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THE SURVIVING AUTHOR HAS PRESENTED SIX HUNDRED COPIES OF THESE MEMORIALS TO THE VESTRY OF ST. MATTHEW’S CHURCH IN UNADILLA, N. Y., WITH A VIEW TO THEIR SALE. THE SUM THUS SECURED IS TO BE HELD IN RESERVE AS A FUND, THE INCOME FROM WHICH SHALL FINALLY BE EXPENDED, WHEN NEEDED, IN THE CARE OF THE BURIAL GROUNDS ADJOINING THAT CHURCH IN WHICH, WITH A FEW EXCEPTIONS, THESE “PIONEERS OF UNADILLA,” LIE BURIED....

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650 Copies Only Printed and the
Type Distributed.

Press of George D. Raitt,
The Unadilla Times.

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White men appear to have been in the upper Susquehanna valley in 1616, or about one hundred and sixty years before the Revolution. They came as explorers and then as fur traders. After them in the next century came missionaries to the Indians. Finally in 1769 arrived surveyors, owners of land patents and actual settlers. When the first Indian raids were made upon the valley in 1777 during the Revolution, thriving farm communities, composed mainly of Scotch-Irish, with a few Dutch and Palatine Germans, had been established at points from Otsego Lake down to the mouth of the Unadilla River.

One of these existed at the mouth of the Ouleout Creek and was called Albout; another was in the old paper mill region; another across the Susquehanna in what is now Sidney village and still another along the lower waters of the Unadilla River. The three settlements at the confluence of the Susquehanna and Unadilla rivers were sometimes known collectively as Unadilla, although the[4] one on the site of Sidney was often designated separately as the Johnston settlement before the war and as Susquehanna Flats afterwards. While it is not unlikely that some of the Unadilla village lands had been occupied in that period, actual proof of this is wanting.

When the war closed, and settlers began to return to the valley, seven years had passed since those early pioneers were driven out. The country was again a wilderness in some respects more forbidding than when the settlers first entered it. Only the blackened logs of burned houses remained on many farms. Lands that had produced wheat and corn through several seasons in happier times were now overgrown with weeds, brush and briars.

No part of New York state, not even the Mohawk valley, had been more constantly the scene of depredations; none had been so often used as a route of travel for small armies of Indians and Tories on the one hand and of American patriot soldiers on the other; none had now become a land of such utter desolation.[2]

When the Revolution closed the earliest settlers[5] to return came in 1784 and many were families whom the war had driven out. Others were men who had entered the valley as soldiers, or who had heard of its rich lands through others who were soldiers. Many went to the old paper mill region. Among these were the Johnstons who had formerly lived in Sidney, and, after spending a year on Unadilla lands, returned to Sidney again. The McMasters and William Hanna also settled in the paper mill region. Others went to the valley of the Unadilla River and still others to the Ouleout. All these men took up lands that had been occupied before the Revolution.

Of those pioneers we have, in several cases, full and authentic records. One who settled on the Ouleout was Sluman Wattles, who came from Lebanon, Connecticut, in 1784 and took up lands below Franklin village where he was to remain a potent factor in the life of all that region for the remainder of his life. Another was Timothy Beach who settled at the mouth of the Ouleout. Another, in the same region, was James Hughston and still another Nathaniel Wattles, who opened a hotel near the Sidney side of the present upper village bridge.

Before a bridge was built Mr. Wattles maintained a ferry at that point to which his name was given. Wattles’s Ferry for many years was the[6] point of destination for scores of pioneers who each season crossed the wilderness from the Hudson to the Susquehanna and here entered boats in which they and their household possessions were transported to points further south and west.

Another pioneer, and the ancestor of a large family that still survives in the Ouleout country, was Isaac Hodges who arrived in 1789 from Florida, Montgomery county, where he must have known the Johnstons and others who came to this valley from that place. The family had been settled in Florida for some years, Abraham Hodges before the war being one of the well known citizens of that part of the Mohawk valley. Isaac Hodges’s son Hezekiah in 1790 settled on the farm where William T. Hodges spent his life. It is recorded of Hezekiah that he planted the first apple orchard known in that neighborhood. It became the parent orchard of many others.

These men had all been a few years in the country before others came to plant the settlement that grew into Unadilla village. Some of the founders of the village arrived from the same towns in Connecticut whence had come the men of the Ouleout. Here in the stream called Martin Brook they found a water power which would drive a saw mill, then a pressing need of the country, and which soon afterwards drove also a grist mill. Here one of them opened a hotel, another a store, and a third became a physician—facts which laid the foundations[7] of a small community in which ere long were to be centered many vital interests of a large frontier territory.

Finally in 1800 an old primitive road, running from Catskill to Wattles’s Ferry, was improved into a turnpike. It became the model road in all this part of the state, and was destined to remain for more than a quarter of a century the main highway of trade, travel and settlement. Contemporary with the opening of this road, was the coming of Curtis Noble and Isaac Hayes, two young merchants, whose enterprise and success gave the final weight of influence to causes already operating for the founding on this soil of the village which, for half a century, was to control a larger sum of interests than any other within a radius of perhaps twenty miles.

Indeed the origin and early growth of nearly all the upper Susquehanna villages came from similar causes. Usually a store and a saw and grist mill determined the site. Mills were established near the mouths of streams tributary to the main waterway. Hotels and stores naturally followed. Centers were thus established, around which other enterprises and homes soon were gathered. With Cooperstown, Oneonta, Otego, Unadilla, Sidney and Bainbridge the genesis is practically the same.

As time went on, other circumstances, added to what lumbering and agriculture had done, led to newer progress, such as the Catskill turnpike that[8] aided Unadilla, the Esopus one that helped Bainbridge, the Charlotte one that made for the welfare of Oneonta, or those later circumstances, which, before the era of railroads set in, made Oneonta and Bainbridge centers of the stage business for the whole valley. All these villages, save Cooperstown and Bainbridge, were founded on lands in the Wallace patent.

The sketches which follow relate to one alone of these villages; but Unadilla might serve as a type of them all. It is a village with whose annals the circumstances of birth and an eighteen years’ residence on its soil have helped to make the author familiar. Many of its leading citizens of a past generation he knew in boyhood. Its highways, hills and streams remain the most familiar and among the fairest he has ever known.

The lives of the men who founded and built up this village may be assumed to possess interest to those who were born in that village, or who have made it their home. No wise man can be indifferent to the founders of any place bearing such relations to himself, any more than he can be indifferent to the founders of his native land in a larger sense. In a very forceful way such men have helped to make him what he is, and what he must forever remain. They are

Out of the very soil on which one is reared appear[9] to spring forces fixing deep marks on one’s nature. One is not alone a native of his birthplace, but in some considerable degree a product. No fact is more familiar in biographies, whether of great or small lives, and for example in the life of Dickens. The fondness of Dickens for ships and salt water was life long because Dickens, like his own Copperfield, had been “born within sound of the sea and its eternal nevermore.”

This influence springs not from climate altogether; nor from soil or landscape. More than to any of these influences perhaps it is due to inhabitants, older and wiser than he, by whom his tendencies were directed, if not actually shaped. Such as these are the unacknowledged teachers of us all. As of the founders of states and of cities, so of those who found villages and small settlements: they definitely give to communities their character. They still exert their sway long after they have ceased to speak and toil.

The primary interest in these sketches now is, and must continue to be, local. And yet, in a sense, those quiet annals have wider value. Small as this village has remained, the charm of its site and the beauty of its streets have impressed all visitors. The place, moreover, stands otherwise apart, and stands with some eminence, as an example of a New York village at its best.

For three quarters of a century, Unadilla remained thoroughly isolated from the great world[10] beyond its borders. Until the nineteenth century had two-thirds passed away, it had neither railroad, nor canal, nor any near communication with one. At Catskill, or at points in the Mohawk valley, for a long series of years, its people could first reach a larger world, and then the undertaking involved a journey on wheels, in some cases of ninety miles, through a rough country. Even in Civil War times, a day’s journey by stage was still necessary in order to reach a railway and learn the war news; while the war had some years passed away, when a railway first came to its own doors.

How that event gradually changed this community those know best who have known the village both before and since the invasion. Before it occurred, growth and character proceeded almost wholly from local forces, which were mainly strong and otherwise beneficent. Whatever was good and productive, proceeded out of the place itself—out of the virtues that lay in its own people, who were very largely of New England stock.

Here in many families dwelt a quality in refinement, the things which, in these matters, mean culture—fineness of feeling, elevation of sentiment, a sense of the obligations which worldly independence confers and a good breeding—which isolation could not deny to the place, and which isolation probably did much to bestow upon it.

Boys who knew that culture and were blessed by its influence, boys who are now men and have[11] travelled far, may well reflect, as more than one of them has done, that in vain have they sought to find that culture developed in finer or sweeter state elsewhere.

To New England the obligation for that is unquestionably large; but this cannot explain all things. When we say that in this inland New York village thrived for almost four score years a bit of New England transplanted in the west, we must add to the statement that it thrived in an isolation so complete that, what was best in New England culture, here came to florescence in full degree.

It is a common enough experience to find men and women showing a partial fondness for their early homes. Out of this isolation of Unadilla has sprung, I think, a very partial fondness for the place among those who knew it in the early forties, fifties and sixties. What Webster, on a famous occasion said of Dartmouth college, they might say of this village: it is a small place, but there are those who love it.

The men who led in this work of village foundation are little known to the present generation. Many of them lie buried in St. Matthew’s churchyard, and headstones mark their graves, familiar places to all who frequent that enclosure. But few are the visitors who know anything of the story of those strong and valiant souls.

The site of Unadilla village comprises nine lots of the Wallace or, as it would be better to call it, the Banyar Patent, since its real owner was neither Alexander nor Hugh Wallace, but Gouldsborough Banyar. They are lots 92 to 100, inclusive. Each runs in a northeasterly direction on lines generally parallel. The lots are of somewhat varying widths with lengths of perhaps ten times the widths. Besides Mr. Banyar the non-resident early owners from whom the settlers obtained their titles included eminent citizens of Albany County—John Livingston, the Lansings and the Van Vechtens—who seem to have acquired their holdings from Mr. Banyar. At first leases on the redemption plan were given. Several pioneers had long been here before they acquired actual titles, although others purchased soon after coming; but it was not until 1811 that the last village lot passed from an alien owner to an actual settler.

The records of those early transactions are not complete. Searches made for the author leave several[13] gaps to be filled. It was not a universal custom in those times to record deeds. A buyer often accepted the old deeds from the man from whom he purchased. Even in cases where deeds were eventually recorded several years might have elapsed after the purchase. In the period from 1772 until 1791, during which Unadilla was part of Tryon, or Montgomery County, no records exist of any sales by Mr. Banyar or of any sales to or by the Livingstons, Lansings or Van Vechtens, searches for the same having been made for the author in vain at Fonda. In Cooperstown the author has fared better. Here titles to almost any lot can be traced back to the formation of the county in 1791. From these records alone has it been possible to prepare the appended account of first sales to settlers.[3]

First to purchase outright, so far as the records show, was Aaron Axtell, the pioneer blacksmith of the village, who was here before 1794. In August 1795, he secured a part of lot 93 for £110. He made the purchase from Mr. Banyar. Lot 93 lies in the western end of the village. Mr. Axtell’s house stood on the site of the future Owens or Salmon G. Cone residence just beyond the railroad crossing, which some twenty odd years ago was burned. In 1810, Uriah Hanford had become the owner of this lot.

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Mr. Axtell was of Welsh origin, and another of the name who came to Unadilla was Moses Axtell. Moses Axtell had lived in Boston before the Revolution, where he was one of the famous party who disguised themselves as Indians and threw the tea into Boston harbor,—the act by which, in the trouble with the Mother Country, the gauntlet was definitely thrown down by the Colonists. Moses Axtell afterwards fought in the battle of Lexington and at Bunker Hill.

Next as a purchaser came Solomon Martin, who in June 1796 secured lot 96, embracing perhaps 150 acres. He paid for it the sum of £141 5s. The sale was made by the Van Vechtens. Like all these lots it ran back to the hills for a distance of about a mile from the river bank.

The third purchase was made by Daniel Bissell. In August 1796 he obtained from Mr. Banyar lots 99 and 100, comprising nearly 400 acres, for which he paid £345. These lots extended from the extreme eastern end of the village down to about where St. Matthew’s church stands. Mr. Bissell sold a part of lot 100 in 1801, to his kinsman Guido L. Bissell for $250. Another part of the same lot he sold to Solomon Martin in the following year for $450.

Gurdon Huntington was the next purchaser. He did not acquire title, however, until 1800, which was about ten years after he came into the country. He then purchased from John Livingston a[15] part of lot 98 for $352. Probably Dr. Huntington had already erected on this lot, the yellow house that still stands in the rear of the building long used as the post office. He seems to have built the house while occupying the land under a lease with the privilege of purchase.

Aaron Axtell in 1803 purchased a further part of lot 93 from William Fitch and Sarah, his wife. He paid $1400 for it, which would indicate that improvements had been made by the former owner. Mr. Fitch had a house in the village before 1803. As Mr. Axtell bought his first part of lot 93 from Mr. Banyar, Mr. Fitch’s part had, of course, originally been purchased from the same owner.

Stephen Benton, in 1804, became the owner of lot 95. He purchased it for $1095 from Peter Betts who then lived in Bainbridge and whose wife was Eliza Fitch, a sister of Amasa Fitch, an early settler on village land. Peter Betts owned other lands in the Wallace patent below the village. He, with William Fitch and Jonathan Fitch, had secured titles to land within the village limits somewhat earlier than the settlers already named; but the Cooperstown records give no clue to the date of their purchases which indicates that he made the purchase before 1791. There were Fitches in Lebanon, Connecticut, and these men perhaps came into the country with the Wattles families in or soon after 1784, which would make them the first settlers who took up village lands.

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Jonathan Fitch in 1805 sold to Jacob Hayes the land he lived on in lot 94. For a part of that lot Mr. Hayes paid $800. Here again improvements obviously were included in the purchase price. Mr. Fitch is known to have had a house in the village at that time.

Next among the purchasers came Solomon Martin a second time. He bought lot 97 from Mr. Banyar in 1807, paying £153 14s. On this lot stood General Martin’s house and store. He at this time was the largest land owner in the village. After his death in 1816, the estate was said to be “land poor.”

The records now proceed to the purchase made by Daniel and Gilbert Cone, in 1811. This was lot 92 which lay beyond the Axtell purchase. The Cones bought of the Lansings and paid $563.39 for the tract. Three years later they sold one acre of it to Niel Robertson for $400, which must have included improvements. From Mr. Banyar in 1813 the Cones bought another lot for $501.25. This was lot 108, but it was outside village limits.

Daniel Bissell who in some respects is the most interesting of these pioneers was a native of Lebanon where he was born in 1748. He married in that place Sarah Wattles and was approaching forty years of age when, about 1792, and perhaps earlier, he came to Wattles’s Ferry. In Lebanon he had already become a man of varied and useful activities. He possessed a considerable tract of[17] land there and papers now owned by Harriet Bissell Sumner show that he had had many transactions with Sluman Wattles. A paper characteristic of the period, containing an “account of Benjamin Bissell’s estate that Daniel Bissell took”, names pistols valued at £2, a greatcoat valued at 12s., leather breeches at 5s. and one gun at £1, 12s., 6d. Another paper signed “Jonathan Trumbull, Captain-General”, who was the original “Brother Jonathan”, his home being in Lebanon, is dated in 1773 and excuses Daniel Bissell from military service owing to “a lameness of the arm caused by fracture and a pain in the chest caused by a sprain.”

Still another paper dated in March 1792 gives a list of articles delivered to Daniel Bissell from the estate of Mr. Fitch. It includes one large kettle, valued at 8s., one meal chest at 3½s., one small feather bed at 30s., one pair of saddle bags at 6s., one small bedstead 10s., and one copy of Gibbs’s “Architecture”, 24s. Some of these articles no doubt found their way to the new settlement. Mr. Bissell had a family of nine children, three or four of whom had reached their twentieth year. He brought with him the large sum of $7,000 in specie, which completely filled a good sized basket.

One of the recorded facts in Mr. Bissell’s life is that he kept the first hotel. A license issued to him, though not the earliest in the town by five or more years, still exists with the seal attached. It[18] is signed by Solomon Martin, in whose hand the whole paper is written, and by Peter Schremling and Gurdon Huntington. By virtue of law these gentlemen, Commissioners of Excise for the town of Unadilla, say they “do hereby permit Daniel Bissell to retail strong and spirituous liquors according as it is in said law made and provided, from the date hereof until the first Tuesday in May next after this date.” The license is dated September 9, 1799.

Mr. Bissell’s relations with other settlers are shown in several letters. One from Noble and Hayes, of which he was the bearer, dated in 1806, is addressed to Bogardus and DuBois of Catskill, and informed them that the Unadilla merchants sent by Mr. Bissell three barrels of wheat, with other articles which were to be sold “if you can and credit us the avails.” Another from Dr. Huntington was addressed to Packard and Conant of Albany. Dr. Huntington sent by Mr. Bissell a few rags and said “I expect you will give four dollars for rags, or more, and if they do not come to the amount of the paper [the rags were to be exchanged for writing paper] I will be I suppose in Albany in about two weeks and will settle for the same.” The date of this is November 1808, when Dr. Huntington was a Member of the Assembly.

About the same time came a relative of Daniel Bissell, though not a near one, Guido L. Bissell, Mrs. Sumner’s ancestor. He was born in 1769[19] and was the father of that other Daniel Bissell whom many men and women can still remember. He was also the father of Hannah Bissell who became the wife of John Veley. In 1796, as Mr. Bissell’s account book records, “John Barsley began to work for me”, and in the following spring “Sevenworth began to work for me.” In this ancient volume, another entry under date of Franklin, March 23rd, 1798, is this: “I promise to Guido Bissell 15 shillings on demand, being for value received, John Pooler”, and still another, “Mr. Guido Bissell and I have settled and find a balance of 2 pounds due said Bissell on account, James Hughston.” Mr. Bissell for some time was engaged in trade. His book has many entries of sales of “jane”, velvet, cloth, etc., as well as charges for work done by himself and men whom he employed. He did some of the work in building Wright’s store in 1815, and when St. Matthew’s church was built made note of “work on the church five days by Mr. Beadle.”

A numerous and influential family in Connecticut had been the Bissells. John Bissell, a pioneer of Windsor, and believed to be the ancestor of them all, was the first white man who ventured across the Connecticut River from Windsor, where he built a house and began the East Windsor settlement. For forty-four years his descendants, Aaron Bissell and Aaron Bissell, Jr., filled the office of town clerk. In Windsor in the last century was a[20] Daniel Bissell and a Daniel Bissell, Jr. The latter performed secret service for Washington, that won for him a badge of merit. Members of this family have been prominent in various walks of life. One of them was a Protestant Episcopal bishop.

Solomon Martin came to Unadilla some years before 1790. In 1792 he already had a store here. He was a native of Woodbury, Connecticut, one of the oldest towns in that state outside the Connecticut River valley, and was a son of another Solomon Martin, descended from one of the first settlers. The family was English and one of them, Captain John Martin, went around the world with Drake. They were entitled to bear arms and had for their motto “Sure and Steadfast.” Solomon was born June 15, 1762. His name is given by Cothran among natives of Woodbury who served in the Revolution, although he was only a boy of thirteen when the war began. His title of general—a militia title, I believe—belongs to a late period in his life. In 1792 he was a captain and in 1806 a colonel. He served in the war of 1812.

His store in Unadilla was the first set up. Its site was on Main just west of Martin Brook Street. Here also he lived, the house and store having been built together. At a late date he appears to have been in partnership with Gurdon Huntington. Many years afterwards there stood near the present White store block a building called the Dr. Huntington store. It was afterwards moved to the[21] site of the present L. L. Woodruff residence and then conveyed to the street that fronts on the river where it still stands adjoining the churchyard grounds. Solomon Martin had a distillery as early as 1803, when Guido L. Bissell charged him “to work at trough at stillhouse 18 shillings,” “to work in the still house 6 shillings”, and again “to work on the still.”

Solomon Martin and Sluman Wattles had close business relations. Mr. Wattles sold him boards “delivered to your store” in 1792, and in the same year charged George Johnson 3 pounds, 17 shillings for “goods taken at Captain Martin’s store.” In 1794 he charged Martin 6 shillings as “fees for license”, and the same year Roger Wattles with “an order on Solomon Martin for three quarts of rum for 7 shillings.” When Martin was in the Legislature in 1806, Sluman Wattles sold him a yoke of oxen “which he agrees to allow me as much for as he can sell them to the McAlpins for and answer the same to Lansing at Albany towards the Mill place which I bought of him (Lansing) between now and the last of August next.” Martin appears to have made his journey to the State Capital in a conveyance drawn by these oxen.

Solomon Martin’s wife was Susan Scott of Catskill, whom he married in 1796. In 1816 he died, and Mrs. Martin with her four sons and her unmarried sister continued to occupy the home in Unadilla for many years. He was elected Supervisor[22] in 1798, 1799, 1800, 1801 and 1802. He was Sheriff of Otsego County from 1802 to 1806, and was twice a Member of Assembly. His business relations were large. Among plaintiffs in suits before Sluman Wattles in and about the year 1794, Martin often appears, some twenty suits and confessions of judgment in his behalf being entered.

During his term as Sheriff, Martin became associated with a murder case in a way that gave his name considerable notoriety. Stephen Arnold of Burlington had so severely whipped a girl six years old that she died of her injuries. Arnold was tried, convicted and sentenced to be hanged. On the day appointed for the execution, thousands of people assembled to witness it in an open field on the banks of the river in Cooperstown. An address was made by a clergyman, the prisoner spoke a few words, Sheriff Martin adjusted the rope, and then, while the assemblage was breathlessly waiting for the final scene, Martin produced a letter from Governor Lewis granting a respite. It appeared that this letter had reached Martin early in the morning and it was now past noon. His excuse for his conduct was that he and a few others whom he had consulted thought it would be improper to make the letter public except on the scaffold.

Solomon Martin’s permanent memorial in this village is the stream that bears his name. It was formerly divided into two streams running through[23] village lands, and then coming together, thus forming an island. When the owners of land on and near this island desired to erect buildings they thought it proper that the brook should be confined to one channel, and accordingly attempted so to make it.

More than half a century has passed since that step was taken, but the stream in high water time is still true to its old time habit: the brook pushes out to the westward and asserts dominion over its old time territory. All the efforts of two generations to prevent this again and again have failed. Across this stream on Main street originally stood a wooden bridge. At the sides horses could be driven down for water. A stone arched bridge erected a great many years ago, admirably took the place of this primitive structure and so remained until 1893, a striking monument of the care with which it was built.

Solomon Martin for many years had a sawmill on this brook. It stood a short distance above the tannery site and here for many years the road came to an end. The building of this sawmill goes back of the year 1796. Solomon Martin, his store and his sawmill were long since gone. They are all forgotten to this generation. A dark stone slab marks his burial place in St. Matthew’s churchyard. Meanwhile the unruly brook remains forever to strengthen recollections of his name.

Further up this stream other sawmills were afterwards[24] built. What was the dwelling house adjoining these mills still does duty there as a home on a different site, and here in their old age long lived Lewis, or “Luke”, and Edward Carmichael. Beyond that site Martin Brook now possesses a newer and more lasting memorial of individual enterprise. Athwart the stream have been erected imposing dams of stone serving reservoirs and standing as firm and permanent as the hills that form their abutments. Solomon Martin had been nearly forty years in his grave when was born the citizen of Unadilla who in that secluded ravine was to erect these enduring and beneficent structures,—Samuel S. North.

Gurdon Huntington, whose home for many years was in the historic building that still stands at the corner of Main and Martin Brook Streets, came to Unadilla before 1794, and here he lived until 1830. He was a native of Franklin, Connecticut, which lies within a few hours’ walk of Lebanon, Daniel Bissell’s home. His father was Deacon Barnabus Huntington, and he belonged to the sixth generation in descent from Simon Huntington, a noted early emigrant from England who sailed for the new world in 1633 with his wife and children, and on the voyage over died and was buried at sea. From his surviving sons a very distinguished family of descendants were to be raised up in many parts of this country—Samuel who was governor of Connecticut and a signer of the Declaration of Independence,[25] Samuel who was governor of Ohio, Daniel the artist, and Collis P., the railroad magnate, whose home in early life was in the Susquehanna Valley at Oneonta.

Gurdon Huntington was born on July 3rd, 1768. He was educated by his father’s pastor, the Rev. Dr. Nott. One of his schoolmates was that Eliphalet Nott who rose to much eminence as president of Union College. The boy read medicine in Connecticut and then came to Unadilla. In 1798 he married Esther, the only daughter of Benjamin Martin of Woodbury, Connecticut. Benjamin Martin was Solomon Martin’s eldest brother.

Dr. Huntington “became a successful and deservedly popular physician” in Unadilla. His practice is known to have extended to places distant forty or fifty miles from home, and one may well believe the statement that “a more welcome visitor never entered those scattered homes.” In this laborious field he made journeys by day and night and often wended “his solitary way along almost untrodden paths”, forded unbridged streams and yet was a “cheerful and happy man”, as well as a “skillful and prosperous physician.” He is said to have accumulated in his time “a handsome property.” He was a man of genial manners and by nature companionable.

Dr. Huntington was elected supervisor of Unadilla in 1803 and again in 1809 and 1811. For seven years he was town clerk. He served four[26] terms in the Legislature—in 1805, 1806, 1807 and 1808. In 1813 he removed to Cairo, Greene County, where he died in 1847 at the age of seventy-nine.

In this early pioneer history, other names besides these are found—Adam Rifenbark, Seth Abel, Capt. Uriah Hanford, Jacob Boult, Abel Case and Jonas Sliter. Each was here before the eighteenth century closed. Capt. Hanford came before 1796 and was a freeholder in 1809. He died here more than thirty years afterwards. He was the father of Theodore Hanford. Jonas Sliter dates as far back as 1795 and probably several years further. He seems to have belonged to the family which settled in the old paper mill region before the Revolution. Perhaps he came back as soon as the war closed. Seth Abel was living in the town before 1798 and long served as tax collector and pathmaster. Abel Case was probably here before the century closed. In 1809 he was a freeholder and in 1810 a commissioner of highways. He owned land that joined Solomon Martin’s and was one of the first vestrymen of St. Matthew’s Church. Guido L. Bissell worked on his wagon house and roofed over his barn in 1806. Jacob Boult was living in the village in 1800 “near the bridge” and was still a resident in 1837. Giles Sisson was living on the river road above the village before 1808. Still another name is William Wheeler, to whom in 1797 Guido L. Bissell sold “15 lights of sash for 7 and[27] 6 pence”, “290 feet of timber for 10 shillings and 1300 shingles for 1 pound.”

The life story of these pioneers is really a history of this settlement in its formative period. Their activities widely differed, and so did their importance. But all were among the first pioneers and they all had a share in laying the foundations.

While Solomon Martin, Gurdon Huntington and Guido L. Bissell had sold goods in Unadilla before the century closed, the first merchants, in any large and permanent sense, were Curtis Noble and Isaac Hayes. Among settlers who came after the century had just ended, special distinction belongs to both men. They were contemporary in their coming with the building of the turnpike, and both were young, Mr. Noble being twenty-five and Mr. Hayes twenty-four. Here they remained in partnership until Mr. Noble died more than a generation afterwards. Their varied activities extended far along the valley and to the north and south of it. They were typical frontier merchants, a class of whom New York State in those times had many examples—men of youthful energy, largeness of aims, honorable purposes, capacity for toil and fine mercantile instincts.

Curtis Noble was descended from Thomas Noble, an Englishman who reached Boston as early as 1653. Descendants of Thomas Noble make up a genealogical record filling a book of more than 600[29] pages. He settled in Westfield, Massachusetts, and there died in 1704. His eldest son, John, was the first white man who settled in New Milford, Connecticut, and there in 1750 was born John’s son Elnathan, and in 1754 his son Jesse.

Elnathan Noble in 1794 bought for $750 a farm of 100 acres in Otsego County on the Butternut Creek in what is now New Lisbon. When he moved to the farm in April of that year, there was a log house on it ten feet by twelve, with an elm bark roof and a chimney of sticks and clay. In a cart covered with tow cloth and drawn by two yoke of oxen he arrived early in May with Johanna Bostwick, his wife, and their one daughter and four sons, finding the land heavily timbered, the settlers few, and these chiefly Dutch or German.

Here Elnathan Noble lived until his death in 1824, his funeral being conducted by the Rev. Daniel Nash, known better as “Father” Nash, with whom he had long co-operated in support of the Episcopal faith. Jesse had followed him to New Lisbon, and Jesse’s son Thomas found in Unadilla a wife in Eliza Ann Beach, daughter of Abijah H. Beach, by whom he had eight sons, Whitney B., George N., Edward B., Thomas H., Carrington T., John Henry and Clark. Jesse’s daughter Hetty became the wife of the Rev. Russell Wheeler, the first rector of St. Matthew’s church in Unadilla.

Elnathan Noble’s eldest son Curtis did not go to New Lisbon with his father. He had already entered[30] upon a mercantile life at New Milford in the store of Elijah Boardman, where also had been employed his future partner, Isaac Hayes, and there Curtis Noble remained until 1800 when he and Mr. Hayes formed their partnership and set out for Unadilla. In that year Mr. Noble married Mr. Hayes’s sister, Anna, who survived him until 1865 when she died at eighty-four.

Mr. Hayes was born in 1776. His father was Thomas Hayes of Ilminster, Somersetshire, England. Mr. Hayes in 1798 was sent by Mr. Boardman to the Western Reserve of Connecticut, now a part of Ohio, under contract to clear up a tract of land, sow grain and otherwise prepare the way for settlers. These lands were in the present township of Medina.

Early in 1800 Mr. Hayes had returned to New Milford and entered into his agreement with Curtis Noble to conduct a business “as merchants or shopkeepers in the State of New York at such place as may by them be thought most proper under the name and firm of Noble and Hayes for a term of time not less than ten years.” They contributed each at the beginning one thousand dollars. Mr. Hayes was soon afterwards to increase his amount, while Mr. Noble had the privilege of doing so. Each was to “devote his whole time and attention to the business, use and benefit of the said company.”[4][31] Instead of ten years this partnership continued for nearly forty. Formal settlement was finally made in 1841 with George H. Noble and Charles C. Noble as executors of their father’s estate.

These Unadilla pioneers came by way of Catskill, the turnpike being then in process of construction. On reaching the river they stopped at the Wattles’s Ferry hotel and soon concluded that the lands across the stream offered the most promising site they had seen for their enterprise. Here was the terminus of the turnpike over which their goods could be brought from Catskill and from here down the Susquehanna could be sent in boats the produce of the country which they expected to acquire in exchange for goods.

Their first stock of goods arrived on a Saturday, when they were living in the house afterwards called the Priest house, a close copy of the Gurdon Huntington house. It occupied the site of the present Horace Eells residence. In one of the rooms of this dwelling the goods were opened and on the following Monday Mr. Hayes on horseback made a tour of the Ouleout country and the upper Susquehanna, announcing to all the inhabitants that a new store had been opened. Solomon Martin, who had a rival store, predicted disaster for the new firm. But Mr. Hayes’s tour brought a crowd of customers at once and a large trade was soon secured.

In the following year the firm was able to send a[32] large quantity of local produce to Catskill and Baltimore. Pearl and pot ashes, pork, bacon, wheat, cattle, dried apples and eventually whiskey became staple articles of export. An old account book records that in 1808 Mr. Noble, on one occasion, sold 30 barrels of pot ashes “for cash in York”, and in 1809, “588 pounds of rags.” Shipments to Catskill were made by well known residents of the town—John Pooler, John Carley, Aaron Axtell, James Hughston and others. The business eventually grew to large proportions. Wheat, rye and corn were grown in vast quantities and everyone was overburdened with the stock on hand. In a single week the firm was known to ship to Catskill 3,000 bushels of wheat, which meant 90 sleigh-loads. These circumstances forced the firm into distilling rye and corn into whiskey, and for this purpose the stone building, afterwards used as a tannery was erected.

Between Unadilla and Baltimore regular ark loads of produce made journeys down the river. As described to the author by the late Clark I. Hayes, these arks were from 20 to 30 feet long and from 15 to 20 feet wide, the depth being from 3 to 4 feet. Boats similar to them were in general use on inland waters at that period. On the Mohawk the favorite boat was called the Schenectady boat, which was “a broad and shallow scow some 50 feet in length steered by a sweep oar of 40 feet and pushed upstream by man power.” On these boats[33] when the river was high 10 tons of freight could be carried.

