Sarah Dayton, a native of New Haven, Connecticut, married Joel Thorpe about 1792. They and their 3 young children traveled from Connecticut by ox team to Ashtabula County, Ohio in 1799. Another child was born within the year.

In June, the father was absent at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to obtain supplies for the family. He was detained by unexpectedly heavy rains which made the bridgeless streams impassable. During his absence the poverty of his family was so great that Sarah emptied the straw from the bed-ticks and gathered from it the few scattered grains of wheat, which she boiled and carefully divided among her little children!

This not being sufficient to support them until the return of the husband and father, she had almost given up in despair when she spied a wild turkey in the field. Taking down from its pegs the old flint-lock gun, she charged it with the last remnant of gunpowder there was in the house, crawled out carefully into the field, leveled the gun across a log, fired, and down came the turkey!

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