VIII.

PIONEERS IN TRIBUTARY NEIGHBORHOODS.

1784-1823.

The rapidity with which the lands in this valley were taken up, once they had been made accessible, is most striking. Not only was the site of the village put under cultivation before the century closed, but many tracts elsewhere, on the hills to the north and south and along the two rivers, Susquehanna and Unadilla. Of those pioneers this volume should contain some record. They became familiar figures in village streets. Here they found a market for their produce; here many of them attended Church; here was the bank; here lived their family physicians and their lawyers; here was the post office, and here were the dry goods and grocery stores. Some of these localities have since built up villages of their own, such as Sidney Centre (or Maywood) and Wells Bridge; but for three-quarters of a century Unadilla was the central village with which all their interests were closely identified.

Across the river from the village in the Crookerville neighborhood, a settlement had been started by Stephen Wood before the eighteenth century closed, and here was a sawmill. Mr. Wood’s wife was a sister of William Gordon who afterwards came to live on the Nathaniel Wattles place. Mr. Gordon was the father of Samuel Gordon of Delhi who was stationed at Unadilla during the Civil War as Provost Marshall. The sawmill in Crookerville had been built some years before 1800, when Guido L. Bissell charged Mr. Gordon “to two days on the mill, six shillings”, “to repairing the sawmill, 14 shillings”, and in 1801, “to work on sawmill, 6 shillings”, and “to work on sawmill and gate 6 shillings.” Soon afterwards a grist mill was erected. It was owned by a man named Bennett who sold it to Mr. Crooker, after whom the place got its name.

Mr. Crooker gave a new start to the settlement by erecting a woolen mill in which yarn was spun, cloth woven and carpets made. For some of these carpets he found a market in New York. He erected seven houses around the mills, one for himself, the others for his employes. He died in 1842, and his son Edmund continued the business, with Elisha Thompson, a brother of William J. Thompson, but in 1844, the property passed into the hands of Major Fellows who, in 1845, converted the woolen mill into a grist mill.

Early among those who reached the hills north of the village were Peter Rogers, Abel DeForest and a man named Morefield. In 1799, Mr. Rogers’s dwelling was described as an “old house,” indicating that it had been built before the Revolution. Town records show that Mr. DeForest was living there as early as 1797. Other men who came to this region were Elijah Place and Rufus Fisk, as early as 1799, and James Maxwell, John Butler and Lysander Curtis, who arrived later.

Abel DeForest was a member of Assembly in 1810, 1813 and 1814. The DeForest name has been well preserved in numerous descendants. According to the census of 1890, there were fifty-eight persons of the name living in the town. William DeForest for more than thirty years was a groceryman in the village. Over his counter, in exchange for peanuts and oranges, were to pass the most of the pennies that came into the author’s hands when a boy.

Lysander Curtis outlived all his contemporaries. When he died in December, 1890, his age was ninety-eight years, nine months and twenty days. For nearly sixty years he had lived on the same farm. He was born in Columbia County in 1792 and came to this valley with his father when twelve years old. He served in the War of 1812, and in 1833 settled on 300 acres of unimproved land at the upper end of Rogers Hollow. Out of this land he made a valuable farm, which at the time of his death was still in his possession. Mr. Curtis had voted at every election save one since he became of age.

Noah Gregory, whose son settled in that part of the town called Unadilla Centre, was a native of Norwalk, Connecticut, where he was born in 1796. He lived in Gilbertsville, and after him was named Gregory Hill. His son, Ebenezer Gregory, in 1823 married James Maxwell’s daughter and moved to a farm where he built the stone house that still stands in Unadilla Centre. He reared four sons and four daughters who have contributed for more than one generation familiar figures to the social and business life of the village.

One of his sons was Jared C. Gregory who died in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1891. He lived in Unadilla for many years, reading law with Judge Noble, and practising it here until 1858 when he removed to Wisconsin, having been two years before the Democratic candidate for Congress. In Wisconsin he had success as a lawyer, became a Regent of the University of the State and postmaster of Madison under President Cleveland. His wife was Charlotte Camp, a sister of Mrs. Charles C. Noble. She is still living in Madison. The author had the pleasure of meeting her there in the summer of 1900, while securing material for “The Old New York Frontier” in the Library of the State Historical Society. He spent two hours in her home, and they passed as might one.

Another son was Dr. Nelson B. Gregory, who in the last years of his life was a conspicuous figure in the village. In his youth he had learned dentistry and went to France where he became a pioneer American dentist. He had among his patients men of whom the world everywhere has heard, including Thiers. He returned to Unadilla about twenty years ago and devoted himself to farming and stock raising on the fertile island farm formed by the Susquehanna and the Binnekill. He died in 1895.

