USA > New York > Oswego County > History of Oswego County, New York, with illustrations and Biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers > Part 100
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At Three Rivers point they met Major Van Valken- burgh on his return. Confident in his skill in managing the Indians, he continued on his way, taking " Har" with him ; but we believe Mr. Olcott did not again risk his merchandise in the unpromising locality around Oswego falls. The major succeeded in pacifying the Indians, being assisted by the British commander at Fort Ontario, who at one time during the trouble sent a small detachment of soldiers up to the falls to preserve order. In the fall Major Van Valkenburgh went back to Stillwater (as did also Lay and Bush, if they came out a second time that season), leaving Oswego falls entirely uninhabited. Gov-
388
WY W. PALMER.
MRS. WM W. PALMER.
JOHN PALMER.
RESIDENCE OF WM. W. PALMER, ESQ., SOUTH GRANBY, OSWEGO CO, N.Y.
MRS. CALVIN FRENCH
CALVIN FRENCH 4
RESIDENCE OF CALVIN FRENCH , GRANBY, OSWEGO CO.,N.Y.
389
HISTORY OF OSWEGO COUNTY, NEW YORK.
ernor Clinton offered a reward for Valentine. Ile came back and stood his trial at Whitesboro', which, as before stated, was the county-seat of Herkimer county. The people of the Mohawk valley were still enraged over the injuries inflicted by the Indians during the Revolution, and it would have been almost impossible to convict a white man for killing an Indian. Perhaps Valentine acted in actual self-defense, but at all events he was promptly ac- quitted. It is said that he came back from Canada (which he could not have been compelled to do) with the under- standing that he was to have half the reward paid to his captor, but that the latter ran off with all the money.
In the spring of 1793, Van Valkenburgh, Bush, and Lay all returned with their families, and occupied the houses built the year before. The major's household, besides him- self, his wife, his youngest son, James, and the negro " Har," contained, properly speaking, another family, con- sisting of his son, Abram Van Valkenburgh, and his wife, Zilpha, a newly-married bride of sixteen. Death was still active on the shores of the Oswego, and during that season both Mr. and Mrs. Lay fell victims to the destroyer. Shortly afterwards a Mr. Penoyer occupied their place. The other pioneers continued their improvements and pre- pared to spend the winter. During one of the first years of his residence Captain Bush built a barn, which was afterwards quite celebrated ; being about thirty feet long, twenty feet wide, and twelve feet high. It was built of logs over a foot in diameter, and those who afterwards saw it could not but wonder where Mr. Bush got help enough to put it up.
In November, 1793, Mrs. Zilpha Van Valkenburgh gave birth to a son, who received the name of Lawrence, from his grandfather, and was the first white child born in the present town of Granby. He has generally been considered, also, as the first one born in Oswego County, but he was probably the second; the first being Camille Desvatines, born in 1791 or 1792, the child of Monsieur Desvatines, the actual Frenchman of the celebrated " Frenchman's island," in Oneida lake. The Van Valkenburghs and Bush, with their families, all spent the winter in their new homes.
In the spring of 1794 the county of Onondaga was formed from Herkimer, including the whole Military tract. A new political town, called Lysander, was also organized, which included the survey-township of that name and also that of Hannibal, thus bringing the whole of the present Granby within its limits. The distinction between political towns and survey-townships must be constantly kept in mind by those who would understand the changes of that day.
It does not appear that there were any new settlers during 1794. Warned by the severity of the past winter, the coming one looked very forbidding to Major Van Val- kenburgh and his family. He had, however, made good friends with the Hessian, Captain Schroeder (miscalled " Shade" by some of the old settlers), in command at Fort Ontario; a friendship doubtless facilitated by the fact that Van Valkenburgh himself was of German or Dutch parent- age. The captain invited Major Van Valkenburgh to bring his family down to the fort and spend the winter, an invi-
tation which the latter gladly accepted. All the Van Val- kenburghs stayed at the fort until the spring of 1795. The exciting domestic outbreak which occurred near the close of their visit has been narrated in the general history.
In the spring of 1795 the major purchased a traet of land on the other side of the river, where he ever after re- sided, abandoning his improvements on the west side. There was a good deal of difficulty about the title of many lots on the Military tract, the soldiers who drew them having apparently sold them several times over, and the facilities for recording deeds and ascertaining titles being much poorer than now. It was doubtless on account of a defeet of title that Van Valkenburgh abandoned the land he had first chosen.
