USA > New York > Erie County > Buffalo > Address on the early reminiscences of western New York and lake region of country : delivered before the Young Men's Association of Buffalo, February 16, 1848 > Part 3
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No American troops ever appeared in this part of the State again, until the surrender by the English, of the American frontier fortresses, in 1796.
It is a singular fact, and the more striking because of its singularity, and one which speaks volumes in favor of the high character and honorable conduct of the early settlers of West- ern New York ; that, inasmuch as at the close of the Revolu- tionary War there were no good feelings existing between the Americans and Indians in this part of the State, and although the fort at Niagara was retained by the British in violation of the treaty of 1783, for thirteen years, not one drop of blood has been shed in battle between the whites and Indians from the time of the Revolution to the present.
It was my intention, originally, to have said something in relation to the purchase of Western New York by Phelps and Gorham ; the possessions of the Holland Land Company ; the Pultney and Hornby estates; the different Indian treaties ; many particulars of the early settlement of Ontario County, and its progress through to Lake Erie ; the details of which, designed for the use of the future historian, might prove dry and uninteresting in a paper like this of mine; I will therefore omit them. The leading reason for doing so, however, is this :
I lately paid the Honorable and venerable Augustus Porter a visit, and in a long and interesting conversation with him on this subject, he gave me the gratifying intelligence that he had made up his mind to write, and was then diligently engaged in drawing up, a full and detailed statement in relation to these matters, from his own personal knowledge; and that it was his intention to deposit the manuscript in the archives of this Association. I can, therefore, congratulate this body upon soon receiving a paper from this gentleman, of the highest interest and use, and much more extensive on these subjects than can be derived from any other source.
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This will soon be followed by a history of the Holland Purchase, by O. Turner, Esq., who is now industriously engaged in procuring his materials from old residents, some of / whom are now settled in the far west. Mr. Turner's history will be composed principally of unwritten materials, tradi- tionary stories, personal events and reminiscences, together with biographical sketches of some of the early settlers ; which, incorporated with what has already been published, will give this work of Mr. Turner's, great interest with the descendants of the carly pioneers, and will throw much light upon the toil and hardships endured, the simplicity of the habits and manners of the people in those days, their indomitable energy and perseverance, and many other interesting matters without a knowledge of which, it is impossible truly to appreciate the noble character of the early settlers of Western New York. A copy of this work will also be deposited with this Association.
It is to be hoped that others will be induced to contribute their personal knowledge of early incidents ; and that the archives of this Association will become the depository of every fact and circumstance that will tend to illustrate the history of Western New York, and its early inhabitants.
Although for the reasons given, I refrain from entering much into any details on these matters, I will nevertheless give you some few particulars and reminiscences obtained from my father, Benjamin Barton, who first came to the Niagara frontier in 1787; from my mother, who came to Geneva in 1789 ; from Hon. Augustus Porter, who came into Ontario County the same year ; and from my own personal knowledge. In detailing them I shall be somewhat discursive, and not very regardful as to the order of time in which they occurred. Before treating any farther of events in Western New York, I will touch upon matters transacted in another part of our
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country - a portion of country which has, now is, and will always continue to exert no small influence upon our present and future prosperity.
It is well known, that in violation of the treaty of 1783, when the English Government was compelled to acknowledge the Independence of her revolted colonies, the United States of America, it retained and kept military possession of all the fortresses on the American side of the great Lakes. Oswego, Niagara, Miami, (opposite Perrysburgh,) Detroit and Michili- mackinac, were amongst the forts wrongfully withheld. The possession of these fortresses gave them the entire control of the numerous Indian tribes inhabiting this extensive district of country, and kept them almost continually in a state of war against the American settlements on and near the Ohio river. They instilled into the minds of the Indians that the Americans had no right to the country north of that river, and that by a combined action of all the Indian powers they could restrain the Americans to the south side. Great efforts were made by the Indians to accomplish this, in a continual struggle to break up and destroy all settlements and to prevent their extending.
