USA > New York > Steuben County > A history of Steuben County, New York, and its people, Vol. I > Part 16
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Then after the treaty ended, as a matter of course, the Indians wanted more whiskey. They importuned Judge Porter, the acting agent for Phelps and Gorham, to satisfy their thirst. He said: "It is all gone." They retorted: "Mill lot not all gone," alluding to the purchase of the lot from the Indians for whiskey as long as the Genesee Falls run the mill. This lot, also known as the "Mill Yard Lot," was only twenty-four miles long by twelve wide. The first town meeting, which was held at Canandaigua, brought the pioneer settlers together for the first time who were spread over the eastern portion of the Purchase.
Two TOWNS EMBRACED THE COUNTY.
Two towns were formed in what was afterward Steuben county. The old town of Painted Post was a town of Ontario county in 1793 and extended from Chemung county to the west line of the now town of Rathbone, including all the settlements at the head of the Che- mung, at Painted Post, Tioga valley and in the lower valleys of the Conhocton and Canisteo rivers. Eli Mead, the first settler at the confluence of Mead's creek with the Conhocton river, was the first supervisor.
Williamsburg, as the other town was called, was erected in 1793, embraced a large extent of country west of Painted Post, and was represented by Jedediah Stephens, who lived at Canisteo, its first member of the board of supervisors, serving in 1793 and 1794.
There were then only Indian trails from these towns to the county seat. Mead and Stephens, the supervisors, went on foot over the Indian trails to the first meeting of the board of super- visors, a distance of seventy miles, carrying their provisions and blankets in knapsacks on their backs and sleeping in the woods on improvised beds of hemlock and other branches. Their route was up the trail in the Canisteo valley, over the Big Hill, down the Canaseraga creek to Little Beard's Town, thence to Wadsworth's (Geneseo) and thence, by a more improved trail, to Canandaigua.
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The first court of common pleas and general sessions at Canan- daigua, in 1794, was held at the house of Nathaniel Sanborn. The presiding judge was Timothy Hosmer; associate judges, Charles Williamson and Enos Boughton. Oliver Pettibone, of the town of Williamsburg, living on Crosby creek in the now town of Hornells- ville, was a member of the grand jury at that term of court, going to the county seat in the same manner and by the same route as the before named supervisors. Mr. Pettibone has detailed to men now living his recollections of that occasion. But one indictment was found, which was for stealing a stag; he said the jury did not look very hard for business.
Ontario county, by a special act of the legislature (1791), be- came entitled to a member of assembly in the legislature of New York, although not entitled to it by population. Colonel Eleazar Lindsley, of the town of Painted Post, by whose aid a settlement had sprung up on the Tioga river (now in the town of Lindley) was elected and was the first member of assembly west of Seneca lake. General Israel Chapin was the member in 1792-3. Thomas Morris was the member of assembly for Ontario county in 1794-6. Thomas Morris, the son of Robert Morris, the former owner of this great domain, was also a member of the seventh congress in 1801-3. He was the first representative in congress from all of the region west of the Preemption line.
Mr. Morris traveled extensively over and through the Phelps and Gorham domain in 1792 and kept a journal of his travels. In his manuscripts, published about 1845, he says: "The excursion was undertaken by me partly from a desire to witness an Indian treaty and see the falls of Niagara, and partly-yes, mainly-to see a country in which my father at that time had such an extensive interest and with the determination to settle in it if I liked it. I was pleased with it, and made up my mind to settle at Canandaigua as soon as I had attained the age of twenty-one and had been ad- mitted to the bar.
"Accordingly in the early part of March, 1792, I left New York for Canandaigua. I was induced to fix upon that place for my residence from the character and respectability of the families already there. In the course of that year I commenced building a framed house filled with brick and which was finished the early part of the year 1793. That house still exists, and even in that hand- some town, where there are so many beautiful buildings, it is not considered an eyesore. When it was completed that, and the house built by Oliver Phelps, were the only framed houses west of Whites- boro."
The hides of the cattle driven to and slaughtered at Canan- daigua, at the time of the Pickering treaty of 1794, were manufac- tured into leather by John Clark, a tanner and currier, who came with Mr. Phelps. This was the first leather made and finished in Ontario county.