The ark proper was the invention of a Pennsylvania farmer named Kryder living on the Juniata. In 1792, when flour and lumber were dear, he first resorted to this kind of boat in order to reach Baltimore, and thus realized an excellent profit. The ark afterwards came into very general use all along the upper as well as the lower Susquehanna. In favorable water 80 miles a day could be traversed. Mr. Kryder’s first ark carried 300 barrels of flour. Later ones were large enough to bear the weight of 500 barrels. It was by means of these boats that the vast grain product of Central and Western New York was for many years transported to southern markets.

The arks of Noble and Hayes were loaded at a cut in the river bank that may still be seen opposite their old store. Having been hauled near the bank, planks were thrown out to the arks from the shore. In seasons when the water was at its most favorable stage,—which was usually falling high water that enabled a boat to be kept in the centre of the stream,—loading was done at other points in order to start several arks at one time. All the products of the country went down the river in these arks—at least all for which a market existed at the end of the journey. They were loaded sufficiently well to draw from 20 to 24 inches of water. From three to five of them were usually[34] coupled together in line and placed in charge of an experienced pilot who understood the course and currents of the stream. Men with long oars steered them at each end of the line under directions from the pilot.

Lumber intended for Baltimore went in rafts which were put together at places along the river where some quiet eddy could be found near a sawmill. One of the best spots of this kind near Unadilla was the eddy below the Condensery which formerly covered a large territory that has since been filled in by the action of the water, leaving scarcely a trace of the water area that formerly existed. After making their sales in Baltimore, Mr. Hayes or Mr. Noble went on to New York to purchase goods, shipping them by way of the turnpike.

Refuse grain from the Noble and Hayes distillery was fed to cattle and hogs. It was a common thing to slaughter from 200 to 300 hogs in the fall, and to feed half that number of cattle through the winter. In the time of Jefferson’s Embargo the firm met with heavy losses. Mr. Hayes used to tell how a supply of crockery that had cost $1200 just before the Embargo was raised was afterwards worth only $112.

When the Embargo was imposed however, it not only affected the stock of merchants favorably but the farmer’s produce unfavorably. Grist mills had been busy with heavy crops all through the autumn[35] of 1807 in anticipation of high prices, due to the foreign demand; but when the ports were closed, the demand ceased and farmers often found themselves in possession of a staple article for which they could not get the cost of the labor put into it—the sowing, reaping and grinding. The loss in New England to each family because of this measure was reckoned in 1808 to be about $100. Thousands of men were ruined by it, and notices of sheriff’s sales covered tavern doors and guide posts at forked roads. Men in those days could be sent to jail for debt and thus in New York City during a period of less than a year 1300 persons were imprisoned. That city has been described as looking “like a town ravished by pestilence.” Streets were deserted and grass grew on the wharves.

Isaac Hayes in 1804 built the house in which his son so long lived—the house still occupied by descendants of his. It was for many years regarded as the finest residence on the road between Catskill and Ithaca. This may readily be believed, for in 1804 the common dwelling house was a log hut, while the three “yellow houses”, then standing in the village, one of which the Huntington house still survives, were fine modern residences.[5] Mr. Hayes’s house for that time was indeed a palatial country mansion. A remarkable feature of it was[36] the height of the rooms, as may still be seen; they are as high as rooms in many dwellings of our day. Remarkable also was the design of the house—the elevation, the mantels, above all the circular stairway. In the existence here of that edifice in those early days lay a sign of the culture which someone has said “corrects the theory of success.”

On the island opposite this house formerly existed a race-course. It does not appear to have been in use long, however,—perhaps not for more than two seasons. A temporary foot bridge was erected across the stream, made of planks resting upon benches having legs long enough to keep the planks above water. This bridge was wide enough for two persons to pass. After the races were over it was removed. Horses and carriages reached the island by the fordway.

Mr. Hayes’s activities in this community, apart from his mercantile business, were wide and varied. He was postmaster for many years, supervisor in 1805, and for seven other years, and was elected to the Legislature in 1811 and in five other years. He had an important share in founding St. Matthew’s Church. He had come from the home of Congregationalism and did not embrace the Episcopal faith until some years after he came to Unadilla, when he joined with others in promoting the services held by “Father” Nash. He was a vestryman, warden and treasurer of the Church for many years and was senior warden at the time of his[37] death, which occurred in 1857 at the age of eighty years and ten months.

Isaac Hayes’s wife was Sarah, daughter of Benjamin S. Mygatt, of New Milford. To the same family belonged the late Henry R. Mygatt of Oxford and his sister, Mrs. Frederick A. Sands, of Unadilla. The two families of Noble and Hayes, as already shown, were related by marriage, Mrs. Noble being Mr. Hayes’s sister. No family accounts were kept at the store; each took what it needed. Eventually the two family homes contained twenty children. One of these children survived elsewhere until 1892; when he died in Bennington, Vermont, at the age of eighty-three,—Joel M. Hayes.

Thomas Hayes of Ilminster had seven children besides Isaac. They were Abraham, Polly, Jacob, Hannah, Daniel C. and Thomas. Abraham’s daughter Anna married Dr. David Walker, who succeeded Dr. Huntington as the occupant of the “yellow house”, and whose brother Francis built the house across the street that was long the home of the late Henry S. Woodruff. Dr. Walker lived in Unadilla as late as 1835, and finally died in the West. A daughter of Jacob Hayes, Julia Ann, became the wife of Col. A. D. Williams, for many years a merchant in Unadilla, of whom more will be said hereafter.

Isaac Hayes’s daughter Sarah Ann, who was born in 1815, became the wife of the Rev. Louis[38] LeGrand Noble, a cousin of Curtis Noble, whose career as a clergyman began in the historic St. Peter’s Church in Albany and included successive charges in North Carolina, Catskill, Chicago, Glens Falls and Hudson City, New Jersey. He became in 1872 professor of English literature in St. Stephen’s college at Annandale. He was a friend of Thomas Cole, the artist, became one of his executors, edited his papers, and wrote his life.

Like Mr. Hayes, Curtis Noble was active in many affairs apart from his own business. He was supervisor in 1825 and 1829 and held the office of town clerk for a longer period than any other citizen of the village has ever done—from 1805 to 1824. A story that has survived to this day is that he once brought down with his gun from the top of a pine tree a Susquehanna shad. This was strictly true. He had shot a hawk and with the hawk fell a shad which the hawk had taken from the river.

Curtis Noble’s eldest son was Col. George H. Noble, whose wife was Sherman Page’s daughter, Elizabeth Butler. He was a man of extensive knowledge and deeply impressed those who knew him. For some time he was engaged in business in the brick store at Main and Depot Streets. The stone part of the Arnold residence was built by him. Colonel Noble at one time edited a paper called the Unadilla News. In 1840, Edward H. Graves had started a paper called the Susquehanna[39] News, which Col. Noble purchased of him in the following year and changed the name. After a brief career it was followed by the Weekly Courier, of which Edson S. Jennings was editor.[6] Colonel Noble died in 1847 at the age of forty-two.

Curtis Noble’s second son was Charles Curtis, a graduate of Union College who became a lawyer at Owego, but after his father’s death returned to Unadilla. He was County Judge in 1843, and a Member of Assembly in 1849. He died in 1851 at the age of forty-five, while on a visit to Owego, where he hoped a change of air might improve his health. By way of Deposit, the body was brought back to Unadilla by rail and from Bainbridge a funeral train of thirty carriages conveyed it to Unadilla. His stone law office, near the house where his widow long afterwards lived, stands as a familiar relic of his career.

His widow survived until July 13, 1890. She was a large-minded, gifted woman. Few like her have dwelt so long in this valley. She was born in Owego in October 1808 and was married in 1834, becoming the mother of six children, three of whom grew to maturity and one to the age of fifteen. All these[40] children soon passed away in the steps of their father. With the finest resignation, Mrs. Noble bore these recurring afflictions which left her for more than a quarter of a century a solitary figure in the home where her young life had been spent. One who knew her long, when writing of her early life, described her as “the centre of a large social circle and the brightest intellectual force within it.” It was, indeed, women like her who could make one realize what Steele meant when he said of Lady Elizabeth Hastings that “to love her was a liberal education.”

Curtis Noble’s daughter Harriet Amelia, the widow of Henry H. Howard, was long the sole survivor of Mr. Noble’s family in the village. Mr. Howard was a citizen of the village for nearly sixty-five years: he came in 1827 and died in 1890. He was a native of Madison County, his father being Samuel Howard a native of Bridgewater, Massachusetts. He married Harriet Noble in 1837, their only surviving child being Dr. Frederick S. Howard of New York. Men and women can now recall the Fourth of July celebrations of their childhood to which Mr. Howard usually contributed the balloons made by him on his own premises. He was a man of bright and original mind, capable of varied and forceful wit, and had considerable knowledge of human nature.

Curtis Noble had a brother named Elnathan who went from New Lisbon to Michigan in 1833,[41] where he gave to a town in Livingston County, the name of Unadilla,[7] and a sister named Sally who in 1808 was married to Dr. Willis Edson. Dr. Edson was a native of Pittsfield, Massachusetts. He read medicine with the famous Dr. White of Cherry Valley and in 1815 came to Unadilla, where he died in 1823 at the age of forty, leaving a son Willis who was long in business here.

A daughter of Dr. Edson was the wife of Col. Robert Hughston who led a regiment to the front in the Civil War. Col. Hughston was descended from the Ouleout pioneer and spent many years on the farm where a bridge crosses that stream to the lands that were taken up after the Revolution by Timothy Beach. Dr. Edson’s son Darwin was the father of William D. Edson, the author’s friend and schoolmate, who practiced law in Unadilla for some years and afterwards joined other men from the village in finding a new home in the “zenith city of the unsalted seas.” In that distant town Mr. Edson is now City Judge.

Otsego County was formerly part of Montgomery. Montgomery had before been called Tryon County after the Colonial Governor, William Tryon. Governor Tryon became a Tory during the Revolution and hence the change in name. At the close of the war Montgomery embraced lands enough to have formed a small state—the lands that now comprise the counties of Montgomery, Otsego, Herkimer, Fulton, Hamilton, St. Lawrence, Lewis, Oswego, Jefferson and parts of Delaware, Oneida and Schoharie.

Otsego was formed from Montgomery in 1791, but the need for a division of the large territory comprising Montgomery had been felt soon after it was set off from Albany County in 1772 under the name of Tryon. The Legislative Council in 1775 set apart a certain tract called the Old England district, in which were included settlements on the Unadilla River and Butternut Creek: under this name the tract was known during the Revolution. After the war, it was reorganized under the[43] same name with new officers and so continued until Otsego was set off in 1791 and then the name disappeared.

Otsego first comprised only two towns—the towns called Otsego and Cherry Valley, but in 1792 the town of Otsego was divided and the name Unadilla was given to its southern half. In that town of Unadilla were then embraced lands that have since been made to constitute seven Otsego County towns, and which by the census of 1890 had a population of 20,024, divided as follows: Butternuts, 2,723; Morris, 1,920; Milford, 2,051; Laurens, 1,659; Oneonta, 8,018; Otego, 1,840; Unadilla, 2,723; Oneonta Village,[8] being not only the largest community in Otsego County, but the largest between Albany and Binghamton. When Oneonta was first taken off from Unadilla, it was named Otego from the creek that still flows across its territory—the Wauteghe Creek of earlier times.

The division of the Unadilla territory began in 1796 when Butternuts (with lands afterwards taken from Butternuts and called Morris), Oneonta, (including lands that afterwards were taken from Oneonta to make Laurens), and Milford were erected as separate towns. The present Otego lands remained a part of Unadilla until 1822. This division found its justification in the growth of[44] population which had been surprisingly large before the 18th century closed. As early as 1794, Otsego County was able to cast 1,487 votes for Member of Congress, which would mean a population of probably more than 10,000. The town of Otsego alone in 1795 had 2,160 male inhabitants above the age of sixteen. Six years later the entire county contained 21,343 souls. Spafford in 1813, which was before Otego was taken off, credited the town of Unadilla with a population of 1,426, and the taxable property was valued at $141,896. Unadilla had five distilleries and fourteen schoolhouses. The land was “held in fee.”

A study of the records of this town of Unadilla, as contained in a large pigskin-bound volume, now in the office of the Town Clerk, sheds interesting light on many aspects of frontier life. It contains the record of the town meeting held in 1796, which met in the house of Daniel Bissell, on the site of the present residence of Samuel D. Bacon, which for so many years was the home of Dr. Evander Odell. This meeting was presided over by Nathaniel Wattles of Wattles’s Ferry. David Baits was elected supervisor and Gurdon Huntington town clerk. It was voted that the next town meeting should also be held in Daniel Bissell’s house, but later meetings held their sessions “in the schoolhouse near Daniel Bissell’s.” In 1798 the house of Solomon Martin was used; in several other years the schoolhouse.

Suggestions were often made that meetings be[45] held outside the village, because of the long distances which many persons had traveled for the earlier meetings. In 1817, and some other years, voters assembled at the house of Capt. Elisha S. Saunders, several miles up the river. Motions were afterwards made that meetings take place on the Unadilla river, in the paper mill country, and in Unadilla Centre, but these were lost.

At the meeting in 1797 it was voted that “the town will be at the expense of sending after Esquire Scramling, or some other magistrate, to qualify the town officers”, and in 1797 that “the town will allow the Town Clerk five dollars for his services for the last year.” The same sum was voted in 1803 to Solomon Martin and David Baits for “services done heretofore as supervisors of this town.” Lawful fences were declared to be those “four feet nine inches high”, with the “poles or rails not more than six inches asunder.” Earmarks were registered as follows: Abner Griffith, “slots in the right ear”; Daniel Bissell, “a square crop on ear, with a half penny on the under side of the left ear”; John Sisson, “a hole through the right ear and a half penny the underside of the left”; William Fitch, “a half penny under side each ear.”

It was voted that hogs “with yokes eight inches long above the neck and four inches below be allowed to run as free commoners”, and that “the town will give for each wolf killed within the limits thereof forty shillings.” Wolves seem to have been[46] plentiful until a rather late period. Dr. Odell in 1872 said men were then living who could remember the site of the railroad station in the village as “a tangled thicket from which the cry of the panther and howl of the wolf were frequently heard.”

In 1796 the number of persons assessed in Unadilla was ninety-nine; the total real and personal property was set down at £2,275, and the tax at £52. A year later the persons assessed numbered 106; the property was $12,045 in value and the taxes were $370. In 1808 a memorandum declared the number of “Quakers returned in this town, 1, viz: Stephen Wilber, tax $4.”

Signs of the discontent, due to an inconveniently large town, which eventually led to taking off Huntsville (Otego) from Unadilla were seen very early. One was the holding of the town meeting at the house of Captain Saunders; another was a proposal in 1817 to divide Unadilla by adding to Chenango County “all that part lying in Upton’s Patent”, which was the valley of the Unadilla River, and coming east to the “west end of the village of Unadilla.” This proposal emanated from “the western portion of the town.” But the town meeting of 1817 resolved to “use all due diligence to prevent such division.” Nine-tenths of the people were declared to be opposed to it, its strongest advocates lying outside the town, and their motives being “to divide and distract the citizens of our territory.”

[47]

Some twenty-five years after Otsego County was formed a project was started for setting off a new county comprising parts of Otsego, Chenango and Delaware, and to be called the County of Unadilla, with the village of Unadilla as the county seat. In 1818, the sum of $250 was voted to defray the expenses of a committee while attending the Legislature “for the purpose of obtaining a new county.” Other papers on this subject may be found in the State archives down to a period so late as 1856.

In 1802 it was resolved that the town should have two pounds. One was to stand “not to exceed half a mile from Hubbell’s Mills, so-called, and the other within half a mile of Yates’s Ferry, so-called.” The two were to be built of “logs rolled up in form or manner of a house.” William Potter was Poor Master in 1793, and in October he charged the town with “a winding sheet for F—— twelve shillings”, and “for F——’s attendance and doctrine £3, 12s. 3d.” In March 1794, he received as license money $10 each from Isaac Gates, Nathan Hill and Barrett Overheyser, and in 1795 the same from nine other persons.

First among enterprises having in view the general good came roads which at the start were mere clearings through the forests. Above all things the scattered settlements in the upper valley needed communication with each other. The road by which they reached the outer world ran from Wattles’s Ferry to Catskill,—a road much older in its[48] first state than the turnpike and one which the turnpike finally supplanted. The original road had been opened about fifteen years before the turnpike was established. A wheeled vehicle as early as 1787 is known to have made a journey over its entire length.

By the summer of 1788 this first road was in passable condition. The State now took its improvement in charge. G. Gelston made a survey of it in August 1790, and during the next year Sluman Wattles did some work on it, his cousin, Nathaniel, having a contract with the State for the work. In 1792, Solomon Martin drove a yoke of oxen over it to Catskill and back, taking fifteen days, which meant an average of six miles a day. The road was only twenty-five feet wide. In the same year a regular weekly mail route was established over it from the Hudson to the Susquehanna.

A State road that dates from 1790, led from Unadilla by the Susquehanna and Charlotte to Schoharie Flats. In that year Sluman Wattles reported to State officials that it was worth £12 per mile “to clear out and make this road.” It became an important highway to the settlers.

To about the same period belongs the building of Main Street in Unadilla village, which was extended westward to the Unadilla River. The survey was made by Nathaniel Lock of Westchester County. The original map made by him may still be seen in Albany. In December 1791, a certificate,[49] signed by Solomon Martin, David Baits, Israel Smith, Elijah Heyden, Nathaniel Lock and other “inhabitants of the Ouleout and Unadilla”, declared that this road had been completed agreeable to Lock’s map by Benjamin Hovey[9] and John Massereau. The signers added that “said road had been amended so that loaded ox teams or carts can pass and repass the whole distance with ease.” Originally the road in Unadilla village ran closer to the river. It was several times altered and once at the instance of Solomon Martin, to whom credit is given for the obtuse angle formed near the Post Office.

Solomon Martin and others certified in 1791 that they had completed a road from the Unadilla to the Chenango River. A road also had been opened down the Susquehanna, where were many settlements, and at Windsor in 1791 one had been started across the hills to Cookoze (Deposit) on the Delaware “to serve”, says Lincklaen, “to transport commodities to the Philadelphia market.” By 1794, a road ran all the way over to Carr’s Creek from the Ouleout, beginning at a point near the stone house on the W. J. Hughston farm. It had been begun somewhat earlier. In that year a bridge was constructed across Carr’s Creek, Sluman Wattles charging 8 shillings for one day’s work on it.

For the records of later road building we must[50] turn to the town archives instead of the State. In 1796, there was made “a return of a highway, laid out through the town of Unadilla, beginning at Abner Griffith’s on the river and running north to the Sand Hill Creek where the patent line crosses; then crossing the creek; thence northerly through lot number 119 until it runs twenty-five rods on the lot of Elisha Lathrop”, from whence it proceeded to the north line of the town. These records show how early the Sand Hill and Hampshire Hollow parts of the town were settled.

The northern central parts of the town were at first approached from the Unadilla River and the Butternut Creek. Earliest among records concerning a road running directly north from the village is “a return for an alteration of a road beginning near Captain Solomon Martin’s on the line between him and Daniel Bissell and running on said line northerly as far as the land will permit.” This return is dated May 10th, 1796; but there is nothing to show anything further in connection with such a road. The present Martin Brook road through to the north part of the town from Martin’s saw mill, was not opened until nearly fifty years after the date of this paper.

In June 1796, commissioners, on the application of twelve freeholders, laid out a road “beginning near Aaron Axtell’s house at a stake, thence running a northwesterly course to a pine tree marked H; then to a pine tree marked with a blaze;[51] thence to a walnut staddle, also marked with a blaze; then running nearly the same course to a pine tree marked with an X; thence running until it intersects the old road six rods north of the five-mile tree.” To this project, which points to what was afterwards the old Kilkenny road, there was opposition and it was referred to a jury of twelve men, who reported that it was “not consistent; neither do we think it necessary and therefore we do protest against said road.” Built, however, this road was in early times, though it had some years to wait. Mention of it first occurs in the list of road districts for 1810.

Earliest of all roads actually opened from the village leading over the hills to the north, seems to have been the one running from near the store of Noble and Hayes, of which mention occurs in the road list for 1809, but a return for the survey of it had been made in 1808. The town in 1800 had already been divided into road districts of which there were fifteen. They show with much force the extent to which the Unadilla township lands had been opened up at that early day. They are as follows:

“First district, beginneth at the town line at Stephen Harrington’s and runneth to the Unadilla River road.

“Second, beginneth at the Butternut Creek and runneth on the said Unadilla road to the Eel Ware Bridge.

[52]

“Third, beginneth at the Eel Ware Bridge and runneth on the said road to a pine tree marked No. 4 at the foot of the hill.

“Fourth, beginneth at the pine tree at the foot of the hill marked No. 4; from thence to the State road and from the ferry to the line of Banyar Patent.

“Fifth, beginneth at Banyar Patent line and running to the two-mile tree on the State road, and from Colonel Baits’s.

“Sixth, beginneth at the two-mile tree and from thence to the Grog Shop Creek to include the bridge.[10]

“Seventh, beginning at the east end of the village, thence to the foot of still water.

“Eighth, beginning at the foot of still water and up the cross new road as far as Laban Crandall’s house; from thence to the eight-mile tree.

“Ninth, beginning at the eight-mile tree; from thence to the Otsdawa bridge.

“Tenth, beginning at the Susquehanna River road up the Sand Hill Creek road to the north line of the town.

“Eleventh, beginning at Merriman’s sawmill; from thence to the northwest line of the town.

“Twelfth, beginning at Laban Crandall’s house;[53] thence through the north line of the town on the Sisson road.

“Thirteenth, beginning at the river road; thence up Wheaton Creek to Joseph Peam’s house.

“Fourteenth, beginning at the Wheaton road; from thence to the Sand Hill Creek road.

“Fifteenth, begins at the west branch of the Otsdawa Creek; thence to the town of Otego [now Oneonta] at or near Thurston Brown’s.”

Such were the roads that established communication among the settlers—primitive highways the most of them, and greatly inferior to the turnpike that came in in 1800 as the model road for all this territory and which remained for many years the chief highway to many parts of central and southern New York. One of the earliest highways in the State west of the Hudson and south of the Mohawk was this one from Wattles’s Ferry to Catskill, and it stands as a historic landmark of that great turnpike era which began with the new century.

The turnpike grew out of stern necessity. So great had been the demand for roads pouring in upon State authorities from all neighborhoods, that it was impossible to meet them. The State in consequence gave to private corporations permission to open and improve roads and impose tolls as their recompense. Among the men who took stock in the Catskill Turnpike were Stephen Benton, Solomon Martin and Sluman Wattles, the[54] price of shares being twenty dollars and the amount of stock twelve thousand dollars. Caleb Benton, who lived in Catskill and was a brother of Stephen, at one time was president of the company. Two stages were kept regularly on the road, the fare being five cents per mile, making the cost of the trip from Unadilla to Catskill about the same as the fare by rail from Unadilla to New York now, while the time consumed was three days.

Dr. Dwight came over the road in 1804 and tells how he saw “a few lonely plantations recently begun”, and how he “occasionally passed a cottage and heard the distant sounds of an axe and of a human voice”, while all else “was grandeur, gloom and solitude.” He describes Franklin as “for some miles a thinly built village, composed of neat, tidy houses”, in which everything “indicated prosperity.” Further down the Ouleout the country “bore a forbidding aspect, the houses being thinly scattered and many of them denoted great poverty.”

At Wattles’s Ferry he was unable to find a boat. Even a dinner was denied him. A bridge had been begun but he had to cross “a deep and rapid ford.” Further down the river William Hanna supplied him with a dinner. It was the opening of this turnpike[11] which, as I have said, determined that a village should grow up at its western terminus.[55] Here was a stopping place, the end of the land journey, a place for stores and hotels, the point where pioneers might enter boats and thus be conveyed to destinations south and west.

The number of houses standing in the village in 1808 could not have been more than fifteen or seventeen. At the extreme eastern end near the bridge lived a man named Morgan. His house was a rude affair dug into the bank.

To the west of Morgan came one of the yellow houses, then occupied by Guido L. Bissell, who seems to have built it.

Next was the home of Curtis Noble whose family comprised at this date his wife and his two sons George and Charles, then five and two years old respectively, and an infant daughter.

Beyond stood the Isaac Hayes residence, built four years before, and already famous as the most attractive dwelling between Catskill and Ithaca.

Beyond this lived Captain Amos Bostwick, whose wife was Sally Hayes, an aunt of Isaac Hayes. Captain Bostwick had served in the Revolution in the same regiment with Elijah Boardman of New Milford. His wife died in 1825 at the age of seventy-seven, and he in 1829 at the age of eighty-six. Clark I. Hayes could just remember him as “an old, infirm man, sitting by his open fire on the hearth, cane in hand, poking the ashes.”

Several rods to the west were the home and shoe shop of Fowler P. Bryan, the father of Alexander[56] Bryan, standing near where the Frank Bacon house is.

To reach the next dwelling, involved a walk to the home of Gurdon Huntington on the corner of Martin Brook Street. This house was built by Guido L. Bissell and Jerome Bates and has long been the oldest house in the village. Except for the rear part, put on afterwards, it has scarcely been altered since its original erection. The flight of time long since raised it to the eminence of a centenarian. Besides Dr. Huntington, those who have owned and occupied it include Dr. David Walker, Dr. G. L. Halsey and Albert T. Amsden, while at one time it was owned by Col. A. D. Williams. The last occupant who owned it was Peter Hodges, who, on the death of his wife in 1889, sold it to Dr. Halsey, who thus became its owner a second time. The design of the house is Flemish. Houses like it may be seen to this day in the older parts of Bruges and Ostend. Readers will perhaps pardon the personal pride which prompts the statement that beneath that roof, on an October day, some time “befo de war,” was born the writer of this chronicle.

Beyond the Huntington house came the store and house of Solomon Martin on the land now occupied by the residence of Marvin P. Sweet. This structure remained standing for more than twenty years when it was torn down to make way[57] for the present house, which was built by the Rev. Norman H. Adams.

The land thence westward was vacant as far down as the site of the present residence of Milo B. Gregory, on which had been erected a few years before the home of Stephen Benton.

No other house existed until one reached the site of the E. C. Belknap home, where a house is said to have existed at that time, but its occupant’s name remains unknown to me.

Beyond this all was vacant until the yellow house of Aaron Axtell, the pioneer blacksmith, was reached.

On the southern side of the street were fewer houses than on the northern—in all not more than six. First at the eastern end came the Abijah H. Beach home, where Oliver Buckley lived in later years. It had been erected as early as 1805. Mr. Beach was a native of New Milford, and thus had for neighbors across the way three other New Milford families,—Hayes, Noble and Bostwick. Next to the west was the Daniel Bissell house, where Mr. Bissell at first had erected a log dwelling. He put up a frame house in 1794, which remained until 1817 when Joel Bragg built on this site his first hotel.

To the west came the home of John Bissell on the site of the Dr. Gregory house. John Bissell owned the neighboring fertile island, a gift from his father.[58] His house was torn down when Joel Bragg erected the brick dwelling.

Further on stood the Sampson Crooker residence on the L. B. Woodruff site, a portion of which still remains at the rear of the later building.

Next came the hotel which Dr. Cone built on the site of the present Unadilla House at the corner of Clifton Street.

Beyond stood Jacob Hayes’s house, just below the site of the Presbyterian Church.

From this point there was no house until the Sliter place was reached beyond the present barns of James White.

Such was the village of Unadilla, twenty-five years after Sluman Wattles and Timothy Beach made their settlements on the banks of the Ouleout. Seven years later the number of houses was thirty, in which fact we see the influence of the turnpike in building up the settlement. Dr. Dwight in his notes of the visit made in 1804, gives as follows his impressions of the place and its surroundings:

“That township in which we now were is named Unadilla and lies in the county of Otsego. It is composed of rocks, hills and valleys, with a handsome collection of intervales along the Susquehanna. On a remarkably rugged eminence, immediately northwest of the river, we saw the first oaks and chestnuts after leaving the neighborhood of Cat skill. The intervening forests were beech, maple, and so forth.

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“The houses were scattered along the road which runs parallel with the river. The settlement is new and appears like most others of a similar date. Rafts, containing each from twenty to twenty-five thousand feet of boards, are from this township floated down the Susquehanna to Baltimore. Unadilla [the township] contained in 1800 823 inhabitants.”

Important additions to the population soon followed the coming of Curtis Noble and Isaac Hayes. They included men who for a long period were to remain foremost citizens. One was Stephen Benton, who came from Sheffield, Massachusetts, and from Peter Betts of Bainbridge in 1804 purchased his farm of 115 acres. Guido L. Bissell in July 1805 charged Mr. Benton with “three day’s work at harvest 18 shillings”, “to making drag 10 shillings”, and “to putting up partition 6 shillings.” Two years later Mr. Bissell charged against him “to making of bedstead 17 shillings”, and “to making table 6 shillings.” In 1810, when work was going forward on St. Matthew’s Church, Mr. Bissell charged for “5½ days work on Church, £2, 6s.”

Mr. Benton opened a store on the northwest corner of Main and Clifton Streets. Across the street may still be seen the building in which on the former site he and his son Albert long did business: it has the date 1816 still upon the pediment. From Sheffield Mr. Benton in 1816 secured as clerk a[61] young man then fourteen years old named Christopher D. Fellows. Mr. Fellows came to Unadilla over the Catskill turnpike, and in 1823 became a partner in the store with Albert Benton. He thus was launched upon a business career that was to last nearly eighty years, his span of life extending to his ninety-third year.

Major Fellows’s share in building up the village was large. He became an active and intelligent force in nearly all that advanced its interests. A feature of the Benton and Fellows business was a distillery. Like Noble and Hayes this firm suffered from a surplus of grain. There was no other way by which the stock could be disposed of. A merit of this whiskey, however, was its purity. Much of the product was consumed by men engaged in lumbering. So great was the demand for it, that a hogshead was sometimes sold at retail in one day. Large quantities in casks were shipped down the river every year.

The Benton distillery stood in the rear of the present residence of Milo B. Gregory. This house dates from 1823, and was erected by Major Fellows and Albert Benton after an earlier house, built by Stephen Benton, had been destroyed by fire. Stephen Benton died in April 1840 at the age of sixty-six. The wife of Major Fellows was his daughter. Major Fellows was elected to the Assembly in 1845 when John A. Dix and Daniel S. Dickinson were chosen United States Senators. In[62] 1894, almost fifty years after that event, Major Fellows went to Albany and was invited to sit in the speaker’s chair.[12]

Contemporary with the coming of Stephen Benton was the coming of Sherman Page, a native of Cheshire, Connecticut, where he was born in 1779. His father was Jared Page, who settled in what is now the town of Greene, Chenango County, at a place still known as Page Brook, on a stream that flows into the Chenango River a few miles above Port Crane. About 1799 Sherman Page went over into the adjoining town of Coventry and there taught the first school in the place. He read law about this time and went to Unadilla to open an office, being the first man in the village to practice that profession regularly.

He was here as early as 1805 and in 1807 was elected a path master. With his father he had come into the country by way of Wattles’s Ferry of which he must have retained the vivid recollections of youth. Into most enterprises, Mr. Page’s energies appear to have entered, whether these were social, religious or commercial. He was supervisor in 1826 and in three other years, a member of Assembly in 1827, and a member of Congress[63] from 1833 to 1837. He was also county judge. He built and long occupied the house where now lives Mr. George W. Hardy, but later on his home was in the stone house across the street. His wife was a niece of Sampson Crooker, and he had five children,—Robert who was a lawyer in Flint, Michigan, Vincent who also went West and long afterwards died in Unadilla, Elizabeth who became the wife of George H. Noble, and long survived as the widow of her second husband, Arthur Yates of Waverley, Mary who was the first wife of William H. Emory, and Maria, the first wife of Frederick A. Sands. Judge Page died in September, 1853.

Mr. Emory was a native of Maryland and was born in 1811. He came to Unadilla about sixty years ago and was all his life engaged in the dry goods trade, at one time in the building that now adjoins White’s store on the west, but which then stood on the lot opposite J. Fred. Sands’s residence, later at the corner of Main and Clifton Streets, in the brick building that was destroyed in the fire of 1878, and still later in the old brick store uptown. He was an active member of the Methodist Church and his home was the westerly one of the two stone houses, its builder having been Frederick A. Sands.

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As early as 1805 had come the first of four brothers who were to leave a distinct mark on the growth of the village,—Dr. Adanijah Cone. His first home was the original hotel that stood at Main and Clifton Streets which he built, and of which for several years he was the proprietor. He then built the rear portion of the house that was afterwards the home of his son, Lewis G. Cone, and in which now lives his grandson, Frederick L. Cone. In 1808, his two brothers, Daniel and Gilbert, followed him, and in 1815, the fourth brother, Gardner. Daniel and Gilbert first lived in an old house on the south side of the road about one hundred rods from the present James White house. The White house was built by them in 1815. These brothers Cone came from Hebron, Connecticut. Their varied interests comprised farm lands, a fulling mill, a store, a hotel and the practice of medicine.

