USA > New York > Oneida County > Utica > Historical fallacies regarding colonial New York : an address delivered before the Oneida Historical Society, Utica, N.Y., at its second annual meeting, January 14, 1879 > Part 7
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only twelve votes were lost (in the town of Augusta) by reason of the above disaster. The whole democratic ticket was elected that year in county, State and Nation. Such was the way politi- cians did their work in those days, and of such materials were they composed.
I am not unmindful of such Romans as Allanson Bennett,
. Charles Tracy, Norman B. Judd, William C. Noyes, Calvin B. Gay, Calvert Comstock and others, but as they were not prom- inent actors for the first forty years of Rome's history, they go into another and later chapter.
1 JOIIN STRYKER.
There is yet one more Roman who should go into this "record " before this chapter closes, for he has been a resident for almost one-half a century, and none in the State has been more active in politics than he. Mr. John Stryker read law with Storrs & White, came to Rome before he was twenty-one to form a law partnership with Allanson Bennett, was admitted to the bar as soon as he had attained his majority, and at once glided into polities by a process so casy and natural, that it was almost second nature to him, and yet he had a large law practice, in connection with his subsequent law partners, Henry A. Foster, Charles Tracy and Calvert Comstock. No person probably in the State, and certainly none in the county was so fond of politics as he or made it such an exclusive study and business for over forty years of his life. He was elected to the Assembly in 1835, held the office of Surrogate for ten years from 1837, and those were about the only offices he ever held; and yet he has attended more caucuses, district, county, State and National conventions, made and unmade office-holders, and managed and manipulated conventions to a greater extent than any other man in the State. A few weeks ago he reached his seventieth birthday, and yet his memory as to facts, dates and details of fifty years gone by is not equaled by that of any living person. The politics of Oneida County and the history of
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HISTORICAL ADDRESS.
State and National conventions would be in a great measure shorn of their most interesting features, if all that Hon. John Stryker had to do therewith was left out.
I have spoken of Mr. Stryker more as a politician, he having been a delegate to twelve State Conventions of the democratic party, a delegate to four National conventions, and for ten years a leading member on the State committee. During a long period of his political life he was in confidential correspondence with such eminent men as Governor Marcy, General Lewis Cass, Governor Bouck, Governor Manning, of South Carolina, John L. Dawson, of Pennsylvania, Edwin Croswell, &c., &c., and a life-long and devoted friend and admirer of Governor Seymour. The letters above referred to, if preserved, would make an interesting history of the times, and an important chapter of the movements of the democratic party. To him and Judge Foster is Rome indebted for its prosperity in securing the Black River Canal and the Syra- cuse and Utica Railroad, against active adverse interests, and the change of the Erie Canal from the Rome Swamp to the center of the city-from which time Rome has continued to increase in pros- perity, on a sound basis, and which have been the means of adding five-fold to her population.
Lengthy as this paper is, it contains not a tithe of what could be written concerning the important events and prominent men in Rome for the first forty years of its history-men who have exerted as great an influence in the history of the county, State and nation as any who have lived in the Valley of the Mo- hawk since the days of the Revolution.
. It is well for the present generation to have occasionally unfolded to their view a panorama of the past, as it will better enable them to understand and appreciate its history, and to more fully realize the nature, character and beneficence of those political institutions which are destined to live and flourish long after the memory of the actors in those scenes shall have faded away, like streaks of morning cloud, into the infinite azure of the past.
PUBLICATIONS OF THE
ONEIDA HISTORICAL SOCIETY AT UTICA
No. 5
Second Annual Address
BEFORE THE SOCIETY BY
WILLIAM TRACY
OF NEW YORK
January 18th 1880
William S. Gottsberger, Printer, New York.
PUBLICATIONS
OF THE
ONEIDA HISTORICAL SOCIETY AT UTICA -
No. 5
Second Annual Address
BEFORE THE SOCIETY BY
WILLIAM TRACY
OF NEW YORK
January 13th 1880
William S. Gottsberger, Printer, New York.
THE ONEIDA HISTORICAL SOCIETY AT UTICA
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ANNUAL MEETING
1880
At the Annual Meeting of the Oneida Historical Society at Utica, held in the rooms of the Society, Tuesday, Jan- uary 13, 1880, the annual reports of the officers were pre- sented, and placed on file.
