USA > New York > Otsego County > History of Otsego County, New York : with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers > Part 31
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1833
1835
1836
1820. 3681
16
1875 2214 1840
1874 Charles MeLean.
Town Clerks. J. B. Walton. Oliver Judd.
44
124
HISTORY OF OTSEGO COUNTY, NEW YORK.
Supervisors.
1817
Horace Lathrop.
1818
1819.
64
..
1820
66
1821.
1822 1823
William Campbell.
1824
1825.
1826
Hornee Ripley.
1827
Abrain Stewart.
1828 Horace Lathrop.
1829 Levi Beardsley.
1830 Horace Lathrop.
William Mc Lean.
1831.
..
66
44
1833
1834.
1835.
1836
1837
1838
Mason Fitch.
1839
1840 James Hetherington.
1841
.
1842
Joseph Phelon. "
1843
Hiram Flint.
1845
Joseph Phelon.
1846 Benjamin Davis. ..
1847
1848 Henry Roseboom.
William Hall.
1849
James Marks.
1850 Charles MeLean.
1851 Win. Marks.
1852 Charles MeLean.
1853
Jonas Platner, Jr.
1854. John W. Sterriker. 1855
1856 Joseph Phelon.
1857 A. II. Watkins. 1858 . 46
1859
6
Jesse Bronson.
A. L. Swan.
S. G. Wilkin.
1864
Charles MeLean. ..
Stephen Waldron.
1865.
IS66. Daniel W. Bates.
1867
George Merritt.
A. S. Botsford. Stephen Waldron.
1871
D. W. Bates.
John K. Diell.
1872 James Young.
66
1873
1874 Charles McLean.
1875. George Merritt.
1876.
The officers for 1877 are as follows :
Superrisor .- George Merritt.
Town Clerk .- John K. Diell.
Justice of the Peace .- Edward Allen.
Collector .- Amos L. Swan.
Commissioner of Highways .- C. H. Platner.
Assessor .- Geo. H. Sherman.
Overseers of the Poor .-- Samuel Ludlam and John H. Prime.
Inspectors of Election .- G. V. Spraker, L. W. Thomp- son, C. M. Bates.
Constables .- W. MeFarren, E. Frantzman, M. F. Dutcher, A. Whitbeck, Geo. Van Alstyne.
Town Auditors .- HI. Salisbury and H. Banker.
Railroad Commissioners .- Theodore Lewis, Wm. Allen.
Excise Commissioner .- Thos. Lynk.
Justices of the Peace .- Chas. McLean, L. W. Thompson, Henry W. Best, and Edward Allen.
AGRICULTURAL STATISTICS, 1875.
Aeres plowed, 5240; in pasture, 5876; acres mown, GASS; tous of hay produced, 7532; bushels barley pro-
doeed, 3097 ; buckwheat, 662; corn, 5117; oats, 59,990; rye, 470 ; spring wheat, 1601 ; winter wheat, 2516 ; beans, 84 ; peas, 284; pounds of hops, 199,794; bushels of potatoes, 25,112; barrels cider, 571; maple sugar, 470 pounds ; value of poultry sold, $686 ; eggs, 2366; pounds of butter made, 103,806; cheese, 15,210; pork made on farms, 107,114 pounds.
Area .- Cherry Valley lias an area of 24,058 aeres, the assessed valuation of which is $443,850, and the equalized valuation $489,580.
POPULATION.
1800 1550 1845. 4125
ISII. 2775 1850 41×6
1814. 3053
1855. 2540
1820 3684
1860 2552
1825 3874
1865 2384
1830.
4098
1870 2337
1835
3876
3923
CHAPTER XXXV.
TOWN OF CHERRY VALLEY-Continued.
Ecclesiastical History-Bank-Freemasonry in Cherry Valley- I. O. O. F .- Fire Department.
PRESBYTERIAN CHURCHI.
IN placing before the reader a history of this church, it is deemed proper to give it in extenso, as its organization was coincident with the settlement of the place in 1740, and the annals of the church from that time to the present form, in a large degree, a history of the village. The Rev. H. U. Swinnerton, A.M., the present talented and efficient pastor, added a valuable contribution to the historie litera- ture of this locality, by the compilation of a work, entitled " An Historieal Account of the Presbyterian Church at Cherry Valley, N. Y.," from which the following sketch is compiled :
This church was organized immediately upon the settle- ment of the locality, by Rev. Samuel Dunlop, a graduate of Trinity college, Dublin. Tradition informs us that on the northern slope of the hill where was located the house of Mr. Lindesay, now the residence of Mr. Phelon, was efected in the first days of the embryo village, a log church and school-house.
