USA > New York > Wyoming County > Warsaw > History of the centennial celebration : Warsaw, Wyoming County, New York, June 28-July 2, 1903 : 1803-1903 > Part 11
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among the most valuable to me in my subsequent career of any three years of my life. My education was p, oenred in the primitive schools of the west hill largely; with a year or two at the parochial school which I will say very little about, and one year with our friend Dr. Briggs, probably the best teacher that ever lived or taught in Western New York, a man we all loved and venerated ; we all recognized his interest in ns, aud he had more than ordinary interest in me for the simple fact that 1 needed all the interest, all the attention that he could give me. There is just one thing that I have always laid up against the Professor. Dolph Barber had a seat just behind mine. Of course we had our writing lessons. I worked pretty hard over mine. He would come in, and say, "Well that will do pretty well for you." Dolph wrote an elegant hand. He would go around to Dolph, a couple of seats away and say, "Barber that is all right," but he would make some little suggestion to perfect Dolph's hand. All there was about it, he thought my hand was so bad that it was hopeless, and gave me up. "Well enough for you."
After three years in the foundry I started for the old country, with impaired health and a worthless patent. I spent a year in England. I did recuperate my health to a certain extent and spent what spare change I had on this patent and then I took to the sea. I did it at the instance of an old friend and ship owner. He said, "It's all very well for you to stand around here and re- cuperate, but go on this ship; here is a ship going to sail next week for India; go there, work or not as you like, and it will do you more good than all of your change of climate." I went. I was just foolish enough to go. I did not go with the privilege of working or not work- ing, but as one of the crew, and I worked. But my ill health disappeared in less than a month. I never have found it since, and from that day I determined that the sea should be my profession. I followed it in the mer- chant service until the outbreak of the Rebellion. Then, of course, I went into the navy and served throughout the war as a volunteer officer. At its close I received a commission iu the regular service, passed through the reg- ular grades from Ensign. Master, Lieutenant, Lieutenant-
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Commander, to Commander, and finally in 1897 1 retired as all naval officers do, at the age of 62 years. Since then I have been my own master to a certain extent. In order that we should not run wild Congress passed a law giving the Secretary of the Navy the right to order any retired officer to duty. Well, it was not long before I was caught, but I said nothing about that. It was dur- ing the Spanish War. £ I served several months at the Navy Department in Washington, then went to San Fran- cisco where I made a contract for the construction of the Samoan coaling station; then to Honolulu, where I seenred a site for another naval station, and there I was called the " Land-Grabber,"-I suppose because of my snc- cess in seenring a suitable location for the station. I re- turned to my own quarters in Washington and retired again at the close of the Spanish war, my own master to the ex- tent that they have never forced me to receive orders or to perform duty.
I fear that I have about reached my limit, for I see the president watching me very closely, and I will bid yon all good night.
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THE SMALLWOOD FAMILY BY MABEL E. SMALLWOOD
The Smallwoods are one of the few English families whose ancestors did not come over in the Mayflower. William Smallwood, the founder of this branch of the family in America, came to this country in 1819 and landed at Alexandria. IIe had intended, probably, to settle somewhere in Maryland, but the sight of negro slaves, bought and sold like cattle, roused his warm heart to such indignation that he refused to live in a state which would countenance such an outrage. Accordingly he bought horses, and carts into which he loaded the family possessions and such of the family as could not walk, and set out to find "God's country," where the boasted American freedom and equality really did exist.
Why he did not stop in Pennsylvania I do not know, unless it was too near to slavery, but he passed through that state to this, and after a few years spent in work- ing for other men and studying the region, he took from the Holland Land Company the land which still forms the old home farm for all our Smallwood family. In a little log cabin upon this he established his family; a wife, four daughters and three sons and set out with their help to clear the land and form a homc. Soon a larger log cabin was built and later a frame house which forms part of the house now standing. Like the loyal English- man he was, he set his house well away from the road and imported English hawthorne for hedges to surround and shield it.
From this home his children married, only one, Michael, remaining with him. None of the others settled in this county and their history is not connected with that of Warsaw. We would not be ashamed of them if they werc.