Daniel and Gilbert Cone in 1808 bought 300 acres of land from Mr. Sliter and in 1811 Lot 92 of the Wallace Patent from the Lansings of Albany. They did a large business in fulling and dressing cloth, people coming from far and near with the cloth they had woven at home. Theodore Hanford and Erastus Kingsley at one time were employed by them. Gardner Cone settled on the farm afterwards the home of Salmon G. Cone, who was his nephew. Gardner Cone’s wife was Sarah Robertson, a sister of Niel Robertson. Daniel married[65] Margaret Hull, a sister of Mrs. Calvin Gates, and for second wife married Hannah Taylor, a sister of Lydia Taylor, the wife of Dr. Cone. Lydia Taylor had a niece also named Lydia Taylor who became the wife of Erastus Kingsley. Hannah Taylor Cone, after her husband’s death, removed to Connecticut, where on January 8, 1894, she died at the age of ninety-four.

Dr. Cone died in 1862 at the age of eighty-four. His widow when she died was past ninety. Their son Lewis G. Cone was for a great number of years one of the best known citizens of the village. With his brother-in-law Frederick A. Bolles, he was long engaged in business. Captain Bolles came to the village in 1838 and remained here until his death in June, 1891. He arrived from Oxford, to which place he had gone from his native town of Vernon, Oneida County. He purchased the hotel at Main and Bridge Streets and conducted it for several years when he sold the property to Colonel Thomas Heath. He married Julia A. Cone in 1839, and afterwards went into the hardware trade with Lewis G. Cone. For almost forty years the two were partners. On the death of Mr. Cone in 1878, the partnership was continued with Mr. Cone’s only son, Frederick L. Cone.

Captain Bolles in 1845 was captain of a company which went out from this village during the anti-rent difficulties in Delaware County. It was a company of light infantry from the 151st Regiment,[66] described by Jay Gould as “composed mostly of young men who with a little drilling made excellent soldiers”. Colonel Samuel North, who afterwards came to Unadilla where the remainder of his life was spent, commanded the regiment. His orders were to hold it “in readiness to answer any call that may be made for additional force should it be deemed necessary”. At the funeral of the murdered Deputy Sheriff Steele in Delhi on August 10, the Rev. Norman H. Adams from Unadilla assisted in the services. Captain Bolles was supervisor of Unadilla in 1851 and in 1861 was a member of Assembly. His first wife died in 1868, and in 1871 he married Mrs. W. S. Bryant of Guilford.

Following Captain Bolles came his brother, Frank G. Bolles, who spent the remainder of his life almost entirely in this village. He was long associated with his brother and Lewis G. Cone in the hardware business, at one time as employe, at another as partner. He was prominently identified with Free Masonry in this part of the State, and was Postmaster under President Cleveland, and saw service in the Civil War. He was all his life one of the most agreeable personalities in the village, his gift of humor being marked and its manifestations incessant. He knew everybody and everybody knew him. His death did more than any other event in a long period of years to[67] eclipse the gaiety of life in public places. Fare-you-well, friend of us all.

Of those four brothers Cone, Dr. Cone’s grandson, Frederick L. Cone, now alone in the male line survives on village soil to preserve the family name. To this family belonged the late Salmon G. Cone, but neither of the four brothers was his ancestor. They were his uncles. His father was Zachariah Cone, who remained in Connecticut where Salmon G. was born and grew up. Salmon taught school in Connecticut, afterwards in Sag Harbor on Long Island and in Kentucky. He came to Unadilla in 1843, and thenceforth until his death few men in this part of the upper Susquehanna valley were better known. He had often been elected supervisor and always by an unusually large majority. The energies of his nature were mainly directed to private enterprises extending much beyond the limits of the village. One who knew him well for the most of his life thus wrote of him after his death:

“He was a bold and outspoken advocate of any cause which he espoused. While this sometimes made his conduct seem rash and injudicious, no one who knew him could fail to have respect for his character, which seemed to be above the use of means to which men ordinarily resort. He could do nothing by indirection. His antagonisms were open as the day, and he was the most firm and steadfast of friends. Mr. Cone’s early training,[68] habits and proverbial industry and thoughtfulness would have made him successful anywhere. He saw all his projects thrive. From small investments he watched his fortune grow to imposing proportions and he was proud in the contemplation that it was all the work of his hands. He lived a great, generous, liberal, manly life and he was in accord with whatever was brave and manly in the community, as he understood it.”

Mr. Cone died in April, 1890, in his seventy-eighth year. He lies buried on the outer edge of that elevated plain where a new cemetery has been opened, overlooking the peaceful village from the Sidney shore of the Susquehanna.

In those first years of the century came other settlers of note,—William Wilmot in 1800, Niel Robertson and John Eells in 1811, and David Finch in 1814. William Wilmot was the first cabinet maker. A memorandum made by Guido L. Bissell in April, 1800, reads, “Wilmot and Hayes began to board with me”, and another “Hayes left of the 12th of December.” Mr. Wilmot was born in Danbury, Connecticut, in 1780, and died in 1849. Near the home of the late A. P. Gray still stands the building where he did business. The house in which his son Daniel W. Wilmot long lived was built by him. Mr. Wilmot married Rachel Wattles, a relative of Nathaniel Wattles. She died in 1812, and he then married her sister Octavia, who was the mother of Daniel. Mr. Wilmot’s[69] third wife was Nancy Cleveland. Later he married Ann Smith. He and they all lie buried in the village churchyard. His business was continued until quite recent times by his son, with whom was associated Colonel Thomas Heath.

Colonel Heath from 1844 until 1858 kept the hotel at Main and Bridge Streets and at one time was Sheriff of the county. He was afterwards proprietor of the Oquaga House in Deposit which got its name from the ancient and historic Susquehanna town, Oghwaga. From the doorway of this hotel many persons, born in Unadilla, first saw a railway train. After the opening of the Albany and Susquehanna Railroad, Colonel Heath returned to Unadilla. Here he died in 1889. He was born in Walton in 1812 and was the father of George W. Heath.

Niel Robertson came from the same place as the Cones,—Hebron. He bought from them his Unadilla land in 1814 and thereon built the house which still stands under the hill at the extreme lower end of the village. Elsewhere he survived to a very old age. His wife died from a lightning stroke. When Mr. Robertson came to Unadilla he brought a child five years old who was afterwards married to the Rev. Lyman Sperry. Another daughter became the wife of A. P. Gray.

Mr. Sperry, who was the father of Watson R. Sperry, for many years managing editor of The New York Evening Post, and who afterwards[70] went to Persia as the United States Minister under President Harrison, was born in Alford, Massachusetts, in 1808, and was a son of Nathan Sperry, whose family had settled originally in Hartford, Connecticut. He became a minister of the Methodist Episcopal church and at one time was Presiding Elder of the Otsego district. Mr. Sperry died in 1892. I recall him best in his old age, when the stoop of senility was upon him, and the kindly, almost eager, interest he always took in anything I chose to say to him. I cannot forget those conversations, each summer for many years in vacation time, on sidewalks and in dooryards, with this beautiful old man.

Mr. Gray was a native of Durham, Greene County. He was born in 1811 and came to Unadilla in 1832. He was an old friend of the Rev. Norman H. Adams who had lived at the neighboring town of Oak Hill. Mr. Gray engaged in harness making in Mechanic’s Hall, and later in carriage trimming. After marriage he lived in the house that Sampson Crooker owned on the L. B. Woodruff site. Late in life he was employed in a responsible place by the Albany and Susquehanna Railroad Company. In the rear of his house on land of his, once existed a brickyard where were made the bricks used in constructing the store destroyed in the fire of 1878. Mr. Gray died in November, 1886.

John Eells came from Walton. He followed marked trees to find the way. He was a shoemaker[71] and tanner, and near the residence of the late John Van Cott opened the first tannery in the village. For a time he lived in the Priest house. The rear portion of Elizabeth Clark’s home was built by him as a shoe shop on lower Main Street. He died in 1870 at the age of eighty-four. His son Horace Eells survived in Unadilla until about three years ago. For a long period he continued the business of tanning and was actively identified with the Presbyterian church.

David Finch was a son of Daniel Finch, an Englishman who settled in Litchfield, Connecticut, before the Revolution. David Finch was one of four children. He married Ruth Mallery of Cornwall, Connecticut, whose father, like his own, had come from England to America before the war. After his marriage David Finch lived for some years in Oxford, Connecticut, where he engaged in manufacturing woolen cloth and where four children were born. His business declined after the War of 1812, and in 1814 he set out for Unadilla where he engaged in building.

His first home in the village was in the western end beyond the Wilmot house. He afterwards bought a farm in Sidney, opposite the old fulling mill, but some years afterward returned to the village and lived in the Masonic Hall, while it occupied the old Brick Store lot. In 1820 he acquired the house afterwards removed to its present site by Horace Eells. It was then an unfinished building[72] which had been begun by Thomas Noble. Mr. Finch, assisted by William J. Thompson, completed it and made it his home.

His first considerable work as a builder was the Roswell Wright house, afterwards the residence of Senator David P. Loomis, which was erected in 1823 or 1824. The panel lumber used for it cost only five dollars per thousand. Mr. Finch built the Edson house below the Presbyterian church about the same time, and in company with Lord and Bottom did work on St. Matthew’s church. Of him William J. Thompson learned his trade. Mr. Finch was born in 1782 and died in 1841. His son, William T. Finch, who died a few years ago in Chicago was long a citizen of Unadilla. A daughter was the wife of Rufus G. Mead.

Mr. Thompson was born in Saratoga in 1805 and came with his father to Otego in 1808, and to Unadilla as an apprentice to Mr. Finch in 1824. He and Mr. Finch were afterwards partners and together reared many structures still standing in Unadilla village, as well as in other places, including Meredith Square and Coventry. Mr. Thompson was a member of St. Matthew’s Church for sixty years or more. He died in Savannah, Georgia, in January, 1895, and his body was brought to the old churchyard for burial. In the Masonic Hall, while an apprentice, Mr. Thompson found his first Unadilla home, scarcely dreaming that he would live to move the edifice to its present place[73] as his own residence for nearly fifty years—the house now the summer home of his son-in-law Lester T. Hubbell.

A friend of Curtis Noble and Isaac Hayes who soon followed them to Unadilla, was Melancthon B. Jarvis who was born in Norwalk, Connecticut, in June, 1775, where he had known Josiah Thatcher. He settled on the Timothy Beach farm near the mouth of the Ouleout, but later moved to the village and occupied part of the house Sheldon Griswold long lived in. He died in 1856.

Captain Josiah Thatcher about the same time settled on a neighboring farm, part of which has since been known as the Sternberg place. He had served in the Revolution three years. In the house which still stands on the place he lived until he died in 1856 at the age of eighty-six. His wife was Anna Reed, and his children were Polly, George, Esther, Harriet, Nancy, Amelia and Frances. His ancestor was an Englishman from Kent, who on arrival in America was shipwrecked off Cape Cod, where a lighthouse was afterwards set up and named after him.

Until the new century had well started on its course, the only business in the country yielding much cash was lumbering, which involved journeys down the Susquehanna and Delaware rivers to Harrisburgh, Baltimore and Philadelphia. So extensive became this industry that others were neglected and prophets of evil predicted the ruin of the country. Every settlement in the valley had many sawmills, not only on the river but along tributary streams. Spafford in 1813 reported that Unadilla alone had sixteen, five of which were accompanied by grist mills.

Among the mills which exerted influence in fixing the sites of villages considerable eminence belongs to those situated in Unadilla village near the mouth of the Binnekill. Originally they were known as the Bissell mills. This site was chosen in order to make use of the waters of Martin Brook and other streams which there found a way into the Susquehanna. Martin Brook at that time was a much larger stream than now. Indeed,[75] on village land, it consisted, as already stated, of two streams which formed an island, a branch starting some distance below the old Peter Weidman place, proceeding westward and southward until it crossed Main Street near a willow tree at the old Post Office corner, and thence went across the Woodruff lands to join the main channel in the churchyard. Besides the waters of this brook, there flowed through the village two smaller creeks then having a larger volume than now, one near the residence of Samuel D. Bacon, the other crossing Main Street several rods further east. Before the timber was cut these three streams combined to pour into the river a large volume of water.

The first mill on the site of the present mills was the sawmill built by Daniel Bissell some years before 1800 and supplied by the waters of these three creeks. At the point near where the combined streams emerged into the river, the banks on both the island and the mainland shore were high, thus affording a natural site for a dam. Daniel Bissell probably erected his sawmill here as early as 1790. We, therefore, have in this mill the pioneer industry for Unadilla village, the first distinct industry in which men engaged aside from farming.

As early as 1803, additional water had been secured from the river through a small raceway dug by John Bissell and a man named Mason. The volume of water was further increased by a dam[76] thrown across the river at the head of this raceway. The lumber industry having expanded, other mills had been erected further up Martin Brook, thus interfering with the supply of water, and making it necessary to obtain a new source from the river. The original raceway, still called the Binnekill, was a much smaller affair than the present one. By using a pole one could leap across it. It is not unlikely that some water always flowed through from the river, except when the water might be very low. It became an easy matter to enlarge the volume by deepening the bed. Evidence exists above the present river dam on the island side that an earlier dam had been built there running diagonally up the stream, instead of straight across as now. M. W. Duley, who owned the property for many years and often made repairs to the present dam, held to the opinion that the original dam was a primitive affair constructed of brush and stone like an eel rack dam.

There still exists in Mrs. Sumner’s hands a certified copy of the contract for the sale of this property to Sampson Crooker in 1803, as made by the owners, Daniel Bissell and John Bissell. It provided that Mr. Crooker should have “the privilege of opening the artificial raceway called the Binekill wider if necessary to supply the mill with water and throwing out the dirt on the bank of said Binekill, together with all the privileges and appurtenances unto the said land, sawmill and[77] Binekill[13] belonging, and also the dam on the river.” With the mill, the raceway and the dam Mr. Crooker acquired a considerable tract of land, in lots 98 and 99 of the Wallace patent, on which were houses inhabited by Brewster Platt and Elijah Ferry.

The contract further specified that Mr. Crooker should have “the privilege of digging a ditch through on the line between said Livingston’s land and said Bissell’s land from the mill to the river, on condition that Livingston stop the water where it now runs into the river.” For this property Mr. Crooker was to pay eleven hundred dollars. He was described as “of Canton, Greene County.” Mr. Crooker probably erected the grist mill soon after 1804. It was standing in 1808 and he owned the property until finally sold to Joel Bragg. Mr. Crooker’s home stood on the site of the L. B. Woodruff house in a lot which then embraced also the St. Matthew’s Church ground and the cemetery. His brothers George and Jacob soon followed him to Unadilla from Cairo.[14]

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From Sampson Crooker these mills passed to Joel Bragg, whose life was one of the most stirring and impressive to be found in these annals. Mr. Bragg was a native of Vermont. With his father early in the century he went to Chenango County. The father seems to have been a “Vermont sufferer”, one of those who were deprived of their Vermont lands by the settlement of the disputes growing out of the New Hampshire Grants, and had received land in Chenango County as compensation for his losses. About the year 1812, Joel Bragg came to Unadilla and purchased land that had been a part of the original Daniel Bissell purchase. He built a new hotel on the site of Mr. Bissell’s hotel, and when this was burned he rebuilt it. George W. Reynolds of Franklin, a few years ago, recalled how in 1828 he had stopped at this hotel with his father, finding it “full of brawny men whose business seemed to be hauling logs to the sawmill and boards to the Delaware at Walton for rafting to Trenton and Philadelphia markets.”

After Mr. Bragg bought the grist and sawmill property from Mr. Crooker, he met with a second misfortune. The mills were burned. It is related[79] that, on the morning after the fire, Mr. Bragg was seen coming down the street smoking a pipe and with an axe over his shoulder. Asked where he was going, his reply was, that he was starting for the woods to cut timber for a new mill. This illustrates the indomitable pluck of Joel Bragg. He not only erected a new sawmill but the stone building used for the gristmill was his work.

Later on Mr. Bragg built the present brick house belonging to the Dr. Gregory estate, making the bricks himself, in the lot between the schoolhouse grounds and the railroad station. This was not long after 1837. Students at the old Academy can recall the ditches that formerly existed in that ground, where clay had been taken out to make bricks. The land being marshy there, these ditches were commonly full of water and became populous with frogs. I well remember going there with other boys to catch these frogs with spears, roasting their legs at the fire we built nearby.

Mr. Bragg died in 1870 at the age of eighty-five years and ten months. A son of his who was reared in this village rose to honors elsewhere,—Edward S. Bragg. He was born in Unadilla in 1827, was educated at Hobart College and read law in the office of Judge Noble. Admitted to the bar in 1848, he soon removed to Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, where he had held several offices before 1860, and in that year became a delegate to the Charleston Convention which nominated Stephen[80] A. Douglass. He became a captain in the army in 1861 and rose to the rank of Brigadier-General, with which he was mustered out in October, 1865, having served in nearly all the campaign of the Army of the Potomac. He was a delegate to the Democratic conventions which nominated Seymour, Greeley and Cleveland. The first nomination of Cleveland was seconded by him in a speech which became celebrated all over the country for its allusion to Tammany Hall’s opposition to Cleveland, General Bragg saying Cleveland was admired “for the enemies he had made.” General Bragg has been repeatedly elected to Congress where he was always a conspicuous figure on the Democratic side. He was seriously mentioned as a candidate for President on the Sound Money Democratic ticket, to run during the first Bryan campaign.

These village mills have had many names contemporary with their owners. Besides the Bissells and Mr. Bragg, the owners have included N. F. Brant, Albert T. Hodges, M. W. Duley and H. Y. Canfield, the present owner. Historic among industries in this village they stand. Elsewhere in the town, few, if any, pioneer mills still remain, and fewer still have any work to perform. Even here the familiar hum of wheel and buzz of saw, which aforetime were often the only sounds that the village heard in still summer afternoons, and which formerly were often heard through the night time also, now seldom startle even the most listening[81] ear. What piles of logs have I not seen gathered about that site in boyhood times; what sleigh-loads have I not seen pass through village streets, now and then to climb upon their tops for a ride to the mill site to watch their unloading! Grass is now growing close to the highway where logs once were piled to the utmost limit, and seldom does any sound emerge from either mill roof or shed.

The earliest religious services held in Unadilla village appear to have been conducted by “Father” Nash. He came to Otsego County as a missionary near the end of the eighteenth century and labored in many parts of the county with great zeal and fruitful results for the remainder of his life. His wife often went with him to distant places on horseback, she leading in the singing while he conducted the services. Of many Episcopal Churches in the county, he, in a spiritual sense, was the founder.

“Father” Nash had held services many times in Unadilla before St. Matthew’s Church was founded, the meetings being held in private houses and even in barns. To his influence was largely due the denominational character of that Church, established as it was in a community composed so largely of men who had come from the home of Congregationalism. It was due to his influence upon them, combined with the fact that several of these men had already acquired some acquaintance[83] with the Episcopal faith, that the Church took on the Episcopal character. These men were Curtis Noble, Isaac Hayes, Josiah Thatcher, Abijah H. Beach, Solomon Martin, Dr. Cone and Sherman Page. They had all come from some of the few Connecticut towns in which Episcopalianism had been able at last to secure a foothold. To its forms and faith they were not wholly strangers.

Among the first Episcopal clergymen who preached in Connecticut was a member of the family to which Mr. Beach belonged, the Rev. John Beach, who changed to that faith from Congregationalism in 1732, and became an active man in the formation of Episcopal Churches in several Litchfield towns. In 1740, he rendered such services to Woodbury, the ancestral home of Solomon Martin, where in 1783 was held a meeting which has historic fame as the first step taken in this country to secure Episcopal authority, Samuel Seabury being selected as bishop.

In 1736, the Rev. Jonathan Arnold, another Episcopal clergyman, held services at New Milford, the home of Mr. Noble and Mr. Hayes, “where the use of the Lord’s prayer, the creed and the ten commandments, or the reading of the scriptures in divine service was never before known”, while at New Milford in 1764 a church was organized. At Hebron, the home of the Cones, was formed in 1734 the sixth Episcopal Church ever known in the state of Connecticut; while at[84] Cheshire, the home of Sherman Page, a Church edifice had first been erected in 1760. The Nobles of New Milford were among the most active supporters of the Episcopal Church in that place. Mr. Hayes when he came to Unadilla, although his sympathies as an Englishman’s son, were perhaps in that direction, was not a professing Episcopalian. In New Milford dwelt friends of Episcopalianism named Thatcher. Partridge Thatcher, who went there originally from Lebanon, was the architect of the New Milford church. To the same family belonged Josiah Thatcher who came from Norwalk, where also Episcopal beginnings had been made.

When finally it was decided to form a Church in Unadilla, the chief inspiring cause was a desire to elevate the moral tone of the community: a frontier settlement seldom maintains a high standard of social life. The motive, therefore, was not so much to found a Church of any one denomination, as to found a Church of some kind. The denominational character of the society was finally determined by a vote. Sherman Page presided at the meeting and the vote was equally divided between Episcopalians and Presbyterians. Mr. Page was therefore called upon to give a casting vote, and thus turned the scale in favor of an Episcopal Church. This meeting was held in 1809.

For the first permanent rector, the wardens and vestrymen sent to Connecticut and secured[85] the Rev. Russell Wheeler who came in the spring of 1814, remaining until August 1819. Josiah Thatcher made a special journey to Connecticut to arrange for his coming. Mr. Wheeler was a graduate of Williams College and had studied divinity under Bishop Hobart. Before coming to Unadilla he had been rector of a Church in Watertown, Connecticut, ten miles from New Milford. After leaving Unadilla, he was rector of the Church in Morris. For him was built the house that formerly stood where now stands the Sperry residence, and in which afterwards lived Albert Benton and Bradford Kingsley.

For one year following Mr. Wheeler, the Rev. James Keeler was rector, and then came the Rev. Marcus A. Perry who remained five years, his home being in the Howard house. Next came the rector who of all men that ever ministered over this Church perhaps made the deepest personal impression and exerted the widest influence on the community, the Rev. Norman H. Adams. He was rector of St. Matthew’s from 1825 until 1853, the year of his death. In the year of his coming, Colonel George H. Noble addressed to his cousin, Susan E. Hayes, who was then in New York, a letter in which he said:

“We are now preparing for Christmas, on which occasion we calculate to have Mr. Adams preach for us. He commences an engagement to preach for us for half the time for six months. He has[86] preached here two Sundays and was very much liked by all who heard him. He writes elegantly and is quite an orator; so I think we shall not have so many dull, go-to-meetingless Sundays this winter as we had anticipated.”

The grave of Mr. Adams with the striking monument that indicates its site is a familiar spot in the churchyard. Mr. Adams came from Greene County and was an old friend of Arnold B. Watson, who came to Unadilla from the same neighborhood.

Ground for a Church edifice and burial purposes was purchased in January 1810. A headstone in the churchyard still marks that date as the year of the first interment. A contract was let in the same year to Sampson Crooker for the construction of a building thirty feet by fifty, but for want of means the frame stood as a skeleton for two years afterward, when the structure was at last finished. Trinity Church of New York city supplied the parish with the money needed for this purpose—fourteen hundred dollars. The means by which that opulent corporation was induced to make the contribution forms an interesting story. It has come down from Judge Page, through the recollections of Lester Hubbell.[15]

The vestry of St. Matthew’s had decided to ask Trinity for help and Judge Page was sent to New York to make the application. He found on arrival that Trinity had so many applications of the[87] kind that its policy had been to decline all, but the Judge, by means of the City Directory, ascertained the personal addresses of all members of the vestry and proceeded to call upon them. On meeting with a refusal from the first one he told him how much he regretted to return home without securing a single vote, and asked as a favor that he might have this man’s vote. The vestryman at last consented, but assured the Judge he could not possibly secure the gift. The Judge then called upon the other vestrymen and employed the same methods as with the first. Each was to give him one vote in order to save his pride on returning home. When the vestry of Trinity came together, the request from St. Matthew’s was duly read by the clerk, put to a vote, and, to the surprise of every one present except the Judge, was passed unanimously. The Judge is said to have kept his countenance in a state of rigid repose, when he rose to his feet and thanked the vestry for their generosity.

Bishop Hobart consecrated the Church in 1814 and in 1817 a bell that had been cast in London was set up. In 1845 the church at a cost of fifteen hundred dollars was enlarged and entirely remodeled by William J. Thompson. This was during the administration of Mr. Adams: it was newly consecrated by Bishop DeLancey. About seven years afterwards another enlargement of the nave was made by Mr. Thompson and Lewis Carmichael, during the rectorship of the Rev.[88] Samuel H. Norton. About the time when Trinity Church gave the fourteen hundred dollars, Gouldsborough Banyar gave the Church 116 acres of land two miles below the village,—a property which was retained until some years after the Civil War, when it was sold and the present rectory in part built from the proceeds.

The first grave opened within the burial ground was that of Edward Howell, a sea captain, who, early in the century, had abandoned his roving life and settled on the Nathaniel Wattles place intending there to spend the remainder of his days. When the purchase of this land was under consideration, Mr. Howell was asked for a subscription. He declined on the ground that he had just sold his farm with the intention of going with his family to Bath, Steuben County. A few days afterwards, Captain Howell was taken ill and died. Thus his grave was the first ever opened in those grounds. As may still be seen, the stone that marks Captain Howell’s grave was “inscribed by his children.” The family removed to Bath where one of his sons became a judge and member of Congress.

In this churchyard are buried many of the first Unadilla pioneers, as well as men who followed them in the first half of the nineteenth century, among the number Solomon Martin, Guido L. Bissell, Josiah Thatcher, James Hughston, Isaac Hayes, Curtis Noble, Stephen Benton, Sherman[89] Page, William Wilmot, Adanijah, Daniel, Gilbert and Gardner Cone, Abijah H. Beach, David Finch, Niel Robertson, Fowler P. Bryan, Joel Bragg, Col. A. D. Williams, Henry Ogden, Dr. John Colwell, Erastus Kingsley, Arnold B. Watson, Col. Samuel North, Frederick A. Sands, Rev. Norman H. Adams, L. Bennett Woodruff, Henry S. Woodruff, and Dr. Gaius L. Halsey.

An earlier burial place than this stood just east of Lester Hubbell’s summer home. There was buried Daniel Bissell. Mr. Thompson remembered the head stone that marked his grave. What disposition was made of these graves when the grounds were abandoned as a burial place, the author has been unable to ascertain.

Contemporary with the founding of St. Matthew’s Church was the founding of Freedom Lodge. Its charter dates from the same year—1809. De Witt Clinton was then Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of the State. At the organization of the lodge, Stephen Benton was made master, Abijah H. Beach senior warden, and Sherman Page, junior warden. For some years meetings were held in the house of Stephen Benton. During that period, the lodge records were lost in a fire which destroyed Mr. Benton’s house. In the time of the anti-Masonic movement, growing out of the Morgan tragedy, the lodge was practically closed. But in 1854, it was reorganized, with A. B. Watson as Master,[90] and R. G. Mead and A. D. Williams as wardens. To a much later date belongs the Chapter.

After St. Matthew’s, the next oldest village Church is the Presbyterian, the influence of which has been an important factor in spiritual and social life. Two Presbyterian missionaries had been here before 1800, and possibly as early as the coming of “Father” Nash. Perhaps it was due to them that so much early Calvinistic strength had been shown in Cooperstown and Sidney. But Elihu Spencer and Gideon Hawley had been more than forty years in advance of them, those men coming as missionaries to the Indians. It is, therefore, true that the earliest religious teachings in the valley came from men of the Presbyterian faith, although on village soil the pioneer,—in so far as depth of impression was concerned, and possibly as a matter of date also—was “Father” Nash, an Episcopalian.

The Presbyterian Church in Unadilla was organized in 1823. Its first members were Uriah Hanford, Rhoda Hanford, Jesse R. Hovey, Mary Hovey, Holley Seeley, Garrett Monfort, Sarah Monfort, John Eells, Sophia Bottom, Daniel Castle, and Philo L. Phelps. For several years services were held in the school-house and in private dwellings. The building of a Church edifice was delayed until 1844, the year in which at Sand Hill the Baptist church was erected.

Since the building of the Episcopal church thirty[91] years had now gone by, in which fact we see the historic importance in early village annals of St. Matthew’s. At Unadilla Centre, as early as 1830, a Methodist Church had been set up, but it was not until a quarter of a century afterward that a Methodist Church building was erected in Unadilla by a society destined to exert marked influence, and to-day existing in a fine state of vigor and usefulness.

The Baptist Church dates from 1847. Judge Page gave the land on which the building stands, valued by him at two hundred dollars. Frederick A. Sands, William J. Hughston and Simeon Bidwell were among the other contributors. Many gifts were in small sums. Scores of persons gave twenty-five and fifty cents. Anything was acceptable. On the original subscription book may still be read items like these: “$3 in boots and shoes”; “$10, one-half in cash, half in hats”; “$5 in boots and shoes”; “$3 in a United States map”; “2 dozen papers of tobacco”; and twenty-five cents in the form of “one bottle of Cholera Morbus Specific.”

Spafford records that in 1824, Unadilla possessed “a handsome toll bridge across the Susquehanna, 250 feet long, with three arches well covered and painted, as ornamental to the village as it is useful.” This bridge had been erected in 1817, the builder being Luther Cowles and one of the workmen Guido L. Bissell. It supplanted an older[92] and inferior structure which had been partly completed as early as 1804, and which stood a few feet further up the stream where remains of one of the piers were still visible a few years ago in clear water. The piers of the new bridge were originally formed of plank boxes filled with stone. These proved inadequate in times of high water and projecting piers of stronger masonry were erected in their place. The bridge continued in use until 1893, when the present structure of iron was erected. It was owned by a company which had the privilege of raising money by issuing bank notes.

The building of another bridge on a new site at Unadilla was probably influenced somewhat by the enterprise which was building up a settlement at Crookerville. It was also inspired by the growing interests of the lower business centre of the village. On June 29, 1822, in the presence of Daniel Cone, Stephen Benton gave the Commissioners of Highways a quitclaim deed to a strip of land running “from the turnpike near Foster’s Tavern[16] on the west side of Sherman Page’s line south.”

This land was granted for a public highway and was to revert back to Stephen Benton or his heirs “in one year after the bridge which is contemplated to be built across the river shall become impassable for teams and loads, unless a new[93] bridge shall be built, and that in good repair for passing with loads and teams.” On the same day a similar deed to land one rod wide adjoining Mr. Benton’s was given to Sherman Page in Daniel Cone’s presence for similar uses and on the same conditions. Benjamin Saunders, W. D. Spencer and Eber Ferris, Commissioners of Highways, laid out this road “agreeable to the request of Gilbert Cone, Albert Benton and John Bissell, trustees for building the free bridge.” This bridge remained free for ten years and then became a toll-bridge. The road was not opened earlier than 1823. A new iron bridge was erected on this site in the summer of 1894.

In 1821, a handsome two-story building was erected as a school-house, including a classical school of about thirty scholars and a common district school. The land for a site had been granted by Robert Harper of Windsor in July, 1820, the consideration being “one dollar and other divers good causes and considerations him thereunto moving.” This edifice, on the site of the present home of R. K. Teller, continued in use as a school for about sixty-five years, when it was sold for a hundred dollars, moved to a street across the railroad track and converted into a dwelling.

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[95] 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[96] 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.

[97]

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[98] 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,[99] 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[100] 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[101] 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[102] 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[103] 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[104] 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,[105] 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[106] 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.[107] 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[108] 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[109] 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[110] 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.

Early in the eighteenth century the village had become divided in its business interests, two trade centers having been created. Sharp rivalry had well begun before the new century was ten years old. As time went on, this rivalry deepened and spread until it permeated the entire community. Indeed, for three generations it formed a pivot around which many interests revolved.

At the beginning of the settlement, the indications were that the center would be in the neighborhood of what is now Main and Martin Brook Streets, where the first goods were sold. The desire to be as near as possible to the terminus of the Catskill Turnpike, and directly accessible to the river from their store, led Noble and Hayes to begin their enterprise at the extreme eastern end of the village. But the interests which centered at that distant point were afterwards shifted to Main and Mill Street, largely because new enterprises had grown up there. Here was found a site more nearly central; here were the thriving mills of Joel Bragg;[112] here Roswell Wright in 1815 built his store; nearby was Bragg’s Hotel; here was St. Matthew’s Church; and here was established the post office.

