USA > New York > Wayne County > Rose > Rose neightborhood sketches, Wayne County, New York; with glimpses of the adjacent towns: Butler, Wolcott, Huron, Sodus, Lyons and Savannah > Part 1
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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
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CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
OUR
BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE
Cornell University Library
F 129R85 R69 + Rose neighborhood sketches, Wayne Count
olin 3 1924 028 825 573 Overs
UN
E
TY
1865
UNDED
Cornell University Library
The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library.
There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text.
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NORTH FROM MIRICK'S HILL. ELMS NEAR LAWSON MUNSELL'S. NEW AND OLD SCHOOL HOUSE, "VALLEY."
A GLIMPSE OF GLENMARK.
MAIN STREET, "VALLEY."
METHODIST CHURCH, "VALLEY."
ROSE
NEIGHBORHOOD SKETCHES,
WAYNE COUNTY, NEW YORK;
WITH
GLIMPSES OF THE ADJACENT TOWNS: BUTLER, WOLCOTT, HURON, SODUS, LYONS AND SAVANNAH.
BY ALFRED S. ROE, A NATIVE OF ROSE.
" What's in a name? that which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet."
PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR, WORCESTER, MASS. 1893.
Copyright, 1893, BY ALFRED S. ROE.
F.S.BLANCHARD & CO. WORCESTER, MASS
PREFACE.
This volume represents summer vacation work fo ancestors who were among the very first to redee wilderness, I cannot remember the time when the st and hardship was not heard. Grandparents and gı my childish ears with anecdote and incident, so that on, it seemed fitting to give the narrative a more per of mere legend and tradition. This was the promp Clyde Times, in 1886, the first of the series, taking 7. When that was ended, friends and relatives in a " You must tell the story of Nos. 5 and 6 also." lowed in successive issues of the Times. In this y made. When they were finished, the idea of going began to take shape, and the eventual visitation of e the result. Having gone through the more or less newspaper serial, and having been read by many, t of country, I was told that the matter deserved the : Obedient to such advice, the book was projected, an ing data for these pages, I have walked and ridden at in and about the town. Were I to include the dista ing Rose, from my Massachusetts home, and in visi
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ROSE NEIGHBORHOOD SKETCHES.
county, been the unit of political organization in this state, the people throughout Rose had been better acquainted with each other. The youth reared in District No. 7 was wont to have in mind, as terra incognita, such sections as "Over East in Butler," meaning the land beyond the Loveless range of hills ; "North of Wolcott " was to him as remote as was Gaul to the ancient Romans ; " West of the Valley," for all reachable pur- poses, might as well have been west of the Rocky Mountains; while "South of Clyde" meant a region as unknown as is the Antarctic continent to the navigator. Fortunately, common church relations brought the most of the people together, as a rule, once a week, though every one of the neighboring towns has claimed, from the very beginning, some Rose citi- zens as church members. Then, too, the acquaintance of residents on the borders of school districts has prevented absolute crystallization and com- plete non-intercourse. Spelling schools, husking and paring bees, brought the young people of a wider area than one school district into intimate acquaintance, an intimacy that frequently ripened into matrimony. In fact, intermarriage in Rose has been so extensive, that were every family, resident in town for thirty-five years, to be represented by a ring, while the ring on the eastern side would not be very near that over on the Lyons border, yet were these to be interlocked in marriage, the taking up of one would involve the whole number. The truth of this statement can be easily ascertained by any one who chooses to follow out the marriages given in this book.
As the school district, in its political and social relations, comes nearer than the N. Y. town to the principle of self-government and to intimate acquaint- ance, I have made that the unit in my story. The dates at the head of each chapter tell when the matter appeared in the Clyde Times. To com- prehend fully the time involved, the reader must have the sliding temporal scale in mind. All changes, since the first writing, are indicated by paren- theses. In making the book I have had to leave out much. It has been a choice of materials. Anecdote and incident that would add a fourth to the volume, have been elided. The genealogical data have been given in passing rather than in separate chapters. I have aimed to make the narrative one of to-day, a series of events now passing, rather than one of yesterday, all in the buried past.
