Capt. Abraham Cuddeback was a man of six feet stature and over 200 lbs. weight. He was strong and athletic, and could with ease jump a five-railed post or rail fence. He was very handsomely built, and in all respects a very good looking man. He possessed a great mechanical genius, dexterity and good judgment. When quite young, seeing how shoemakers and weavers performed their work, he commenced and did the shoe-making and weaving for his father's family, and became the best shoemaker and the best and quickest weaver before he was a man grown of any in this vicinity. In the time of the French war his father sent him to Old Paltz, where, and in Rochester, he followed weaving and had no equal in those places. After that war ended the people here generally were destitute of fanning mills, and cleaned their grain with hand fans. He had seen one at Gumaer's and may have seen a few at the Old Paltz. He undertook and made one for his father or himself, and afterwards made several; one for my father, which was done in a good and handsome workmanlike manner, with which was cleaned all the grain of those in the fort at my father's during the Revolutionary War, and thereafter all his own grain during his life. Before the commencement of that war a Mr. John Williams had given him some instruction for laying out the frame work of a house and barn, from which he considered himself enabled to do the carpenter work of such buildings, and did the carpenter work of a house and one or two barns before the war commenced, and after it ended a house and barn for himself and two or three other barns. After the war ended, he made a turning bench, repaired the old spinning-wheels in the neighborhood, turned spools, clevises, &c., for rigging the same. Before the war commenced, the wagons here had all been obtained from Rochester, in Ulster county, some of which were nearly worn out at its end, and a few years thereafter he undertook to contrive how to make a wagon. He said the greatest puzzle he had in mechanical work was to study out rules to make the wheels (of which he was entirely ignorant), but, after thinking over it, he discovered by what means he could make the same. After this he made wagons in a good and workmanlike manner, and in as good style as those which had been obtained from Rochester. He afterwards made pleasure sleighs according to the Kingston fashion of his time, of which there were only one or two old ones in this neighborhood as good and handsome as those which in his time, had been made at Kingston, except painting, which he did not do. He made the best ploughs, and all kinds of farming utensils, of any which were made in his time in this part of our country. He was the greatest marksman at shooting with a rifle and one of the best hunters. And, notwithstanding all these acquisitions and the attention he paid to his farm, he was one of the greatest idlers in the neighborhood, and did often for the sake of