XII.

THE UNADILLA HUNTING CLUB AND THE JUBILEE OF INDEPENDENCE.

1820-1826.

When the century had passed through its first quarter, Unadilla had become a thriving frontier settlement. Affording as it did a terminus for two great highways, the one to Catskill, the other to Ithaca, and with a navigable river giving an outlet to Southern markets for lumber and farm products, notable prosperity had been secured. As we have seen, two new bridges had been built across the river, a fine schoolhouse erected, and church societies established. There were thriving stores and hotels, woolen industries, blacksmith, cabinet and wagon shops, a hat factory, lawyers and physicians. In the township the cloth produced in the year 1824 comprised 19,206 yards. There were four grist mills, three fulling mills, six carding machines, and one ashery.[25] On farm lands the number of sheep was 5,044; of cattle, 2,324, and of horses 439.

The population of the village was somewhat less than 300: in 1827 it was 282, and in that year it was incorporated. It so remained for thirty years when after an interval of more than thirty, it was incorporated again. Under that early incorporation one-third of the highway tax was applied to the construction of side walks. At the same time, efforts were made in other directions for improvements. In the spring of 1828 the large trees that now adorn Main Street, were set out—“by the united work of willing hands, gratuitously rendered”, said Col. North.

The population of the township in 1824 was 2,194, of whom 506 men were farmers and 110 mechanics, in the latter class being embraced the carpenters, masons, blacksmiths, mill operators, etc., the proportion to farmers indicating very promising activity outside mere soil cultivation. Thirteen men were classed as traders, or storekeepers. Six were foreigners, by which term seems to have been meant persons not of an English speaking race. Nineteen were free blacks, men who a short time before had doubtless been slaves. Throughout the county the population had grown surprisingly everywhere. By 1820 Otsego counted up 44,800 souls, or nearly as large a population as it has ever had since.

On the side of social life for a period ten years later, the next chapter will give interesting glimpses from Henry Noble’s journal. The village had already become a well known centre for deer hunting. Indeed, its fame in that respect had extended far beyond its borders. Nowhere in the upper valley were deer to be had so plentifully as among these hills. Men came from distant places in the autumn, having formed what they called the Unadilla Hunting Club, of which a charming account has been left us by Levi Beardsley.[26] Among its members were Sherman Page, Henry Ogden and Dr. Colwell, with professional and other friends of theirs from Oxford, Utica and elsewhere, among them General Rathbone, Colonel Clapp, Judge Monell, Judge Morris, and John C. Clark. Sherman Page was the Grand Sachem of the club.

The meetings extended over four days. After lasting for five years a Legislative enactment interfered with them. At each meeting a dinner was given by Judge Page, at which were consumed one or two saddles of venison, Susquehanna pike—then plentiful in the river, and in the capture of which Henry Ogden was an expert,—wine and brandy. The general meeting place was the village inn, on the site of the present Unadilla House, which adjoined Judge Page’s home and was called Hunters’ Hall. The game mostly sought was deer. From early Indian times this region had been celebrated as a favorite haunt of these fleet-footed and mild-eyed creatures. In a letter written some years after the meetings ceased, Judge Page said:

“We killed twenty-seven deer one week. Among them were twelve large bucks. That week we ran fifty-two well trained hounds. We had thirty-two men who put out the dogs, some in pairs, others singly, and about thirty bloods; some men were on horseback and others on foot; some watching the points of hills, others at the fords of the river, and always one or more at the Indian Monument.[27]

“Imagine yourself on the high bank at Pomp’s Eddy,[28] the sun just resting over Burnt Hill, Round Top at the south, Poplar Hill at the north [the points of the compass are here obviously reversed] the famous eel weir above and the cave bank below you. A hound breaks forth on Poplar Hill; another and still another on Burnt Hill and Round Top. By this time twenty are in hearing. You know not when the dog may come. You hear a rifle at the cave bank and now another at the eel weir, and perhaps at the haystack and Ouleout. Crack, crack, crack, and still the music of the dogs grows louder and more shrill as they approach. All is expectation and excitement. You are flurried.

“At this moment a large buck with antlers erect is seen on the opposite side, making his way directly to you. Pop goes a smooth-bore, and Spickerman,[29] the poacher, has killed him. Your agitation and excitement cease, for you are angry and wish John Carley was there to lick the rascal. You despair of killing anything, but are not discouraged for another deer will soon be along, and as for Carley he will certainly flog the poacher when he meets him.

“The dogs are still in full cry in every direction and your morning’s sport has just commenced. Keep your place for another deer will be here; and so it turns out. You have killed him and Carley has found and licked Spickerman, and got away his buck, but has finally restored it at your request after the flogging.”

