USA > New York > Livingston County > History of Livingston County, New York, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers > Part 59
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Nathaniel Wilder was born in Buckland, Frank- lin county, Mass., December 3d, 1815. Married Miss Cecelia Paine, of Pennacook, November 30th, 1848, where they settled in 1851. Their children are :- Charles N., a teacher; Lucy M. and Wm. P. Wilder. He is a successful farmer and like the Paines a Presbyterian.
George Gearhart was born near the Schuylkill, Pa., in 1774. Soon afterwards his father removed to Scipio, Cayuga county, then a wilderness. There George Gearhart married and had twelve children. He moved to Portage in 1818, where he died in 1857.
Deacon John Gearhart, his son, was born Jan. 3, 1804. He married Miss Elizabeth Guthrie in Nunda, June 19, 1828. She was born in New Jersey, August 8, 1804. She was a woman of un- common abilities with a will to use them for the good of others. She died July 13, 1879. Deacon Gearhart was one of the constituent members of the Portage Baptist Church. He was a lumber- man, built a saw-mill and became a farmer on the paternal homestead.
They raised nine children : Chas. H., who mar- ried Louisa Taber ; Anna Cordelia, wife of Deacon Alfred Taber; John G., who married Anna Van- slyke ; Sarah A., wife of Rev. Lucius E. Palmer; Mary E., wife of Augustus Beardsley, of Portage- ville ; Martha, wife of Menzo Lowell; William C., who married Nancy Orton ; Nath. A., who married Ella Gilbert, volunteered in the 104th Regiment, and was severely wounded in the battle of Gettys- burg, has been several terms the efficient County Clerk of this county, as chief or deputy; and George Adelbert, who enlisted in the 130th Regi- mant or First New York Dragoons, served through the war, was several years a merchant at Dalton, a public lecturer, and efficient Sunday school superintendent. He married Miss Elizabeth Wing, of Mt. Morris.
George Gearhart, the youngest of the twelve children of George Gearhart, Sr., was born in 1816. He still occupies the paternal homestead, and is a successful farmer. He married Miss Sally Baldwin, whose father, Deacon David Bald- win, was one of the first settlers. Their children were : Armilla, wife of Albert Dunn ; G. Munroe, killed at the close of the battle when Gen. Sheri- dan destroyed the army of Jubal Early ; Fayette, Esther, Mary, Merritt and Frank.
Record Taber was born in Rhode Island, April 17th, 1798. The family soon after moved to
Scipio, Cayuga county, N. Y. In 1820 he married Miss Sally Meeker, and in 1825 they settled in Portage and became noted as prosperous and public spirited citizens. He still resides on the old farm. They reared a large and intelligent family, of whom only two remain here, viz: Deacon Alfred Taber, of Dalton, and Clark W. Taber, who married Sarah, daughter of D. P. Lake, Esq.
CHAPTER XX11.
HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF MOUNT MORRIS.
M OUNT MORRIS was formed from Leicester April 17, 1818, and named* in honor of Robert Morris, a son of the distinguished financier of the Revolution of that name, whose large means greatly aided the straitened colonists in their struggle for independence. It lies upon the west border of the county, south of the center, and is bounded on the north by Leicester, from which it is separated by the Genesee, on the east by Grove- land and West Sparta, on the south by Nunda and Portage, and on the west by Leicester and Castile, Wyoming county.
The surface presents a pleasing variety of roll- ing and hilly upland and rich valley lands. Gen- esee river forms the north and west border. Cashaqua creek, the only considerable stream in the town, enters it near the center of the south border, and flowing in a north-easterly direction across the south-east part, leaves the town near the center of the east border. It again enters the town for a short distance near its confluence with the Canaseraga. Numerous small streams flow into these from all directions. They generally rise in the central and southern portions of the town, which attain the altitude of several hundred feet above the broad alluvial flats which border the river and creek.
The valley of the Genesee, "the terrestrial para- dise of the Seneca's," says a modern writer, f takes its name and signification, ("a pleasant open val- ley,") from the beautiful broad flats below Mt. Morris; and the Marquis de Talleyrand, the dis- tinguished French statesman and exile, as, in 1793, he stood on the bold terrace which skirts the flats in the vicinity of that village, on the spot now occu- pied by the residence of Dr. M. H. Mills, filled with admiration at the grand scenery which long fixed his gaze, exclaimed "it is the fairest land-
* Pioneer History of Phelps and Gorham's Purchase, 173.
t From Sketches of the Caneadea Reservation and its Inhabitants, by John S. Minard, of Hume, Allegany county.