Michael married Elizabeth Beedon, of Perry, in 1836, and their children, two sons and five daughters, whom
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many of you know, were born in the old house, grew to manhood and womanhood there, and are now at work in the world, bearing their share of its burdens wherever they are. Their living children, the fourth generation of Smallwoods here, unmber twenty-six, and are not far enough along in life to make it safe to brag of them. Unless they make fairly decent citizens, however, all laws of heredity may be omitted from future books.
They are somewhat hampered by family facts and tra- ditions. They have to side with the under dog, for their sturdy old great grandfather was an active abolitionist until he died, and counted it one of his great blessings that the Lord permitted him to live away beyond the allotted "three score and ten," until his own glad eyes had read the Emancipation Proclamation, and his own eager cars had heard the shonts of thanksgiving when Lee's army laid down its arms.
They have to be Methodists, sooner or later, and really ought to be Methodist ministers. They are obliged by force of ancestry to know more or less of books and most of them have to teach at least a few years. This, by the way, may be equally hard on the families upon whom they practice. Even if they spend much time in cities they must often return to mother nature and renew their strength like that fabled hero of old, whose strength re- turned at every contact with the earth.
All the family traditions are against great wealth, so if you ever meet a rich Smallwood you may be certain he does not belong to our branch. It is equally unlikely if he is very poor. We belong rather to the common people, whom Lincoln thought the Lord must love be- canse he had made so many of them.
One of the greatest trials of our generation is in se- lecting partners to share our family glory. Our ances- tors have used great judgment in such selections, so that unprejudiced observers have sometimes thought the an- nexed members were really an improvement upon the gen- nine article. Up to date this generation has been equally fortunate, but you can see that the responsibility is great. We can only promise to use our best judgment.
The fifth generation of Smallwoods in this country
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consists of four small youngsters, more interesting just now to ns than to the world at large. We pray for them that they may inherit as clean a record as we did, and pass it on without tarnish to their children's children.
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REMINISCENSES Warsaw Academy Fifty Years Ago BY DR. HORACE BRIGGS
Mr. President, and Ladies and Gentlemen :
Without preliminaries 1 proceed to say that I suc- ceeded Mr. Charles J. Judd as principal of the old Warsaw Union School in 1847, I think. Mr. Judd was a model teacher and a Christian gentleman. He had large experience, and a prestige superior to that of any other teacher that I knew in the county. It was presumption in me, a young man with limited experience, to follow a teacher with such a record, but Mr. Judd had decided to abandon the profession, and I was invited to occupy his place in the old building, which has been referred to several times; the cobblestone structure on South Main street, bearing on its pebbly front in large letters the words "Warsaw Academy". It was a Union school when I entered it, but I think it was incorporated as an academy the year afterwards. My associates were Miss Emeline D. Howard, Miss Kate Crosby, Miss Urania Stevens, a Miss Hawkins, Miss Annette Richards and others, along down the years, and Miss Frane Phelps of Mount Morris, a very popular society woman. It would be pleasant for me to talk about the pech- liarities and idiosyncracies of my associates. They had them well developed. But this is a public occasion, this is a popular meeting, and those ladies are not here to defend themselves; and so I proceed to say that they did good service in the discharge of their duties in the school, and especially had it not been for the wise counsel and the loyal support that Miss Howard gave me, the school would doubtless have had another principal long before I left for Alexander in 1854.
We registered generally, about 350 scholars every year, in three departments, and more than one-third of them
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were in the Senior department. I don't think I ever worked so hard in my life, nor did I ever have a deepc : interest in any school over which I had supervision, than in Warsaw Academy. It was my first large school, and there were included in it some of the brightest minds that it was my good privilege ever to instruct.
We got along with little friction down through the years, and we made a record-it would not be becoming in me to give it value-the people here know best about that.
I come here to-night and look around upon these faces to find recognition. I feel like a stranger in a strange land. I know scarcely one, or very few, at least. You don't know Joseph and Joseph doesn't know you. Time has been playing tricks with us, and we all wear masks, we don't know each other; and as I look around I feel-well, at the risk of casting a shadow upon your. festivities-I feel like asking, "Where are they"? Doubt- less, if I should call the roll here to-night, quite a num- ber would be able to answer "Ad Sum"-I am present. I know that others have found homes in other towns and in other states, and the mossy marbles on yonder hill tell where many others lie sleeping. I went up there to-day to read, and think and listen.
