History of Livingston County, New York, from its earliest traditions to the present together with early town sketches, Part 80

Author: Doty, Lockwood R., 1858- [from old catalog] ed; Van Deusen, W. J., pub. [from old catalog]
Publication date: 1905
Publisher: Jackson, Mich., W. J. Van Deusen
Number of Pages: 1422

USA > New York > Livingston County > History of Livingston County, New York, from its earliest traditions to the present together with early town sketches > Part 80

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).

The one village of North Dansville is Dansville, which in 1900 had a population of 3,633-about a third more than that of any other village of the county. It has been a prominent milling center for the manufacture of flour, paper, lumber and other articles from almost its first settlement. A branch of the Genesee Valley canal ended here in a convenient basin, and before the Erie railroad was built it was the selling and shipping point of the lumber interest of a very large region.

There are now two railroads-the Dansville and Mt. Morris, which connects with a branch of the Erie at Mt. Morris, and the Lack- awanna, which runs along the eastern hillside, and is the through line from New York to Buffalo.

827

HISTORY OF LIVINGSTON COUNTY

There is no more beautiful spot of 5000 acres in Western New York than Dansville. The steep eastern hills, with their woods and vine- yards, the busy railroad and the inviting Sanatorium, afford delightful pictures to the dwellers in the valley, and from their high points may be seen lovely landscapes on the north, west and south, including a long extent of the valley and the billowy eastern hills. The centering streams form pleasing promontories on the south, and near by are some charming glens, one of which, that of Stony Brook, has been made easily accessible for about half a mile by means of paths, bridges and stairways.

Some geologists have regarded Dansville as the end of a prehistoric lake extending 50 miles northward to Irondequoit bay, but a Dansville geologist has discredited this theory and given reasons for believing that in the ice period, when the country was covered with masses of ice 3000 to 5000 feet thick, moving southerly, two glaciers met at Dans- ville and the contact caused a counter movement which plowed out the valley.

Long before the town was settled an Indian village occupied the site of Dansville village, and included an Indian burying ground cov- ering three acres. It was abandoned before Sullivan's expedition of 1779. .

The first family to settle in Dansville was that of Cornelius McCoy, which consisted of himself, his wife, two step-sons and one step- daughter, who came from Pennsylvania. This was in June 1795. William McCartney and Andrew Smith were then settled in Sparta, about three miles distant, having come there in 1792. The McCoys at first occupied a surveyor's hut, but in the fall cut logs for a house 18 by 14 feet, and Indians helped put theni in place. The house was roofed with basswood bark.

The next year, according to James McCurdy, one of these step- sons, Amariah Hammond, Dr. James Faulkner, Samuel Faulkner, Captain Daniel P. Faulkner and William Porter settled there. These settlers, all of whom came from Pennsylvania, soon had houses con- structed, and became very busy men. Captain Faulkner immediately purchased 6000 acres of land, and induced fifteen more families to move and settle in the town. He laid out the village the year of his arrival, and it takes its name from him. He erected the first saw mill in the town, and his brother Samuel put up the first

828

HISTORY OF LIVINGSTON ' COUNTY

frame dwelling, which was of two stories. In 1796 or 1797, Captain Williamson had a saw mill and a grist mill built at the upper end of the village. The grist mill was burnt before it was entirely finished, and was rebuilt in 1806. Before the Williamson mill went into oper- ation the settlers had to go twenty miles to the Conesus outlet to get their grain ground.

John Vandeventer was Dans- ville's first tavern keeper, in a plank house, which he opened in 1797, and the same year Samuel Faulkner opened his two story house as a tavern. Amariah Hammond built the second log house in the town in 1796.

Christopher Vandeventer and his three sons came from New Jersey in 1796. They were all tanners. Thomas Macklen, a Scotchman who came in 1797, taught the first school in 1798 in a small house about a mile north of the center of the vil- lage, and had ten or twelve scholars.

