USA > New York > Monroe County > History of the pioneer settlement of Phelps and Gorham's purchase, and Morris' reserve; embracing the counties of Monroe, Ontario, Livingston, Yates, Steuben, most of Wayne and Allegany, and parts of Orleans, Genesee, and Wyoming. To which is added, a Supplement, or Extension of the pioneer history of Monroe county > Part 22
USA > New York > Allegany County > History of the pioneer settlement of Phelps and Gorham's purchase, and Morris' reserve; embracing the counties of Monroe, Ontario, Livingston, Yates, Steuben, most of Wayne and Allegany, and parts of Orleans, Genesee, and Wyoming > Part 22
USA > New York > Livingston County > History of the pioneer settlement of Phelps and Gorham's purchase, and Morris' reserve; embracing the counties of Monroe, Ontario, Livingston, Yates, Steuben, most of Wayne and Allegany, and parts of Orleans, Genesee, and Wyoming. To which is added, a Supplement, or Extension of the pioneer history of Monroe county > Part 22
USA > New York > Yates County > History of the pioneer settlement of Phelps and Gorham's purchase, and Morris' reserve; embracing the counties of Monroe, Ontario, Livingston, Yates, Steuben, most of Wayne and Allegany, and parts of Orleans, Genesee, and Wyoming. To which is added, a Supplement, or Extension of the pioneer history of Monroe county > Part 22
USA > New York > Ontario County > History of the pioneer settlement of Phelps and Gorham's purchase, and Morris' reserve; embracing the counties of Monroe, Ontario, Livingston, Yates, Steuben, most of Wayne and Allegany, and parts of Orleans, Genesee, and Wyoming. To which is added, a Supplement, or Extension of the pioneer history of Monroe county > Part 22
USA > New York > Wyoming County > History of the pioneer settlement of Phelps and Gorham's purchase, and Morris' reserve; embracing the counties of Monroe, Ontario, Livingston, Yates, Steuben, most of Wayne and Allegany, and parts of Orleans, Genesee, and Wyoming. To which is added, a Supplement, or Extension of the pioneer history of Monroe county > Part 22
USA > New York > Steuben County > History of the pioneer settlement of Phelps and Gorham's purchase, and Morris' reserve; embracing the counties of Monroe, Ontario, Livingston, Yates, Steuben, most of Wayne and Allegany, and parts of Orleans, Genesee, and Wyoming. To which is added, a Supplement, or Extension of the pioneer history of Monroe county > Part 22
USA > New York > Genesee County > History of the pioneer settlement of Phelps and Gorham's purchase, and Morris' reserve; embracing the counties of Monroe, Ontario, Livingston, Yates, Steuben, most of Wayne and Allegany, and parts of Orleans, Genesee, and Wyoming. To which is added, a Supplement, or Extension of the pioneer history of Monroe county > Part 22
USA > New York > Wayne County > History of the pioneer settlement of Phelps and Gorham's purchase, and Morris' reserve; embracing the counties of Monroe, Ontario, Livingston, Yates, Steuben, most of Wayne and Allegany, and parts of Orleans, Genesee, and Wyoming. To which is added, a Supplement, or Extension of the pioneer history of Monroe county > Part 22
USA > New York > Orleans County > History of the pioneer settlement of Phelps and Gorham's purchase, and Morris' reserve; embracing the counties of Monroe, Ontario, Livingston, Yates, Steuben, most of Wayne and Allegany, and parts of Orleans, Genesee, and Wyoming. To which is added, a Supplement, or Extension of the pioneer history of Monroe county > Part 22
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Peleg Redfield, was a townsman of Mr. Phelps in Suffield ; was a musician in the Connecticut line during the Revolution. In 1799, he exchanged with Mr. Phelps, his small farm in Suffield, for 200 acres, wherever he should choose to locate, on any unsold lands of Mr. Phelps. He selected the land where he now resides on the Rail Road, a mile and a half west of Clifton Springs ; (a judicious selection, as any one will allow, who sees the fine farm into which it has been converted ; ) clearing three acres and erecting the body of a log house, he removed his family in Feb. 1800, consisting of a wife and six children. " The journey," says a son of his, " was perform- ed with a sleigh and a single span of horses. Besides the family, the sleigh was loaded with beds and bedding, and articles of house- hold furniture. I shall never forget this, my first journey to the Genesee country, especially that portion of it west of Utica. The snow was three feet deep, and the horses tired and jaded by the cradle-holes, often refused to proceed farther with their load. I had the privilege of riding down hill, but mostly walked with my father, my mother driving the team."
