USA > New York > Livingston County > Nunda > Centennial history of the town of Nunda : with a preliminary recital of the winning of western New York, from the fort builders age to the last conquest by our Revolutionary forefathers > Part 23
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67
201
£
CAPT. HENRY BAGLEY
CHURCH STREET, NUNDA
202
=
had one, but has hired Nunda talent. Miles Moffat, however, practiced law at Genesee Falls, about 1838-50. At the time of the canal celebration in 1836. Benedict Bagley was president of the day and Addison M. Crane, the poet of the occasion.
The residence of this great lawyer did not match his celebrity. It was only large enough for a law office, but his family lived there too. Everyone who has lived in Nunda knows the building, it stood where the Grace church now stands, until 1852. Dr. Chittenden then moved it down East Street to the parsonage well, and Mrs. Bowhall has lived in it for many years on Center Street. It was burned to the ground a few months since. Mr. B., after 1850 built on Mill Street, the house now owned by Mr. and Mrs. Robert Wright. He had become Vice President of what is now the Erie railroad ( Hornell Branch) and was classed with great lawyers. His student A. M. Crane be- came a member of Assembly in the west. As stockholder and director of a railroad, Bagley probably sunk all his funds, excepting his charges against the company for legal advice. He removed with his wife and daughter to Dans- ville in 1855 and died in 1875, aged 75.
1824- FRAME HOUSES AND RIVER NAVIGATION
This year frame houses were built in town and village. the first that there are any record of. Asa Heath is said to have built the first in the village, and George W. Merrick the first on a farmi. The tenant house now standing on the old Chandler farm was also built that year, if not before, for it was on the farm when Jonathan Barron bought a large tract of land, including this farm, in 1824 or 1825. It is probable that Asa Heath had parted with his farm to Law- yer A. C. Chipman, and bought of his brother James S. Heath some land near State Street, where the first house was built. The Jones family became own- ers of both houses and barn, and moved them in 1832 near their cabinet shops. and there they are showing age, but still in use. Hubbells frame inn must also have been built about this time, for Alanson Hubbell, was married that year to Miss Parmilia Robinson. who has survived alike her husband and his habitation to which she came a bride in 1824. After 1824 it is doubtful it any more log houses were built in the village. On the Creek road near Nunda Junction there were several small houses and one of them built in the town of Mt. Morris in 1823, is said to have been the first one built on that road. The writer lived for nearly eight years in a double house made of two of these first frame houses built by the Sherwoods. but joined together. He also remembers seeing one of the houses on the Mt. Morris side of the, then county line, moved by Abijah Hayward of Cooperville, in which. Howards family lived many years. Probably Ebenezer Warner. the carpenter, built most of these build- ings, as he livel on the E. W. Kendall farm. One of them was bought by Henry Rockefellow of him, and moved near this once well known line. At least fifty similar houses, for they were nearly all alike, can be found to-day n this village and town. They were 20x24 feet, the roof slanting to the front. with a door and two windows in the center of front, two windows on the sides, and one on each side of the gable. Twelve feet posts, one foot square, intrud- ing into the room, built of good material. they have survived their builders. and unlike them will have their centennial in due time. One hundred more in
203
----
the village alone have changed their form, added a story with gable facing the street, added porches. bay windows, one pane sashes to windows, and like many another well painted beanty appear decidedly youthful. This year also navigation opened on the Genesee River below the Lower Falls. The Erie canal was completed to Rochester, and now shingles, grain and potash could be sent from Rochester to New York. There was one man with energy enough to undertake to make the Genesce serve his bidding. If arks could be sent to Baltimore from Arkport on the Canisteo Creek, and they had been for a quar- ter of a century, then they could be sent down the Genesee also. Sanford Hunt was the Noah, to inaugurate the movement and probably one of the Pet- ersons, who was said to be an Arkwright, built the ark, and Hunt himself was the Columbus, to seek not a new world, but a new market. A Geneseo news- paper under date of May 27, 1824. announces the passing of the "Hazard" from Nunda down the river, loaded with lumber, potash and pearl ashes for Al- bany. The same year steani navigation was tried on the Genesee up the river as far as Geneseo.
THE WAITES AND JOSLYNS
John Waite, Esq., said to be a veteran of the war of 1812-14, settled on the Gibbs Homestead. Gibbs, Buffalo, Holmes and Seward Streets and Oak- wood cemetery are on this farm. Waite settled in 1823. and his brother-in- law, Lindsay Joslyn in 1824.
