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 14
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A story was told me in Hamburg, quite in harmony with the circumstances, to the effect that the Buffalonians were converted to the project of dividing the town of Erie by a piece of strategy on the part of Capt. Jotham Bemis, then resident near Abbott's Corners. They had opposed a division, as all the town business
153
THREE NEW COUNTIES.
was done at their village, bringing them more or less trade, and making unnecessary, so far as they were concerned, the expense of new towns.
So, in the spring of 1807, Capt. Bemis made arrangements for all the south part of the town of Eric to be fully represented at Buffalo, by men prepared to stay over night. It was then customary to fix the place of the next town-meeting in the afternoon, just before closing the polls.
Accordingly, all the south-country people duly appeared at Buffalo, and every man of them remained. Most of those from north of the reservation started for home early, and the villagers alone were in the minority. When the time came for appoint- ing the next place of nieeting, the gallant captain rallied his men, and it was fixed at John Green's tavern, in the present town of East Hamburg. Then the Buffalo people were willing the town should be divided, and used their influence also in favor of a division of the county.
Whether this story be true or not, certain it is that on the 1 1th day of March there was a complete municipal rcorganization of the Holland Purchase. On that day a law was passed by which all that part of the county of Genesee lying north of Cattarau- gus creek, and west of the line between the fourth and fifth ranges of townships, should form the county of Niagara. The counties of Cattaraugus and Chautauqua were erected at the same time, with substantially the same limits as now, but it was provided that neither of them should be organized until it should have five hundred voters, and meanwhile both, for all county purposes, were attached to Niagara.
It was also enacted that the county-seat of the latter county should be at " Buffaloe or New Amsterdam," provided the Hol- land Company should in three years erect a suitable court-house and jail, and should deed to the county at least half an acre of ground, on which they should stand. It gives a somewhat amus- ing idea of the amount of legal business expected to be done, to note that three terms annually of the Court of Common Pleas and two of the Court of General Sessions were provided for, and that in order to give time for the Court of Sessions it was enacted that two terms of the Common Pleas, all of which were to be held on Tuesday, might be extended till the Satur-
II
154
DESTRUCTION OF " ERIE."
day following ! The first court was directed to be held at the house of Joseph Landon.
By the same act the town-lines of the Purchase were changed to a very remarkable extent. A tier of townships off from the east side of Willink had been left in Genesee county. This, together with old Batavia, was cut up into the three towns of Batavia, Warsaw and Sheldon.
All that part of Niagara county north of the center of Ton- awanda creek, being a part of the former towns of Willink and Erie, and covering the same ground as the present county of Niagara, was formed into a town by the name of Cambria. All that part between Tonawanda creek and the center of the Buf- falo Creek reservation, also comprising parts of both Willink and Eric, was formed into a town by the name of Clarence, which as will be seen included the village of Buffalo. The first town-meeting was directed to be held at the house of Elias Ransom, (near Eggertsville.) All that part of Niagara county south of the center of the reservation, being also a part of Wil- link and Erie, was formed into a town which retained the name of Willink.
In the new county of Cattaraugus a single town was erected named Olean, while Chautauqua county was divided into two towns, Chautauqua and Pomfret.
It will be seen that by this act the town of Erie was com- pletely obliterated from the map, while Willink, which had pre- viously been eighteen miles wide and a hundred miles long, extending from Pennsylvania to Lake Ontario, was changed into a town bounded by the Buffalo reservation, Lake Erie, Cat- taraugus creek, and the east line of the county, having an extreme width north and south of twenty-five miles, and an ex- treme length east and west of thirty-five. So great was the complication caused by the destruction of the old town-lines while retaining one of the town-names, (as well as by the sub- sequent revival of "Erie" as a town-name, as will be hereafter related,) that all the local historians and statisticians have got lost in trying to describe the early municipal organization of this county. Even French's State Gazetteer, a book of much merit and very great labor, is entirely at fault in regard to near- ly all the earlier town formations of Erie county.
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155
ACTUAL BEGINNING OF ERIE COUNTY.