Mr. Dunlop was not only a minister. but a scholar, and an earnest friend of that thorough education which has been so inseparable a part in the history of Presbyterians in Scotland, as well as all over the world. He became the first apostle of liberal learning beyond the towns on the coast and the Hudson. He at onee began the teaching of the classics to the boys of the settlement, and to others who came from the seattering villages of the Germans on the Mohawk; and it is related of him that as he guided the ox-team at the plow, the lads followed in the fresh earth of the furrow, scanning the daily " stent" of Homer or of Virgil. He was the educator of a number of men who became eminent and us ful in the great struggle which. some years later, evoked the energies of the youthful nation.
Mr. Dunlop was an energetie man, and the statement has come down that, in his desire to meet his brethren in
1861
1862.
66
1863
Wm. Burch.
Albert C. Stevens.
B. Steens.
A. A. Saunders.
Charles MeLean.
1860 James Young.
..
William Duffin. John K. Diell.
..
1868. Charles McLean.
1869
¥
1870. Amos L. Swan.
Town Clerky. J. B. Walton. Oliver Judd.
.6
Levi Beardsley.
Adolphus W. Flint.
Oliver Judd. Robert Dunlap.
1832 Levi Beardsley. Seth C. Burch.
66
1844
1875 2214 IS40
HISTORY OF OTSEGO COUNTY, NEW YORK.
125
the ministry, made the long journey to New Hampshire, and attended presbytery. Though the records of that day, both of the presbytery and of this church, are lost, there can be but little doubt that the distant charge of Cherry Valley was one of the twelve churches which are said to have formed that carly presbytery of Boston. At a later time a nearer point of support was found. The an- cestors of De Witt Clinton* had settled at Little Britain, in Ulster county, near the Hudson in 1731. There grew up before the Revolution what was called the presbytery of Ulster; and with that as their nearest neighbors, the church and its pastor seem to have been connected.
.
But this long trip to presbytery was not the most dis- tant journey this active inan performed. He seems to have been capable of undertaking anything when he had a rea- son. He was the first person in Cherry Valley to make the voyage to Europe across the ocean. He was still un- married, and it was now nearly seven years since he had left his friends in Ireland. When he started for America it was to seck a home to which he might take the young girl who had promised to be his wife. But that engage- ment had prudently been made conditional ; for, like those who seek their fortune on the Pacific coast in these days, it was not uncommon for the adventurer who started for the new world to be lost by shipwreck, by pirates, or by the Indians, and never be heard of after. It was too much to ask that the happiness of her whole life should hang on such chances, and it was stipulated that if the young min- ister did not return within seven years the lady should be free. The time was almost out, and others had sued for her hand. To one of them she had at last yielded, and while poor Dunlop was beating off the stormy northern coast, panting to make a harbor, the preparations for the wedding were in progress. He arrived the day before the marriage, and the last day of the appointed term, claimed his bride, was joyfully accepted as one returned from the dead, aud led her away to his wildwood home. Poor lady ! eould she have known the scene of bloody violence in which she was to yield up her life, she might well have hesitated to embark.
.
The frontier settlement of Cherry Valley prospered and · inercased in population.
As years went by death claimed his share from the number of the people, and a spot was selected on a rise of ground, near the southern edge of the village, where they were laid away to rest, and many a rude slab, split from the limestone-ridge hard by, still marks the spot where a pioneer lies wrapt in his long slumber, but whose name no hand skilled with the chisel was there to engrave. With their growing nuuibers better accommodations for their worship than the old log house could afford became necessary, and a frame church, the second edifice, was ereeted within the limits of the little quiet grave-yard.
Like all the communities of our country, the constant struggles with the Indians or with the French gave occasion to develop those war-like qualities which were soon to be useful in the grandest effort ever made by any nation in the sacred cause of freedom. Frequent rumors of dangers re-
quired that the rifle should be shouldered by the head of the family, as he led his wife and children to the house of God, and that the sentry should paee watchfully to and fro before the door, while the psalm was lifted up from pious hearts within.
Every man became in some sense a soldier, and even the sports of the children in the village street were those of marching and manœuvring,-the keen eye of the savage. peering from the brushwood of the overlooking hill, being at least onee deceived at the sight of their parades into be- lieving that real soldiers had arrived to garrison the place. Service in the old French war promoted several of the mem- bers of the church to military offices of some rank, whose regular eommissions are still preserved, and scarce a man was there but had seen something of war.
