succeed him in business.

Eben Chaffee was a farmer and land surveyor, a selectman of the Town of Sharon and a Justice of the Peace. He was one of the "Magistrates" of the town. He was a member of the Congregational Church of Ellsworth, was a strong prohibitionist, took an active part in temperance matters, being at one time President of a Prohibition Alliance. He was one of the clerks of the corporation "The Proprietors of the Common and Undivided Land in the Township of Sharon." His interest in farming, in the land, as a trader and as a public spirited citizen, is attested to by the fact that in the index of instruments of record in the Sharon town office, there are no less than 112 documents recorded in which he was one of the principal parties. In most of these he is listed as the grantee, many in which he is the grantor, some in which he acted as administrator or other officer. The story is told of a meeting that was held at which the main topic of discussion developed around the virtues of maintaining some sort of an accounting system. One of the principal speakers, who was notoriously slow in paying his bills, called on Eben to express his ideas on some sort of a bookkeeping plan. Eben's reply, possibly with just a touch of sarcasm, was that he didn't know too much about bookkeeping as the only system of this kind that he kept was his pocket notebook. By 1870, with the addition of children and grand-children, parents, grand-parents and in-laws, the family had grown to where it was evident that a larger house was indicated, and in 1871 the 'new' house was built on the west side of the South Ellsworth Road. This was a large classic white colonial house with green shutters, a side-paneled front door, and French doors from the front downstairs rooms to the covered porch that extends across the front of the house. A wide green lawn stretches between the house and the white picket fence along the road, with a walk-in gate in the middle and a drive-in gate to the left. Walter Reed was once asked if he knew just when the new house was built. He replied that he should remember, as it was always reported to have been "raised" on July 2, 1871, the day he was born. According to "Uncle Josh" (Joshua B. Chaffee, Eben's cousin, who always had lived across the road, and also moved into the new house when Eben and Amanda finally moved permanently to North Dakota and lived there with his wife Betsey until his death in the the early 1920's), the old house became part of the barn assembly that was used as a horse barn and carriage shed until it was torn down in late 1910 or early 1911. This "new" house is still standing, in Ellsworth, and is known as "Pearson's Corners". When Eben and Amanda were finally settled into the new house, there were with them their children Florence and Herbert, Florence's husband John Reed and their three children Walter, Robert and Katherine, Eben's recently widowed mother Grandma Hannah Everett, and Amanda's mother, Grandma Fuller, most of the time with some additional hired help. The two grandmothers each had their own room off of the dining room on the first floor. John and Florence had the room at the left at the top of the front stairs. Katherine was in the upstairs room at the southeast corner. Eben and Amanda used the "hall bedroom", with the three boys, Herbert, Walter and Robert, in the north side rooms at the back. This left the "spare room" at the front, and two or three small rooms at the back that could be used by the hired help. There were also a couple of rooms finished off over the woodshed and back hallway with a stairway up from the woodshed. This was a busy household in the 1870s, but soon events transpired that changed the course of Eben's and Amanda's life.

Eben, along with a small group of local businessmen, organized the Amenia and Sharon Land Company, which acquired about twenty-seven thousand acres of land near Fargo, Dakota Territory (for this story, see Our Story, Chapter 4 ). Farming operations were begun on these lands, and for the next several years Eben spent half the year in Dakota, supervising the farming season as General Manager and Secretary/Treasurer of the Company, and the remainder attending to his duties in Connecticut. Operations in Dakota became continually more demanding, and in 1885 his wife, Amanda, (her mother Harriett Fuller having died the previous spring) spent the summer there with him in their claim shanty to satisfy the homestead requirements in acquiring the northeast quarter of section 26, which eventually became the site of the new town of Amenia, Cass County, Dakota. Their claim shack had originally been a small train depot in the nearby town of Casselton. Eben Chaffee acquired it from the railway and had it transported to them in Amenia where, it is reported, the roof leaked and Mr. and Mrs. Chaffee had to sleep under an umbrella when it rained. Amanda returned to Connecticut that fall, but the next summer, following the death of Eben's mother Hannah Chaffee Everett, made the final break and returned with son Herbert to make their permanent home in the west.

Gradually a town grew up around the train depot and grain elevators at Amenia. For the next few years Eben and Amanda lived in rooms over the company store and office building. Amanda resented very much spending the necessary money to build a house, and after it was finished did not want to move into it. The story is told that she was induced to leave town on some pretext or other, and on her return found that bed and baggage had been moved into the house in which they were to live for the rest of their lives.

Mr. Chaffee was not active in politics in his new home, but was always active in civic and community affairs, especially in connection with the church. It was due to his influence that a Congregational Church was organized in the new town of Amenia, and the church building was dedicated on July 14, 1887. He managed all the village property closely in order to keep out 'undesirable' people or businesses, and once or twice stopped ball-playing on Sundays. He allowed his men no work and no hunting on the Sabbath. It was said that he wouldn't have harvested a field on a Sunday if he had had certain knowledge that a hailstorm would destroy the grain Sunday night. Because of his religious strictness, his men were "a little in awe of him." In honor of the esteem he had in the community, he was later selected as a delegate member of the Constitutional Convention that convened in Bismarck, D.T. on Thursday, July 4, 1889, to draft a constitution for the new State of North Dakota when it was admitted to the union on November 2, 1889.

Due to failing health Eben Chaffee submitted his resignation as general manager of the Sharon and Amenia Land Company, which was accepted by the board of directors at their annual meeting in Sharon, CT, on March 4, 1892. He died on October 19th of that year. He had driven out alone to inspect one of the farms, and on his way home, a few miles from town, apparently felt ill and got out of the buggy and let the team go. As he did not return by nightfall, a search party set out, and found the team in the ditch tangled up in the harness, and his body beside the road a little farther on. Amanda survived him, continuing to live in their home in Amenia, ND, until her death in 1907.

Children, all born in Ellsworth, Sharon, CT:

i. Alice Rebecca, born Nov. 3, 1845; died Sept. 19, 1848 in Ellsworth.

ii. Florence Adele, born Feb 4, 1849; died Apr. 9, 1881 after the birth of her fourth child; married Sept. 22, 1870, John Horace Reed, son of Newton and Anna (Van Dyck) Reed of Amenia, NY. He was born Sept. 24, 1846; died Aug 24, 1925, In Amenia ND, and is buried there. She is buried in Ellsworth.

iii. HERBERT FULLER, born Nov. 20, 1865; died Apr. 15, 1912; married Dec. 21, 1887, Carrie Constance, daughter of George and Ellen (Board) Toogood of Manchester, Iowa.

To see more pictures of Eben & Amanda, click here for the Photo Gallery

Sources:

-1909 CHAFFEE GENEALOGY, p. 348

-Sedgwick's General History of the Town of Sharon, p. 205

-Descendants of Eben Whitney Chaffee, compiled by H.L.Chaffee, 1969 and Carter G. Chaffee, 1998

-The Day of the Bonanza by Hiram Drache, 1964

-History of Amenia & Sharon Land Company by Dr. Wm Hunter (unpublished mss)

-letter from George F.H.Birdsey to Walter Russell Reed, Aug. 11, 1926

-letter from Irene Birdsey to Julia Birdsey, Feb. 10, 1858; NDSU-IRS Archives