THE WAITES
John Waite, Esq., took up in the early days a large farm which extended over the entire western and northwestern part of our village. A large log house a little to the south and cast of the Gibbs mansion faced the road to Oak- iand, furnished a home for his large family. Mrs. Waites' maiden name was Phoebe Thompson. Their children : Almina, who was married to Edw. Swain and afterward to Samuel Skinner ; Emily was married to Campbell Allen of Castile ; Loverna to a Mr. Maunard of Canada; and Garifelia also married a Canadian. The sons, Erastus Darwin married Hepsy French ; Thompson died while a young man; David Vandalia became an M. D., Hiram died in 1904, aged 78. Two handsome boy twins, Edward and Edwin, if living are now ;" years of age. The Waites were a scholarly family and an honor to the town. They sold out to Eli Sharp, whose boys were noted base ball players 15 years later. Waite moved to Wilcox Corners and afterward returned and built a house on Church Street, but died elsewhere before it was completed.
THE JOSLYNS
The Joslyns were energetic and scholarly. Mrs. Joslyn was a sister of Squire Waite. Their son Waite Joslyn lost a limb in a threshing machine and so a store was built for him on the site of the W. B. Whitcomb store. where his father in 1832 became the first postmaster in Nunda village succeed- ing Wm. P. Wilcox, and Null as postmaster at Wilcox Corners in 1831.
Zara W., taught a select school, Adoniram, Chauncey and Zara W .. were all teachers in the school on East Street and on Mill Street. One of the sons probably Chauncey was assistant secretary of the Interior Department under U. S. Senator, Henry M. Teller, at the same time that Major George Lockwood
204
was chief clerk in this department. Secretary Teller lived when a boy in Alle- gany County, and it is said sometimes came to Nunda bare-footed, a custom with boys in that day, but now obsolete, as Chauncey and Zara were college bred, it is possible it was the former. The daughters were Evelyn and Mary. A sketch of the life of Lindsay Joslyn written by one of his sons, tells us of his future career. He became a judge of probate court and was a leading man in his western home. He was while living in Nunda village its first post- master. The other sons of Lindsay Joslyn were Adoniram, Chauncey, Zara W., who studied medicine and became a skillful physician and located perman- ently at Mt. Morris, and Merritt. Frederic and Daniel. Lindsay Jocelyn and Samuel Swain, Sr., built the Swain grist mill in 1828. The Jocelyns built a log house on the Jared Willis-Stamp place and numerous shops, for they were all workers.
THE DEACON WISNER FAMILY, AND A STORY OF THE DEACON'S INTERPRETATION OF THE "UNKNOWN TONGUE"
The deacon was a quaint man full of dry humor, he was said to preach sometimes, mostly in school houses. Like his neighbor, Peter Myers he would have preferred a Free Will Baptist church, but that form of church belief, did not exist in Nunda until after his day, so he attended the ministrations of the Baptist church. The family were very intelligent, the boys were inclined in youth to be full of pranks, of a harmless order, but sobered down at manhood to the sterling realities of the sedate type of life required at that time of all profes- sors of religion. Looked at from a present standpoint where cheerfulness and joy are not antagonistic to a devout life, we can't help but rejoice that the boys got some pleasure as they were going along toward a more sedate manhood.
We will introduce Deacon Daniel and Sarah Wisner, who owned several hundred acres of land on the Cranston road and their four sons. (2) Horace, married Rachel Hudnut : William, married Betsey Hudnut : Eliza, married in Pennsylvania, her husband was killed by a falling tree; Calvin, married Polly Hudnut ; and LaFayette. married Harriet Warner, sister of Octavia Warner Page of this place.