Meanwhile, had occurred the opening of the store of Stephen Benton at Main and Clifton Streets, and the building of the hotel by Dr. Cone diagonally across the way. Here therefore was now another center. Thus had been cast the die from which so much of the subsequent history of the village was to take its rise—two rival centers of trade. Colonel North has shown with fullness, in a paper reprinted in a later chapter, what had been the growth of the two ends by 1828. Each in some respects had advantages. If the eastern, or upper, end had a young ladies’ private school, the western end had two physicians as against the other’s one. Up-town had the only church building and the grist and saw mill; but down-town had the fulling mill and the tannery. Each had a hotel. Wagons were made down-town and clocks and watches were there repaired, but hats were made up-town and so were coats and trousers. In one respect the honors were notably easy. Each had its own distillery; but this fact may have increased rather than allayed the disputatious tendencies.

The opening of the two stores of Stephen Benton and Roswell Wright was almost simultaneous. Mr. Wright at the beginning did business alone, but soon had as partner Moses G. Benjamin. Mr. Wright had come from Wethersfield, Connecticut,[113] where he was born in 1785, and had previously started in business in Catskill. After remaining his partner in Unadilla for several years, Mr. Benjamin went to Bainbridge. Their store stood on the southeast corner of Main and Mill streets, and among those who helped to build it was Guido L. Bissell. Standing in the centre of the village, it supplanted for its immediate area the store formerly conducted by Solomon Martin and Gurdon Huntington, General Martin having died in 1816 and Dr. Huntington having gone to Cairo in 1813. It continued for a long period of years to be the up-town centre of village business life. Mr. Wright was postmaster for a number of years and he had in his employ, or as partners, at one time and another, young men who were to become notable factors in the future of the village. More than one was to remain a resident for sixty years.

Arnold B. Watson, one of the number, was a native of Albany County, and came to the village in 1821 to take charge of a classical school in the upper story of the building that long stood on the site of R. K. Teller’s residence. He was then twenty-three years old. Two and a half years later he entered Roswell Wright’s store and in a short time was a partner, the firm becoming Wright and Watson. Later it was Wright, Watson and Company, Abiel D. Williams having joined the firm.

Mr. Wright died in 1832 and Mr. Watson went[114] into business on his own account in the brick store which had been erected across the street in 1832, on the site of the Masonic Hall. The Masonic Hall was then ten years old. It had been built by Lord and Bottom and was now removed eastward to the site of the present beautiful residence afterwards built by Mr. Watson. Here Mr. Watson continued to do business for many years, and here he established the Unadilla Bank, which for more than twenty years was perhaps the most widely known bank in this part of the valley. Clark I. Hayes became his partner, and by this firm the extensive operations of Noble and Hayes were revived and long continued.

Mr. Watson’s activities outside his firm extended in many directions. He became active in the organization and building of the Albany and Susquehanna railroad and his name was one of those proposed for president. Of St. Matthew’s Church he was senior warden and treasurer for thirty years. To him more than to any other one person was the village indebted for the old Academy. He not only had the largest amount of stock but in every possible way promoted its welfare afterwards, his interest never ceasing until his death.

Mr. Watson had twenty-two shares of the Academy stock; A. D. Williams had sixteen; L. B. Woodruff, twelve; Erastus Kingsley, thirteen; Mrs. Charles C. Noble, eight; C. I. Hayes, eight; the estate of Isaac Hayes, twelve; Mrs. Isaac Hayes,[115] seven; Joel Bragg, five; and W. J. Thompson, two. An effort was made to secure for the Academy the land known as the Harper lot, which faced Main Street opposite the present Sands and Arnold residences. Subscriptions were solicited, but disputes arose, ending in the purchase of the present site from Joel Bragg, land which was then an orchard.

The absence of down-town names from the list of stockholders would indicate that down-town men had been disappointed in the selection of the site, the stock being entirely taken by men living uptown. The building was erected by Mr. Thompson in 1851. It continued in use until 1894, when the present fine structure of brick was erected and the old building sold and taken down, the Academy site and its endowment fund being united with the new school.

Mr. Watson, in 1832, built for his residence the brick structure which now forms part of Bishop’s Hotel. Erastus Kingsley afterwards acquired this property and enlarged it for hotel purposes. Later on Mr. Watson erected the residence which still stands east of the brick store. Mr. Thompson built it for him. This involved the second removal of the Masonic Hall, which was taken to its present site where with its enlargements it stands as the summer home of Lester T. Hubbell. Mr. Thompson found a model for Mr. Watson’s new house near Utica, or at least some suggestions for it; but[116] otherwise he was the architect as well as the builder of that noble village residence.

Mr. Watson’s first wife was Susan Emily, daughter of Isaac Hayes. Their children were Henry M., now of Buffalo; Julia N., who died in her youth; Sarah A., who was married to the Rev. E. Folsom Baker; Susan H., the wife of Frederick T. Sherman of Brooklyn, and William H. of Buffalo. In 1865 Mr. Watson married Isaac Hayes’s daughter Augusta, who survived him until December 20th, 1891, when at the age of seventy-three she died in the house her father had built in 1804. In this house she had been born. In St. Matthew’s Church she was baptised; she remained all her life a member of it and in its churchyard she lies buried.

Mrs. Watson’s brother, Clark I. Hayes, at the age of seventy, followed her to this last resting place a little more than a year afterwards. Mr. Hayes during his business career was universally popular throughout a large territory. Mr. Rogers, whose acquaintance with him was intimate, has described him as “a gentleman by instinct, courteous, pleasant, affable.” Amid many changes of fortune he maintained through life a placid, hospitable and manly relation towards society and those who compose it. Born as he had been to rural affluence and reared in refined surroundings, he personally seemed never altered by trials which might have been sufficient to break the spirit of men trained in sterner schools. Under his influence,[117] probably more than that of any other man in the community, was due the elevation of the standard of farm stock in this part of the valley.

Like his sister Mr. Hayes was born in the house in which he died. Her home for some years was elsewhere, but Mr. Hayes spent all his days in this dwelling, which was part of his inheritance. Few lives have embraced so long a period of village history as these two. When this brother and sister first saw the light scarcely more than twenty houses were standing; the turnpike was still the main highway from the Hudson to this part of the state; lumbering was the chief industry and produce arks were making voyages down the Susquehanna. These lives were interesting in many other ways, ways more personal, for all who knew and understood this man of staid courtesy and sweet spirit, this woman of bright and gentle life, whose careers closed in the very place where they began.

Another year brought to this churchyard another child of Isaac Hayes, his son Frederick T., of whose boyhood more than one pleasing glimpse is given in Henry Noble’s diary, of which extracts will be printed in a later chapter. Frederick Hayes spent his business life in a New York bank of which he was an officer, but he often came back to Unadilla, pleased once more to walk among the scenes of his youth.

In Erastus Kingsley was seen perhaps the most popular landlord which this valley ever knew. He[118] was a native of Franklin where he was born in 1800, his father being Bradford Kingsley. On coming to Unadilla, he was employed by Daniel and Gilbert Cone. For a short time he kept the hotel at Main and Bridge Streets. A sister of his was the first wife of Marvin C. Allen and the mother of Chester K. Allen. Mr. Allen for some time lived in the Bradford Kingsley house and later on bought a house then standing on the corner of Main and Walnut Streets, where he died. For his second wife he married Caroline Gregory. Mr. Kingsley died in 1865. His hotel at Main and Depot Streets was the headquarters in stage-coaching times and in the rear of it travelling circuses usually fixed their tents.

Around this village corner gather many other memories. After Mr. Watson perhaps comes Colonel Williams, at least in point of duration of associations. He was a native of Westford, Otsego County and a son of Israel Williams. He began life in Unadilla as a clerk in Wright’s store and afterwards was a partner. In 1827 he removed to Honesdale, Pennsylvania, where with his wife’s brother, Thomas Hayes, he was engaged in trade for ten years. He then returned to Unadilla and resumed business on the old site, Mr. Wright having died. Mr. Wright’s house became Colonel Williams’s home. He was elected supervisor in 1855 and died in 1871 at the age of sixty-nine. Long after his death his son Thomas and his daughter Elizabeth remained familiar and pathetic[119] figures amid the scenes of their father’s life, which had been active and honorable in youth and prime but which closed in misfortune. Thomas Williams died in Cooperstown in 1890, and was buried in the churchyard here at his father’s side.

Contemporary with these names is the name of John Colwell. Dr. Colwell was a bachelor, and a bachelor he died. He was born in Richfield in 1794. An authentic story of his youth relates to his dislike of school. Found missing one day, he was long searched for in vain until at last discovered by his mother half way down a well. Being urged to emerge from his cool retreat, he refused to do so unless assured that he would be neither punished nor made to go to school. Dr. Colwell read medicine in Cherry Valley with the elder Dr. White and settled in Unadilla as early as 1820. Here he remained until his death, widely known and always beloved. His office still stands on Mill Street just below the blacksmith shop. He boarded for many years at Kingsley’s hotel and previously had lived at Bragg’s hotel.

Mr. Kingsley was tolerant of Dr. Colwell’s eccentricities in money matters. The doctor never kept any book accounts, seldom made collections and infrequently made payments. Mr. Kingsley in consequence acquired a habit of collecting some of the doctor’s bills himself, and thus took care of his own claims; it might now be money that he collected, or it might be a “side of beef.” This simple[120] method of paying two debts by one transaction seemed to accord admirably with the doctor’s liking for simple methods in finance. He was supervisor in 1845 and 1846 and died in 1868 at the home of Dr. Joseph Sweet. He was laid away in St. Matthew’s churchyard.

Dr. Colwell was an old schoolmate of Levi Beardsley, the author of the “Reminiscences.” Contemporary with him in Unadilla was Henry Ogden, whom Beardsley describes as “a fine, talented fellow, but amazingly fond of hunting and fishing and a most keen sportsman.” Mr. Ogden was from Catskill. He had four sons and two daughters, the eldest son being a graduate of West Point, who died a brevet-major in the regular army, receiving his rank for meritorious conduct. He served in the Black Hawk war of 1832 and in the Florida wars of 1837-38 and 1840-42. He died at Fort Reilly, Kansas, in 1845, and lies buried in the churchyard here with his father and mother. Henry Ogden’s two other sons removed to California. Mr. Ogden was a lawyer and his office building still exists as part of the home of William H. Sewell on Watson Street. His house occupied the site of the church rectory and was built as early as 1815. It now occupies a new site on Martin Brook Street.

Another name permanently connected with this village corner is that of Levi Bennett Woodruff. Mr. Woodruff was a native of Hartford County,[121] Connecticut, whence he went with his father, Joel Woodruff, to Meredith, in Delaware County, when ten years old. In coming to Unadilla he was the forerunner among four brothers, one of whom, Lloyd L. Woodruff, is still living here. Joel Woodruff spent his last years in the old house on the turnpike just above the Foster Thompson farm, an ancient dwelling with an old sweep well and once owned by Ira Spaulding. A portion of this structure had formerly been used as a schoolhouse on another site.

L. B. Woodruff came to Unadilla in 1829 in company with Edwin J. Smith, who also was from Meredith. The two engaged in blacksmithing near the present stone shop and for many years conducted a prosperous business. Blacksmithing had previously been carried on in the same place by Turner McCall and Charles Wood. Mr. Woodruff in 1835 or 1836 built the stone shop still standing and later on the spacious dwelling on the Main Street corner. Retiring from the shop, he engaged in trade in a store near his house, and during the railroad building years conducted a large business. He died in 1879.

Mr. Woodruff was followed in 1835 by his brother, Henry S. Woodruff, who survived him several years. He also was a blacksmith, but he abandoned that calling from ill health and for a long term of years was proprietor of the stage line from Unadilla over the old Turnpike to Delhi,[122] by way of Meredith Square. He had exceptional eminence for familiarity with that road. He was born upon it in the town of Meredith and had travelled over its western end more times than any one else living in his day. When he died the buildings on his premises were found stored full of many curious relics of the stage business, from the smaller hardware of sleighs and harnesses, to worn-out whips and ancient buffalo robes, from two-horse vehicles to an old-time covered sleigh that marked in signal manner the passing away of an interesting era.

The year 1841 brought to the village the third of these brothers, Lloyd L. Woodruff, who engaged in trade as a merchant tailor and then as a general dry goods merchant, builder, &c., with his brother-in-law, Milo B. Gregory, in the uptown brick store. John Woodruff, the fourth brother, spent some years as a clerk in the old brick store when a young man, but finally removed to Delhi where he became an eminent citizen and merchant.

More than sixty years ago, when the Masonic Hall stood on its original site, one of its occupants was Seleck H. Fancher, whose sudden death from heart failure in March, 1891, startled the community. He was found in his garden about eight o’clock in the morning with life extinct. He was a native of Connecticut and died at eighty-two years of age. Until the hour of his death, his life had been an active one. Several generations of boys[123] and girls will long preserve the memory of this open-minded man, this kind-hearted friend of theirs. He was a shoemaker and like Samuel Rogers was wise in many things besides his craft. A building that will long be associated with his activities is the octagon house built by him and which was his home for more than twenty years. Mr. Fancher was himself as many-sided as the house he dwelt in. His mind had as many windows open to the sun.

At the junction of Main and Mill Streets two other men, destined to notable distinction in village annals, began their careers. Each had been born in another place, each came to Unadilla as a young man, each spent here the most of his remaining days, and here finally each was to pass away and be buried in the old churchyard, the one fifty-one years afterwards, the other sixty-six—Frederick A. Sands and Samuel North.

Mr. Sands, as early as 1835, was a clerk in the Wright store. He had come to the village from Franklin and was a son of Judge Obadiah Sands, a native of Sands Point on Long Island, descended from Captain James Sands[21], an Englishman, who came to this country about 1642, landing at Plymouth. Capt. Sands had been born at Reading, England in 1622.

Benjamin Sands of Sands Point married Mary Jackson, and Obadiah Sands, the father of Frederick[125] A. Sands, was their son. Leaving Sands Point in May 1795, when in his twenty-first year, Obadiah, fifteen days later arrived at Cookoze, now Deposit, then a large centre of the lumber industry. He had with him as cook a colored boy who was a slave. Mr. Sands engaged actively in lumbering and dealt in real estate, following these pursuits at Cookoze until 1802, when he settled in Delhi, remaining there three years. He then removed to a place in Sidney, about three miles below Franklin village on the turnpike, and in the same year was married to Elizabeth Teed of Somers in Westchester County. In 1811 he removed to Jericho[22], afterwards Bainbridge Village, where he engaged largely in the purchase and sale of real estate.

Mr. Sands afterwards purchased a tract of land in Franklin, one mile east of the village, and in 1818 went there to live. On this farm Abel Buell of Lebanon, Connecticut, had settled in 1790, or earlier, and thus was near his old Connecticut neighbor, Sluman Wattles. Franklin thenceforth until 1840 continued to be Judge Sands’s home. For a short time afterwards he lived in Meredith and in 1845 went to Oxford where he died in 1858. He was buried on the farm in Franklin, but his remains[126] were afterwards brought to Unadilla and now rest in the churchyard. He had six sons and three daughters. All but three of them survived him. The survivors were Dr. William G. Sands of Oxford, Jerome B., of Bainbridge, Marcellus, Dr. A. Jackson, who lived many years in Unadilla, Frederick A., and Elizabeth E., who became the wife of Joshua C. Sanders and is still living in New York.

Frederick A. Sands was born in Bainbridge February 19th, 1812. Following his employment as a clerk in the Wright store, Mr. Sands engaged in business first with Christopher D. Fellows, under the name of Fellows and Sands, and next with Mr. Watson as Watson and Sands. He then removed to Oxford where he was active in business with his brother-in-law, James W. Clark, along with whom and an old personal friend, Henry L. Miller, and others, he became interested in the First National Bank of that place, an institution that has had a prominent and successful career. Mr. Miller and he were lifelong friends. They were buried at the same hour and on the same day in 1886.

On the death of his father in 1868, Mr. Sands, who was executor and trustee of the estate, abandoned his mercantile pursuits and devoted himself to the affairs of the estate, which was a large one for that period. In his management of this property the necessity never arose for a lawsuit. He possessed what Matthew Arnold called[127] “sweet reasonableness.” When he died, it was said of him that “few men have done so much business with so little litigation.” He was familiar with real estate titles in the neighborhood where he lived, and his papers have been described as “models of neatness and brevity and always as correct as care and labor could make them.” With this scrupulous exactness went also a fine integrity. In politics Mr. Sands was a democrat, though he had small liking for the profession of politics. Official place he never sought. Mere office could scarcely have added anything to the esteem in which for two generations he here was held.

Mr. Sands’s first wife was Maria, daughter of Sherman Page. Two years after the marriage she died. In January 1841 he married Clarissa A., sister of the late Henry R. Mygatt of Oxford, who survived him only a few months. Mr. Sands had dwelt in both of the stone houses in the centre of the village, having built the western one and enlarged the other, which was his home for more than forty years. Between these ancient dwellings his son, J. Fred. Sands, in later years erected a beautiful modern home, and far to the rear of them, on an elevated plateau where agricultural fairs were annually held long ago, opened up streets and erected a number of houses.

The story of this Main and Mill Street centre, of the Academy and the old brick store, connects itself closely with the life of another citizen of the[128] village who was Mr. Sands’s son-in-law. In the Academy building Frank B. Arnold’s life in the village had its beginning. In the brick store he had his office and there he died. He lived in Unadilla more than twenty years, and first came to take charge of the Academy. Dr. Odell and Mr. Thompson were the trustees who engaged him. He was from Gilbertsville, where he had just been graduated from the school, and now wished to teach in order to help himself through Hamilton College. Under Mr. Arnold the Academy became very prosperous, and never was teacher more popular with students. A memorial of his career may be seen in the trees that still stand near the side-walk in those school grounds. They were planted by the hands of Mr. Arnold and his pupils.

Having read law and been admitted to practice, Mr. Arnold soon removed to Nebraska, but he came back in a few years and thenceforth always lived in the village. Although a Republican, he was several times elected supervisor in this Democratic town by majorities as large as were ever given to any candidate. In 1885 and 1886 he was elected to the Assembly and in 1887-1888 served in the Senate. He became the Republican candidate for Congress in 1890, but was defeated by a small majority. His health was seriously undermined at this time, and on December 11th he died in his office at Main and Depot Streets.

Mr. Arnold made a distinct mark in the Legislature[129] and became known throughout the State. He had many attractive personal qualities, with tastes quite apart from those which the law and politics fostered. He had read extensively in general literature and had collected many books. His law library was the one which formerly belonged to Daniel S. Dickinson. Mr. Arnold was born in Ireland and came to this country when a child. His father settled in East Hartford, Connecticut, where some years later the boy was seen by Major C. P. Root of Butternuts, and under his influence made his home in Butternuts.

On this corner in Roswell Wright’s store the business life of Samuel North in Unadilla was begun. His age was fourteen when he arrived in May, 1828, remaining in the store until he was twenty-one. The history of his family goes back to pioneer days in the valley of the Delaware. The Norths are of Long Island origin and of English ancestry. At Newtown the line comes down from Thomas to Benjamin and then to Robert, who in 1784, with twenty other persons, mostly from Long Island, set out for what is now the village of Walton by crossing the wilderness from Kingston to the Delaware. With Robert North came his wife and an infant son named Benjamin who was the father of Colonel North. Mrs. North for the last portion of this journey rode on horseback with her infant in her arms and with a bed and pieces of furniture fastened on the horse behind her.

[130]

The owner of the Walton patent was William Walton, a man of much note and affluence in New York at that time. He had offered to give a tract of land in his patent to the first male child born there on condition that the child should bear his name. The first child thus born was a son of Robert North. Mrs. North had wished to call him Samuel, and, in spite of the offer, the name Samuel was adopted. This boy went to Albany as a clerk in the Assembly, and afterwards became a lawyer, but died in early life. Long after this event Samuel’s brother Benjamin became the father of a son, in whom was revived the name of Samuel. This was Colonel North, who for many years was probably the most distinguished citizen of the village.

After leaving Unadilla when he became of age, Colonel North pursued his mercantile calling for a time in New York. Returning to Walton he became colonel of a regiment of Hamden and Walton militia which was called out during the Anti-rent difficulties. He once more settled in Unadilla and in 1849 was elected County Clerk. In 1853 he was made principal clerk in the appointment division of the General Post Office Department in Washington, and soon afterwards was made special agent of the department for a portion of New York and New England. He was a delegate to the Charleston convention of 1860 and voted for Stephen A. Douglass. By this act he incurred the displeasure of President Buchanan and lost his[131] position. Returning to Unadilla he engaged in the hardware business. While acting as one of the fifteen special agents of the Post Office Department he had been rated as No. 1 as to the value of his services.[23]

[132]

Colonel North’s wife was Eliza Gray of Durham, Greene County, whom he married in 1835. She died in 1891 and he followed her in 1894 in the 81st year of his age. Their son Thomas Gray North, was born in Walton, August 15, 1840, and for years filled a large place in the business life of Unadilla. He was the head and manager of the banking house then known as Thomas G. North & Co. which, for more than thirty years, has been among the prominent and successful banks in this part of the State. Since his death the house has been continued as North & Co., Samuel S. North, Colonel North’s only surviving child being the head. Thomas G. North’s untimely death in 1885 cast a shadow over the village such as few events have done. He was educated at Geneva and began business with Charles C. Siver in 1865, first as hardware merchant and then as banker. Mr. Siver’s poor health ending finally in his lamented death broke up the partnership and Mr. North continued the business with his father until he died.

Colonel North, near the close of his life, published an interesting and valuable description of the village at the time of his first arrival in 1828.[24] By his kind permission, secured at the time of its appearance, the greater part of this paper is given here. The description begins at the eastern end of the village and first embraces the north side of Main Street through to the western end as follows:

“The first dwelling was a one story house in which lived an aged couple, Jesse Noble and his wife.

“Next was the residence of David Finch and family consisting of himself and wife, four sons and four daughters.

“At this point was a diverging road, then as now, leading over the hills to the town of Butternuts. On the west side of this road, a few rods from Main Street, stood the distillery of Noble and Hayes, one of the seeming necessary adjuncts of the then new country, to work up the surplus grain[134] of those days, for which there was no market except in a liquid form.

“Next was what was known as the tenant house of Noble & Hayes, in which lived Amos Priest and his wife on the site of which now stands the residence of Horace B. Eells, being the same house with additions and improvements in which David Finch lived, but was moved to where it now stands, because of railroad encroachments.

“Next was the store and storage buildings of Noble & Hayes, one of the earliest mercantile firms established in this section. The store, since abandoned for such use, has been altered into a dwelling, and is now occupied by George Wolcott and family.

“Next was the residence of Curtis Noble and family, consisting of himself, wife, four sons and four daughters.

“Next was the residence of Isaac Hayes and family, consisting of himself, wife, four daughters, two sons and a niece. It is now the home of Clark I. Hayes and family.

“Next was the residence of Captain Amos Bostwick, a Revolutionary soldier, and family, consisting of himself, wife and one daughter. It is now known as the tenant house attached to the farm of Clark I. Hayes.

“Next passing an intervening space of several rods of open field, came what was designated as the “yellow store” built by Henry A. Beach,[135] but never successfully utilized for business purposes. It became a sort of “catch all” for migratory tenants. It occupied the lot on which now stands the residence of LeGrand Stone.

“Next was an open field to where Hiram Benedict and family resided in a small house, detached from which was a shop in which he carried on the tailoring business. The house at a later day was improved and modernized by Jared C. Gregory, and is now the residence of Mrs. Wm. McLaury and daughter.

“Next was the house now the residence of Mrs. Henry H. Howard, then occupied by Arnold B. Watson and family.

“Next was the residence of Daniel Castle and family, consisting of himself, wife, two sons and a daughter. It is the same house modernized and improved, now the property and residence of Mrs. Hurlburt.

“Next was an intervening cultivated field, upon the west side of which was an unoccupied house, formerly the residence of Jacob Hayes and family. It was at a later day removed, and the lot with some addition to it was afterward built upon by Hon. Charles C. Noble. The place has lately been purchased by James Collins, who with his family now occupies it.

“Next was an open field a distance of thirty rods down to where H. C. Gregory and his family now reside in the house built by Mr. A. B. Watson.[136] Within the grounds of the same as now inclosed, stood near the east line, the dwelling of Mason DeForest, and near thereto a shop in which he worked at shoe making. Both the house and shop were demolished when Mr. Watson built his house.

“Next was the Masonic Hall standing about two rods east of the brick store since built, in which lived Henry A. Beach and his family. Masons at that time being in a languishing condition, the lodge room was soon used for a young lady’s school, kept by a Miss Seymour from Connecticut. The Hall was afterward purchased by William J. Thompson, moved to Watson Street, and by him converted into a dwelling which is now his residence.

“Next passing an intervening space of several rods down to where White’s Hall now stands, there was an unoccupied building known as the Dr. Huntington store, which was afterwards moved off, and is now the residence of Nicholas Price on Watson Street.

“Next was the yellow house yet standing, then the residence of Dr. David Walker, his wife, and one child, a son.

“Next after an interval of several rods was the house occupied by the family of General Solomon Martin, deceased, consisting of his widow, her maiden sister, Mary Scott, and four sons, Edward, William, Benjamin and Robert. It is the place whereon now stands the residence of Marvin[137] Sweet, which was built by, and for many years, was the residence of the Rev. Norman H. Adams.

“Next was an open space of about forty rods down to what is now known as the Elder Sperry place, where was a house occupied by Albert Benton and family, on the site of which now stands the Sperry mansion.

“Next were the store and storage buildings of Benton and Fellows, back of which was their distillery and tenant house. It is worthy to be remarked that, notwithstanding the cheapness and abundance of whiskey in those spiritual times—two shillings per gallon at retail—there was more drinking and fewer drunkards than there are now. Delirium tremens was not a resultant effect of over indulgence, nor was such a thing known in Unadilla, until after the local distilleries had ceased to make pure extract of rye and corn and the merchants introduced as a substitute therefor that vile decoction of the Devil’s invention, New England rum.

“Next was the residence of Stephen Benton, where now Major C. D. Fellows, one of the old and honored survivors of the long ago now eighty-nine years of age, resides, and rejoices in the possession of pleasant home surroundings and the comforting consciousness of an upright life, having been always a Democrat without variableness or shadow of turning.

“Next passing along an intervening distance of[138] some forty rods there was a house in which David Scott and family resided.

“Next was a building adjoining the west line of the house, lot and premises of Samuel North, in which Deacon John Eells carried on the business of shoe making.

“Next was the wagon shop and manufactory, of Horace and Sheldon Griswold, since made into a dwelling and now the residence and property of Mrs. Isaac Crandall.

“Next was the cabinet shop of Wm. Wilmot still standing, but changed to a tenant house.

“Next was the residence of Wm. Wilmot and family consisting of himself, wife, three daughters and one son. The residence is now occupied by the survivors of the family, one daughter and the widow of Daniel.

“Next was the residence of Deacon John Eells and family, which he abandoned a little later to occupy the brick house he had built and in which his son-in-law E. C. Belknap and family now live.

“Next was an old house occupied by Luke Washburn, jr., which served the double purpose of a residence and a shop in which he manufactured chairs. It is the locality on which now stands the residence of Mrs. Henry Briggs.

“Next on the west part of Mrs. Briggs’s lot was a one story building occupied by a man named Hovey, a repairer of watches and clocks,[139] who did business under the then attractive sign of an immense outhanging wooden watch.

“Next was the Capt. Uriah Hanford place with a frontage of some forty rods on which standing well back from the road was a red house in which Major Fellows commenced housekeeping.

“Next was a diverging road from Main Street, leading from Kilkenny and Rogers Hollow, facing which on the corner west stood a small building in which Niel Robertson carried on the business of saddle and harness making.

“Next was the residence of Dr. Nijah Cone and family consisting of himself, wife, son and daughter. The place is now owned and occupied by the widow of his son Lewis G. and his grandson Frederick L.

“Next was the residence of Daniel and Gilbert Cone, now owned and occupied by James White and family.

“Next and last on the north side of the street about forty rods further west was a tenant house of D. & G. Cone, since demolished, in which lived a man named John Hough and his family.”

Colonel North next describes the south side of Main Street, returning first to the eastern end as before, and then proceeding west as follows:

“First came the residence of Judge Abijah H. Beach and family, consisting of himself, wife, two daughters and one son, and is now the residence of the widow of Oliver Buckley.

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“Next where Miss Jeyes and her brother now reside, was the home of Guido L. Bissell, his wife, two daughters and two sons. The house was built by the accumulated earnings of the two daughters, Betsy and Hannah.

“Next was the residence of Capt. Daniel Hayes, his wife and four sons. Within the same inclosure was a shop in which Capt. Hayes worked at the business of making hats.

“Next at a distance of several rods further down was the hotel kept by Joel Bragg, in which he with his wife and their children, four sons and two daughters resided. It was lately the residence of Dr. Evander Odell and family and is now owned by F. O. Adams.

“Next passing along a few rods below stood the shop in which Daniel Castle and Benjamin H. Ayers dealt in furs and manufactured hats. The building since altered into a dwelling, is now owned by Lyman H. DeForest.

“Next was the residence of “Uncle John Bissell” (he was everybody’s uncle). “Uncle John,” who was a widower, lived here with his son Benjamin and family. The old house was at a later day torn down to make place for the brick mansion now the residence of Dr. Gregory, which was built by Joel Bragg, who at that time owned the farm property therewith connected.

“Next was the residence built for himself by Roswell[141] Wright, now owned and occupied by Ex-Senator D. P. Loomis and his family.

“Next standing on the corner of the road leading to the grist and saw mills of Joel Bragg, was the store of Roswell Wright, occupied by the firm of Wright, Watson & Co., composed of Roswell Wright, Arnold B. Watson and Abiel D. Williams. It is the same building, modernized and now owned by Albert Mallery in which the grocery business is carried on by Heimer & Mallery.

“Next, turning down the mill road, there stood, some ten rods from the corner, on the west side of the road, a wood framed blacksmith shop, occupied successively by Turner McCall and Charles Wood. Later this building was abandoned and the more commodious stone building as now used was erected by Levi B. Woodruff in which he continued the business.

“Next standing near the present residence of Hiel Crandall was a house in which lived a very respectable colored family of the name of Howell of which the husband and father, Peter, was a trusty man and a recognized favorite.

“Next on the opposite side of the road midway between the brook and the sawmill, lived Richard Ferguson, the sawyer, and his wife, in a small, one story plank house long ago demolished.

“Next the grist and saw mills stood together at the end of the road which was a Cul de sac ending thereat.

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“Next on the corner of Main and Mill Streets opposite Wright’s store, there stood an old house in which lived the family of a man by the name of Robinson who attended to grinding the grain of customers and taking judicious tolls at the gristmill.

“Next was the law office of Henry Ogden, Esq., occupying the site on which afterwards was built by Rufus Mead the store now standing vacant. The office was moved down near the mills and altered into a dwelling.

“Next was the residence of Henry Ogden and family, consisting of himself, his mother, his wife, four sons and two daughters, occupying the site of the present Episcopal rectory.

“Next was St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church, occupying the site on which it now stands, then and for several years afterward, the only church edifice in town.

“From the church to the old district school house there were no buildings.

“From the school house to the present residence of H. E. Bailey was an open field known as the “Harper lot,” on which were no buildings. It was a place of resort for pitching quoits, ball playing, military parades, shows and circus performances.

“The residence of Mr. Bailey, referred to in the preceding paragraphs, was built by the Hon. Sherman Page, and at the time we write of, was the residence of his family, consisting of himself and[143] wife, two sons, three daughters and a niece. Mr. Page was a representative man and a notable figure in public affairs of that time. On the east of the house, close to the street, stood his law office, long since moved off and appropriated to other uses.

“Next was the well-kept hotel of James Williams which since its modernization and extensive alteration and improvement, now bears the name of the Tingley House. In the now open space, corner of Main and Bridge Streets, stood the hotel barn, in front of which was a commodious open shed for the use of travellers and local patrons of the hotel. On the road leading to the bridge, then as now, spanning the Susquehanna river, a distance of about seventy rods, there were no buildings of any kind.

“From the corner of Main and Bridge Streets down to the Edson place, the present residence of W. E. Rifenbark, a distance of over fifty rods, there were no buildings. On the west side of the house, next to the west line of the premises, was the office of Dr. Edson but that has disappeared.

“Next was the house that is now the home of William Ingraham and family then occupied by John Bottom and family who afterward moved to Boston and were there known by the name of Bottome.

“Next was a small house on the site of the house now belonging to the Rev. Mr. Hayes in which[144] lived Melancthon B. Jarvis and his family of which the late Mrs. A. S. Ames was one of the daughters.

“Next was the tanning and currying shop of Johnson Wright which, with his house nearby, since demolished or removed, were on the lot and premises on which stands the fine residence of the family of the late John Van Cott.

“Next was the residence of Deacon Holley Seeley and family and a little further on was his blacksmith shop in which he wrought skillfully and industriously at his trade of shoeing horses and fashioning implements of farming for his customers. The family long ago moved away and the house was transported to a location on Martin Brook Street. The old shop fell into disuse and went to decay.