For the purpose of giving security to these frontier set- tlements, and to break up this powerful Indian confederacy, the United States sent several armies or large bodies of men against them. Three of which, under Col. Crawford, Gen- erals Harmer and St. Clair, were defeated and some of them nearly destroyed by the Indians. It was not until the great and decisive victory of Gen. Wayne* over the combined Indian forces, aided by Englishmen painted like savages, on the banks of the Maumee, in August, 1794, that any thing like
* The Indians called Gen. Wayne the " Wind," because in the battle of the 20th of August, 1794, with them, they said he was like the whirlwind, that tore up and drove every thing before it.
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peace and safety was secured to the settlers in the country then called the North Western Territory.
This battle was fought in sight of a British fort, from which the Indians had been armed and supplied with the means of fighting ; and most probably a promise had been given of assistance in the coming fight, or protection within its walls in case of defeat. But when the conflict raged too strong for them, and when Wayne with his victorious legions pressed on and overthrew them, the Indians fled from the field of their defeat, and sought admission into the fort. But the danger of personal safety to themselves, of their false friends the English, if they openly interfered, caused the gates to be shut against them, and the Indians were left to the mercy of the conqueror.
From this moment the illusion which had obscured the minds of the Indians gave way, and it appeared plain to them, they were engaged against a power over which they could not triumph ; and that their friends and advisers, the English, when the times of adversity arrived, had not the power to aid them. This victory was followed by the treaty of Greenville in 1795, the dismemberment of the great confederacy forever, and secured peace and safety to the inhabitants of that country.
It is impossible to realize the importance of this victory, or do justice to the gallant General who achieved it, without understanding the peculiar circumstances of the times. The great lakes and all of our frontier military posts in the occu- pancy of a foreign government, who had withheld them from us in violation of treaty stipulations for many years - the nume- rous and powerful Indian nations throughout the whole west, decidedly and openly hostile to our people, were under the influence and supplied with the means of war by the English, who never hesitated to urge them on - coupled with the fact, C
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that the Indians had already defeated and nearly destroyed three American armies, had General Wayne failed on this occasion, the whole country would have been a scene of blood. This victory forms an important era in the history of the Western country.
A long time previous to and during the war of 1812, between England and the United States, Tecumseh, one of the greatest of Indian warriors and statesmen, made great efforts to revive this confederacy, but the lesson taught the Indians in 1794, had not been forgotten; and Tecumseh could only succeed partially in his darling project. In later years, when the fierce warrior Black Hawk undertook the same thing, but on a much more limited scale, in Northern Illi- nois, he could not succeed even in securing the aid of the whole of his own tribe or nation. But he was only a warrior -- bloody and fierce to be sure-and had none of the statesman- like qualities of the Pontiacs and Tecumsehs of former days, and is not entitled to notice on the same page of history with them.
Within a few years after the victory of General Wayne, the Government of the United States established garrisons and trading posts or factories as they were termed, in different parts of the Western Country, for security as well as the distributing of the annuities promised the Indians under the the Treaty of Greenville. One of the factories was at Lower Sandusky, a picketed work, which afterwards formed Fort Stephenson, where Colonel Croghan, then a captain, highly distinguished himself in September, 1813, by defeating with a small force, General Proctor with a large number of British regular troops, and a powerful body of Indian auxiliaries. Another was at Fort Wayne, on the Wabash river, another at Detroit,*
*This military post was delivered up by the English, under the Treaty of 1794, to Captain Moses Porter, of the United States Army, who with 65 men took possession on
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another at Michilimackinac, and in 1804 Chicago* was occu- pied.
From a report made to Congress in 1788, we learn the
the 11th July, 1796. Colonel J. F. Hamtramck arrived on the 13th, from the Maumee Rapids, with more troops, and assumed the command. The township above and adjoining the city of Detroit, is named after this gentleman. His son is now in the service of his country as Colonel of the Virginia Volunteers, and is in command at Saltillo, in Mexico. Scarcely a vestige of the old fort is now remaining; every thing has been swept away by the rapid growth of that city; and the spot where it stood, and which has been the scene of many a bloody strife, is now covered with beautiful build- ings, and is the abode of elegance and wealth.
