by Alex Brooks
Monday, November 1: This afternoon I took my double wagon and went to Election to Claudius Moffitt’s and carried brother Samuel and old Mr. Caleb Sheldon. I voted for Governor Enos T. Throop and Lieut Gov Edward P. Livingston and Senator Herman I Quackenbush and Assembly George R. Davis, Aaron Worthington, Martin Springer, Chester Griswold.
Enos T Throop was Martin Van Buren’s Lieutenant Governor. They were elected in the 1828 election and took office in January of 1829. Throop became Governor after Martin Van Buren resigned as Governor in March of 1829, after he was appointed Secretary of State by President Andrew Jackson. Van Buren, incidentally, served the shortest term of any Governor in the history of the State. In the 1830 election in which George cast his vote for Throop, Throop was elected Governor in his own right and served his own two year term, but he did not run again in 1832 and was succeeded by William Marcy. Marcy started as the Editor of the Troy Budget, a newspaper that George subscribed to, and was also a part of Martin Van Buren’s New York group of Jacksonian Democrats. Marcy served three terms as Governor of New York. In any case it is clear that George is a committed Jacksonian Democrat.
Saturday, Nov 13: Some rainy and high wind. We chopped and drew a load of wood and sorted and cribbed some corn. This afternoon Doctor White from Pittsfield Medical Institution came and operated on sister Newton’s other blind eye, and they paid him five dollars.
Sunday: Rainy. I rode to I Newton’s to see how sister was since the operation on her eye.
Monday, Nov 15: Today I took my single wagon and carried my four oldest children to school. It was the first day that school began. Mr. Hiram Mattison is our teacher.
Monday, December 13, 1830: Today I rode to Berlin as far as Hamon Village and a half a mile west up the mountain to Berlin games to look for cows to buy. I did not agree for any cows and I returned home this evening. This morning Mr. Benjamin Carpenter died, he had been deranged about a year.
Wednesday: Today stormy. I chopped some wood and ground axes and tended to chores. On this evening Miss Meriah Sackett died with a lingering consumption. She is the daughter of Calvin P. Sackett.