Of the eight children of Ellis and Betsey, only one was a boy. George E. Colburn was born in 1799 in Plainfield and died in 1864 in Burlington Flats. Although he seems to have started out well enough, at some point George’s life seems to have gone off track.

In April 1822, at age 23, he bought a three-acre property for $550 in Burlington, “bounded...on the south by the highway leading from Peter Goodhill’s Mills to Nicholas Parker, on the west by land Belonging to Ellis Colburn...” The size and relatively high price suggests that this was not a farm but a place to house a family in town. The year following, 1823, he married Lois Mach (1804-1838.) She bore him eight children over the next 15 years, seven of which survived her. Her last, Delos, was born the year she died, so she may have died in childbirth.

The 1830 census lists the 30-40 year-old George living with a woman aged 20-30 (his wife Lois), four boys under 10 (George M, Josiah, Elijah, Albert) and a girl 10-15, perhaps a servant or sister.

By 1831 George seems to have saved enough money to buy a farm of his own, also in Burlington, for $2200. It seems to have been prime bottom land along a creek, just outside town:

containing one hundred and fifty eight acres one fourth of an acre of land be the same more or less, bounded as follows to wit: Beginning at a pile of stones in the south line of land owned by Freeborn Matterson and runs from thence southerly along the line of marked trees twenty six chains and forty one links to a stake and stones which is a corner between Samuel Gardners farm and the one hereby conveyed and on the east line of land owned by Amanda Dyer thence easterly on the north line of Samuel Gardner and lands formerly owned by Job Burleson deceased sixty four chains and fifty links to a small Butternutt tree on the west shore of the Wharton Creek. Thence up said west shore of said creek as it winds and turns till it strike the south east corner of lands formerly owned by Andrew Matteson and now owned by Elijah Chapin.... Ref

In 1839, a year after Lois died, George married Sally Ann Medbury (1801-1885.) Sally Ann came from a numerous clan of Medburys that had migrated from Rhode Island to the New Lisbon area around the turn of the 18th century. New Lisbon lay just across the Unadilla river in Chenango County. Sally Ann was 37, very late in life for a woman's first marriage in the 19th century. In 1840 she bore George one more child, Legrand (the first Colburn to be given that name, though not the last.)

The 1840 census lists George living with his second wife Sally Ann and seven surviving children, now in the town of Pittsfield. Unlike his father, George had almost all boys. Three others live with them, two female and one male, likely employees.

The mark for the male appears in the 10-24 age bracket of Free Colored Persons. “Colored Persons” were extremely rare in Otsego County at the time (and are still rare there today.) According to Wikipedia “Upstate New York became a major center of radical abolitionist activity and was an important nexus of the Underground Railroad.” Perhaps this young man live with the Colburns as the result of such activity.

What happened to George Colburn? The 1840 census seems to show him a prosperous landowner, with numerous young sons and a new wife from a clan of prosperous merchants. Three others live under his roof, presumably working for him. By 1844 however the dream seems to have fallen apart. The only clues to what happened appear in real estate records.

The Yorkers who sold George the Pittsfield farm apparently took out a mortgage with New York Life Insurance in 1832. There is no mention of the mortgage in the 1834 sale document, despite the Ostranders’ assurance that they “have in themselves good right full power and lawful authority to grant and convey...” By 1844, $920 was still owed. Whether or not George Colburn knew about the Ostrander mortgage when he bought the Pittsfield property, he took out another one himself in January 1841. At some point he also bought an additional 41 acres in the same area.

The owner of the 1841 mortgage, who also at some point bought the 1832 mortgage from New York Life, was one Samuel Medbury, first cousin once removed of George’s second wife Sally Ann. Samuel was something of a mover and shaker in New Berlin, owning real estate worth $15,000 in 1850, according to the census. After the financial panic of 1857 he moved to Michigan, where he successfully started several businesses.

Was George a victim of bad lawyering--tricked by the Yorkers who sold him an attractive farm into unwitting responsibility for an unsustainable mortgage? Or, trained by his father in the ways Yankee farmers made the best of hilly terrain, was he unable to cope with the different demands of the better bottomlands long farmed by Yorkers? Perhaps he was unlucky enough to purchase his riverine lands just before a flood. The Unadilla is prone to flooding in places, and today briefly splits into two channels near where his farm used to be, in a way that does not appear in the 1868 or 1903 maps.

George Colburn reappears in the census records of 1860 as head of a household living in New Berlin with Sally Ann, daughter Melissa, son Legrand, Legrand's wife Louisa, and a domestic. He is listed as having personal property valued at $1000, but no real estate. Perhaps he was tenant farming one of Samuel Medbury's properties.

George Colburn family in the 1860 census records for New Berlin, Chenango County

George might have had moral or psychological issues. There was a lot of drinking on the American frontier, often to excesses that inspired the Temperance movement during his lifetime. His business reversal might have sent him into what at the time was called "melancholia" and today "depression" (an affliction not unknown among his descendants.)

When George’s father Ellis wrote his will in 1858, he left $100 to each of George’s children, 1/4 of his real estate to each of four surviving daughters, and everything else to his eldest daughter Cynthia. To George, his only son, he left nothing.

Excerpt from a copy of Ellis Colburn's will, in which he left $100 (about $2800 in 2014 dollars) to each of his son George's children but nothing to George himself.