The oldest residents of the town of Erie, also, had forgotten its existence, and insisted that "Willink" covered the whole ground. Even the gentlenian who told me the story as he had heard it, of the Bemis maneuver, supposed it related to a divi- sion of Willink. Although "Erie" was plainly laid down on a map of the Purchase made by Ellicott in 1804. I was half dis- posed for a while to regard it as a myth, and mentally desig- nated it as "The Lost Town." The old town-book before referred to, however, gave me considerable faith in it. and at length an examination of the laws of 1804 and 1808, proved it- existence and showed how completely the previous organization was broken up by the statute creating Niagara county.
It will have been .een that, by that law. there were but three towns in Niagara county. two of which were in the present county of Erie. As. however. Cattaraugus and Chautauqua were temporarily united with Niagara, the new board of super- visors which met in Buffalo must have been composed of six member-, representing a territory a hundred miles long and from twenty to seventy-five miles wide.
This was substantially the beginning of the present Erie county organization, although the name of Niagara was after- wards given to that part north of the Tonawanda. Erie county formed the principal part of old Niagara, both in territory and population : the county seat of old Niagara was the same as that of Eric. and such of the old Niagara county records as are not destroyed are retained in Erie county.
Having thus reached an epoch in the course of events. another chapter of a general nature becomes necessary.
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THE PIONEER'S BARN.
CHAPTER XX.
MISCELLANEOUS.
The Pioneer's Barn .- The Well. - The Sweep .- Browse. - Sheep and Wolves. -- Sugar-making. - Money Scarce .- Wheat and Tea .- Polash. Social Life .-- Schools,-The Husking Bee .- Buffalo Society .- Dress .- Indians. - Loaded Beaver Claws .- Peter Gimlet .- An Indian Court. - The Devil's Ramrod .- Describing a Tavern .- Old King and Young Smoke .- Anecdotes of Red Jackel.
After the pioneer had got his log house, his piece of clearing and his fence, the next thing was a barn. An open shed was generally made to suffice for the cattle, which were expected to stand cold as well as a salamander is said to endure fire. But with the gathering of harvests came the necessity for barns, and, though log ones were sometimes erected, it was so difficult to make them large enough that frame barns were built as soon as circumstances would possibly permit, and long before frame houses were aught but distant possibilities.
All were of substantially the same pattern, differing only in size. The frame of the convenient forest timber, scored and hewed by the ready hands of the pioneer himself, and roughly fitted by some frontier carpenter, the sides enclosed with pine boards without battening, the top covered with shingles, a threshing floor and drive-way in the center, with a bay for hay on one side, and a little stable room on the other, surmounted by a scaffold for grain-such was the Erie county barn of ISO8, and it has changed less than any other adjunct of the farm, though battened and painted sides, and basement stables, are becoming more common every year.
Generally preceding the barn if there was no spring conven- ient, but otherwise slightly succeeding it, was the well. The digging of this, like almost everything else, was done by the proprietor himself, with the aid of his boys, if he had any large enough, or of a neighbor to haul up the dirt. Its depth of course depended on the location of water, but that was gener-
157
A PICTURESQUE OBJECT.
ally to be found in abundant quantity and of good quality at from ten to twenty feet.
Excellent round stone was also abundant, and the settlers were never reduced to the condition of those western pioneers who are obliged, (to use their own expression,) to stone up their wells with cotton-wood plank.
The well being dug and stoned up, it was completed for use by a superstructure which was then universal, but is now almost utterly a thing of the past. A post ten or twelve inches in di- ameter and some ten feet high, with a crotched top, was set in the ground a few feet from the well. On a stout pin, running through both arms of the crotch, was hung a heavy pole or " sweep," often twenty feet long, the larger end resting on the ground, the smaller one rising in air directly over the well. To this was attached a smaller pole, reaching to the top of the well. At the lower end of this pole hung the bucket, the veritable " old oaken bucket, that hung in the well," and the process of drawing water consisted in pulling down the small end of the sweep till the bucket was filled, and then letting the butt end pull it out, with some help. If the pioneer had several small children, as he generally had, a board curb, about three feet square and two and a half high, usually ensured their safety.
The whole formed, for a long time, a picturesque and far-seen addition to nearly every door-yard in Erie county. Once in a great while some wealthy citizen would have a windlass for raising water, but for over a quarter of a century after the first settlements a farmer no more thought of having a pump than of buying a steam-engine.