Captain Porter was a sergeant in the revolutionary army, and was engaged in the bloody battle of Fort Mifflin, or Mud Island, in the Delaware river, in 1777, soon after General Howe obtained possession of Philadelphia. In this affair the Americans lost 250 in killed and wounded out of a force of 650 men, before they could be driven from their position. Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Smith, afterwards General and comman- der at the battle of Baltimore, in September, 1814, when General Ross, of the British Army was killed and their army defeated; and for many years United States Senator for Maryland, commanded the fort on that occasion. Captain Porter was promoted to a majority, and in 1800 commanded at Fort Niagara. About this time he opened the road from the brow of the mountain to Ska-joc-quad-da Creek, known as the military road, and constructed bridges across this and the Tonawanta Creek. He left this frontier in the winter of 1806, and marched with his command to Pittsburgh, for service down the Mississippi, during Burr's operations in that quarter. In the war of 1812 with England, he was a colonel, and succeeded General Alexander Smythe in command on the Niagara frontier during the winter of 1812 and 1813. His head quarters for some time, were at the log house of Mr. Rogere, at Williamsville, on the west side of the creek, where the largest portion of the troops were cantoned in log huts, on the site of that beautiful village, which was then densely covered with heavy timber. He rose to the rank of Brigadier General and died some few years after the war. He sustained & good reputation in the army, and was always considered an efficient and brave soldier, and kind hearted man.
*The military works erected by the United States at this place, consisted of a few wooden block-houses picketed in, with other buildings sufficient to secure the Indian annuities and military stores, and quarters for a Captain's command. In July, 1832, during the Black Hawk War, the few families and traders here, numbering in all about one hundred persons, had to depend upon these works for shelter, in the daily expecta- tion of being attacked by this Chief and his warriors. At this time (1848) this little village and isolated band of people, have grown to a well built and flourishing city. numbering more than 16,000 inhabitants. A large canal, of about one hundred miles in length, terminating at Chicago, is completed, during this present month of April, connecting Lake Michigan with the Illinois river; thus forming a steamboat and canal communication between the great Lakes and the Mississippi river.
This is not the only place of note that has risen like magic, on the western shore of Lake Michigan. Other towns and places, whose beginning were subsequent to 1-32: attract the eye of the traveller. Milwaukie, with a busy population, over 14,000, Little Fort, Southport, Racine, Sheboygan and some others, numbering from 1000 to upwards of 3009 souls, beautify and adorn the bank, while inland, numerous brisk villages are springing up in all directions.
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number of inhabitants in the then North Western Territory, now forming the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and the Territory of Wisconsin, embracing a surface more than twice the size of Great Britain and Ireland, and capable of sustaining a population equally as dense.
That report says that the villages on the Mississippi or near there, contained the following families : Kaskaskia, 80; Prairie de Roche 12; Fort St. Philip 5; Kehokia 50; Fort Chartres 5. St. Vincents, Detroit and some other places on the Lakes contained probably, not much more than an equal number. These were all French, or Canadian settlements. The total population did not exceed three thousand. The same district of country now contains but little if any, less than five millions of inhabitants.
The year 1794 was remarkable for another event of great importance to us as a nation, and of the greatest possible benefit to the whole Western Country. That year a treaty known as "Jay's treaty," was concluded between the Gov- ernments of England and the United States; under which, the English agreed to surrender the military posts on the American side of the lakes. The surrender however, did not take place until the spring or summer of 1796; and from that time only, have we used or had the privilege of using our great lakes, over which now floats a commerce of millions of dollars.
I have now reached that point of time when the germ of the greatness which we behold in Western New York, and the great West, go where we will, was first laid; and I ask your attention to the small and recent beginning of every thing around us.