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HISTORY OF LIVINGSTON COUNTY.
scape that the human eye ever looked upon." A writer of a nearly equally early period,* after refer- ring to the large, numerous and "singularly curious" openings in the Genesee country, giving signs of extensive cultivation, land which, from the ignor- ance of the early settlers as to its quality, was sup- posed to be barren, until necessity compelled them to attempt its cultivation, says: " It is difficult to account for these openings, or for the open flats on the Genesee river, where ten thousand acres may be found in one body, not even encumbered with a bush, bat covered with grass of such height that the largest bullocks, at thirty feet from the path, will be completely hid from view. Through all this country there are not only signs of extensive cultivation having been made at some early period, but there are found the remains of old forts where the ditches and gates are still visible. They ap- pear to be, in general, well chosen for defense."
The town is wholly underlaid by the rocks of the Chemung and Portage groups, deeply covered in many places with alluvion and drift. The river flats comprise some of the most valuable land in the county. The best is assessed at $135 per acre, without buildings, or with only a barn, t while the average equalized assessed value throughout the county is only $62.03. Much of the high land is clay and some of it is very hard and unproduc- tive. It is a grain-growing town, with a majority of the farms adapted to wheat.
The Avon, Geneseo and Mit. Morris Railroad enters the town in the north-east corner and ex- tends in a south-westerly direction to Mt. Morris village, thence it deflects to the south-east, leaving the town a little north of the center of the east border, and connecting with the Erie and Genesee Valley Railroad to Dansville. The projected Rochester, Nunda and Pennsylvania Railroad ex- tends through the town along the valley of Casha- qua creek. The rails are laid through the town, but the road has never been operated. The aban- cloned Genesee Valley canal enters the town on the north border, at the village of Mt. Morris, where it crosses the river, and extends in a south- easterly direction of the Cashaqua Valley, entering and leaving the town with that stream. and skirting the first terrace which rises from the flats.
The population of the town in ISSo, was 3,943, being exceeded only by North Dansville. In 1875 it was 3,795, of whom 3,207 were native, 588 foreign, 3,776 white, 19 colored. 1,876 males and . Williamson's Letter IV., Documentary History of New York, 11., 1147.
t The assessments range from 80 to 100 per cent. of full value.
1,919 females. In area it ranks third in the county, being exceeded only by Springwater and York. In 1875 it contained 29,705 acres,* of which 25,056 were improved, 4,236 woodland, and 413 otherwise unimproved. The cash value of farms was $1,837,876, ranking fifth in the county ; of farm buildings other than dwellings, $135,522 ; of stock, $190,074, being fifth in rank in the county ; of tools and implements $57,884, ranking fifth in the county. The amount of gross sales from farms in 1874 was $155,231, in which respect it ranked ninth in the county.
In 1877, there were one union and eleven com- mon school districts in the town. The number of children of school age residing in the districts September 30, 1880, was 1,101. During the year ending that date, eighteen teachers were employed at one time for twenty-eight weeks or more; the number of children residing in the districts who attended school was 782, the average daily atten- dance during the year was 399, the value of the volumes in the district libraries was $1,195, the number of school-houses was fourteen, eleven frame and three brick, which, with the sites, em- bracing 4 acres and 101 rods, valued at $1.390, were valued at $20,400, the assessed value of taxa- ble property in the districts was $1,783.530. Paid for teachers' wages, $4,357.60. Paid for school apparatus, $540.12. l'aid for school houses, sites, fences, out-houses, repairs, furniture, &c., $9,716.83. Paid for other incidental expenses, $736.07. Paid for school libraries, $400.00.
The first white settler in Mt. Morris, and, indeed of the entire Genesee Valley, was Mary Jemison,com- monly known as the " White Woman," who resided with the Indians seventy-eight years, seventy-two of which were spent in the Genesee Valley and fifty-two on the Gardeau flats, which lie upon the Genesee, partly in this town and partly in Castile, Wyoming county. She was highly esteemed by the Indians, who named her Dchewamis, signifying, " the woman with light hair." Her biography was published at her dictation in 1824, and re-published in 1877, by Hon. William P. Letchworth, of Glen Iris, Wyoming county. Her life is one of strange vicissitudes, and from its intimate connection with the history of this section merits an extended notice in this connection.