Mr. Beardsley wrote of those times thirty years afterwards:

“I have seen nineteen fat bucks and does lying side by side in the ballroom of our hotel at Unadilla. Even in my sleep and often within the last twelve months I have dreamed of those Unadilla hunts, and the well known cries of the hounds that used to traverse those romantic hills. That music has in fact ceased; the deer are all gone; the huntsmen have laid by their rifles, and civilization and agricultural improvements have spread over those rugged hills as well as those delightful valleys.”

On July 4, 1826, the Jubilee of Independence was celebrated with enthusiasm along the valley and on the Turnpike. Toast lists that still survive show with what keen interest the political topics of that time were discussed. The strife of parties and the flow of patriotic speech were as intense in that period as in any that since has passed, save perhaps during the Civil War. It was an important era of expansion and development, in which our new civilization was broadening out into the democratic spirit that has since pervaded it, supplanting the aristocratic tendencies of public life in earlier times. The presidents who had been in office were Washington, John Adams, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe. In the year of the Jubilee, John Quincy Adams was President. Four years later was to begin the long supremacy of Andrew Jackson, with all that this implied in making the general government what Lincoln afterwards declared that it should still be,—a “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”

In those Jubilee orations were contained valuable suggestions of the political temper and stress out of which the Jacksonian spirit was to rise into control of the National Administration. Along this valley, and in the towns on the Catskill Turnpike with which Unadilla had the most intimate relations,—more intimate than with settlements on the Susquehanna—these political sentiments were everywhere strong.

Among the celebrations was one at Kortright Centre, now a mere handful of scattered farmhouses, but then a thriving village where had gathered for the celebration practically all the population within a radius of perhaps twenty miles. The Turnpike was then in its most flourishing state, with hotels so frequent as often to stand within sight of each other. Along this highway dwelt a homogeneous, though long drawn out, community, ninety miles in length, with its pulse beating as from the throbbings of one heart, its main interests practically identical from Catskill to Unadilla. The oration spoken at Kortright in that Jubilee celebration discloses the prevailing public sentiment of the time.[30] Of Washington the speaker said:

“Endowed by nature with a frame of the greatest strength, which had not been enervated by parental indulgence or a puny education, with a strength and depth of mind to which to find a parallel we may search the records of the world in vain, he seemed from infancy destined to command. The inflexibility of his virtues astonished his enemies; his coolness and self-possession in the hour of danger pointed to him as the master spirit of the Revolution, peculiarly fitted ‘to ride the whirlwind and direct the storm.’ His valor had been tested in the French war, and long will the banks of the Monongahela bear witness to his youthful prudence and courage in saving the remnant of Braddock’s defeated army.

“On accepting the chief command, his modesty and diffidence betrayed the greatness of his soul. After showing his countrymen the way to conquest and victory he concluded the American war with honor to himself and his compatriots in arms. He resigned his commission into the hands which gave it and retired to his farm to enjoy the sweets of domestic life, and this, too, at a time when an exasperated and injured people were ready to confer upon him absolute power. But, preferring the happiness of his country and the approving smiles of his own countrymen to the glittering diadem, he once more endeared himself to the land of his nativity, gaining the paternal appellation of the Father of his Country.

“When it became necessary to secure the Federal compact by adopting a proper constitution, fitted to the growing wants of the young and rising republic, he presided in that august assembly that framed it. He was the first to administer the government under its regulations, and for eight successive years, beset with perils and dangers, guided by wisdom, he steered the bark of state into the port of safety.

“For all these services and self-denials, what did he ask as a recompense? The crown had been refused when within his grasp. Did he lay his hands upon the national treasury? No; he refused pay for the seven years he had spent in arduous service. Did he ask for peculiar privileges for himself and his family? No; none of these. He retired sublimely to the shades of Mount Vernon, there to enjoy the happiness rural life affords, content with the honor of having assisted his countrymen to achieve their independence and establish their liberty upon a permanent basis. History furnishes no parallel to this. Compared with Washington, Alexander becomes a selfish destroyer of the human race, Caesar the ambitious votary of power, and Bonaparte the disappointed candidate for universal empire.”