Near 1796, John Van Buren, Jr., originally of Kinderhook, located himself on " Indian point," near the lower landing, on the west side. He and his sons-Peter, John, Jacob, and Volkert-were afterwards noted as stalwart boatmen on the river. About 1797, Captain Bush moved away. Soon after, the Van Burens occupied the same premises, and there, in October, 1798, the youngest son, David Van Buren, was born, now the oldest native of this town. In a little while, however, the whole family moved to the east side of the river, where most of them made their homes throughout their lives. Bush's vacant clearing was culti- vated for a while after the Van Burens left it by some of the Waterhouse family, residing on the east side of the river. Thus all of the original pioneers of Granby, Van Valkenburgh, Bush, and Lay, had died or moved away, and in 1799 there does not appear to have been a solitary resident on this side of the river except the Frenchman, Penoyer, and it is not certain but that he had left. From the place he occupied southward to Three Rivers point there was not a single house on this side the river, and but one on the other side. Just about the beginning of the eentury Henry Bakeman, a mulatto from New Jersey, pur- chased the part of lot 4 previously occupied by Lay and Penoyer, and became a permanent resident there.
The next person we hear of in what is now Granby was David Webster, who settled, about 1802, on the river- bank, a little below the outlet of Lake Neatawanta, remain- ing near three years. About the time he left (1805) Barnet Mooney, afterwards quite prominent in public affairs, located himself just above the mouth of the outlet. Luke Montague took Webster's place farther down. We think it was in 1804 that Peter IIngunin, a relative of the family so prom- inent in the early history of Oswego, came and occupied lot 74, previously owned by Bush. His son, James, soon after bought the north half of that lot of Bush, and made his home upon it. By this time people had begun to find out that there were two sides to the river, and to make set- tlements accordingly. Still, not a single immigrant had built a cabin or made a clearing away from the river-bank. There was no road, even along the west side of the river, except between the clearings in the vicinity of the falls. The Oswego furnished the only means of communication with the puter world.
Abraham Barnes, the original owner of lot 75, came and lived on it in 1805, apparently intending to revive his title, which he was supposed to have conveyed away.
390
HISTORY OF OSWEGO COUNTY, NEW YORK.
In the year 1805 two young men, on their way to Os- wego on business, stopped for the night at the house of Ebenezer Wright, a justice of the peace, residing on the east side of the river. One of them was John T. Hudson, afterwards canal commissioner of this State, and the other was Martin Van Buren, subsequently president of the United States. After supper, Mr. Wright invited his guests to cross the river with him and be present at a mar- riage ceremony which he was to perform. The young men assented, and were soon set across to the other shore. They proceeded to a house some distance above the lower land- ing, and in due time the ceremony was performed. The bridegroom was only nineteen years old, and the bride six- teen. This, according to the best attainable authority, was the first wedding ever solemnized within the territory now comprising the town of Granby, the youthful parties being John, otherwise "Jack" Waterhouse, and Polly, better known by her friends as " Pop" Hugnnin: Thirty or forty years later Mr. Hudson related the adventure to William Schenck, and the sketch of early days, afterwards furnished by B. B. Waterhouse to Peter Schenck, gives the date of the marriage.
Before going further in noticing the course of immigra- tion, we will give some attention to the natural character- istics of the territory to which this chapter is devoted. As all who reside in this vicinity know, the Oswego river forms the eastern boundary of Granby. Perhaps, however, all do not know that the river-front of the town has a length of about thirteen miles. This stream, which was originally rapid and turbulent along all its course, was broken by sev- eral rifts and by the renowned Oswego falls, which, though not very high, acquired great celebrity from being on the main route between the east and the west. All travelers had to dash over them or plod around them, and were sure to remember all about them.
There are also several small islands in the river, but the largest of them belongs to the town of Volney.
The most noted of these is the celebrated Bradstreet's island, or " Battle island," as it has latterly been called, opposite lot 46, in the northeast corner of this town; and it was in Granby that General Bradstreet rallied his men, after the fight on the island, marched them up to the mouth of Lake Neatawanta's outlet, and routed the enemy from the swamp in which they had ensconced themselves, as narrated at full length in the general history.