It took longer for the pioneer to get a meadow started than to raise a crop of grain. Until this was done, the chief support of his cattle in winter was " browse," and for a long time after it was their partial dependence. Day after day he went into the woods, felled trees-beech, maple, birch, etc .- and drove his cattle thither to feed on the tender twigs. Cattle have been kept through the whole winter with no other food. Even in a much more advanced state of settlement, "browse" was a fre- quent resource to eke out slender stores, or supply an unex- pected deficiency.
In the house the food consisted of corn-bread or wheat-bread,
158
WILD AND TAME ANIMALS.
according to the circumstances of the householder, with pork as the meat of all classes. Beef was an occasional luxury.
Wild animals were not so abundant near the reservations as elsewhere. They were most numerous in the southern part of the county. The Indians kept them pretty well hunted down in their neighborhood, though they had a rule among themselves forbidding the young men from hunting within several miles of their village, in order to give the old men a chance.
Venison was frequently obtained in winter, but the settlers of Erie county were generally too earnestly engaged in opening farms to be very good hunters. Sometimes, too, a good fat bear was knocked over, but pork was the universal stand-by. No- body talked about trichina spiralis then.
Nearly everybody above the very poorest grade brought with him a few sheep and a cow. The latter was an invaluable re- source, furnishing the only cheap luxuries the family enjoyed, while the sheep were destined to supply their clothing. But the keeping of these was up-hill work. Enemies lurked on every hill-side, and often after bringing a little flock for hundreds of miles, and protecting them through the storms of winter, the pioneer would learn from their mangled remains that the wolves had taken advantage of one incautious night to destroy them all. Wolves were the foes of sheep, and bears of hogs. The latter enemies, however, could generally be defeated by keeping their prey in a good, stout pen, near the house. But sheep must be let out to feed, and would sometimes stray so as to be left out over night ; and then woe to the captured. Occasional pan- thers, too, roamed through the forest, but they seldom did any damage to the stock, and only served to render traveling at night a little dangerous.
Despite of wolves, however, the pioneers managed to keep sheep, and as soon as one obtained a few pounds of wool his wife and daughters went to carding it into rolls with hand-cards, then to spinning it, and then they either wove it or took it to a neighbor's to be woven, paying for its manufacture with a share of the cloth or with some farm products. Everything was done at home and almost everything by hand. There was not at this period, (the beginning of 1808,) even a carding mill or cloth- dressing establishment on the whole Holland Purchase, though
159
THE "SUGAR BUSH."
one was built the succeeding summer at Bushville, Genesee county.
As soon as flax could be raised, too, the " little wheels" of the housewives were set in motion, and coarse linen or tow cloth was manufactured, which served for dresses for the girls and summer clothing for the boys.
Tea and coffee were scarce, but one article, which in many countries is considered a luxury -- sugar-was reasonably abun- dant. All over the county grew the sugar maple, and there was hardly a lot large enough for a farm on which there was not a "sugar bush."
One of the earliest moves of the pioneer was to provide him- self with a few buckets and a big kettle. Then, when the sap began to stir in carly spring, trees were tapped-more or less in number according to the facilities at command-sap was gathered and boiled, and in due time made into sugar. New beginners, or poor people who were scant of buckets and kettles, would content themselves with making a small amount, to be carefully hoarded through the year.
But the glory of sugar-making was in the great bush where hundreds of trees were tapped, where a shanty was erected in which the sugar-makers lodged, where the sap was gathered in barrels on ox-sleds and brought to the central fire, where caul- dron kettles boiled and bubbled day and night, where boys and girls, young men and maidens, watched and tasted, and tasted and watched, and where, when the cautious hours of manufac- ture were over the great cakes of solidified sweetness were turned out by the hundred weight.
Money was scarce beyond the imagination of this age. Even after produce was raised, there was almost no market for it except during the war, and if it could be sold at all, after drag- ging it over the terrific roads to Batavia or some point farther east, the mere cost of traveling to and fro would nearly cat up the price. Wheat at one time was but twenty-five cents a bushel, and it is reported of a family in the north part of the county, in which the good woman felt that she must have her tea, that cight bushels of wheat were sold to buy a pound of tea ; the price of wheat being twenty-five cents a bushel and that of tea two dollars a pound.
