USA > New York > Delaware County > Delaware County, New York, history of the century, 1797-1897, centennial celebration, June 9 and 10, 1897 > Part 2
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One of the most important agreements which Sir William John- son made with the Indians was a treaty entered into at Fort Stanwix in 1768. This treaty was designed to settle the disputes which had arisen in reference to the western boundary line to
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HISTORY OF DELAWARE COUNTY.
which the location of white settlements might extend. The line tixed by this treaty was an irregular one beginning on the Ohio river and running eastward to the Susquehanna, and along branches of the same, thenee to the Delaware river, and so northward near the present city of Rome and by the Canada Creek to Lake Ontario. It was signed on the part of the British by Sir William Johnson, and on the part of the Indians by representatives of each of the six confederated nations, viz the Mohawks, the Oneidas, the Tuscaro- ras, the Onondagas, the Cayugas, and the Senecas. Sir William on behalf of his government paid to the Indian chiefs the sum of ten thousand four hundred and sixty pounds, seven shillings and three penee, and in return received a deed of the land so conveyed. Delaware county lay to the east of this line, which was known as the "line of properties." It was therefore open to settlement, both under the terms of this treaty, and under the Hardenbergh patent which had originally been bought from the Indians.
The only Indian who is known to have lived in Delaware county after the Revolutionary war was old Teunis, who dwelt alone in a little tent by the lake which still retains his name, situated in Bovina near the borders of the town of Andes. The story con- cerning him is that during the Revolutionary war, when the Indians were about to make a raid upon the white settlements in Middletown, the family of Mr. Yaple received a friendly warning from this Indian who had received kindnesses from them. Taking advantage of this timely caution Mr. Yaple and his neighbors escaped and drove off their cattle and saved much of their belong- ings. Probably the action of Teunis in giving notice to the whites enraged his companions, and made it necessary for him to escape into solitude. Here he lived for many years, supporting himself by hunting and fishing, and occasionally receiving a little help from the white neighbors who always felt for him a deep sense of gratitude for saving their lives.
There is a tradition that when Teunis ran short of lead to make balls for his rifle, he used to make a journey of a few days from
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INDIAN OCCUPANTS: WILD ANIMALS.
home, and bring back with him blocks of a mineral which he used for the manufacture of balls. This gave rise to the belief that there was somewhere within reach a lead mine to which Teunis went for his supply of this mineral. Search for it has often been made; but no such mineral deposit has ever been found. It is impossible that he derived it from any natural mine. And he never revealed the source of his supply. It is probable that he had access to some secret store of lead which his tribe had established when they used to roam over this region in search of game.
It is as appropriate a place as we shall find to give some account of the wild animals which inhabited the wilderness, when the white settlers came into Delaware county. The largest and most power- ful of these animals was the black bear (Ursus americanus) which roamed freely through all the mountainous regions of the county. Their food was a mixed carniverous and vegetarian diet. When pressed with hunger they watched for and destroyed domestic animals. They were specially fond of honey, and when a tree contained a store of this delicious food the bear was always on hand to climb it and if possible extract some of its sweetness .. The earliest settlers suffered much from their depredations among their hogs. As was often the ease the hogs were turned into the forests to collect nuts as food; and the bears took advantage of the opportunity to seize them and carry them off. At other times when the hogs were confined in a pon to be fed with the milk of the dairy, the bears often eame prowling by night around the buildings and carried off the well fed occupants of the pen.
For these reasons the farmers were always prepared to hunt these natural enemies. Every one had his rifle, and many were skilled in the use of it. The flint-lock rifle was at these carly times the chief kind of gun in use. The percussion cap was not intro- duced until about 1840. The old fashioned long barreled tlint-lock American rifle was a most effective weapon, not only in the hands of the white pioneer settler, but also in the skilled and steady hands of the Indians.
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HISTORY OF DELAWARE COUNTY.
