USA > New York > Livingston County > Nunda > Centennial history of the town of Nunda : with a preliminary recital of the winning of western New York, from the fort builders age to the last conquest by our Revolutionary forefathers > Part 1
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67
Gc 974.702 N92h 1753003
REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
3 1833 01150 3320
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015
https://archive.org/details/centennialhistor00hand
1808 - 1908
CENTENNIAL HISTORY
OF THE
TOWN OF NUNDA
NY. 1808-1908
WITH A PRELIMINARY RECITAL OF THE WINNING OF WESTERN NEW YORK, FROM THE FORT BUILDERS AGE TO THE LAST CONQUEST BY OUR REVOLUTIONARY FOREFATHERS
EDITED BY H. WELLS HAND
PUBLISHED BY ROCHESTER HERALD PRESS 563 1908
1
. 1753003
F 851513.38
THE BOOK
"'Tis pleasant sure, to see one's name in print, A book's a book, although there's nothing in it." Byron.
"They have been at a great feast and stolen the scraps." Shakespeare.
"In this pudding is not one thing alone, but one thing with other things together."
Lord Lytletou.
"It is a regular omnibus, there is something in it to everybody's taste; those who like fat can have it, so can they that like lean, as well as those who prefer sugar, and those who choose pepper."
Shirley.
" 'My book' is a cupboard of mixed frugal fare, Its substantials are 'well done,' its dainties 'are rare,'
'Over done' is the beef, though 'seasoned' with care, Of the last century's venison. I bid you beware, While the Indian meal is the moderns' choice fare, Though the smoke of the wigwam lingers still in the air,
There's pepper and sugar, and ginger and suet, Help yourself -- chew the 'dates'-it's all yours -- just go thru it."
The Keshequa Bard-after Shirley.
--
AUTHOR'S TEN COMMANDMENTS TO HIMSELF
AND
COMMENTARY FOR OTHERS
I. Be intensely interested in your subject matter ; let persons and places reflect the interest of the writer.
II. Investigate, get to the bottom facts; remember your investigations will save thousands of others personal research.
III. Persevere ; the persistent plodder alone succeeds ; miracles are wrought by perseverance.
IV. Be human,-have a sense of humor. Man is the only animal that smiles ; the Pioneers had a rich fund of humor, and transmitted it through inheritance to their offspring. Young readers also crave it, wit wins with them when wisdom wearies.
1
V. Give, when possible, personal knowledge of localities and events; it adds something new from personal testimony, and is, at least, orig- inal. Even fish stories lose half their fishiness if the fisherman him- self tells them. This application is not specific: there are others.
VI. Familiarize yourself with what has already been written, and, like a soldier, "appropriate" every "scrap" and turn it into edible "scrap- ple."
VII. See the beauty in every scene, the good in every life; then lend the public your spectacles that they may see what you see.
VIII. Avoid pessimism and slander : leave each skeleton in its closet, years of retirement have not improved its aroma ; leave out the bad when possible; just assume that our forebears were as "bearish" as their posterity, (don't say descendants, it implies too much). Hunger and toothache bring back the original savage. At our worst "we are all poor critters." At our best-well, we live in paradise-i. e., Nunda.
IX. Be intensely in earnest when dealing with life's realities. Death is as real as birth ; pathos as essential as humor. "Oakwood" is more densely populated than the village or town we live in.
X. Don't fear the critics; criticism, not commendation, is their stunt. Banish fear, for the common man who writes Is brother hero to the man who fights,
Neither are seeking wealth, fame or renown For good of others shall their acts redound, Then banish fear of blame, or critics frown, Who does his best merits the victor's crown.
On these ten precepts (prescribed for myself) hang all the hopes of suc- cess of the amateur writer and
Local Historian.
3
yours Truly Mille Yand At 40.
4
DEDICATION
I dedicate to my mother, Anna Minerva Hand, on whose centennial birthday, October 5, 1905, I com- menced to write this humble record of the lives and the environment of the Pioneers of Nunda, of its
Heroes of Five Wars, of
its Scholars and
Teachers, of Churches
and their Clergymen,
of its Merchants, Mechan-
ics and Manufacturers, of its Editors, Authors, Poets and Artists, of its Pro-
fessional Men, "Civil List" and self-made men. This hour glass of a century's fleeting sands, Will tell the wondrous tale this modern age demands.
5
PREFACE TO
"CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF NUNDA"
I.