* Census of 1875. The published Proceedings of the Board of Super- visors in 1879, state the number of acres to be 28,958, the equalived assessed value of which was $1,711, 337, or $59,09) per acre. In this, however, it was less than the average per town-$62.03-which was ex- ceeded by only six towns in the county, though it exceeds the average value per acre in the county, which was $54.62.
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MOUNT MORRIS-EARLY SETTLERS.
Mary Jemison was born on the ocean in 1742 or '43, during the voyage of her parents, Thomas and Jane (nee Irwin) Jemison, from Ireland to Philadelphia. In the spring of 1755, while resid- ing on Marsh creek, then on the Pennsylvania frontier, a party of four Frenchmen and six Shaw- nee Indians surprised and captured the entire family, (except two of Mary's brothers, who were in the barn at the time, and escaped to their mother's family in Virginia,) consisting of her parents and three children, including herself, to- gether with the wife and three children of a soldier, who was visiting with them, and, having set out for a bag of grain, was killed the instant before by the same party. All were inhumanly murdered, except Mary and a boy-one of the soldier's chil- dren-who were taken to Fort Du Quesne, (Pitts- burgh,) where Mary was adopted by two Seneca women in place of a lost brother, and kindly treated by them. From her hopeful nature and buoyant spirits she rapidly acquired the habits of her rude captors, with whom she soon became a great favor- ite, and of whom she always spoke in terms of the highest praise.
During a four years' residence on the Ohio she married a Delaware Indian named Sheninjee, by whom she had two children -- a girl, who died in in- fancy, and a boy, whom she named after her father, Thomas Jemison.
In the autumn of 1759, she accompanied her foster-sisters to the home of their mother, who lived at Beardstown, on the Genesee, near the site of Cuylerville, in Leicester. She made the long and toilsome journey of six hundred miles on foot, carrying upon her back her infant son, then nine months old. Here she expected to be joined the following spring by her husband, who was to spend the winter on the Ohio in hunting furs, but he sickened and died soon after her departure.
After the close of the French and English war in 1763, the latter government offered a bounty for the surrender of prisoners captured during its con- tinuance, and Mary was offered her freedom ; but she chose to continue her forest life, and actually concealed herself to avoid abduction by parties who were bent on securing the bounty.
About that year she married a noted Seneca warrior named Hiokatoo, by whom she had two sons and four daughters, whom she named after her rela- tives-John, Jesse, Jane, Nancy, Betsey and Polly. All, except Jane, who died about 1795 or 1796, married and raised families, and many of their descendants still reside on the Indian reservations.
During the Revolutionary war, her home, which was always a hospitable one, frequently harbored Brant and Col. John Butler, while planning their predatory incursions upon the frontiers of the col- onies, and when the Senecas fled before the ad- vance of Sullivan's army in 1779, she accompanied them to Niagara. She was among the first to re- turn to the Genesee, and finding nothing but deso- lation at the once populous and thrifty Beardstown, she made her way up the river to Gardeau flats, which had escaped the desolating hand of Sullivan's army, and there engaged her services to two fugitive slaves to husk corn on shares. Her negro com- panions left the flats after two or three years; but Mary continued to reside there until 1831, becom- ing rich in herds and flocks as well as in lands.
The treaty at Fort Stanwix in 1784 provided for the restoration to freedom of all white persons held as prisoners by the Indians. Pursuant to this pro- vision Mary was again offered her freedom, but, notwithstanding the importunities of her son Thomas, who urged her to return to her white relatives, she persisted in her determination to pass the remainder of her life amidst the scenes of her womanhood. She feared that her friends, if found, would disdain to recognize her Indian children, and she preferred to pursue the quiet of her simple yet happy life rather than subject them to contumely. She would not throw aside her Indian costume, even after the white population had surrounded her residence, but adhered to the Indian habits and customs to the last.
At the treaty at Big Tree in 1797, a tract of land of nearly 18,000 acres, comprising the Gardeau flats, was secured to her in perpetuity, notwith- standing the violent opposition of Red Jacket. This she let out on shares to white people and thus lived in comparative ease. A contemporary author* writes that he "remembers to have seen the old white woman at his father's house, when a boy, and to this day distinctly recollects how she looked and appeared; short in stature, under size, very round shouldered and bent forward, caused by toting luggage on her back, supported by a strap across her forehead. Her complexion, once white, was tawny; her feet small and toed in ; dressing in the ordinary costume of the Indian female, she resem- bled a squaw, except her hair and light-colored eyes. Her house was the stranger's home. None were turned away hungry from her table. In all her actions she showed so much simplicity, good-
* Dr. M. H. Mills, of Mt. Morris, who writes under the nom de plume of Corn Planter, and is a voluminous contributor to the local press.