To show you how averse the English were to allowing the free range of this frontier or the use of the Lakes to our people, I will relate some of their acts. In 1787, the year my father
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first came to the Niagara frontier, at which time all the white settlements were on the Canada side of the river, he said it was the practice of the commanding officer of Fort Niagara, to furnish the Indians with cards having on them sealing wax bearing a particular impression ; and directed them if they found any white men rambling about the country who had not such a pass or card, they were British soldiers deserting, and they must take them up and bring them to the Fort ;- that he was once or twice thus arrested himself, and at other times had to dodge and run away from drunken and troublesome Indians.
In 1789, John Fellows, of Sheffield, Massachusetts, started from Schenectady with a boat, its cargo mostly tea and tobacco, with the design of going to Canada to trade. On reaching Os- wego, the commanding officer refused him permission to pass that place. Fellows returned with his boat and cargo up the Oswego river to Seneca river, up that into the Canandaigua outlet as far as where Clyde is. Here he built a small log building (long known as the block-house) to secure his goods in, while he was engaged in bushing out a sled road to Sodus bay on lake Ontario. He then went to Geneva and got a yoke or two of cattle, hauled his boat and property across, and in this frail conveyance embarked with his goods, and pushed across the lake. He met with a ready sale for his tea and tobacco and did well. He re-crossed in the same boat and landed at Iron- dequoit creek. This boat was afterwards purchased and used by Judge Porter in traversing the shore of Lake Ontario, when making the survey of the Phelps and Gorham purchase.
This was the first American craft that ever floated on the waters of the great lakes, now filled with magnificent steam- boats and sail vessels, fully employed in carrying on the immense commeree which passes over them.
In 1793, Judge Porter informs me, that he was employed
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by two men in New York, who owned a large tract of land lying between Ithaca and Owego on the Susquehanna river, and also a ten thousand acre tract on the St. Lawrence, to explore it for them. That he crossed from Salisbury, in Con- necticut, to Cattskill, and with a pack on his back pushed through the country to where Ithaca now is. He explored the large tract of land, when he, with a man named Hull, came down the shore of Cayuga lake three or four miles, where they bought a canoe from a Dutchman. In this canoe they passed down the lake and through the different rivers to Oswego, for the purpose of going into the St. Lawrence to visit the other tract of land. He was refused permission to pass the fort at Oswego, and as there was no other route to get to this land but by the lake, he had to relinquish that part of his job, and he and his companion voyaged to Schenectady in that canoe, where he sold it.
And as late as 1796, and only a few days before they gave up forever the Fort at Oswego, did the English refuse permission to the boats with the surveyors and others in the employ of the Connecticut Land Company, who were going to survey the Western Reserve in Ohio, to pass that place. The boats were under the charge of Joshua Stow, uncle of Judge Stow of this city. Determined not to be delayed, he took the boats during the day a mile or two up the river, and at night silently ran them past the fort into the lake, and pursued his way to Fort Niagara, where he found the fort in our possession. The boats and their loading were conveyed across the portage at Queenstown, on the Canada side of the river and came on to Buffalo.
The first American troops who took possession of Fort Niagara that summer were under the command of Capt. Buff, with a detachment of artillery, accompanied by Capt. Little- field with part of a company of infantry. More troops arrived
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in December, and in the spring of 1797, the command was assumed by Major Revardy, a French officer in our service.
My father's first visit to the Niagara frontier was in the summer of 1787. He was employed to aid in driving a drove of cattle and sheep from the Western part of New Jersey, which had been sold to the English to supply their troops and Indian department; this being the best market the country then afforded. At that time there was a small cluster of Mohawk Indians residing a little over a mile east of the present village of Lewiston; the first night of his arrival he slept in that Indian town, and, at the period of his death, was the owner of the farm where formerly stood this Indian settlement. The farm is now known as the "Mohawk Farm."