The story is told with the heartiest good-will towards everybody. Hav- ing no axes to grind, nor grudge to pay, I have made the book, possibly unduly Roseate, but this is a matter for each reader to settle with himself. If some families are given more in detail than others, it is because said data were more easily forthcoming. When facts were given, I have aimed to use them. In embellishing the volume with illustrations, I have, as a rule, abstained from the use of pictures of people now living, save in the case of my own family and in that of town officers. The most of the pic-
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ROSE NEIGHBORHOOD SKETCHES.
tures of individuals, have been secured with great difficulty, and many have had to be copied before going to the engraver. Obviously, the re- sults are not the best pictures in the world, but they do serve to show us how the first settlers looked. Rose abounds in scenery worthy the painter's brush, and my camera was used in many places that are not shown in these pages, simply because the sun and the plates did not respond to my efforts. In other words, the negatives were not good.
This book should not go forth without rendering thanks to all those who have aided in its preparation. As every one who has written a letter or answered a question has thus contributed, I hereby thank each and all, not only for helping me, but for their zeal and affection for the township. which is or has been home. As these pages are read, I hope the thought will be constantly in mind that the silent sleepers in our ceme- teries fought a good fight, that we of to-day might enjoy what they suf- fered for. Let us not forget the first settlers who, in house and field, toiled unceasingly that the comforts of civilization might follow.
Hoping that the story of Rose, thus told, may bind us yet more closely to the scenes of our childhood, and that our common regard for each other may hereby be intensified, this volume is submitted to any and all who care for the town in which they reside, or which was formerly their home.
ALFRED S. ROE.
WORCESTER, Mass., Nov. 20, 1893.
CORRECTIONS AND ADDITIONS.
Page 21. Wm. Sherman died in Butler, and his son, Henry, was in the 111th Inf.
Page 28. The Martin Saxton place is now owned and occupied by Robert Weeks.
Page 47. Wm. Hallett was married Sept. 13, 1893, to Miss Ida Bovee, of Wolcott.
Page 52. For Sally Bump, read Bundy.
Page 57. Mrs. Ida (McKoon) Wickwire died Sept. 22, 1893. Ernest O. Seelye and family have returned from Dakota to the home farm.
Page 62. For Mary Champion, read Champney.
Page 67. Add to Oaks family, Charles G. Oaks, Jr., of North Rose.
Page 113. John W. Vanderburgh is living in Des Moines, Iowa.
Page 115. The farm house of Geo. Catchpole was burned Oct 19, 1893.
Page 185. Mr. Jeffers Dodds sold his farm in October, '93, to Mr. Loren Lane, formerly of Rose.
Page 195. For Alonzo, read Lorenzo Snow.
Page 203. Mr. Geo. H. Green died Sept. 26, 1893.
Page 311. For Mrs. John, read Mrs. Joseph Phillips. Page 391. Add John Sherman, Feb. 6, 1864; H, 111th Inf .; Sept. 10, 1864.
THE TOWN OF ROSE.
LOCATION .- This town is about three miles north of the village of Clyde, a station on the N. Y. Central R. R., midway between Syracuse and Rochester. It is about eight miles south of Lake Ontario, and is east of the middle line of Wayne Co.
GEOLOGY AND TOPOGRAPHY .- In this town are extensive ledges of lime- stone that have been worked both for building and burning purposes, At Glenmark, the ledge outcropping produces a very interesting waterfall, shown in the illustrations. Here, too, may be found fossils peculiar to the Clinton group of the Niagara period, to which group and period the town geologically belongs. Among the cobble stones, or hard head rocks, with which a large part of the surface is covered, may be found many conglom- erate shell petrifactions. They are water worn, but, as a rule, show their composition excellently. Obviously they came here by the same agency which produced our many ranges of hills, viz., the ice march or movement. The late George S. Seelye found several specimens of orthoceratidc, which showed admirably both the fossil and the cast. Farmers' boys have turned up these specimens for years, exciting usually no further remarks than "I wonder what they are." There is not a stone wall in the town which has not some of these fossils, remnants of a Paleozoic age, doing the ignominious service of field defending instead of gracing a college cabinet.
