History of Chautauqua County, New York, and its people, Volume I, Part 9

Author: Downs, John Phillips, 1853- ed. [from old catalog]; Hedley, Fenwick, Y., joint ed. [from old catalog]
Publication date: 1921
Publisher: Boston, New York [etc.] American historical society, inc.
Number of Pages: 649

USA > New York > Chautauqua County > History of Chautauqua County, New York, and its people, Volume I > Part 9

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tauqua county had many skilled hunters familiar with the woods and accustomed to the use of the rifle. In fact, every neighbor- hood had its Leather Stocking. Oliver Pier, of Harmony, killed 1322 deer with the same rifle. During its use it required three new stocks and hammers. He paid for his farm with the boun- ties upon the wolves that he killed. Peter Ja- quins, of Clymer, captured nearly a hundred wolves previous to 1832, for which he received an average bounty of $12 per head. Zacheus H. Norton, an old trapper and hunter who lived in Gerry on the Cassadaga creek, was very suc- cessful in hunting the otter, the pelts of which were valuable. The otter practically disap- peared in 1825. Mr. Norton killed one hundred deer in a single season.

But it was not safe to wander aimlessly along the delightful rivulets and in the sequestered recesses of the woods, for they were full of danger. To leave the beaten path, or Indian trail, while travelling through the unbroken forest, in order to find a shorter or better route, or even for a little distance for any cause, was sure to be disastrous to one not thoroughly experienced in traveling in the woods. It would often happen that, under such circumstances, the wanderer would go miles from home and become lost. On these occasions the settlers would rally from far and near, skillfully organize themselves into par- ties, choose leaders and scour the woods until the lost one was found.

In early years Miss Baluma Shurtleft, after- wards the wife of Nathan Lee, was lost in the woods near Sinclairville. There was a gather- ing, and a general search. For three days she subsisted on berries. She was finally found near the east line of the town of Charlotte. Mrs. Underhill, of the town of Charlotte, while picking blackberries, wandered to the edge of the Cassadaga Swamp and lost her way. She remained in the woods three nights before she was found.

In April, 1826, two boys of Samuel French, of the town of French Creek, one aged five years and the other but three, strayed from their path and were lost in the woods. For two days and two nights a search was made without success. On the third day, two hun- dred men assembled, chose leaders, and formed a line, with the understanding that not a word should be spoken or a gun fired until the chil- dren were found. A systematic search was made. For a long while they scoured the woods without success. At last the man posted at the extreme west end of the line stooped to tie his shoe; he glanced backward under his

CHAUTAUQUA COUNTY AND ITS PEOPLE

arm, and saw the head of the oldest boy. Guns were fired and a shout went along the line. Two of the fleetest young men ran to carry the news to the anxious mother. The foremost runner fell exhausted at the door crying, "Found them both alive." The lost boys both lived to be men.

Early in the spring of 1812, Mrs. Larry Sco- field, who lived a short distance southeast from where is now the county asylum, and about half a mile from the site of Dewittville, was in need of some thread. Knowing that her neighbor, Mrs. Southworth, half a mile away, just west of the present site of the asylum, had a wheel, she threw a shawl over her shoul- ders, took her baby, which was then but a few months old, on her arm, and a hank of flax in her hand, and started through the woods for Mrs. Southworth's. She wandered from her course and traveled all day long, with her infant in her arms, trying to find her way, with- out success. Tired and hungry, she passed the night with no other protection from the cold than her thin shawl, and a blanket for her child. She had no knowledge of woodcraft, and did not know how to direct her course by the moss on the trees, or by the sun, which seemed to her always in the wrong direction. Weary, discouraged, and faint from hunger, subsisting upon such scant food as the woods at that time of year afforded, carrying her in- fant, she wandered several days in the dense woods which then spread over the towns of Chautauqua, Ellery, Gerry and Ellicott. She must have strayed northeasterly far into the town of Ellery, for she finally struck a small stream which she followed until it discharged its waters into a larger stream, which proved to be the Cassadaga. She then pursued her journey down the creek until she came to a jam of driftwood, where she crossed to the other side of the stream. Her progress was interrupted by tributary streams and wet and swampy lands. She finally became completely exhausted and sank to the earth with her in- fant and gave herself up to perish. In the meantime the few settlers around Dewittville instituted a search and she was finally found at the spot where she had at last resigned her- self to death, by persons who knew nothing of her wanderings. The place where she was found was a short distance above Levant, on the east side of the Cassadaga, sixteen miles in a direct line from her home. She and her baby were carried to Edward Works, (now Falconer) and when she had rested sufficiently, they were taken up the outlet (the Chadakoin) and the lake to her home. She had been at

least four, perhaps six days, wandering in the woods. Mrs. Scofield afterwards moved from the county, and died at De Kalb, in Illinois. Her babe grew to womanhood, married Chris- topher Love, and died in 1879, in Illinois, where her descendants are living.