The late father of Colonel Silas Hopkins, nearly seventy- five years of age, now living in Cambria, Niagara County, was one of the party. They came by way of Wyoming, up the Susquehanna, between the Lakes Cayuga and Seneca, and through to Niagara by the Tonawanta Reservation. On reaching the Genesce River, at Avon, near the spot where Mrs. Berry, the mother of Mrs. E. C. Hickox, of this city, subsequently kept a ferry across the river, the party stopped some time for the purpose of feeding and recuperating the animals ; and for their own comfort and convenience, put up a small log building which was among the first, if not the very first building, erected by white men between Fort Schuyler (now Utica,) and Lake Erie, on the line of the old state or stage road between the two points. On his return to New Jersey he came up the river from Niagara, on the Canada side, and remained a few days at Buffalo, which then only contained two or three log huts in the vicinity where the Mansion House stands. For the services rendered his employer on this occa- sion he received eight dollars, and thought himself well com- pensated.
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He returned the next year as far as Geneva, and from that period was a resident of Western New-York, until the time of his death ; which occurred at Lewiston, in June, 1842, to which place he removed with his family, in June, 1807. The family of James Latta, my grandfather, on my mother's side, came to Geneva, on the 14th of September, 1789,-my mother, now living, was nearly sixteen years of age. The family removed from New Windsor, on the Hudson River. They came to Albany in a sloop, crossed over to Schenectady in wagons, ascended the Mohawk River, as far as Fort Stanwix, (now Rome,) hauled their small boats over the portage, into Wood Creek, down that into the Oneida Lake. They reached that on the evening of a clear moonlight night, and my grandfather paid his men extra wages, to pass over the lake to Fort Brewerton, during the night ; fearing a storm would arise in the morning and detain them several days, as was frequently the case. The route then, was down the Oneida River to Three River Point, then up the Seneca River to the outlet of Seneca Lake, then up that to Geneva. The voyage from Schenectady consumed seventeen days, during the greater part of which time it rained.
At this time, there was no mill in the country nearer than Newtown, (now Elmira,) fifty miles distant, and this one had no bolt; the flour ground there, required to be sifted before using it; provisions were brought into the country by water, up the Mohawk in small boats, and from the Susquehanna River on pack horses. It was some time before mills were erected in many places. The first one she remembers was Waggoner's, on the outlet of the Crooked Lake, near where Penn Yan now is. This place was originally settled by emigrants from Pennsylvania and the Eastern States, in nearly equal numbers, and my father has the credit of giving it a name. Being at that place on a certain time when the people
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were talking much about giving their place a name, and as there was much difficulty in finding one to suit all parties, he proposed Penn Yan or Yank, as most descriptive of the people and where they came from ; being half Yankees, and half Pennamites, as they were called ; the oddity of the name and its expressive meaning took with the people, and hence the name of Penn Yan.
Before mills were built, almost every family kept one or two mortars or homminy blocks, for pounding corn in. These blocks were frequently, amongst the people in the coun- try, made in the stump of a tree near the house. They would cut the stump square and then burn or dig a cavity in the top, deep enough to receive the corn; and to relieve the labor the pounder was frequently used by means of a swing. Provisions of course were scarce and dear, there being no money in those times ; and the people lived mostly on corn, pumpkins and beans, and killed deer and bears for meat. They were kind and friendly to each other, and bore their sufferings patiently, rendering to each other all the assistance they could. The early settlers were a superior class of men, of great physi- cal strength and superior intellects, capable of doing and endu- ring every thing-and their powers were frequently taxed to the utmost.
I will relate a story, which will show the simplicity of man- ners which characterised the people for many years, as well as the manner in which parties of recreation were sometimes formed in those days.
My father was a long time employed by the Surveyor Gen- eral, the late Simon DeWitt, in surveying the military tract
*This tract of land was set apart and appropriated for military services rendered during the revolutionary war by the New York State troops. To show the limited geogra- phical knowledge, possessed by the Legislature in those days, of even the central part of the State, I will give an extract from the act describing the boundaries of this tract. 5th Session of the Legislature of the State of New York, held at Poughkeepsie, in Dutchess County. GEORGE CLINTON, Governor. Passed July 25, 1782.
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lying east of Ontario County, to and including Onondaga. From his great industry and availing himself of every honora- ble manner to better his condition, and by the practice of rigid economy in his expenditures, he had become comparatively forehanded. He determined to build a better house than the
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