This document in our archives is the deed of a sale for 125 acres of land sold by Samuel Pennock to Titus Goodall of Lyme for twelve pounds, in September, 1775. By this time, Pennock was already identified on a list of suspected Tory sympathizers in what was then Gloucester County, New York. He and his brothers and fellow Loyalists, James Jr. and Aaron, would have property in Strafford confiscated into the 1780s, according to Josephine Fisher in her article “Loyalists in Strafford”, written for the December 1937 Proceedings of the Vermont Historical Society. Selling the land was perhaps a stopgap measure on Pennock’s part to gain some sort of income on the property before it could be seized.

Many know the Pennock name, and the Strafford brothers who fought–and died–on opposite sides of the Revolutionary War. Eight sons of James and Thankful (Root) Pennock engaged with Col. John Peter’s Queen’s Loyal Rangers; of those, five never returned to Strafford. James Jr., Jesse, and William died at the Battle of Saratoga in October, 1777; Samuel, his wife and children (all but one Isaac), his brother Jeremiah, and nephew Jesse settled in Leeds County, Ontario with other American Loyalists. “Wherever you find a Pennock,” writes Thad W.H. Leavitt in the History of Leeds and Grenville, Ontario, from 1749 to 1879, “they trace their forefathers back to Vermont.”

Leavitt is, of course, incorrect with some of his information; not all the Pennock brothers were killed, and he seems to have confused Oliver, who returned to Strafford with Aaron and Peter, with Jeremiah, who followed Samuel to Canada. (He also tells a bizarre, apocryphal tale of James and Thankful meeting at a New York hotel.) However, it does appear that the Pennocks are counted among the founding families of Leeds County, and Samuel listed in the directory of the United Empire Loyalists’ Association of Canada. In this way, Samuel has followed in the steps of his own parents, who chartered a new course to establish and grow the town of Strafford.

More research will need to be done to identify the location of the land Samuel Pennock sold to Titus Goodall back in 1775. The 125 acres, it appears to read, lay “in the Township of Strafford…Being undeeded Land to be Laid out on the original Right of Paul[?] March.” It’s not listed among the real estate assets in the probate record following Goodall’s death in 1778, unless it is part of the “25 acres of land Lying east of Eb[enezar] Green’s house” in Thetford. Still, this deed is a small part of a much larger story, of a man beginning on a road that will lead him away from Strafford for good.