USA > New York > Erie County > Sardinia > History of the original town of Concord : being the present towns of Concord, Collins, N. Collins, and Sardinia, Erie County, New York > Part 49
USA > New York > Erie County > Collins > History of the original town of Concord : being the present towns of Concord, Collins, N. Collins, and Sardinia, Erie County, New York > Part 49
USA > New York > Erie County > Concord > History of the original town of Concord : being the present towns of Concord, Collins, N. Collins, and Sardinia, Erie County, New York > Part 49
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I have heard my mother relate that one day her husband was chopping down trees she heard one fall and listened, as was her custom, for the renewed sound of the ax, by which token she knew that no accident had befallen the chopper, as sometimes happened to people in such work. But not hearing
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any sound she ran out and called, " Isaac, is anything the mat- ter?" "Yes," came the answer: "matter enough, the tree has fallen on the pig and killed it."
The loss of one small pig seems so small a matter now as to be hardly worth mentioning, but it was more of a calamity to them than the loss of ten cows would have been in after years.
My father bought his first cow of Peter Pratt. His son John, now an old man, thus tells of it :
" Isaac Allen came and looked at my father's cows, seven or eight in number, and offered thirty-five dollars to be allowed his choice. The offer was accepted and Isaac walked up and laid his hand on the very best cow. I had never seen a cow sold for so high a price."
The first year, the one hen hatched seventeen chickens, but several were destroyed by a weasel, which in turn, met his fate in a dead-fall set for him.
For the first year or two much of the meat set upon the table was game from the woods. Pigeons and turkeys abounded ; one of the latter frequented the vicinity of the house and became so tame she would fly down and pick up corn thrown to her, but unfortunately she perished in the burning of a " fallow."
One piece of game I have heard my father say, was a rac -. coon, caught two or three years after he came to the country. The fowls, which were roosted in the log-barn were being taken, one by one, until to save the rest he made a small fowl-house near his own, constructed of bass-wood logs, notched at the ends and fitted so closely together that no animal larger than a cricket could get between. One night he was awakened by a great commotion among the poultry and running out was just in time to lay hold of the hind legs of a raccoon as he was escaping through a hole he had made in the thatched roof. Calling the hired-man to assist the creature was soon killed and when dressed proved to be so plump and nice he was cooked and eaten with a relish, as a substitute for the chickens he had fattened on. But father added to the story: "When I got better acquainted with the animal I never wanted to eat another coon."
One of the first labors, after getting the ground prepared,. was to set out an orchard. The watch was traded for a gun.
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and one hundred apple trees. They were all small, the tallest not higher than a man's head, but the second or third year they bore the first apples my mother tasted in the country.
My father was always very successful in his tree-planting and fruit culture, and until he was more than three score and ten years of age, I think very few seasons passed that he did not plant an orchard, a single tree, or a bush of some sort that would bear fruit. Writing to me when he was fifty-eight years old, he said " I have planted some two or three hundred fruit trees during the last two years."
The first orchard was seedlings, but grafts of many excellent varieties were soon set, and bore before my remembrance. One variety was a curiosity I never saw elsewhere-an apple part Greening and part Tolman Sweeting.
He had many varieties of peaches, plums, cherries, pears and all the fruits which before the country was denuded of its forests grew and bore so abundantly. I have seen as fine peaches from his trees as I ever saw offered in the Buffalo markets from the Delaware orchards since. I might add that his fruit was raised for home consumption ; there was no market to which he could have taken it had he desired, but it was given away most freely, and while he gave he exhorted his neighbors to cultivate for themselves, and when giving a basket of peaches I have heard him say, " Now be sure thee plants the stones." I remember hearing an elderly man, in answer to my father's recommendation to plant an orchard, say, " Why, Isaac, I shan't live to eat the apples." The reply was, " Well, no matter if thee don't ; somebody else will,"
Father used to say that the best way to keep children from stealing fruit was to give them plenty at home, and that par- ents were at fault who did not strive to do so.
Though at first neighbors were so scattered and far apart, opportunities were found for kindly offices towards each other. My mother always spoke in the warmest terms of their kind- ness and pleasant ways to her. In speaking of those early times, "Aunt Susic," as every one called her, used to say, " Land! we was all like sisters them days."
