USA > New York > Erie County > Centennial history of Erie County, New York : being its annals from the earliest recorded events to the hundredth year of American independence > Part 12
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" The Contractor's Store," a somewhat noted institution of that day, was started in the fall of 1804, or spring of 1805, by
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SUNDRY SETTLERS.
the gentlemen who had contracts for supplying the military posts of the West. It was at first in charge of Samuel Tupper. who came to Buffalo about that time, and may have been one of the contractors. The fact that he was appointed a judge of Genesee county in the fall goes to show that he was not a mere clerk. He was the first person within the limits of Erie county who had a right to the appellation of judge. There have been a good many since.
About the same time, Zenas Barker began keeping on the Terrace a rival tavern to Crow's. At the fall term of the Court of Common Pleas, both Crow and Barker were licensed to keep ferries across Buffalo creek ; the former at the mouth and the latter at what was afterwards known as the Pratt ferry. Another new-comer was William Hodge, a most energetic young man, only twenty-three years of age, but having already a wife and two children, one of whom, then five months old, was Willian Hodge, Jr., now a venerable and highly respected citizen of Buffalo. Mr. H. soon established himself on lot 35, now corner of Main and Utica streets, remaining in that vicinity throughout his life.
Besides the two Buffalo liquor-licenses recorded in 1805, there was one to Nathaniel Titus, who in that year opened a tavern at the bend of the lake, in what is now Hamburg. His place was afterwards long known as the Barker stand.
Among other settlers in Hamburg, Abner Amsden located himself on the lake shore, four miles above Titus, where his son Abner still lives. The latter, then eleven years old, is now eighty-two. I found him last year two or three miles from home, and so busy getting a load of lumber that he could not stop to talk much. He said, however, that he had lived on that same farm seventy years, and the longer he lived on it the better he liked it.
"You can't wear the country out," said the old gentleman, "if you farm it right ;" and he has certainly tried it long enough to know.
Jotham Bemis, (or "old Captain Bemis" as he was called,) Vandeventer's opponent in the middle-of-the-road contest for the supervisorship, purchased land in Hamburg in 1805, and then or soon after located himself near the site of Abbott's Corners.
I31
PRIMITIVE MILLS.
Tyler Sackett, Russell Goodrich, Rufus Belden, Abel Buck, Gideon Dudley, Samuel P. Hibbard, King Root, Winslow Perry and others came about the same time or a little later.
In East Hamburg, Jacob Eddy, (father of David) and Asa Sprague settled near Potter's Corners. Among other immi- grants were William Coltrin, Samuel Knapp and Joseph Sheldon. The "Friend" or Quaker element began to center about Potter's Corners, giving to that locality characteristics which it has ever since to some extent retained.
In 1805, Daniel Smith, son of Deacon Ezekiel, put up a rude mill, for grinding corn only, on a little stream since called Hoag's Brook, two miles southwest of Potter's Corners. It was a log building about cighteen feet square, with wood gearing, and would grind five or six bushels a day.
David Eddy also built a saw-mill for the Indians, by contract with superintendent Granger, on Cazenove creek, near what is now "Lower Ebenezer." It furnished the first boards for the inhabitants of the south towns. The cranks, saws, etc., had to be transported from Albany. The same enterprising pioneer raised nearly a thousand bushels of corn in his first crop, having prepared the ground by chopping down the trees and burning the tops, leaving the bodies on the ground.
To Boston, in 1805, came Deacon Richard Cary, a godly sol- dier of the Revolution, who had shared the hardships of the northern army in its vain but gallant adventure against Quebec, and had followed the footsteps of Washington through the ter- rible campaigns of the Jerseys. The extreme poverty of the pioneers of the Holland Purchase has been the theme of frequent description, and I think their descendants are somewhat proud of it-or, rather, proud of their surmounting such difficulties. There were so many cases of men bringing their families to their new homes on ox-sleds, and arriving with from fifty cents to five dollars each, that I can not mention the half of them. Deacon Cary, however, is fairly entitled to special notice in this respect, for when he reached the valley of the Eighteen-Mile he had just three cents in his pocket and was two dollars in debt. A sick wife and eight children explain the condition of his finances.
