History of Steuben county, New York, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers, Part 12

Author: Clayton, W. W. (W. Woodford)
Publication date: 1879
Publisher: Philadelphia, Lewis, Peck & co.
Number of Pages: 826

USA > New York > Steuben County > History of Steuben county, New York, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers > Part 12

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HISTORY OF STEUBEN COUNTY, NEW YORK.

eured for building the Cayuga bridge, Col. Burr and Gen. Swartout subscribed for the whole of the stock. At that time Col. Burr had other business connections in this region. "Thus commeneed the intercourse of Aaron Burr with the people of Western New York, many of whom, with Col. Tyler, were drawn into the " great South- west expedition." Col. Tyler and Israel Smith were com- missaries of the expedition. They went upon the Ohio River and purchased supplies, and shipped them to Natchez. Col. Tyler was arrested and indicted, but was never tried. With fortune impaired by all this, in a few years after Col. Tyler removed to Montezuma, and became identified in all the early enterprises and improvements at that point. Ile built the first canal-barge, which appeared with flying colors at Syracuse on the opening of that portion of the Erie Canal in 1820. In the war of 1812 he acted as assistant commissary-general to the Northern army. He died at Montezuma in 1827.

In the progress of settlements westward, there followed Danforth and Tyler, John L. Hardenburgh, whose location was called in early years " Hardenburgh's Corners," now the city of' Auburn. In 1789, James Bennett and John Harris settled on either side of Cayuga Lake, and estab- lished a ferry. This was about the extent of settlements west of the lower valley of the Mohawk, when settlements in the Genesee country began to be founded. The late venerable Joshua Fairbanks, of Lewiston, who, with his then young wife, came through from Albany to Geneva in the winter of 1789-90, was sheltered " the first night in the unfinished log house" of Joseph Blackmer, who had become a neighbor of Judge Dean; the " next night" at Col. Danforth's, there being no intermediate settler. They camped out the third night ; the fourth stayed with John Harris on Cayuga Lake.

The parents of Gen. Parkhurst Whitney, of Niagara Falls, came through to Seneca Lake in February, 1790, camping out three nights west of Rome. It is mentioned,* in connection with the account of the early advent of Maj. Danforth, in May, 1788, that his wife saw no white woman during the first eight months. These incidents are recited to remind the younger class of readers that the pioneers of this region not only came to a wilderness, but had a long and dreary one to pass through before arriving at their destination. They literally passed through the " wilderness" to inherit their " promised land."

In 1788 all the region west of Utica was the town of Whitestown, and included in its jurisdiction all the settlers in the Genesee country. The first town-meeting was " hekl in the barn of Capt. Daniel White, in said town, in April, 1789. Jedediah Sanger was elected supervisor. At the third town-meeting, in 1791, Trucworthy Cook, of Pompey, Jeremiah Gould, of Salina, Onondaga Co., and James Wadsworth, of Geneseo, were chosen pathmasters. Ac- cordingly, it may be noted that Mr. Wadsworth was the first pathmaster west of Cayuga Lake. It could have been little more than the supervision of Indian trails; but the " warning" must have been an ominous task. Mr. Wads- worth had the year previous done something at road-making,

which probably suggested the idea that he would make a good pathmaster. In Clark's " Onondaga" it is said, " The first road attempted to be made in this country was in 1790, under the direction of the Wadsworths, from the settlement at Whitestown to Canandaigua, through a coun- try then but very little explored, and quite a wilderness."

At the first general election for Whitestown the polls were. opened at Cayuga Ferry, adjourned to Morehouse's, at Onondaga, and closed at Whitestown.