Though my mother was so young when she began her house- keeping, she took to her new home the best linen tablecloths and
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RECOLLECTIONS OF COLLINS.
towels of her own manufacture, coverlids and blankets of her own spinning and weaving.
In all this work of the wheel and loom she was very skillful, and for many years all the wearing apparel as well as the bed- ding for her increasing family was home-made.
Any financial success to which my father achieved was as much due to his wife's industry, frugality and economy as to his own out-door management.
At first, there must have been some scarcity in the larder, but my mother possessed a peculiar knack to make her plainest dishes savory. Garden or wild herbs were made to serve for spices. "Greens" and wild berries were found in their season. The candles, the soap and almost everything used for food as well as clothing were home products. A substitute for soda was found in the lye made from cob-ashes, and if any one now has nicer short-cake or soda biscuits, more delicious butter or finer Linden honey " in the honey-comb," than was seen on my mother's table, may I be there to eat.
Before my remembrance the days of scarcity had passed. Poultry, fresh mutton and veal, besides beef and pork, made variety through the year. Fruit was abundant and though canning was unknown, there were such changes of dried and preserved as left no lack. Of milk and cream, the food of all foods for children, and for the want of which they grow up puny and small-boned, there was neither lack nor stint-neither of butter and cheese.
One who was a boy in 1816, told the following in 1881 :
"I went with an elder brother to lay a stick-chimney, the lower part of stones, for Mr. Allen. His wife was a little mite of a woman but she got us the best dinner I had ever seen, and it was always a mystery to me how she did it when every one had so little to do with."
No doubt the lad's appetite was good sauce, but there are others who can testify to my mother's good dinners when she had a greater variety to select from, and to the open-handed, generous hospitality that characterized both of my parents, whether in the log-house or in the larger house next built.
The friend, the wayfarer and the stranger found a welcome ; the homeless and the fugitive from slavery rejoiced to enter.
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RECOLLECTIONS OF COLLINS.
I never saw but one person turned from the door and he was an " old codger." in present parlance, a tramp. My father had ridden up on horse-back just in time to see the man enter the house. Finding it occupied only by women and children, he commenced to use profane and obscene language, which father, coming in quickly, overheard. Walking towards the man and making some significant gestures with his riding-whip, he said : " Thee sees that door; walk out of it." My father was not a small man, and he was strongly and well built. The fellow did not " stand upon his going."
Medicinal herbs and roots were always kept on hand for use, and the doctor was seldom seen.
The next year after house-keeping began the first child was born, and nearly every two years another was added to the family until the eighth and best beloved. Two sons and five daughters lived to marry and find homes of their own.
The log-house which sheltered the young couple, held the family for more than a dozen years. True it was a little en- larged by a stoop which served for a dining-room in Summer and the chamber of an outside cheese-house made more room for beds ; but I have often marveled since how we were all made so happy and comfortable in such close quarters, though then we seemed to have room enough.
Not least among the remembered pleasures are the Winter evenings spent around the great open fire-place. The making of those fires was a work of labor as well as skill. The late after- noon was the time for renewing, after the fire had been allowed to burn down. Then the andirons were pulled forward and all the brands, coals and ashes scraped from the chimney in a close heap. Out of doors a clevis, an iron instrument, shaped like a deep U, with sharp ends, was driven into the prepared back-log four to eight feet long and eighteen inches or two feet in diam- eter ; a chain was hooked into the clevis, the log hauled into the house and with the aid of a hand-spike rolled close to the chimney. On top of that a back-stick of smaller dimensions. was placed, and frequently a third stick was added to the top of that. The andirons were put in place, a large, green fore-stick laid on, and the wood piled on cob-fashion most
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RECOLLECTIONS OF COLLINS.
unstintingly, the brands and coals put under and the hearth swept with a splint broom.
O, those glorious fires! Children of the present day warm- ing their feet over a black hole in the floor or sitting by the most artistic base-burner, can have little idea of the pleasure and cheer that filled the room and glowed upon all its occu- pants. That great pile all aflame, the smoke and sparks float- ing up the wide-mouthed chimney, the pictures that came and went in the glowing coals, ever changing, ever renewing them- selves in brighter forms, were sights that never palled on the eyes of children.