“Next was an open space of some forty rods down to the residence of Niel Robertson and family where John Armstrong now lives with his family.

“Next was the office of Dr. Nijah Cone near the present gateway entrance to the barnyard of James White.

“Next was the cloth dressing and finishing shop of D. and G. Cone who carried on work in that line largely.

“Next were the barns of Messrs. Cone who, among their other industries, were quite extensive farmers.

“Next and last was a red house in which Elias Mead, his wife and three sons lived. Mr. Mead[145] worked at chair making and house painting. The premises are now owned by Dr. Johnson and his family.

“A little further down near Bartholomew’s shingle mill was the fulling mill of Messrs. Cone.”

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.

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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[148] 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[149] 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[150] 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[151] 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[152] 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.[153] 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[154] 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[155] 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[156] 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[157] 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.”

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[158] 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.”

A newspaper as already shown, was first established here about sixty years ago.[32] For a period earlier than that, no better light could be shed on social and business life than is found in an old journal kept by Henry C. Noble from November 1830 to January 1833, now in the possession of Mr. Noble’s nephew, Dr. Frederick S. Howard of New York. When he began this journal, Henry Noble was twenty-one years old, serving as a clerk in the store of his father and Isaac Hayes. In company with Frederick T. Hayes, his cousin, he afterwards began business for himself in the old Noble and Hayes store, but died of fever in May 1833.

That he was a young man of much promise this journal alone would show. Any one may see that who reads the subjoined passages. While writing the journal its pages seem to have been accessible to his companions including his brother George H.,[160] and Rufus G. Mead, who occasionally made entries some of which were prompted by refreshing boyishness. Here and there were signs of good literary ability, especially on the part of his brother. The following items are taken from the last six months of 1830:

“Dec. 5. Page and Benton party mustered all hands today and sent them all over town to get signers to have Isaac Hayes (the now postmaster) put out of office and C. D. Fellows appointed in his stead. Do not fear for the result of their labors much; think they mean to effect more at town meeting than at Washington.

“Dec. 8. Employed considerable part of the day in arranging post office concerns. We have a stage from Catskill every night and one from Ithaca every morning; one from Albany and one from Cooperstown weekly. The post office spirit is abroad. Everything that has a sound echoes post office.

“Dec. 20. Cotillion party at night; had Arnold extra music; a very pleasant time. Eat a bowl of oysters and come home.

“Dec. 23. Alarmed about two o’clock this morning by the cry of fire. As Fred sallied out the first thing to attract our attention was a bright blaze flashing at intervals towards the heavens. We hasten to the scene of conflagration which was Mr. J. Bragg’s sawmill and his stone gristmill. Not anything could be done to save them as they[161] were so far gone before discovered. All the village folks assembled to see the destruction that was going on. Much sympathy was shown as Mr. Bragg is one of the most unfortunate men that ever lived in the tide of time. About four years ago his house was burned. I do not think $8,000 would make good his loss that he has suffered for four years past.

“Came home from the fire; went to bed; got up at daylight and in the course of the day all of us fixed for the wedding. Christmas eve and Mary Hayes is to be married to Nathaniel Piersol, in the church before such an audience as always attend on Christmas eve. Miss E. B. Page, H. A. Noble and A. Edson were bridesmaids, and Hen, Fred and George groomsmen. All of us started from Isaac Hayes’s house to the church. We soon found ourselves before the altar and the holy man. The ceremony soon performed and all took a seat in the right hand corner of St. Matthew’s exposed to the wonderment of a thousand eyes. Came home and had a merry time.

“Dec. 27. It is supposed Mr. Bragg’s mills were set on fire—by whom none knows.

“Dec. 28. Mr. Bragg is getting out timber to repair his sawmill immediately. They have got a subscription to help him; which has been signed very liberally.”

During the first six months of 1831, the record embraces parties, a music school, a stirring town[162] meeting, the finding of a boy lost in the woods and the raising of Joel Bragg’s new sawmill:

“Jan. 3, 1831. Much is said about clearing the dams out of the Susquehanna. They are to have a great meeting down the river.

“Jan. 15. All went to cotillion party in the evening; last one we are to have; eight or ten couples from Franklin, some from Huntsville and Bainbridge; had a very fine company of ladies, say twenty-five, and about thirty gentlemen; had Pyro to play, a blind boy and Arnold; danced until about two o’clock.

“Jan. 28. All went down to Williams’s to music school, the last they have; had some very fine music and all the young folks from the village there; girls and boys and some old women; went from there to Dr. Walker’s and spent the rest of the evening very pleasantly; got home at twelve.

“Feb. 1. Benton’s store down town, folks say, is the centre of business. Let them think, for after a close examination we find we have as many mechanics at the upper side of the schoolhouse as below and more merchants, more lawyers, doctors, etc., and much more taxable property, and take a great many more newspapers by one-third.

“Feb. 4. We did but little business in the store except we sold a bill of drygoods to T. Allen to amount of $230.

“Feb. 19. Bragg raised his sawmill this afternoon.

[163]

“Feb. 27. Caucus meeting at Williams’s; all met and up-street and down-street could not agree upon the mode of making nominations. Therefore, they quit and came up to Bragg’s and nominated Curtis Noble supervisor and David Walker for town clerk. Down-street folks held up John Eells for supervisor, H. Griswold town clerk, etc., and anti-Masons held a meeting at Maxwell’s and nominated David Hough for supervisor and D. Walker for town clerk. S—— kept open doors all day; kept a bottle of whiskey in readiness and free for all who wished to drink, but, by the bye, must vote as he wants to have them.

“March 2. Town meeting day and three parties. S—— store turned into a grog shop and all the poorest shacks in town voted his ticket and got drunk on his whiskey. Eells got 130 votes, C. Noble 108, Hough 80, a close run; took a vote to move the town meeting up to Bragg’s and tied; tied again to move to Betts’s, and lost by fifteen votes; therefore it must be at J. Williams’s again.

“March 27. Some of the Clipknockey[33] Dutchmen ran against the free bridge.

“May 18. S. Pooler had a boy of twelve years old lost in the woods near Judson’s mill[34] on Thursday, and all the people for five or ten miles about turned out to look for him, say about 500 men each day, until Sunday all went out and the number was estimated at more than 1,000. They formed[164] companies and each company formed a line and scoured the woods until about two o’clock P. M., when they found him. Then they all rushed to Pooler’s house (and it was a splendid sight), to hear the horns, guns and the hallooing and the multitude altogether produced a scene seldom witnessed anywhere. A joyous smile seemed to light up every countenance. The boy was out three nights and four days. He was able to run about and to all appearances would have lived a month longer.”

A celebration of the Fourth of July, a mad dog scare, the Catskill and Erie railroad,[35] Dr. Walker’s new store, Thanksgiving Day, and the marriage of the Rev. Norman H. Adams are topics touched upon in the ensuing six months:

“July 4. Called very early in the morning; boys firing an old gun; heard the thirteen guns fired down at Williams’s from a three-pounder; worked very hard in the store until ten o’clock; then went down to Williams’s orchard and heard a very good oration from Samuel Gordon, Esquire; marched over to the tavern and sat down to a good dinner; paid four shillings for it; gave one shilling to sit at the wine table. Commodore M. T. Woolsey presided; Captain Thatcher commanded the gun and thirteen regular toasts were drunk, accompanied[165] by the hurrahs of the people and the thunders of the cannon.

“Came home about four o’clock, opened the store and stayed here until about eight o’clock, and then started for Bragg’s where the Bachelors of Unadilla had assembled and all the girls in the village and some from Huntsville and Walton, etc., and together with the officers of the day occupied the whole house; the company a large one and very select. About eleven o’clock the doors to the dinner table were thrown open and all turned in and everyone helped him or herself to whatever they wished. The rooms were handsomely decorated and the tables were furnished with all the luxuries the land produced—berries, cakes, wine, etc. Each and all ate what they wanted, then went down below and promenaded from room to room until they were satisfied, all following the dictates of their own feelings. At a seasonable hour retired each to his respective homes in the best spirits possible. Thus we celebrated the Fourth of July, and it was said by all to be the happiest day Unadilla had to boast of.

“July 16. Some droviers here to buy cattle. George added up accounts of sales to-day and found the month of June $1,900. Store full of hired hands to get their pay for harvesting.

“July 24. In the evening all the girls and boys went to take a walk, say a company of seventeen assorted; went up to the bridge and down to[166] Williams’s corner and home. We have now in our village E. A. Ogden, R. H. Martin, C. C. Noble, three young men, two of whom, Noble and Martin, have just been admitted to the bar and Ogden is a graduate of West Point.

“July 30. Charles[36] started with Piersol for Owego to look at the place and see about going there to settle down. George and all the commissioned officers gone over to Butternuts to officers’ election; returned at night; made A. D. Williams lieutenant-colonel.

“Aug. 30. Great cry about mad dogs. Every person that ventures out in the evening now carries a large cane to kill mad dogs with.

“Sept. 1. Pooler and I went on the island and fixed the race course, three-fourths of a mile long.

“Oct. 13. Horse-racing people collecting from all parts of the country to see the sport; race course on the island. About four o’clock the horses trotted, and Pooler’s mare by beating the two first heats took the money without running the third. At night, Fred and myself took the stage for Catskill; from there we went to Albany and looked about the city; went up to the railroad to see the cars (steam) come in from Schenectady and go out.[37] Started for New York on Sunday morning.[167] Nothing new or old that is worth recording happened until Saturday morning when we started for Connecticut in the steamboat. New Milford is a dull old town and a very rich one. Some fine girls and many old folks.

“Oct. 28. Norman H. Adams came home with his wife; had been out to Rensselaerville and got married.

“Oct. 30. Have been to church all day. Adams preached and his wife was at church exposed to the gaze of a large congregation that wished to satisfy their curiosity to see the priest’s wife.

“Nov. 16. Dr. Walker has opened a store one door west of the church. Warsaw is in the hands of the Russians, but the Poles still fight like heroes. England is agitating her Reform Bill and France, unhappy France, is losing what she gained in the ever-memorable days of July, 1830.

“Nov. 30. People talk about a railroad coming down the river from about ten miles below Cooperstown and from there to Catskill. When such a project shall be carried into effect, then I think our part of the country will flourish again, for it is the only thing that will shake off the curse that was put upon us by the construction of the Erie Canal.

“Dec. 4. Talk about having a dance to-morrow night at Williams’s, but can get but few ladies to agree to go. Many of them have a kind of religious scruple about the matter: think it is wicked, but dare not say so for fear of being thought foolish.

[168]

“Dec. 8. This day is Thanksgiving, but people hardly know it; they read so little of newspapers and think so little of the day. Nothing is done to distinguish it from any other day. In earlier times it used to be set apart for eating pumpkin pies, pudding and molasses. Shocking degeneracy. The usages of olden times have given place to cranberry tarts, mince and apple pastry.

“Dec. 9. We held a meeting a few days since to appoint delegates to Owego, the object of which is to take into consideration the contemplated railroad from Catskill to Lake Erie, and at the same meeting agreed to apply for a charter for a toll bridge where the free bridge now is.

“The cold water folks are as active now as any we have. They are making great efforts to reform the whole community and say the time is not far distant when drinking ardent spirits will be completely done away with.

“Came home, got horse and went down to Foster’s with Mead and Colwell; got supper for ourselves and a bit of hot toddy, and came home about twelve o’clock.”

Below is an interesting collection of entries ranging from a remarkable freshet and rafting time to the raising of Mr. Adams’s new house; from the marriage of men who were afterwards well known citizens to the cholera in New York, and from oyster suppers at Foster’s tavern to the departure of[169] Samuel North for New York where he had obtained employment in Pearl Street:

“1832. Jan. 16. News, news, news, news! This day William J. Thompson, a bachelor, was married to Miss Eliza Betts in the morning and a good many of us village folks went up to bear witness.

“Jan. 19. Benton’s free bridge went off with the ice last night. The ice went out of the river here to-day. It came down from above and dammed up before the store so much that it stopped and turned the water onto the island, which in a few minutes was almost all flooded, but after a few hours the water forced a way through. It was a splendid sight to see the rolling and tumbling, cracking and breaking up of the ice (say sixteen inches thick) and to see the anxiety of the multitude that lined the bank gazing with a pleasure approaching terror to see the operation of such tremendous powers. It left the island covered with large cakes.

“Jan. 22. Cone has been down to the Unadilla river and says the bridge has gone; also the Sidney bridge has turned up about a foot and must go off with the ice; but few bridges stand the ice freshet this winter. It is the hardest we have had this twelve years, so say all.

“March 13. The island is almost all flooded. George and myself went onto it in the boat and sailed all over from head to foot. Crooker’s part is almost wholly flooded. Up at Boalt’s the road[170] is drowned out, so much so that no one can pass, and the Sidney bridge went off last Sunday. Almost all our communications with the other villages are cut off.

“March 17. The vestry have voted Mr. Adams one hundred dollars and have raised one hundred more by subscription to assist him in building a house on the Martin farm which he has bought for $1,500. God prosper him.

“As a bachelor and a member of the club, I feel it a duty to note particularly all the marriages that take place, whereby our society is affected. Therefore, the case of Levi Bennett Woodruff must be commented upon. The bachelors have given him a discharge. Woodruff, in short, is a fine fellow of uncommon attainments, rather interesting than otherwise, in his manners good-natured and good-looking. His wife (Silva Eldridge) I do not know much about, although I have long been acquainted with her; but think she is of good disposition and possessed of generous feelings.

“April 5. Heard from George today by some raftsmen that have been down to Philadelphia and sold their lumber and returned. The best brought $23. Mr. Wright was buried today.

“April 15. All the young ladies in this end of the street are getting to be religious. Three or four of them ‘obtaining a hope’ as it is called (where one is convinced of her duty towards God and the light of the everlasting gospel works upon her).

[171]

“May 6. Wednesday Samuel North left Watson and Williams and has gone to New York. Samuel was a good fellow and well liked and one and all expressed a regret to lose him.

“May 30. Samuel North was over from Walton and returned on Tuesday. He has been since he was here to New York and obtained a situation in Pearl Street with O. O. Halsted and Company—very good place indeed.

“June 5. Watson is building a new house, almost opposite his store; also Adams is pulling down the old Martin house and is to build a new one this summer.

“June 17. Concert on Thursday evening last at W. H. Scott’s[38] where he had assembled all the finest girls in the neighboring towns as well as of this. He had three pianos and the young ladies played in succession from the youngest to the oldest. The room was crowded with the most respectable audience I ever beheld in this place upon any occasion of the kind.

“June 21. The Indians in the Northwest Territory have declared war against the United States. My old friend E. A. Ogden is with the United States troops in the enemy’s country.”

The building of the brick store, protracted meetings at Esquire Eells’s and a visit from Bishop Onderdonk are chronicled during the next half year:

“July 10. Went in the afternoon to help raise[172] the Adams house. Samuel North returned home. He left the city on account of the cholera which rages hard in New York; 100 to 150 cases a day.

“Who talks about anything else but the cholera: it is prayed and preached and sung and laughed about. The city of New York vomits out its inhabitants by thousands daily as if it had itself got the cholera and was throwing the disturbed contents of its prodigious stomach over the whole country. The steamboats puff and the coaches groan under their heavy loads. When the stage driver winds his melodious horn as he comes round the hill all the good old ladies and some of the men run to the door to see if the cholera is coming.[39]

“July 22. Bishop Onderdonk here and preached two sermons, and in the forenoon confirmed about thirty-five of the young people, principally young ladies. Bishop Onderdonk is good sized and well proportioned (two hundred and thirty pounds) for a man; performs his duty in a very impressive and solemn manner, and supposing none equal to Bishop Hobart we were happily disappointed.

“July 28. Cholera meeting at Williams’s tonight.

“August 26. Cholera still continues to rage in New York, Albany, Rochester and Syracuse. Dr. Colwell gone to New York, sent by the inhabitants of this village.

1833. “Jan. 6. On the evening of January 1st, the good people of the village had what is called a[173] donation party at the Rev. Mr. Adams’s, at which was a very large and respectable company assembled, and together with the fine supper and very good address by Mr. Adams made the evening very pleasant. Donation amounted to about sixty dollars and the effect produced was very good.”

Under later dates are many entries in the journal in another hand, the hand of Henry Noble’s friend Frederick T. Hayes, who seems to have been his most intimate and constant friend. Some of these passages were written years afterwards in New York city; others here in Unadilla. Following are a few of them:

“Henry C. Noble died in Unadilla the 15th of May, 1833, at twenty minutes before seven o’clock.

“1843. August 6. Looking over this old journal and much disposed to feel melancholy. Had he lived, today would have been his birthday. I even now feel the pang of the separation. Time has been multiplied but has not lessened my friendship. I can even now shed a tear. I can say no more.

“George H. Noble died in Unadilla 26th July, 1847.

“1853. August 30. Henry A. Ogden died this day at 6 A. M.

“1868. Tuesday, May 19. Obituary of Dr. John Colwell in the Unadilla Times. He died on the morning of the 13th at the house of Dr. Joseph Sweet, full of honors and full of years. Thus are those whose names are written in this book passing away from off the earth.

[174]

“1870. January 6. While over to Hudson City yesterday, Carrington I. Hayes told me Mr. Joel Bragg of Unadilla died last Monday.”

Mr. Hayes survived until 1894, when he died in Montclair, New Jersey, and as already stated, his body was brought to Unadilla for burial. Opposite the house in which he was born, has since been erected as a memorial a large and beautiful seat cut from granite. Standing there in a small park-like enclosure, overlooking the Susquehanna, it may well testify to the fondness Mr. Hayes always had for the village on whose soil he was born, and in whose soil he sleeps.

And so have passed away these pioneers—they and many of their descendants. A kind of desolation has indeed overspread this beautiful land, in the midst of which, even in broad noonday, one seems to hear “the footsteps of bygone generations passing up the village street.”

[176]

These reminiscences were written by Dr. Halsey for “The Unadilla Times” and were printed in the columns of that newspaper in the spring and summer of 1890. In the following winter they underwent revision, with a view to their appearance in pamphlet form for distribution among his old friends. He had long been in failing health and on February 17, 1891, he passed away at his home in Unadilla. The last mental exertion in which he ever engaged occurred two days before his death and was connected with these papers.

Beginning in the spring of the same year the present writer undertook to prepare a series of footnotes to these papers, with an introduction, giving a brief outline of the early history of this part of the upper Susquehanna Valley. As the subject was investigated, it became evident that for such an introduction a great mass of material, largely unpublished, could be had in libraries and state archives,—in New York City and Albany, and in the Harvard University library and the Wisconsin State Library at Madison. The work of years, rather than of weeks was seen to be necessary to prepare a record that could aspire to be at all worthy of the historic interest of the subject.

Researches from year to year finally resulted in the[178] preparation not of a mere introduction to the reminiscences, but a formidable manuscript of many hundred pages and more than 150,000 words, embracing not only the history of Unadilla village, but the entire upper Susquehanna valley from Otsego Lake to Old Oghwaga, and many neighboring localities. This manuscript that has since been divided into two parts, one of local interest, the other of general,—“The Pioneers of Unadilla Village”, now submitted to the public, and “The Old New York Frontier.” The real germ of the two volumes, therefore, lies in these reminiscences. Indeed, except for my father’s work, those volumes never would have been undertaken.

F. W. H.

146 W. 119th St., New York.
Dec. 10, 1901.

Readers of our village paper may find some interest in the personal reminiscences of one who came to Unadilla just half a century ago in April of this year, 1890. Such a record may properly include a brief reference to my childhood and early youth, which were spent elsewhere, the object being to contrast old circumstances with the advantages now accessible for training and educating the young that they may the more readily and completely fulfill the purposes of the Great Father of us all.

It must be evident to intelligent minds that there is a Great First Cause from which emanate all the phenomena of organized life; and equally evident that the governing motive of that intelligence is something higher and more elevating than the enslaving of masses of men in order that a few may accumulate wealth and power. Conditions are indeed improving, though not as rapidly as we might wish to see them. The facilities of the present day for enlightening all classes through higher education are so ample, varied and often so free, as compared[180] with fifty years ago, that none need now be launched upon the uncertain sea of life without being better able to understand and fulfill the purposes of their existence.

I was ushered into the world, according to the record, on the fourth of May, 1819, twenty days before the Queen of England;[40] among the bleak and stony hills of Kortright, Delaware County, New York.[41] My father was born at Bridgehampton, which lies at the eastern end of Long Island, where his ancestors had lived and died since 1640. Thomas Halsey, the first settler there, was a Hertfordshire Englishman who had lived in Naples, Italy, and then in Lynn, Massachusetts,—in the latter place some time before 1637. From Lynn in 1640[42] he sailed with a company of men and women to Long Island, where they founded Southampton, the oldest town, I believe, in this state settled by Englishmen.

[181]

My father, after whom I was named, was also a physician and had emanated from the office of the elder Dr. White of Cherry Valley[43] and was of more than average prominence along the Catskill Turnpike in those early days. Being a profound lover of his profession, he was very devoted to its practice.[44] He was never known to refuse a call from rich or poor, day or night, if able to go. Naturally sociable and fond of mirth he was a great story teller, ever ready to give or receive a joke.

I will give an instance when a rather expensive one was perpetrated upon him, but he took it as it was intended, and repaid it in due time with compound interest. A man of the name of William Blakely kept a noted hotel about three miles west of our home. A shooting match was being held[182] there one winter day. My father had great pride in his abilities with the rifle and was present. He and Blakely each had a new beaver hat, which kind of head covering was all the style in those days, costing eight dollars, then a large sum for a hat. Blakely began to banter my father about his marksmanship, and finally offered to set up his beaver forty rods off as a mark at sixpence a shot, Blakely to pay a shilling when the hat was struck, the trial to begin after dinner. While at dinner Blakely exchanged hats and set up father’s as the target instead of his own. A confederate in the joke was sent to report on every shot. He reported a failure until the hat had been struck several times, but finally brought it in, when my father found he had ruined his own hat.

The old Catskill turnpike, that starts at our upper village river bridge, and runs eastward through to Catskill on the Hudson, passes the door of my father’s house. On one of the red mile stones that stood within a few rods of the house was cut “56 miles to Catskill.” It was the goal for many a frolic in boyhood with my neighboring playmates.

As there were no canals or railroads in those days, this turnpike was the outlet for a large portion of western and southern New York, and also for parts of the state of Ohio. The products of the farms, butter, grain lumber, wool, etc., had to be drawn by teams over this road to reach a market at Catskill. Droves of hundreds of head of cattle[183] and sheep were passed daily. Stages with three and four extra teams heavily loaded hourly passed both ways. Hotels were to be found as often as every two miles the whole length of the road, and all crowded every night. Private carriages without number were to be seen loaded with people and their baggage, going on journeys to visit friends at a distance. This vast amount of travel to and from Catskill, naturally made that place a point of great interest in my boyish mind; to see it was the height of my ambition.

In those early days the motto of the civilized world was “to spare the rod is to ruin the child.” My father not only endorsed it but improved upon it, using the rawhide in place of the rod, but as I felt then and am now positive it was a grave mistake. I believe most emphatically that no child, whatever may have been his characteristics, was ever improved mentally or physically, through having the base feeling of fear instilled into him. To this day, when that instrument of torture is brought up and I recall my sufferings from the use of it, the old feeling of resentment and denunciation is aroused. I know it was a great damage in my mental development, and I have no knowledge of any instance where it served a beneficial purpose.

Training and persistent appeals to the budding reasoning faculties of the youthful brain are the only correct method for the parent who would[184] secure control of his children. Love and reverence, not fear and hate, are the principles to inculcate. Are the rod and rawhide calculated in their nature to inspire love and reverence? Parents should rather make companions of children, reason with them, let them see and know there are two sides to all pictures, good and bad; familiarize them with the two sides of all moral questions and then show them through reasoning powers why the right one should be adopted. Brutal chastisement with rod or rawhide never drove a moral idea into a youthful brain and never can.

What a change in every department of life since those times has taken place. Kitchen stoves were then unknown; no carpets covered floors. My father brought the first cooking stove into the town, and his house became as it were a hotel for many days, owing to the callers who came out of curiosity to see the wonderful “Jew’s Harp” cooking stove. Matches were unknown. Many and many a cold, stormy night, have I been called up to harness or unharness my father’s horse, and many a cold morning have I had to go to a neighbor’s forty or fifty rods away, for a shovel of live coals to start the morning fire.

My school days at Kortright were confined to the district school, and three years in a private school kept by the village clergyman.[45] I then[185] spent a year at Hartwick Seminary[46] near Cooperstown from which place I walked at the close of the term to my home in a day, a distance of 30 miles. The greater portion of the three years of private instruction I have always looked upon as lost or wasted, it having been mainly devoted to acquiring a smattering of the dead languages, Latin and Greek. I say wasted, unless the case were that of a person desirous of becoming a teacher, or of diving into moss covered theological traditions. Even such persons however would be better fitted to advance the general welfare of the race, if they devoted more energies to acquiring a knowledge of what pertains to that welfare, through methods of mental development that belong to modern times. I recently read in the Delhi Gazette a notice of the death of Robert F. McAuley, a member of the bar, at Kingston, on the Hudson river. He was an old schoolmate, and the youngest child of the Rev. William McAuley, referred to above as the village clergyman, whose private school I attended.

The son and I were very intimate in our youthful associations. This led to what I may call an epoch-making[186] incident in my youthful history. In those days the military law of the state called for a general training day; all males between the ages of 18 and 45 were required to be enrolled and to do two days’ duty yearly—one day of company, and one of general training. General training was looked forward to yearly as a very important event, not only for doing military duty, but as a general holiday for the amusement and recreation of old and young, both male and female. Our fathers decided, in order to encourage us in our studies, to give us the privilege of attending the coming general training, which was to be held that year at Delhi; that is, provided we were studious, and attentive to our school duties.

On the morning of the anxiously looked for day we received a letter of introduction to General Erastus Root,[47] of Delhi, who at that time was the most prominent lawyer and statesman in that section of the country, if not in the State, and the commanding officer of the military force assembled. We were received very kindly, and placed in charge of his son, who took pleasure in showing[187] us over the field where the exercises took place, and we went home at night feeling greatly elated over the reception and other delights of the trip.

Mr. McAuley was one of the most highly educated men of his day, a graduate of Glasgow, Scotland; he was as familiar with Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, as with the English language. His church was of the Scotch-Irish Presbyterian faith—“Seceders” as they called themselves in those days; he was looked up to and revered by the entire community, and was the peace-maker in all differences that arose among his parishioners. The communicants numbered several hundred. The grounds about his church on every Sunday were crowded with teams; in fact Sunday was like a general training day in point of numbers. Within a radius of six miles from his church I am sure it is no exaggeration to say there would not be fifty of the populace absent from the services, which were made up of two long sermons each day, opening and closing with a prayer of corresponding length.

At his death the congregation split up into three churches which I am told have a comparatively feeble existence; in fact I was told on a recent visit to the old home by one of the most prominent members[188] of the parent church, that he doubted whether they could longer sustain a clergyman and that they would probably be obliged to sell their building to the Methodists. Mr. McAuley raised to maturity 16 children—9 sons and 7 daughters; he lived to bury all I think but four or five. He was totally blind for several years before he died.

At the age of sixteen I was left an orphan by the death of my father, my mother having died five years previous. They both lie buried in a favorite corner of the ground he owned near the old home which was reserved at the sale of the estate after he died. Time and the elements have not dealt kindly with their monuments, but it has recently been a reverent occupation of my brothers and myself to restore them and enclose the grounds with a new wrought iron fence. The old buildings are still standing, but in a very dilapidated condition; the office, a two story building—the upper story, used by his many students as a dissecting room—stands unoccupied; even the outside front door was unclosed on a recent visit. But in most other things there has been little change. Kortright presents today essentially the same scene that I looked upon in boyhood,—except that the inspiring scenes of busy life along the highway are known no more.

On reviewing at this date the following few years of my free intercourse with the world, unchecked and uninfluenced by parental restraint, I am astonished[189] at my escape from moral destruction, through the wiles and baneful influences, which are every where so prevalent and attractive in appearance to the uncultured, easily impressed, youthful mind. Does the world and do parents, realize their responsibility in watching over and guiding children through this, the most critical period, morally speaking, of life, from sixteen to twenty-one? If we only look about we may see a horde of stranded, mental and physical wrecks as compared with the few who are carried safely through that period.

After spending three years required by law as a medical student, beginning with Dr. E. T. Gibbs in Kortright, two years after the death of my father and ending with Drs. Fitch and Hine of Franklin, I was graduated and received my diploma from the Fairfield Herkimer County Medical College, which was afterward moved to Albany and merged into the college established there.[48] This was in the winter of 1839-40, three months before I reached my majority.

As an example of the wonderful advancement in all departments of knowledge, allow me here to[190] mention the little that was then known of the wonderful, all-pervading principle of electricity. The professor of chemistry at the Fairfield College, James Hadley, when lecturing upon that subject, said to the class before him that this principle, so omnipresent throughout nature, could never be of practical use, for the reason that it could only be made to produce motion, being without other power, and to prove it he had an apparatus, driven by electricity, by which a wheel was made to revolve rapidly, but the slightest obstruction, as a feather, would stop it. He was estimated to be one of the highest of chemical authorities. Could he return to life again with what amazement would he look upon the influence that this element is exerting upon the enlightenment and advancement of the world.

In looking about for a place in which to open an office for the practice of my profession, I decided to stop at what is now Scranton,[49] Pennsylvania, then a hamlet known as Razorville and a lumbering section. Coal was known and the people of the region were burning it but it had no commercial value, for the simple reason that there were no railroads or other facilities for transporting it to market. I finally abandoned the idea and on the 9th day of April, 1840, landed in Unadilla and took board with Erastus Kingsley but not having the traditional shilling piece in my pocket; instead[191] I had $5 borrowed money, and a debt of $700 on my shoulders.

The 9th day of April, 1840, was a clear beautiful spring day; the ground was dry, roads were dusty and farmers busy with their spring’s work. On my way from Franklin to Unadilla on horseback, when opposite the old Daniel Beach Hotel,[50] two miles west of Franklin, a hotel having a reputation far and wide, my horse stumbled throwing me over her head sprawling into the dust, but luckily doing me no damage other than covering me most thoroughly with dust.

Unadilla Village was then a hamlet estimated to contain 300 inhabitants; there were three physicians, one of whom had come in the year before and bought the old Bragg Hotel, the property known in later years as the Dr. Odell place. Had I known that this gentleman intended to practice his profession, in addition to keeping a hotel I probably should not have ventured to remain here, but once arrived and circumstanced financially as I was, I could see no alternative but to stay, and sink or swim as the fates might decree. The two other physicians, Drs. Cone and Colwell, had been here many years, and were firmly established practitioners. While their deportment toward me as a new comer and competitor, was cool and dignified, I had no reason to complain of their treatment.[192] The outlook at best was anything but encouraging for a young stripling lacking a month of being of man’s age.

The village as it would have appeared upon the map in 1840 I may describe as follows: Beginning at the upper or east end, the first building was a one story, weather-beaten house, standing near the shanty occupied by Mrs. Slavin; it was the home of our venerable disciple of St. Crispin, S. H. Fancher.

Then came the house now owned and occupied by Horace Eells. It then stood on the opposite or eastern corner of the old Butternuts road—the site is now occupied by another house—and was owned by David Finch, father of Wm. T. Finch, Esq.

A few rods back on the old Butternuts road stood a small, low shanty that had been used in connection with the Noble and Hayes distillery (since occupied as a tannery by Mr. Eells) as a hog pen; it was then occupied by a family of the name of Nichols—Ti Nichols, who was one of my first patrons. I shall ever retain a feeling remembrance of the premises, for the reason that on my first visit in a dark night, the crown of my head came in violent contact with a knot in a beam over[194] head, the room being not over five feet in the clear.[51]

On the site now occupied by Mr. Eells’s house there stood one of the first houses built in this place, the house on the present Post Office corner being the other and of the same style. The one in question was then occupied by Amos Priest, who was the practical farmer for the Noble and Hayes firm.[52]

Next was the old store building of the above firm, soon afterward used as a tobacco and cigar factory by Noble and Howard.

The two next as now standing were the residences of the Noble and Hayes families with the farm house next adjoining. Mr. Noble had died a few years previously. Mr. Hayes was still living and dealing quite largely in fat stock.

Next came the old yellow building that was recently torn down and a double tenement house erected on its site.

Thence was a vacancy down to the premises now occupied by Frank Bacon, where was a small house afterward succeeded by the present neat cottage.

Next was the adjoining property with the present rear portion of the house; the front was[195] afterward built. This house and the small house to the east of it were then owned and occupied by Thomas H. Graves, a partner in the stage route between Ithaca and Catskill.

