The ages to which the first and second generations arrived, cannot
all be correctly ascertained for want of records of the times of
their several births and deaths. The only record of which the writer
is in possession, is that of the families of the first and second
Peter Gumaer, relative to the births of their respective children.
These two records are a guide to get into the neighborhood of the
times of the births of the members of the other families, and from
what I have obtained from inscriptions on tombstones and the
information I have had relative to the times to which some of them
lived, I can correctly determine the ages of some of them and within
a few years of others.
It was said of Jacob Cuddeback, by his grandson, Capt. Cuddeback,
that he lived to the age of 100 years and retained his faculties good
to the end of his life. In 1686, when Peter Gumaer was 20 years old,
and he and Cuddeback had to leave France, the latter cannot have been
less than 20 or 25 years of age. It appears he lived until after the
inhabitants of this neighborhood had to buy some land out of Expense
lot number two, in the Minisink patent, for a supply of fuel, rail
timber, &c., which must have been about the year 1766. From all of
which it appears that the age of Cuddeback cannot have been less than
100 years, and that the answer he made to his son William, heretofore
mentioned, near the end of his life, shows that his intellect was yet
good at that time.
* * * * *