All along the river the ground was considerably broken, frequently rising into bluffs, though of moderate height. This tract was covered with a heavy growth of pines, hem- locks, oaks, and chestnuts, all of the finest kind. The pioneer, who, with rifle on his shoulder, roamed over the country away from the river, in search of deer or bear, found the surface of the ground more level, occasionally degenerating into swamps, and covered with a dense forest of beech, maple, clm, and hemlock, with occasional ridges of chestnuts.
A little more than half-way from the southern to the northern limits of the present town, and only half a mile west of the principal fall in the Oswego, the pioneers found a beautiful little lake, sparkling in a dense, dark frame of pine, hemlock, and oak. The surveyors determined its area
at about eight hundred acres, and inquisitive youths found its lowest depths to be near twenty feet. The Indians called it " Ne-ah-tah-wan-tah," and the linguists of the day inter- preted that as meaning "The little lake near the great lake."
The Indian name has been very properly retained, but in printing it in other places in this work we have taken the liberty of omitting the h's and hyphens. All Indian words of more than one syllable had marked pauses between the syl- lables, and guttural sounds at the ends of them. But though we adopt their names, we invariably make them conform to our smoother and more rapid pronunciation. Naturally and properly we usually write them without the hyphens and h's, which denote the Indian pauses and gutturals. Occa- sionally some one tries to make an exception, but without good reason. There is no more sense in writing Ne-ah-tah- wan-tah than .there would be in writing Ohn-tay-ree-oh, or Cay-yoo-gah, or On-on-dah-gah. Doubtless the Indians pronounced those names thus, but we moderns don't, and it would be foolish to write them so. Therefore the little gem of Granby shall be Neatawanta, so far as we are concerned.
Subsequent investigations showed that Lake Neatawanta was a hundred and twenty feet above Lake Ontario. Its outlet ran nearly north for two miles and then turned into the Oswego. It did not, however, afford sufficient drainage, and several marshes along the lake-shore generated malaria and disease.
The territory of Granby was drained by several small streams. The largest of these was Ox creek, which rose on the edge of Hannibal, ran in tortuous course a little north of west, and emptied into the Oswego some four miles be- low the present southern line of Granby. Three or four much smaller streams ran into Lake Neatawanta, while in the north part of the present town were the head-waters of Rice creek and Eight-mile creek.
The pines and oaks along the river were extremely fine, and large quantities of them were cut down and rafted to Montreal and Quebec, where they found ready sale to Eng- lish ship-builders. The first clearings had usually been made by girdling the large trees, cutting down the small ones and the underbrush. When the tops of the girdled trees died, the sun came down between the trunks with sufficient freedom to bring out very fair crops from the virgin soil. In the spring of 1806 the town of Hannibal was formed from Lysander. It included the whole of the survey-township of Hannibal, and the thirty-three lots of the survey-township of Lysander, before mentioned as lying in a notch between Hannibal and the river.
To return to the course of settlement. In 1806, Barnet Miller located in the neighborhood of Barnet Mooney. Cornelius H. Miller moved over there from the cast side shortly after. In 1807, John I. Walradt purchased a part of lot 74 of James Hugunin, and put up a small frame house, which was the first clapboarded residence we can hear of in town. He was an active, enterprising man, and soon afterwards was engaged in portage on the west side of the river.
Previous to 1807 the portage business had been carried on entirely on the east side. A " portage," however, did not involve the investment of any great amount of capital.
FARM VIEW OF THOS R.WRIGHT, GRANBY, OSWEGO CO., N. Y.
T. R. WRIGHT
MRS. T. R. WRIGHT.
4
RESIDENCE OF THOMAS R.WRIGHT, OSWEGO FALLS, N. Y.
391
HISTORY OF OSWEGO COUNTY, NEW YORK.
A yoke of cattle and a stout wagon were the principal necessaries, though several teams might be used. Goods were brought from the east, through the Mohawk river, Oneida lake, and Oswego river, to a point just above the falls, in what were called Durham boats,-large, flat-bot- tomed boats, carrying about twenty-five tons of freight each, and propelled on the river by men going from stem to stern on " running-boards," provided with cleats, and pushing with poles against the bottom. At the point just men- tioned the freight was transferred to ox-wagons on one side of the river or the other, carried down about a mile and a quarter, and re-embarked below the rapids in bateaux, propelled by oars, carrying about eight tons each, and sent down to Oswego. Sometimes, it is true, Durham boats were found below the falls, and still more frequently bateaux were used above them, but this was the usual course. The portage on the west side was carried on with great vigor for two or three years by Mr. Walradt and others, but was finally abandoned to the residents on the otherside.