The hills of Wayne have formed the theme of poet and of scientist. The late Dr. Lawrence Johnson, of New York City, himself a native of Sa- vannah, found in them a never ceasing source of interest and enjoyment. Upon them he prepared a valuable monograph, " The Parallel Drift Hills of Western New York," read before the New York Academy of Science, Jan. 9, 1882. In this, he shows that our long ranges were formed under the immense glaciers that once overspread this section, naturally taking the direction of the ice stream. When the ice disappeared the hills were saved from denudation by the resulting water, which formed a vastly greater Ontario. He says, " This lake undoubtedly discharged its waters southward through the valleys in which lie the small lakes of the moun- tain ridge. During this period the parallel drift hills were in deep water, and hence beyond the reach of denuding agencies, though they doubtless received the débris of melting icebergs, particularly the large boulders of crystalline rocks which here and there dot the surface, but are not now present in the boulder clay." The traveler along the line of the N. Y. Central R. R. cannot help noticing these elevations, pronounced and of a
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ROSE NEIGHBORHOOD SKETCHES.
singular regularity. If at all given to surface observation, he cannot readily forget the impression. Wayne, and to some extent Cayuga county, are noteworthy for their ridges. They are nowhere mountainous nor ex- actly precipitous, save, possibly, their northern terminations, which are steeper than elsewhere. All of them are cultivated, but it would doubt- less be much better were the western sides allowed to grow up to woods. The eastern slopes invite the early sun and fairly laugh in wonderful fertility. To the farmer no finer sight can be had than the fields along these morning sides, for instance, those of William S. Hunt, lately Colonel Briggs', or those of the John B. Roe and Roswell Marsh farms. Of these hills, Rose has twelve well defined illustrations, viz., south from the Delos Seelye farm ; that extending into Galen from the southeast part of the town and the one immediately west ; then there are two ranges, including much of the old Finch and Benjamin farms ; leading north, from a point back of William H. Griswold's farm, is a ridge which, to some extent, shuts off the view of that forming the western boundary of the Town district; still further to the north is the high hill, the highest in town, one hundred and forty feet, back of the Roseview or Sherman Brothers' farm ; immediately to the westward is the long range leading down to the Valley ; southwest of the village is found, first, the hill on which once dwelt the Drowns, now owned largely by George Milem ; west of the Valley, on the Jeffers road, is the hill on whose summit lived the Dodds and Glen families, while last of all, looking off towards Lyons, is the range long held by the Ways, Worden and Weeks people.
In the southeast the drainage is in that direction, reaching finally the Montezuma marshes and Seneca river. In the southwest, water flows toward Clyde river ; in the northwest, through Mudge's creek, the flow is into East bay, while west of the Mirick or Closs hills, the water finds its way into Great Sodus bay. The surface, for many square miles north- ward from Clyde, is as level as a tennis court, and until the Sodus canal was undertaken, there seemed to be very little inducement for water to flow in any direction.
SOIL AND PRODUCTS .- Men who have wandered far have returned to Wayne county with the reflection that no part of the country can produce, in abundance, a greater variety of objects which contribute to the good of mankind than Wayne. Fruits, vegetables and grain in almost limitless kinds and quantities are here produced from tree, bush and soil. The latter is a gravelly loam, mingled with clay in places, and in the swamps the blackest of mud abounds. At any rate, this is true of Rose, for in the county no township more thoroughly merits the application of the intro- ductory remark than this. The early settlers found immense trees-beach, maple and hemlock, with ash, cedar and tamarack in the swamps. The legend still lingers of a buttonwood or sycamore, near Wayne Centre, so large that a section of it was used as a dwelling house after it had fallen
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ROSE NEIGHBORHOOD SKETCHES.
'down and proven to be hollow. In fact, one of the interesting stories of the late Simeon I. Barrett was that of putting up at the Buttonwood tavern early in the century. The late Hiram Church of Wolcott said that in 1808 three families, numbering fourteen people, young and old, put up at this same inn for the night and were well entertained. Osgood Church, his father, was one of the guests. He also says this was on one of the Jeffers farms. Maple trees furnished a large part of the sugar used by the first settlers; beach, hewed and mortised, formed framework for buildings that yield to no destroyer save fire, while hemlock afforded material for tan- ning, and siding for house and barn. The swamps were dark, luxuriant and almost impassable. In fact, as late as the forties my father once wan- dered several hours in the tamarack swamp, now the Osgood onion fields, thinking to make a short cut to the Valley, only to emerge, at last, near the point of entrance, viz., near where Stephen Chapin now resides. When the late Linus Osgood discovered the onion-raising qualities of this black, vegetable mold, he added scores of dollars per acre to its valuation. Some- thing in soil and atmosphere has made this county the peculiar home of peppermint. Rose dwellers remember how rank it grew by the springs in early days, and how it was gathered and hung up for winter's use. Early in the century, says Anson Titus, Phelps' historian, a certain Andrew Burnett of Deerfield, Mass., who had gathered mint along the streams of his native state, came west in the effort to dispose of his distilled product. He found the plant in greater abundance here than elsewhere, and so set- tled, following his vocation. The farmers, quick to discern a good thing, began to cultivate, and from Lyons the growing eventually worked into Rose. Latterly, the raising and evaporating of blackcap raspberries has proved a paying industry, experience having taught Rose farmers that they cannot compete with the western wheat growers. After all, probably, the crop that promises most to the careful husbandman in Rose is that which comes from his apple orchard. Barreled green or in a dried condition, this fruit is as necessary as wheat, and the world must have it. No part of the country raises more to the tree or better in quality. Each year will see additional orchards planted, till, in a sense, the town will return to woodland. The census data in this volume show what have been raised ; already
" Round about them orchards sweep,
Apple and peach tree, fruited deep."
