Colby Homestead Farms’ Roots Trace Back to America’s Earliest Settlers

Colby Homestead Farms, which traces its lineage to America's earliest settlers, innovates to feed today's communities

For 219 years, Colby Homestead Farms has continued farming while participating in their community. Daniel Ulrich for American Essence

Imagine a company that has been around for as long as the U.S. Capitol, is as old as West Point Academy, and is still family-owned and -operated today. There’s such a farm in Spencerport, New York, conducting business 219 years after its founding. In the beginning, it was a small family farm started by several brothers who bravely traveled from Salisbury, Massachusetts, to Western New York, where they purchased land and began clearing that land for a farm.

For 219 years, Colby Homestead Farms has continued farming while living and participating in their community. They cultivated the land decades before the town was founded, and they’ve been contributing to local community, business, government, and faith-based activities for the past two centuries. Addressing the challenges and opportunities of each generation hasn’t always been easy, but from the American Civil War to World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, and the present day, the Colby family has remained active in their community in many ways.

1600s to 1800s: Earliest Beginnings

The Colby family can trace their lineage back to a man named Anthony Colby who came to America among the earliest settlers with the Winthrop Fleet in 1630. Sometime later, around 1640, Anthony settled in Salisbury, where he planted his family’s roots. The Colbys remained there for approximately 150 years until they made a difficult and dangerous decision to move west, to what was then an undeveloped part of America. The original family home was donated to the Bartlett Cemetery Association, in 1899, as a memorial to the Colby and Macy families.