At this period the settlements in Western New York had just begun. At Geneva (then called Kanadesaga) there was a cluster of buildings occupied by Indian traders and a few settlers who had come in under the auspices of the Lessee Company ; Jemima Wilkinson, with her small colony, was upon her first location on the west bank of Seneca Lake upon the Indian trail through the valley of the Susquehanna, and across Western New York to Upper Canada,-the primitive highway of all this region ; one or two white families had settled at Catharine's Town, at the head of Seneca Lake. A wild region of wilderness sepa- rated the most northern and western settlements of Pennsyl- vania from those of the lakes and the Genesee Valley. All that portion of Ohio bordering upon the lake had of our race but the small trading establishment at Sandusky and the military trading post upon the Maumee. Michigan was a wilderness, save the French village and British garri- son at Detroit, and a few French settlers on the Detroit River and the river Raisin. In fact all that is now included in the geographical designation-the Great West-was In- dian territory, and had but Indian occupancy, with a few exceptions similar to those made in reference to Michigan. In what is now the western portion of the Dominion of Canada, there had been the British occupaney of a post, oppo- site Buffalo, early known as Fort Erie, and a trading station at Niagara, since the conquest of the French in 1759. Set- tlement in its proper sense had its commencement in Canada West during the Revolution. It was the offspring of one of its emergencies. Those in the colonies who adhered to the king fled there as refugees. The termination of the struggle in favor of the colonies and the encouragement af- forded by the colonial authorities gave an impetus to this emigration ; and yet at the period of the commencement of settlement in Western New York settlement was confined to Kingston and its neighborhood, Niagara, Queenston, Chippewa, along the banks of the Niagara River, with a few suiall settlements in the immediate interior. Upon Lakes Erie and Ontario there were a few British armed ves- sels, and three or four schooners were employed in a com- tuerce which was confined wholly to the fur trade and the supply of British garrisons. By the conquest of the French, Great Britain had prepared a place in her Canadian colonies for those who chose to be loyal to her during the Revolutionary struggle, and would avail themselves of such an asylum, but they were an element too insignificant to colonize a country with, and were even despised and shunned by the better class of European emigrants.

Within the Genesee country, other than the small settle- ment at Geneva, the Friends' settlement, which has been before mentioned, there were two or three Indian traders on the Genesee River, a few white families, who were squatters

# Clark's Onondaga.

HISTORY OF STEUBEN COUNTY, NEW YORK.

upon the flats, one or two white families at Lewiston, one at Schlosser, a negro with a squaw wife at Tonawanda, an Indian interpreter, and two or three traders at the mouth of Buffalo Creek, and a negro-Indian trader at the month of Cattaraugus Creek. Fort Niagara was a British garrison. All else was Seneca Indian occupancy.

In all that relates to other than the natural productions of the soil there was but the cultivation in a rude way of a few acres of flats and intervales on the rivers and creeks, wherever the Indians were located, the productions princi- pally confined to corn, beans, and squashes. In the way of cultivated fruit, there were in several localities a few apple- trees, the seeds of which had been planted by the Jesuit missionaries,-almost the only relic left of the early and long occupancy of this devoted people. At Fort Niagara and Schlosser there were ordinary English gardens.

The settlement of the Genesee country was first attempted by Oliver Phelps, in 1789. It was attended with great difficulties. There were nothing but Indian paths, and the whole country was one boundless forest. Mr. Phelps left Albany on the 15th of February, and went in a sled as far as Whitestown, on the Mohawk River. From Whitestown he was obliged to proceed on horseback ; he found only a few straggling huts on his way, at the distance of from ten to twenty miles apart, and they only affording shelter from the snow and convenience for fire. On the evening of the third day he reached Geneva. From Geneva to Canan- daigua he found only two families settled, and the latter place consisted of " two small frame houses and a few huts." From Canandaigua to the Genesee River he found only two families residing on the path. At the Genesee River he found an Indian store and tavern, and no other indica- tions of a settlement.

While Mr. Phelps was thus paving the way for settle- ments west of the lakes and in the valley of the Genesee, New England pioncers were launching their canoes on the Unadilla, and Pennsylvania emigrants were shoving their barges up the Susquehanna, the Chemung, the Conhocton, and the Canisteo.

The first settlements in Steuben County were made at Painted Post, and in the vicinity of the Chimney Narrows, as early as 1789. Harris, the Indian trader at the Post, was three years earlier. Then eame John Harris, Eli and Eldad Mead, George Goodhne, Frederick Calkins, and Ephraim and Ichabod Patterson.

Frederick Calkins may fairly be regarded as the first farmer of Steuben County, he having felled the first piece of timber and made the first clearing for farming purposes. He was a native of Vermont, and settled on the south side of the Chemung River, on what is now the site of Corning, in 1789 .*

The oldest decd in the county is that of Col. Arthur Er- win, for the town of Erwin. It bears date July 18, 1789, and is signed by Oliver Phelps.t

The settlement at Canisteo, by Uriah Stephens, Richard Crosby, and their families, was made in the autumn of 1789. Mr. Stephens belonged to a large family of New England

descent, and had settled at an early time in the Wyoming Valley.