The two next were as now the H. H. Howard and Benjamin H. Ayers houses,[53] the latter being years after remodelled by the late Simeon Bidwell.[54]

Thence we pass to the stone law office of C. C. Noble.[55]

Thence was a vacancy down to the site of the A. B. Watson house now occupied and owned by H. C. Gregory, where then stood the Masonic Hall afterwards moved to its present location on Watson[196] Street, and converted into a dwelling by William J. Thompson.[56]

Between this hall and the brick hotel stood the Mechanic’s hall, afterwards moved to its present site and now owned and occupied by R. M. Brant as a grocery and dwelling.

The brick store was then occupied by the firm, I think though am not positive, of Noble and Emory, but it was soon changed to Watson and Noble and finally to Watson and Hayes.

Next came the brick hotel opened that spring by Erastus Kingsley who was probably as well known as a hotel landlord as any man in the rural part of the state. He could count his patrons by the hundred; when traveling they would go 10, 15, and 20 miles extra, just to stay over night with “Old Kingsley.”

All was now vacancy again down to the old yellow house on the corner of Martin Brook Street now owned by the writer.

There were no buildings on Martin Brook Street except a small one story one which is now a part of Dr. Joseph Sweet’s residence; it was then occupied by the widow Lamb and two sons, Lewis and Gurdon.

Next on Main Street came the Rev. N. H. Adams house with farm attached, Lewis Lamb, above[197] mentioned, being his farm hand. This is the house now owned and occupied by M. P. Sweet.[57]

Again was a vacancy down to the stone houses; the first or eastern one was built and occupied by George H. Noble, the other was built by F. A. Sands and occupied by Judge Page, who had purchased it on the death of Mrs. Sands, who was the Judge’s daughter.[58]

Where now stands the Lyman Sperry house stood an old house owned by Bradford Kingsley, the father of Erastus.

Then was a vacancy again to the corner of Clifton Street, since opened, where stood the old Benton and Fellows store, the front of which—afterward built on—was moved across the street and is now the Fellows Block, occupied by M. B. Gregory, the printing office, etc. The firm name was[198] then, I think, Benton and Fellows, but it was soon changed to Fellows, Mead and Finch.

Next was the old Benton house, then occupied as now by Major C. D. Fellows in whose house the elder Benton, his father-in-law, died a few days or a short time after my advent.

A vacancy occurred again and extended down to the house then owned and occupied by Col. Daniel Cone, since remodelled.[59]

A small house stood next, on the lot now occupied by Col. Samuel North’s residence; it was afterward moved farther down on the south side of the street and is now owned by Mr. Bryant, the cooper.

Next was the adjoining brick house, owned by Esq. Eells, father of Horace Eells, and of the wife of E. C. Belknap, the present owner.

Then came the frame part of Edson and Hanford’s carriage shop;[60] and then the brick shop and Wilmot’s cabinet shop.

The adjoining house now owned by the A. P. Gray estate[61] was then owned by a blacksmith of the name of Chatfield, whose wife, a sister of our old patriarch O. F. W. Crane, was in the last stages of consumption, and was put into my hands[199] as a patient by her then attending physician, one of my old preceptors, Dr. Francis W. Hine,[62] of Franklin.

After the A. P. Gray house came the Wilmot homestead.

The next was an old rookery where the residence of the widow Briggs now stands and in the same yard stood a small house which was afterward burned.

Then came a house patterned after the old house behind the Post Office. An incident attached to the latter dwelling I overlooked in its proper place and will give it here. I bought this property, on the corner of Martin Brook Street, in 1850, of Col. A. D. Williams, and lived in it seventeen years. Here my sons were born. While living there I took out the chimney and in doing so, came across a brick, on which were the initials of a man and the year 1809, thus giving at least a hint as to the age of that chimney.[63] The house mentioned above stood on the site of the fine residence afterwards erected by Evans Owens, which was burned mysteriously.

Next was the Dr. Nijah Cone house, now owned by his grandson Frederick L. Cone, and then the Gilbert Cone house, now owned by James White.

If we now cross the road and return, we find[200] the house at the foot of the hill which was the Niel Robertson residence.

The next house stood where the John Van Cott residence now is[64] and was owned by Johnson Wright who conducted a tannery in the rear of the house. He had a leather store in a building which was moved and now stands on Martin Brook Street where it has been converted into a house for rental.

Then came the house[65] and store owned by Colonel Sheldon Griswold, now the property of the Rev. Mr. Hayes. The store was occupied by Griswold and Cone, Lewis Cone being Mr. Griswold’s partner.

A house occupied by A. P. Gray who was running a harness shop came next.

From there all was vacant up to the Dr. Edson place, now belonging to the Peter Rifenbark estate.[66]

From there the land was all open up to the hotel now the Unadilla House.[67]

[201]

Next came the old Page house now owned by H. E. Bailey.

From there all was vacant up to the old school house site now occupied by the Teller residence, except that there was a building on the corner of Main and Walnut Streets, which was afterward moved and is now the upright part of the Jordan place on Walnut Street.

Adjoining the school house stood, as now, the H. S. Woodruff place, and next a small house, where now the L. L. Woodruff house stands. This house was moved and is now occupied by Mr. Price, on Watson Street.

Next came the Episcopal Church and adjoining it a house where the rectory stands, which was moved to Martin Brook Street for a house to rent.

Next was a small house which is now the rear part of the L. B. Woodruff house.[68]

Next across the street came the store and dwelling of Colonel A. D. Williams, now owned respectively by A. Mallory and D. P. Loomis.

Then came the brick house owned by Joel Bragg and now the property of Dr. Gregory.

The next was the hat shop of B. H. Ayers, afterwards[202] converted[69] into a dwelling and now owned by Lyman DeForest and occupied by Charles Mulligan.

The next was the old Bragg Hotel now owned by our agent at the railroad station, Mr. Adams.[70]

From there was an open space up to the old Bissell residence which recently passed into the hands, by purchase, of Mr. and Miss Jeyes.

Next was an old house, since torn down, occupied by Daniel Hayes, a hatter. Lastly came the old Judge Beach house which now is the Oliver Buckley residence.[71]

Thus I have mentioned every house and building of any importance which constituted the village of Unadilla when I first became a resident and which stood on Main Street. Watson Street has since been opened through to Bridge Street with the exception of the portion that runs through the land between the Misses Raitt and Miss Elizabeth Veley[203] residences, but there were no buildings yet erected on it. There was not a dwelling or other building standing on Mill Street except the Woodruff stone blacksmith shop, J. Hanford’s wagon shop, the mills and the house where Hiel Crandall lives, which was then the Mill house and stood on the corner by the Condensery.

Martin Brook road had been opened a few years previous. It was opened in its upper part largely through the efforts of A. B. Watson and A. D. Williams who desired to bring business from the Rogers Hollow country to the upper end of the village. The land on either side was in a state of nature, covered from near the Eells tannery, with pine and hemlock; nearly an unbroken forest through to the Wheeler Warrener farm on the Rogers Hollow side of the hill. There was a small clearing on what is now the John Osborn farm, and just beyond, a man of the name of Wycott, had rolled up the year before, a small one room log house. The road was hardly passable the greater portion of the way and I had quite a serious time one very dark, stormy night in getting home from a visit to one of the Bartholomew families, then living beyond the Rogers Hollow Creek.

I was on horseback, and started for home about eight or nine o’clock, as near as I can remember. It was raining and as dark as a pocket, but I had no difficulty until I reached the summit of the ridge, coming toward the village, where I struck the[204] thickest of the woods. The limbs and underbrush began to whip me in the face, and I soon became aware that my horse had lost the trail—it was not fit to be called road—but I could do no better than give her the reins, protect my face from the brush, and allow her to go where she pleased. After what seemed to me hours, I discovered in the distance, a slight glimmer of light and pointed for it. I found it to be the reflection, through the unmudded chinks, of the Wycott house fire place. They were all abed, and had left the brands burning and the light showing between the logs. I hallooed and induced the old man to lend me his lantern. When I reached home the clock was striking twelve so that I was certainly three hours traveling some three and a half or four miles.

An amusing incident in my experience in that neighborhood occurred on the Osborn farm above referred to. An old log house standing near the creek below the Osborn barn was occupied by Ethan Allen, known as “Capt. Horn,” who was given, as those who remember him will recall, to boasting and telling pretty tough yarns, one of which gave him the nickname above mentioned. This yarn related to his grabbing a bull by the horns and hurling him off a bridge and twisting off the horns.

Well, I was called to see him one cold night and found him suffering severely from pleurisy; while preparing to bleed him, which was the accepted[205] treatment in those days for that disease, he made the remark, in his boastful way, that he had never fainted in his life, and that I might take as much blood out of him as I pleased; I could not make him faint. Feeling a little mischievous I concluded to test his powers of endurance. I drew him up before the fireplace, where a roaring fire was burning, corded his arm, made a free opening into the vein, and the blood poured out in a stream nearly as large as my little finger. In less than two minutes he was on his back on the floor in a complete faint. After a few moments he came to; looking up and rubbing his eyes he said: “Doctor, I was not the least bit faint. I was only a little sick at the stomach and thought I would lie down a moment.”[72]

The following are the names, I believe, of all persons now living whom I found here in April, 1840, and who are still residents in April, 1890: S. H. Fancher, C. I. Hayes, Mr. and Mrs. H. H. Howard, Mrs. C. C. Noble, Mrs. Curtis Gregory, Mrs. A. P. Gray, Major C. D. Fellows, Mrs. E. C. Belknap, Miss Elizabeth Veley, David Hanford, Samuel D. Bacon, Mrs. Louisa Hanford, Mrs. Edson Jennings, Emeline Wilmot and Captain F. A. Bolles. Others who were then here and are still living elsewhere are these: Mrs. George H. Noble, Waverley; Mrs. A. B. Watson, New York; Samuel Robertson, Corning; Mrs. R. S. Hughston, Delhi; William T. Finch, Chicago, and J. I. Laraway. C. W. Carpenter arrived a month later.[73]

J. I. Laraway and his father-in-law Weidman had recently purchased the water power and mills[207] of Joel Bragg, and had moved in from Schoharie County a month or two ahead of me. Older citizens will remember the disaster which befell them soon after their arrival, by the going out of the river dam.

The only Church was St. Matthew’s, of which the Rev. N. H. Adams was rector. He was universally beloved and was very attractive in the pulpit, the church being well filled upon all occasions when he preached. The district school offered the only facilities for educating the young, but it was generally supplied with excellent teachers.

Captain “Horn” was one of my first and most constant patrons. He then lived on the old Butternuts road, about two miles from the village, in a tumbled down log house—log houses were the rule in those days; outside of the villages a frame dwelling was comparatively rare—with a flock of small children nearly as wild as Arabs. My day book for the year 1840 will show that I averaged visits twice a week professionally and my only recompense was the working of my poll tax and an occasional day’s work he did on the lot which I now occupy purchased of A. B. Watson and Isaac Hayes in 1841.

As an instance of how lasting an impression a slight and insignificant matter will make on a person’s mind I give the following: In the woods as you climb the hill on the old Butternuts road going north one day I saw a bird about half the size of a[208] robin, of a dirty red plumage, which had as I remember, but two notes to its song and these of a mournful character. Whenever I have since heard that bird’s song it has brought to my mind the idea of pinching poverty, so closely associated was it with my frequent travels to that poor family.

Col. Williams’ store, on the corner of Mill Street, was a rendezvous in those days for the genial spirits of the village including the Colonel himself. It was rare fun to listen to the jokes and repartee of a coterie of fun-loving men, made up of Dr. Colwell, Rufus G. Mead, Benjamin H. Ayers, L. Bennett Woodruff, A. B. Watson, David Finch and others. The shots and jokes flew thick and fast, keeping the room in a roar of laughter.

Mr. Woodruff was then running the blacksmith shop. He had recently bought a pair of sporting fowls. Mr. Mead rushed into the shop one morning, saying to Mr. Woodruff hurriedly, “there’s a crow in your walnut tree; let me take your gun.” Mr. Woodruff had a double barrelled gun, and prided himself on his abilities as a marksman. He insisted on using it himself—just what Mr. Mead wanted him to do. Mr. Woodruff loaded both barrels and creeping out very cautiously to a proper distance, blazed away and brought down his blooded hen. It was a long time before he heard the last of that joke.

When “Mesmerism” began to attract attention, Dr. Colwell took quite an interest in it. Mr. Mead[209] thought he saw an opportunity to accomplish a good joke on the doctor. He proposed to mesmerize him and appointed a time for the experiment. He prepared on the sly a dinner plate, covered on the bottom with lamp black, which he gave to the doctor to be held by him in front with the clean side opposite his face, Mr. Mead sitting in front with a similar plate, minus the lamp black. Dr. Colwell was to make every motion that Mr. Mead made. Mr. Mead drew his finger across the bottom of his clean plate, and then across his forehead. Dr. Colwell started to make the same motion on his blackened plate—he of course being ignorant of the lamp black—but instantly fathomed the aims of the enemy and putting his thumb to his nose, said, “Don’t you wish you could!”

The street was alive with similar episodes in those days, but when town meeting occurred, then what a tumult! The cries were “up-street” and “down-street!” and “Hurrah, boys”; there was war to the knife for the two factions and a triumph duly celebrated by the winning side. Happily those days, so suicidal and damaging to the welfare of the village, are fast becoming mere matters of history.

Some time in the month of June following my advent in Unadilla, a renowned menagerie—June, Titus and Angevine’s—appeared for exhibition; they stayed over night with Kingsley, where I was[210] boarding, leaving before day break. Mr. June, on going out of his sleeping room in the dark, fell down the stairway, bruising himself severely and had to remain behind for two days. I being in the house was called up to see to his injuries, for which I charged him one dollar. This was the first money I received from my profession.

My first act in dental surgery was performed on the person of the well known Lewis Carmichael, who at that time was a rising influential politician; in fact he almost controlled the politics of the town, though he was not old enough to use the franchise himself.[74]

At the close of my first year of practice I had charged the sum of $125, as my day book will show and three quarters of it still stands unpaid. I owed Kingsley ninety odd dollars for board for which I gave him a note, that was current in the community for several years, apparently legal tender; it passed through many hands before it finally reached mine again. This was anything but encouraging. The future had a decidedly blue look but I could do nothing less than hang on and hope.

I had then a friend to whom I owe a lasting debt of gratitude, which it has ever been a great pleasure[211] to repay so far as has been in my power by rendering similar encouragement to the young man just starting out. His name was Harry Wolcott; he lived on the farm now owned by Gardner Rider on the Franklin road in Sidney and was a bachelor living with an invalid maiden sister. Whenever I met him his encouraging words were “stick doctor; you will finally succeed.” No one but he who is similarly situated can realize and appreciate the value of such a friend as he was. He held a high position in the community as an intelligent, thorough-going business man. That his surroundings in his present state of existence are more in consonance with his faculties and aspirations I can have no doubt.[75]

Asking pardon for this digression, I resume my story. In the fall of 1840—when I cast my first vote, which was cast for Martin Van Buren—I married Theodora Kirby, daughter of Reuben Kirby,[76] of Bainbridge, and began house keeping in the spring of 1841, in the house now owned by Mr. Morse on the corner of Main and Walnut Streets which had been built in the summer of 1840.[212] Death claimed her a little over two years afterwards, beloved by all who had ever known her.

In the spring of 1841 a boy came asking me to go over to what was then known as the Baxter Saw Mill, on Carr’s Creek,[77] to see his brother. On reaching the bridge crossing the creek on the river road, I met another boy urging haste. I hurried accordingly, and when I reached the house a young man stood in the door in great agony for want of breath. Just as I reached him after tying my horse he began to settle down in a suffocating condition. I caught him in my arms and laid him on the bed. After a hasty inquiry, the house being filled with the family and neighbors, I surmised where the difficulty was, unbuttoned his shirt collar and took out my thumb lancet—having no other instrument with me. Mr. Chester Sweet, father of the two Drs. Sweet, a giant of a man, then stepped up and asked, “what are you going to do doctor, cut his throat?”. I replied “yes.” “You must not do it” said he, “let him die a natural death” making a motion to push me away. I replied, “Stand back! I am the doctor here, and you interfere at your peril.” I passed the lancet into the trachea or wind pipe, just below the “Adam’s apple,” or prominence in the male neck, and called for a goose[213] quill, having rolled the man over on his face to prevent the blood from running into the opening.

The instant the lancet entered the trachea the air rushed into the lungs with a whistle, so forcibly were the muscles endeavoring to inhale air into the lungs. In a few moments he recovered consciousness and continued to breath through the quill until the next morning. This operation had taken place in the afternoon. In the night, or toward morning, an abscess broke, discharging a large amount of pus. The operation thus was successful and the fellow lived many years. News of the operation was carried far and near. The young doctor had actually brought a dead man back to life; so went the report, and from that time on I had my share of business.

My first opportunity for treating a broken bone was the case of a young lady living two miles below Teedville, on Trout Creek, a sister of Mrs. H. B. Crooker of this village. On her return from a visit to her parents to resume her position in the woolen mill, then in operation at Crookerville, she was thrown from her carriage, breaking the bone between the knee and hip. In passing over the road to reach her I did not wonder at the accident; a worse road to be called a highway could not be found. I never had better success in all my experience in after practice.

Many years afterwards I had a similar case which proved disastrous to the patient from[214] causes beyond control, but resulted in my having to defend a charge of mal-practice at Delhi. A Mr. Bundy, of East Masonville, had the misfortune to break his thigh. He was past the prime of life, and had been a sufferer for many years from chronic diarrhœa, from which cause he was very thin in flesh, his physical powers poorly conditioned to withstand the strain of a long confinement upon his back as was necessary in the treatment of his injury. I apprised him of the fact at the time, that he might understand his danger.

I used every effort to support his feeble condition but with such slight success that at the end of seven weeks I was obliged to relieve him from the close restraint in order to save his life—three months is the average duration of time necessary in such cases. He fully understood the condition and refused any professional counsel, which I tendered, expressing himself as having confidence in the wisdom of my management. The result was a bending at the seat of the fracture, the callosity not having become sufficiently hard to offset the contraction of the muscles and he was a cripple for the remainder of his life. More than a year afterward, through the influence of professional rivalry, he became dissatisfied, and prosecuted me. The case was tried at Delhi and resulted in disagreement of the jury. Before the sitting of the next court the plaintiff voluntarily offered, through his attorney, to drop the case by each party paying[215] his own costs, which I accepted, notwithstanding Judge Mason, before whom the case was tried, told my counsel he never saw a more complete defense established, and that I was entitled to a verdict.

My first obstetrical case was in the family of John Butler,[78] father of Captain Frank Butler. Dr. Cone was the family physician but was not obtainable, and as a last resort I was called to officiate. I shall never forget the reception I met with, and the close scanning by the sharp black eyes of the patient, with the severe catechising I had to endure. Expecting her “old doctor,” and seeing a young stripling—“Dr. Bean Pole”[79] I was called in those days—she as a matter of course was taken by surprise, never having seen me before. That straight laced moralist, who believes the sin of lying should be denounced under any and all circumstances, would I am sure admit that there[216] are exceptions to all rules, had he been in my shoes at that time and thus forced to give an encouraging answer to the many questions as to my experience in such cases, a truthful answer to which would have driven me from the house. The case terminated happily for all concerned and we have been fast friends ever since.[80]

My horse when I got her was an unbroken three year old colt. She proved to be a remarkably fleet roadster. I drove her six years and during that time had many a frolic with other drivers on the road. I was driving once from Mt. Upton down the Unadilla river, and overtook a man on horseback near where the old Oxford turnpike joins the river road. He refused to let me pass him by whipping in ahead whenever I attempted to pass. My horse soon “caught on” to the situation and was as anxious for a little fun as I. Having a long bow-tipped whip I drew up on the lines and chirupped to the mare. When close enough I gave his horse a cut with my whip which caused him to jump and came very near unhorsing the rider. He had not more than recovered his equilibrium before I brought the whip down again and so on continued to lash the horse which was soon running his best gait.

It became so interesting for the rider that he finally offered me the road by getting outside the[217] track, but I refusing the offer followed up another cut of the whip which brought him back into the road. I ran him in this way to Rockdale, a distance of a mile or more. On reaching his home he rolled himself off without waiting for his horse to stop, and with an oath said: “Now get out of that wagon and I will whip you.” I stopped and laughingly said to him “next time a stranger in civil manner asks for the road I am inclined to think you may find it worth while to give it,” bade him good day and passed on.

On another occasion I was driving home from Cooperstown. Just this side of Portlandville a road comes down off the hill on which a man in a cutter was that day coming. He apparently saw me as he struck his horse into a sharp trot. I allowed him to come in ahead of me, but soon my horse’s head was over the back of his cutter puffing her breath against his head. He lashed his horse into a run but was unable to get away; the mare’s nose still kept his ears warm. Thus I ran him to where he turned up the hill road just this side of Milford Centre. Bidding him good night as I passed him—it was a bright moonlight evening—I came on home.

I could give many like incidents, and cannot refrain from giving one such frolic I had with Dr. Colwell. He had just got a very fast mare from “Bill” Green of Mt. Upton. We were both called in counsel in the case of Zachariah Prindle, father[218] of Judge Prindle of Norwich. He lived in Ideuma and it was his last sickness. It was fine sleighing and when we were putting on our overcoats Colwell said: “Doctor if you get started first, I will try and keep in sight of you.” I replied, “Well, if you do, I will either give you the road or drive fast enough to get out of the way.” I started out first and soon after striking the Hollow Creek road, the doctor’s mare’s nose was in my neck. I drew up on the lines, chirupped to my horse, and soon was out of his way. I doubt whether two horses were ever driven over that road to the village in so short a time. When I drove up to my barn, which still stands in the rear of the Teller residence, the doctor was about where the railroad crosses Martin Brook Street. He never referred to the matter afterwards.

Dr. Colwell was a bachelor, somewhat eccentric, sharp, quick witted, and could be very sarcastic when occasion required it. As an instance, I have heard the following anecdote often told. When he came to Unadilla, Dr. Edson was practicing here—grandfather to our present Supervisor. He was said to have been a nervous excitable man, easily irritated. He met Colwell one day on the road, not long after Colwell settled here, stopped his horse and said to him, “Young man, you had better leave here while you can, for I shall starve you out.” Colwell promptly replied, “You can’t, for I won’t board with you.”

[219]

[As an illustration of Dr. Halsey’s fondness for animals may be introduced here a little item written by him on another occasion for the Unadilla Times. Dog Daisy whom he describes was a poodle having a coat as white as Angora wool:

“Kind nature once bestowed upon a household in Unadilla a dear girl baby as another link in the unending chain of organized life in human form. While yet in her infant years an elder brother, grown to manhood, gave her as an evidence of his interest in her welfare an infant specimen of the canine species for a companion and plaything. The two became almost inseparable, by day and by night. Years passed, and their love and friendship strengthened.

“When the child arrived at the proper age to require the pedagogue’s aid in the development of her intellectual faculties, the little white bundle of animated wool would be seen in constant daily attendance upon her, going to and from the school room, during the hours of study, reclining under her seat and by her side during recitations. Upon arrival home at the close of the day’s session he would bound into the house with the happiest possible expression of laughing face and wagging bushy tail, fully understood by the parents as saying ‘One more day of faithful protection for your child.’

“Such were his characteristics of faithfulness and gentleness that both teachers and scholars recognized[220] his claims to an exception in school rules; he was allowed free entrance and occupancy of the general school room. But age and its attendant infirmities which have no respect for any human or other being, gave at last the final decree of change which we call death and Daisy has gone where all good dogs go.”[81]]

For the following few years up to 1847, I had a full share of patronage, but in consequence of the scarcity of money in circulation, the original load diminished slowly. In 1845 I had found and married my present wife in Yankeeland, Connecticut. Here allow me to perform the most grateful and pleasing duty of my life and say that to her unselfish, and devoted efforts for my interests, I am largely indebted for any measure of success I have attained in life. She had a strong affection for her native State and place of birth. I knew that my ledger showed I had more than enough to balance my obligations. Confident that there was an inviting field at her old home, I decided to emigrate to Connecticut, and in 1847 sold out to Dr. Odell,[82] and left Unadilla as I supposed for good—so little do we know what the future has in store for us. I[221] located first in the town of Southington, Hartford County. The year following I bought a house and lot in Plainville, four miles north and a promising town of recent origin. Here I considered myself a permanent fixture and was building up a good practice when the whole course of my life was changed for a year. The scene was shifted to the tropics and then to California, in the course of which I nearly lost my life.

In 1848 the news of finding gold in California was a prominent feature of newspapers all over the country. A fever for emigration to the mines spread with unheard of rapidity throughout the civilized world. Companies were being formed everywhere.[83] California was the only topic of interest. The question of how to get there was a knotty one; there were no railroads, and the Rocky Mountains, with an intervening, desolate, unexplored barren waste, offered apparently unsurmountable obstacles to an overland route. There was no course other than a voyage around Cape Horn—a six to ten months’ trip—or across the Isthmus of Panama, taking the chances of a vessel from that point—at that time a bye place rarely visited by sailing vessels. There were not vessels[223] enough afloat to take the multitude anxious to make the venture.

A comic entertainment was put on the stage of one of the New York theatres in Broadway showing “Mose trying to go to California.”[84] I witnessed its performance while waiting to sail for the Isthmus with the company to which I was attached. It was exceedingly amusing. “Mose,” the leading character, was so strikingly like one of our company that we dubbed him “Mose” and he is still known by that name by the old members of the company, five of whom are still living. We have for several years had an annual meeting and a barbecued lamb dinner in a very romantic locality in Connecticut, beside a charming sheet of water, called Compounce Pond, under a high steep ledge of granite rocks, where we meet, with a few choice friends, and renew our experience in California gold digging.

Our company as organized consisted of eight men afterward taking in two more, one of whom was “Mose.” We had a capital of $4,000 invested in part in an outfit, including a years’ supply of provisions, and a twenty gallon cask of brandy which we kept full by putting in water whenever a draft was made upon it. We finally sold that[224] brandy and water in Sacramento for $108. The original cost was $20.[85] We bought our tickets in New York for passage from Panama to San Francisco, on the steamer California[86] on her second trip from Panama. She was the first steamer sent out from New York by the Pacific Mail Steamship Company to San Francisco, and was billed to be due at Panama the 1st day of March, 1849, to make her second trip.

We took passage from New York on a sailing vessel, her name “Abrasia”—which was sent down by the Panama Railroad Company with supplies for making the preliminary survey of the road now running across the Isthmus.[87] She was lightly loaded with freight and the members of our company were the only passengers. We had a bouncing[225] trip. The second day out from New York, just after striking the Gulf Stream, we encountered a terrific storm of wind and rain which lasted five days, the wind blowing right in our teeth and one day it was so violent that we were obliged to run on our back track 150 miles, under bare poles.

The most striking demonstration of man’s powerlessness and complete subjection to the mercy of the elements that I ever witnessed was on the day above mentioned—the wind blowing a hurricane with rain in sheets. As far in the misty distance as the eye could discern, was a vessel scudding under bare poles, and not a living soul was to be seen. The situation was anything but pleasant for green landsmen; not one of the passengers failed to pay his tribute to old Neptune in an involuntary effort to turn himself inside out.

As soon as it became evident that the captain knew his business and was attending to it, we buried our fears and really enjoyed the excitement. I was awakened one night by the captain swearing a perfect torrent of oaths. He had gone out on deck, as was his custom through the night, to see that everything was all right. He had nothing on[226] but his shirt. Just as he reached the deck from his stateroom door a tremendous wave dashed over the vessel, drenching him thoroughly. It would be useless to attempt giving a description of the torrent which poured out of his mouth, but I laughed until my sides ached. Several years afterwards I met him at the United States Hotel in New York and reminded him of the storm. He told me it was one of the worst he had ever encountered.

We reached Chagres[88] on the Atlantic side of the Isthmus on the thirteenth day from New York, when we embarked on a little steamboat which had been sent down to navigate the Chagres river.[89] Could that stream, with its banks an impenetrable mass of vegetation, lofty trees covered with vines hanging in festoons with myriads of flowers of all colors, besides monkeys, parrots, paraquets, and many other birds making a perfect babel of song and chattering, bewildering to the northern ear—could it be easily reached by only a day or two of travel from New York, it would attract thousands[227] of visitors.[90] At the head of navigation we were transferred to large dug-outs or canoes, manned by two natives with long poles, to take us to Gorgona[91] some twelve miles higher up the stream. These boatmen were stripped entirely naked for this work and every few rods would run their canoes on to a sandy shore, dive into the water and swim around until cooled off. We paid them fifty cents each for poling us twelve miles against the current. A Real (10 cents) was a day’s wages before the advent of California travel across the Isthmus.

Being ahead of time for the steamer we put up our tent at Gorgona, sent our Captain over to Panama—about 24 miles—to the agent of the steamship company for information. The Chagres river was simply alive with fish. When we threw in a handful of crumbs the water would fairly boil[228] from their efforts to secure them, but if you baited a hook they would not touch it. We exhausted all plans for catching them. We had a net in our outfit 150 feet long, and thought that it would work; we got it out and strung it; got two boats and launched them into the water. Then we surrounded a host of fish and could we have landed them I have no doubt we would have had two wagon loads at least, but with three men to each rope, before we could get to the shore the fish began to jump over the cork line exactly like a flock of sheep over a stone wall; we secured only a few, perhaps a dozen.

Gorgona was at that time a village of perhaps fifty huts, standing on a beautiful plateau at an elevation of fifteen or twenty feet above low water mark. We remained there two weeks, then starting for Panama—distant 24 miles. All freight had to be packed on mules or natives’ backs. It was surprising the loads those natives would shoulder and not lie down until they reached their destination. They had a rack made of reeds to which the freight was lashed; when it had been placed on the shoulders a strap was passed around the points of shoulders and chest, and another around the forehead. I saw a large trunk, which weighed 225 pounds, thus lashed to a native and he started on a lope for Panama, which he reached next day without laying it down as the owner told me afterward. The road was simply a trail such as cattle[229] make, very rough and rocky, making it very tedious to travel with a load. We were a part of two days on the route across, reaching Panama[92] on Sunday afternoon.

The first view I had of the Pacific ocean as it makes inland some 600 miles to form Panama Bay was a memorable event to me. The sea was as smooth as glass with not a ripple, and the reflection of the sun’s rays from the west giving the water a rich yellow appearance, made an impression that I shall never lose. My attention has since been called to some famous lines by the poet Keats on the discovery of the Pacific by the Spaniards. Keats says that when he first read Chapman’s translation of Homer he felt

Our messenger whom we had sent ahead, finding that we were fated to be held there for an indefinite period, had secured rooms where we could live and we moved in at once. The house, a two-story stone[230] building, belonged to the governor of the state. His residence was on a corner of the plaza, and our house was opposite. He offered the building entire to us for 150 dollars or to rent for two dollars a day. This will give an idea of the value of real estate at that time. A large three story building standing on the main street was bought that spring for 300 dollars and opened as the “American Hotel.” It is still run as a hotel as I have noticed in the news from there.

As I have before mentioned, the city up to the California gold excitement had had for many years a location on the map but no business; in fact grass was growing in the streets. The English government had a line of steamships trading with South American governments, on the Pacific side, which came monthly to Panama to unload and pack their ingots of silver on mules’ backs to cross the Isthmus, to be reshipped for England. I saw two cargoes of ingots landed; there were 150 or 200 ingots, shaped like a capital V, and weighing 150 pounds each. They were guarded across by soldiers.

The city was then surrounded by a heavy wall 12 to 14 feet high, laid in cement as hard as stone. On the water side it was built on the bed rock so far out that the tide coming in had pounded holes through the wall. There were two gates for ingress and egress, one the main gate from the land side, the other on the water side. Just inside the[231] main gate and facing it was a nice little stone building having but one room; inside was a life size image of the Virgin Mary, beautifully dressed, with diamonds sparkling all about her breast. She stood on an elevated platform—at her feet a pretty box for contributions. It is a Catholic country and every person on coming into the city was expected to pass into the room, kneel before the Virgin in an attitude of prayer for a moment or two, throw in his mite and go about his business. The priests removed the offerings at intervals.

Gambling and cock fighting, the latter on Sunday afternoon after services when even the clergy were to be seen, with an occasional mock bull fight outside the walls were the leading amusements. I saw a man who was tantalizing a bull with a red rag, caught on its horns and hurled against a stone building, apparently killed, but he finally came to himself and walked off.

There was a large cathedral with several churches. The cathedral was never closed. I was there during Lent and Passion Week and the displays were simply gorgeous—processions by day and torch light ones by night, the entire population in line, bare headed. One night the Virgin was placed upon a raised three step platform, and carried about the streets on men’s backs. I counted 180 wax candles eighteen inches in length, enclosed under glass resting on the steps of the platform, a[232] beautiful sight. Apostles and Saints had processions making rich displays.

