Cornelius R. Stafford, son of Jonathon Stafford and Phebe Orr, was born on February 4, 1813 in Manchester, Ontario County, New York. He married Phebe F. Whitney on April 4, 1839 in Geauga County, Ohio. To their union were born four children.
Cornelius recalled that there was much digging for money on his farm and about the neighborhood in Manchester, New York. He remembered Doctor Philastus Hurlbut speaking at the schoolhouse in Palmyra and taking statements from those in the audience about the sullied character of the Smiths.[1] From 1850 to 1880, he was a farmer in Auburn, Geauga County, Ohio.[2] He died on February 14, 1892.
[1] Bushman, Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism, pp. xvi, 71; Vogel, Early Mormon Documents, 2:196–197.
[2] US Federal Census, 1850, 1870, 1880.