The stern occasion for the use of all their bravery and all their endurance had now come. . The Presbyterians of Ireland never yet wasted too much love on the oppressive government of Great Britain. The fathers of some of them had been in the siege of Londonderry and the battle of the Boyne, and we may be sure that they were Whigs. The stamp-act affair reached them, and likewise did the pro- ecedings in Boston harbor. When the news came of what had been done at Concord and Lexington (brought by a courier hastening west and leaving the country all on fire with his patriotic fury as he passed), there was hardly a man who did not resolve to take up the fight. Before this, Cherry Valley had becu included in a territorial division called Palatine district of the county of Tryon. A standing com- mittee of safety was formed for the district, with sub-com- mittees in every hamlet. They were under the rule of the family of Johnstons, zealous royalists, who formed the cen- tre of a nest of Tories at Johnstown. Little formidable iu themselves, they were made so by reason of their entire control of the great Indian league of the Six Nations, who iufested the forests of the whole region. The little church was the seene of the first meeting of the committee, which convened the people to denounee the attempts of the Tories by a bold stroke to carry that part of the country over to the side of the oppressors. By subverting the grand jury and judges assembled in the spring of 1775 the actions of congress had been denounced, and it was hoped thereby to array these settlements against the cause of independence. The patriots in the church subscribed the following articie of association in opposition to that attempt.t
Thus our church, consecrated already as a seat of piety. became a cradle of liberty and a theatre of heroic action. Surely, not more adventurous was it to sign the Declaration of Independence in the old State House at Philadelphia than to write one's name on that paper in the rude frame church in the grave-yard at Cherry Valley.
These Presbyterians were the more exasperated in that a large body of Roman Catholic Highlanders, their own apostate countrymen, as they regarded them. formed part of the array at Johnstown with which they were threat : : . 1. In a letter to the committee at Albany, imploring helpt save the frontier for freedom, they concluded as follows :
" In a word, gentlemen, it is our fixed resolution to sup-
. Campbell's Life of De Witt Clinton.
t See page 14.
126
HISTORY OF OTSEGO COUNTY, NEW YORK.
port and carry into execution everything recommended by the Continental Congress, and to be free or die."
A document, still extant, shows in what regard the Christian Sabbathi was held by them in the grand Centen- ninl of a hundred years ago. The question was not then whether Sunday is a day of holy rest or a day of worldly pleasure. The following is a letter written from Cherry Valley in reply to a citation to convene with the committee at a meeting appointed for a certain Sunday. It reminds one of the reply of the apostles when they were forbidden to preach. " Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye : For we cannot :"
CHERRY VALLEY, June 9th, 1775.
SIR: Wo received yours of yesterday relating to the meeting of the committee on Sunday, which surprised us not a little, inasmuch as it seemed not to be in any alarming circumstance; which, if it was, we should readily attend. But as that does not appear to us to be the ense, wo think it is very improper ; for unless the necessity of the committee sitting superexceed the duties to be performed in attending the publie worship of God, we think it ought to be put off till another day. And therefore we conclude not to give our attend- ance at this time unless you adjourn the sitting of the committee till Monday morning. And in that case we will give our attendance as early as you please. But otherwise we do not allow ourselves to be cut short of attending on the public worship except the case be so necessitous as to exceed sacrificc. We conclude with wishing success to the common cause, and subscribe ourselves the free born sons of liberty.
JOHN MOORE, SAMUEL CLYDE, SAMUEL CAMPBELL.
P. S. If you proceed to sit on the Sabbath, please to read this letter to the committee, which we think will sufficiently assign our reason for not attending.
These were men who could fight as well as pray. Of the three, the first was disabled, but the second, then a major, and the third, then a lieutenant-colonel (with a brother of the latter, who was killed), were the only men from Cherry Valley in the battle of Oriskany, and at the elose of that stubborn and bloody action led off the remnant of the regiment of Colonel Cox, who was killed.
In 1778 a fort was ereeted on the hill where was located the church and school-house, the entire establishment being surrounded by a stockade. The second edifice thus became the church within the fort. We have now traeed the his- tory of the church to the massaere.
THE POST-REVOLUTIONARY CHURCH.