Palm Sunday was a noisy one; every individual native had his whistle, made of palm leaf and there were thousands of shrill toots, until in the middle of the afternoon, a procession appeared escorting an image of Christ, with His crown of thorns, astride an ass, a large number of the clergy with banners being in advance, and they preceded by a bevy of 40 or 50 little girls, dressed in white, with their arms full of flowers, scattering them as they walked, and all singing. The next morning a rope was stretched across the street, with an image of Judas hanging, by the neck, and every passer by hurling some missile at him. I was strolling one day behind a church building and saw a hole in the wall some four feet from the ground; on looking in I saw deep down, perhaps 10 or 12 feet, small human bones. On inquiry I was told they were the bones of still-born infants who died unbaptised and were thrown in with quick lime to destroy the soft parts.

I walked one day out to the cemetery which is nearly a mile outside the walls. There was an acre of ground surrounded by a wall of 8 feet or more thick and 10 or more high, laid in cement. On the inside were three tiers of openings in the wall large enough to admit a coffin. The dead were placed in a nice coffin, dressed as the circumstances of the friends could afford, covered with a profusion of[233] flowers, carried in state to the cemetery, then stripped of everything, put in a tight rough box, the box filled with quick lime and finally pushed into the opening in the wall and sealed up with cement. After a proper interval, to allow the soft parts to be destroyed by the action of the lime and when the hole was wanted for another, it was opened and the contents, bones and all, emptied on the ground and another body put in. The ground was covered with bones. I picked up a human jaw bone which must have belonged to a giant; it was more than twice as large as any one I ever saw before or since. I brought it home as a curiosity and loaned it to William Johnston, of Sidney, an eccentric man descended from the pre-Revolutionary pioneer of the same name, and he forgot to return it.

The water for the city was all brought in on the heads of women, in earthen crocks holding three gallons and sold for 10 cents a crock; the spring was the best part of a mile outside the city, walled up nicely, and ran about a half inch stream as I remember it. The tide comes in at Panama 23 feet twice a day, while on the Atlantic side at Chagres one would hardly notice that there was a tide. The places are only 50 miles apart. This is an anomaly I have never seen explained to my satisfaction; there must be some other than the moon theory I think.

When the tide is out at Panama one can go out[234] on the rocks two miles, but he must look out for the incoming tide. I was out one day looking for shells very busily; when I looked up I was nearly surrounded by water; you may rest assured I ran for life once certainly; I could not get into the city but got out of the water about a quarter of a mile down the coast.[94]

We had arrived in Panama the first of March and expected to meet the steamer California for which we had tickets. She failed to appear on account of her crew deserting her on her first arrival at San Francisco; the result was we were obliged to lie there until the Panama which left New York the same morning we did, and aboard which we were now to sail, came around the cape and reached Panama when the agent of the steamship company put us aboard her. It was estimated that there were 3,000 people from the States in Panama awaiting vessels to proceed to California. The condition became more and more alarming as the detention and increase of people increased the congestion. Sickness was very prevalent, funerals were of daily occurrence, a plot for a cemetery had to be purchased and it was rapidly filled. Many having but little money soon found themselves without means for living and with no prospect of getting away they took the back track and returned home.

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The excitement increased daily and so desperate became the situation that had not vessels appeared just as they did I think there would have risen a riot that would have perhaps destroyed the city; in fact there were several outbreaks which were quelled with difficulty.[95] The demonstrations of joy made upon the arrival of the steamer Panama and a sailing ship the Humboldt[96] were as cheering as the previous excitement was alarming. The intense heat on the Isthmus—the thermometer standing at 100 daily—was very trying to northern people, unless protected under the shade. Being nearly under the Equator exposure to the direct[236] rays will strike one blind, but the cool trade winds from off the salt water, with quiet in the shade, relieve the oppression so completely, that reclining in a hammock with an interesting book became a luxury.

The natives are of mixed blood made up of Spanish, Negroes, and Indians and are a very strong athletic race. The language is a corrupt Spanish and in tone and expression charmingly beautiful. I was frequently stopped on hearing parties in conversation; there was so much excitement and emphasis that I looked next for blows and knock downs. The people are very friendly in manner but quick to resent an insult. They are free and unsuspecting in conversation. What would be denounced here as highly indecorous and improper is unnoticed. As an instance I recall that one day a nicely dressed lady was passing whose maternal ambition was soon to be gratified. I tipped my hat saying “Senora, pickaniny poco tempo?” She replied “Si Senor” and was as far from showing any expression of false modesty as though I had inquired the time of day. Children of both sexes[237] up to 10 or 12 years are seen everywhere entirely naked, and pass unnoticed. The female dress is very picturesque and beautiful being made of light material with great profusion of ruffles and laces.

Without intending in the least to detract from the fame of our own beautiful sisters of the north, I must in truth say that the handsomest, most queenly and dignified woman I ever saw was a full blooded Spanish lady, who entered the cathedral at Panama one morning, at early mass, followed by her female servant carrying a handsome piece of carpeting for her mistress to kneel upon during her devotional service.

On the appearance of the “Panama” the local agent notified us to get aboard at once and we were not long in complying. Our detention had obliged us to pay in rent for the building we occupied money enough to have paid for the title as offered by the owner. Our Captain engaged a five ton dug-out, with two natives to take us and the outfit to the steamer which was lying at anchor six miles out in the bay. As I think of that day’s trip to the steamer a shiver will run over me to this day. We were loaded almost to the water’s edge, with but one sail, the wind strong in our teeth. We were obliged to start while the tide was coming in so as to reach deep water before the tide could leave us stranded on the rocks, and had to tack and beat against the wind and the inrushing tide for several hours until it changed to the opposite[238] direction. We embarked about 8 o’clock A.M. and only reached the steamship after dark; thus the entire day was spent in a six miles’ straight line voyage; why we were not capsized has always been a mystery, loaded as we were and frequently flooded with water from the waves. The boat required almost constant bailing.

A very exciting incident occurred soon after our arrival on board. A difficulty had arisen between two ladies on their arrival at Panama. One was the wife of a distinguished Government officer, stationed in California to whom she was going. She is still living and somewhat famous. The other was a lady of equal social rank who had been the head of a prominent temperance organization in Philadelphia. She was possessed of stinted means and was anxious to emigrate to California to improve her financial condition. She had arranged with the first named lady to travel with her as a “companion,” her passage and other expenses being furnished as compensation. On their arrival at Panama the first named lady registered at the American Hotel as Mrs. —— and servant, to which the other took prompt exception, rightfully claiming that she was an equal in status as “companion” and should not be ranked as servant. The excitement among the Americans, whose numbers were estimated at 3,000, was very great, the sympathy being with the companion lady.

When the boats, or dug-outs containing the two[239] ladies, arrived at the steamship, the commander, Capt. Bailey,[97] who had evidently been apprised of the trouble, refused to allow the second lady to get aboard. The passengers, who all understood the case, arose en masse and insisted, that having a ticket for passage, she must and should be allowed to go. The Captain, seeing the determined feeling, yielded, but declared she should have neither a stateroom, which her ticket entitled her to, nor a berth—no sleeping or toilet facilities whatever. The vessel was a side-wheel steamer, and a bridge called the hurricane deck spanned across from the boiler deck to the wheel house. Underneath this bridge the passengers were allowed to put a temporary berth, where she could lie protected from rain, but over her head was a shelf used as a catch-all for bolts, pieces of iron, etc.

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One night the vessel was rolling badly and a large iron bolt rolled off striking the sleeping lady. At first she was supposed to be dead. She was married and the result of the injury was a premature confinement. The Captain barbarously refused to allow the ship’s surgeon to attend her, and a physician from New York was selected from among the passengers to officiate. She recovered after a dangerous illness, caused by unavoidable exposure, and reached San Francisco where she opened a first-class boarding house, and prospered as long as I knew anything of her. A few years after this incident the newspapers announced the death of Captain Bailey, from cholera. I know of one of those passengers who threw up his hat and cried for joy on hearing the news.

I should add here that after the vessel got out to sea a meeting of the passengers was called to make an authorative statement of affairs to send back to the east for publication. When we had assembled however the Captain came on deck and ordered us to disperse or he would bring his guns—two cannons, one on each side the deck—to bear upon us, run his ship into the first port he came to, and declare a state of mutiny. Of course we could only submit.

The voyage up the Pacific was a delightful one.[241] The water was as smooth as glass with not a ripple to break its mirror-like surface—nothing but an undulating, regular swell, like the pulsations of the human heart. We were in sight of land nearly all the way. The mountain scenery, although so distant, was grand with the coast range of mountains, rising skyward thousands of feet, peak after peak, occasionally a nearly extinct volcano belching forth smoke, and all covered with a forest of dark, perpetual green. My only fear was that being so near the coast, we might run onto a sunken rock.

Aside from the view of the coast the voyage was devoid of interest. Occasionally whales were seen at a distance, blowing water as they came to the surface to breathe. We had a fine view of one which came alongside the vessel, within 30 feet, as I remember it. He played around the ship several minutes, finally diving and throwing his tail high in the air. A number of blackfish—a fish weighing I judged from 600 to 1000 pounds—followed in the wake of the vessel, for several days, apparently seeking the refuse as it was thrown overboard.

Three days before the trip ended it was announced that our provisions were giving out and we would have to submit to close rations. The coal was also giving out; in fact everything that would burn, oil, pork, resin and every surplus spar, was used up. We were reduced to sour krout for the last meal we had on board, the morning we entered[242] San Francisco Bay. I have often wondered why I escaped death from eating that meal. I was very hungry from the short rations, and I don’t think I ever enjoyed a meal better. I must have stowed away at least a quart with no bad result.

The only stop we made was at San Diego where the Bay is quite large, but I judged shallow, the entrance so narrow that one could almost have jumped ashore from the vessel. Cape St. Lucas is usually a very windy locality, similar to Cape Hatteras on the Atlantic; it blew very strong when we rounded it and at that point we passed through what appeared to be oil, very offensive and foul smelling, covering a large area of water—and supposed to have come from a burned whale ship.

The entrance of San Francisco Bay, the Golden Gate and the bay itself, are marvelous works of nature. The “gate” is narrow, perhaps 200 feet wide—just a gap out of solid rock, rising perpendicularly upon each side perhaps some hundreds of feet. When we passed through, the tide was going out with a velocity, bewildering and frightful to behold. It did not seem possible that our vessel could move in the current but she proudly walked through, like a strong sea monster. As she was entering the bay what a marvelous scene was presented to the eye—a vast expanse of fathomless water running sixty miles north and sixty south from the gate and thus one hundred and twenty miles in length and having an average of ten miles[243] of width. This reservoir of two mighty rivers—the Sacramento and San Juaquin—draining the entire country west of the Sierra Nevada range of mountains, has all to be emptied into the ocean through that narrow “gate,” and is truly one of the greatest marvels on the globe. The entire floating war vessels of the world could find anchorage with room for more. How strange that all this wonderful arrangement of nature for the benefit of man should have lain idle, and comparatively of no benefit, until it came into the possession of Yankee enterprise and of a nation the youngest in history and then hardly out of its teens. With what rapidity it has arisen in importance within the past forty years. Has blind chance caused this marvelous advancement?

The Bristol and California Co. the name of our mining association was made up of the following members: George W. Bartholomew, manager, Wellington Winston and Isaac Pierce of Bristol, Conn., Jared Goodrich, Andrew Jackson Norton, A. L. Dodge, Geo. W. Dresser, Eldridge Atkins, and the writer, all of Plainville, Conn. Bartholomew, Pierce, Goodrich, Norton, Dodge, with the writer are still alive, the writer being the youngest except Dodge. To Norton I am doubtless indebted for my life and ability thus to make a public record of our story; further history of this fact in detail will be given later on and I will simply say here that a more noble-hearted, self-sacrificing man never lived.[244] May the declining years of “Capt. Dick” be as peaceful and happy, as he deserves to have them.

Large vessels, like the “Panama,” had to anchor three miles from shore in the bay; passengers and freight were sent ashore in lighters. This shallow water has now been done away with by filling in and docking out to deep water so that the business portion of the city of San Francisco stands now where then was water.

The city of San Francisco[98] then had perhaps a hundred board shanties and cloth tents scattered about. We arrived the fourth day of June and when we returned from the gold diggings the next October there were blocks of buildings, three and four stories high, a busy city of 15,000 inhabitants as estimated. The most prominent business was gambling. Thousands of dollars, yes hundreds of thousands, in gold dust, I have seen lying upon the table awaiting the turn of a single card or the wheel.[99]

A gambler came into the diggings where we were and opened a dive. I saw him on winning a pile[246] made up of ten cent pieces, scrape them off the table and throw them, in disgust, out into the brush as too small a matter to spend his time with. Coins of ten cents were comparatively of the same value there as the cent is here for the reason that they would buy no more; in fact there was nothing on sale, from a drink of poisonous whiskey up, for less than one dollar. Flour, corn meal, dried fruit, sugar, onions, etc., etc., were a dollar a pound. Consequently fractional money was a nuisance. When we went into the diggings our freight from Sacramento cost one dollar per pound. The result of such prices was that thousands of dollars worth of outfits were thrown away; storage for a common trunk was three dollars per month and everything else was in proportion. A rag picker, junk and old clothes man could have found his paradise in the streets of San Francisco and Sacramento in those days.[100]

We put up our tent in San Francisco and remained a week before we obtained a chance to reach Sacramento, vessels being very scarce. We finally found a thirty ton sloop which was about[247] to make the trip loaded with freight; we started late in the afternoon, the vessel loaded so near the water’s edge that the waves would throw water through the scupper holes on to the deck. The captain was a sleepy thick headed fellow, evidently a chance “pick up” for the trip, with an equally intelligent crew of three. There was no system or discipline, every one doing just as he pleased. I have often wondered why we were not swamped and drowned before we reached the mouth of the Sacramento river.[101]

It would take a more alluring excitement than gold digging to induce me to undertake a like trip; in fact the whole enterprise from the outset was a fearfully reckless one, whatever the route taken, around the Cape, across the Isthmus, or overland. It is no wonder that disasters, deaths and total failures were far, far in excess of the successes.[102] Fortunately[248] we induced the captain to cast anchor near the head of the bay for the remainder of the night. The next morning we sailed along up the river very nicely until we reached what was called the “sleugh” a stretch of deep, still water five miles long, having but little current. On the left bank was a thick forest of large, tall trees, the right bank being swampy and called Tulare Swamp. The latter was covered with bull rushes large enough for fish rods, 10 to 15 feet long, and gallinippers or mosquitoes were as large as horseflies and came in clouds. It was impossible to protect one’s self. They would think nothing of the pantaloon leg as an obstruction to their voracity.

The trees on the left bank being higher than our sloop’s mast, the wind could not reach our sails—the north west trade winds blew from that direction—consequently the vessel had to be warped up through the five miles; that is, a large rope shipped into a small boat which all vessels carry for emergencies was drawn out its full length, fastened to a tree and then all hands began to pull at the other end. Thus the vessel by main strength was forced up to the tree. We then anchored and paid out the cable for another stretch. Three members of the crew were unable to perform the task, and consequently we who were passengers[249] had to do the work. At night we would tie up the ship, go ashore, build a big fire, get a meal, roll up in our blankets with our feet as near the fire as possible and sleep, the fire giving partial protection from the gallinippers.

We were five days warping through the “sleugh.” When we again got wind, every man was a fearful yet comical sight, face and hands swollen from the bites of the insects beyond recognition, eyes nearly closed, fingers and hands looking like small pumpkins with sticks in them. We were so long in getting through the warping that our provisions gave out and starvation was showing his grinning teeth very forcibly, but fortunately a boat passed us one day; it had no provisions to spare, but the captain informed us there was a camp of woodchoppers about two miles off; we sent out a committee of exploration; they were gone so long that we began to fear they had become lost in the forest, but they finally came in just at dark with several pounds of pork for which they paid two dollars a pound; all now was serene again.

I think the handsomest sight I ever beheld was while we were laboring so hard pulling our little vessel by main force up stream inch by inch. A large full rigged ship with every sail set and bending to the wind hove in sight several miles below us, the water flying in sheets from her prow. She moved along like a giant as she approached us and passed us as a thing of life, loaded with passengers,[250] her captain in full dress pacing the deck giving his orders with all the dignity of an autocrat as he was. She soon passed us and was out of sight in a few moments, leaving us poor devils exerting our muscles to force our little craft inch by inch. Had our safety depended entirely upon my efforts I could not have used them while that magnificent scene was before us: my imagination was, and is to-day, so charmed with its soul inspiring beauty that I was completely overwhelmed with the scene and was unconscious of our condition. It was the most striking because of the great contrast between the conditions of the two vessels.

When we finally arrived at Sacramento that ship was moored to the bank with her sails all furled. I went aboard of her one day to take a good look at her and whom should I run against but Vincent Page of Unadilla, sitting on a stool cleaning up his gun. Through him I learned of R. G. Mead, Charles Smith, Henry Wright and others.[103]

[251]

Sacramento when we landed was a city in name only; there were only two board shanties, one being a store house for dry hides collected for shipment and market, the only business in the country previous to the gold excitement. The plot of land embraced in the city limits was originally owned by that old and now famous settler, Captain Sutter, who had a large ranch under a title from the Mexican Government. His residence was surrounded by a heavy wall for protection against attacks from Indians. In his later life he was unfortunate, with irregular pursuits, and finally lost his estate piecemeal and died in comparative poverty.[104]

Among his professed friends was “Sam” Brannon, a Mormon who managed to get title to the section embraced in the city which numbered in[252] population the following October, when we returned from the diggings, 10,000.[105] Jay Street was built up with imposing two and three story solid blocks for a long distance back from the river; buildings of all descriptions were springing up in all directions. Had our company not been blinded, as were nine-tenths of the men who came into the country, by the gold fever, we might have made our “pile” in three months without seeing the diggings or doing a single stroke of labor. We were among the first to arrive and of course knew of the vast multitude who were on the way.

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Had we invested what little of our capital we had left, with running our credit as far as it would carry us, in real estate, we could have been ready to return home when I did, the following November with all the money necessary for any reasonable company of men, but the argument was that we had started for the diggings where gold could be shoveled up like wheat in the bin. I made an effort with my company to allow me to remain, put up a big cloth house, open a hospital, put out my sign and they go to the mines. I had an interview with Brannon and he advised carrying out the idea by all means, and told me to select my location—that I might have any lot on Jay Street, now the Broadway of the city, for $300, and have six months’ time for payment. I selected two adjoining 25 foot fronts, but I could not prevail upon my company to release me. I was their physician and must be with them. The next October, when we returned for the winter from the mines these lots had been sold for $13,000 each and were occupied by fine three-story buildings.[106]

We arranged to have two of our company, who[254] understood butchering, remain in Sacramento and open a market. Just across the river was a large ranch devoted to raising cattle for their hides. We made a bargain with the owner to sell us cattle as we wanted them to kill at $13 per head and furnish two men to help catch and drive them to the slaughter house. Beef was selling at 75 cents a pound just as fast as it could be cut up. On the morning when we were to start for the mines these two rebelled and thus broke up our arrangements.

After selling what of our outfit we could and throwing away the balance except our trunks, which we stored, we made a bargain with a man from Connecticut whom our captain accidentally met and recognized as formerly a professor in Yale College—his name I cannot recall. He had invested in a pair of oxen and a lumber wagon, and was hauling freight for a living.[107] We paid him one dollar per pound for carrying our kit on to the Middle Fork of the American river, or as near as the team could haul the load. The distance was estimated, I think, as 80 miles from Sacramento.

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The party all had to walk, of course, and camp out at night. Except for being disturbed by the howling of wolves—and a big fire would keep them at a proper distance—camping out in the open air was really a luxury after a hard day’s journey in the hot sun. The air, during the dry season of the year—seven to nine months—is devoid of moisture; the regular northwest trade winds are robbed of all moisture while passing over the snow mountains, where it is condensed and falls as snow; there are no dews, but a delicious coolness calling for a pair of woolen blankets to lie under.

Sacramento City is situated at the junction of the American river with the Sacramento. We stopped there a week and decided to go on to the Middle Fork of the American. The American river is made up of three branches—north, middle and south. To reach the middle fork we had to follow up the main river some 40 miles when we struck the mouth of the south fork on which was located the sawmill built by Mr. Sutter, where the first gold was discovered in the tail raceway.[108] Here we exchanged our ox-team mode of travel for a train of mules.[109]

From Sutter’s mill our route now lay over the steep rocky divide between the South and Middle Forks of the American river with nothing but a mule path to follow. The mountains before us called the Coast Range were from 2,000 to 3,000 feet high, very steep and rocky, covered with several varieties of oak and red cedar; wolves and bear were numerous, and also deer. We encountered no bear, but saw many fresh tracks soon after leaving camp in the morning.

There were numerous flocks of fowl larger than our partridge, the plumage a bluish color and a cockade of feathers curving from the top of the head toward the bird’s bill. From the crest of the mountain at the foot of which the Middle Fork, our destination, came in sight, it seemed impossible for a human being, much less a loaded mule to make the descent, the grade was so nearly perpendicular, but a zig zag or rail fence shaped path led down and we succeeded in traveling it without any mishap. A few days after, happening to look up the mountain, I saw a loaded train of mules coming[257] down; one mule made a misstep, lost his balance and rolled head over heels to the bottom; he must have rolled 80 rods at least. I supposed he was killed of course, but the next morning he was feeding around apparently no worse for the trip.

We arrived at the foot of the mountain about 10 o’clock A.M., and set about putting up our tent and getting dinner. One of the company anxious to see gold stole quietly away with a pan and spoon. He returned within an hour with a half ounce of it. This aroused all; it was the first gold dust we had seen and that dinner was disposed of in short notice. All went down to the water edge, where our companion had found it. It was evidently an old hole worked the year before. As the result of our afternoon’s work we took to camp 12 ounces of gold and a happier company of men could hardly be imagined.

We were two weeks in exhausting the hole. Let me explain what I mean by “hole.” We had located on a large bar known then and afterwards as the Big Bar of the Middle Fork.[110] There were[258] about 30 acres in it lying in a bend of the stream. It had been built up by the water during freshets. Gravel, cobble stones, and boulders comprised the material. The boulders which were in greatest proportion were from the size of an ordinary pumpkin, to that of a 40 gallon cask, of a green color, oblong in shape, worn to as smooth surface as a globe and nearly as heavy as the same quantity of lead would be. Consequently the moving of them was very laborious with no angles to clasp, no crowbars at hand and having from 8 to 10 feet in depth to move before we reached “paying dirt,” the thermometer standing at 118 in the shade from 10 to 3 o’clock. All these things combined will give some idea of the fun of gold digging. There being no statute laws the miners organized a code based upon Judge Lynch. Among these laws were those affecting titles to “claims.” A plot 10 feet wide running back 50 feet toward the mountain constituted a “claim.” A tool, worn out shovel, or other thing, placed there[259] constituted a title; no one thought of disturbing a claim as long as the tool lay there. A claim being worked was the “hole.”

We finally pitched our tent upon a beautiful little plateau formed originally by a land slide. A spring of very cold water was near by. While we were at work in our first hole, a company from Vermont came to the bar and struck in a claim, sank a well hole down to the bed rock and left it. We had to pass by it on our way from our hole and I finally threw an old shovel in. It lay there several weeks undisturbed and when we had exhausted our job, three of our company including myself as the fourth decided to strike into this abandoned hole—here I should say that our company of eight—the others not yet arrived—had divided into three squads. It took us all the forenoon to clear out the hole of the boulders and debris which had been thrown in from the adjoining claims. After dinner we began washing pay dirt. I shoveled, another carried to the water, while a third was working the “rocker.” I laid bare a piece of gold while shoveling the second pailful, about one and one-half inches long and one-half to three-fourths of an inch wide and one-eighth of an inch thick, holding it up and hallooing to the boys if they knew what that was. We did not fool away much time that afternoon and carried home at night 12 ounces of dust worth then $16 per ounce or $192 for the half day’s work—pretty fair wages. But[260] after taking out the offsets the profits were materially reduced. In the first place it took us one-half of our time to get down to “pay dirt,” then it cost us $3 per day to live—nothing was less than one dollar per pound—and the squad I was with made nearly all the money.[111]

That hole lasted our squad through the season. We would take down a bench of the overlying dirt two feet wide, ten feet in length and eight feet deep, down to within a foot of the bed rock where we would strike “pay dirt” and it was rich. We would carry home at night from 20 to 36 ounces of the shining metal. I remember distinctly that for the last two days, we carried home one day 36 ounces and the other 24. There was but one more bench to take down and we swapped it for a horse to pack our combined accumulations down to Sacramento, it being about time for the winter storms, with snow and rain, to set in. A big snow storm was liable to come on and shut us in the mountains for the winter, which, without a good stock of provisions was not a pleasant outlook; besides our partnership expired in October and we must go to Sacramento to settle up and divide. Running through the hole was a smaller hole about the size of an inch augur, literally crammed full of clean pure gold which required no washing, in flakes looking almost precisely like ripe cucumber seeds.[261] We would get from ten to twelve ounces, out of that vein every bench we took down.

Our success was soon heralded down to Sacramento and San Francisco and miners flocked in until we had a village there of several hundred. The foot of the bar was made up almost entirely of the large boulders above described. The bed rock as it showed at the edge of the stream was evidently cup shaped declining back from the water. I proposed that one squad strike in there, but the work requisite was too formidable the others thought. I offered to be one of three to give the company one ounce a day for my time and take my chances, but no one would join me. A company of sturdy Pennsylvania Dutchmen started in there and took out gold in enormous quantities. They worked there four weeks and pulled out for home saying they had all the gold they wanted. You can rest assured I did some scolding as well as laughing at our men. The bed rock shelved back from the stream rapidly making a large receptacle for the heavy metal to drop in.

I worked as hard as anyone, although not obliged to do so according to our contract. I hung my “shingle” outside our tent, had a naval medicine chest of drugs and instruments, and did quite a[262] professional business. One case I shall never forget. A tall, straight, noble looking German came into the tent one day. By motions—he could not speak English—I understood his ears were at fault; on looking in I could seen an obstruction. Making a dish of soap suds and with a glass syringe I took out of each ear a wad of figured calico cloth nearly as large as the end of my thumb. Warmer expressions of delight than those he exhibited I never witnessed. He drew out a bag of gold dust, threw it upon my medicine chest as much as to say “Take what you please, if it is all.” I weighed out two ounces which was as much as my conscience would allow; thirty-two dollars for syringing out a man’s ears seemed enough, but he was not satisfied and asked the entire company to go to a liquor tent close by and take drinks all around which cost him $1 per head or $8 in all. I suppose he had been in the military service in Germany and stuffed his ears in order to get his discharge.

We took turns of a week each as cook. The style of living was quite primeval. The kitchen apparatus consisted of a camp kettle, coffee pot and frying pan; the kettle answered for a boiler, baker and stewer. We freighted in a tierce of pork, dumped it on the ground under an oak tree, covered it with old coffee sacks where it lay until used up, the last portion as sweet as the first. Fresh meat hung up in the shade would not spoil but dry up as hard as our dried beef here. Pork, fresh beef or[263] mutton, flour, corn meal, dried apples and onions were our articles of diet and all a dollar per pound.

We had as light and palatable bread as I ever saw, baked every day. We saved a bit of the dough for lightening the next day’s batch, adding the surplus grease from our fried pork. I committed an error while acting as cook that caused great fun for the boys for a long time after. I thought to surprise them at dinner by getting up an old fashioned boiled Indian pudding such as my mother used to make occasionally at our home in Kortright. I stirred up a measure of corn meal in cold water—that was the error—put in dried apples as fruit, tied it up in a white sheet and got it over the fire in the camp kettle about 11 o’clock while preparing the balance of the dinner and then called the boys. After disposing of what there was on the table they started to leave. I told them to wait as I had a desert; then went out to the fire, brought in my pudding bag anticipating the expressions of delight they would make when the delicious dish was revealed. It did look inviting when I rolled it out on the tin plate, but to my astonishment when I cut down the centre and the two halves rolled apart the inside was as dry as though it had never been wet up.

There was another bar across the stream just below us on which one of our squads proposed to start a hole. How to get across was the first question. A large pitch pine tree stood on the[264] bank on our side, about three feet in diameter. Norton, who was a stout, two fisted Yankee, well accustomed to the axe, said he would cut it to fall across for a foot bridge. He took his axe after dinner and in about an hour he came back to the tent saying he had had enough of that job. I asked, “How so?” He replied that he had done his best and only succeeded in getting out the first chip, the tree being so full of pitch that it cut like lead.

About that time or soon after a company of 40 miners organized to cut a canal across the base of the opposite bar for the purpose of turning the whole channel of the stream and thus laying bare and dry about 100 rods of the original bed. One of the company, a last year’s miner from Oregon, gave it as his opinion that in a deep hole just at the head of the bar, cut out of the bed rock by the water dropping over a fall of several feet, was a large amount of gold. What gave assurance of the truth of the opinion was that at the head of the falls where the water was shallow but swift, scales of gold could be seen in large quantities in the seams and crevises of the bed rock, but the current was so swift that it was impossible to secure them when dug out with a knife.

The proposed canal was about forty rods long. They needed a foot bridge and hired a man to chop down the pine Norton had assailed for eight dollars; he worked all day and gave up the job, but[265] was induced to continue by liberal offers of pay; he worked steadily for a week and with the combined assistance of the company, on the Sunday following succeeded in felling it. As incredible as this may seem it is literally true; the character of the timber and the man having nothing but a single axe for the work make the unreasonableness of the story materially modified even to a skeptic. But what detracts from the romance of the undertaking is the fact that the result was almost a complete failure; they spent the entire season and turned the entire stream very completely; pumped out the deep hole and secured two or three bushel of fish; not an ounce of gold in it. But just at the foot of the hole they found a large mass of gold, the balance of the bed not showing any pay dirt. They were a sorry looking company and had the sympathy of the entire settlement. The water coming from the snow capped mountains, in sight and estimated to be 30 miles away, was very cold, almost ice water, too cold for bathing and well stocked with fish similar to our trout but without speckles.

Sunday was recognized as a day of rest from digging but used as washing day. From 10 A.M. to 3 P.M. was a period of rest in consequence of the extreme heat; the reflection of heat from the high barren rocky mountains was simply terrific; the thermometer ranged daily at 118. A piece of iron left in the sun could not be held in the[266] hand; about 10 the north-west trade wind would start up so that under cover or shade one would be very comfortable while quiet; the nights were deliciously cool requiring a pair of woolen blankets for comfort.[112]

We packed our valuables onto the old gray horse and bidding goodbye to the diggings started for the top of the mountain, which we reached just after dark. We arrived at the Sutter sawmill, now called Coloma, the second day after when we concluded to stop and “divide” up as some of the number wanted to go back into the dry diggings. We reached Sacramento about 9 P.M. When we left there in June the town had no buildings or streets and only a few tents. Now we found in October solid blocks of buildings of two and three stories, more like Broadway, New York, than when we saw it last with streets open and built up in all directions, and a population of 10,000. Could it be possible? Yes! it must be true; like Rip Van Winkle we had been spending our lives as it were in a sleep, and had just been aroused to find the world so completely changed as to make us strangers in it. Such were my feelings that[267] night, and it was days before I could locate old land marks, so as to realize I had ever been in the place before.

It was my intention to open an office and practice my profession at Sacramento, but on looking over the ground I was simply amazed to see the number of doctors’ shingles hanging out. I actually think one would have been safe to call every other man he met doctor; he would get an affirmative answer and in truth I was ashamed to let myself be known as a physician. As a consequence I decided to go to San Francisco and look about.

I have overlooked a matter in its proper order. As previously stated our company organized with a capital of $4,000; when we reached the diggings our funds except the outfit, tools, camp equipage, etc., were exhausted and we owed $1200, of which $100 is still unpaid. We gave a note for that amount in Sacramento, but on our return to the city we were unable to find the owner after making a diligent search. I took passage for San Francisco on the first down trip of the first steamboat[113] that was put on the Sacramento river. It was a flat bottom scow with two small engines, one to each wheel with no deck cabins or other conveniences. At the Bay we were put aboard a sloop for the balance of the trip, the steamer not being safe.

[268]

Arriving at San Francisco I was again astonished at the marvelous change since leaving it four months before. A veritable city of 15,000 inhabitants had sprung up with towering blocks of buildings, many of which would vie with those of that time in Broadway, New York; where there was water were now docks covered with buildings and still being pushed out farther into the bay; a teeming busy throng filled the streets bordering on the water. I found the same state of affairs as to the number of doctors’ signs. I was negotiating to take an interest in a drug store as a practitioner when it was announced through the papers that the stock of provisions was rapidly diminishing and none were known to be on the way. Flour jumped from $50 to $120 per barrel at once and every thing else in the eatable line went up in the same proportion.