The year 1790 marks the first settlement at Addison, on the Upper Canisteo, in the lower valley of the Conhoeton, and in several other parts of the county. It is not, how- ever, our purpose to follow these various settlements in de- tail in this general chapter. They will all be found in their appropriate place in the histories of the several towns.

ADVENT OF COL. WILLIAMSON.

The advent of Col. Williamson to this county was the signal for a more general settlement of the country in every direction. We quote the following from MeMaster's Ilis- tory :

" While our foremost pioneers were reaping their first harvests in the valleys of the Canisteo and Chemung, great schemes were on foot in the capital of the British empire for the invasion of the Genesee wilderness. An officer of the royal army had conceived a splendid project for the foundation of a city in the midst of the forest, and, sustained by men of wealth in London, was about to penetrate its utmost thickets to raise up a Babylon among the habita- tions of the owl and the dragon."

It may be added that Col. Williamson's scheme contem- plated not only a city but a rich and well-populated tribu- tary country. Ile came to colonize the country with hardy emigrants and industrious settlers of all classes and from every nation, with enterprising artisans, and intelligent, thrifty citizens, and to make the wilderness around him blossom as the rose. Such may be fairly presumed to have been Col. Williamson's scheme, whatever fault may be found with his method of carrying it out. He was cer- tainly a large-minded and liberal promoter of the early settlement of the country, always devising and doing liberal things to forward the interests of colonization in every di- rection. If he came to the wilderness with the visionary project of building a city, it will be admitted that no man before or since his day ever made such a stir in the wilder- ness. No man ever did so much towards the settlement of any country of the same extent as did Col. Charles Wil- liamson during the short ten years of his operations.

Col. Williamson's first enterprise was to open a high- road from Northumberland to the Genesee, over mountains and valleys hitherto deemed impassable. The only road leading to the north from the mouth of the West Branch (where Williamsport is now situated) followed the valley of the Susquehanna, leading the traveler who desired to come in this direction a long distance out of his way. A direct road to the Genesee would cross a ridge of the Alle- ghanies. "An Indian trail, often trod during the Revolu- tion by war-parties from the fastnesses of the Six Nations, ran over the mountains; but to open a road through the rugged wilderness which would be passable for wagons was deemed impossible. After a laborious exploration, how- ever, by the agent and a party of Pennsylvanian hunters, a road was located from Ross Farm (now Williamsport, Pa.) to the mouth of the Canaseraga Creek, on the Genesee, a distance of one hundred and fifty miles. This road was opened in the ensuing autumn by a party of German emi- grants under the leadership of Benjamin Patterson, the

# See History of Corning.

¡ History of town of Erwin.

HISTORY OF STEUBEN COUNTY, NEW YORK.

enowned hunter and guide. Mr. Patterson was well ae- quainted with the German language, and Col. W. 2 tad entire confidence in his skill and ability. Ile .. bundantly supplied with money and means. Seven stou oung Pennsylvanians, well skilled in the use of the axe nd the rifle, were chosen by him as assistant woodsmeu, ud these and the Germans were to open the road, while he guide, in addition to his duties as commander of the olumn, undertook to supply the camp with game.

Judge McMaster gives the following graphie and very nteresting account of this enterprise :

" It was in the month of September when the emigrants appeared t the mouth of Lycoming Creek, ready for the march to the northern aradise. . . . A little way up the creek they commenced hewing the oad. Here the Germans took their first lessons in woodcraft. They rere not ready apprentices, and never carried the art to great perfec- ion. We hear of them in after-years sawing trees down.# The envy frontier axe (nine-pounder, often ) was to them a very grievous hing. They became weary and lame; the discomforts of the woods rere beyond endurance, and their complaints grew longer and more oleful at each sunset. But in a few weeks they found themselves eep in the wilderness. The roaring of torreuts, the murmur of uge trees, the echoes of the glens, the precipices, at the feet of which an the creeks, the forests waving on the mountains aud erowding the vines like armies, were sounds and sights unknown to the pleasant lains of Germany. When it was night and the awful howling of the rolves all around scared the children, or when the crash of great rees, overturned by the high and whirliog winds of autuion, woke he wives from the dreams of house, or when the alarmed men, aronsed n the mid-watches by strange uproars, looked out into the darkness o see enormous black clouds sailing overhead and the obscure cliffs oming around, while goblins squeaked and whistled in the air and ieked the tents over, then they all gave way to dismal lamentations. Che equinoctial storms come on in due time, and it was sufficiently isheartening to see the dreary rains pour down hour after hour while the gorges were filled with fog and vapors steamed up from the wollen torrents, and the mountains disguised themselves in masks of ist or seemed, like Laplanders, to mutile themselves in huge, hairy louds, and to pull fur caps over their faces. No retreat could be hoped or. Behind them were the elamorous creeks which they had forded, nl which, like anacondas, would have swallowed the whole colony ut for the guide, who was wiser thau ten serpents and outwitted hem ; behind them were bears, were owls, exceeding cruel, were wild nen and giants, which were only held in check by the hunter's rifle. The guide was merciless; the tall Pennsylvanians hewed the trees and oared ont all manner of boisterous jokes, as if it were as pleasant a hiog to flounder through the wilderness as to sit smoking in the quiet orchards of the Rhine.