In his wanderings as an exile, in 1795, the Duke de la Roche- foucauld-Liancourt, the founder in France of a school for the educa- tion of soldiers' orphan children, went from Bath to Canandaigua. He traveled the Williamson road and was detained by floods at Five Mile creek two days, where he found a comfortable inn. He speaks of the Eight Mile Tree (now Avoca) and Twelve Mile creek; Will-
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iamsburg, the Dream City; Wadsworth's Conessus lake and Canan- daigua. The last, he says, was a place of much promise, with many buildings mostly of logs and that pine boards made in the dense nearby forests sold in the town for ten shillings sterling for one hundred feet. The schoolmaster was paid a salary of twelve dollars per month and subsisted by living with the parents of his pupils.
A NEW COUNTY REQUIRED.
New settlers came in rapidly all over the county. It was a long and tedious journey from the southern part of this large county to the shire town. By reason of this many improvements were neg- lected and the people of the remote parts became estranged from those at Canandaigua, which, by reason of its advantages, pos- sessed an influence far superior to the outlying localities. Clamor and sentiment rapidly grew for relief from this situation and a new county seemed to afford the only way for betterment.
CHAPTER V I. EVOLUTION OF STEUBEN COUNTY.
DISTRICT OF YORKSHIRE-MONTGOMERY AND ONTARIO COUNTIES- A PIONEER'S LIFE ROMANCE-TWO RHODE ISLAND COUSINS- COLONEL ARTHUR H. ERWIN-THE OLD CANISTEO FLATS- "ASSOCIATES" DIVIDE TOWNSHIPS-WHAT Is Now HORNELL. CITY-COLONEL ELEAZER LINDSLEY-CAUSES OF PHELPS- MORRIS RUIN-ST. CLAIR AND WAYNE CAMPAIGNS-EFFECTS OF WAYNE'S VICTORY-POPULATION IN 1790-FUTILE TREATY OF PAINTED POST-FIRST LEGISLATIVE REPRESENTATIVE-RI- VALRY BETWEEN NORTH AND SOUTH TOWNS-STEUBEN COUN- TY CREATED-THE COUNTY'S NAMESAKE.
The civil divisions of the province of New York, from its first occupation by the Dutch down to the year 1683, underwent many changes. Under the Dutch regime the only civil divisions were the city and the towns. In 1685 a civil division, called the district, or shrievalty, of Yorkshire, was erected. It comprised Long island, Staten island and the lower part of the present coun- ty of Westchester.
DISTRICT OF YORKSHIRE.
For judicial purposes, after the English custom, the district was divided into ridings, three in all, so named because of the traveling or "riding" of the judges and other judicial officers from place to place where courts were required to be held. The east riding was the present county of Suffolk; the west riding, Kings county, Staten island, Newtown and part of Westchester; the north riding, all of the present county of Queens except New- town.
MONTGOMERY AND ONTARIO COUNTIES.
Counties were erected and fixed for the first time by the act of the legislature in 1683-ten in number-as follows: Albany, Dutchess, Kings, New York, Orange, Queens, Richmond, Suffolk, Ulster and Westchester. Washington county was formed from Albany county in 1772, and Tryon county was erected from Al- bany in the same year. It comprised all of the provinces west of a north and south line, extending from St. Regis on the river St. Lawrence to the west bounds of the township or borough of Schenectady, then in Albany county; thence southwest in an ir-
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regular line to the east branch of the Delaware river, sometimes then called the Mohawk branch of the Delaware, because of the Indian trail from the Mohawk river up the Scoharie creek and over a low divide to the headwaters of this branch of the Dela- ware. The east boundary of Tryon county continued down this branch of the Delaware river to the line dividing the provinces of New York and Pennsylvania, at or near the southeast corner of Broome county, New York; and thence in a northwesterly di- rection to Fort Bull on Wood creek, at or near the present city of Rome, New York. All west of the last mentioned line was the territory of the Six Nations of Indians; so that at the bc- ginning of the Revolutionary war the province of New York was composed of only ten organized counties. Because of the odious and cruel character of its namesake, William Tryon, the last of the royal governors recognized by the province or state, and in response to the demands of the patriotic people residing within its limits, Tryon county was re-christened Montgomery, in memory of the brave American general, Richard Montgomery, who gave his life in the assault on Quebec, December 31, 1775. The change of name was made by the legislature of New York, as petitioned on April 2, 1784. Ontario county was formed from Montgomery county, January 27, 1789. It embraced all of the Phelps and Gorham Purchase from the state of Massachusetts, extending from Pennsylvania on the south to Lake Ontario on the north, from which lake it took its name.