A story was in print twenty-five or thirty years ago, that if good then is now. Two of the boys, ( who can tell if the embryo preacher was one of them). found some excuse for staying away from church, and saw the rest of the fam- ily depart for meeting. The boys then hied away to the Keshequa, where there was a good swimming hole. with a spring board attachment, and commenced indulging in their well planned amusement. An old ram that they owned had become somewhat pugnacious, and sometimes helped the boys make good time out of the pasture lot, and over the fence : sometimes they had found it a matter of prudence to jump into the creek as they could make better time in the water than Mr. Buck. This day they had planned some new amusement. They ex- hibited themselves in nature's costume and invited the attention of the adver- sary. He accepted the challenge and came at full speed after them. The wide plank spring board over which the boys ran seemed no obstacle, he followed them with such headway that he could not stop and into the water he went. while the boys were soon on the bank. Again and again they caused their fleecy adversary to plunge in, but looking up they discovered coming toward
205
1
them the keen old Deacon, intent on finding out the secret for staying at home on Sunday. Carefully hiding themselves in the bushes they saw the Deacon approaching, and soon he was out on the spring board peering around for the boys. The buck also saw the old man, he had got down on his knees to look into the bushes, when ker-whack! splash! into the pool goes Deacon and ram, both dressed in their very best garments. Did those youngsters laugh? It was na- tural they did. Did they not help their poor father out? No, the buck tried hard to, for he did not see that his new adversary was less pranky than the others. The boys all dry and clean met the bedrenched Deacon when he reached home, and expressed surprise that he had not gone to church, but the Deacon knew the joke was on him and was wise enough to consider the incident closed. The story got into print, but it was not the Deacon that furnished the particulars.
About the year 1839 or 1840, the Latter Day Saints or Mormons sent ont their Missionaries among the Gentiles of that day, and by their songs, their new Bible, their speech in unknown tongues, their power to interpret tongues, their insistence on immersion as the true baptism, in this community mostly holding to that form, they found ready listeners and many converts. In. Portage, Ossian and Chautauqua Hollow they were very successful so they tried Nunda. The Wisner school house (or was it the Coopersville school house ), furnished the place, and an eager audience listened to the new revelations all in scriptural lan- guage, with the holy tone and apt quotations from prophetic prophesies of lat- ter day glories were being disseminated much to the satisfaction of the credu- lous and supersitions that listened to the eloquent speaker. Finally he said that to some were given the power to speak in an unknown tongue, and to others were given the interpretation. He added that he could speak in a tongue he could not understand, but it would be useless unless there was someone present who could interpret what he said. "Who will interpret the words of wonderful wisdom that are given me, that I have not learned, but have come to me with power to proclaim, but no power to interpret?" Dea- con Wisner rose to his feet, looked sadly around and replied. "I can interpret what you say, speak on!" Then followed a motley mess of meaningless words and syllables strung together and uttered with a volubility worthy of a penta- costal saint. When he paused for breath, the quiet old man without a smile or even a frown said placidly. "I will interpret: He says he's the child of the devil and the works of his father he will do." "I did not say any such thing," shouted the angry Mormon. "Ah brother remember you said you could not interpret. I can." The excited company burst out in vociferous laughter and the first and last Mormon meeting in that part of Nunda was closed informally
In one section of the town. the southeastern, a Mormon family by the name of Kellogg sold their home and it was moved to this village, and many people have lived there. Near the foot of Massachusetts Street it may be found. "It · is long and low and cid."
In Ossian there being no Deacon Wisner there to interpret, some of the citizens went to Nauvoo, and one of the fair ones had the honor of being one of the many wives of Brigham the Prophet.
The family of Hon. Daniel Ashley: consisted of Daniel Ashley Jr., and his wife Hetty. His children were: Carlos C. Ashley and Helen his wife:
206
Daniel D., Sylvia, married Quartus H. Barron ; Frances, #Henry H., married Mehetable Messenger, he was a merchant in Oakland: Oliver and Yates were merchants in Nunda, but were not successful. The family came into the vil- lage in 1835, built the two story house No. 39 East Street, ( since owned by Mrs. Gilbert, Dr. Brown and Milton Van Dusen), Mill Street tannery, the Captain Campbell house Walnut Street, and helped for ten or twelve years in giving the town a desirable degree of enterprise along business and educational lines. They left most of their money in the town when they went west. Mrs. Sylvia Barron, past 80 years of age, alone survives. Connected with the family were some nieces and a nephew, Mrs. Caroline Ashley Palen, who died 1841, and her daughter Miss Ashley, wife of Addison M. Crane, Clarissa Ashley. Sophia Webster Lloyd, a teacher and poetess, mother of the celebrated novelist. John Uri Lloyd, Edward Webster, student at academy and law student, who became eminent in after life as a lawyer, he married a cousin of Hon. Addison M. Crane of Nunda. Mrs. Sophia Webster Lloyd, lived with her uncle Ashley, and taught school in the Page district in 1847. She grad- uated at the Seminary in Lima, in 1841. Her sons have collected her poenis, printed them and have given them out to special friends, a filial act worthy of imitation. She wrote principally for the Saturday Evening Post, the "Olive Branch," and the Philadelphia Saturday Courier.