In 1804, Abel Holmes came from Connecticut to Morris, bringing with him a son Amos, then one year and a half old. In 1809 Mr. Holmes went to Unadilla Centre, built a log house and cleared up a farm, with his nearest neighbor living one mile away. He lived to be eighty-four years old, and his son Amos died at ninety-five. Amos learned to ride a bicycle when he was ninety-three. The last years of Amos’s life were spent in the village and he distinctly remembered the place as he had seen it in boyhood.

By 1820 many families were living along the old Butternut road, running north from the Noble and Hayes store. Beginning at the north line of the town and coming south, the first farm was occupied by Richard Musson, who had settled there in 1804. Then came in the order named, Daniel Adcock, Jehiel Clark, Captain A. Bushnell, a family on the Peter Coon farm, Simeon Church, L. Farnsworth and James Maxwell. This brings us to Unadilla Centre where Mr. Maxwell kept a hotel. South from this point the settlers were Mr. Lamb, Mr. Carr, William Derrick, a colored man who had formerly been a slave owned by General Jacob Morris, another Mr. Carr, Jarvis Smith, John Haynes, who was a blacksmith, Joseph Smith, Mr. Allen, and finally Mr. Hemenway. This brought the traveler to the hill overlooking the village, at the base of which lay a group of buildings belonging to merchants, stock dealers, and farmers, gathered about the store and distillery of Noble and Hayes.[17]

In the Sand Hill and Hampshire Hollow regions, the town road records show that lands had been taken up before the eighteenth century closed. Among the early names are Daniel Buckley, John Sisson, Samuel Merriman, Elisha Lathrop, Thomas Wilbur, and John Cranston, all of whom had arrived as early as 1796 when Abner Griffith and Samuel Betts were living on the river road south of those settlements. John Sisson came as early as 1790, living first on the river road and then removing to the neighborhood afterwards called Sisson Hill. Other early names are Eber Ferris, John Palmer, Aaron Sisson, Lee Palmer, Hezekiah and William Carr, Edward Smith, Harvey Potter, Bethel Lesure, Samuel Patterson, and Captain Seth Rowley.

Captain Rowley had taken part in the siege of Fort Schuyler in 1777, that historic event which, combined with the battle at Oriskany, precipitated the Border Wars of the American Revolution. Captain Rowley spent three weeks at Fort Schuyler. He died at the age of ninety-one. On the river road near the mouth of Sand Hill Creek settled Captain Elisha Saunders, who was a physician as well as a soldier. He was killed at the battle of Queenstown in the War of 1812, and left two sons, one of whom became a physician in Otego, while the other, B. G. W. Saunders, lived for many years in Unadilla.

Benjamin Wheaton had settled in the eastern part of the town before 1796. He survived in that neighborhood as the traditional hero of many hunting tales, some of which are worthy of Baron Munchausen. One of them relates to a panther. Mr. Wheaton, after a long tramp through the woods, on sitting down to rest, fell asleep. When he awoke, he found himself covered with leaves and concluded that a panther had thus bestowed upon him the attentions received from other creatures by the celebrated Babes in the Woods. He believed however that the panther’s attentions had been prompted by self interest, in that she expected to return with her young and make a meal of him. Accordingly, he climbed a tree and when the big cat came back with her kittens, the mighty hunter slew all three.

The condition of Hampshire Hollow, which was settled by seven families from New Hampshire, has been described by Sylvester Smith as it existed in the early part of the century.[18] The heads of families and the number of their children were these: Parker Fletcher, seven children; Whiting Bacon, (the father of Samuel D. Bacon of Unadilla), eleven; Peter Davis, six; Walter Winans, four; Gaius Spaulding, four; Ephraim Smith, ten; Abraham Post, ten; John Cranston, ten; Samuel Lamb, four; Levi Lathrop, twelve; Asa Lesure, eight; Ephraim Robbins, six; Theophilus Merriman, seven; William Chapin, seven; John Lesure, eight (Mr. Lesure was living in 1891 at the age of eighty-nine); Thomas J. Davis, three, and B. M. Goldsmith, three. Nearly all of these families in Mr. Smith’s boyhood were still living in log houses.

With the building of the road from the Ouleout over to Carr’s Creek, in 1794, an important beginning was made in opening up the Sidney Centre neighborhood—a road little used now-a-days because of the heavy grade, but it seems to have been the original means of approach to Sidney Centre. Settlers came in slowly. The first to arrive came before the road was open. Jacob Bidwell settled there in 1793 and found two or three families had preceded him, but they did not remain long. Mr. Bidwell built a house on the farm owned in recent years by Harper W. Dewey. His brother taught the first school on Carr’s Creek and in 1798, at this wilderness home, was born a son who spent his old age in Unadilla village—Simeon Bidwell.