On the wide, stone-hearth we cracked our walnuts and but- ternuts or roasted our chestnuts in the embers.
The great pewter platter flanked on either side by plates of the same metal, shone like burnished silver on the cupboard shelf as they were turned up edgewise, displaying their largest surfaces.
Little need was there by that fire of lamp or candle to read the newspapers, of which there was one in the days of my earliest remembrance. I cannot remember its name, but I know it was printed in Buffalo ; was Whig in politics, and was wonderfully entertaining from the President's message to the last advertisement in doggerel rhymes.
During the first years of my father's residence in the coun- try he was captain of the militia company of Collins, but his ideas of war and military life altogether underwent a decided change, when his heart was renewed by grace, and he appre- hended the teaching of Christ. This change took place among a band of devoted Methodist people, though he never united with them, but joined the Friends and lived and died a mem- ber. The wife had been born of Quaker parents, and brought up a Friend. My father talked very little about his religious opinions, and was very charitable towards the opinions of others, saying, "He can't be wrong whose life is in the right."
" By their fruits ye shall know them." His honest, upright dealing, his generous sympathy for the needy and suffering were among his strong characteristics. The willingness to suf- fer wrong rather than resent it, or even to defend his own
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rights was something remarkable. He was the friend and counselor of people in very different circumstances and ranks in life. The business man sought his opinion of crops, cattle and lands. Parties in domestic trouble came to him for coun- sel, while the young entrusted him with their love secrets.
Several times during my father's first years in the country he taught Winter schools with such decided success as to show that he might have been very useful had he made a profession of teaching. He possessed in an eminent degree the four most important natural gifts for a teacher : An agreeable presence ; a more than ordinary love and fondness for the young; an in- tense and abiding love of knowledge, and ability to communi- cate what he knew to others.
I have always been thankful that he was my first instructor. Teaching in his own district when I was four years old, I was carried in his strong arms or rode pick-a-back, while my brother and sister older walked before, through the tall pine forest, and as we thee'd and thou 'd by the way the lessons I learned were, I have no doubt, as profitable as what in school extended from A B C to "crucifix" in Webster's old spelling book.
My father was a very close observer of nature. I used to think he could most truly forecast the weather from the morn- ing's observations. He knew all the trees of the forest, the plants of the fields, and the birds and living things were a study and a delight to him. I never knew one who seemed to live as it were in sympathy with all God's creation more than he.
When very old and feeble, he would sit for hours on the ver- andah feeding the birds with crumbs or looking out upon the trees and fields.
I once asked him what he saw there to amuse him so long. Pointing to the fir-trees, he answered in Whittier's words, I see
" How the robin rears her young, And how the oriole's nest is hung.
The house was built before any roads were laid out, and the nearest was finally made half a mile away, but the quiet life was not altogether wanting in stirring incidents.
On one occasion, my mother had sent her eldest child eight or nine years of age, to a neighbor's on an errand. He"went
.
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by a "blazed " path through the woods. When it was about the time he would be likely to return there came up the most terrific storm of wind and rain that had been known there. Large trees were torn up by the roots and blown down in all directions. The father was away and not expected home. After the storm subsided the mother looked anxiously for the absent boy's return, but darkness set in without any tidings of him.
The hired man was urged to go and 'ascertain whether the child had started for home before the storm commenced, but he declared the path must be so blocked up with fallen trees, it would be impossible to find the way by night.
But to the mother there was no rest, and no impossibility to finding the way, along which her first-born might lie crushed and bleeding under a fallen tree, or having lost his way, might be exposed not only to the damp chills of night, but to wolves or panthers. So leaving her other children asleep she took her lantern-not the glass globe of the present day, illuminated with kerosene-but a lantern of perforated tin enclosing a sin- gle tallow-dipped candle, liable to be blown out by a too sud- den gust of wind, and there were no lucifer matches to take along for relighting. Thus equipped she went through the woods along the path, climbing over fallen trees, searching under their broken branches, stopping ever and anon to call Daniel ! Daniel! but only the echoes and the night sounds of the great forest replied. The woods passed, the open fields were soon crossed, to find the child detained by the kindly- meaning neighbors who realized the dangers of the way more than the mother's anxiety. The return was more quickly per- formed, and midnight found her quieting her hungry baby.
