Person:John Deming (37)

John Deming, Jr. was the next to last of his parents' twelve children. He did not match the output of his father, producing only nine offspring with his wife Prudence Treat, whom he married in 1767.

She was from the notable Connecticut family previously mentioned, a descendant of Governor Robert Treat. This was the third intersection of the two families, which began when Governor Treat's father Richard married Elizabeth, the aunt of "John The Settler" Deming and continued when their daughter Honor Treat married the same John Deming.

Sometime after 1773, John and Prudence Deming left Wethersfield after the first three of there children were born -- then only five, three and one years of age -- to settle in what would later become Berkshire County. It was situated in the forested green hillsides and lush valleys of the Berkshire Hills in western Massachusetts. Just as his great grandfather John, Sr. was a founder of Wethersfield, so too was John, Jr. one of a group founding the town of Stockbridge (originally called Indiantown). Western Massachusetts was settled considerably later than the towns in the eastern part of the colony because it was in hostile Indian country, farther removed from the perceived safety of older settlements. Stockbridge was incorporated in 1774 and John Deming became one of the first three members of the Board of Selectmen, the men chosen to represent it with the Colony of Massachusetts. Many public meetings and worship services were held in his home.

This same year, 1774, was when the Intolerable Acts were passed by the British Parliament in response to the Boston Tea Party incident. The town was only a few months old when the first Continental Congress was held in Philadelphia, a meeting that called for organizing local militias to deal with impending trouble with the mother country. Whereupon, a meeting of the Stockbridge settlers was held on November 10, 1774 at which Increase Hewins was named Captain and John Deming Lieutenant of a local militia. When the Revolution began, Deming enlisted with the regular colonial forces and served two hitches as a private, first with Captain Soule's Company and later with Colonel Webb's Regiment.

He lived to see Massachusetts become the sixth state of the new country and John Hancock, whose signature was the most prominent among those signing the Declaration of Independence, become its first governor. But the Revolution had not completely settled the issue with the British and by the time he died in 1812, the United States was again at war with Great Britain.

During his life, John Deming accumulated property in both Stockbridge and what is today known as Great Barrington. He is thought to be buried in the Deming cemetery on a hillside in Stockbridge, of which only a few gravestones remain, most of which the elements have rendered unreadable. (Taken from: A Family History, by Donovan Faust)^[1]

1. ↑ ^1.0 1.1 A. Donovan Faust (Foust). A Family History: The Ancestors of Thomas Wilson Faust. (1997).
2. ↑ ^2.0 2.1 55 John Deming, in Deming, Judson Keith. Genealogy of the Descendants of John Deming of Wethersfield, Connecticut: with Historical Notes. (Dubuque, Iowa: Mathis-Mets Company, 1904)
   53-54.

   "55 John Deming, (son of David 18) born 14 Mar. 1743 in Wethersfield, Conn.; died 28 Apr. 1812 in Sandisfield, Mass.; married 31 Aug. 1767 in Wethersfield, Prudence Treat, daughter of Oliver and Damaris (Rose) Treat, born 13 Mar. 1748; died 25 Dec. 1807. John Deming remained in Wethersfield until after his father's death, and in 1772 he bought land in Sandisfield, Mass., soon after which time he probably moved to that place. In 1778 he is called John Deming 2nd of Sandisfield. As there were other men of the same name in and about Sandisfield, it is difficult to distinguish him upon the records, but it is probable that he is the John Deming of Sandisfield who served as a private in Capt. Soule's Co., Col. Fellows' regiment, enlisting 8 May 1775, and serving three months."

3. ↑ Wethersfield Vital Records, in Connecticut, United States. The Barbour Collection of Connecticut Town Vital Records
   1:107.

   DEMING, John, s. David & Martha, b. Mar. 14, 1742/3

4. ↑ Smith, Elizur Yale. Vital records of Sandisfield, Massachusetts, to the year 1850: Sandisfield Revolutionary soldiers. (Rutland, Vermont: Tuttle Publishing Co., Inc., 1936)
   94.

   "Deming, … John, husband of Prudence, [died] April 28, 1812 aged 70 years."

5. ↑ John Deming, in Find A Grave.