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HISTORY OF LIVINGSTON COUNTY.
ness of heart and sincerity, her admirers and friends increased as her acquaintance became ex- tended. She never was known to make trouble among the Indians, or among white people and Indians. She was always a peace maker, and minded strictly her own affairs."
Hliokatoo, Mary Jemison's second husband, was born on the banks of the Susquehanna in 1708, and died of consumption in November, 1811. His mother was sister to the mother of the celebrated chief Farmer's Brother. He was a warrior, and from his youth to the close of the Revolution was engaged in all the wars of the Senecas, often lead- ing hostile expeditions. Though kind in his do- mestic relations, as a warrior he was capable of the most cruel atrocities attributed to a savage nature, and exulted over the many fiendish tortures inflict- ed on his captive foes. Mary bears testimony to this complex nature, not, however, peculiar to the savage. She says :-
"I have frequently heard him repeat the history of his life from his childhood, and when he came to that part which related to his actions, his brave- ry and war; when he spoke of the ambush, the combat, the spoiling of his enemies, and the sacri- fice of his victims, his nerves seemed strung with youthful ardor, the warmth of the able warrior seemed to animate his frame, and to produce the heated gestures which he had practiced in middle age. He was a man of tender feelings to his friends, ready and willing to assist them in distress ; yet, as a warrior, his cruelties to his enemies were, perhaps, unparalleled, and will not admit of a word of palliation."
From such a parent we might not unreasonably expect the transmission of those qualities to the offspring which embittered Mary's later life. Two of her sons, Thomas and Jesse, were the victims of the savage brutality of a third, John; and the latter was in turn murdered by two Indians with whom he had quarreled.
Thomas, who married the daughter of an Eng- lish fur-trader, trapper and hunter and a Seneca squaw named Sally-who afterwards became the wife of Ebenezer Allen-died at the age of fifty-two. Ile left a family, of whom one -- Jacob Jemison- was in part educated at Dartmouth College. He afterwards passed through a regular course of med- ical studies, and became an Assistant Surgeon in the United States Navy. He died on board his ship in the Mediterranean squadron about 1850.
Another son, Thomas, was a worthy representa- tive of his race, and an earnest advocate of the degree of civilization to which it is attainable. He was born at Squakie Hill, near Mi. Morris, in the
latter part of December, 1796, and died on the Cattaraugus Reservation, September 7, 1878. Col. William Lyman, of Mt. Morris, formerly of Leices- ter, one of the oldest and worthiest representatives of the venerable but rapidly diminishing pioneer race, pays the following tribute to this man, whose word, said Governor Patterson, "was good as any white man's note in the valley." He says :-
" As the list of our pioneers grows shorter, and worthy individuals drop from the stage of action, and we miss a friend, we are ambitious to add our testimony to their worth and spread before the living our impressions of their good deeds, their in- tegrity and usefulness. I am unwilling that the opportunity should pass without notice. The death of Tom Jemison * brings up recollec- * * tions of past interviews and transactions that are not easily effaced. I knew him intimately; he was an honest man, a good friend, and a promi- nent man in his connections. The house he built on Squakie Hill, where he lived in his youth, still stands as a monument of his enterprise, and almost the only mark of the aborigines who once covered that location and were a power. Although no writer, he swayed the judgment and actions of his tribe for good, and was the peer of Tall Chief, Sharp Shins, Blinkey, Keneda, Straight Back and Capt. Cook, and we can say, without fear of con- tradiction, that a good man has fallen."
In 1811, Dehewamis commenced negotiations with Jellis Clute and Micah Brooks for the sale of a part of her land. In 1817, a special Act of the Legislature invested her with the power to convey it; and in the winter of 1822-23, she conveyed all, except a tract of two square miles on the west bank of the Genesee, and a lot for Thomas Clute, to Messrs. Gibson, Brooks and Clute, who, in con- sideration, bound themselves, among other things, to pay to her or her heirs or successors, $300 a year forever.
