Stafford Raydure Biography:  Orange County, VT

Contributed by Teri Brown. Copyright.  All rights
reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.org/copyright.htm


Stafford Raydure was born in Randolph, Orange county,
Vermont, March 22, 1809. He lived with his grandfather
and attended school sev­eral years and then went to the
State College at Montpelier, after which he studied
medicine with Dr. O. Pond, at Castleton, Vermont, and
was licensed to practice. In the fall of 1837 he taught
school in Fredonia, New York, and soon after came to
Crawford county and settled at Evansburg. Two months
after his arrival he was married to Miss Deso­late
Quigley, daughter of John Quigley, of Vernon township,
April 1, 1832. He then moved on to a farm which
belonged to his wife, and which she had paid for by
teaching school. In 1833 he worked on the canal and
kept boarding house, and afterwards went to Brightstown
and commenced the mercantile business in company with
Matthews & Cook. At the end of six months the
partnership was dissolved, and he bought a farm in the
Beatty settlement, and then peddled clocks and bought
cattle for about one year. After this he peddled for
Seymour & Barton for about four years, and then peddled
tin ware for Cadwell & Bartle, of Meadville. In 1842 he
tired of peddling, and bought a farm in Sads­bury
township, south of Conneaut Lake, and moved onto it. In
1849 he built a mill at the outlet of Conneaut
Reservoir. In 1853 he built another in East
Fallow­field township, and in 1867 built two more in
Athens township, which are now known as Athens Mills.
He followed the lumber business extensively about
twenty years marketing his lumber at New Castle,
Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and Louisville. In 1859 he went
to Lancas­ter county with a drove of oxen, and in 1860
took another drove of beeves to the New York market,
and was dealing in stock more or less from 1842 to
1868. In 1862 he went into the oil business, pro­ducing
near Tidioute and Watson’s Flats, and again in 1868 at
Pleasantville and Church Run. He was a candidate for
the Legislature on the Liberal ticket in 1872, and got
more votes than any other candidate, but was counted
out because of a mistake in spelling the name on a
portion of the tickets. He has held nearly all the
township offices at dif­ferent times, and has always
been an ac­tive man in politics as well as in
busi­ness. He now owns about eight hundred acres of
land in Crawford county, and about three hundred and
fifty in Indiana, eighty miles southwest of Louisville.

Directory of Crawford County, PA, 1879-1880, pages 310-
311

Submitted by Teri Brown