Bezaleel Waste, Sr. was born on May 14, 1742, in Plymouth, Mass. and was named for the Bezaleel Waste who came from Europe in 1670. Here he received his formal schooling, limited as it was.

At 18 he went to live near Barnstable, Mass. on Cape Cod, and became a farmer there for a few years, later returning to Plymouth. Tragedy struck this family as the Father struggled to extract a meager living out of the sandy soil in the Plymouth wilderness, and to protect his children from the elements, sickness and hunger. Twins were born in September of 1767, but due to lack of proper medical care, the babies died the same month. A month later, one-year-old Charles died, too. Baby Richard was less than a year old when Death took him in 1771.

During the Revolutionary War of 1776, Lieutenant Waste enlisted in the United States Army and performed many heroic deeds as a surgeon on the battlefields of New England.

The War over, he moved to Wilmington, Vermont in 1778 and he found a job as a surveyor on the highways of Wilmington and Somerset. He was then 36 years old. With his family of 12 children, he traveled northwest beyond Albany, N.Y. in 1788, and settled for a time in the small town of Hague, New York by Lake George.

The Waste cabin in Hague was filled with profound sorrow in May, 1794, with Death took away 18-year-old Deborah, then returned three short months later to claim 16-year-old Joanna. It required people of extraordinary courage and faith to face such dire tragedy and rise above it, as they had to do.

In 1809, he returned to Vermont, this time making his home in Whitingham. He died there on September 2, 1818, and is buried in the Cutting Cemetery in South Whitingham near his old homestead. He was 76 years old.

"Six generations of this Waste family lie buried side by side in the same graveyard in the south-east part of the town," wrote Leonard A. Brown, Esq. in the book History of Whitingham, 1866. He married Etta Edith Waste, daughter of Charles Howard Waste. "This is an incident of very rare occurrence in a rural town only 100 years old . . . The family was self-reliant and apparently took very little interest in what was going on in the world - the outside limits of their own family."

At 18 Bezaleel married JOANNA CANNON, who was 17, on November 28, 1760. Her parents were Ebenezer and Mercy Blossom Cannon. She was born on September 4, 1745, at Barnstable, Cape Cod, Mass. And she died in Whitingham on May 20, 1815, and is buried there. She was then 72 years old.

Bezaleel Sr. and Joanna Cannon Waste had 12 children:

Charles Waste (1766-1767). Ebenezer Waste (1768-1847), wed Lydia Baldwin; had 4 children. Richard Waste (1770-1771). BEZALEEL WASTE, JR. (1772-1841) (Our Line). Mercy Waste (1774-1853), wed Levi Hale; had daughter Salome. Deborah Waste (1776-1794). Joanna Waste (1778-1794). Uri Waste (1780-1853), wed Martha Morse; had 11 children. Patience Waste (1782-1839), wed Uriah Balcom; had son Bill. Sarah Waste (1786-1823), wed Mr. Pierce.

Hague, Warren County, New York (pop. 760) lies 127 miles east of Utica, 330 feet above sea level, on the western fringe of the finger shaped Lake George. This is the pine and hardwood forests south of historic Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain and just west of the Vermont borderline. This lakeside town is both a lumber center and a resort for fisherman and hunters. It was founded in 1808 by the Dutch and named after the queen's residence and capitol city of the Netherlands of Holland.

Whitingham, Windham County, Vermont (pop. 816) lies 30 miles west of Brattleboro, a few miles north of Rowe across the Massachusetts border, and is about halfway in the 48 miles between Troy, N.Y. and Keene, New Hampshire. Over 1400 feet above sea level, this picturesque, mountainous village produces maple sugar and syrup. It is the site of teh famed curative Sadawga mineral springs and the birthplace of Brigham Young, the Morman leader. Nearby is Lake Whitingham, largest lake entirely within the State, and it's Dam, "the highest earth-dam in the world." This remote hamlet was chartered in 1770 to Colonel Nathan Whiting, for whom it is named; Samuel Champlain discovered Vermont in 1609.

(Reference on Bezaleel Waste and family: "Vermont Historical Gazeteer", 1891, Vol. V, page 713.)''