For a long time after the settlement of the country the cleared land formed a very small part of its area, and wild ani- mals continued to be troublesome. My father had several hogs carried off by bears. One night when a cow had been shut in a high log pen with the sheep, the inmates of the house were startled by the noise of the cow-bell. Father reached the pen in time to hear a great scrambling as of some large animal get- ting"over the logs, but it was impossible to see anything in the pitch darkness. The creature threw off some of the logs as it
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went, and the cow, as if beside herself with fright, jumped out and ran with all her might off into the woods, until the sound of her bell died away in the distance. Morning light revealed the tracks of a very large bear.
When speaking of wild animals, I have heard father laugh- ingly say that though he had met with wolves, bears and many other denizens of the woods, his greatest fright was from a screech-owl that suddenly called out just over his head as he was walking alone under the trees one dark night. The first thought was of a panther.
Year by year the clearing of the land went on, sometimes let out by the job at a fixed price per acre. Often a chopper was hired by the month, and worked all winter. I remember lis- tening to the regular strokes of the axe as it was laid not to the roots, but to the trunk of the tree two or three feet from the ground, and it was with no little interest that I watched for that unmistakable quivering and crackling in the top that be- tokened the " tottering, crashing, thundering to the ground." What was not made into saw-logs and firewood was left for the burning, which usually took place the latter part of May when the adjoining forest had put on its full panoply of leaves. Then on a still, clear day fires were set, and smoke and flame went up as from a burning city. I once saw twenty acres burned over at once, part of it on a farm adjoining my father's, and wood enough was consumed to have brought quite a little fortune if it could have been weighed out and sold by the pound for firewood, as I have since seen it in other countries.
I do not remember much of my father's hunting except of bees. This was a quiet pastime which he seemed to enjoy long after he had many hives full at home. He was very successful in raising bees, and great quanties of honey were consumed on his table, but in those days people had not learned how to pro- cure the honey without killing the bees, and this was done by loosening the surface of the ground a yard square and inserting four pine sticks, to the upper ends of which were inserted rags dipped in melted sulphur.
A cool evening was the time chosen. Two men, stopping up the holes in the hive quietly lifted and set it down over the prepared place, just as a third person had ignited the sulphur.
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RECOLLECTIONS OF COLLINS.
The earth was thrown up a little around the edges of the hive and it was knocked and thumped until the poor bees fell down suffocated with the gas. This was called "taking up a swarm of bees."
When the older children were young we were accustomed to use the plain language and at the same time we were trained to show proper respect to superiors and elders; we were not allowed to use vain compliments-No, sir, or ma'm to our yes and no.
When my elder sister and myself were just entering our teens, a dancing-master, who was organizing a class in Gowanda, in canvasing for pupils, called at our house, Making known his errand, his statements were politely listened to, while he dwelt upon the great improvement in manners likely to result from his instructions. Father replied : "No doubt thee thinks so, but can thee engage that their morals will be improved also?" We were not sent to dancing-school.
I have heard persons of. the first generation brought up in Collins, bewail their want of advantages as compared with the present youth. But was there not some compensation ? Phys- ically, in the abundance of fresh, unadultered food and the more simple habits of life, and, mentally, in the necessity of doing something for themselves?
True, the young men and maidens could not take the evening train for the city, hear the last new Prima Donna and be home before morning. But who shall say that their pleasures were not as keenly enjoyed, or as conducive to happiness ? Mayhap they rode to a " paring bee," after a yoke of oxen ; their toilets probably gave as little anxiety as is now experienced by the wearers of more expensive ones. But did they not fall in love and marry without ever thinking of diamond engagement-rings or bridal veils, "imported for the occasion" ?
By the time the family exchanged the log-house 'for a new one on the public road the tillable land had increased both by clearing and purchase, until much work was to be done; and as the mowers, reapers and cultivators and other labor-saving machines of the present day were not in use, many more hands were required than would be necessary for the same work now.
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RECOLLECTIONS OF COLLINS.
Six or eight men swinging their scythes together is a pleas- ant sight to look upon, whatever it may be to the actors.