The principal source from which the following portions of this recital are drawn is an exceedingly interesting MS. volume, inseribed in a beautiful hand resembling copper- plate, " The Records of the Presbyterian Church and Con- gregation in Cherry Valley, Anno Domini 1785." Besides this, which is chiefly a chronicle of the temporalities, the Records of the Session are extant in four volumes, com- mencing in 1804.
The thread of the history is abruptly resumed with the following quaint and touching entry upon the first page of the old record-book.
" We, the Ancient Inhabitants of Cherry Valley, in the County of Montgomery, and State of New York, having Returned from Exile finding ourselves destitute of our Church officers, viz., Deacons and Ellers. In consequence of our difficulties, and other congregation4, in similar circumstances, our legislature thought proper to pass a
Law for the Relief of those (viz., An act to encorporate all Religous Societies passed April the Sixth, One Thousand Seven Hundred aud Eighty-four). In compliance of said act we procceded as follows :
ADVERTISEMENT.
" At a meeting of a Respectable Number of the Old Inhabitants of Cherry Valley, it was agreed upon that an Advertisement be set up to give notice to all the former Inhabitants that are Returned to their Respective Habitations to meet in the Meeting House yard on Tues- day the Fifth Day of April Next at Ten O'clock before Noon, then and there to chose Trustees who shall be a Body corporate for the purpose of taking care of the Temporalities of their Respective Presbyterian Congregation agreeable to an act (eto.).
" Cherry Valley, March 19, 1785.
"SAMUEL CLYDE, Justice of the Peace."
Thus, with neither minister nor missionary nor any of those specially qualified persons at hand who are generally the prique movers in religious undertakings. not even a dea- eon or elder, the forlorn remnant of the people of Cherry Valley who had escaped the ravages of war and of the massacre, true to their pious training, out of their desire to worship God, and under the leadership of the eivil magis- trate, assume that right to form themselves into a church, which is inherent in Christians in such circumstanees, without regard to precedent or ecelesiastical sueeession. The war, which so severely tried the colonies, received its finishing stroke in the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown in October, 1781 ; but it was not till late in 1783 that the armies were disbanded, a treaty with Great Britain having been signed in September that year. For a space the encr- gies of the young nation seemed paralyzed with its efforts, and with the vision of its suceess. It was not till the second year after this that the survivors of Cherry Valley came to seareh amid the thicket of young vegetation for the boundaries of their farms and the relies of their homes. They met informally, as we have seen, to take measures for the rehabilitation of their church, and the advertisement was set up in March, 1795.
There is something extremely impressive in the thought of that assemblage of returned " exiles" in the meeting- house yard, deliberating in the cold March air, amid the blackened ruins of their sanctuary and the graves of their dead, upon the prospects of rebuilding the house of God. The artist, seeking to perpetuate upon the canvas the spirit of that earnest period, could scareely find a more fitting sub- jeet for his peneil. Great drifts of snow there frequently still cover the ground at that season ; but, if otherwise, we may imagine the unpromising features of the landscape which formed the ground of the picture ; the arehing steurs of the raspberry making a tangle over the low gravestones, through which it was difficult to walk; the trees bare of leaves ; the nearer hills lonely and gray, save where patches of the hemlock varied the tone with touches of blackness ; and the distant summits far down the valley fading to shades of cold steel-blue under the clondy and threatening sky. The costumes of the figures, the brown doublet or heavily caped greatcoat of gray ; the blue Continental uni- forin, and rough hunter's legging of leather, would give di- versity to the group; but what a master-band must not it be that eould render the firur and rugged lines iu the faces of the men !
The names of twenty-one electors are recorded who clected three trustees, Samuel Clyde, John Campbell, Jr.,
1
HISTORY OF OTSEGO COUNTY, NEW YORK.
127
.
and James Willson. The last accompanied Lindesay in 1739 when he came to locate his patent, and seems to have been the surveyor. He purchased a farm in 1745, and the old parchment deed describes him as the high sheriff of Albany county, which at that earliest period extended over this district. The returning officers were Colonel Campbell and Wm. Dickson. the latter the ancestor of Rev. Cyrus Dickson, of New York.