The act of the legislature creating the county of Ontario provided that the justices of the sessions should proceed to divide the new county into two or more districts for town purposes. They had, in 1791, made the "district of the Painted Post," which em- braced the entire territory of what was included in the new coun- ty of Steuben, in March, 1796. In 1794, through the united in- fluence of Charles Williamson, Jedediah Stephens and George Hornell, the district of the Painted Post was divided and the dis- tricts of Canisteo and Williamson were formed. The former em- braced all of the district of the Painted Post north of the present north line of the towns of Greenwood, Rathbone and Corning, and the west line of Rathbone; the remainder of the territory was the district of Williamson. Bath was its business center; Canisteo Castle, of the district of Canisteo; and Painted Post, of the district of that name.
The Painted Post was originally applied to and included an unlimited territory as extensive as the Mohawk valley, the Genesee country, or the Wyoming valley. It was understood to embrace all of the domain or territory drained by the rivers and their tributaries, whether in the provinces of New York or Pennsylvania, that formed the Tioga river, now called the Chemung. It was a very large extent of country, the backbone of the Appalachian plateau. On a single section of one thousand acres streams orig- inate whose waters find the sea on the cold and foggy shores of the gulf of St. Lawrence and the coast of Labrador; other waters find the sea through the Chesapeake bay, where great lazy barges rise and fall with a sleepless tide; and still other waters flow toward the Mexican gulf, where, under summer skies, birds with saffron-tinted wings fade in the dreamy blue.
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The northern part of Ontario county, along the trail from Albany to Niagara, which was afterward improved and made passable for travelers and all kinds of vehicles along the shores of Seneca, Canadaigua and Crooked (now Keuka) lakes and their outlets, was settled by men from New England, eastern New York and the Mohawk valley, except those who occupied the purchase of Jemima Wilkinson and her followers. The land was sold in comparatively small parcels for the future homes of the cmi- grants. Their method of travel was primitive in all things; no cars, no canal boats, stages or any other convenient means of seeking a home in this "land of the lakes," whose fertility, beauty and cheapness attracted the homeseeker. Of course, the "land- shark" was always like the hawk, looking for his victim.
A PIONEER'S LIFE ROMANCE.
This is the statement of a man who early came to what was later called the town of Richmond, Ontario county : "Fabulous tales were told by the soldiers who had served in Sullivan's cam- paign, and by those who had returned from the Painted Post and the Genesee country. I became enthusiastic and resolved to emi- grate, but a journey of four hundred miles through the woods and sparsely settled portions of the state of New York was no trifling affair. Yet the gilded promise of fortune and fame, in the unequalled country of the Painted Post or the Genesee, lightened every care and flattered every ambition. Hope, then, as before and ever since, told a flattering tale. I longed to leave my New Hampshire home, and, with others of my age, could not longer delay. I hastened my preparations and joined the fast- increasing number, who, like myself, were chasing the delusive phantom. I bade my friends and home good-bye; with no other aid or capital but their prayers and tears and the few articles of clothing, tools, food for the journey and my faithful old Queen's arms that had done duty with John Stark, I turned my back on the old red door and my life work began. My outfit was simple, consisting of a change of flannel underwear, an axe, a pewter cup and plate, knife and fork, a small iron kettle and a woolen blanket, a few pounds of bacon, two quarts of beans, and my trusted gun, with tinder box, powder horn and bullet pouch- the whole weighing about forty pounds. I bade all my friends and neighbors good-bye and promised the girl I left behind that she would be constantly in my thoughts, and that I would return for her when I had cleared a few acres and built a cabin-a promise I most faithfully and literally kept and fulfilled.