Arriving at their new home, the Pioneer family found shelter with a new settler, "until the bark would peel in the spring," when a roof was put upon the body of the log house that Mr. Redfield had erected ; openings made for a door and window, and bass-wood logs split for a floor. Here the family remained until autumn, when a double log house had been erected. Mr. Redfield is now in his 80th year ; his memory of early events, retentive, and his physical constitution remarkable for one of his years. He is the father of
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the Hon. Heman J. Redfield, of Batavia; of Lewis H. Redfield, the well known editor, publisher, and bookseller at Syracuse ; Hiram Redfield of Rochester, George Redfield, Cass co. Michigan, Alex- ander H. Redfield of Detroit, Cuyler Redfield, with whom he re sides upon the old homestead. His son, Manning Redfield, of Man chester, was killed in a mill where he was marketing his grain in 1850. One of his daughters, was the wife of Leonard Short, of Shortsville, and the other, of Marvin Minor, a merchant at Bergen and Johnson's creek. "I could have made my location at Fort Hill, near Canandaigua," said the old gentleman to the author, "but a town was growing up there, and I feared its influence upon my boys." There are many Pioneer fathers who have lived to regret, that they had not been governed by the same prudent motive.
The Pioneer mother died in 1844, aged 80 years. It will appear incredible to the house keepers, and young mothers of the present day, when they are told, that Mrs. Redfield, in early years, when she had a family of six and seven children, performed all her ordin ary house-work, milked her own cows ; and carded, spun and wove, all the woolen and linen cloth that the family wore. But the old gentleman thinks it should be added, that he and the boys lightened her labor, by uniformily wearing buckskin breeches in the winter ; though the mother had them to make.
REMINISCENCES OF PELEG REDFIELD.
In 1800, a log house had been vacated; we fitted it up and hired Elani Crane* to teach a school. It was a mile from my house, and my boys used to go through the woods by marked trees.
In early years, wolves were a great nuisance; nothing short of a pen sixteen rails high, would protect our sheep. In winters, when hungry, they would collect together and prowl around the log dwellings; and if disappointed in securing any prey, their howling would startle even backwoodsmen. The Indian wars upon the wolf with great hatred; it is in a spirit of revenge for their preying upon their game, the deer. In the side hill, along on my farm, they dng pits, covered them over with light brush and leaves, and bending down small trees, suspended the offals of deer directly over the pits. In springing for the bait the wolf would land in the bottom of the pits where they could easily be killed. The salmon used to ascend the Canandaigua outlet, as far up as Shortsville, before mill dams were erected. The speckled trout were plenty in the Sulphur Spring brook; and in all the small streams.
* Mr. Crane died recently in south Bristol aged 83 years; he came to the Genesee country in 1788.
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In 1805, I was erecting my frame house, and wanted glass and nails. I I went with oxen and sled to Utica, carrying 50 bushels of wheat. I sold it for $1,68 per bushel, to Watts Sherman, a merchant of Utica, and paid 18d per pound for wrought nails ; $7 50 for two boxes of glass .*
It was pretty easy for young men to secure farms, in the earliest years of settlement. I knew many who received a dollar a day for their labor, and bought lands for twenty five cents per acre.
A Baptist Church was organized in Manchester in 1804; the first Trustees were : - Ebenezer Pratt, Joseph Wells and Jeremiah Dewey. This was the first legal organization, a society had been formed previous to 1800. Judge Phelps gave the society a site for a meeting house, and in 1806 Deacon John McLouth erected a log building. In 1812 or 13, the stone meeting house was erected. Rev. Anson Shay organized the church, and remained its pastor for 25 years ; he emigrated to Michigan, where he died in 1845. The Methodists had a society organization as early as 1800, hold- ing their primitive meetings in school and private houses.