The wolf (Canis lupus) was also a common pest about the new farms. It was a cowardly but a mischievous animal. Their spe- cialty was the waylaying and killing of sheep. They remained hidden during the day and came out at night. A single wolf in this way often became the terror of a whole neighborhood. From its lair, often almost inaccessible, it would sally out in search of unprotected sheep. If the season were winter and snow on the ground it was possible to track its depredations. But even when the hunter was able to follow the wolf to its lair, it was sure to have taken timely warning and made its escape. Dogs were often used to follow the tracks of the wolves, and sometimes combined efforts were made to hunt and destroy what had become a serious and destructive nuisance.
The red fox (Vulpex fulves) was another of the farmer's enemies. The destruction of poultry was its special purpose. It also was a night prowler. It was hunted especially in the winter time by men with dogs. The English fox-hound was carly introduced and was a common sentinel on the farms. The fox-skin had besides a commercial value which led to a keener interest in hunting this animal.
The most dangerous wild animal which frequented the woods of Delaware county was the panther-commonly called "painter " (Felis concoler). It was not a large animal. but belonging to the cat family, was possessed of great agility. It sought its prey by noiselessly gliding within reach, and then making a sudden spring. In this way it attacked deer, and sheep, and oven cows. It was capable even of attacking a human being* when tempted by hunger or by the helplessness and exposure of its victim. It scarcely ever appeared in the open fields, and whenever it was killed by the hunter it was nearly always when found lurking furtively in the woods.
From time to time the board of supervisors offered bounties for
* Ser Cooper's description of Leatherstocking shooting a panther and saving the life of Elizabeth and Louisa. The Pioneers p. 337.
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INDIAAN OCCUPANTS: WILD ANIMALS.
the killing of some of the destructive wild animals. The bounty in later times was $5 for killing a wolf, and $15 for killing a panther.
The animals hunted for food were not many, the red deer (Cervus canadensis) being the principal one, or indeed ahnost the only one. This graceful animal roamed the hills of Delaware in great numbers and even down to a recent period. The flesh was an important article of food to the pioneer settler. The male is provided with antlers which fall off every spring and grow out again during the summer. Each year additional prongs grow upon the antlers, so that the age of a buck may be approximately known by the number of prongs upon his antlers. The female gives birth to one doe at each time of breeding, so that the increase of the herd is not rapid. They feed entirely on vegetables. Their common food is the buds, leaves and twigs of forest trees, and the wild grass and plants which grow near streams of water. They are hunted in two ways: one the still bunt where the hunter creeps silently and slowly upon his prey, and shoots one of a herd. As the deer is exceedingly timid and very swift of flight, it is not easy to get within shooting distance. The second method of hunting is with dogs who are capable of tracing the animal by scent. The deer runs usually in a well known track, and therefore the hunter stations himself near where it is expected to pass. The baying of the hounds gives warning of the approach, and when the feet footed animal darts by the hunter must be ready to give it the fatal shot.
Besides the flesh of the deer which furnished delicious food to the settler, the skin was tanned into a soft leather called buck-skin, which had many uses. The Indians used it for moccasins and other primitive purposes. White settlers made from it leggings, mittens, gloves, whip-lashes, etc.
There were besides the large game already enumerated, several smaller and unimportant animals. Thus there was the woodchuck (Aretomys monax), which was hunted for the skin, and which fed
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HISTORY OF DELAWARE COUNTY.
specially on the red-clover and was troublesome to the farmer by making trails through the growing meadows. There were at least three kinds of squirrels, which however playful and pretty were destructive to the ripened grain: the chip-monk, the red squirrel, and the gray squirrel. To these may be added the beautiful black squirrel which however was more rare than any of the others. The squirrels, especially the chip-monk, were sometimes a great nui- sance to the farmer, in stealing eorn and wheat and rye. Some- times squirrel-hunts were held in a neighborhood, when every body, who could get a gun, started out to kill all the squirrels he could find. There was usually a prize offered for the person who killed the greatest number, and a second prize to him who killed the next greatest. The necessity for this kind of destruction of squirrels has long since disappeared, and farmers are now quite willing that the nimble little marauders should steal all they need to supply their summer food and their winter stores.