The Treasurer, Robert S. Williams, reported as follows :
Balance on hand at date of last report, - $139 46
Amount received from all sources, 1879, - 141 45
Amount expended, 1879, 161 54
Balance on hand, - - 119 37
No. members who paid dues, 1879. 55
No. members whose dues are unpaid, - - 78
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The report of the Librarian, Morven M. Jones, showed the following increase in the collections of the Society :
1879
1880
Increase
Bound Books,
512
829
317
Pamphlets,
346
644
298
Newspapers and Periodicals,
222
268
46
Manuscripts, Documents, Maps,
227
296
69
Relies and Works of Art,
67
83
16
1,374
2,120
746
The annual election of officers followed, and the tellers declared the result as follows :
President, HORATIO SEYMOUR. Vice Presidents, CHARLES W. HUTCHINSON, ALEXANDER SEWARD, EDWARD HUNTINGTON. Recording Secretary, S. N. DEXTER NORTH.
Corresponding Secretary and Librarian, MORVEN M. JONES.
Treasurer, ROBERT S. WILLIAMS.
Executive Committee, JOHN F. SEYMOUR, JOHN L. EARLL, S. G. VISSCHER, DANIEL BATCHELOR,
RICHARD U. SHERMAN.
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The society took a recess until evening, when it assembled in Library Hall, the President, Horatio Seymour, in the chair, and the annual address was delivered by William Tracy, of New York.
At the conclusion of the address, on motion of Hon. William J. Bacon, it was unanimously
Resolved, That the hearty thanks of the Oneida Histori- cal Society are tendered to William Tracy, of New York, for his valuable and entertaining address upon the early history of Oneida County, and that he be requested to furnish a copy for publication.
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Mr. President, Gentlemen and Ladies :
Forty-two years ago I had the honor of addressing the Young Men's Association of this city upon Men and Events connected with the early history of Oneida County. The years which have passed since then have been pregnant with striking events in the history of the world. This city, then containing a population of some ten thousand souls, has become the abode of nearly or quite four times the number. Should we go outside of it, and look at the changes in our own country, they will furnish us striking lessons in the manner that Providence works out the great problems of civilization. A war growing out of the annexation of Texas, intended by the promoters of the measure to enlarge the area of slavery, added to our boundaries territory sufficient to constitute an empire; another instituted to perpetuate the institu- tion and extend its area over the whole land, resulted in blotting it ont from the nation, and rendering every foot of its dominion land of the free. Although this cost us thousands of millions of treasure, and the blood of a million of our sons, yet the terrible price has not been thrown away, and we can rejoice that we have stamped out the sore spot which for years had given the lie to the Declaration of In- dependence. Our commerce, agriculture and the arts have increased, so that instead of a dependence upon the produc- tions of other countries, we are now furnishing from our fields and workshops the supply of the necessaries of life, not only for ourselves, but also for other nations, for which they are paying us by hundreds of millions of the precious metals.
The map of the United States has been enlarged by the
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organization of states covering more territory than the original thirteen colonies possessed, and filling it with people full of enterprise and energy, employed in advancing the general welfare.
As we turn to the other portions of the world, we see that in Europe the progress of political revolution has accom- plished changes more striking than those of any century of the past. France, up to the revolution of the last century and the establishment of imperial goverment, succeeded by the restoration of her ancient dynasty, has given way successively to the government of the son of the most radical of the republicans of the reign of terror, to be hurled from the throne to give way to a second republic, again to be replaced by a second empire, and that followed by a third republic.
The small states of Italy and of the Church have been united under a constitutional monarchy. Peoples under its influence, emancipated from intellectual slavery, are making rapid strides in civilization under the wise sway of the son of the sovereign who acquired from his people the appella- tion of " Il Re Galantuomo," the honest king.
Revolution has also performed its work in Spain. The land of romance, of Ferdinand and Isabella, of Charles V. and his bigoted and cruel son-where reprobate monarchs had for ages withstood the march of civilization-has been seen under republican rule, and now presents the appear- ance of a well regulated united monarchy, giving promise of a stable, well ordered state.
Most of the States which had divided the German- speaking people have become consolidated into an empire
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under the leadership of Prussia. Russia has emancipated her millions of serfs from a slavery as averse to human progress as the negro slavery which was once the reproach of our own land.