Work of my hand, my heart, my brain, Child of my inner life, I live in thee ; if not, how vain The years of study, struggle, pain.
And e'en the few that yet remain Seem menaced by suspended knife.
Or Death, with whom I wage unequal strife.
:
II.
Friends of my youth, old friends I knew In Keshequa's delightful vale! I dedicate these years to you And bid posterity renew
The plaudits that belong to you, As men of thought, deed, purpose true ;
I trace the record from primeval trail,
And lend my heart and eyes, lest yours forgetting fail.
III.
Pioneers, scholars, heroes, self-made men, Relive your lives in this historic tale, In "Grand Review" I marshal you again In living picture, sketched with loving pen, Show to your progeny, a NOBLE RACE OF MEN; And unless hand, brain, loving heart shall fail, I'll blaze a path to fame, as your enduring trail.
H. W. H.
ó
- --
INDEBTEDNESS
1
I N seeking for information concerning the pioneers of an early day, those who were of the "second generation of pioneers," all elderly people, have been my chief source of information. "I cannot begin to name all, but must mention a few out of the many I have interviewed. Mrs. Mercy J. Bowhall, born in Nunda in 1825. has remembered most; Mr. Porter Warren has been here longest, since 1819; Mrs. Mary Barrett Barron, our oldest citi- zen, now 94, who settled in 1834; Mr. Munson Barker, aged 85, born in Nunda ; Mrs. Adeline Barker; Mrs. Minerva Rathbun and Mrs. Matilda Sherwood Russell, both born in 1826; Mr. Peter Townsend, born in Nunda in 1827; Mr. Leonard Jackson, who came from Portage to Nunda in 1831; Mrs. Nancy White Passage, born in 1820; the late John Fitch of Oakland; the late Mrs. Mary Wheeler Clark, (aged go) ; the late Rev. James R. Bowen and his sister, Mrs. Justus Barker ; Mrs. Rufus Robinson, (aged 88) ; Mr. Monroe Myers ; Mrs. Elizabeth Cree. who has lived 70 years in Nunda village; Mr. Robert R. Wright, Miss Electa Day and Mr. John Kelley of Dalton ; Mr. J. Monroe Cole, (aged 84) ; Mr. Milton Hills, Miss Sarah Pettit, Mrs. E. O. Dickinson, the late Rachel Bennett, Charles Parmalee, the late Yates Bennett, Mrs. Martha Lake Johnson, Mr. George Ditto of Iowa. Others have furnished sketches and will be credited with them. To all these I am exceedingly grateful for helping me to do what I regarded as a duty, to try to keep the pioneers who made us the recipients of their achievements, in grateful remembrance for their unnum- bered benefactions to this age.
THE AUTHOR.
Sluiter
7
:
Hostesio, Revulisa tomahank King ofilundão
8
BOOK I DEPARTMENT I
INDIANOLOGY
OUR RED PREDECESSORS AND THEIR ALLIES
THE STORY OF THE WINNING OF WESTERN NEW YORK
Lament of Revolutionary Soldier-
"The graves that our children gave us Grudged us our renown."
A Pioneer's Appeal-
"Go and when ye find a heart reflective Where the thrill of kinship shall not fail Of the lives we lived within your borders Tell thou the homely tale."
An Indian's Appeal- "Glad were your fathers to sit down on the threshold of our Long House. Have we no place in your history?" Dr. Peter Wilson-A Cayuga Chief.
INTRODUCTORY TO DEPARTMENT I
W ERE a text. or several of them, as essential in a history as in a ser- mon. the excerpts selected would justify any departure or digres- sion from the strict limits of this story of the past century.
OUR UNPAID DEBT OF GRATITUDE
We have an inheritance of priceless value, the title deed, written with the blood of patriots. while the graves of those who also lived within our borders fail to tell of their heroism. They gave us a country, and freedom, and the priceless boon of Liberty. We have a part in the ingratitude and neglect shown by their children. We, who claim to love heroism, leave these graves of the benefactors of our nation and ourselves unsought, unhonored. unnamed, and hence unknown.
9
!
: 1 1
! 1
---
-
OUR LACK OF VENERATION
The tale of struggle of the individual pioneer, the products of whose toil we yearly enjoy in the harvests gathered from the fields they created out of forests, but we owe them their personality, an abiding name, attached to the farm they hewed out, the highway they opened, the store or shop they built, or the position they filled, the type of life. of nobility, of worthy citizenship they exemplified and transmitted as best they could to the next and future generations, this needs to be retold to this irreverent age-as food for appre- ciation.