At Smith Settlement homes were planted about the same time, the pioneer having been Samuel Smith. On the Niles farm the first settler was John Wellman who sold the place to Joseph Niles in 1810. Mr. Niles came from Connecticut. He was drafted for the War of 1812 and for twenty-five dollars hired a man to go in his place. This man went to Sackett’s Harbor under General Erastus Root of Delhi. Mr. Niles’s son Samuel lived on this farm all his life, I think. In 1816, David Baker, the father of Horace and William Baker, came to this neighborhood.

Another early settler was Jonathan Burdick. His father had settled in Kortright in 1810. Jonathan came to Carr’s Creek in 1836. Except for the Smith settlement, the country was still in large part a wilderness. Assisted by his wife Mr. Burdick rolled up a log house. His father had been present as one of the guard at the time Major André was taken from the old Dutch Church at Tappan to his place of execution, for complicity in the treason of Benedict Arnold. The father was also present at the surrender of Cornwallis. Another pioneer in the Sidney Centre neighborhood was Windsor Merithew. He came in 1835. The first school-house in this region was built in 1825 and was constructed of logs.

In the paper mill district some of the first settlements in the town were made. Here stood the original village of Unadilla, a village of scattered farms, planted in 1772 and burned by the American soldiers under Colonel William Butler in 1778, when it had become a settlement of Indians, British Tories and runaway negroes who had driven out the original Scotch-Irish pioneers. To these lands came some of the first settlers who returned to the valley after the war, which was about 1784. On the paper mill site, saw and grist mills had been built within a few years and around them was gathered a thriving settlement. The mills were owned by Abimileck Arnold. A carding mill and cloth dressing factory were also established here. Mr. Arnold arrived soon after the war closed and seems to have been here before the conflict began.

On the farm just below the paper mill site, where the Johnstons spent their first season, was made one of the settlements that belong to a time previous to the war. Here now William Hanna, a Scotchman from Cherry Valley, made his home and here he long lived and kept a hotel. Mr. Hanna was possibly a relative of the Rev. William Hanna, who twenty years before had been pastor of the first Presbyterian Church established in Albany and had corresponded with Sir William Johnson, from which we may, perhaps, infer that the younger William Hanna had come into the valley before the war. The younger Hanna had served in the Revolution in the Third Regiment of Tryon County Militia. Witter and Hugh Johnston were in the same regiment. In this regiment David McMaster was a captain.

Two Ouleout names that appear on the muster roll are Abraham Fuller who built the mill there probably before the war, and Abraham Hodges, while among other names are Daniel and David Ogden of Otego, and Henry Scramling and John Van Dewerker of Oneonta. Jonathan Carley the pioneer of the family that still survives on the Ouleout, had served in the Revolution and came into the country in 1796 from Duchess County.

A sister of the Johnstons was the wife of Stephen Stoyles who settled on the farm where recently lived Norman D. Foster and whose daughter was married to Obel Nye. Mr. Stoyles had served in the Revolution and came into the valley in 1788. Descendants of Mr. Nye lived on this farm until it passed to Mr. Foster. Here for many years cider was made and to this mill and the rival manufactory at the Ryder farm on the Ouleout many boys from the village years ago were accustomed in the autumn to make their pilgrimages. With delight the author recalls that among these boys he was often one.

Captain David McMaster came with the Johnstons. He lived across the way from the Ephraim Smith house. C. Frasier settled on the A. N. Benedict farm and David Bigelow on the Evans place, not far from the site of the old Indian Monument, all trace of which I believe has now disappeared. As early as 1796 Moses Hovey had settled in this neighborhood—I believe on the Sylvester Arms place.

To the Luther farm early came back one of the Sliters of the Revolution and then Phineas Bennett who was here at the beginning of the century, or before. Elisha Luther, a Revolutionary pensioner, came from Clarendon, Vermont, in 1825, and bought the farm from a family named Sherwood. Mr. Sherwood’s daughter was the wife of Moses Foster whose coming was contemporary with Mr. Luther’s. Mr. Foster left behind numerous descendants.

Other daughters of Mr. Sherwood by another wife were those who became the three wives of Colonel David Hough, owner of the farm on which stands a brick house. One of these daughters when married to Colonel Hough was already the widow of a man named Lord. Another was the widow of Dr. Slade, the father of Chauncey Slade, a citizen of the village for many years. Colonel Hough bought his farm from a family named Hurd who were relatives of the Jewell family of Guilford. On this farm bricks were made and many thousands of them were used for chimneys in Unadilla village. Alvin Woodworth lived in this neighborhood early in the century and his son Alvin Clarke Woodworth, who died in 1818, was the first person buried in the cemetery near the home of Norman D. Foster. Here Chauncey Slade lies buried.

