The Notebooks of Charles F. Mulks

The names on deed No 3 are signed in the following order.

The Mulks family of Caroline New York are the descendants of the first Benoni Mulks one of the earliest pioneers of the town.

He was born in the Wall Kill valley, Orange County, New York in 1742 and lived to be ninety years of age. His death occurred at his home in Caroline October 14th, 1832. His grave is in the old Mulks Cemetery, where are buried members of five generations of the family.

The father of Benoni was a Scotch-Irish immigrant, whose name was John Mullex, and all that is known about him is from the family record and for this we are indebted to the venerable John Mulks of Whitewater, Wisconsin, who has now been dead over thirty years. According to the record John was born in 1719 in County Downe Ireland and came to America when a boy or very young man.

Of the McNeal family, the parents of Susan, the information is derived from the same source, a brief written memoranda by the late John Mulks, who was the youngest of the four children of Benoni and who surviving all the rest lived to the vulnerable age of 85½ years and died at his home in Whitewater, Wisconsin, December 1864.

John McNeal and his wife were both born in the north of Ireland, the former at Londonderry in 1686 and the latter at Tyrone in

They were both protestants and were both in the siege of Londonderry, sometime after which, together with several other families, they came to America and settled in Orange County in the then province and now state of New York; that among these families were those of Col. Charles Clinton, and the Dennistons.

If these McNeals were in the fort at the siege of Londonderry, they were there as children, for they were both under five years of age. It was probably a matter of tradition in the old family, and although tradition is very long lived, it sometimes gets a little mixed up in its facts. The McNeal Clinton and Denniston and names are to be found in Eager's history of Orange County and also in the documentary history of New York relating to Orange County. The Clinton family are historical in the annals of the state.