The corporate body was kept up from this time onward ; but in the first years the church was left to eare for itself without the assistance of a regular minister, worship being maintained with such temporary help as could from time to time be procured in a region so isolated. By 1790 a meet- ing-house had been erected, but from subsequent records of the post-revolutionary church seems for many years to have been without regular furniture, and in the barest pos- sible conditiou. In 1796 the names of fifty-four others are entered as "members of the first Presbyterian congre- gation." Among these is that of Rev. Solomon Spaulding, a man whose literary labors subsequently became an in- strument in supporting the most seandalous imposture our county has produced. We read in Seripture of an old prophet at Bethel, who preferred dwelling among the ten tribes to ministering to the faithful people, and whose pref- erenee therein ultimately led to deplorable mischief. Mr. Spaulding doubtless anticipated no such results, but having abandoned the ministry, he devoted his leisure to some unprofitable speculations about those same lost Tribes of Israel. On this he wrote a romanee, detailing an imaginary history, and identifying them with the aborigines of this `continent, whom he deseribes as coming to this country by a long journey through various lands from Jerusalem, under two leaders, Nephi and Lehi, and giving rise to the traces of art and civilization which exist in the mounds, and other relies which still are so perplexing a problem to scholars. The MS. of this work being sent to a printing- office, where its absurdity eaused it to be refused, it was copied by one Rigdon and thenee eame into the hands of Joseph Smith, the pretended prophet of the " Latter-Day Saints," beeamne the source of the pretended revelations of the " Golden Leaves," and now survives, with a few ad- ditions from Scripture, as the Book of Mormon.
- -
Somewhere before this time an energetie effort was made in behalf of education, and a handsome building was erected for an academy, which long exerted the happiest influ- ence on the culture of the neighborhood, and sent out numbers of men who became prominent throughout the country. Mr. Spanlding appears to have taught in this institution, and doubtless he occasionally preached in the church, and baptized the children. But in this year both church and school were to seeure the services of a man whose labors in the latter soon raised it to great efficiency, and who himself rapidly rose to eminence as an eloquent divine and efficient supporter of education. An entry in the Record, Ang. 15, 1796, states that the question " whether this society will give the Rev. Mr. Eliphalet Nott a call to settle as our minister," was carried in the affirmative, and a subscription opened to raise money for his support.
Dr. Nott came from Connecticut in the summer of 1795, as a licentiate missionary to these parts, being then at the
age of twenty-one and recently married ; reaching the place by the great turnpike from Albany, by which this country was soon to be opened up to rapid development, but which was then only recently eut through, and passable only on horseback. He himself describes the pleasing emotions with which he gazed down upon the smiling valley with its nestling village and waving cultivated fields, after the rough uninhabited country which intervened for long distances between it and the more easterly settlements .* Filled with melancholy thoughts at his lonely situation in a region so distant, and where he supposed all would be entire strangers, he stopped at a house to ask for some refreshment, when to his surprise he was greeted by name. It was an old Con- nectieut acquaintance, Mr. Ozias Waldo, who received him most. cordially, and at onee urgently besought that he would tarry and take charge of the church, of which himself long after continued an active and useful member. Engagements further on required Mr. Nott's attention ; but the eall was made out, and after some hesitation he returned and took up his labors as both preacher in the church and teacher in the academy, which was soon thronged with pupils. In his letter of acceptance, a characteristic document recorded in his own hand, he dwells on the " distance from minis- terial assistance and advice" as making him hesitate. but speaks of the prevalence of infidelity and the "destitute and broken state" of the society, which he calls a " solitary Zion," not as deterring, but as the reasons for not " de- serting" it.
A proposal that the eall should require Mr. Nott to " put himself under the direction and inspection of the presbytery of this State," seems to have led to the appoint- ment of Mr. Spaulding to present the call to presbytery ; but apparently nothing was done, for the young preacher was not ordained till he became pastor at Albany. He himself, however, in one of his letters, relates the eireuw- stanees under which he was led to become a Presbyterian. On his way to the west he stopped at Schenectady, and going into a prayer-meeting was asked to preach by Dr. John Blair Smith, the president of Union college. In a long conversation afterwards he explained the object of his journey, which was as a missionary of the Congregational church. But he was deeply impressed with the views of his host, that as the New England people and the Presby- terians in the new region were so much in accord on points and doctrines, it seemed unwise and unchristian to encourage them in maintaining a profitless division of their strength. that they ought to be indueed to unite, and join efforts in the Master's cause. These arguments gave a new direction to the young man's life ; he abandoned Congregationalism. and lent his influence to form that " plan of nuion" which led to the building up of so many large and prosperous churches. There is no record of the results of his labors as the supply of the little congregation, and his stay ex- tended to but two years. But he here first established his household, made ties of friendship which lasted as long ... his extended life, and formed that attachment for the place which caused it ever to dwell in his memory among hi- most pleasing associations. He loved to revisit the beau-
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