To shelter these ten persons there was a log cabin twelve feet
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WILLIAM WARREN.
square, with a one-slope roof, in which a blanket served as a door, and a piece of factory cloth stretched over a hole did duty for a window. The Johnsons and Cary all took their first crops of wheat to be ground at Chippewa, full forty miles distant.
In Aurora there was a considerable influx of emigration. Jabez Warren moved his family thither in March (on an ox-sled of course); Emerson and Godfrey came with him. Taber Earl came back from Buffalo, Thomas Tracy and Humphrey Smith, purchasers of the previous year, occupied their lands, and settle- ment in Aurora was fairly under way. The price of land was two dollars per acre.
Jabez Warren's oldest son, William, who, though not twenty- one till the July following, had been married two years, also came, received a part of the tract entered by his father, and made a clearing at the east end of East Aurora village ; cutting down the soft maples and basswoods, but only girdling the harder trees. In August he had five acres thus cleared, four of which he sowed to wheat, and in telling the story he adds : "I got bouncing wheat." He then brought his family, making the seventh in that township.
William Warren, since better known as General Warren, was a smooth-faced, good-looking youth, of amiable disposition and pleasant manners, who would not have been picked out from his appearance as peculiarly adapted to endure the hardships of frontier life. Yet he has survived them all, and still remains in reasonably good health, at the age of ninety-two, to tell the story of his remarkable career. Until a few years since he con- tinued to dwell at East Aurora, but has latterly resided at Knowlesville, Orleans county.
The future gencral had an early predeliction for military affairs, had been an "ensign" of militia at his former home, and immediately after his arrival in Erie county was commis- sioned as captain His district embraced all the south part of Erie and Wyoming counties. With his commission came an order to call his company together for organization. He did so and nine men responded.
In Newstead Archibald S. Clarke purchased, and soon settled, on the Buffalo road, about a mile and a half southwest of Akron, becoming ere long one of the most prominent citizens of the
I33
WILLIAMSVILLE.
county. Aaron Dolph came about the same time, and among other names of immigrants of that period are John Beamer, Eli Hammond, Salmon and George Sparling, and Henry Russell.
Among other settlers in Clarence in 1805, were Thomas Clark, Edmund Thompson and David Hamlin, Sr. His son Lindsay Hamlin, then eleven, is one of the earliest surviving residents of Clarence. He thinks that when he came in 1805 Asa Ran- som had both a saw-mill and a grist-mill. If so the latter must have been built as early as 1804. Other data fix the year at ISO5. At all events it was the first mill for grinding wheat in the county, and was for several years the sole resort of the settlers north of the reservation.
Mr. Hamlin states that when he came the "openings" occupied half the space for four miles west and south of Clarence Hol- low, and along the Lancaster line. They were small prairies of a few acres each, surrounded by oak and pine. They were very productive, and the settlers used to raise from sixty to eighty bushels of corn per acre.
The names of John Hersey, Alexander Logan, and John King appear as purchasers in Amherst this year. One of the events of the season there was the opening of a tavern by Elias Ransom, three miles west of Williamsville, and another was the marriage of Timothy S. Hopkins in the log house built by Thompson four years before, which has now become the venerable clapboarded, dun-colored "Evans house."
A more important event was the advent of Jonas Williams. He had been a clerk in the land-office, and when on his way to Chautauqua county on business for the company had been cap- tivated by the grand water-power on Ellicott's creek. He bought the land and the abandoned mill, of Thompson, and in the spring of 1805 began to rebuild the mill, becoming the founder of the village which still bears his name.
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POOR PIONEERS.
CHAPTER XVII.
PIONEERING.
Poverty .-- AAn Aristocratie Mansion. A Horse Bedstead .- Oxen .-- A Raising .-- Clearing Land .- The Logging Bee .- The Rail Fence.
I have now shown the general course of events, as accurately as I could, down to a time when settlement had got pretty well started in Erie county. Still everything was in the rudest form, and the daily lives of the settlers was of the very hardest de- scription.
Whenever there was something peculiar in any of the numer- ous stories of pioneer experience which I have read or listened to, I have narrated it, and shall do so hereafter. It would, how- ever, have been entirely impracticable to publish each individual experience, or the ordinary events in each town, because so many of them were closely similar to each other. There would have been twenty-five town histories all very much alike. The ob- jeet of this chapter is to consolidate these numerous accounts, and give a general idea of what pioneering was in Erie county in its earliest stages.