COL. HUFFMAN FAMILY SETTLED ON STILLWELL FARM ABOUT 1826
I. I. Colonel Huffman and wife ( family Universalists). 2. Submit Huff- man, married Silas Grover. 3. Polly, married Mr. Webb, who built Mrs. Johnson's house on Church Street. 4. Abby, married Silas Hatch, nephew of Silas Grover.
Children of Colonel Huffman. II. I. Huldah, married Patrick FitzSim- mons : (2) Julia, married Benjamin Butler; (3) Catharine, single: (4) Philip. married in the west: (5) David, married in the west: (6) *William H. (cap- tain Civil War), married Mary Starkweather of Nunda ..
III. Ann, married Bryant : Jennie, married Kellar : Tyler, lives in Nunda, Ill.
II. 7. Laura, married Bryant: John, married in the west.
Colonel William Huffman had a fine physique and at "Militia Training" attracted great attention by his soldierly bearing, it is probable that he was in the War of 1812, but that is not definitely known. He bought the Eagle Hotci soon after it was built. took charge of it for a short time. He was succeeded in 1835, by Daniel Grover. It is probable also he was in the short, two weeks affair, called the Patriots War, in which the greatest success scored by the small company from Nunda was the bounty lands they secured in the West, as Colonel Huffman and his son-in-law, David Butler, and Butler's brother-in . law, Sherwood, settled in Illinois soon after 1838, (when this bloodless conten- tion took place ). and they called the place Nunda, Ili. We may conclude they located their bounty lands there. ` (See Captain Osgoodby's Co., Patriots War. )
207
£
HUBBELLS CORNERS
At the risk of shocking the sensibilities of some of the fastidious denizens of Nunda village, we must state that the first name applied to our present vil- lage was Hubbells Corners. From 1824. when Hubbells Inn was the chief fea- ture of the settlement. \ frame building, and a bride of nineteen, pretty and capable, deserved special notice. The first settlers seemed to be indifferent as to names. Messenger's Hollow, Hunt's Hollow, Wilcox Corners are sufficient evidence, even Rochester was Milltown, till it became Rochesterville. These corners do not now exist, they were north of the Nunda House where there is no street now, and when a block of stores filled up the space where the street was, and the landlord sold out and a larger hotel was built there in 1835, the name of the hamlet gradually passed away, and only those past seventy years of age remember the original name of the hamlet. The recent discovery that the bride landlady of 82 years ago. is still living. has helped to make the name a matter of interest.
The Hubbells Corners of that day, was a settlement of three houses and two barns, around our present plaza, and two large pools of water well stocked with frogs. James M1. Heath on site of old Eagle Hotel, now the four story Livingston block, had a hut ; William Gould in log house, opposite. Union block: and Hubbell on site of the Nunda House were all in 1822. A large barn where the post office building now stands, and probably the very old building back of the Nunda House that became the first foundry, and is now a livery stable, was all that there was where the business portion of our village now is found. In 1832 when a hotel and several stores were built, the unsightly pools of water were drained and the new village named Nunda Valley, which is located in one of the most charming valleys in Western New York, became an actuality.
Mrs. Hubbell has been a widow many years. She resides at St. Lawrence, Hand County. South Dakota. An annual celebration of her birth is held since she became a nonagenarian, and by reason of her age, a celebrity. She has been the mother of ten children, only three of them are now living ; one son 82 years old, one daughter now 78, who spent ten years of her life as a mis- sionary in India ( these were both born in Nunda) and Mrs. Hyde, with whom she lives, born in Oakland in 1837 or '8. A lady of 95, who was invited to the annual birthday party, was too feeble and another 89, sent the same excuse, but others came and these young people had a pleasant time and two of them then had their pictures taken, and I have the picture of this former beauty and bride : which I present, that readers may form an estimate of how well they will look when they become centenarians.
Hubbells Corners grew however, to have a store or two of its own, a land office, and a village with eighteen streets, a cabinet shop, but when the post of- fice was taken away from Wilcox Corners that place ceased to thrive. It3 founder moved to Pennsylvania. the clerks came to Nunda, and went into busi- · ness, and Utley Spencer and Waite Joslyn sold the goods from the corner store. best known as the Walter B. Whitcomb store. The Tobey grocery was the first in the place. but Lyman Tobey is now forgotten except by those past seventy years of age. The new post office was called "Nunda Valley" and so the place had a change of name, that is at least descriptive of the locality.
Riley Merrill settled on the State road, north of the village. He sold out
208
his farm at an early date about 1830 and came into the village and built the house now owned by Mrs. H. Peck. He had a large family of interesting girls and only two boys.