"St. John's Church, Farmington," (Episcopal, at Sulphur Springs,) was organized by the Rev. Devenport Phelps, in 1807. The offi- cers were :- John Shekels, Samuel Shekels, wardens; Darius Seager, William Warner, George Wilson, Archibald A. Beal, Davis Williams, Thomas Edmonston, Alexander Howard, William Pow- ell.t
GOLD - BIBLE - MORMONISM.
As we are now at the home of the Smith family-in sight of " Mormon Hill"-a brief pioneer history will be looked for, of the strange, and singularly successful religious sect-the Mormons; and brief it must be, merely starting it in its career, and leaving to their especial historian to trace them to Kirtland, Nauvoo, Beaver Island, and Utah, or the Salt Lake.
Joseph Smith, the father of the prophet Joseph Smith, Jr., was from the Merrimack river, N. H. He first settled in or near Palmyra village, but as
* Mr. Redfield has preserved his store bill. It is made out and signed by Henry B. Gibson, the well known Canandaigua Banker, who was the book keeper in Sher- man's store.
+ A brother of the early Hotel keeper at Geneva. The two brothers had erected a public house at the Springs, and William was the landlord.
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early as 1810 was the occupant of some new land on "Stafford street" in the town of Manchester, near the line of Palmyra." "Mormon Hill " is near the plank road about half way between the villages of Palmyra and Manchester. The elder Smith had been a Universalist, and subsequently a Methodist; was a good deal of a. smatterer in Scriptural knowledge: but the seed of revela- tion was sown on weak ground; he was a great babbler, credulous, not espe- cially industrious, a money digger, prone to the marvellous; and withal, a lit- tle given to difficulties with neighbors, and petty law-suits. Not a very pro- pitious account of the father of a Prophet, -the founder of a state; but there was a "woman in the case." However present, in matters of good or evil !--- In the garden of Eden, in the siege of Troy, on the field of Orleans, t in the dawning of the Reformation, in the Palace of St. Petersburgh, and Kremlin of Moscow, in England's history, and Spain's proudest era; and liere upon this continent, in the persons of Ann Lee, Jemima Wilkinson, and as we are about to add, Mrs. Joseph Smith! A mother's influences; in the world's history, in the history of men, how distinct is the impress !- In heroes, in statesmen, in poets, in all of good or bad aspirations, or distinctions, that single men out from the mass, and give them notoriety; how often, almost in- variably, are we led back to the influences of a mother, to find the germ that has sprouted in the offspring.
The reader will excuse this interruption of narrative, and be told that Mrs. Smith was a woman of strong uncultivated intellect; artful and cunning; im- bued with an illy regulated religious enthusiasm. The incipient hints, the first givings out that a Prophet was to spring from her humble household, came from her; and when matters were maturing for denouement, she gave out that such and such ones-always fixing upon those who had both money and credulity-were to be instruments in some great work of new revelation. The old man was rather her faithful co-worker, or executive exponent. Their son, Alvah, was originally intended, or designated, by fireside consultations, and solemn and mysterious out door hints, as the forth coming Prophet. The mother and the father said he was the chosen one; but Alvah, however spir- itual he may have been, had a carnal appetite; eat too many green turnips, sickened and died. Thus the world lost a Prophet, and Mormonism a leader; the designs impiously and wickedly attributed to Providence, defeated; and . all in consequence of a surfeit of raw turnips. Who will talk of the cackling geese of Rome, or any other small and innocent causes of mighty events, af- ter this? The mantle of the Prophet which Mis. and Mr. Joseph Smith and one Oliver Cowdery, had wove of themselves-every thread of it-fell upon their next eldest son, Joseph Smith, Jr.
And a most unpromising recipient of such a trust, was this same Joseph Smith, Jr., afterwards, "Jo. Smith." He was lounging, idle; (not to say vicious,) and possessed of less than ordinary intellect. The author's own re- collections of him are distinct ones. He used to come into the village of Palmyra with little jags of wood, from his backwoods home; sometimes pat- ronizing a village grocery too freely; sometimes find an odd job to do about
* Here the author remembers to have first seen the family, in the winter of '19, '20, in a rude log house, with but a small spot underbrushed around it.
t France.