In the many instances of this kind, women and children were usually the subjects. The searchers were not always so fortunate as to find the lost one alive. It was even less dis- tressing to find him dead than not to know his tate, for then long years of fruitless search would sometimes follow. Stories of a wild person seen in some distant wilderness, or a captive among the Indians, would revive the hopes of friends only to find the cruel rumor false. A pitiful story is told of two children of James Roe, who resided in Hanover, lost while rambling in the forest. One was found in a mill pond, and the clothes of the other in the woods. In the town of Cherry Creek, in April, 1822, on a clear Sabbath morning, a little daughter of Joshua Bentley, then in her fourth year, strayed into the woods and was never afterward seen.

During the pioneer period the progress of settlement rapidly continued. The sunlight had been let into every town as now organ- ized in the county before the Erie canal was opened. An unbroken wilderness, for ten years after John McMahan had built his house in Westfield, covered the four southwestern towns. In that part of the county, in a tract of more than one hundred fifty square miles, not a log cabin had been reared nor a clearing made. In 1812 settlement was first commenced in this region, in French Creek, the extreme southwestern town, by Andy Noble, from Oswego county, on lot 44, John and Gardner Cleveland, Roswell Coe, Nathaniel Thompson, Amon Beebe, Gardner Case, Silas Terry, Ne- - hemiah Royce and A. S. Park.

For more than ten years after the first set- tlement of the county, its eastern portion con- tinued exclusively in possession of the wolf and catamount. A wilderness of pine, hemlock and black ash, for a distance of five miles, ex- tended on both sides of the Conewango, in Chautauqua and Cattaraugus counties, be- tween the Kent Settlement in Villenova and Kennedy's Mills in Poland. In 1813 Joshua Bentley, Jr., from Rensselaer county, undis- mayed by dangers from the Indians, assisted by his wife, erected a rude log cabin in the heart of the wilderness on lot 7, just west of the village of Conewango Valley, in Ellington, close to the eastern borders of the county. His father, Joshua Bentley, Sr., three years later

A PIONEER FARM HOUSE

in 1

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THE PIONEER PERIOD

settled near him in 1816, in a log house that he had built, and kept the first tavern in the town. In April, 1815, Wyman Bugbee settled on lot 29, near the present village of Ellington. Among the earliest settlers of Ellington were James Bates, Samuel McConnell, Simeon Law- renee, Benjamin Follett, Ward King, Abner Bates, Reuben Penhollow and Ebenezer Green. The first settlement at Cherry Creek was made in 1815, by Joseph M. Kent. He reared his bark-covered log house in the spring of that year, on lot 9, near the southwest corner of the town. He returned to his family in Ville- nova, and sent his wife on horseback eight miles through the woods, with one child in her arms and another behind her, with nothing but marked trees to guide her to her new house. She arrived safely, and with flint and punk started a fire and passed the first night un- disturbed except by the howling of the wolves in the Conewango Swamp. Among other early and prominent settlers were Joshua Bent- ley, Jr., Isaac and Stephen Curtis, James Marks, Barber Babcock, Ely D. Pendleton, Elam Edson, Daniel and Alvah Hadley, Rob- ert James, Arthur Hines, John Luce, Reuben A. Bullock, Horatio Hill, George H. Frost, Wanton King and James Carr. In 1815 Alex- ander Findley, a native of Ireland, commenced a sawmill on lot 52 at the foot of Findley Lake in the town of Mina, and in 1816 made his per- manent home there. He soon after built a gristmill. He was the first settler of the town, and gave his name to the lake and the village. George Haskin, Aaron Whitney, George Col- lier, Hial Rowley, Elisha Morse, Peter R. Mon- tague, Horace Broekway, Joseph Palmer, Rob- crt Corbett, Gideon Barlow, James Skellie were all early settlers. Peter R. Montague, one of the best known pioneers of the town, died in 1896, at the advanced age of eighty- seven. The east side of Mina was settled by people from county Kent, England, James Ottaway, ancestor of A. B. Ottaway, the well- known lawyer of Westfield, and former dis- triet attorney, being the pioneer, he having settled there in 1823.