INDIANS AND RELICS .- It is probable that the territory included in our town once formed a part of the Cayugas' possessions. Still it was on the border of the Senecas' lands, and may have been an almost neutral section, thus accounting for the limited finds of relics. While in some parts of the country arrow-heads and hatchets are found in abundance, any such memento is rare in Rose. Relics in the possession of George W. Aldrich, in North Rose, and of Abner Osborn, in the Valley, are noteworthy examples.
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ROSE NEIGHBORHOOD SKETCHES.
Mr. L. H. Clark in his Military History narrates the finding of a piece of a cannon on the old Collins farm, in the Valley, about fifty years since. Chauncey B. Collins, now living in Clyde, was his informant, and he describes the relic as eighteen or twenty inches in length, having a bore of about two inches. The place of finding was north of Wolcott street. Unfortunately the item was lost, else what an interesting beginning it would make for a Rose museum. A little further north, on what is now Fisher land, then that of Thaddeus Collins, Jr., was found an old axe, of shape and make indicating French origin ; near by also was found a bit of ancient pottery. Arrow-heads have been found along the ridge where now lies the road north from the Valley. These facts to Mr. Clark suggest the existence, years since, of a line of forts or fur trading posts follow- ing the old Indian trail which led from Crusoe lake along Marsh creek into the plain west of the Valley and so to Sodus bay. Pertinent to the foregoing is the finding in 1889 by Dwight Flint, just over the Rose line, at the head of Sodus bay, of a large quantity of lead and bullets. Though Mr. L. H. Clark, H. H. Wheeler of Butler and Mr. D. M. De Long of Rose all took part in discussing the how and when the material came where it was found, it does not seem that the supposition is disproven that the bul- lets may have had to do with early times. In 1891, July 5, Mr. Stephen B. Kellogg found in his corn field, on the old Aaron Shepard farm, an exceedingly well-preserved silver coin of the value of an old shilling piece, having this inscription : "Ferdinandus VI., D. G. Hispaniarum Rex. 1751." Older far than the settlement, it may have been lost by some early explorer, French or English, passing through these parts from one post to another. Of course it is barely possible that a settler may have possessed and lost. At any rate, the coin remains.
ORIGINAL OWNERSHIP .- The early charters of Massachusetts and Con- necticut included all the land between certain parallels from the Atlantic to the Pacific. At the same time, New York, through her charter, held all now included within her borders. Accordingly, New York possessed what two other states claimed. This was especially true as to Massachu- setts. Before the Revolution it is supposed that the Bay State agreed to New York holding sway over all that territory between the boundary of the two states and the extreme western line of settlements made before the War. After the War the dispute was reopened, both states claiming juris- diction over western New York. Instead, however, of appealing to arms, as the Michigan and Ohio people did in the thirties, these parties, with whom the memory of battles against a common foe was still fresh, left their case in the hands of commissioners, who met in Hartford, Conn., Dec. 16, 1786. These officers were Oliver Wolcott, Richard Butler and Arthur Lee, all being men revered in American history. They confirmed the sovereignty of New York over all the territory in dispute, but to Massachusetts was conceded the preemption right of the soil from the native Indians of all
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ROSE NEIGHBORHOOD SKETCHES.
land lying in the state west of a line drawn due north to Lake Ontario, from a point in the north Pennsylvania line eighty-two miles west of the northeast corner of that state, excepting a territory, one mile in width, the whole length of the Niagara river. Also, they ceded to Massachusetts a tract equal to ten townships, each six miles square, between the Owego and Chenango rivers. In 1800 an amicable agreement was effected with Connecticut, whereby the latter state received from the general government lands west of New York, and thereupon relinquished all claims upon the future Empire State.