OUR FIRST AMERICANS
The appeal of the only Americans not of foreign ancestry comes to us across the centuries, like a message from a far away realm, "Have we no place in your history? You who were weak when we were powerful. We who re- ceived you as neighbors and friends, when we could have crushed you. You whose ways we knew not; we who let you sit on our doorstep, and you crowded us from our Long House; you who call so proudly our Ga-nun-no your Great Empire State ; have we no claim to remembrance, no part in your story of the past, no place in your history? You tell of your heroes ; had we no heroism? You praise your statesmen ; had we no men great in council? Have your orators left no space on their platform for the Logans and Red Jackets whose eloquence was unquestioned? Who followed the trails that for centuries had been trodden only by the red men. Do none of these trails, now your great highways of commerce, lead back to the villages of the Iroquois, to the Lords of the forests and the plains, to the predecessors of the pioneers?"
INTRODUCTION
Successive centuries of the past
Could tell of wars in old Nunda, .
Since the Fort-Builders held full sway, Conquerors at first. then swept away
By tribe more fierce, no tribe could last But half a century in Nunda.
Till sprang a race from hills away, Ere great Columbus sought our shore, Three centuries, held full sway. or more, And left their honored name for aye, Our blood bought realm, renowned Nunda.
These rhymes suggest the dilemma that besets the local historian. He deals with a locality with a pre-historic past. His way is hedged by paradoxes,- his subject has its limitations, for every town is limited, while the ramifica- tions of his subject are unlimited, for Nunda is old-centuries old-and it would be impossible even to write a Centennial History of Nunda, Livingston
1
10
--
-
County, for our Nunda has been in two counties since its township formation, and in two other counties before the nineteenth century began, and in others still before that.
One century is the child and grandchild of preceeding centuries, and His- tory, like Biology, has something to say of its ancestry. The very name Nunda is pre-Columbian, for it is Indian. It is the condensed name of the greatest nation of Indian warriors and conquerors that the so-called "New World" ever had. The "Hill born race," called by others "The Senecas," a name accepted by them, for they were fond of a plurality, and even a multiplicity of names, given to them because they lived between the two Seneca Rivers, for the Genesee was once called the little Seneca, besides, as Seneca was the name of a Roman, and the Romans were "world conquerors." this race also came to be called "The Romans of the New World," and were proud to receive this well bestowed title. They called themselves the Nunda wa-ono or "hill born race," shorn of its suffixes ono (people) and wa, or wah, (plain or valley). These "lords of hill and vale" were simply the Nunda Indians, but as they knew no necessity for economy in nomenclature. and loved a variety of forms of expression, this will in part explain the sixty or more forms of expression used for this one royal tribe. our immediate predecessors, the Nunda-waos or Senecas. The Indian word "nun" meant hill, and "non" great hill, chain of hills, mountain or chain of mountains. The residence of a great Sachem, whether a great war chief or great "council chief," often changed the form of a word and prefixed a great O to it. A few Indian words will elucidate this. O-nondagas, the great mountain people : O-nondaga, the Indian village, great council chief lived here ; O-nonda-O, the chief village for a time of the Senecas, and the great war chief of the Iroquois lived here : Onondao, near Nunda vil- lage, 200 years ago, means, where the chains of hills come together or "the meeting of the hills:" Nunda-O, the hill in front; Nunda, encircled by hills ; Nundow, an earthwork (Ft. Hill) in front.
The first village in which the Senecas lived in New York State was near Naples, and was called Ge-nunde-wa, the hill there was only a knoll; Nunde means hilly or small hills. A great word that means the whole Empire State when it meant about the same as the Long House of the Iroquois, i. e., from Albany to Niagara, was Ga-nun-no.
So the Nunda of the Senecas was not the 6 x 6 town of our day, nor the 12 x 24 town of a century ago, not even the hard fought battle fields won by the Senecas from their predecessors from the Nunda of the Upper Genesee and its former continuation down the Cashaqua Valley, but also the lower valley of the Genesee and all the hills and plains to the Seneca Lake and river. There have been many Nundas. all interesting, all beautiful. all worthy of historical research and record. The pioneers found the "Nunda's" or Seneca Indians here, and the Indianologist of to-day finds abundant evidence of their former camps and villages, their corn and potato fields. Former historians have spoken of Nunda as simply hunting grounds for the Indians from their immediate vicinity. The scarcity of large trees in our wide valley tells a dif- ferent story, so far untold. Was it savage floods or savage men who swept them away?