In 1820 the first settlement of Clymer was made. That year John Cleveland settled upon lot 58. In 1821 William Rice, the father of Vietor M. Rice, who was for many years State superintendent of Public Instruction, settled on lot 59. Through the influence of Hon. G. W. Patterson many Hollanders were influenced to settle in the town. About 1846 the beginning of their immigration commenced.

Over twenty years elapsed after McMahan

made his first elearing at the Cross Roads, be- fore the town of Sherman was settled. It was first settled by Dearing Dorman, from near Batavia, Genesee county. In 1823 he erected a shanty on lot 32, and introduced his youthful wife. Henry W. Goff came later the same year. Alanson Weed came from Ellery in the spring of 1824. Sherman was the last town settled in the county, but its settlement was accomplished before the close of the pioneer period.

On the 12th of June, 1812, Congress passed an act declaring war with England. At Al- bany, at the same time, the Legislature was passing an act of far greater and more lasting importance. By this act, common schools were established, and the State for the first time divided into school districts. The common school law went into effect in 1814. It was ad- ininistered, and the school money apportioned and paid out in the county by the supervisors, the commissioners and inspectors of the town, and the trustees of the districts. Nearly all of the schoolhouses of the frontier and pioneer periods were built of logs. In 1821, according to Phineas M. Miller, there were 117 log school- houses in the 128 school districts of the county. Gathered from a wilderness region around about, almost equal to a township in extent, the pupils would daily wend their way along forest paths to one of these primitive school- houses. At first little more was taught than reading, writing, and arithmetic. Although wanting in the scientific methods of teaching of modern times, thorough instruction was given by strong-minded old teachers, in these simple branches, and what was more, a genu- ine love of learning inspired, resulting in after years in many self-educated, even accom- plished, men and women.

In 1824, during the pioneer period, two years before the Erie Canal was built, while the stumps were still standing on the village green, and the fires still burning in sight in the fal- lows, the Old Fredonia Academy was incor- porated. It was opened in 1826, with Austin Smith as its first principal. He afterwards was a leading citizen, and a distinguished law- yer of the county, and is a remarkable faet that he lived to the age of nearly ninety-nine years, an honored and respected citizen of the village of Westfield; his life nearly spanned the hundred years of our county's history. He married Sarah A., the daughter of John Me- Mahan, the pioneer settler of the county, and was an actor in many of the early events that we have already recorded.

CHAUTAUQUA COUNTY AND ITS PEOPLE

CHAPTER IX.

The Early Farming Period-1825 to 1835.

The people who settled in the county prior to the completion of the canal, were mostly frontiersmen from the western borders of set- tlements in New York and Pennsylvania.

The people who emigrated to Chautauqua after the building of the canal differed in cer- tain respects from those who came before them. They were not so poor. The prospect for a market for the surplus products of the soil, and other signs of coming prosperity invited people from New England and from communi- ties in other settled localities, who brought with them more means, and the habits of econ- omy and thrift that prevailed in the East. These new-comers were better skilled in hus- bandry, and consequently better fitted for the changed condition of the country, which had now advanced from a backwoods state, and be- come a "farming country," although there were several towns almost entirely covered by for- ests.

The period in the history of the county that followed the completion of the Erie canal may be called the "Early Farming Period." It con- tinued a little over twenty-five years, and lasted until the first railroad was built into Dunkirk. During this period the county was being rapidly cleared of its forests, and increased in

its population. By the State census of 1825, the population of the fifteen towns of the county was 20,639, an increase of 5,371, or more than thirty-three per cent. in the five years. We shall see hereafter what was the rate of increase during the five succeeding years. Jamestown in January, 1827, had 393 inhabitants, and was that year incorporated the first village.

The opening of communication between the East and this distant western country now be- gan to stimulate the enterprise of the county. In 1825 Capt. Gilbert Ballard was running a stage wagon three times a week upon the mail route between Jamestown and Mayville. The only other route in the county upon which stage wagons were run was that between Buf- falo and Erie. Twice a week over this route, Col. Nathaniel Bird was carrying passengers and the mail. The road for miles east of th :: Cattaraugus creek for many years was ex- tremely bad and sometimes impassable. The Four-Mile woods, Cattaraugus creek and Cash's tavern in the present town of Brant, were the dread of all travellers. Roads and the facilities for transportation were at this time the great need of the inhabitants of the

southern and western counties of the State .. While the canal was being built from the Hudson at Albany to Lake Erie at Buffalo, the inhabitants of the southern tier of counties, by persistent effort, secured the passage of a bill by the legislature for a survey of a State road from the lower Hudson to Lake Erie. This may be said to be the beginning of a movement that resulted twenty-five years later in the building of the New York & Erie rail- road. The surveyors of the State road arrived at Dunkirk, December 24, 1825, and completed their survey to the foot of the wharf. Dunkirk had then only about fifty inhabitants.

