Lake County Ohio GenWeb

Anson Sessions 1770-1827

From A Record of the Revolutionary Soldiers buried in Lake County, Ohio, New Connecticut Chapter Daughters of the American Revolution, Painesville, Ohio, 1902.

Typed and submitted by Becky Falin, 1996.

This pioneer of the Western Reserve was born in Windham, Conn., April 16, 1770, and died in Painesville, Ohio, in August 1827. His father was a deacon of the Presbyterian church and a school teacher. Anson Sessions, in 1770, left his native place and went to Cooperstown, N.Y. After the defeat of the army of St. Clair he volunteered for military service under Gen. Wayne, and was with him on the Maumee, Aug. 21, 1794, when the Indians suffered such an overwhelming defeat that they never after made serious head against the whites in the north-west. After the treaty of Greenville, Ohio, he was ordered with the army to the Cherokee country.

Mason, the notorious leader of the banditti that infested the Mississippi country, was killed by one of his own followers for the reward offered. His head was brought in while Sergeant Sessions was at Natchez. While at the south, Butler, his colonel, died, and by request of that office, made just before his death, Sessions accompanied Mrs. Butler and the children back to Piitsburg, then Fort Duquesne.

Being a soldier and a frontiersman, he was solicited by Aaron Burr to join his expedition, but suspecting its true character, he refused. Sessions was honorably discharged from the army after three years' service in the Indian wars, which on account of the part taken in them by Great Britain, were stated by Gen. Harrison in his speech at Fort Meigs, to be a continuation of the War of the Revolution.

For his services in the army a warrant for 160 acres of land was issued to his widow in 1851. It was obtained chiefly on the testimony of a Mr. Stevens of Montville, who was also in the army and one of the very few, if not the last survivor. During all the years of his service, Mr. Sessions used to like to say, he had "not slept under a shingle."

After his discharge, he returned to Cooperstown, N.Y., where he lived three years; then started on horse-back, with a few hundred dollars in coin, for Tennessee, to buy a farm.

He stayed over night at Buffalo, there being at a place then two log cabins only, and following the lake shore, arrived in Painesville in October 1800, the same year of the arrival of Gen. Paine and Judge John Walworth. He was hospitably entertained by Walworth, and was induced by him to buy 180 acres of land, for four dollars an acre, now known as the Fobes farm. He immediately built a log cabin on the first hill near the river, cleared up most of the bottom land and a portion of the upland, and set out extensive fruit orchards. Mr. William Fobes, who died in 1860, told of eating peaches from this farm in 1806.

On the 16th of Dec., 1804, Anson Sessions married Asenath A Fobes, a daughter of Lemuel Fobes, from Norwich, Mass.

A contract with the Conn. Land Company was made Nov. 20, 1806, and signed by Abraham Tappan and Anson Sessions in pursuance of which all portions of the Western Reserve lying west of the Cuyahoga River, comprising 800,000 acres, was conveyed. Mr. Sessions was not a surveyor, but was then a man in the prime of life, of great bravery and perseverence in any business he undertook, making him a safe and trustworthy partner. This statement was made by Judge Tappan in the Cleveland Herald in 1831. He also says that "Mr. Anson Sessions was large and well proportioned, and in his younger days decidedly good looking. He was a man of peculiar strength, and was known and esteemed among the pioneers as very kind and benevolent."

Mrs. Sessions survived him, with four of their six children, named Norman, Aurel, mariner, and Horace. He was buried on his own farm, where his remains now rest.

His name is inscribed on a monument in Evergreen cemetery.