In 1831, she sold her remaining lands in the Gardean Tract, and removed with her daughters and their families to the Buffalo Reservation, where she died September 19, 1833. She was buried with Christian rites, in the cemetery near the Seneca mission church, and over her grave was placed a marble slab, which bore the following inscription :-
"In memory of Mary Jemison, daughter of Thomas Jemison and Jane Irwin. Born on the ocean between Ireland and Philadelphia, in 1842 or '43; taken captive at Marsh creek, Pa., in 1755, at thirteen years of age; carried down the Ohio; adopted into an Indian family.
"In 1759, removed to Genesee river ; was natur- alized in 1817. Removed to this place (Buffalo Reservation) in 1831, and having survived two husbands and five children, leaving three still alive, she died September 19, 1833, aged about ninety-
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MOUNT MORRIS-EARLY SETTLERS.
one years, having a few weeks before expressed a hope of pardon through Jesus Christ."*
In less than two decades from the time of her burial every vestige of her grave had disappeared, and the ground which contained her remains brought under cultivation. Subsequently a street laid out through the cemetery passed over it, and the stone which marked it was much defaced by the vandalism of relic seekers. In March, 1874, her remains were disintered by Hon. Wm. P. Letchworth, under the immediate supervision of her descendants, and, together with other articles found in her grave,t placed in a tasteful black walnut coffin, and deposited in a marble sarcopha- gus, on Glen Iris, at Portage Falls, six miles from her former home at Gardeau.
The spot selected for the final resting place of her remains is a high eminence on the left bank of the Genesee, overlooking the upper and middle falls and railroad bridge, and commanding the finest view of the picturesque scenery of that lo- cality. Near to and upon the same eminence is the ancient Seneca council house,¿ where she rest- ed after her long, fatiguing walk from the Ohio. It was brought down the canal from the Caneadea Reservation in 1872, by Mr. Letchworth, who has made varied and extensive contributions to Indian lore, and filled an adjoining artistically constructed Indian hut, fifteen feet square, with Indian curios- ities.
The grave is curbed with stones once used as head-stones in the Indian cemetery at Gardeau, and afterward to construct a road culvert ; at its head stands what remains of the slab which mark- ed her grave at Buffalo, the original inscription on which has been transferred to a square block of mar- ble six feet in height, which stands near it, and is de- signed to form the pedestal to a statue of Mary Jem- ison, in Indian costume, and bearing on her back a babe, just as she made her advent into the Genesee Valley; at its foot is a blackwalnut tree, planted by
* Mary Jemison was religiously instructed in her childhood ; and after her capture, her mother, judging from the fact that her shoes were ex- changed for moccasins that Mary was destined to escape the cruel deatlı which awaited herself, enjoined her to remember these early instructions and her native tongue as long as she lived ; but, though at first she en- deavored to fulfill the promise then made, in the lapse of time both were lost to memory, and she became a Pagan, continuing such till within a few weeks of her death.
t Near the center of the grave was found a peculiarly shaped porcelain dish, containing what, when placed there, may have been articles of food, and a wooden spoon much decayed.
# This council . house is constructed of hewed logs, and is 18 by 36 feet. It has a door on either side, and seats of poles inside. The roof is made of large shingles, covered with poles. Each log as it was taken down was marked and replaced so as to present the same appearance as when orig- inally constructed. Upon one of its logs there still remains the sign of a cros., precisely like those the early Jesuits are known to have used.
her grandson, Thomas Jemison, and raised from seed borne by the tree that shaded her grave at Buffalo.
The next white settler in this town was Ebene- zer or "Indian" Allen, a native of New Jersey, who came to this locality in 1782. He was a Tory and ally of the Indians, and fled from Penn- sylvania to evade the just punishment of his crimes. He made his home at the house of Mary Jemison, on the Gardeau flats, and worked her land till the close of the Revolution. He provoked the enmity of the Indians by taking a wampum belt and a tender of peace to an American out-post, thus treacherously misrepresenting a party of British and Indians who contemplated a renewal of border hostilities. The sacred pledge of the wampum belt was observed, but the Indians determined to pun- ish Allen for his perfidy, and tracked him like a wild beast, so that for weeks he was obliged to conceal himself to elude his pursuers, his physical wants being supplied by the kind-hearted Mary. He was, however, captured, and tried and acquit- ted in Canada.
In 1785, he located on the site of the village of Mt. Morris, which received from him the designa- tion of Allen's Hill. He married a Seneca squaw named Sally, (the mother of the wife of Thomas Jemison, the eldest son of Mary Jemison,) who bore him two daughters, named Chloe and Polly.
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