An account of Justus Da Lee's life begins with a voyage by ship from Providence, R. I. In 1793. His parents, James Waterman Da Lee (1765-1840) and Anstis Kinnicutt Da Lee (1775-1849) had only been married seven months when they left Rhode Island for New York to start a new life. They accompanied her parents, Daniel Kinnicutt (1735-1817) and Hannah Kent Kinnicutt, and many other family members. The purpose of the move was Planting New Baptist Churches throughout upper New York. They were located in Jefferson, Livingston, Rensselaer, Schoharie, and Washington Counties. Justus was born in Pittstown, NY on October 1, 1793. He would be the first of thirteen children, although five would die in infancy. He grew up in Cambridge, NY and lived there until age 47. He served in the War of 1812 in the Cambridge Militia for twenty days, which earned him 160 acres of land under the Bounty Land Act of 1855. He was awarded it in Aurora, IL, but never took up the land. His son Amon G. J. Da Lee later homesteaded it in Kansas, near Lawrence. He taught school in Cambridge in 1815, and on October 13, 1816 Justus married Mary Fowler in the Baptist Church. She was the daughter of Amon Fowler and Ruth Gilbert. Justus and Mary had ten children, seven of whom lived to adulthood. By 1824 Justus's parents and several sisters and brothers had moved to the western side of New York next to Lake Erie in Chautaugua County. He remained in eastern New York, but in 1826 he started showing an interest in portrait painting. He traveled all across upper New York as an itinerant painter in watercolors. He painted small oval portraits which usually were 2 1/2 x 3". He quit doing this work in the late 1840's and is listed in Buffalo in 1848-49 as a grocer. Unfortunately for Justus, his move to Buffalo was ill timed. His wife Mary, his son Almanzon, and his grandson all died within one week during an outbreak of cholera in Buffalo. Justus moved to Aurora, IL by 1856, and later by 1870 is living out west in Eden, Fond du Lac County, WI, with his daughter Harriet L. Williams, wife of Bemsley Williams. Justus is blind on the 1870 census, and died there on January 5, 1878. He is buried in the Odekirk Cemetery near his daughter Harriet L. Williams. He shares his tombstone with his other daughter Mary Ann Vosburgh, who died there in 1894. Justus got about $3.00 a portrait for his paintings, including the frame. He died poor. Today his paintings are called "Folk Art" and are highly collectible and go for upwards of $10,000 to 15,000 each. One is in the Colonial Williamsburg Collection in Virginia.