On the Central and South American portions of our con- tinent the march of political improvement, though marked with revolutions and frequently with misrule, has, never- theless, made progress. Mexico having successfully resisted an attempt from without to overthrow her republican insti- tutions and impose upon her a foreign monarchy, has intro- duced reforms in the administration of her affairs, and affords ground for hope that she may soon become a well established state. The other Spanish-speaking republics are beginning to move forward in the improvement of their political condition and the welfare of their people. Brazil, the only nation still under royal sway upon this side of the Atlantic, has come under the mild govern- ment of a paternal sovereign, earnestly engaged in studying the marks of progress in other nations, and in developing the resources of his own empire and promoting the happi- ness of his people.
Turning our eyes away from these glimpses of the march of light, in our own continent and Europe, towards the ancient seats of civilization, their recent history is quite as striking, and their outlook for the future as hopeful. China and Japan, for ages sealed against human progress, have been opened to the rest of the world, and they are per- sistently and rapidly introducing the arts and amenities of western civilization. Geographical discovery has opened up the Dark land to us. The Niger and the Nile and the
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Congo have given up their secrets, and the problem of Africa's call to life has deeply interested the philosophical and scientific world. This has all been done within the memory of a large portion of this audience.
It is not alone that the changes referred to have taken place among the nations, -the triumphs of invention and dis- covery in the arts and sciences, in amelioration of the con- dition of the human family, have been quite as signal within our age. Never before have they made such great strides. The inventor and the improvers of the steam engine never dreamed of the conquests we witness all around us, and of those of its dependencies. No one, half a century since, dreamed of seeing the oceans vexed with iron ships ten times the size of any vessels then known, and passing, thousands of miles, from country to country with the regularity of a ferry-boat.
The galvanic telegraph, with its conquests, transmitting messages over every land and under every sea, has brought the whole race of civilized man into instant communication, and become the ready servant of diplomacy and commerce and friendship. The cabinet minister now sits in his bureau and communicates his despatches to the antipodes and re- ceives immediate answers. The merchant in New York or London converses with his correspondents at Japan or Australia, and a musician can sing a song or play a familiar tune to be heard and awaken the recollection of his friends across ocean and continents.
The railroad forty years ago had just started on its won- derful career. Its thousand miles have multiplied them- selves a thousand fold in our country, and many a thousand
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fold in other lands. It has crossed the mountain chains of the four quarters of the globe, and the Alps, the Andes, the Rocky Mountains, and the Himalayas are witnesses to its exploits in changing the whole means of intercourse between nations.
The improvements and increase of machinery to relieve human toil have multiplied beyond all former expectations. Without attempting to enumerate the wonders to which they have given birth, I simply name a single invention, unknown forty years ago, which has become a necessity in various workshops, as well as at the fireside of the home- stead in many lands, the sewing machine, of which three- quarters of a million are made and sold in this country every year.
It is not my purpose to attempt an examination of these topics. The time allowed to me for a lecture would be in- sufficient for even a brief notice of a tithe of them. I have alluded to them simply as showing the progress of the world within the period that the history of Oneida County has been urged on from the time the first emigrant struck his axe into the unbroken forest up to the present, when it has become the abode of a high degree of civilization.
Within the last forty years, the earlier history of Oneida County has been examined and illustrated by the pens of several of your distinguished fellow citizens. When I read here "Notice of men and events connected with the early history of Oneida County," I think no one had attempted any written contributions to it. Since then quite a number of your citizens have supplemented what I then attempted. My friend Judge Pomeroy Jones has given full and valuable
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annals of each of its towns with notices of their settlers. Judge Othniel S. Williams has collected the traditions of the settlement of Kirkland. Mr. John F. Seymour has made a very interesting addition to your history in his ad- dress at Trenton. David E. Wager, Esquire has written valu- able and interesting notices of Rome. Doctor M. M. Bagg, an exhaustive work upon the history of this city, and my early and valued friend Judge William J. Bacon in his ad- dress on the members of the bar of this county, has left lit- tle to be added to the subject. You would not thank me for a fresh recital of their historical sketches. I shall not, there- fore, attempt a review of the history of Oneida County, but will confine myself to a comparative view of what she was in her early stages while the hand of improvement was at- tacking her forests, to convert them into farms and the homes of civilized life, and what she has became under the plastic hand of the emigrants and their sons and daughters, with incidental anecdotes of a few of its inhabitants.