11
When did our history, as a part of the State. or a part of the Colony, of New York commence? Was this section of land we call Nunda once a part of New Netherlands, or was it New France? Where begins, and to what time may we, like the great writer of the Pentateuch, say. "In the beginning." Geographically we are one of the many subdivisions of New York. Then, this being a Centennial History, and the author is not yet three score and ten much less five score. this presents another difficulty. How is he to supplement his personal recollections? Where do the sons of pioneers get their knowledge of the first three or four decades, that preceded their advent in the Nunda val- ley of six or seven decades ago? What father and mother said, when we were "light infantry." and what other fathers and mothers told their children, and the few things that these pioneers of the twenties and thirties have told to writers of pioneer sketches, these must prove of incalculable value. However. my parents were not early pioneers of "Pioneer Nunda." My father was born. it is true, in the year of the Big Tree Treaty, held at Big Tree (Geneseo), in 1797, but born in Montgomery County, N. Y., and my mother, in 1805, in Albany County, the year and the very day that our first supervisors from the town of Angelica, Genesee County, met at Batavia, and though the original trail from Albany to Buffalo was closely followed by the Erie Canal, my parents did not find their way to the far famed Genesee Valley until they could come with comfort by that form of improved canoe, the Erie Canal packet, as far as Rochester. As for myself, I did not come even at that time, 1837. I could not come then. and if I had had my say in that matter, I wouldn't. How- ever, a year or two later I also became by birthright a pioneer of the Keshaqua . Valley. I am sorry that my birth place was not in Nunda, for it is said, and . I won't dispute it, that anyone born in Nunda needs no second birth-no place on earth could be better for the purpose or nearer Heaven at the close of life.
It is legitimate in writing pioneer history to prove yourself either a pio- neer or a son of a pioneer, or both, "or forever after hold your peace." I will not call this, then, a digression, but I expect to show that our 6 x 6 town plot is not only a part of Livingston County, but was also a part of Allegany, Gen- esee, Ontario, Montgomery and Albany Counties as well as a part of Holland, France and England.
History, geography and biography are all alike interesting and all inter- biend in the location of our heroes of five successive wars, and makes it diffi- cult to tell when the epitomized story of the centuries begins that led to the settlement of this section. whose Centennial is nearly at hand. While the pioneers of various vocations, that are a part of our biological records, or their ancestors, came from some of these first geographical subdivisions of our great Empire State. And there is history in every event that makes a boundary. a general, a county or its judge, or even a town and its supervisors.
OUR PIONEERS
Having divided up our State and subdivided our counties and even our towns, and I speak advisedly, the counties and towns of which our present Nunda has been a part, we will then tell the story of the man with the axe. and the woman, smaller and weaker than the man, who did, and still does. more hours of work in every twenty-four than this hard handed son of toil.
12
4
,
OUR SCHOOLS
Then the story of the schools, the teachers who taught all they knew, and the scholars who learned all they could. all must be told from the very first teacher in 1809 and the very first school. to the later schools and academies taught by normal bred and college bred men and women ; also students from these schools, some of whom found their way to college and the professions.
OUR SOLDIERS
Nunda has ever been a patriotic town and has had citizens who were soldiers, in every war the United States has engaged in, and these demand and shall receive a separate department, and as far as possible every citizen. or former citizen, of Nunda, who went into the tented field from here. or from any town, county or state. shall have his military record given, where it may be known and read by all the loyal hearted citizens of Nunda.
OUR CIVIL LIST
Our civil list is not conspicuous for high attainments ; there are too many towns in the state for every town to furnish a President or Vice President. United States Senator or Judge of the Supreme Court. but some of the men who have climbed high in State and Nation we call "ours" just the same, though not on our civil list. and in our hearts we call them our Washington, our Hamilton, our Lincoln, our Teddy and our young Jimmie. We have made the town list longer by adding the names of those former citizens of Nunda who went west and grew tremendously in their enlarged surroundings.
AUTHORS, PUBLISHERS AND PRINTERS
This list will include all of these classes, as far as known, who have ever lived in Nunda and used printers' ink. The professional men have their chap- ter also and even the specialists of the town, whether artists or poets, have all the space their dainty goods require.
--
The merchants, mechanics and manufacturers made the village as truly as the farmers with God's aid made the town. The town, of course, includes the village, and the old adage holds good. "God made the country, and man made the town." The town makers are a distinct class as much so as the farm makers, and deserve the plaudit in this case of "well done." The writer is inclined to say, however. that some of the retired farmers have helped the town makers in making the village every year more beautiful.