This afternoon I revisited the old schoolhouse, and that room, my room, sacred with many memories. I brushed away the dust, found a seat and settled down to think, to listen again. I resigned myself entirely to imagination and let it play with me. I think I must have fallen into a trance; I do not know what the con- dition was; I suppose philosophers would call it pyschic subjectiveness. It was a day dream. It was perhaps a state of hallucination. £ Imagination transfigured every- thing. It soon rehabilitated and refilled the whole room. Every desk was there and every seat had an occupant- sixty double desks and a hundred and twenty shadowy pu- pils, but they were real to me. They greeted their old preceptor with their wonted smile. It was his old school of 1849.
I have had put into my hands a catalogne published in that year, and if you will bear with me, Mr. Presi-
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dent, I will read some of their names. Adolphus Barber -I met him to-day for the first time in many years ;- the Caner boys; John Crocker, and Johnny wis a nice boy ; William Il. Darling, our first college student; Henry J. Doolittle-I think he was referred to today by one of the speakers by mistake; Wheeler Fargo; Walter Fargo; John A. Gates; I am calling the roll of a very few only and at random; Charles M. Judd; Abram Lawrence, I think I met him on the street the other day; E. D. Mckay-I should like to stop and talk about Mckay. I tried, and failed, to get some flowers to put on his coffin at Southern Pines in North Carolina; Joseph M. Nichol- son, Granville Nicholson; George, Albert and William II. Walker, and I think that others of the family were in school after that; Calista Bronson; and then came the Bartletts; Lucy Bishop-I met her today ; Helen Buxton ; Caroline Barber; the Bassett girls, quite a number of them; Mary Cutting, Harriet Crocker, Delia Cole, Lucy and Frances Carpenter, Mary E. Darling, Julia Darling and Jennie :Darling; Caroline E. Gould ;- what a memory for me, for I lived in the family for years-Harriet Gates and Mary Gates, and Mary E. Lynde, Delia Miller, Mary Mc Elwain, Frances Patterson, Adelia C. Walker, Lucy Young, Elizabeth Young, Martha Young, and Mary Young. These persons were so photographed in my memory that I seemed to recognize almost every one in the room be- fore me.
Now, you know something about the after history of these people probably-I know very little or nothing, for it is a far cry back over this space of a half century or more.
While looking into their faces I noticed sadness upon some of them, sorrow had doubtless touched them; the dove of Peace had left its home in their hearts and flown away. They had probably lost their grip, had been de- feated; but most of them appeared bright, cheery, fresh, blooming, happy, joyous young people as I knew them in early days. I looked into their faces with questions- What have you gotten out of life! How have you borne yourselves during these years! And there seemed to come a still small voice from out that spectral throng,-still
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and small, yet clear and distinct, oraenlar and impressive, and this was the message: "Tell every educator whom yon meet to give some time every day to instruction in ethics; for moral instruction, instruction in duties to our friends and neighbors, to our country and its flag, such as we learned from the little old book that we studied with you called . Watts on the Mind,' has done more for ns than any other one study that we ever pursned."
The engine on the distant hill aroused me from my revery, my hallucination. 1 looked around, I was alone. There was the same dust covered floor, the cobwebs were hanging from the ceiling and there was that old black- board-Oh, what memories-concealing volumes of the history of the school beneath its black surface, and de- tails of scenes stranger than those of Arabian Nights. Reluctantly I left the place, for it was my little Monnt of Transfiguration; but I brought away this message, and I pass it on to you: My fellow teachers, if such are present, and those who aspire to become instructors of the young, remember that the schoolmaster and the school ma'm, and the conscientious mother hold in their hands the destinies of our country; nay more, the destinies of the human race, and I trust that the time is soon com- ing when instruction in moral duties shall be given at every fireside, and shall find a place in the carrienhim of every school in our land.
MR. AND MRS. CHARLES H. DANN BY J. EDWIN DANN
My father, Charles Hemy Dann, was born in Delaware County, N. Y. His education, begun in the country schools, was continued in Delaware Literary Institute and Williams College; I will not say was completed, for he was a student all his life. After leaving college he taught in Sehoharie, N. Y., and later was principal of Keeseville Academy.