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the store of Seymour Scovell; and once a week he would stroll into the office of the old Palmyra Register, for his father's paper. How impious, in us young " dare Devils" * to once and a while blacken the face of the then meddling inquisitive lounger-but afterwards Prophet, with the old fashioned balls, when he used to put himself in the way of the working of the old fashioned Ramage press! The editor of the Cultivator, at Albany-esteemed as he may justly consider himself, for his subsequent enterprize and usefulness, may think of it, with contrition and repentance; that he once helped, thus to dis- figure the face of a Prophet, and remotely, the founder of a State.
But Joseph had a little ambition; and some very laudable aspirations; the mother's intellect occasionally shone out in him feebly, especially when he used to help us solve some portentous questions of moral or political ethics, in our juvenile debating club, which we moved down to the old red school house on Durfee street, to get rid of the annoyance of erities that used to drop in upon us in the village; and subsequently, after catching a spark of Metho- dism in the camp meeting, away down in the woods, on the Vienna road, he was a very passable exhorter in evening meetings.
Legends of hidden treasure, had long designated Mormon Hill as the de- pository. Old Joseph had dug there, and young Joseph had not only heard his father and mother relate the marvelous tales of buried wealth, but had ac- companied his father in the midnight delvings, and incantations of the spirits that guarded it.
If a buried revelation was to be exhumed, how natural was it that the Smith family, with their credulity, and their assumed presentiment that a Prophet was to come from their household, should be connected with it; and that Mormon Hill was the place where it would be found.
It is believed by those who were best acquainted with the Smith family, and most conversant with all the Gold Bible movements, that there is no foundation for the statement that their original manuscript was written by a Mr. Spaulding, of Ohio. A supplement to the Gold Bible, "The Book of Commandments" in all probability, was written by Rigdon, and he may have been aided by Spaulding's manuscripts; but the book itself is without doubt, a production of the Smith family, aided by Oliver Cowdery, who was a school teacher on Stafford street, an intimate of the Smith family, and identified with the whole matter. The production as all will conclude, who have read it, or even given it a cursory review, is not that of an educated man or wo- man. The bungling attempt to counterfeit the style of the Scriptures; the intermixture of modern phraseology ; theignorance of chronology and geogra- phy; its utter crudeness and baldness, as a whole, stamp its character, and clearly exhibits its vulgar origin. It is a strange medley of scriptures, romanes, and bad composition.
The primitive designs of Mrs. Smith, her husband, Jo and Cowdery, was money-making; blended with which perhaps, was a desire for notoriety, to be obtained by a cheat and a fraud. The idea of being the founders of a new sect, was an after thought, in which they were aided by others.
* To soften the use of such an expression, the reader should be reminded that ap- prentices in printing offices have since the days of Faust and Gottenberg, been thus called, and sometimes it was not inappropriate.
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The projectors of the humbug, being destitute of means for carrying out their plans, a victim was selected to obviate that difficulty. Martin Harris, was a farmer of Palmyra, the owner of a good farm, and an honest worthy citizen; but especially given to religious enthusiasm, new creeds, the more extravagant the better; a monomaniac, in fact. Joseph Smith upon whom the mantle of prophecy had fallen after the sad fate of Alva, began to make demonstrations. He informed Harris of the great discovery, and that it had been revealed to him, that he (Harris,) was a chosen instrument to aid in the great work of surprising the world with a new revelation. They had hit up- on the right man. He mortgaged his fine farm to pay for printing the book, assumed a grave, mysterious, and unearthly deportment, and made here and there among his acquaintances solemn annunciations of the great event that was transpiring. His version of the discovery, as communicated to him by the Prophet Joseph himself, is well remembered by several respectable citi- zens of Palmyra, to whom he made early disclosures. It was in substance, as follows:
The Prophet Joseph, was directed by an angel where to find, by excava- tion, at the place afterwards called Mormon Hill, the goll plates; and was compelled by the angel, much against his will, to be the interpreter of the sa- cred record they contained, and publish it to the world. That the plates contained a record of the ancient inhabitants of this country, "engraved by Mormon, the son of Nephi." That on the top of the box containing the plates, "a pair of large spectacles were found, the stones or glass set in which were opaque to all but the Prophet," that " these belonged to Mormon, the engra- ver of the plates, and without them, the plates could not be read." Harris as- sumed, that himself and Cowdery were the chosen amanuenses, and that the Prophet Joseph, curtained from the world and them, with his spectacles, read from the gold plates what they committed to paper. Harris exhibited to an informant of the author, the manuscript title page. On it were drawn, rudely and bunglingly, concentric circles, between above and below which were char- acters, with little resemblance to letters; apparently a miserable imitation of hieroglyphics, the writer may have somewhere seen. To guard against pro- fane curiosity, the Prophet had given out that no one but himself, not even his chosen co-operators, must be permitted to see them, on pain of instant death. Harris had never seen the plates, but the glowing account of their massive richness excited other than spiritual hopes, and he upon one occasion, got a village silver-smith to help him estimate their value; taking as a basis, the Prophet's account of their dimensions. It was a blending of the spiritual and utilitarian, that threw a shadow of doubt upon Martin's sincerity. This, and some anticipations he indulged in, as to the profits that would arise from the sale of the Gold Bible, made it then, as it is now, a mooted question, whether he was altogether a dupe.
