Joseph Sackett

85. Joseph Sackett, 1707–__, of Newtown, L. I., New York City and Orange County, all in the State of New York, son of (23) Judge Joseph and Hannah Alsop Sackett, was married, March 23, 1731, to Millicent Clowes, daughter of Samuel Clowes and his wife Catherine Donne. He was by profession a lawyer. Previous to or immediately after the date of his marriage he became engaged in mercantile business in New York City, to which for several years he gave considerable attention—dividing his time between that and the practice of his profession. Meantime his father, Judge Joseph Sackett, and his father-in-law, Samuel Clowes, acquired title to several extensive tracts of fertile land in the vacated Capt. John Evans patent, on the west bank of the Hudson River and in the County of Orange, N. Y. This land they had surveyed and plotted into small farms and village lots, which they disposed of to incoming settlers. Evidently this lucrative land business on the Hudson possessed for the young lawyer and merchant a controlling attraction, for about the year 1741, he relinquished all interest in his promising mercantile venture to his younger brothers and removed with his family to Orange County. There, in addition to looking after his father's real estate interests, he soon became engaged in extensive transactions on his own account. In 1747 he was appointed, by Governor George Clinton, High Sheriff of Orange County, which office he retained by consecutive reappointments through the administrations of Governors Danvers, Osborn, De Lancy, and Sir Charles Hardy, to the year 1757, when he resigned said office, removed his family to Long Island and took up anew the practice of his profession in New York City.
     Samuel Clowes, Esq., 1674–1760, the father of Millicent Clowes Sackett, was born in Derbyshire, England. In receiving his education he was instructed in mathmatics [sic] by Flamestead, for whose use Greenwich Observatory was erected. He became a lawyer and on reaching New York in 1697 began the practice of his profession, and is credited with being the first lawyer to settle on Long Island. On July 18, 1698, he was married to Catherine Donne (sometimes written Denne). In 1702 he accompanied Lord Cornbury to Jamaica and was immediately thereafter commissioned Clerk of Queens County, which office he held until 1710, when the pressure of professional business and personal interests impelled him to resign. He was practical surveyor as well as an able lawyer. His name appears as attorney in some of the most important suits of that period, and figures more extensively than that of any man of his time in real estate transactions found recorded in early records of Long Island and the Hudson River counties.

Mine Found in Orange County
Johannes Closson, formerly a workman of Mr. Schuyler's, about eleven years ago, came to me, and told me that he had found a mine on my land above the Highlands, at a place called Blooming-Grove, lying between Goshen and the river, in Orange County, where my eldest son Joseph Sacket, Jun. now lives. I made him several offers. He said it would not do, but if I would give him a lease for a term of years, he would carry it on at his own cost, and deliver me one half at the pit's mouth, and come to work in 6 or 8 month's time, and told me the ore was as good as Mr. Schuyler's. But he died before the time he was to come. About 4 years ago, I heard his widow made enquiry after a Sacket on Long Island, I went over to her, she said her husband had been dead 7 years, but he told her that on one Sacket's land, above the Highlands, on the west side of the river, he had found a mine, and that he dug very shallow, and could heave it out by bushels, but he covered it up carefully, and that it was near by a spring, and not far from a brook. There was an elderly Dutchman present then, and he said he had often evenings and mornings conversed with him, and he said he had often told him the same thing, and heard him say, if he had his leave, and lived 7 years, he should be a gentleman. Now if any person can discover the vein of ore, if it is on my lands, he shall have out of the first clear profits, 300 l., or he shall have it for a term of years, as Closson was to have it, or he shall have the 8th part of it for ever, as witness my hand, July 27, 1752.
Joseph Sacket

—New York Gazette, Orange County, New York, 3 Aug 1752