Bennington

BLOOMER, Reuben

Vermont Historical Magazine, No XI, October 1867, p 184

[Biographical note extracted from a section on the history of Dorset, 
Vermont.] Reuben BLOOMER came into town [Dorset, Bennington County, Vermont] 
in 1774 and settled on the farm still owned by his descendants. He married 
[Miss?] Susannah PADDOCK, and raised a family consisting of nine sons and 
eight daughters. He went with the army to Hubbardton [Rutland County, 
Vermont] as teamster. In the summer of 1777, when nearly all the people, 
panic stricken at the threatened invasion of BURGOYNE, had fled, he still 
remained on his farm. At this time a son of his nine years old dying, he was 
reduced to the hard necessity of setting out for the place of burial alone. 
Providentially a stranger came along and assisted the stricken father in 
burying his dead. He himself [Reuben BLOOMER] died in 1824, aged 
eighty-eight years. [By calculation he was born about 1736.] His wife 
[Susannah BLOOMER] died at the advanced age of ninety years.

Submitted by Cathy Kubly