Josiah Chauncey (1716-1802) was the son of the Reverend Isaac Chauncey, the second minister to serve the town of Hadley, Massachusetts. Reverend Chauncey was an enslaver of Arthur Prutt and his wife, Joan, and their children. Josiah likely inherited their son, Caesar Prutt, on Reverend Chauncey's death in 1745. Caesar's older brother, George (1722-1794) was enslaved by Josiah's brother, Richard Chauncey (1716-1802.) Josiah sold his deceased father's house and homelot and settled in a precinct of the town that was incorporated in 1759 as Amherst, Massachusetts. In a property assessment in 1770, Amherst assigned Caesar Prutt's value at £25.
Josiah was a tea merchant and for many years was a licensed retailer of spirits. He served as the first justice of the peace in Amherst in 1758, was a representative to the General Court in 1760 and 1762, and in 1773, was appointed Captain of the Amherst militia by Governor Thomas Hutchinson. Sylvester Judd wrote in his History of Hadley that Chauncey and several other "influential men were unfriendly to the [American] revolution." Under pressure from the Patriots of Amherst, Chauncey refused the Governor's commission. "According to tradition, the whigs [Patriots] of Amherst burnt Capt. Chauncey's commissions under a tree, with some display." (Judd, HIstory of Hadley, p. 410-411.)
Chauncey continued living in Amherst during the Revolution. Unlike his enslaver, Caesar Prutt served in the Amherst militia and later, in the Continental Army. Chauncey moved with his family to Albany County, New York, in about 1781, where he died in 1802.
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