In 1785 the region now covered with beautiful farms and villages and the two manufacturing and commercial cities Utica and Rome, now constituting this county, was a wilder- ness. The only land which had been denuded of its forest consisted of two small Indian clearings at Oriskany and Oneida castle. An Indian village occupied the left bank of the Oriskany creek just eastward of the site of the woolen factory which was built as early as 1810. An- other Indian village at Oneida castle was the principal home of the tribe which gave to it its name. During the year first mentioned the late Judge Hugh White, with a family consisting of several sons and daughters emigrated
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from Middletown, Connecticut, and established himself in the present village of Whitesboro, building a log house on the southern extremity of the village green. His settlement gave the name of Whitestown and of the Whitestown Country to the lands lying westward of the German flats and north- ward to the boundaries of the State. He was soon followed by numbers of emigrants chiefly from Connecticut and Mas- sachusetts, though there were some from the other settle- ments of this State, and some from New Jersey. Many of them had been soldiers in the Revolutionary army .. Thirty- six years after this period it became necessary for pensioners under the Act of Congress of 1818 to appear before the county courts and make depositions as to their services. In Oneida County the court appointed a day to hear their ap- plications. There then appeared a few less than two hun- dred of these veterans. After having made their depositions they formed into line, and led by a Revolutionary drummer marched through the streets and around the village green. As the youngest Revolutionery soldier must then have been about fifty years old it is probable that an equal number of those who had settled in Oneida County had within the thirty-six years after the war died, and that there may have been four or five hundred soldiers who had emigrated to Oneida County, or a sufficient number to constitute a bat- talion. I will here remark that among the officers of the army who became inhabitants of the county, were General Frederick William Augustus, Baron Steuben, who died at his residence in Steuben, in 1794, General William Floyd, one of the siguers of the Declaration of Independence, Colonel Benjamin Wal- ker who had been aid to Washington and subsequently to
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Baron Steuben. He became an inhabitant of Utica and died here ; and Colonel Garret G. Lansing of Oriskany. The latter once told me the story of his becoming a soldier. His father resided in Albany. A week before Garret became sixteen years old, the age required for military service, he overheard his mother tell his father that Garry would be- come of age for being enrolled during the next week, and it would be prudent to say nothing of it. The boy was deter- mined to become a soldier and no sooner had he heard the news that he might be a subject of enrollment than he went to the enrolling officer and told him his age. He was en- rolled and the next week started with a small detachment of new militia men to reach the northern army. This reached Fort Edward when the funeral services over the remains of Miss McCrea had just been commenced. After her burial the detachment marched onward toward the rear of the army. Before they came up to it it was ordered to make a detour away from their line which it was supposed could be accomplished during the day. Their commissariat consisted of a single piece of pork, sufficient to last them until they should reach their comrades. This was placed in a pot and set upon a fire, and as the boy of the party, young Lansing was installed cook and left alone to watch the fire. After regarding the pot attentively for an hour or two with nothing to amuse him, he fell asleep, and awoke to see a bear which had been attracted by the savory mess running off with the pork. He had obtained it by upsetting the kettle from the fire and capturing the contents. Young Lansing was confounded and it required a very little flight of imagination to present to his minds eye the picture of his
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hungry companions when they should return and find their pork gone through his neglect. He therefore concluded, rather than meet them, to avail himself of a hiding place where he could remain until their anger should sub- side. The party came back and found the contents of the pot missing, and seeing nothing of their cook, concluded that he had been killed by the Indians, and their pork con- sumed by them. But when he turned up, their joy at his being alive overcame their disappointment. He com- pleted a short term of service, and at its close was made an ensign in the regular army, and remained in the army until the close of the war. The reason of his settling at Oriskany is perhaps worthy of note.
When quite a lad he had accompanied a surveying party up the Mohawk. At the mouth of Oriskany Creek it landed, and found the Indians of the village engaged in a dance. He was struck with the beauty of the clearing, with its sur- rounding forest. Often after he left the army this scene was recalled to him, and after a few years spent in Wash- ington County, the memory of the spot led him to visit it and purchase a farm there and ereet a house, in which he spent the residue of his life. He died in 1831, respected and beloved by all who knew him.