In the first place, it may be said roundly that all the carly settlers of this county, as of the whole Holland Purchase, were extremely poor. The exceptions were of the rarest. Over and over again Mr. Ellicott mentions, in his letters to the general agent, the absolute necessity of making sales with little or no advance payment. Over and over again we find men buying from one to two hundred acres, the amount paid down being twenty dollars, ten dollars, five dollars, and even a smaller sum.
When we see Sylvanus Maybee, the Buffalo merchant, paying but $15 down for a village lot, twelve dollars the next year, and then failing to pay altogether ; when we find Erastus Granger, superintendent of Indian affairs and post-master of Buffalo, sleeping on a pole bedstead, with a puncheon floor to his room, we can imagine the condition of the general run of settlers.
There was not, at the end of 1805, a grist mill in the county,
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A HORSE BEDSTEAD.
except Asa Ransom's, which was small and poorly supplied with water. There was no saw mill south of the reservation, and but two or three north of it. Except a few little buildings in Buf- falo, there was not a frame house in the county. The structures under which the earliest settlers sheltered themselves and their families hardly rose even to the dignity of log houses. They were frequently mere cabins of small logs, (there not being help enough to handle large ones,) covered with bark. Sometimes there was a floor of split logs, or "puncheons," sometimes nonc. A log house sixteen feet square, with a shingle roof, a board floor, and a window containing six lights of glass, was a decid- edly stylish residence, and its owner was in some danger of being disliked as a bloated aristocrat.
The furniture was as primitive as the houses. Sometimes a feather-bed was brought on an ox-cart to the new home, some- times not. Bedsteads were still rarer, and chairs pertained only to the higher classes. Substitutes for the latter were made by splitting a slab out of a log, boring four holes in the corners, and inserting four legs hewed out of the same tree.
A bedstead was almost as easily constructed. Two poles were cut, one about six feet long and the other three. One end of cach was inserted in an auger-hole, bored in a log at the proper distance from the corner of the house ; the other ends were fastened to a post which formed the corner of the struc- ture. Other poles were fastened along the logs, and the frame was complete.
Then, if the family was well off and owned a bed cord, it was strung upon the poles ; if not, its place was supplied by strips of bark from the nearest trees. This was called by some a " horse bedstead," and by some a "Holland Purchase bed- stead."
Usually the emigrant brought a small stock of provisions with him, for food he knew he must have. These, however, were frequently exhausted before he could raise a supply. Then he had to depend on the precarious resource of wild game, or on what his labor could obtain from his scarcely more fortunate neighbors.
Even after a crop of corn had been raised, there still re- mained the extreme difficulty of getting it ground. But in
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"THIE PLUMPING MILL," ETC.
this case, as in so many others, necessity was the mother of in- vention. A fire being built in the top of a stump, a hollow of the size of a half-bushel basket would be burned out and then scraped clean. Then the pioneer would hew out a rude wooden pestle, fasten it to a "spring-pole," and secure the latter to a neighboring tree. With this primeval grist-mill corn could be reduced to a coarse meal. When there were. several families in a neighborhood, one such machine would serve them all. It was sometimes called a "plumping mill."
Another way was to flatten a beech log, hollow it out, fit a block into the hollow and turn the block with a lever.
The clothes of both men and women for the first few years were such as they brought from their former homes. If these were plentiful, the owners were comfortable; if scanty, they were patched till their original material was lost beneath the over- lying amendments.
When the emigrant was unmarried, he frequently came on foot and alone, with only an axe on his shoulder, selected a lo- cation miles away from the nearest settler, put him up the rudest kind of a cabin, and for awhile kept bachelor's hall, occa- sionally visiting some friendly matron to have his bread baked or his clothes repaired.
When a family came it was almost invariably behind a yoke of oxen. These patient animals were the universal resource of the first pioneers of Western New York. Cheap, hardy, and far better adapted than horses to the terrible roads of those days, they possessed the further advantage of being always transmissible into beef, in case of accident to them or scarcity in the family. During the first few years of its settlement, prob- ably not one family in ten came into Erie county with a span of horses.