In 1826 Walter Smith, a young merchant of Fredonia, scarcely twenty-five years of age, who through his enterprise and business capac- ity had been able in this backwoods region to accomplish the sale of $75,000 worth of goods in a single year of trade in Fredonia, and had furnished supplies for all the United States forts and garrisons of the Great Lakes, almost entirely from the farming products of Chau- tauqua, as the result of his sales, was attracted to Dunkirk, by its fine harbor, which opened to navigation two weeks earlier than Buffalo, and the prospect that it would be the western termination of the State road. In 1825 he bought the undivided half of the Dunkirk prop- crty for $10,000, and turned his energy and business ability to building up the place. The few steamboats he induced to stop at Dun- kirk. The "Pioneer" carried passengers and made daily trips between Buffalo and Dun- kirk. A line of stages was established be- tween Dunkirk and Erie by way of Fredonia and Westfield, connecting with the "Pio- neer," thus avoiding the bad roads between' Buffalo and Cattaraugus. At Erie, this line, connected with stages for Pittsburgh and Cleveland. By these routes nearly all the travel passed between these points. In 1825, Obed Edson and Reuben Scott established a semi-weekly line of stages between Fredonia and Jamestown. A little later, Mr. Smith in- duced Mr. Edson and Walter Eaton to extend the route in a daily line from Dunkirk to War- ren, Pennsylvania.

Also, through Mr. Smith's influence and active efforts, Daniel Garnsey was elected to Congress that he might advance the interests of Dunkirk. Garnsey was the first member of Congress ever elected from Chautauqua county. Garnsey procured an appropriation from Congress, and work was commenced on

EARLY FARMING PERIOD-1825-1835

a lighthouse at Dunkirk in 1827. This was the first expenditure made in Chautauqua for im- proving the navigation of Lake Erie. In 1828, through the efforts of Garnsey, a beacon light was constructed at Silver Creek, and about the same time Barcelona was made a port of entry, and a lighthouse erected there which was lighted by natural gas carried in wooden pump logs from a spring not far away. Cattaraugus, Mayville and Barcelona were early surveyed into village lots by the Holland Land Com- pany. No places in the county were regarded at first, of so much importance as these, and Barcelona was for some years a place of con- siderable trade. Gervis Foot was energetic and effective in promoting its fortunes. In 1831 the steamboat "William Peacock" was built by citizens of Westfield, to ply between Erie, Barcelona and Buffalo. A brick hotel was erected, and five stores were doing a brisk Trade about that time.

Among other enterprises Walter Smith con- ceived the plan of opening the Cassadaga and Conewango to keel-boats. Men were hired to clear out the obstructions for the navigation of these streams, and a trip or two was made by a keel-boat twenty-five feet long loaded with merchandise between Warren and Cassadaga. The Cassadaga was so small when the obstruc- tions were removed and the stream so crooked, that navigation was found impracticable.

In 1828, the Holland Land Company sold 60,000 acres of land in the eastern and south- eastern towns of the county to Levi Beards- ley, James O. Morse and Alvan Stewart. They were known as the Cherry Valley Company.

In 1828, Chautauqua Lake was first navi- gated by steam. It was then the highest body of water so navigated in the world. Before the settlement of the county it had been made a means of communication between the Great Lakes and the Ohio, and immediately after the settlement was much used as a means of transit. A large canoe, made from a pine tree over five feet in diameter, was launched at Miles Landing in 1806. For many years it was the largest craft on the lake, and was consider- ably used for carrying purposes. Large quan- tities of salt from the salt springs of New York were transported southward from Mayville over the lake to Jamestown in a large scow or flatboat built by Judge Prendergast, thence in keel and Durham boats down the river. In 1824 Elisha Allen built a boat propelled by horses, which was called a horse-boat. It occa- sionally navigated the lake during the period of a year, but finally proved a failure. In 1827 Alvin Plumb formed a company and built the

first steamboat that navigated the lake, an ex- cellent boat, named the "Chautauqua." She was launched at Jamestown amidst the firing of cannon. She made her first trip to Mayville, the Fourth of July, 1828.