YOUR PART OF THE BOOK
Biography is the part of the book that determines who is to be remem- bered a century hence. Modern Nunda and its present citizens are to have such space as they desire. at a required rate, that their pedigree, selves and family may live in history. But in local history mediocrity does not spell "nothing," but "something" and "somebody" for men who have climbed up more steps than many whom the world calls great have climbed from low probabilities and meagre opportunities, and from the fetters of poverty to af-
-------
13
fluence and influence, and usefulness to intellectual vigor and moral integrity, uprightness and worth.
"Thinkest thou perchance that these remain unknown, Whom thou knowest not;
By angel trumps in Heaven their praise is blown, Divine their lot."
If mediocrity were left out the book would be thin and meagre and many a man whose deeds were noble, and many a woman who "has done what she could," although they would ultimately receive the Savior's plaudit, "Well done, good and faithful," would pass down to the tomb and to oblivion "un- wept, unhonored and unsung."
OUR LIST OF SELF MADE MEN
A list of self made men, in various fields of endeavor, will not be without interest.
The men who had no "silver spoon" at birth But proved their "metal" by intrinsic worth.
The winning of Western New York from the Senecas, through Sullivan's campaign, and by purchase at the "Big Tree Treaty" in 1797, was not the first time by many that it had been won. The history of our Nunda, in any of its three forms, all during the past century, is but the winning of a wild wilderness by our hardy pioneers, to its present condition of fine fertility. Such a history would be shorn of nine-tenths of its interest if we did not go back a century farther, to the predecessors of the pioneers and give their story of how they won Nundaho, even the boy Indianologists of our town who find at certain places an unusual collection of arrow heads and other evi- dences of Indian habitation, know that these lands have been won and occu- pied by certain races of Indians, and that there were villages here that no previous historian has told about. Then the men Indianologists have made greater discoveries, that satisfy them, that the Nunda or Keshequa Valley has some day been the scene of battles, and not mere neutral hunting grounds for different tribes, and they ask for a synopsis at least of former centuries of possession.
The colonists won this Western wilderness from the British, and they- the British-won it from the French, though neither owned it for it belonged to the native Americans, the red races that possessed it and who won it suc- cessively, nation after nation, by conquest.
To at least name the nations who have lived where we live, and have left Indian names on land and streams is as far as this can be done, an impera- tive duty, even if this leads us across six centuries to pre-Columbian days. The first of these Indian nations that have left evidences of their presence in our part of Western New York are the Fort-builders, no Indians known since the first white man followed trails thousands of years old into the interior of New York Colony, or that of the New Netherlands, or of France, has ever found a Fort-building Indian. The Iroquois Indian had no use for Fort Hill
14
or the three forts at Belvidere, or the one at Conesus, or those that extend to Oswego. Excavations of these forts had led to the certainty that their pos- sessors came from Ohio and brought with them some of the useful or orna- mental utensils found in the huge mounds of the Mound-builders. This does not prove that they were the same; it rather suggests that they were the Mound-builders' conquerors, and thus became the possessors of their articles of skill. The mound suggests an Egyptian origin.
Next in order, unless they were the same, were the Allegewi, Talegewi Allegany or Ohio River Indians, who called the Ohio River after them, and when they in turn were driven out of Ohio they came up one branch of their great river and gave it the same name. These people clung to the forts, used fort defences, made high banks of streams their fortresses, and either with bows and arrows drove out those who like David were expert with a sling, or they were the stone throwers themselves and could not defend themselves against a Huron or Algonquin antagonist armed with bow and arrow. Within a mile of Nunda near what appears like a fort, quantities of these stones with a small indentation on one side can be found ; and yet some of us who live on the Keshaqua trail that passes this scene of former battle for supremacy forget that the trail and the battlefield have been here at least 800 years. The story of the winning of Nundao, and of all west of the Genesee, by the Nundawaono. or Seneca Indians. will tell all there is to tell.
Again, we live in a township that has been subdivided till it forms many towns, and it is interesting to retrace the subdivisions of Greater New York Colony, Greater Albany County from which a whole state has been taken and counties and towns enough to make several small states. Nunda is an integral part of these great and important subdivisions and its centennial history can gain interest by following the frontier settlements from Schenectady, the pine woods of the East, to the larger pines of Allegany.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.