William Perine came from Washington county to Will- iamsburg in 1797, and moved up to Dansville two years later, purchasing several hundred 1. acres of land along the eastern part of the village, including both bottom and hill lands.

Colonel Nathaniel Rochester visited Dansville in 1800, and came there to reside in 1810, having purchased a large tract of land which included the most of the water power of the village. He bought the mills which had been erected for the Pulteney estate, and built in Dansville the first paper mill of Western New York. About this time several mills went up. Jacob Opp built a grist mill, clover mill and tannery, and William and David Porter a saw mill, grist mill and

829

HISTORY OF LIVINGSTON COUNTY

paper mill. A grist mill built by David Sholl in 1800 was burned in 1807. When Peter Sholl came, in 1808, there were about twenty houses.

Some of the other settlers who came before 1800 were Frederick Barnhart, Jacob Martz, George Shirey, Jacob Welch, James Logan, William Phenix, John Phenix and Jared Irwin.

James McCurdy of the first family of settlers wrote out some remi- niscenses in which he said that in their second year (1796) they took some of their grain to Bath-which was then considered one of the best markets in the western section of the state-and had to take their pay in goods. Grain was brought there from Geneva, and shipped down the Cohocton, Chemung and Susquehanna rivers. Mr. McCurdy said they could hardly have lived the first year (1795) had it not been for the Indians, who were very friendly. There were very few sheep, and it was difficult to procure wool for stockings, and Mr. McCurdy for one sheep two years old, reaped, bound and shocked two acres of barley.

William Scott of Scottsburg recollected of the business men of Dansville in 1807 the following: John Metcalf and Jared Irwin, mer- chants, the latter also a tavern keeper: Jonathan Barnhart, tavern keeper; Jonathan Stout, tailor and tavern keeper; Isaac Vandeventer, tanner; Peter Laflesh, cabinet maker; Daniel Sholl, miller; Gowen Wilkinson, Amariah Hammond, Jacob Welch, James McCurdy, farm- ers. In the log school house north of the village services were held on Sunday and a singing school once a week.

Thick rushes along Canaseraga creek were the principal food of the cattle during the first winters of the early settlers, the animals preferring them to hay, and it was said the rushes grew green in winter as well as in summer.

Indians frequented early Dansville in the fall and winter, camping at the southern end of the town, and having occasional feasts and pow-wows there. They were invariably friendly to the whites, and supplied them with much game in exchange for grain and meal.

The most of the first settlers were from Pennsylvania and New Eng- land, and a large proportion of them were of Scotch-Irish descent. Many Germans came later.

Jonathan Rowley, who moved from Stephentown, N. Y., to Dans-

830

HISTORY OF LIVINGSTON COUNTY

ville in 1805, bought a large tract of land and immediately put up the first brick building, a tavern.

The following extract is from the New York Gazetter of 1813: "The village of Dansville is pleasantly situated on a branch of the Cana- seraga creek near the northwest corner of the town, thirty-five miles northwest of Bath. Here is a post office, a number of mills, and a handsome street of one and one-half miles in length occupied by farm houses, etc. The valley embracing this settlement contains 3000 acres of choice lands, and the soil is warm and productive. There is a road from Bath to Dansville village that leads diagonally across the center of this town from southeast to northwest, and another between Dans- ville village and Ontario county leads across the northern part. The population is 666, and there are about 100 taxable inhabitants." This quotation refers to the year 1812, or the seventeenth year after the ar- rival of the first settler.