New-comers were always warmly welcomed by their prede- cessors, partly doubtless from native kindness, and partly because each new arrival helped to redeem the forest from its forbidding loneliness, and added to the value of improvements already made.
If there were already a few settlers in the locality, the emi- grant's family was sheltered by one of them until notice could be given to all around of a house-raising on a specified day. On that day, perhaps only a dozen men would be collected from as
A HOUSE-RAISING. I 37
many square miles, but all of them able to handle their axes as easily as the deftest clerk flourishes his pen.
Suitable trecs had already been felled, and logs cut, from twelve to sixteen feet long according to the wealth and preten- sions of the builder. These were drawn by oxen to the desired point, and four of the largest selected as a foundation.
Four of the most active and expert men were designated to build the corners. They began by cutting a kind of saddle at the ends of two of the logs ; a space about a foot long being shaped like the roof of a house. Notches to fit these saddles were cut in the other logs and then they were laid upon the first ones. The operation was repeated again and again, the four axemen rising with the building, and shaping the logs handed up to them by their comrades.
Arrived at a height of six or eight feet, rafters made of poles from the forest were placed in position, and if a supply of ash "shakes," (rough shingles three feet long,) had been provided, the roof was at once constructed, the gable-ends being formed of logs, successively shortened to the pinnacle. Then a place for a door was sawed out, and another for a window, (if the pro- prietor aspired to such a convenience,) and the principal work of the architects was done.
They were usually cheered in their labors and rewarded at the close of them by the contents of a whisky jug; for it must have been a very poor neighborhood indeed in which a few quarts of that article could not be obtained on great occasions. Some- times the proprietor obtained rough boards and made a door, but often a blanket served that purpose during the first summer. There being no brick, he built a fire-place of stone, finishing it with a chimney composed of sticks, laid up cob-house fashion, and well plastered with mud.
The finishing touches were given by the owner himself; then, if the family had brought a few pots and kettles with them, they were ready to commence housekeeping.
The next task was to clear a piece of land. If the pioneer had arrived very early in the season, he might possibly get half an acre of woods out of the way so as to plant a little corn the same spring. Usually, however, his ambition was limited to getting three or four acres ready for winter wheat by the first
IO
1 38
THE LOGGING BEE.
of September. To do this he worked early and late, fortunate if he was not interrupted by the ague, or some other sickness.
The first thing of course was to fell the trees, but even this was a work of science. It was the part of the expert woods- man to make them all lie in one direction, so they could be easi- ly rolled together. Then they were cut into logs from fourteen to eighteen feet long, and the brush was cut up and piled. When the latter had become dry it was fired, and the land quickly burned over, leaving the blackened ground and charred logs.
Next came the logging. When the piece was small the pio- neer would probably take his oxen, change works so as to obtain a couple of helpers, and the three would log an acre a day, one driving the team and two using handspikes, and thus dragging and rolling the logs into piles convenient for burning. The first dry weather these, too, were fired, the brands watched and heaped together, and when all were consumed the land was ready for the plough.
Even an ordinary day in the logging field was a sufficiently sooty and disagreeable experience, but was as nothing compared with a "logging bee." When a large tract was to be logged, the neighbors were invited from far and near to a bee. Those who had oxen brought them, the others provided themselves with cant-hooks and handspikes. The officer of the day, otherwise the "boss," who was usually the owner of the land, gave the necessary directions, designating the location of the different heaps, and the work began. The charred and blackened logs were rapidly drawn, (or "snaked," as the term was,) alongside the heap, and then the handspike brigade quickly rolled them on top of it. Another and another was dragged up in rapid succession, the handspike-men being always ready to put it right if it caught against an obstacle. As it tore along the ground, the black dust flew up in every direction, and when a collision occurred the volume of the sooty zephyr arose in treble volume.
Soon every man was covered with a thick coat of black, in- volving clothes, hands and face in a darkness which no mourn- ing garb ever equaled. But the work went on with increasing speed. The different gangs caught the spirit of rivalry, and each trio or quartette strove to make the quickest trips and the highest pile. It is even said by old loggers that the oxen would
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PRIMITIVE FENCES.
get as excited as the men, and would "snake" their loads into place with ever increasing energy.