Some of the older inhabitants of the county will remember the flocks of wild pigeons that sometimes in the spring flew over the valleys. These birds were properly called Passenger Pigeons (Ectopistes migratorins). The breeding places of these birds were in the north, sometimes as far as the Hudson Bay country. The immense floeks in which they crossed Delaware county were on their way to the breeding grounds. These flocks were sometimes half a mile wide and long enough to require two or three hours to pass over a given place. In Cooper's Novel of the Pioneers, will be found a description of a flight of pigeons near Otsego Lake, when the group of characters is represented as killing the birds with clubs, and guns; and how in their extravagance even a cannon loaded with seraps, was fired into the almost interminable flock .*
Such migrations of pigeons however have completely ceased. With the more destructive agencies now made use of, the pigeon like the buffalo has been almost hunted out of existence. Delaware Ser Cooper's Pioneers, p. 267.
H . Si Je StrN .1
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INDIAN OCCUPANTS: WILD ANIMALS.
county sees them no more, although fifty years ago they were a common sight which many of the old inhabitants will remember.
Besides the swallows, the robins, the woodpeckers, and other birds which were harmless, there were a muumuber which were regarded as the enemies of the farmers and which were always held as legitimate objects of their skill in gunning. These were: the crows which fed voraciously on the newly sown grain and against whom scarecrows were almost valueless; the hawks, which were marauders of domestic chickens; owls which prowled about the houses by night to hunt for mice and other destructive rodents, but which when flesh is scarce do not hesitate to help themselves to grain and fruit; and more rarely the engle which from its tlight in the air pounced mercilessly upon the young lambs, and even some- times upon young children.
It only remains to say a word about the wild inhabitants of the waters of Delaware county. The most notable of the fish in its streams has always been the brook trout (Salmo fario). This delicious fish frequents the streams of temperate climates. It aseends all these, even the very small ones, for the purpose of selecting suitable ground for spawning. During every rise of the streams there is an irresistible instinet in these trout to push on to higher and higher ground. They are fished legitimately with a bait of angle-worms. or grasshoppers, or with an artificial fly. But the streams of the county have been so thoroughly fished, and the methods of illegitimate fishing with weirs and nets so much used in them, that the brook trout has very largely disappeared. It is only where portions of the streams are " preserved " and protected from common fishing that a few of this delicious game are still to be found.
In the rivers there have been preserved from the earliest times some of the black bass, which is caught with a bait or with a fly. It is an excellent table tish, but has never been very abundant.
Among the early settlers along the West branch of the Dela- ware as well as the East brauch, there was for a time runs of shad
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HISTORY OF DELAWARE COUNTY.
(Alosa sapidissima) in the spring. This of course was before the shad fishing on the lower Delaware was as destructive as it has since become. Now shad rarely go higher than the dam above Trenton in the Delaware river, and such a thing as the expectation of a profitable run at Deposit or Colchester is out of the question.
Thus we have traced the aboriginal inhabitants of the county from their earliest time of the white settlers. The forests that sheltered the Indians and the game on which they lived have almost gone. The streams of water, once sheltered from evapora- tion by the abundant and over-hanging trees have dwindled into insignificance. The lumber which used to give work to the chop- per, and a rush of business every spring to the raftsman, is gone. Instead we have thousands of civilized inhabitants, industrious and thrifty; cows instead of deer; sheep instead of wolves; roads and railroads instead of Indian trails; and churches and school-houses with worshippers and smiling school children on every road and in every village.
II. Physical Features.
TF' we mark out on the map of the Colony of New York, before its settlement by the whites, the little space included in the present county of Delaware, it would be found to be a very rough, though a very picturesque spot. It is covered completely by woods, mostly of maple and beech interspersed with birch, cherry and bass-wood. But at frequent intervals there were fine groves of pine and spruce, and mountains clothed to the very tops with the rich green of the hemlock. The soil in general was stony and incorrigible, and responded unwillingly to the tillage of the hus- bandman. But along the rivers and brooks there were here and there sweet bits of intervale which softened the roughness of the surface. Every where from the hillsides burst out little springs which each in turn contributed to streams that flowed into the picturesque rivers.