160
"BLACK SALTS."
A little relief was obtained by the sale of "black salts." At a very early period asheries were established in various parts of the county, where black salts were bought and converted into potash. These salts were the residuum from boiling down the lye of common wood-ashes. As there was an immense quantity of wood which needed to be burned in order to work the land, it was but little extra trouble to leach the ashes and boil the lye.
These salts were brought to the asheries and sold. There they were again boiled and converted into potash. As that could be sent East without costing more than it was worth for transportation, a little money was brought into the country in exchange for it. In 1808 there were very few asheries but they afterwards became numerous.
Social life was of course of the rudest kind. Still, there were visitings to and fro, and sleighing parties on ox-sleds, and other similar recreations. As yet there were hardly any but log tav- erns, and hardly a room that even by courtesy could be called a ball-room. Yet dances were not infrequently improvised on the rough floor of a contracted room, to the sound of a solitary fiddle in the hands of some backwoods devotee of Apollo.
There was not, as has been seen, a church-building in the county, except the log meeting-house of the Quakers, at East Hamburg, and not an organized church, excepting the "Friends Meeting," if they called it a church, at that place, and the little Methodist society in Newstead. Even Buffalo had no church in 1808. Meetings were, however, held at rare intervals in school-houses, or in the houses of citizens, and frequently, when no minister was to be had, some layman would read a sermon and conduct the services. Dr. Chapin sometimes per- formed these functions in Buffalo, besides conducting the funer- als, furnishing his house for dancing-school, and taking the lead in everything that was going forward. Some irreverent youth declared that the doctor "did the praying and swearing for the whole community." "
Nearly every neighborhood managed to have a school as soon as there were children enough to form one-which was not long after the first settlement. The universal testimony is that log houses are favorable to the increase of population ; at least that in the log-house era children multiplied and flourished to an extent
1
161
THE HUSKING BEE.
unheard of in these degenerate days. It may be taken for granted, even when there is no evidence on the subject, that a school was kept within a very few years after the first pioneer located himself in any given neighborhod, and generally a log school house was soon erected by the people.
There was, at the time of the organization of Niagara county, only the single store of A. S. Clarke, outside of Buffalo, in what is now Erie county. Taverns, however, were abundant. Along every road men with their families were pushing forward to new homes, others were going back after their families, others were wending their way to distant localities with grain to be ground, with wool to be carded, sometimes even with crops to be sold. Consequently, on every road those who could provide beds, food and liquor for the travelers were apt to put up signs to announce their willingness to do so.
One of the principal occasions for a jollification in the country was the husking-bee. Corn was abundant, and it had to be husked. So, instead of each man's gloomily sitting down by himself and doing his own work, the farmers, one after the other, invited the young people of the neighborhood to husk- ing-bees; the "neighborhood" frequently extending over several square miles.
They came in the early evening, young men and women, all with ox teams, save where some scion of one of the first fami- lies brought his fair friends on a lumber wagon or sleigh, behind a pair of horses, the envy and admiration of less fortunate swains. After disposing of their teams as well as circumstances permitted, and after a brief warming at the house, all adjourned to the barn, where the great pile of ears of corn awaited their arrival.
It was cold, but they were expected to keep warm by work. So at work they went, stripping the husks from the big ears and flinging them into piles, each husker and huskeress striving to make the largest pile, and the warm blood that coursed rapidly through their veins under the spur of exercise bidding defiance to the state of the temperature.
This warmth of blood was also occasionally increased by a "red ear " episode. It was the law of all well-regulated husk- ing-bees, dating from time immemorial, that the young man to
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CANADIAN EXCURSIONS.
whose lot fell a red car should have the privilege of kissing every young woman present. Some laws fail because they are not enforced, but this was not one of that kind. It has even been suspected, so eager were the youth of the period to support the law, that the same red ear would be found more than once the same evening, and the statute duly enforced on each occasion.