A. O. Bunnell's excellent History of Dansville contains the follow- ing "firsts" among others:

First marriage, William McCartney to Mary McCurdy; first school teacher, Thomas Macklen; first resident minister, Rev. Mr. Pratt; first merchant, Daniel P. Faulkner; first millwright, Peter Sholl; first physician, Dr. James Faulkner; first shoemaker, Gower Wilkinson; first blacksmith, James Porter; first resident surveyor, Andrew Rea; first tavern keeper, John Vandeventer; first justice of the peace, Dr. James Faulkner; first postmaster, Jared Irwin; first town clerk, Laz- arus Hammond; first constable Henry Cruger; first tailor, Joseph C. Sedgwick; first lawyers, James Smith and John Proudfit; first death, Nathaniel Porter; first supervisor, Amariah Hammond; first carder and cloth dresser, Samuel Culbertson; first cabinet maker, James McCurdy ; first tanner, Isaac Vandeventer; first newspaper, the Village Chronicle, started in .1830 by D. Mitchell; first debating society, the Dansville Polemic Society, organized in 1811.

It is related of Amariah Hammond, a settler of 1796, that he belled his horse in order to find him after being let loose in the forest, and that he sharpened his dulled plough-share on a large stone; that to get his horse shod he had to go thirty-five miles to Bath, and to get scythes to cut his grass, he went to Tioga Point, where two of them cost him $11.

Captain Daniel P. Faulkner spent his money freely after his arrival

831

HISTORY OF LIVINGSTON COUNTY

in 1796, and was enterprising and popular. For one thing, he organ- ized a military company of thirty men. He spent his money so freely and carelessly that he failed in 1798 and went back to Pennsylvania, but returned in 1802, and died in Dansville.

Dr. James Faulkner, who came in 1796 or 1797 with his father Sam- uel Faulkner, in some reminiscences mentioned his father's two-story tavern, which he opened in the fall of the latter year, and stated that his uncle, James Faulkner, was then living in a shanty. Dr. James was then only seven years old. When he grew up he studied medicine and surgery, practiced awhile, and then engaged in other business. He bought a large tract of land in Dansville about 1815, and accumu- lated a large fortune. He was member of assembly in 1824 and state senator in 1842. In the war of 1812 he went to the northern frontier on the staff of Gen. McClure. He was president of the First National bank of Dansville from the time it was started in 1864 until his death in 1884. his age being then ninety-four. His son Samuel D. Faulkner was twice elected county judge and surrogate in 1871 and 1877.

Reference has been made to Nathaniel Rochester, from whom the city of Rochester takes it name, and who came to Dansville in 1810 to reside, and remained six or seven years. His former home was in Maryland, where he was an active business man and held several re- sponsible offices. His Dansville interests comprised 700 acres of land, a grist mill,' saw mill and paper mill. He moved to East Bloomfield in 1815, after selling his Dansville property for $24,000, and in 1818 from there to Rochester, where he had bought mnuch land while in Dansville. He was chosen a presidential elector while in East Bloom- field, was the first county clerk of Monroe county, was assemblyman in 1822, and became president of the Bank of Rochester in 1824. He died in 1831. Wherever he lived he was greatly respected and es- teemed. In Doty's history are some reminiscences of the late Willian Scott of Scottsburg, who went into the carding and cloth-dressing business in Dansville early in 1811 in partnership with Col. Rochester, the latter furnishing the necessary funds. About that time Col. Roch- ester was making frequent visits to the Falls, and was full of the flattering prospects there. Mr. Scott reports an interview with him : " 'The place must become an important business point,' said Col. Roch- ester, and he expressed regret that he had spent so much time and means in Dansville, instead of going to the Falls at once, adding : 'If I

832

HISTORY OF LIVINGSTON COUNTY

had just made over to you by gift a deed of all my property at Dans- ville, and gone direct to the Falls, I should have been the gainer. Dansville will be a fine village, but the Falls, sir, is capable of great things.' I reminded him that he had established a successful paper- mill and other machinery at Dansville, and had otherwise aided in giving an impulse to the business of that already thrifty town. 'Yes,' said he, 'but I am past the age for building up two towns.' During the conversation I had remarked that the name the 'Falls' was good enough then, but added, 'of course you will find a more fitting one as the place increases.' 'Ah,' said he, 'I have already thought of that, and have decided to give it my family name,' and that was the first time I ever heard the word Rochester applied to the present prosperous city. Col. Rochester was a fine type of the true southern gentleman."

