Bethiah Youngs Vail
(1778 - 1847)

Morristown was a very small community at the time of the American Revolution when Bethiah Youngs was born, probably in or near what we now call Whippany. Her father, Ephriam Youngs, was a carpenter born on Long Island in 1749, and earned special notice from the Continental Congress for rescuing the records of the Proprietors of East Jersey at Perth Amboy before the British could destroy them. Her mother was Phoebe Cutler, daughter of one of the first settlers of Morristown.

Bethiah lost her mother when she was only eight years old, leaving her father with four young children. The eldest, Stephen, was almost twelve, but Abijah was only five and little Phebe was still a baby just over a year old. It would only be two months, though, before Bethia's father married again. His choice was Dinah Lee Cutler, his widowed sister-in-law, the wife of Phebe's brother Abijah who had, coincidentally, died on the day Bethiah was born. Dinah's son Joseph, Bethiah's first cousin, became her step-brother. Three more children were born to Ephriam and Dinah before Bethiah's father was accidentally drowned building a bridge near Newark when she was fifteen years old.

Bethiah's brother Stephen was the first to marry, in 1898. Joseph Cutler married Betsey Cook from Hanover two years later. In 1801, Bethiah married the promising young blacksmith Stephen Vail. The next year, her little brother Abijah married Betsey Cook's sister.

Bethiah's first child, Harriet, was born in 1802. That same year, Joseph's first son, Silas, was born. Twenty-seven years later, Dr. Silas Condict Cutler would marry Bethiah and Stephen's eighteen-year-old daughter, Sarah Louise.

Bethiah and Stephen had two other children, Alfred and George, who were to distinguish themselves in science and politics. They can be studied in other sections of this website.

Here are some family brainteasers:

• Alfred and George Vail were Joseph Cutler's nephews (stepsister's sons)
• Uriah Cutler was grandfather of both Bethiah Youngs (mother's father) and Joseph Cutler (father's father)
• Joseph Cutler's daughter-in-law was his neice (stepsister's daughter)
• Stephen Vail was Joseph Cutler's brother-in-law (stepsister's husband)

To make matters more complicated, after Bethiah Vail died in 1847, Stephen remarried the widow Mary Lidgerwood. One of the Lidgerwood boys married Silas and Sarah's daughter. . . . But that's a story for another family's website.