Mr. and Mrs. Merrill ; married Cravath; (2) Mrs. Town.
The children were: 1. Addison. 2. Mary Elizabeth, married Rev. Hodge. 3. Emeline. 4. Adelaide married Ira Wisner, editor of the first paper in Nunda. 5. Amelia (Mrs. Hovey). 6. Celestia Martha. 7. Laura Siloam, (attended college at Oberlin). 8. Cecelia Harmonia. 9. Riley Jr .. married Helen Livermore, a preceptress in Nunda Literary Institute.
CHAUTAUQUA HOLLOW PIONEERS
In 1822, the family of Alexander Craige came to Chautauqua Hollow. Mr. and Mrs. Craige had at the time six children, they came from Vermont, in win- ter in a covered sleigh, but finding the snow deep they passed the winter of 1821-2 at Lima. The three younger children Lucy, Mercy and Mary were born in Nunda.
Among the first settlers of this strangely named little valley I find the family of Alexander and Eunice Craige, so early did they settle here, near a well worn trail leading to Allegany and Chautauqua Counties from Bath and Canisteo, and crossed here by one leading to Gardeau through Nunda that it is not surprising that this pioneer family knew the chiefs Straight-Back and Wil- liam Tall Chief sons of the great chief, Tall Chief, as well as they knew their neighbors. Aaron and Harvey Shepard. Indeed they saw them often during the hunting season when they and other Indians would come in at meal time and needed no urging to partake of the food provided for the household, throwing potato skins over their shoulders as they would in their own wigwams, and in the fall when the nights were cold Indians and squaws would lift the latch quiet!v at niglit and warm by the fire on the hearth, then steal away quietly to give others a like opportunity. Sometimes they brought game and left it, but gen- erally they twisted the scripture rule and made it better "to receive" than "to give." Mr. Craige's ambition to be a good farmer kept him from being what nature designed him, a skillful mechanic. He learned while at Lima, to make baskets and soon became an expert basket maker, excelling even the Indians who are skilled in this work. If this is not a contradiction, his bushel baskets were too good. In those days the wheat raised on the burned clearings had to be washed and when put in big baskets for that purpose the water poured upon the grain would carry off the soot and dirt but his held the water and so held the dirt. We would like his kind best now. The men who could make the tools they worked with in that day were fortunate men.
Mr. Craige was born in 1776 and Mrs. Craige in 1783. The one at the be- ginning of the Revolution, the other at its close. A like coincidence of historic dates, was shared by John Bennett and wife as the record in our cemetery . shows. No doubt both husbands were patriots and both wives peaceful.
The children of this pioneer family were Laura (Mrs. Stephen Wilson). John, Eliza (Mrs. Russell N. Fuller ), Maria ( Mrs. Sylvanus Dixon), Caroline ( Mrs. Ed. Millhollen). Alexander. Lucy Ann ( Mrs. Sidney Frisbee of Wells- ville ), Mercy Jane, born May 5. 1825 (Mrs. Henry B. Bowhall), whose hus- band was killed August 1st, 1854, at the Bell Skinner and Company's foundry, and Mary (Mrs. James E. Cadby).
209
Mrs. Bowhall has lived in this town all her life, and to her wonderful mem- ory the writer is greatly indebted for more than half of the information, col- lected of the past. With other farmer and village girls she worked in the Swain Woolen Factory, attended the Academy with those older and younger. and so knew all the brightest and best in this vicinity, she also taught several of our district schools, boarded 'round, and so knew the parents as well as their children. For over fifty years she has lived in this village and so she has had unusual opportunities to know old and young for at least four generations, for most of our pioneers lived to be very old and their stories of the past live in her memory still. Her little home, just large enough for one is almost historic, it was built by William Haldane, the architect and builder of the first Presbyter- ian church (now the Methodist) and her nouse stood on the site of the Epis- copal church, after Halpine built his brick house, the rectory. the small house was rented to Benedict Bagley, Esq., and like others of the young village it re- mains a type of the small houses that were built before Nunda was incorpo- rated. It served as Dr. Chittenden's dental office from 1851 to '59 near the M. E. parsonage well, when it was moved to Mill Street where the old institute was burned and afterwards was bought by Mrs. Bowhall and moved to Center Street, where she has since resided.
Her historic house was burned to the ground April 4th, 1908 with its con- tents. Mrs. Bowhall now 83 .. is with a niece at Alfred, N. Y.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.