In 1809, Barnet Mooney was elected to the general as- sembly from Onondaga county, being the first person ever sent to that body from the territory now comprising Oswego County. He was also chosen for the same position in 1810, 1812, and 1814.
About 1810 the house built by Bush on lot 74 was oc- eupied by Truman Bronson, and the next year Moses Ives settled on the same lot. In 1811, also, a portion of that „ lot was taken possession of by a gentleman who was a lead- ing pioneer, whose sons were prominent citizens, and whose descendants still live near where he first located .. This was Mr. Jacob Schenek, who had visited the locality in 1808, who began preparations for a residence in 1811, and who brought on his family in 1812.
Up to about this time, nearly twenty years after the first improvements had been made in Granby, there was not a solitary settler away from the immediate vicinity of the river. But in 1810 or 1811, John Hutchins located him- self near what is now called Bowen's Corners, four miles southwest of Oswego falls. It is somewhat difficult to aseer- tain why so good a country as the interior of Granby has proved to be should have remained so long unsettled, while other tracts without its facilities of river communication had filled up with a numerous population before the war of 1812. · Doubtless, however, one reason is to be found in the extremely heavy timber that covered the ground, which indeed attested the strength of the soil, but wbich obstructed the operations of the pioneer. There was also considerable low, wet ground, which interfered with the opening of roads, but which, when onee drained and subdued, has be- come some of the most valuable land in the county.
At all events, the testimony of the carly settlers and their sons is substantially unanimons that nothing was done towards settling up the back country until just before the war of 1812, and very little until after it. In March, 1812, William Wilson and Zadock Allen moved into the locality where IIutehins had established himself. Mr. Wilson's year-old boy Charles, now a hale old man of sixty- six, residing only about two miles south of the point where his father located, is, so far as we can learn, the earliest surviving resident of the interior of the town.
During the first year or two, of course, the new settlers had to buy their grain. Mr. William Wilson and his old- est son, also named William, then about seventeen, used to go on foot-there being no road passable for a team-to Betts' Corners, in Lysander, buy some grain, and carry it home on their backs through the woods. The next day they would carry it in the same way to Burrows' mill, now Hannibal Centre, and return with a grist.
On one of these trips, being somewhat later than usual, night overtook them ere they reached home, and they soon lost their way. After vainly endeavoring to reach home in the dark, and floundering around hopelessly in the woods for some time, they gave up and sat down to wait for morn- ing. A pack of wolves got scent of them, and came howl- ing and gnashing their teeth altogether too close for pleas- ure. The youth climbed the tree, but the old man was not sufficiently agile for that, and awaited the expected onslaught at the foot. However, the foe did not make the attack.
Next morning they were delighted to hear the crowing of cocks near by. Shouldering their sacks they started for the sound, and in a few moments they came to their own little elearing, having stayed on their own land all night.
Jesse Green and his son Amos settled at Bowen's Cor- ners in the summer of 1812, and William Dewey about the same time, or perhaps the year before.
Mr. Cyril Wilson settled about the same time on the place now occupied by Isaac Pierce. Ilis brother-in-law, Mr. Hale, also lived there then, and was a zealous wolf- catcher. In 1811, Deacon Elijah Mann had made his home on the river, below Mooney's place, where he was long a prominent citizen. Near the same period a settle- ment was made about a mile west of Mann's, by Abraham Shepherd, Samuel Colby, and John Miller, generally known as " Yankee Miller," to distinguish him from the numerous Millers of German descent living along the river.
Other carly settlers of the period were Daniel and John Cody, the first residents in the southeast part of the town.
But a sudden stop was to be put to the small stream of immigration that had begun to flow into Granby. William Schenck well remembers when a horseman came galloping at full speed along the road, stopping for a moment to tell the startled pioneers that war was declared with Great Britain, and then hurrying on to warn the people at Oswego. Visions of invasion immediately arose before the minds of the scattered settlers, accompanied by dreams of Indian massacre, which was then considered to be the inevitable accompaniment. Yet the pioneers nearly all held their ground, and the women often had to care for their families alone during the absence of the men on military duty.