The condition was any thing but a pleasant one, I looked the matter over very carefully and finally decided that I could go home and return the next spring for less money than it would cost me to stay there. One of our company, Captain Norton, was intending to take the next steamer for Panama and home and I decided to accompany him. While preparing for the journey we came across the Vermont party whom I have mentioned as abandoning[269] the hole which I afterwards held with an old shovel; they were also returning on the same vessel.

The difference in cost of passage between cabin and steerage from San Francisco to Panama was $100. We clubbed together, and bought some private stores and took steerage tickets. The vessel made but one call on the trip—at Acapulco about half way, where we remained one day and all went ashore. Acapulco is by nature a paradise, a beautiful little harbor, perfectly land locked, the land rising quite rapidly from the white sandy beach, for 40 or 50 rods, then descending on the opposite side through a magnificent grove of orange and other trees down to a beautiful stream of clear sparkling water about twice the size of the Ouleout. Here we all enjoyed the luxury of a swim in the clear water. I cannot remember when I enjoyed a day’s outing as upon that occasion.

During my rambles through the city of Acapulco I came across a pathological curiosity. I have ever regretted loosing its measurements which I took at the time. It was a hydrocephalous child which, judging from its physical developments, was two or three years of age; the face had an infant’s[271] appearance while the cranium or skull was distended to the size I am confident of half a barrel. I took its measure anterior—posteriorly and laterally over the crown, put the paper in my pocket where it disappeared with my clothes mysteriously as I will explain farther on.

We raised anchor and sailed from Acapulco about dark the following evening, and being in a hot climate everybody lay on their blankets out on deck whenever they could. I lay down on the boiler deck about in the centre of the boat, the deck being occupied by sleeping men all around me. Some time in the night I awoke with a feeling of extreme fright, having the impression that the passengers charged me with having committed a crime so heinous that they were about to mob me. Knowing I was innocent of any offence, I lay some minutes endeavoring to convince myself that it was a delusion of my own mind, but the more I cogitated over it the more my fears were aroused, until as a final resort to save myself, I sprang up and jumped down to the main deck, some ten or twelve feet, and hid in the water closet forward of the wheelhouse.

From that time for nine days all is a blank to my mind, although I shall ever retain the impression, which proved incorrect, that I left the closet and on reaching the deck met Henry Wright who was among the passengers and is now living in Walton, a man whom all our older people will[272] remember as having formerly lived here[114] universally respected and recognized as a man of unimpeachable integrity. My reasons for thus speaking in complimentary terms will soon be apparent.

My impression was that I had told Mr. Wright my gold dust bags were in the water closet, and requested him to take care of them. Fortunately for friend Wright and myself the traditional honesty of the sailor was our salvation from an unpleasant situation. My old friend Norton informed me after I had passed the crisis and recovered consciousness, that the morning after my attack, he found me alone in the cabin with a pair of blankets over my shoulders and no other clothing, not even a shirt, on. He asked me what was the matter and I replied “Nothing.” “But where is your clothing?” I replied, “I came aboard without any.” “Where is your money, he asked?” and my reply was “Mr. Wright has it.”

After getting me in bed and calling the ship surgeon, he looked up Mr. Wright, saying, “I suppose you will take good care of his money.” “I have no knowledge of his money,” Mr. Wright answered, “I have not seen it.” Norton said: “Halsey just told me he informed you where it was and asked you to take care of it.” “It is a mistake. I have not seen Halsey and know nothing whatever of his money.”

[273]

During the day the mate of the vessel gave out notice that one of the sailors while in the performance of his duties had found some bags of gold, which the owner could have by proving ownership. Norton, familiar with these bags, was able to obtain them, thus freeing Mr. Wright from the charge I should have entertained—that he had my money—had the sailor been a dishonest man and kept the gold.

The morning of the tenth day from the day of my attack of sickness the steamer cast anchor in Panama bay. The rattle of the chain as the anchor was run out aroused me to consciousness. I can never forget the feelings with which I looked around, bewildered and amazed, unable to account for my condition and surroundings, unable to lift a finger even. I could only appeal to the good angel—Norton—who was standing over me, for an explanation. I was carefully swung into a hammock over the side of the vessel and thence into a small boat and got ashore. Then they placed me upon the sand outside the wall of the city where I lay for an hour or more, until Norton could go into the town and secure a room at the American Hotel. I was there two weeks, hovering between life and death until I secured a physician from New Orleans, who with his family, was on his way to the new Eldorado and was stopping at Panama to recuperate his purse, which had been depleted.

He prescribed 30 grains of quinine to be taken in[274] 10 grain doses at intervals of two hours, thus taking 30 grains in three hours, an amount which no physician at the North would dare to prescribe. It unquestionably saved my life. I was wholly unconscious for the next 24 hours. When the effect wore off my fever was banished but I was as helpless as an infant. His after treatment did not suit me and at the tenth visit I dismissed him, paying for his services $100 with thanks for his good intentions. After a few days I became satisfied that I could not get any strength in Panama, but must get across the Isthmus into a cooler climate. I made a bargain with four natives to put me into a hammock, sling it on a bamboo pole and take me across to Cruces[115] on the Chagres River for twenty dollars.

We started in the morning, but when a mile or two on our way and in a dense forest, the natives laid me down and refused to go further without more pay. Here again I was cared for and protected by my dear friend Norton, except for whose presence and prompt action I should doubtless have been left to the wild beasts, or death from exposure, if not actually murdered. Norton is a large, muscular man, with the courage of a lion, though as gentle and kind in disposition as a[275] lamb when not aroused. He was the owner of a double barrelled shot gun, which he had taken to California and thought so much of that he brought it back. His hair was very long with full uncut beard, which hung down in front to his waist, altogether giving him a leonine appearance not to be trifled with. When they laid me down he drew the cover off his gun, cocked it, deliberately stepped in front of the rascals, with the most savage look imaginable—I can see it now—and with his gun at his shoulder ready to fire, ordered them to pick me up. The cowered fellows sullenly complied and we had no further trouble.

We arrived at Cruces after dark on the second day. I was refused admission to a hotel kept by a Yankee on account of my condition, the proprietor fearing I had a contagious disease, but was allowed to pass the night in an out building on a pile of dry hides. I never passed a better night of sweet sleep, and in the morning walked unaided into the hotel and relished a breakfast of sugar cured ham, soft boiled eggs and coffee, bought a bottle of sherry wine, chartered a dug out and started for Chagres, where I was put aboard a steamer bound for New York.

As soon as we got under way, and struck the north-west trade wind, the effect upon me was like magic. A glass of lemonade could have been no equivalent in relieving thirst to that cool, delicious wind. I sat on deck and took it in with more relish than I ever drank any iced beverage on a sultry day in August. Every breath I took added new life and stimulation to every nerve and muscle like electricity. My appetite became almost uncontrollable. About an hour before the opening of the dining room I would seat myself at the door, the first one to enter and last to leave the table. It was on that vessel I found my relish for the tomato; it had always been a disagreeable article to me, but one day the stewardess brought out a pan of them and put them in one of the small boats which hung at the davits. They looked so inviting that I reached over and took one. I bit into it and a more luscious fruit never passed my lips.

The voyage was a very pleasant and uneventful one. We stopped at Kingston on the Island of Jamaica[277] for one day. I went on shore and while sitting in a hotel a native seeing me very shabbily dressed—and by the way my clothing aboard the vessel coming down the Pacific was never found; I suppose I must have thrown it overboard after taking out my gold dust[116] and placed it where the sailor found it, other passengers had contributing to cover my nakedness—approached and asked me if I did not wish to buy some clothing. That being my object in going ashore I replied in the affirmative. He offered to take me to a shop and without thinking I started, not even saying a word to Norton who was sitting near by. The man led me into several streets and finally through a narrow alley into another street where the shop was situated.

When he entered that alley the thought struck me, suddenly, that he had evil intentions. Owing to the fact that Kingston was renowned for the disorders committed by its villainous population,[117] I felt that I was in a dangerous predicament. But it would not do to show fear. My only resort was to put on a bold, unconcerned appearance, keeping my eyes open. The alley being narrow I dropped[278] behind him and kept behind the rest of the way. I selected my suit and fortunately had loose change enough to pay the bill, but no other money in sight.

I think this delayed him in his plan. Soon after we started back he asked me if I was intending to remain ashore that night. I promptly answered that I expected to do so. He then said he would be around at bed time and see that I had a good room. He urged me not to go to bed until he came, which I promised, but before dark I went aboard the vessel, believing I had escaped harm once more.

We reached New York on Christmas morning. It was the coldest day I ever experienced. I have no recollection of the temperature of the thermometer, but having come direct from the torrid climate into the frigid the contrast was fearful. I stopped at the United States Hotel, still standing in Fulton Street. Here came my first experience in sleeping in a feather bed since leaving home in February previous. Sleep I could not, but rolled from one side to the other in misery—such is the power of habit—and finally got out on the floor with a single[279] covering and there slept like a log the balance of the night.

Reaching my home in Connecticut the next day, I was received as one from the dead. Friends had had no word from me since my first arrival at Panama. From California not one letter had yet reached them.

Thus ends a brief recital of my adventurous gold seeking trip to California. Here I must refer again to the great obligations I shall ever rest under to my old friend Capt. Norton. May his days be as long and happy as, were it in my power, I would make them, with the full consciousness that when he goes to his last home, the verdict will be: There was a faithful friend and an honest man. The world in more ways than I have personally known, has been the better for his having been an actor in life’s great drama. God bless him.

Physically a wreck and in no condition for business, I made a visit soon after my return to this beautiful village for recuperation and pleasure among old friends. Meeting with a most cordial greeting and many requests to again become a resident, and having nothing in Connecticut to hold me—I had sold my property there before going to California—; moreover, as is universally the case with those who have spent the whole or a part of life in Unadilla[118] I still held a high appreciation[280] of it and so was pleased again to become a resident, being in this appreciation no exception to the familiar rule.

[281]

Before returning to Connecticut I bought the old Martin Brook corner property[119] of Col. A. D. Williams. This was in the spring of 1850. The property then embraced what is now the Joyce furniture store and White store lots. As an evidence of the growth of the village and the advance in the value of real estate, let me say I paid Col. Williams $800 for the property, built the office, the same year, and the barn the next. The railroad project was started a few years later and real estate began to boom. I sold the White store lot for $600 and the balance for $3500. The furniture store lot was afterwards sold off and last summer (1889) I re-purchased the balance for more than three times what I had paid Col. Williams for the whole original tract. It is now the most eligible site for a business block, and will undoubtedly be so occupied in the future.

When I had again become a resident in 1850, I had and have always since had no disposition to change until the final change—the common lot of all, which I am ready to accept at any time.

During the war of the rebellion and just after the battle of Antietam[120] I was impelled by sympathy[282] for the poor sufferers from that terrible fight to go down to Washington in company with Dr. Joshua J. Sweet and tender my services, gratis. Judge Turner, of Cooperstown, was then acting as Assistant Secretary of war. He procured an order and forwarded us to Frederick, Maryland, for duty in the barracks hospital at that place. I spent two weeks in charge of a ward where were twenty or more poor fellows suffering every imaginable form of wounds. I saw in that time all the horrors of war that I cared to see.[121]

[283]

[Dr. Halsey was asked to write a chapter giving his experience in the hospitals at Frederick. He could not be induced to do so. The entire war topic was repugnant to him. “I always feel,” he said in 1890, “like using an oath whenever the subject is brought up.” He never could believe that real necessity for the war was compatible with public intelligence. He felt fortified in this view by[284] the success with which he had seen slavery peacefully abolished elsewhere in the world. England had abolished it in her own colonies long before our Civil War and without loss of blood. In Russia millions of slaves were freed without war and the same result had been achieved without domestic conflict in Brazil. One of these countries was ruled by an autocrat and two of the three comprise in part scarcely more than semi-civilized people and[285] yet they effected great economic revolutions by means entirely peaceful.

Nor could he forget that slavery in the northern States had been abolished without war. He knew that this was not due to higher moral sense on the part of the northern people, but to causes purely economic. Slavery in the North did not pay and hence it was abolished. He believed this would ultimately have been the result in the South, a view which the tremendous changes wrought in agricultural labor by machinery since the war has steadily tended to confirm in many thoughtful minds.

When the war afterwards became a war to save the Union, and the Emancipation Proclamation had eliminated slavery from the issue, he knew how entirely the situation and the motives for the war had changed; but never to his last day did he fail to regard the war, in its immediate origin, as a public iniquity in which extremists at the North and South alike had dyed their hands in innocent blood. He knew that secession sentiments were not exclusively the property of South Carolina and Mississippi and that Abolitionists at the North, who have since been held in great honor and almost made national heroes, openly advocated it, long before the Southern leaders fled to it as a desperate resort.[122]]

[286]

In 1865 I became interested with a partner in the first drug store[123] opened in the village, which finally came into my hands alone and made necessary my withdrawing from the active practice of my profession. Failing health at last compelled me to dispose of the drug store in the spring of 1888.

Thus briefly have I reviewed my personal history in the past half century. Notwithstanding its length it has occupied much more time than I expected when starting it. Yet, had I included all points of any special interest as they passed my mind’s eye in panoramic order, perhaps I could have occupied a far larger space. The urgent wish of my children was the first inducement. The pleasure derived from thus reviewing my life in leisure moments has been the fullest compensation. If[287] readers have been in any like proportion gratified, this truly has been an additional as well as unexpected pleasure.

I cannot refrain from attempting as a final addendum a look into the probable and possible developments of the next fifty years. While I am neither a prophet nor a son of a prophet, yet in view of what the past fifty years have brought out in utilizing and subjecting the primary elements to the practical benefit of mankind, I have no hesitation in placing myself on record as anticipating as great or greater achievements in the same direction. Who would have called a man sane fifty years ago that should have sincerely said we would ever talk with another living thousands of miles away? or that one’s voice could be stirred up and again given to another’s auditory sense years after?

In view of this and other equally incredible developments, how long before the air will be as safely navigable as the earth or water? It is but a question of time when principles of economy will secure us against extravagant waste of fuel. The earth is fast being gridironed with railroads driven by the consumption of coal, but only a small per cent of the heat evolved is utilized. The other ninety per cent or so is complete waste. Geology says coal will eventually be exhausted and wood is already practically destroyed as fuel.

The child is now living who will see heating,[288] lighting, washing, cooking, etc., done at central points, and supplies distributed wherever needed. He will also see the fact recognized and generally adopted that Omniscience in creating and developing our wonderful Universe had some loftier, more ennobling object in view than to allow the few to enslave the masses simply for power and gain. God speed the time when the old saying of Robert Burns, “man’s inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn” will cease to be true.

[This diary was brought to light not long after the foregoing Reminiscences had appeared in “The Unadilla Times.” Dr. Halsey was urged to include it in the proposed pamphlet, but made no definite reply to the suggestion. It obviously did not occur to him that it would be interesting to others than himself—not even to members of his own family. I do not remember having ever seen it before, or been informed by him of its existence. Written as it was amid the scenes described, the propriety of including it here seems clear. Although he used a pencil, and more than fifty years have passed, the words are still as distinct and legible as when he set them down.]

Feb. 12, ’49; left Plainville; stormy; staid at New Haven till 16th one o’clock P.M.; arrived in New York 7 P.M.

Left New York Friday 23, at 9 o’clock and 20 minutes; all sea sick before night. Saturday 24th, table vacant pretty much. Good appetites are few. Wind commenced to blow up from the north-east Saturday night and continued with rain till[290] Sunday 25th at 2 o’clock P.M., when it changed into the south-east and continued a perfect gale Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday till 9 A.M., when it went into the north-east, or rather when we struck the trade winds blowing from the north-east.

We are now, Thursday P.M. 1st March tripping it towards Chagres at the rate of 10 knots an hour.

Friday 2nd. A beautiful day and going at a nice rate; warm and balmy.

Saturday 3d. A beautiful day; we this day crossed the tropic and every man has his coat off; sun comes down hot.

Tuesday 4th. Made land this morning 6 o’clock, the Caicos Islands on our right and Turks Island on our left; a beautiful day, thermometer at 10 o’clock stood at summer heat; shirt sleeves and summer vests are out in profusion; had divine service on board to-day by a lay brother (Mr. Appleton) of New York, an aged man who with two sons and two nephews are going to California after fortunes. Had occasion to prescribe for two cases to-day on board.

Monday 5th. Another fine day; we made the passage to-day between the Islands of Hayti and Cuba; we were not near enough to either to see how they looked except that there was very high land on both. The inauguration of President Taylor was observed by cracking a few bottles of[291] champagne furnished us by the generosity of the house of Livingston and Wells of New York. It is getting very hot for us northerners.

Wednesday 7th. Another fine day and fine run. We shall make Chagres Friday if everything continues favorable.

Thursday 8th. Another fine day and we have made a fine run. Nothing of consequence has occurred to-day except an eclipse of the moon this evening. To-morrow we expect to see Chagres, being at 4 o’clock to-day but 130 miles off.

Friday 9th. Made Porto Bello this morning and from there to Chagres is thirty miles; the scenery was magnificent. Arrived off Chagres about noon where we anchored and lay till Saturday noon; had fine sport fishing.

Saturday 10th. Towed into harbor this morning by the “Orus.” Left Chagres 2 P.M. in the “Orus” which took us 15 miles up the river and then we took canoes. The scenery up the river is beyond northern conception in point of beauty. The land must be capable of producing unlimitedly.

Sunday 11th. Arrived at Gorgona and pitched our tent. The river is literally crammed with nice fish, but cannot be caught with a hook; am not so favorably impressed with the natives here as at Chagres; they are fast learning dishonesty from the Americans. They all smoke, women and all; I observed one woman smoking with the lit end in her mouth.

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Monday 12th. Nothing of note to mention except that we drew our seine and caught a few noble fish; but there are too many snags to fish safely. Gambling is carried on here by some Americans and several fools have lost all their money and returned home. Very hot, thermometer ranging about 100.

Tuesday 13th. Five of our company went on to-day with the most of our baggage and the rest of us go when we get ready. Freight is from 6 to 10 dollars per 100 lbs. as you make your bargain.

Saturday 17th. Left Gorgona for Panama. Walked to the half way house and put up,—the distance called from 12 to 15 miles.

Sunday 18th. Started about 4 o’clock and reached Panama about 12; fell in on the way with a company who had a dog, and about two miles from the city it was taken rabid, but the owner would not consent to have it shot till it had treed us all. The city is a very ancient looking place, the buildings being constructed of stone, the old Spanish style with tiled roofs and surrounded by a wall of great strength, but time is crumbling it in many places. The inhabitants are a mixture of blacks, Indians and Spaniards—an ignorant inoffensive people, all Catholics; the cathedral was a splendid building in its day. All people smoke.

May 17th. Left Panama in a bunjo for the Panama steamer lying in the bay and with no little satisfaction—such in fact as no one but who[293] has been imprisoned nine weeks in the same place can appreciate. We raised anchor about 12 P.M. and started for Francisco.

Friday 18th. We are on our way, all a jolly looking set of fellows. The news received from California and our being set free from a tedious imprisonment have put a happy look upon all. Saw a whale spouting this morning before getting out of the bay and also sharks.

Monday 21st. Nothing of note since last date. Pierce was taken sick today.

Tuesday 22d. P. is quite sick to-day, but hope he will not be long. We are getting along fine. We were followed to-day by a school of black fish and they attracted great notice jumping out of the water. They followed us several miles.

Wednesday 23d. P. is about the same. I fear he will be hard sick.

Thursday 24th. Nothing of note. We are on our way finely, having so far beautiful weather. P. is no better; a hard place to be sick in; no attention being paid to either sick or well.

Friday 25th. Many a sick person would give a fortune to be insured as delightful weather for a sea voyage. P. is about the same, his fever not quite as high as it has been.

Saturday 26th. We last night came very near being lost in the breakers. Our “look out” fell asleep and the first we knew we were aroused by the noise of the breakers, they being not more than[294] one and a half miles off and we going 9 or 10 knots. The captain says there is a serious mistake in the survey of the coast along here as laid down on the chart, for at noon yesterday on taking his observation and looking at his chart, it made us to be 25 miles farther from land than we were which, with the heedless “look out” came very near being our death. We spoke a little schooner this morning bound for California in distress. She was 64 days out from Panama and had lost four men from thirst and 4 others with their small boat who went ashore for water and did not return—for what reason they know not and they already had the scurvy aboard. We supplied them with water and getting three hearty cheers for it we parted. Poor fellows, I fear they will never reach their destination. A fellow of the name of McGruder, who came with us from New York on the “Abrasia” went aboard of her as mate and was one of the four who went ashore and did not return.

Sunday 27th. We are passing the mouth of the Gulf of California to-day and there is a great change in the weather. P. is improving slowly.

Monday 28th. We this morning about 5 o’clock made Cape St. Lucas and of course got the first sight of California, showing a range of very high mountains. I began to feel as if I was going to California sure. May my Julia feel as well and happy to-day as I do. God protect her while I am[295] absent. P. is doing well. A good many of the passengers have their overcoats on—a very unusual sight for the past four months.

Tuesday 29th. Nothing of note has occurred to-day. We saw a sail, but so far off as not to distinguish. More overcoats are in good demand. The weather is very cool. P. is about well. We had a very fine view of a whale to-day, being quite near and showing 30 or 40 feet of his length. He threw the water fine.

Wednesday 30th. This is the day fixed upon for the United States and Mexican governments to meet at San Diego to commence running the boundary line. We have the United States Commissioner (Col. Weller[124]) and suite aboard; we shall not reach San Diego before day after to-morrow (Friday) which of course breaks the treaty, the consequences of which we shall see. We have had strong head winds all the way from Panama and for the last 24 hours almost a gale because of which we have not made very fast time. We had another fine view of a whale to-day, being in the midst of[296] a school of them spouting in every direction and our course right along side one, within I should think 50 feet of the vessel. It was a grand sight when he came to the surface throwing the cloud of spray and showing 40 or 50 feet of his length.

Thursday 31st. We are plodding along and shall probably reach San Diego to-morrow. Saw plenty of whale to-day. Had the laugh on 4 or 5 of the passengers who were in the habit of hooking from the galley. The cook baked a pie containing tartar emetic. They stole it and of course had occasion to cast up their accounts.

Friday, June 1st. We made San Diego today before it was noon and landed Colonel Weller and party, during which stay one of our crew ran away. We left about 2 P.M. again and hope to reach Francisco Sunday night.

Saturday 2nd. We found this morning that we were short of coal, but after looking about discovered several tons which we knew nothing of—a culpable neglect of the chief engineer, I should think. With prudence and using spars and other loose stuff about the vessel we hope to reach Francisco. We have had strong head winds to-day and made Point Conception about 2 o’clock, where it always blows a gale, but we weathered it. The coast about the Point presents a beautiful prospect of table land and high mountains in the rear. There is but little vegetation—no trees except occasionally[297] a cluster with patches of grass. The plains are covered with herds of wild cattle.

Sunday 3d. We have had to give up our berths to make fuel for the engine. With the aid of them we hope to reach Francisco by 2 o’clock to-night. We have seen any quantity of whale to-day.

Monday 4th. We arrived at Francisco about 6 this morning after burning every thing loose about the vessel. The bay is a splendid one and the entrance puts me in mind of New York. The tide was going out and there was a terrible commotion of the water. The town is a small place yet but alive with persons. We are not discouraged about “the diggings” from what we hear. This is the windiest place I ever saw—worse than Unadilla Centre. We pitched our tents and remained here until Saturday 9th, when we left for the diggings intending to remain at Sacramento City a few days. We left Francisco about 5 o’clock and sailed up the bay about 30 miles and cast anchor for the night. For what reason I know not, but on endeavoring to raise the anchor on Sunday 10th morning, we could not do it and were obliged to cut the chain and go on.

Monday 11th. We had a dead calm to-day and only made five miles.

Tuesday 12th. We passed a very uncomfortable night last night. It rained all night and we all were wet through and, to add to our discomfort, the calm has continued all day and our provisions are[298] getting low. “I’m going to Sacramento with my banjo on my knee.” I can realize that song now.

Wednesday 13th. The calm still continues and we have been trying to warp up, but haven’t made but a mile or two. I know not what we shall do, for starvation is staring us in the face. Hurrah! our agent went ashore this morning and walked to a small ranch and bought a small piece, 2 or 3 pounds; gave two dollars for it which will prevent our starving a day or two longer. What makes our situation more horrible are the clouds of mosquitoes. I never saw mosquitoes before so large and you cannot get away from them; every man’s face and hands look like puff balls.

Thursday 14th. The wind has served us very well to-day—at least until about three P.M., when we came into a bend in the river, when it was ahead and we had to warp again. But just before we had got through the bend the wind caught us and away we went down stream, losing all we had gained and brought up at a tree on the opposite side of the river where we tied up for the night and I went ashore with my blankets and slept under a splendid oak tree—the first good night’s rest I have had on the trip.

Friday 15th. By warping this morning a short distance we succeeded in getting the wind in our favor and we finally have reached our destination, Sacramento City, composed of two framed buildings and some 200 cloth ones and tents. The news[299] we get here is as good as I looked for, but all of our baggage is a dead weight pretty much, as it will cost us more to get it to the mines (50 dollars a hundred) than it is worth and they ask 4 dollars a barrel per month for storing. We shall sell what we can and leave the rest.

Tuesday 19th. Five of us started to-day for the Middle Fork of the American river the balance remaining at Sacramento City. We travelled four miles and camped for the night under a splendid oak tree and we were well serenaded by a pack of prairie wolves.

Wednesday 20th. We have had a day’s walk in a broiling sun through an oak opening as level as a floor and have travelled 20 miles where there is no water. We met a man who showed us a lump of gold weighing 49 ounces, taken out a few days since. We have 25 miles to make to-morrow to reach Sutter’s Mill, and I dread it for my feet are both blistered.

Thursday 21st. We have only made 15 miles to-day over a hilly road and have had fine sport shooting game along the road. The country is full of wild animals, particularly wolves. We saw four this morning within 40 rods of each other. I suppose they were after a deer which was near them.

Friday 22d. We reached Sutter’s Mill (Coloma) about one o’clock to-day and found it like the other towns, a lively place of cloth houses and the hottest place I ever saw. I think the thermometer[300] stands to-day 130° in the shade. I thought Panama was hot but this is ahead of it. We were disturbed last night between 11 and 12 by a person we took to be an Indian and we thought best to keep watch the balance of the night, each one to take his turn for an hour, but we had no further trouble.

Saturday 23d. We have been out to try our washer to-day and have washed out about 8 dollars—very good for raw hands, I think.

Monday 25th. We have been out to-day again and had better luck, having got 34 pwts. and 3 grains.

Thursday 26th. Started for the Middle Fork and arrived on

Thursday 28th; nothing occurring on the road worthy of note. One of our company went out with his pan and was gone about three hours and brought back 9 pwts. 11 grains of gold. I thought I had seen a wild, desolate region before, but it was a mistake. Here we are hemmed in by towering mountains, the thermometer from 100° upwards and snow in sight.

Friday 29th. We have been at work to-day, at least three of us, and have done very well; made 7 ounces, 8 pwts. and 18 grains. There is gold enough here but it requires very hard labor to get it.

Saturday 30th. We have done well indeed to-day,[301] having dug, three of us, 11 ozs. 16 pwts. and 18 grains.

October 26th. We left the mines about the 1st of October and I made my way down to San Francisco where it was my intention of wintering, but there are more of my profession than patients and I shall make my way home as fast as possible.

Thursday 1st November. We left San Francisco to-day at 1 o’clock P.M. and made the port of Monterey the following day about 1 P.M. from which port we sailed about 4 P.M. and have had a rain storm since and it still (Saturday 3rd) continues to rain.

Sunday 4th. The rain ceased about 10 last evening when it cleared away and the wind changed into the north-west. We spread our sails and we are now speeding away by the united aid of wind and steam, but with nothing to relieve the aggravating ennui of a sea voyage except the western coast of California and Mexico which being a dreary, barren waste, gives but little relief. However, the cheering thought that I am on my way and with good fortune shall soon find dear friends and more than these my own Julia, makes my heart leap for joy. God speed the vessel.

Monday 5th. We made the port of San Diego last evening where we had to take in a new supply of coal which detained us till this evening. Our next port is Mazatlan.

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Tuesday 6th. Nothing of note except fine weather and we are getting into a warmer climate.

Wednesday 7th. I have had to witness a scene to-day which I hope never to be obliged to see again—a burial at sea. The earthly remains of an only son, the pride of doting parents in New York, were committed to the mighty deep—a horrible sight to me. God grant that I may be allowed to get back to mother earth when I die, let that be where it will, among friends or foe; I care but little; but give me a tenement in the bosom of earth.

Saturday 13th. We made the port of Mazatlan[125] about 10 A.M. where passengers were to be allowed to go ashore and some had left in the small boats when a British naval officer came aboard and brought the news of the cholera being ashore and of course we were not permitted to leave.

Sunday 11th. We made the port of San Blas about 10 A.M. but did not remain long.

[Here the diary abruptly ends. Three day’s later the ship must have reached Acapulco, on leaving which point Dr. Halsey became dangerously ill of fever and for nine days was unconscious, as described by him in a previous chapter. During the remainder of the voyage home he was never able[303] to complete these notes of his trip. When again he took up the unfinished task, more than forty years had passed over his head and when he finally completed it he had reached almost the end of his allotted days.]

After the attack of Chagres fever Dr. Halsey continued through life a man in robust health. The only subsequent illness he ever had was the last. He wrote as follows in a letter of January, 1886:

“Three years more bring me to seventy years of age. I have good reason for feeling that I may not reach that period, and as time develops the truth of my views I can dispose of my affairs to better advantage than executors could. I am perfectly aware that my right kidney is affected with disease. I have been conscious of it for two years and have kept it measurably in abeyance, but it is gradually making progress. I have lost flesh within that time in very marked degree. I weigh less than 180, whereas I have been up to 212.

“I tell you this, not to alarm you, as it is only to be looked for as a final result some time in the future, though serious enough to warn me to put my house in order. I can keep the disease under control for some time probably, and as long as I can do so, prefer to remain in business. I have no fears of death or the future. With my children all fitted for life and well situated, my life work is finished[304] and I am ready to yield to the universal demand of nature. I feel that I have lived not wholly in vain; that the world in some small degree may have been benefited. Although conscious that I have not filled the full measure of what might have been, want of training and guidance after I was left an orphan, is in a measure to be charged with the shortcomings. I am thus frank with my boys.”

After the last chapter of his Reminiscences had appeared in “The Unadilla Times” his health failed alarmingly. He wrote on Jan. 17, 1891: “I have lost ground in a quite marked way during the last week including the sense of feeling in my right foot. A little exertion exhausts me. To the Post Office and back is about all I can do. I feel that my worldly career is nearly ended, though I hope to see the Spring.” Three days later he wrote in what is probably his last letter: “If I lose ground as fast as I have lost it in the past two weeks, my stay here is short. I have my own affairs arranged in as good shape as possible, [he had made his will between the writing of these letters and had written out his wishes in regard to the funeral] and am ready to submit to the inevitable at any time.”

A few days before the end came, he was heard to say: “I am content enough, and yet I could have wished to visit Fred”—a reference to his son Frederick A. Halsey, detained at his home in Sherbrooke, Canada, by illness in his own family. His esteemed friend of many years, Dr. Paris Garner[305] Clark, was now in constant attendance, visiting him each day and several times was called in the late hours of the night. During the last week he lost ground with unexpected rapidity, but on Sunday, February 15th, was able to sit up and dictate some final instructions as to his Reminiscences.

The end came on Tuesday the 17th. After a night of peaceful sleep, in the early forenoon of a beautiful winter’s day, the sky blue and cloudless, the earth white with snow, he passed away as if in a sleep. Among his final words were these: “I am going, going; but we have had a happy life. God bless you all.”

The approach of dissolution, which he had noted with professional discernment from week to week and day to day was thus accepted in the spirit in which he had performed the duties of life—without fear and with a manly heart.

That serene ending has often reminded me, as indeed his whole life reminds me, seen now from afar, of some lines by Walter Savage Land or to whom, in temperament and character, he had one or two points of close resemblance:

The burial services were held at the family residence on the afternoon of Thursday, February 19th, when the Rev. Dr. R. N. Parke read the[306] twelfth chapter of Ecclesiastes and prayers for the family and others present. Judge Gaius L. Halsey of Wilkes-Barre, Pa., a nephew and namesake of whom he was very fond, delivered an address. The day was cold, clear and still, sun and snow filling the world with light. Because of ice on the sidewalks, the procession passed up the centre of the street—a line that reached from the doorway of his home to the old churchyard path. When the mound had been raised up, evergreen boughs were made to cover it. On the following morning the ground was wrapped in a light covering of newly fallen snow from which rose up the large mound, the evergreens concealed beneath the mantle of white.

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