The wife of Harris was a rank infidel and heretic, touching the whole thing, and decidedly opposed to her husband's participation in it. With sacriligious hands, she seized over an hundred of the manuscript pages of the new reve- lation, and burned or secreted them. It was agreed by the Smith family, Cowdery and Harris, not to transcribe these again, but to let so much of the new revelation drop out, as the "evil spirit would get up a story that the second translation did not agree with the first." A very ingenious method, surely, of guarding against the possibility that Mrs. Harris had preserved the
×
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manuscript with which they might be confronted, should they attempt an im- itation of their own miserable patchwork.
The Prophet did not get his lesson well upon the start, or the household of impostors were in the fault. After he had told his story, in his absence, the rest of the family made a new version of it to one of their neighbors. They shewed him such a pebble as may any day be picked up on the shore of Lake Ontario-the common horn blend-carefully wrapped in cotton, and kept in a mysterious box. They said it was by looking at this stone, in a hat, the light excluded, that Joseph discovered the plates. This it will be ob- served, differs materially from Joseph's story of the angel. It was the same stone the Smiths' had used in money digging, and in some pretended discov- eries of stolen property.
Long before the Gold Bible demonstration, the Smith family had with some sinister object in view, whispered another fraud in the ears of the credulous. They pretended that in digging for money, at Mormon Hill, they came across "a chest, three by two feet in size, covered with a dark colored stone. In the centre of the stone was a white spot about the size of a sixpence. Enlarg- ing, the spot increased to the size of a twenty four pound shot and then explo- ded with a terrible noise. The chest vanished and all was utter darkness."
It may be safely presumed that in no other instance have Prophets and the chosen and designated of angels, been quite as calculating and worldly as were those of Stafford street, Mormon Hill, and Palmyra. The only business con- tract - veritable instrument in writing, that was ever executed by spiritual agents, has been preserved, and should be among the archives of the new state of Utah. It is signed by the Prophet Joseph himself, and witnessed by Oliver Cowdery, and secures to Martin Harris, one half of the proceeds of the sale of the Gold Bible until he was fully reimbursed in the sum of $2,500, the cost of printing.
The after thought that has been alluded to ; the enlarging of original in- tentions ; was at the suggestion of Sidney Rigdon, of Ohio, who made his appearance, and blended himself with the poorly devised scheme of impos- ture about the time the book was issued from the press. He unworthily bore the title of a Baptist elder, but had by some previous freak, if the author is rightly informed, forfeited his standing with that respectable religious denom- ination. Designing, ambitious, and dishonest, under the semblance of sanc- tity and assumed spirituality, he was just the man for the uses of the Smith household and their half dupe and half designing abettors ; and they were just the fit instruments he desired. He became at once the Hamlet, or more appropriately perhaps, the Mawworm of the play. Like the veiled Prophet Mokanna, he may be supposed thus to have soliloquised : -
" Ye too, believers of incredible creeds, Whose faith enshrines the monsters which it breeds ; Who bolder, even than Nimrod, think to rise By nonsense heaped on nonsense to the skies ; Ye shall have miracles, aye, sound ones too, Seen, heard, attested, every thing but true. Your preaching zealots, too inspired to seek One grace of meaning for the things they speak ; Your martyrs ready to shed out their blood
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For truths too heavenly to be understood ;" * * *
" They shall have mysteries-aye, precious stuff For knaves to thrive by-mysteries enough ; Dark tangled doctrines, dark as fraud can weave, Which simple votaries shall on trust receive, While craftier feign belief, 'till they believe."