Frequent mention has been made of Captain Williamson, agent of the Pulteney estate and founder of extinct Williamsburg. He began to give much attention to Dansville soon after the first settlers arrived, selling lands to many comers and building mills. From 1791 to 1801 his energies were mostly directed to the build- ing up of the upper end of the valley, and as early as 1792 he established William McCartney close by Dansville as one of his land agents.

Major Moses Van Campen, the famous scout, spent the later years of his life in Dansville re- siding there from 1831 to 1848, the year before his death. An in- teresting memoir of his heroic life was published by his grandson, Rev. J. Niles Hubbard in 1841, and there is a summarized sketch of the same in A. O. Bunnell's History of Dans- ville, from which we select and condense. He was born in New Jersey in 1757 and died in Almond, N. Y., in 1849, aged ninety-two years

833

HISTORY OF LIVINGSTON COUNTY

While a boy he became skillful with the rifle, and in woodcraft. In school he excelled in mathematics, and learned surveying before he was sixteen years old. His father moved to Northumberland county, Pa., in 1773, and here, when Moses was seventeen, he adopted the cause of the revolutionists, and was made captain of a company organ- ized for military drill and practice with the rifle. Soon he became ensign in the Continental army, and fully entered upon his career as a soldier in 1777, at the age of twenty. The war had then begun and the Six Nations had become allies of the British. Van Campen was placed at the head of a company to make forays against them, and within a few months conducted three or four short expeditions in such manner as to elicit warm commendations from his superiors. He studied thoroughly the characters and methods of the Indians, and understood them better than they understood themselves. His anticipations of their movements and aims seemed intuitive, and he was always ready to incur danger in meeting them. He connected himself with Gen- eral Sullivan's army in the expedition to the Genesee, and was made its quartermaster, in which position he showed remarkable efficiency in the collection and transportation of supplies. Soon he began to act as scout, and would go out alone, steal close to the camps of the In- dians, and watch and count them. General Sullivan soon discovered his qualities, and told him to select and command twenty-six soldiers

as the advance guard of the army. With this company he performed several brave and skillful exploits voluntarily, for he continued to be quartermaster. He returned home from the expedition sick with a fever. In 1783 a party of ten Indians killed and scalped his father and younger brother, and made him prisoner with two other men and two boys, to be taken to probable torture and death. But he got hold of a knife, cut the bonds of himself and his companions in the night, killed five sleeping Indians while his companions killed four, and escaped. Later he was again taken prisoner in an expedition up the Susquehanna, and conveyed by his Indian captors to Fort Niagara. On the way he was compelled to run the gauntlet at Caneadea, and if he had been identified as Van Campen, whose name had become a terror to the Senecas, would have been tortured. At Niagara he became a prisoner of Colonel Butler, who offered him a commission in the British army, and threatened to deliver him to the Indians to be tortured if he refused to accept it, which he did. Butler placed him

834

HISTORY OF LIVINGSTON COUNTY

in confinement, and he was not released until after the treaty of 1784, when General Washington appointed him one of the interpreters for the Six Nations, a position which he held until a few years before his death. He moved from Pennsylvania to Allegany county in 1796, and there practiced surveying. In 1810 he was appointed a state sur- veyor to lay out some important roads. While living in Angelica he held several offices, among them those of judge of the court of com- mon pleas and county treasurer. While residing in Dansville he was selected for president of the day at the impressive ceremonies in Cuylerville connected with the removal of the remains of Boyd and Parker to Rochester, and at that time, although eighty-four years old and quite feeble, made a brief address. Mr. Treat in introducing him spoke of his "matchless heroism and virtues." The combined hero- ism, skill and energy displayed by Major VanCampen in his military career were rarely equaled in the war of the Revolution.