My mother, JJerusha Waterbury, was born in Schoharie. While a student in the Academy she met the young teacher, Charles Dann. In 1819 she was graduated from Troy Female Seminary. Following her graduation she taught in Jordan Academy, in Brockport Collegiate Institute, and with an associate principal founded Penn Yan Female Seminary.
In September 1854, Perry Academy was opened. The Wyoming County Advertiser of that date speaks in glow- ing terms of the new principal, Charles H. Dann, and of the preceptress, Miss Jerusha Waterbury. On Janu- ary 3d, 1855, these two were married in Perry.
Mr. Dann taught in several towns of Western New York, was principal of No. 10 in Rochester, and came to Warsaw in 1863. He was principal of Warsaw Academy from 1863 until 1870 and later was engaged in the nursery business.
Three children came to Warsaw with my parents, Alice, Charles, and Mary ; Townsend had been taken away. Willis, Irving and Edwin were born here. From the Warsaw home, Alice, Charlie, Willis and Irving were called to the better home. Charles 11. Dann passed away July 5, 1888, and Mrs. Dann on April 22, 1901.
One of my father's old pupils writes: "Mr. Dann is the one teacher of my life that I look back to with deep gratitude. He was a fine scholar, a man of pure motive, and noble character."
Of my mother, one of her friends says: "She was
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one of God's noble women, always doing good and mak- ing those around her happy."
I am proud to speak to you of my parents. Proud of iny father, an earnest student, a wise and faithful teacher, a Christian gentleman. Proud of my mother, strong, brave, courageous. Showing herself friendly she had many friends, and a host of young people whom she helped and inspired bear her in loving memory. The lives of our parents are a daily inspiration to their children, and the memory of the home they founded, of their help and counsel, and the lives they lived, is our rich inheritance.
JOSHUA H. DARLING BY HARRISON DARLING JENKS, M. D.
In the year 1830 there appeared in the little village of Warsaw a young man, tall, erect of carriage and digni_ fied in bearing, Joshua Harrison Darling. Ile was born twenty-two years before in Henniker, New Hampshire, the son of Judge Joshna Darling, at one time President of the Senate of New Hampshire, an alnmmus of Dartmouth College, as was also the grandfather. His ancestors were among the early settlers of New England, coming from England to Massachusetts in 1643.
This young man, from the traditions and culture of a prominent New England family had decided to cast his lot with the then just settled Western country, the pres- ent locality of Warsaw.
At first a clerk in the general store of Dr. Augustus Frank ; he soon became a partner of Andrew W. Young in the same sort of business. Shortly after, this partner- ship was dissolved, and on the corner where the present National Bank now stands he carried on a general store for the next twenty years.
At the end of this period, 1851, the need of a bank nearer than Batavia became apparent, and with foresight characteristic of the man, Mr. Darling established a State Bank, the first in this county. For fourteen years, dur- ing a period of great financial stringeney, when state banks were daily suspending operations, when failures were an every day occurrence, Mr. Darling successfully conducted his bank, the soundness of which was never in question. We have in our possession a state bank note on the Wyo- ming County Bank, dated October, 1859, signed, J. II. Darling, President, and J. Harrison Darling, Cashier. After passing through this critical time and through the Civil War he availed himself of the National Bank Law of 1863, and in 1865 reorganized his bank into a National
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one. Of this bank he was President until his death on March 24, 1869.
Of acknowledged financial ability, yet his high moral character and integrity were the crowning characteristics of his life. Deeply religious in his nature he freely, but in- ostentatiously gave to the church, the church of his fathers from the early settlement of New England, and almost every matter of public interest in this village received his counsel and financial aid. He gave $10,000 toward the erection of the Congregational church and gave the new organ which cost $2,000, in addition. By his will he also gave $150 a year for ten years for the support of the church. What he gave in charities and benevolent enterprises was always with good judgment and in a quiet manner, not even his most intimate friends really know- ing the extent of his benefactions.
Ilis interest in school matters is shown in this qno- tation from a letter written February 8, 1850, in reference to the Free School Aet :
" There continues to be considerable opposition to the Free School Law, but it will stand, I think. It may be amended some for the better at the present session of our Legislature."