Under the auspices of Rigdon, a new sect, the Mormons, was projected, prophecies fell thick and fast from the lips of Joseph ; old Mrs. Smith assum- ed all the airs of the mother of a Prophet ; that particular family of Smiths were singled out and became exalted above all their legion of name- sakes. The bald, clumsy cheat, found here and there an enthusiast, a mo- nomaniac or a knave, in and around its primitive locality, to help it upon its start ; and soon, like another scheme of imposture, (that had a little of dig- nity and plausibility in it,) it had its Hegira, or flight, to Kirtland; then to Nauvo ; then to a short resting place in Missouri-and then on over the Rocky Mountains to Utah, or the Salt Lake. Banks, printing offices, tem- ples, cities, and finally a State, have arisen under its auspices. Converts have multiplied to tens of thousands. In several of the countries of Europe there are preachers and organized sects of Mormons ; believers in the divine mission of Joseph Smith & Co.
And here the subject must be dismissed. If it has been treatedl lightly - with a seeming levity - it is because it will admit of no other treatment. There is no dignity about the whole thing ; nothing to entitle it to mild treatment. It deserves none of the charity extended to ordinary religious fanatacism, for knavery and fraud has been with it incipiently and progress- ively. It has not even the poor merit of ingenuity. Its success is a slur upon the age. Fanaticism promoted it at first ; then ill advised persecution ; then the designs of demagogues who wished to command the suffrages of its followers ; until finally an American Congress has abetted the fraud and imposition by its aets, and we are to have a state of our proud Union - in this boasted era of light and knowledge - the very name of which will sanction and dignify the fraud and falsehood of Mormon Hill, the gold plates, and the spurious revelation. This much, at least, might have been ' omitted out of decent respect to the moral and religious sense of the people of the old states.
FARMINGTON.
Township No. 11, R. 3, (now Farmington,) was the first sale of Phelps and Gorham. The purchasers were : - Nathan Comstock, Benjamin Russell, Abraham Lapham, Edmund Jenks, Jeremiah Brown, Ephraim Fish, Nathan Herendeen, Nathan Aldrich, Ste- phen Smith, Benjamin Rickenson, William Baker and Dr. Daniel Brown. The deed was given to Nathan Comstock, and Benjamin 14
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Russell ; all except Russell, Jenks, J. Brown, Fish, Rickenson, Ba- ker and Smith, became residents upon the purchase. In 1789, Na- than Comstock, with two sons, Otis and Darius, and Robert Hatha- way, came from Adams, Berkshire county, Mass. ; a part of them by the water route, landing at Geneva, with their provisions, and a part by land with a horse and some cattle. When the overland party had arrived within 15 miles of Seneca Lake, they had the ad- dition of a calf to their small stock, which Otis Comstock carried on his back, that distance. They arrived upon the new purchase, built a cabin, cleared four acres of ground, and sowed it to wheat. Their horse died, and they were obliged to make a pack horse of Darius, who went once a week through the woods to Geneva, where he purchased provisions and carried them on his back, twenty miles, to their cabin in the wilderness. Upon the approach of winter, the party returned to Massachusetts, leaving Otis Comstock to take care of the stock through the winter, with no neighbors other than Indians and wild beasts, nearer than Boughton Hill and Canandai- gua. About the same period of the advent of the Comstocks, Nathan Aldrich, one of the proprietors of the township, came by the water route, landing his provisions and sced wheat at Geneva, and carrying them upon his back to the new purchase ; he clear- ed a few acres of ground, sowed it to wheat and returned to Mass- achusetts.
In the month of February, 1790, Nathan Comstock and his large family, started from his home in Adams, accompanied by Nathan Aldrich and Isaac Hathaway, and were followed the day after by Nathan Herendeen, his son William, and his two sons-in-law, Josh- ua Herrington and John M'Cumber. The last party overtook the first at Geneva, when the whole penetrated the wilderness, making their own roads as they proceeded, the greater part of the distance, and arrived at their new homes in the wilderness, on the 15th of March. After leaving Whitestown, both parties, their women and children, camped out each night during their tedious journey, and arriving at their destination, had most of them to erect temporary habitations, and this at an inclement season.
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