Red Jacket, the most eloquent of all the Indian orators, and whose great speech against signing the treaty made at Big Tree is a familiar historical event, had only a visiting connection with Dansville. This was in his later years when he was mourning the decay of the Sene- cas, their folly in signing away their land rights in the Genesee country, and was trying to drown his sorrows in drink. He would stand on boxes or steps in the streets of Dansville, in an inebriated condition,'and make speeches of mixed English and Indian words, lamenting the departed glory of his tribe and the Iroquois League.

The late Dr. F. M. Perine, a grandson of Captain Wm. Perine, whose coming to Dansville in 1799 has been mentioned, said in a paper before the Historical society: "Captain Perine was five years in the Revolutionary army, captain of cavalry under General Francis Marion ; thinking him one of the greatest of our revolutionary generals he named his first grandson after him, the name I have the honor to bear. He had ten children all of whom grew up to manhood and womanhood, all now having passed to that unknown world from whence no traveler returns; the last surviving one being my father who died last spring at the age of eighty-four. Capt. Perine located east of Dansville, taking up a tract of land, in fact all lying east of what is now Main street (but then was simply a path cut through the woods) ; afterwards selling what was known as the Shepard and Rowley tract, reserving what was known as the Perine tract until his death, which occurred at

835

HISTORY OF LIVINGSTON COUNTY

the age of ninety-three. In connection with the flat lands taken up he also added several hundred acres of hill land, among which is the land now occupied by the Our Home on the Hillside, of Dansville."

Of a later early settler Dr. Perine said: "Lester Bradner, who came here in 1814, together with Joshua Shepard formed a copartnership and conducted the business of merchants, distillers and millers. Mr. Bradner, selling out his interest in the store, and buying very largely of real estate, became in time one of the wealthy men of the section,

1 1

1.1

MAIN STREET, EAST SIDE, DANSVILLE, 1830 FROM PEN SKETCH BY H. C. SEDGWICK.

1 Joshua Shepard Store

2 Geo. Hyland's Hat Shop }

3 Holmes' Harness Shop

1 Hasler's Tailor Shop Sisters

5 R. Day, Office and Residence

W. F. Clark Store 6

Babcock Drug Store

8 Wilson Teasdale, Watch Shop and Tenement House

9 Mrs. Rowley Residence

Ia S. W. Smith Residence

Smith and Melvin Store

12 Archway Leading to Potashery

13 S. Hunt, Grocery and Harness Shop

14 S. Hunt, Residence

15 O. D. Stacy, Tavern and Residence

16 J. C. Sedgwick, Tailor Shop and Residence

17 J. C. Sedgwick, Tenant House

18 Davis Orchard

Called the Three

S36

HISTORY OF LIVINGSTON COUNTY

and one of the most successful business men. He was instrumental in establishing the Bank of Dansville, and was chosen its first president in 1839 or 1840, and continued in that capacity for many years."

Speaking of the time of Mr. Bradner's arrival (1814; Dr. Perine said: "Dansville had now emerged from its primitive state, and numbered among its one hundred inhabitants the Browns, Hartmans, Bradleys, Coverts, Abram Dippy, Justus Hall, the Smiths, Melvin Rowley, who was the model tavern keeper for many years, Hunt the harnessmaker, Sedgwick the tailor, Taggart the hatter, and the famous Pickett the grocer."

Joshua Shepard came to Dansville from Connecticut in 1813, and became a successful merchant, almost all his trade being barter, on account of the scarcity of money. He would go to New York in the winter, riding all the way in a cutter. He was public spirited, and gave the land for the first church building in Dansville, besides assist- ing largely in paying for it.

Dr. W. F. Clark, who came to Dansville in 1814 and commenced the practice of medicine, found one other physician in the village, Dr. James Faulkner. Later he engaged in several other kinds of busi- ness-had a lumber yard, an ashery and a store. He was influential in getting Dansville and adjacent territory set off into Livingston county.