The Susquehanna river roughly speaking flows along the north- western border of the county; the East branch of the Delaware intersects the southern townships, and the West branch the central townships. The county is thus divided into three sections cach with a high, irregular water-shed drained by numberless tributary streams.
I have before me the new geological map of the State of New York, which Professor James Halls the State geologist has issued. At my request he has furnished me with a special colored map of
* Professor Hall is by many years the senior of any officer or employe of the State, He received his first appointment in the geological survey from Governor Marcy in IS37. and he has been continuously since then in the service of the State.
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HISTORY OF DELAWARE COUNTY.
Delaware county. More than three-fourths of the county, including all the southern portion belongs to the Catskill formation. A little corner on the north side including portions of the townships of Davenport and Harpersfield belongs to the Ithaca formation. South of this, extending along the Susquehanna and including parts of Sidney, Franklin, Meredith, all of Kortright, and parts of Harpersfield, Stamford and Roxbury, and following the West branch down below Hamden, and the East branch below Halcott- ville, lies a very irregular space belonging to the Oneonta formation. Finally there is another very irregular tract forming the division between the Catskill and Oneonta formations, and belonging to the Chemung formation. No coal deposits occur in any of these formations, and no minerals of any kind have ever been discovered within the limits of the county.
Occasionally howlders have been encountered, especially in the northern part of the county, which indicate that in the glacial period much of this region was covered with ice. Moving with resistless impulse it carried with it from distant points the rocks which it had picked up on its way. In the township of Franklin is an immense bowlder which from its composition and character could not possibly have been derived from any neighboring rocks. This bowlder was brought to my attention by Professor J. C. Smock now superintendent of the Geological Survey of New Jersey. He visited it when he was studying the evidences of the glacial period in New York and New Jersey, and expresses his belief that it was brought thither by the ice from some point in Canada.
The rocks in Delaware county are not in general suitable for building purposes. The only valuable quarries are the flagging stones which have been found in several localities. In the neigh- borhood of the village of Delhi these quarries have been worked to great advantage, so that few places have better flagged side- walks than this charming country village. When building stones are required in the structures which are to be erected, they must be brought from a distance: or they may be picked up in small
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PHYSICAL FEATURES.
quantities from the bowlders which have been dropped here and there as described above.
The mountains of Delaware county form a connecting link between the Blue Ridge on the south and the Catskill and Helder- berg mountains on the north. The highest peak in the county is Mt. Pisgah situated in the township of Andes, said to be about 3,400 feet above tide. In the southern part of the county the mountains are high and the valleys narrow and declivitous. With the exception of the bottom lands along the rivers, there was little land capable of growing successful crops of grain. The best crop-and this has given to the county its distinguishing spe- cialty- was the grass which furnished pasture to the cows in summer, and hay for them in winter. The springs and brooks which provided abundance of water, and the trees which provided refreshing shade, were helps in the same direction.
For a long time the abundance of pine in parts of the county gave employment to many lumbermen, who ent and bauled and rafted* to market the product of the forests. In like manner the hills covered with hemlock furnished bark for tanning leather. But a century of such destructive industries has virtually ex- hausted these sources of primitive wealth. Few rafts are now run either on the West or East branches. And scarcely a tannery can. be encountered in any part of the county.
* See below Section.
III. Early Settlements.
T HE only part of the present county which is claimed to have been occupied by white settlers at a date prior to the Fort Stanwix treaty is a small settlement on the East branch of the Delaware river in the present town of Middletown. In the year 1762 or 1763 a small band* of adventurers of Dutch extraction set out from Hurley in Ulster county to explore the lands on the East branch of the Delaware. They ascended Shandaken creek, crossed over the mountains forming the divide between the tributaries of the Hudson river and the Delaware, and found themselves in the beautiful valley of the East branch. To their great surprise they found here evidences of a deserted Indian village, which they afterwards learned was called Pakatakan; and even traces of Euro- pean settlements at several places. These latter were doubtless left by the hardy trappers and traders who had forced their way hither in search of beaver skins, and had found at least two homes of the beaver near this place.