At the time Judge White arrived in this county, with the exception of the clearings at Oriskany and Oneida, there was absolutely no land ready for cultivation, and no roads. Before the revolutionary war there were Indian foot-paths leading from Oneida to Fort Stanwix, and again from that point along the Mohawk to the German Flats, and again from Oneida through the present towns of Vernon and
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Westmoreland to Fort Schuyler. There were no other roads, and these would not have admitted horse-back riders. The troops which, during the French war in 1758, passed up to Fort Stanwix, were forced to cut paths for their passage : but they had overgrown, and during the revolutionary war they had again to be cut anew, but they had left no roads. Judge White came up the river in a boat from Schenectady with his family and goods, and landed them at the mouth of the Sauquoit, which for several years after continued to be the usual landing place of the small boats which navigated the river. The territory then presented a very different scene from the one which now greets the observer-very different from that which greets the emigrant to the new lands in the western and south-western States. There the settler finds a soil ready for his plough; here no prairie met the vision of the former. Everywhere was unbroken heavily timbered forest, to be subdued only by the joint efforts of the axeman and cultivator. Severe toil was required to clear and fence and prepare the soil for the agriculturist. It was literally the abode of only wild beasts and the redmen, whose living was obtained from the chase. There was no mill nearer than Palatine, and for two or three years the emigrant had to carry his grain upon his back for forty miles to be ground, or crush it in a primitive mortar made by burning a cavity in a log of wood. No house of worship nearer than the German Flats invited the emigrant from the land of the Pilgrims and their churches to worship the God of their fathers. His task was to convert this territory into a fit abode for more than two hundred thousand people who now occupy it, covered with farms and homesteads and villages
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and cities, adorned with churches, schools and institutions of benevolence and taste. Within the limits of less than a single century this has been done, and the wilderness has blossomed as the rose.
Within five years from the time Judge White planted his footsteps on the bank of the Sauquoit, the work had been well begun. Light had been made to penetrate the forest ; farms had been partly cleared, and emigrants had estab- lished themselves in comfortable homesteads along the valleys of the Mohawk, the Sanquoit, and the Oriskany ; highways had been opened from settlement to settlement. Whitesboro, Rome and Clinton had become small villages, Utica, under the name of Old Fort Schuyler, was still and for several years after but a small hamlet, with only a black- smith shop, a small tavern, and a single trader. The late Mr. George Huntington informed me that in 1793 he arrived there on horse-back, and the tavern was unable to furnish him food for his horse. He inquired if there was no one in the neighborhood who could provide him with something to keep his animal from starving. The answer was there was no one but a farmer who lived about half a mile westward who had hay and grain for his own use, but none to spare, and he would not sell it. He inquired from where the farmer came, and was told from New England. Mr. Hunt- ington found a man to go to him with the horse, and tell the farmer that its owner was a young Yankee, just arrived, and he wished, on account of his Yankee brotherhood that he would entertain his starving horse. The farmer who was the late Stephen Potter, known both as Captain and Dea- con Potter, was pleased with the manner of the request, and
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replied that he would take care of the horse. The next day when Mr. Huntington called upon him, he refused to accept any pay for the service from his Yankee brother. A lasting friendship was then commenced between the two. I will here relate an anecdote of the captain and his friend Mr. Huntington which illustrates the integrity of the Yankee farmer. Mr. Huntington had contracted for a large tract of land on Frankfort Hill. The seller of the land had failed to convey it and a suit was brought by Mr. Huntington for damages they depending upon the value of the land. It be- came important to prove this and knowing that Captain Potter was acquainted with the land, he directed his attorney to subpona him as a witness, but charged him not to offend the old gentleman by undertaking to get an opinion of him in advance, as it might lead him to suspect that it would be an attempt to induce him on the strength of his friendship for Mr. Huntington to influence his testimony. The trial came on, and the attorney refrained from inquiring from Captain Potter in advance his opinion of the value of the land. He called him to the witness stand. He asked him if he knew the land; he replied, yes, every foot of it. Well, Captain Potter, do you know its value? Yes, sir. Very well, tell us what it is worth? The old gentle- man paused a moment, until the court, the jurors, and the spectators had fixed their eyes upon him when he slowly said. "Well, if I had all the gold that I could draw with my four yoke of oxen on a sled upon glare ice, and I had to invest every cent of it in land, I vow to God, I would! not give a dollar an acre for it."
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