To the Border Wars of the Revolution, which were still fresh in the memory of many of his auditors, the speaker referred as follows:

“The sufferings of many peaceful inhabitants were little inferior to those of actual combatants. Their fields were laid waste and devastated; their homes burned over their heads; their sons murdered upon the paternal hearth; their wives and daughters outraged by a licentious soldiery, and to cap the climax of British butchery, the merciless savages were let loose on our defenseless frontier settlements and a bounty was given for American scalps. How often were the scattered inhabitants led captive into the howling wilderness; how often was the murderous tomahawk plunged into the defenseless bosom; how often was the smiling babe torn from its mother’s arms and its brains beat out against the wall!

“Alas! the records of those days furnish too many incidents of tragic scenes. How could that nation, which we have been told was the bulwark for that religion taught by the Prince of Peace, authorize such barbarity? How could that nation, which still wishes to lord itself over our minds and style itself the pattern of refinement, assist in those acts so revolting to human feelings? But such was the fact. If any in this assembly have a doubt of the truth of this assertion, I appeal for confirmation to those whitehaired patriots before me whose eyes I see moisten at the recollection of the tragic scenes. Certainly the curse of an offended God must fall upon that people so lost to the feelings of honor and humanity.”

Of England’s direct complicity in the barbarities committed during the Border Wars there no longer exists any doubt. Joseph Brant, during his visit to London, in 1775-6, entered into an understanding with Lord George Germaine, the member of Lord North’s cabinet, who had direct charge of the conduct of the war in America, while the correspondence between at least one other member of the Cabinet and the commander of the English army in this country settles beyond all question the complicity of the home government in the employment of Indians during the war.

A large mass of testimony also exists to show that the Indians were not only urged to take part in the war, but were promised immediate pecuniary rewards, were lavishly supplied with presents, and were assured that, however the war might terminate, their material condition should be made as good as before. It was not the Indians who were responsible for the most barbarous scenes on the frontier, but the English themselves—Tories who had gone to Canada and come back, of whom the master fiend was Walter N. Butler and a leader scarcely less culpable, his father, John Butler. Brant himself declared, on more than one occasion, and notably at Cherry Valley, that the Tories were “more savage than the savages themselves.”

How high ran party spirit in 1826 further passages from this oration by my grandfather will show:

“There is one reflection painful to the feelings of every well-wisher of our land. It cannot be denied that party spirit has had a baneful influence upon national character. Long must the moralist deplore its effects on the manners and morals of the present age. Why has the hated demon been permitted to stalk through our land uncontrolled, embittering the cup of domestic happiness and poisoning the social intercourse of friends and neighbors? But thanks to the wisdom and enlightened policy of our late president, James Monroe, the administration was shown to be the representative of a nation and not the instrument of party feeling, and under him we have enjoyed a political calm that is both salutary and refreshing.”

[Illustration: JOSEPH BRANT—THAYENDANEGEA,

Born in 1742, Died in 1807.

From the Original Painted from Life in London in 1776.

From “The Old New York Frontier.” Courtesy of Charles Scribner’s Sons.]

President Adams, having recommended what is known as the Panama Mission, the speaker remarked that for this he “had been denounced by the aristocratic slave-holders of the South and a few renegades from the cause of freedom and humanity in the North”, and then added the following words on slavery and disunion, subjects which even then had become portentous to men’s minds:

“These men style themselves patriots and republicans. Yet we have been told by the mouth of this faction (I mean the beardless man of Roanoke)[31] that our Constitution is a falsehood; that it carries a lie upon the face of it in asserting that men are born free and equal. Our legislative halls have been polluted by hints at the dissolution of the Union. May that tongue cleave to the roof of the mouth that dares to utter such a treacherous sentence, and may that arm be paralyzed that shall be raised to carry the unrighteous threat into execution.”

In concluding, a few words were addressed by the speaker “to the surviving patriots of the Revolution who this day honor us with their presence”:

“Ye war-worn remnant of that patriotic band who were the stay and defense of your country in the hour of danger, what cause have we not to venerate those silver locks, bleached in the service of your country, those war-worn features the consequence of many a painful campaign, and those scars received in defense of American liberty? They are the emblems of merit and the true badges of honor, serving as marks of distinction by which we are enabled to point you out from among your less fortunate citizens. They are far more honorable than those toys of knighthood so eagerly sought after by the sycophants of monarchical power.

“Long will your country respect that valor which shielded her liberty from the attacks of an infuriated foe. May your country still reward you for those services performed a half century ago. Although the liberal intentions of our chief magistrate have been frustrated toward you for the present by the illiberality of a faction, yet I trust that the day is not far distant when you will acknowledge that republics are not always ungrateful. May the evening of your days be as happy and serene as its meridian was glorious and honorable. Although time has greatly thinned your ranks and each succeeding year makes your number less, your fame will be as durable as the everlasting hills of your own dear country.”