The hardy adventurers from Hurley took up farms along this valley, and having made some hasty preparations went back for their families. They obtained warranty deeds for the land from Chancellor Livingston one of the heirs of Johannes Hardenbergh the owner of this tract. The price paid was twenty shillings au aero; and the deeds bear the date of 1763. The names of these first settlers, so far as they have come down to us, were the brothers Harmanus and Peter Dumond, Johannes Van Waggoner, Peter Hendricks, Peter Brugher, and Messrs. Kittle, Yaple,
* I am'indebted to a communication from Dr. O. M. Allaben, in Gould's History of Delirare County, for this account of the Middletown pioneers.
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EARLY SETTLEMENTS.
Sloughter (now named Sliter), Hinebagh, Green and Bierch. Their farms were chosen along the banks of the East branch, and the vicinity. The settlers were driven off* by the Indians in the Revo- lutionary war (1778), and the buildings and improvements were destroyed. But soon after the war they returned and resumed their abandoned farms.
The first settlements in both Sidney and Harpersfield took place about the year 1770; and both in like manner were interrupted by the disturbances of the Revolutionary war, which shortly followed. The pioneer of the former of these settlements was Rev. William Johuston a Presbyterian clergyman born in Ireland, and who had resided several years previous to his removal to the Susquehanna valley in the neighborhood of Albany. Mr. Johnston and his son Witter Johnston journeyed by Otsego lake and thence down the Susquehanna, stopping finally at the beautiful flats which are now called Sidney. Here they found a few scattered but friendly In- dians, belonging to the Housatonick tribe, which at this time were subject and tributary to the Six Nations. They selected a farm of 520 acres bordering on the river, which was a part of a land-patent belonging to Banyar and Wallace, of which they bought the fre-simple. In the Revolutionary troubles which soon came on Wallace took the tory side, and his property which the Johnstons had bought, but had not paid for, was contiseated and became the property of the State. On the recommendation of the governor, however, the Johnstons ou payment of the balance still dne were confirmed in the title to the land they had bought.
The Johnston family occupied their new home in the year 1773, and were followed by other families who soon made a thriving and attractive neighborhood. They were named Sliter, Carr, Wood- rock and Dingman. The Sliters inter-married with the Johnstons and in the troubles of the Revolutionary war took with them the patriotie side. But the others became tories and are lost sight of, except that Carr afterward is said to have erected * See below Section.
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HISTORY OF DELAWARE COUNTY.
the first grist-mill in this vicinity, upon Carr's brook which empties into the Susquehanna a few miles above the Johnston settlement.
In 1777 during the Revolutionary war the Johnston settlement received a visit from Brant and a band of Iroquois Indians. The Susquehanna valley was a frequent resort of these fierce warriors: and all the scattered Indians of other tribes which wandered through the region between the Susquehanna and the Hudson were tributary to the Iroquois. Brant and all the Six Nations had made a treaty with the British through Sir William Johnson and had embraced the tory side in the pending controversy. He came with a band of about eighty men. The white settlers held a conference with the redoubtable chief, who announced to them his ultimatum. He gave them eight days in which to leave their homes, after which everything would be at the mercy of his followers. If any of the families chose to declare themselves British partisans, he promised them protection and permission to remain in their homes. Under this urgent alternative Mr. Johnston and the other whig families took leave of their little possessions and hurried to Cherry Valley. They were there when the little village was burnt by the Indians in 1778; but the family escaped in time from the massacre, and one of the sons was in the fort which withstood the efforts of the savages to burn or take it.
After the war was over the fugitive families returned in 1784 to their homes at Sidney, and resumed the peaceful and prosperous life which has made Sidney one of the most attractive of all the towns in the county.
It remains to say something about Harpersfield, which is the only other part of the county which was settled by white people before the Revolutionary war. The founders of Harpersfield were a family of Harpers, whose ancestor James Harper migrated from Ireland to Maine in 1720. After successive migrations of the family John, a grandson of the Irish emigrant, settled in 1754 at Cherry Valley in New York. A son of this John named John, jr.,
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