In 1829 the village of Fredonia was incor- porated. This year also marks the beginning of the temperance reform in Chautauqua county. In 1829 the Chautauqua County Temperance Society, as auxiliary to the State Society, was organized at Mayville; Judge E. T. Foote was chosen president. The use of intoxicating liquors previous to that time was universal in the harvest field, at house raisings. logging bees, on training and election days, and on all occasions where there was an assembly- ing of the people.

In 1829 stage wagons had been supplanted, and post coaches were running regularly and carrying the daily mail over the entire route between Buffalo and Erie, by Rufus S. Reed, cf Erie, Thomas G. Abell, of Fredonia, and Bela D. Coe, of Buffalo. Ballards' stages were carrying the daily mail from Jamestown to Mayville, alternating on the east and west side of the lake. The next year Mayville was incor- porated as a village.

Five years had now elapsed since the Erie canal was completed, and never before or since has the county made such progress, or in- creased so rapidly in population as during those five years. By the United States census taken in 1830, the population was 34,671, an increase of 14,032, since the enumeration in 1825, or 68 per cent. in five years. The population of Jamestown had more than doubled during the preceding years, and was in June of that year 884. Dunkirk had increased six fold ; its popu- lation was 300. The population of Erie county, including Buffalo, which had then 8,668 in- habitants, was by the same census found to be 35.719, or about the same as that of Chau- tauqua. More than 30,000 inhabitants resided outside of its villages. The country popula- tion of this county was considerably greater in 1830 than the country population of Erie county at that time. Much the larger propor- tion of the inhabitants now reside in the cities of Jamestown and Dunkirk, and the many vil- lages of the county, and yet the cleared lands in 1830 were far less in extent than the area of improved land at the present time.

In 1831 great quantities of pot and pearl ashes were manufactured among the hills. The exports from the northern and middle portions of the county consisted of large amounts of pot and pearl ashes, in which Walter Smith was a

CHAUTAUQUA COUNTY AND ITS PEOPLE

principal dealer. Many horses and cattle were also exported from the county.

Lumbering was the leading industry in the south-eastern part of the county. Thickly scattered over the hills and more abundantly gathered along the streams and lowlands, grew that majestic and useful forest tree, the white or Weymouth pine. These trees grew tall and straight, eighty or one hundred feet without a limb, then sending out a few branches, they formed a tufted top; they towered far above the surrounding forest. At maturity they were three to five feet in diameter, often more. They grew to the height of one hundred and fifty and even two hundred feet. The lumber manu- factured from the white pine was most beauti- ful in appearance and excellent in quality. These pine trees grew in all the towns south of the Ridge, but more abundantly in the south- eastern ones. A dense pine forest twelve iniles square, covered Carroll, Poland, Ellicott and Kiantone, the site of Jamestown, and part of Busti. These monarchs of the woods have now nearly disappeared.

There were many saw mills in operation in Carroll, Poland, Ellicott and in other towns in which pine trees grew. The principal ones were those of Judge Prendergast at James- town, the mills at Kennedy, at Worksburg and Frewsburg. The Kennedy mills sawed three or four millions of feet annually, as did also the Jamestown mills. All except that used for home consumption, for years went down the Allegheny to supply the southern market. Often it sold there for no more than it cost to manufacture and transport it. An important part of lumbering was the transportation of the boards and shingles to market. They were rafted down the Allegheny and sold at Pitts- burgh, Cincinnati, Louisville, and other points along the Ohio. Sometimes they were shipped down the Mississippi and sold in New Orleans. The lumber that was gathered along the Cone- wango, Cassadaga, Goose creek, Chautauqua lake and outlet and the Stillwater, was first rafted to Warren. The rafts were all con- structed in sections. A tier of sixteen feet boards were laid down, and another course crossways upon that and so on until the re- quired number of tiers were obtained. This was called a "platform," and was firmly fast- ened together by means of "grubs." For a June, or "light fresh," or flood, a platform of twelve courses was laid. For a spring or "deep fresh," twenty-six courses were laid. Five of these platforms in line, hitched together by "coupling planks," usually constituted a suffi- cient raft for the Cassadaga and the Cone-

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History of Chautauqua County, New York, and its people, Volume I, Part 9

Author: Downs, John Phillips, 1853- ed. [from old catalog]; Hedley, Fenwick, Y., joint ed. [from old catalog] Publication date: 1921 Publisher: Boston, New York [etc.] American historical society, inc. Number of Pages: 649

Author: Downs, John Phillips, 1853- ed. [from old catalog]; Hedley, Fenwick, Y., joint ed. [from old catalog]
Publication date: 1921
Publisher: Boston, New York [etc.] American historical society, inc.
Number of Pages: 649