The brothers Solomon and Isaac Fenstermacher came in 1805, and for some time built most of the frame houses, including the only three-story building in the county at that date, called "Solomon's temple."

Some of the later residents of the most prominence have been George Hyland, who came to Dansville in 1829 as a hatter, and ac- quired considerable wealth ; Reuben Whiteman, who came in 1851, and in the lumbering business became the wealthiest man in town; Emerson Johnson and Harriet N. Austin, closely associated with Dr. James C. Jackson in the development of the Health Resort; Judge Isaac N. Endress, John A. VanDerlip, D. W. Noyes, Samuel D. Faulkner, Job E. Hedges and Charles J. Bissell, all of whom became distinguished as legal practitioners; Sidney Sweet, a studious and much-traveled man, of great business ability, who was state senator in 1856-7; George Sweet, inventor of valuable agricultural machinery; David Mitchell, Archelaus Stevens and E. C. Daugherty, early editors and

GENESEE VALLEY

PACKET BOAT 1844, ARRANGEMENTS, 1844.

1 Packet Bond Leaves ROCHESTER and DASSVILLE Dail, as follows:

Leves Rech. stur for the 11 ville

1.1

. 12 0.41

Nim hess r.

d .. Surde, illa, The just Horns, 1 York;

L' Ker Settlement .

., 1.o' ",anding. ! 12. 1.11.

. Ale.

and row at Rochester at

To time for the Packet Boats for Syracuse or Buffalo or

. e

to is' Lasting troncouser !'.

LIGHT FREIGHT CARRIED.

For Passuże apply at the Packet Boat Wiec, Rerbester: A. STILWELL, Mi. Morris! .. VERNOY. Dammiilfe : tu the' Captain on -Board. . .

PACKET BOAT TIME TABLE.

100M

FURNASI.

SCENE ON CANAL, AT COMMINSVIL.LE.

838

HISTORY OF LIVINGSTON COUNTY

publishers. One of the present editors and publishers is A. O. Bunnell, who started the Dansville Advertiser in 1860, and is known throughout the United States as secretary of the New York Press Association for about thirty years, as secretary of the New York Re- publican Press Association for a dozen years, and as having been president of the National Press Association in 1894-5-6; another is Frederick A. Owen, head of the F. A. Owen Publishing Company, who within fifteen years has built up in a small village one of the large pub- lishing houses of the state, and established three magazines of enor- mous circulation ; and another is Oscar Woodruff, who has published and edited the Dansville Express about a quarter of a century, and has been elected supervisor of the town and president of the village an uncounted number of times. The list of these later worthies might be considerably extended.

As early as 1833 there were fifty-five saw mills within a circuit of a few miles of Dansville, and in 1843 a number of steam mills had been started and the manufacture of lumber had increased enormously. The canal was opened then, and Dansville's most rapid growth was in the decade of the canal period between 1843 and 1853, before the com- pletion of the Erie railroad. The lumber business brought hundreds of teams and men to the village during the winter months, and the mills and stores and canal for transportation made it the chief center of trade between Bath and Rochester the year round. The business of the paper mills alone amounted to $200,000 a year, and they paid to their 200 employes over $100,000 a year. The total value of products shipped by canal from Dansville in 1844 was $250,000, while in 1850 they amounted to $665, 469, and the value of those received, to $1,287,- 166. During this period packet boats were run regularly, and much of the time were crowded with passengers.

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.

History of Livingston County, New York, from its earliest traditions to the present together with early town sketches, Part 80

Author: Doty, Lockwood R., 1858- [from old catalog] ed; Van Deusen, W. J., pub. [from old catalog] Publication date: 1905 Publisher: Jackson, Mich., W. J. Van Deusen Number of Pages: 1422

Author: Doty, Lockwood R., 1858- [from old catalog] ed; Van Deusen, W. J., pub. [from old catalog]
Publication date: 1905
Publisher: Jackson, Mich., W. J. Van Deusen
Number of Pages: 1422