Massachusetts, then, had to secure a title from the Six Nations, whose hunting grounds and homes she had acquired from New York. There were sharpers in those days as well as later, and efforts to negotiate with the natives were frequently frustrated by the nefarious advice of these com- panies of men, who had united to rob the Indian and to cheat the white man. In 1787 Massachusetts contracted all her claims to the land west of the Pennsylvania line, about 6,000,000 acres in all, to Messrs. Oliver Phelps and Nathaniel Gorham for $100,000, to be paid in three installments. Here is the origin of the famous Phelps and Gorham purchase. Canan- daigua was the headquarters of the new project, and here in July, 1788, was effected a treaty with the Indians, prominent among whom was the noted Red Jacket. After opening this great tract to settlers, the purchasers in 1790 sold all remaining lands to Mr. Robert Morris, a man of great wealth, a resident of Philadelphia and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. He it was who loaned to the government, in its distress, more than a million dollars, yet late in life he lost his fortune and spent some time in a debtor's cell. The price paid by Mr. Morris was about eight pence per acre, but he soon turned his contract over to a syndicate of English gentle- men, viz., Sir William Pulteney, who held nine-twelfths ; John Hornby, two-twelfths, and Patrick Colquhoun, the remainder. The chief capitalist was the first named. Hornby was a retired East Indiaman, having been governor of Bombay. He also was a capitalist. Colquhoun was a states- man and philanthropist. The London agent effecting this sale was William Temple Franklin, a grandson of Benjamin Franklin. They paid £75,000 for the lands, and passed their management over into the hands of Captain Charles Williamson, who had been a British officer during the War, but who became thoroughly imbued with the American spirit, and managed the business of his principals with great success. At that time foreigners could not hold landed interests in this country, hence the vesting of titles in Williamson, who took the oath of allegiance in 1792. He was a native of Balgray, Dumfriesshire, Scotland, and to that country he retired when through with his labors in America. The property was known as the Pulteney estate, with land offices in Geneva and Bath.
However, the territory included in Rose did not fall into this allotment. Its connection therewith came about thus : When the preemption line
HON. ROBERT S. ROSE.
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ROSE NEIGHBORHOOD SKETCHES.
was run out it touched Lake Ontario some distance further west than was expected, but no complaint was made, till some years later it was discov- ered that an apparently intended deflection had been made to the west, far south of Geneva. To obviate this fault a new line was run, that known to-day reaching the bay at Briscoe's cove instead of three miles west, as run at first. Again, to compensate Revolutionary soldiers for their serv- ices, New York had promised a large tract of land along her western border, or near the preempted Phelps and Gorham purchase. The northwest township in this allotment contained more land than some later counties. Through Romulus, Washington, Junius and Wolcott, we come finally to Rose; but in the early assignments it was found that the state had disposed of land included in the Gore that triangular strip having its acute angle near the Chemung river, its base Lake Ontario and its sides the old and the new preemption lines. To compensate, there was made over to the Pulteney estate all the land now embraced in the town of Huron; in Wol- cott a strip on the west side, about two miles in width, the same boundary line extending through Butler, touching Savannah near the residence of H. H. Wheeler, Esq., and all of Rose save three lines of lots extending across the town and into Butler to the above-named line, said lots being known as Annin's gore, though they really make a rectangle. In other words, these compensating lands extended from Annin's gore northward, taking certain portions of Rose, Butler, Wolcott and all of Huron. This was known as Williamson's patent:
Early in the century an extensive purchase was made by Messrs. Rose and Nicholas of Geneva. This land, 4,000 acres in extent, lay on both sides of the Clyde and Valley road from Annin's gore, or near the farm house of William H. Griswold, to within three-quarters of a mile of the north line of the town, or to the northern boundaries of the Lyman and Covell districts. There was a western ell included between a line drawn from a point just north of Isaac Campbell's house and the northern line, a little beyond the home of Mrs. Charity Stearns, and both running to within less than a mile of the western limits of Rose, or a trifle west of where the widow Messenger now resides.
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