Note 47 — REMINISCENCES OF VILLAGE LIFE AND OF PANAMA AND CALIFORNIA. 1840-1850.

Erastus Root, a native of Hebron, Connecticut, was a graduate of Dartmouth and settled in Delhi in 1796. He sat in the Legislature from 1798 to 1802 and was then four times elected to Congress, and later was several times sent again to the Assembly. From 1820 to 1822 he was Lieutenant-Governor of the state, in 1821 a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, in 1824 a member of the commission which codified and modified the laws of the state; was three times Speaker of the Assembly; again was State Senator in 1840-44, and for many years was Major-General of the State Militia. The latter office he held when these two boys from Kortright presented their letters of introduction. He was an ardent Democrat of the George Clinton type. The poet Halleck made reference to him in one of his works. General Root died in New York in 1846.