"There were four of us in our company. We camped out and replenished our scanty food supplies with game or fish as opportunity offered. Two other emigrants, one day about dark, came and camped with us. They were employed by speculators in the interest of what they called the Lessee Company, and claimed their title was better than that of Robert Morris, or Phelps and Gorham. They said they were from Connecticut, were paid by the day and their living; a day's work was forty miles travel. We passed many ox-carts, drawn by oxen and loaded with household goods, women and children. They had tents and cooking tools. These were families moving into the Painted Post country. They
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HISTORY OF STEUBEN COUNTY
usually went in a company of six or eight carts. They were from the Mohawk country and most of them only talked Dutch. We also met and passed many six-horse teams drawing ponderous Concord wagons, loaded with storekeeper's goods of all kinds; much machinery, iron, saws and everything needed by the store- keepers and mill-builders. We met many of these teams and wagons going back east; loaded with flour, black salts and whiskey ; these articles would pay all the expenses of the trip. The drivers rode the off wheel-horse; each had but a single line or rein. The boss teamster rode a horse ahead and marked the bad spots. The sight of these returning wagons made me feel a little homesick, but as I had started I was going through. We were told why so much whiskey was needed. It was the only way corn could be got to market in a paying way. Much of the wheat was smutty or grown and if it could not be made into flour fit to eat it could be stilled into high wines and would bring cash at Albany or at Baltimore. Cattle and hogs were fattened on the still slops. I went on to Canandaigua. Here I hunted up and found a former townsman, now quite an old man, who had been a soldier with Sullivan, had come back and settled here. He told me that there was some good land near the foot of Honeoye lake, and advised me to go there. It was all thick woods; no settlers, only trails. I went to the land office with the old neighbor and he helped me to make a selection. It was like buying a lottery ticket. I took the chance. I bought an 'article,' as it was called, for the lot selected, paid what little money I could spare for the first pay- ment, and next morning before sun-up I started for my future home. There was no road; only a bridle-path, guided by marked trees. After careful and tiresome searching I found the sur- veyor's hacks and marks, marking the section lines and number of the lots, and found my land. It was about two miles from the foot of the lake; all a virgin forest, the largest and tallest trees I ever saw. I found a small stream. I followed it up a few rods and came to a spring of pure cold water. This gave me courage and alone in the wood I sat down by this spring. I summoned all of the courage and fortitude I possessed; the stock was getting low. I would not harbor for an instant the thought of discourage- ment. 'I am here; I will stay.' Before sundown I had chopped down the first tree and from its branches and boughs made my bed. That night I wrote my first letter. It was to the girl of my heart. I told her of my adventures, of our new home where our house was to stand. I did not omit the hope-inspiring spring ; how its sparkling water reminded me of her beautiful loving eyes. I told her I had named this spring for her-a name it always bore. I paid the postage on that letter (twenty-five cents), written on old-fashioned foolscap, folded, tucked, sealed and addressed with all the skill I possessed. I then went to work with new courage and, with a giant's strength, made a substantial clearing. My planting and sowing in the rich soil yielded abundantly. I built a comfortable log house, with chimney, doors and windows, cheered on by my promises to the namesake of my spring. In five years our mutual promise was solemnized. We came to our new home; it did not look as lonely and forbidding as the first night I came to it. Our house was so pleasant and comfortable! Love never
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flew out of the window. The sparkling waters of our spring have always been refreshing and invigorating. The reflection I now see in its inviting waters is not the same I saw when I first stooped to drink from its crystal fount. The face of a nonagenarian is not the face of twenty-two, but, like the nightingale in the 'Ty- roleans,' love still chants the song as then. Children and grand- children have come to us. Some remain; others have gone to 'just over on the other shore,' making the old home in the dense woods more sacred than ever." This is the recital of an old man, told many a year ago, who has toiled, loved and passed on; whose remains now sleep beside the wife of his youth; whose love never waned within sight of that crystal fount whose reflections were always true, singing, "For man may come and man may go, but I go on forever."