" They arrived at the Laurel Ridge of the Alleghanies, which di- ided the Lycoming from the head-waters of the Tioga. Ovor this, a listance of fifteen miles, the road was to be opened,-no great matter n itself, surely, but it could hardly have been a more serious thing to he emigrants had they beeu required to make a turnpike over Chim- orazo. When therefore they toiled over these long hills, sometimes ooking off into deep gulfs, sometimes descending ioto wild hollows, sometimes filing along the edges of precipices, their sufferings were ndescribable. The guide was in his element. Hle scoured the raviues, lambered over the rocks, and ever and anon the Germans, from the ops of the hills, heard the crack of his rifle in groves far below, where the elk was browsing, or where the painted catamount, with ser whelps, lurked in the tree-tops. Not for wild beasts alune did the hunter's eye search. Ile could mark with pleasure valleys aud mill streams, and ridges of timber ; he could watch the labor of those invisi- ole artists of auturun, which came down in the October nights and decorated the forests with their frosty brushes, so that the morning sun found the valleys arrayed in all the glory of Solomon, and the lark robe of laurels that covered the ranges spotted with many colors,

wherever a beech or a maple or an oak thrust its solitary head through the crowded evergreens ; he could smile to see how the " little people" that came through the air from the North Pole were piuching the but- ternuts that hung over the creeks, and the walunts which the squir- rels spared, aod how the brisk and impertinent agents of that huge monopoly, the Great Northern Ice Association, came down with their coopers aud headed up the pools in the forest, and nailed bright hoops around the rims of the mountain ponds. The Indian summer, so brief and beautiful, set in-doubly beautiful there in the hills. But the poor emigrauts were too disconsolate to observe how the thin haze blurred the rolling ranges, and the quiet mist rested upon the many- colored valleys, or to listen to the strange silence of mountains aud forest, broken ouly by the splashing of erecks far down ou the rocky floors of ravines. Certain birds of omen became very obstreperous, and the elamurs of these were perhaps the only phenorueua of the season noticed by the pilgrims. Quails whistled, crows cawed, jays scolded, and those seedy buccaneers, the hawks, sailed overhead, screaming in the most piratical manner,-omens all of starvation and death. Starvation, however, was not to be dreaded immediately, for the hunter, roving like a hound from bill to hill, supplied the camp abundautly with game.

"The men wept, and cursed Capt. Williamson bitterly, saying that he had sent them there to die. 'I could compare muy situation,' said the guide, ' to nothing but that of Moses with the children of Israel. I would march them along a few miles, and then they would rise up and rebel." Mutiny effected as little with the commander as grief. He checred up the downhearted, and frightened the mutinous. They had fairly to be driven. Once, wheu some of the men were very clamorous, and eveu offered violence, Patterson stood with his back to a tree, aud braudishing his tomahawk furiously, said, 'If you resist mne I will KILL you,-every one of yon !'

" They worked along slowly enough. At favorable places for en- campment they built block-houses, or flocks, as the Germans called them, and opened the road for some distance in advance before mov- ing the families farther. These block-houses stood for many years landmarks in the wilderness. September and October passed, and it was far in November before they completed the passage of the moun- tains. The frosts were keen; the northwesters whirled around the hills, and blustered through the valleys alarmingly. Then a new disaster befell them. To sit of evenings around the fire smoking and drinking of coffee, and talking of the fatherland, had beeu a great comfort in the midst of their sorrows ; but at length the supply of euffee was exhausted. The distress was wild at this calamity. Even the men went about wailing, and exclaiming, 'Ach, kaffee ! kaffee, mein lieber kaffee !' ( Oh, coffee ! coffee ! my dear coffee !) However, no loss of life followed the suddeu failure of coffee, and the column toiled on ward.