Indoors, cheese and butter-making went on ; there were hired spinners and weavers to make up the wool from the flock and workers to cook and spread the table for all. And besides these there were visitors, comers and goers more in those times when every one traveled in his own conveyance, than now.
To partake in these labors, to plan and direct either in-doors or out made drafts upon nerve and brain. But I forbear to go on in what was but the common life of so many at that period.
Towards the closing years of my father's life I asked him to write out his early experience. He said there was nothing worth writing ; there were no startling incidents, no important events, that he had merely gone on from day to day trying to do the best he could and that was all. But for some years before his death his trembling hand refused to guide the pen and the writing was carried on by my mother who kept up quite an extensive correspondence with absent children, grandchildren and others. This with the cultivation of flowers occupied much of her time.
My parents lived to see great changes in their own and other lands, of which their fondness for reading kept them informed. They greatly rejoiced in all reforms for the benefit of mankind. Father said, "The world is growing better, this or that evil is being done away." Always interested in politics, he went to the polls until the last election day of his life, when four gener- ations cast in Republican tickets.
Rejoicing in all that brought peace and good-will to man- kind, my parents went down the hill of life and finished their course in 1879: carried to their graves from the same farm where had been their home sixty-four years. Mother was eighty-four and father, who died two months later, near eighty- six.
May those who remain cherish their memory and emulate their virtues.
MRS. D. C. A. STODDARD.
Isaac Allen, the subject of the above sketch, was born Aug. 26, 1793. in Danby, Rutland county, Vt. His father, Zoeth
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THE ALLEN FAMILY.
Allen, served in the Revolutionary war. His mother was Jane Harper. He was married May 25, 1815, to Lydia Bartlett, who was born in Cumberland, R. I., April 25, 1795.
In June, 1815, he came to Collins, then Concord, Niagara county. In July of the same year, he walked to Batavia, and took an article of 220 acres of land, on which he built a log cabin. He then walked back to Vermont, and in the Winter of 1816, moved his wife and goods with a wagon and two horses to his new home-the journey occupying twenty-three days' actual travel.
In this home, their first child, Daniel, was born April 28,
ISAAC ALLEN.
1817. He married Eleanor Wells, whom he survives. They had four children : Sarah Jane, who died at the age of fourteen years ; Walter W. and Alice, who died April, 1881, and Leonard D., who moved to the State of Michigan, where he now lives.
Mary Allen, born April 11, 1819, was married to Benjamin P. Wells, who survives her. They had three children : Isaac A., Arestene C., and Mary Josephine.
Drucilla C. Allen, born June 18, 1821, married Rev. Ira Stod- dard. They went to the Province of Assam in India, as
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THE ALLEN FAMILY."
missionaries, where they remained about nine years. They then returned and after a few years went back to their missionary work. Mrs. Stoddard stayed three years and Mr. Stoddard six years, their health not permitting them to remain longer in that warm, unhealthy climate. They have three children : Bertha, Ella and Ira Joy, all born in India. They now live in Pella, Iowa.
Jane Allen born March 13, 1814. Died at about two years of age.
Joshua Allen, born March 10, 1826; attended select school in Gowanda and Gowanda Union school ; was married to Eme- line Etsler, daughter of Archibald Etsler. She was born in
MRS. ISAAC ALLEN.
Liberty, Frederick county, Md., Nov. 1, 1830. They have five children : Charles E., Myron H., R. Harper, Eva and Clara M. Mr. Allen is a dairy farmer, lives on the old homestead of three hundred acres ; has been Assessor ten years.
WESTFIELD, N. Y., Aug. 10, 1882.
Erasmus Briggs, Esq.
DEAR SIR :- Agreeable to your request, I write to say that my father, the late Ralph Plumb, was born in Sauquoit, Onei- da county, N. Y., in the year 1795, and was the sixth child in
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THE LATE RALPH PLUMB.
a family of seven sons and three daughters. His father, Joseph Plumb, with his mother Mary, came from Middletown, Conn., a short time previous to his birth, and were among the first settlers of Oneida county. His father died, I think, in 1807, and left him with four others, with their mother on a small farm, the older children having previously left home.
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