Another instance of the early pioneer is that of a young man, his young wife and child, who journeyed from Delaware county, New York, to the present town of Howard, Steuben county, in 1808, in a cart drawn by a yoke of stags. Behind was a young cow, hitched to the rear of the cart by a halter around her horns. They traveled down the trails, along the Delaware and Susque- hanna, up the Chemung and Cohocton rivers, and thence up Goff's creek to their new home, meeting with all the experiences and surprises of the woods; sleeping under the cart at night, the ani- mals tethered for grazing; and cooking their meals by the way- side, the nourishment afforded by the cow making their journey of five days endurable. Their nearest neighbors were three miles away for the first few months. A shanty or cabin was soon put up and their land selected and bought by contract. It was late in the summer. They were eight miles to the nearest store, Ken- nedy's Corners, and twelve miles from Bath, a place of large im- portance for those days, where sympathetic people were found. The first winter was one of comfortless and lonely experience. The next spring brought neighbors within a mile; then it seemed that it was more like the old home on the Delaware. They could hear the roosters of the nearest neighbors crow. The stout arm of this pioneer began to push back the woods and his team of stags was just the aid needed in the logging and breaking up the ground between the stumps. The next year crops and the in- crease from their animals gave them more comfort and happiness than any other year. Other and following years gave them more abundantly and more in quantity, but the contrast was never so marked between actual want, exposure and hardship, and abund- ance, comfort and fear. Many a time during the first summer this heroic wife and mother rigged a basket, or crib covered with boughs, to keep out the sunshine, in which she put her baby, and suspended it from the limb of a nearby tree, while she assisted her husband in picking up branches and unburned pieces of wood, carrying them to a pile to be burned; or in planting or hoeing their crops, looking after the poultry, pigs, etc. The greatest surprise of the year was the finding, in August, of a full-grown and full- blown sunflower. How the seed came to be deposited in their soil was a cause of wonderment. The occasional traveler and more occasional visitor was called upon to see the welcome flower.
From these persevering, industrious and prudent people came
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children and descendants, possessing all the good reputation and virtues of their pioneer ancestors; good citizens who never shirked duty, fearing nothing but sin, and adding only honor to the places where their lives were fixed.
Two RHODE ISLAND COUSINS.
In 1796 two men of early middle age-cousins, residing when ashore in Bristol, Rhode Island, who had been the most of their lives sea-faring men (privateers during the Revolutionary war) - got the "western fever." They had had enough of the life of a sailor and determined to go to the Indian country, as the Painted Post and the Genesee country was called. They had saved some money from their sea-faring employment, but how to reach this far-famed inviting land was not clear. They could go by land travel across Massachusetts and New York; they could go to New York by sea and then to Albany and up the Mohawk river to with- in about one hundred miles of the Painted Post country, and about the same distance to the Genesee country, through the woods and on foot; or they could take shipping to Baltimore and then go by flat-boat up the Susquehanna to the very doors of the Painted Post country. Finding a good opportunity to ship for good wages on a coastwise trading schooner to Baltimore they chose this last route. The trip to Baltimore was fine, the living good; the crew, besides themselves, consisted of the skipper and the mate and eight men. Our adventurers told their shipmates such gilded tales of the land they had set out for that most of the crew would have gone with them but for the fact that their ship- ping articles provided they were to be paid only. when they re- turned to their home port. After being paid off the emigrants had no difficulty in finding barges, flat-boats, durham boats and arks ready to start for the west branch, "Tioga Point," and Painted Post country. They took passage on one of the latter, laden with provisions, household goods, milling irons, supplies and families-all destined to the Post country. They were to help navigate and propel the boat, for which they were to receive their passage, board and lodging. After supplying themselves with axes, guns, ammunition, long heavy river boots and a change of clothing they "set sail" for up-the-river ports. For some dis- tance on the bay and up the river they made use of a square sail set to a movable mast. The crew consisted of the captain, colored cook and eight men, all told. The craft was well equipped with oars-one for steering in place of a rudder; a dozen setting poles with pikes and hooks and two lines of inch rope, each fifty to one hundred feet long. The gunwales' were provided with six to eight oarlocks, or thole-pins. On the outsides were running boards, on which the men walked when using the setting poles. One end -the pike end-was placed on the bottom of the stream, the other against a saddle or cushion on the front of the shoulder. The aids to this navigation were a "white-ash breeze," the setting pole and the towing line. The "old salts" declared that whaling or privateering in their most strenuous efforts was only baby work compared with the hardships and perils of inland navigation. Sometimes the craft would run on a shoal, rock, or log; then the crew would go into the water, with lines and levers, to get the Vol. I-8
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