Teams that understood their business would stand quiet while the chain was being hitched, then spring with all their might, taking a bee-line to the log-heap and halt as soon as they came abreast of it. They had not the benefit, either, of the stimulus applied to the men, for the whisky jug was in frequent circulation.
Faster and faster sped the men and teams to and fro, harder strained the handspike heroes to increase the pile, higher flew- the clouds of dust and soot. Reckless of danger, men sprang in front of rolling logs, or bounded over them as they went whirling among the stumps. Accidents sometimes happened, but those who have been on the scene express wonder that half the necks present were not broken.
As the day draws to a close a thick cloud covers the field, through which are seen a host of sooty forms, four-legged ones with horns and two-legged ones with handspikes, pulling, run- ning, lifting, shouting, screaming, giving the most vivid idea of pandemonium that a farmer's life ever offers, until night de- scends, and the tired yet still excited laborers return to their homes, clothed in blackness, and the terror of even the most careless of housewives. But the work is done.
To sow the land with winter wheat was, in most cases, the next move. A patch might be reserved for corn and potatoes, but spring wheat was a very rare crop.
The next absolute necessity was a fence. The modern sys- tem of dispensing with that protection was unknown and un- dreamed of. Probably the records of every town organized in the Holland Purchase, down to 1850, would show that at its first town-meeting an ordinance was passed, providing that horses and horned cattle should be free commoners. Hogs, it was usu- ally voted, should not be free commoners, while sheep held an intermediate position, being sometimes allowed the liberty of the road, and sometimes doomed to the seclusion of the pasture.
Sometimes a temporary fence was constructed by piling large brush along the outside of the clearing, but this was a poor de- fense against a steer that was really in earnest, and was held in general disfavor as a sign of "shiftlessness," that first of sins to the Yankee mind.
140
THE "VIRGINIA RAIL FENCE."
The universal reliance, and the pride of the pioneer's heart, was the old-fashioned " Virginia rail fence." Not long ago it would have been an absurdity for an Erie county writer to say anything in the way of description about an institution so well known as that. It might perhaps do to omit any mention of it now. But if any copies of this book should last for thirty years, the readers of that day will all want to know why the author failed to describe that curious crooked fence, made of split logs, which they will have heard of but never seen. Even now it is rapidly becoming a thing of the past, under the combined influences of cattle-restraining laws and the high price of timber.
One of the most important things which the emigrant looked out for in selecting a farm was an ample supply of oak, elm, ash, or walnut, for rail-making purposes. Then, when winter had put an end to other work, laden with axe, and beetle, and iron wedge, and wooden wedge, he tramped through the snow to the big trees, and perhaps for months did little else than convert them into great, three-cornered rails, twelve feet long, and facing six or eight inches on each side.
In the spring these were laid in fence, the biggest at the bot- tom, one end of each rail below and the other above, and each "length" of fence forming an obtuse angle with that on either side. Four and a half feet was the usual height pre- scribed by the town ordinances, but the farmer's standard of efficiency was an "eight-rail fence, staked and ridered." The last two adjectives denoted that two stout stakes were driven into the ground and crossed above the eighth rail, at each corner, while on the crotch thus formed was laid the biggest kind of a rail, serving at once to add to the height and to keep the others in place. Such a fence would often reach the height of seven feet, and prove an invincible obstacle to the hungry horse, the breachy ox, and even to the wild and wandering bull.
If any of the old settlers should find any mistakes in this ac- count, I trust they will keep quiet, for the next generation will know nothing of the subject, and cannot criticise the description.
Having now narrated the story of the average pioneer, until he has provided himself with the absolute necessities of fron- tier life-a log house, a few acres of clearing and a rail fence- I turn again to some of the details of local progress.
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A FOUR DAYS' RAISING.
CHAPTER XVIII.
1806 AND 1807.
A Tavern in Evans. - A Grist-Mill in Hamburg .- A Four Days" Raising .- First Meeting-house in the County. - Mills, etc., in Aurora. - Settlement in Wales. -The Tomahawk Story .- First Methodist Society. - A Traveling Ballot Box. -First Erie County Lawyer .- Primitive Pork Packing .- Pay as You Go .- The Little Red School-house .- Chivalry at a Discount.
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