With Elisha Luther came his son, Martin B. Luther, whose death in the summer of 1890 removed a citizen of much personal worth and superior intellectual endowments. He had been supervisor in 1841 and 1842 and was a justice of the peace for several terms. He was an authority on titles in the Wallace and Upton patents and was a surveyor of long experience. He was prominent in Masonry. He joined to wide reading a clear and large understanding. Mr. Rogers[19] did not exaggerate in describing him as “a man of great capacity, much modesty, an honored citizen, a good farmer, and a gentleman of unquestioned honor.”

On the Unadilla river a large family of the name of Spencer settled,—so large indeed that a part of that neighborhood was known as “Spencer Street.” The father was Jonathan Spencer and one of the sons was Orange Spencer. These men appear to have first settled here before the Revolution. Following them were several families to whom they were related by marriage, sisters of Jonathan being the wives of Jeremiah Birch, Jonathan Stark and Jeremiah Thornton.

Mr. Birch was the grandfather of Albert G. Birch.[20] Jeremiah Birch came soon after the Spencers and was from the same locality in Montgomery County. He as well as the Spencers had served in the Revolution in the Third Regiment of Tryon County Militia and probably was at Oriskany. Mr. Stark made his home on the Horace Phelps place and died about sixty-five years ago. Another relative of Jonathan Spencer was Jalleal Billings, who was a son of one of his sisters. He settled near the bridge that now crosses to Shaver’s Corners. Mr. Billings’s mother had for her second husband Enos Yale, who settled in that valley several years before the eighteenth century closed. Mr. Yale was prominent in town affairs.

To this same valley, near the mouth of the river, some time afterwards came another family named Spencer. Their ancestor, Amos Spencer, originally was from Connecticut and had served in the Revolution. He had settled in the town of Maryland, Otsego Co. On the Unadilla river settled two of his family, Simeon and Porter, who afterwards came to the village, leaving descendants, some of whom are still living there.

Samuel Rogers, the ancestor of P. P. Rogers, came to Unadilla before 1795. Four children and his wife came with him. They settled first on the Gates place above the Salmon G. Cone farm, but went afterwards to the Unadilla river. Mr. Rogers was a native of North Bolton, Connecticut, where he was born in 1764, and his wife a native of the neighboring town of East Windsor. He died in 1829. Mr. Rogers was one of those shoemakers who have been remarkable for other things than their trade. He worked at that trade for the most of his life, but had great love of books and was possessed of much knowledge in several directions. Like Sluman Wattles, he was a typical pioneer of the best class, a man who could do many things and do them well. He was a practical surveyor and knew enough medicine to have practised it. He had learned some law, and after he was fifty-five years old acquired a good reading knowledge of the Latin language. Judge McMaster, who knew him well, said: “There was no man in this society in his time of so much intellectual culture as Mr. Rogers except the minister, and not always excepting him.”

Mr. Rogers’s son Jabez was long a resident of the village, as was his grandson, Perry P. Rogers, whose later life was spent in Binghamton where he died in 1894, to the regret of every person who had known him. He had a most intimate knowledge of the early settlers of this part of the valley. He was born on the Unadilla river, but in boyhood went to Steuben County and thence to Buffalo, where he was admitted to the bar. He came to this village in 1857 and practised law here until 1871, when he went to Binghamton and there spent the remainder of his days. He lies buried in St. Matthew’s churchyard. My school mate, his son Joseph, grew up in this village, and in the churchyard sleeps.

At the mouth of the Unadilla river grist and saw mills were owned at the beginning of the century, if not earlier, by a man named Nickerson. Sixty or more years ago they had passed into the hands of Harry Hoffman. The farm where Delos Curtis lives was occupied by John Abbey, the Bryan farm by Silas Scott. Seth Scott is an early name connected with the Thomas Monroe farm, and another name connected with it is Phineas Reed, who built the stone house in 1832. On a portion of this farm lived Major David Francis, who came into the country as early as 1790. His house stood near the creek that crosses the highway where the road turns off to East Guilford. Older residents well remembered many amusing stories of this man.

Seth Scott and his brother Silas had arrived as early as 1796. Seth’s wife was Amy Birch, an aunt of Albert G. Birch. Silas Scott, William D. Mudge, father of the late William L. Mudge of Binghamton, and Jesse Skinner all lived in this neighborhood and married sisters named Lee, daughters of Philemon Lee. Of this family of Scott was “Granther” Scott, who kept the first toll bridge at Wattles’s Ferry. Henry Dayton, who surveyed many of the first town roads, lived where Julius Utter more recently lived. Jerome Bates was another early resident on the Unadilla river. He was a carpenter and with the builder Bottom erected the house on the Bundy farm. Here also settled Zachariah C. Curtis who died in 1891 in his ninety-second year. His parents were from Stratford, Connecticut, and had settled in Madison County. About 1800, he was born. Mr. Curtis settled on the Unadilla river in 1823, where he was a pioneer in the cultivation of hops. For many years his yard was the only one in the southern part of the county. Mr. Curtis was the father of J. Delos Curtis.