Being a strong anti-slavery man, thoroughly opposed to the extension of slavery, he early became identified with the Republican party as the party most likely to effect a settlement of the slavery question, and was in 1860 sent as a delegate to the National Republican Con- vention which nominated Abraham Lincoln for President.
In 1832, Mr. Darling married Miss Lucretia Frank of Granville, N. Y. Seven children were the result of this union, of whom only the eldest and the youngest survive, Mrs. Mary Jenks of Warsaw and Mrs. Frances Neeld of Chicago.
In 1845 he married Miss Laura Mosher of Canandaigua, by whom he had seven children, two of whom are living, Mrs. Margaret Chapman of Elyria, Ohio, and Miss Grace Darling of New York. In 1862 he married Miss Clara Beebe of Litchfield, Conn., who survives him and is now living in Wallingford, Con.
Mr. Darling died in March 1869 at the age of 60
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years, in the full maturity of his powers, and good deeds illumined his life to the end. Indeed, the good which he did is living today and helps to make Warsaw what it is at this one hundredth anniversary. The workman dies, but the work goes on.
Finally, in these days when our large cities are filling with men from foreign shores, 700,000 or more already this year; when there are many sections of large cities to which the English language has become a stranger, celebrations like this serve to remind us that we should be glad that we Warsawians, past and present, have a history to which we can proudly look, that we Ameri- cans as a whole can amalgamate this great crowd of foreigners into good American timber. If we can but apply the principles of the inspiring address of this after- noon toward making good citizens of this horde of emi- grants, our ancestors have, indeed, not lived in vain.
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THE GATES FAMILY BY ELIZA GATES MILNE
Seth Gates, my grandfather, was the first member of the Gates family to settle in Warsaw. He was born in Preston, Conn., in 1775. He married January Ist, 1800, in Litchfield Ilerkimer Co., N. Y., Miss Abigail Merrill of that place. She was born in West Hartford, Conn., De- cember 19th, 1777. Their first child, Seth Merrill Gates, my father, was born October 16th, 1800, in Winfield, Ilerkimer Co., N. Y.
Six years after their marriage, in the spring of 1806, they made the pilgrimage to Western New York, and settled in Sheldon, his house being the third one built there. At a Pioneer meeting held in Warsaw fifty-four years later, in 1860, Mr. Gates said of this journey : "My father was twenty-six days on the road, and hard driv- ing at that." All this region was then known as Genesee County, and it was not until two years later, in 1808, that the towns of Warsaw and Sheldon were sep- arated from the rest. It proved to be within the bound- aries of this latter town that my grandfather had settled, with a few other hardy pioneers, and there he lived for most of his life, enduring bravely the same hardships his neighbors had to endure and helping in the development of the wilderness.
In 1808, the same year the township was separated from the surrounding ones, he helped to organize the Baptist church there and was soon after elected one of its deacons. In the War of 1812 he commanded a com- pany of Light Infantry on the frontiers until the battle of Queenston had so thinned its ranks that it was annexed to another company. In 1834 my grandfather moved to Warsaw. Three more children were born to them in Sheldon; Chauncey, Calista and Delia.
Warsaw was now a thriving settlement although not incorporated as a village nntil nine years later; in 1843.
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It was made the county seat of Wyoming County in 1841. Its inhabitants were already far removed from the ex- treme privations that had been borne by the early set- tlers. For about twelve years there had been little, if any fear of wild animals in the immediate vicinity, and the bounty of five dollars apiece for the scalp and cars of each wolf taken and killed in the county, had not been claimed since 1821. However, as late as 1880, only four years before this time, the records show that the men were called out for a wolf hunt, abont three miles west of here, in Orangeville. But the settlements themselves were now quite safe and prosperons, coming out slowly, but surely from bereath the burden of heavy taxation made necessary by the war of 1812. Home industries had to compete with the British trade which had been suspend- ed during the war, and a market for what little surphis grain or produce was raised was still too distant to be easily available. The struggle for a bare existence may be said to have continued until the completion of the Erie canal in 1825, which brought to these Western New York people speedy and permanent relief.
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