A vast pile of unhusked ears was soon by many hands trans- ferred into shining heaps of husked ones, and then the company adjourned to the house, where a huge supply of doughnuts and other simple luxuries rewarded their labors. Possibly a bushel of apples might have been imported from lands beyond the Genesce, and if the host had also obtained a few gallons of cider to grace the occasion he was looked on as an Amphitryon of the highest order.
Perchance some frontier fiddler was present with his instru- ment, when, if the rude floor afforded a space of ten feet by fifteen clear of fire-place and table, a dance was arranged in which there was abundance of enjoyment and energy, if not of grace, and in which the young men were only prevented from bounding eight feet from the floor by the fact that the ceiling was but six and a half feet high.
In Buffalo there was a little closer resemblance to the society of older localities, but only a little. Mrs. Fox, the before-men- tioned daughter of Samuel Pratt, relates that up to the time of the war the greater part of the society enjoyed by the Buf- falonians was furnished by Canada. The west side of the Ni- agara had been settled much earlier than the east, and naturally a much larger proportion of the people had attained a reasona- ble degree of comfort.
With these the few Buffalonians who made pretensions to cul- ture were on terms of cordial intimacy. Visits were frequently exchanged, and during the long, cold winters it was a common thing for two or three Buffalo gentlemen to hitch up their sleighs. fill them with their friends, male and female, and drive across the ice to the hospitable residences of some of their Canadian acquaintances, where they were greeted with a ready welcome and ample cheer. Similar excursions were made from Canada to the homes of Captain Pratt, Dr. Chapin, Judge Tupper and others.
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A FLOATING POPULATION.
In the sleighs which thus drove back and forth, and which glided along the few streets of the frontier village at that pe- riod, the male figures were invariably clad in long overcoats, (or surtouts,) with broad capes, covered with a number of little capes, or "shingles," as they were then called, while the whole was surmounted by a big fur cap. Fur was cheap and abund- ant, and the fur cap was the universal head-wear of the mascu- line Buffalonian. The ladies, too, were well enveloped in fur, and each fair face retreated into the depths of a vast " coal scut- tle" bonnet, which would have held a dozen bonnets of this degenerate era, and still have had room for the owner's head.
Arriving at their destination, and doffing their out-door clothing, the ladies appeared in the narrowest of skirts, and. waists close up to their arms, while broad lace collars surrounded their necks, and pointed shoes adorned their feet.
The gentlemen displayed themselves on state occasions in blue, "swallow-tailed," brass-buttoned coats, buff vests and snuff- colored trowsers, and above their ruffled shirts shone smooth faces fresh from the razor, which had removed every particle of beard save when some very stylish exquisite had left a diminu- tive side-whisker to adorn the upper part of his cheek.
The increase of population in Buffalo had not been rapid. The exact number of families at the time it was made the county- seat is not known, but was probably about thirty-five, as the next year it was forty-three. There was, also, as in all new places, a considerable number of unmarried men, engaged in various kinds of business.
Besides these, there was a truly "floating population" of In- dians, squaws and papooses, for whom Buffalo was the grand metropolis. Hardly a day passed in which a number of these children of the forest might not have seen on the streets, the men sauntering aimlessly along, or seeking to obtain whisky of whomsoever they could, the squaws frequently engaged in more honorable occupations. Sometimes they (the squaws) brought baskets of corn on their heads ; sometimes chickens and eggs. Capt. Pratt's store was the principal rendezvous of Indian trade and travel. Mrs. Fox remembers that one squaw, whom she calls White Seneca, (there was also an Indian who went by that name) used regularly to bring butter to her mother, Mrs. Pratt.
164
PETER GIMLET.
Both Indians and white men brought in a great deal of game. In the winter great sled-loads of deer would be driven up to Capt. Pratt's door, and sold out to the villagers at the cheapest imaginable rates.
To Pratt, the Indians according to his daughter's recollection gave the honorable title of "Negurriyu," meaning "honest dealer." The history of the Pratt family gives his Indian name as "Hodanidaoh," meaning "a merciful man." It is not improb- able that both were used. The Indians were fond of giving names. Notwithstanding the general respect for him, yet some of them were not averse to defrauding him if possible; a task rendered somewhat difficult by his quick eye and ready wit.
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