" At the place now occupied by the village of Blossburg they made a camp, which, from their baker who there built an oven, they called ' Peter's Camp.' Patterson, while hunting in this neighborhood, found a few pieces of coal, which he eut from the grouud with his tomahawk. The Germans pronounced it to be of good quality. A half-century from that day, the hill which the guide smote with his hatchet was ' punched full' of holes, miners were tearing out its jewels with pickaxes and gunpowder, and locomotives were carrying them northward by tons.

" Pushing onward seven miles farther, they made the . Canoo Camp,' a few miles below the present village of Mansfield. When they reached this place, their supply of provisions was exhausted. . . . Patterson killed an abundant supply of game, and went down with some of his young men to Painted l'ost, thirty miles or more below. Ile ordered provisions to be buated up to this place from Tioga Point, and returned to the camp with several canves .; He found his poor people in ntter despair. They lay in their tents bewailing their misfortunes, and said that the Englishman had sent them there to die. He had sent a ship to llamburgh, he had entieed them from their homes, he had brought them over the ocean on pur- pose that he might send them out into the wilderness to starve. They refused to stir, and begged Patterson to let them die. But. he was even yet merciless. Ile binstered about without ceremony, cut down

# " An old gentleman, who came over the road in an early day, says he trees looked as if they had been gnawed down by beavers."- Turner's Phelps and Gorham's Purchase.

+ Some of the canoes were made at the camp, and some were pushed up from Painted Post. Capt. Charles Wolcott, of Corniog, went up with a canoe and brought down twenty-four Germans.

HISTORY OF STEUBEN COUNTY, NEW YORK.

the tent-pole with his tomahawk, roused the dying to life, and at length drove the whole colony to the river bank.

"Worse and worse! When the Germans saw the slender canoes they sercamed with terror, and loudly refused to intrust themselves to such shells. The woodsmen, however, put the women, the chil- dren, and the sick into the canoes almost by main force, and launched forth into the river, while the men followed by land. Patterson told them to keep the Indian trail, but as this sometimes went back upon the bills and out of sight of the river, they dared not follow it for fear of being lost. So they scrambled along the shore as best they could, keeping their eyes fixed on the flotilla as if their lives depended upon it. They tumbled over the banks : they tripped up over the roots; where the shores were rocky they waded in the cold water be- low. But the canoes, gliding merrily downward, wheeled at last into the Chemung, and the men also, accomplishing their tedious travel along the shore, emerged from the wilderness, and beheld with joy the little cabins clustered around the Painted Post.

"Ilere their troubles ended. Flour and coffee from Tioga Point were waiting for them, and when Peter, the baker, turned ont warm loaves from his oven and der lieber kaffe steamed from the kettles with grateful fragrance, men and women crowded around the guide, hailed him as their deliverer from wild beasts, and begged his pardon for their bad behavior.

" It was now December. They had been three months in the wil- derness, and were not in a condition to move onward to the Genesee. Patterson, with thirty of the most hardy men, kept on, however, and opened the road up the Conhocton to Dansville and the place of des- tination. The others remained through the winter of 1793 at Painted Post. 'They were the simplest creatures I ever saw,' said an old lady; ' they had a cow with them, and they loved it as if it was a child. When flour was scarcest, they used to feed her with bread.'

" The whole colony was conducted to the Genesee in the spring. There was at this time a single settler in the valley of the Conhoeton above the settlements near Painted Post. The fate of the first potato crop of the Upper Conhoeton is worthy of record. This settler had cultivated a little patch of potatoes the previous summer, and of the fruits of his labor a few peeks yet remained buried in a hole. The Germans snuffed the precious vegetables, and determined to have them. Finding they could not be restrained, Patterson told them to go on, and if the owner swore at them to say ' thunkce, thankec,' as if receiving a present. This they did, and the settler lost his treasures to the last potato. The guide paid him five times their value, and hade him to go to Tioga Point for seed."

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History of Steuben county, New York, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers, Part 12

Author: Clayton, W. W. (W. Woodford) Publication date: 1879 Publisher: Philadelphia, Lewis, Peck & co. Number of Pages: 826

Author: Clayton, W. W. (W. Woodford)
Publication date: 1879
Publisher: Philadelphia, Lewis, Peck & co.
Number of Pages: 826