John 1. Walradt was an officer in the army, doing gal- lant service with the American forces in Canada. His wife, the eldest daughter of Daniel Hugunin, of Oswego, and endowed with all the force of character which distinguished that family, managed the property during his absence.
Throughout the war the river teemed with business, to an extent unknown before since great armies passed along it during the old French war. Vast amounts of artillery, munitions, and stores were frequently collected at the falls, either awaiting transportation or because that was con- sidered a safer place than Oswego.
392
HISTORY OF OSWEGO COUNTY, NEW YORK.
About twenty large cannon and a very extensive and valuable assortment of warlike stores, intended for the great ship-of-war "Superior," were thus assembled at the falls when the British attacked Oswego, in May, 1814. The thunders of canuon came rolling up the river, re-awakening the fears of invasion and massacre which had been lulled to sleep by two years of safety. Resolute Mrs. Walradt, knowing that her friends in Oswego were in great danger, -especially two of her brothers, one of whom was in the land and the other in the naval service,-could not sit still and await the result. Mounting her horse, as narrated by her daughter, Mrs. Howell, she galloped off towards the scene of battle, often obliged to bend low to escape the boughs which overhung the narrow trail that served as a road. She soon met the fugitives streaming up the river- shore, and learned the unfavorable result of the conflict, but also learned the safety of her friends. Every one expected an immediate advance of the enemy to capture the stores at the falls, but the British had received sufficient punishment at Oswego, and were willing to leave in brief order.
One afternoon about a fortnight later, both shores of the river at Oswego falls were astir with several hundred soldiers and sailors, and the river itself was crowded with heavily-loaded boats, for Lieutenant Woolsey was about setting forth on his hazardous expedition to take the guns and stores of the "Superior" through to Sackett's Harbor. The success of that expedition, and the complete defeat inflicted on the foe who undertook to capture it, have been described at length in the general history.
Notwithstanding the difficulty and discouragement pro- duced by the war, Jacob Schenck, in 1814, erected his saw-mill, on which he had begun work as early as 1811. Cyril Wilson purchased a share in it before it was raised, and helped finish it. This was the first mill of any de- scription built in Granby. Yonng William Schenck went up along the river, through the present Oswego town, nearly to Oswego village, and baek into Hannibal, to invite men to the raising. There seems not to have been a very cordial feeling between the people on this side of the river, who were all farmers, and those on the other, who were mostly boatmen, and hardly any of the latter were invited or were present. From all the country thus scoured about twenty men were got together to put up the mill.
After the war, immigration recommenced, though still with faltering steps. Seth Camp made the first settlement at West Granby about that time, though the exact year is not known. In March, 1816, Oswego County was formed, the town of Hannibal, which still included Granby, being the only one west of the Oswego river in the new county. As the territory of the present Granby had had the honor of having the first assemblyman from what is now Oswego County, so it furnished the earliest " first-judge" of that county, and in the same person,-the Hon. Barnet Mooney.
By this time there was a regular road opened through the whole length of the town along the west side of the river, and considerable travel on that side. As Mr. Wal- radt had probably the best house in the settlement, and as tavern-keeping was then the most high-toned business there was going, the people insisted that he should open a tavern.
In fact, travelers were determined to stop with him any way. Accordingly he hung out a sign, and this was the first tavern in Granby. For many years it was the centre of business on the west side of the river, town-meetings, general trainings, and similar gatherings being usually held there.
There was now sufficient population, so it was thought that the great town of Hannibal, which contained over a hundred square miles, would bear division. Accordingly, by an act passed on the 20th day of April, 1818, two new towns were formed from Hannibal,-Oswego and Granby. The latter included the thirty-three lots of the old survey- township of Lysander, which had previously been a part of the political town of Hannibal, and nineteen lots of the survey-township of Hannibal; that is to say, it included all the land within the present limits of Granby, the north part of lot 46, and the whole of 37. The two tracts last named formed a triangular piece running down the river almost to Minetto. This triangle was subsequently cut off from Granby and annexed to the town of Oswego. The first town-meeting was held at the house of Cyril Wilson, on the first Tuesday of May, 1818, Barnet Mooney acting as moderator and Peter Schenck as clerk, when the following officers were duly elected :
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