Daniel Kirtland, the first member of this family of whom we have definite information, was a native of Durham, Greene county, New York. Owing to confusion in the existing records and paucity of dates, it is uncertain whether this Daniel is the Daniel Sr., who married Lovisa Lord, and is the great-grandfather of Caroline Kirtland, or his son, Daniel Jr., who married Huldah Stevens. The family belongs to the border clans of Scotland and is found in Durham, Yorkshire and Cheshire, England, whence members of it emigrated in early days to Durham, Woodbury and Wallingford, Connecticut. About 1784, a number of families from these Connecticut towns, settled in what was then Freehold, Greene county, New York, naming their settlement New Durham, and in 1805, incorporating under the name of Durham. It is thought that the Kirtlands were among these settlers. In the census of 1810 there were four families, a total of twenty-one persons of the name of Kirtland of record. Children of Daniel Kirtland : Daniel P.; Eliza M.; Frederick W.; Julia A.; Caroline A.; Horace B.; Dorrance L., mentioned elsewhere.
