USA > New York > Steuben County > History of the settlement of Steuben County, N.Y. including notices of the old pioneer settlers and their adventures, 1853 > Part 10
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The next spring I started down the rivers Conhocton and Canisteo, with a large fleet of arks loaded with 1
1 flour, wheat, pork and other articles. The embargo being in full force, the price of flour and wheat was very low. At Havre de Grace I made fast two or three arks loaded with wheat to the stern of a small schooner which lay anchored in the middle of the stream, about half a mile from shore. Being ebb tide, together with
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the current of the stream, we could not possibly land the arks. Night setting in, there was no time to be lost in getting them to shore, as there was a strong wind down the bay, and it would be impossible to save them if they should break loose from the schooner. I left the arks in charge of William Edwards, of Bath, whilst I went on shore to procure help to tow the arks to shore. Whilst I was gone the wind increased, and the master of the schooner hallooed to Edwards, who was in one of the arks, that he would cut loose, as there was danger that he would be dragged into the bay and get lost, and he raised his axe to cut the cables. Edwards swore if he cut the cables he would shoot him down on the spot, and raising a handspike, took de- liberate aim. It being dark, the Captain could not distinguish between a handspike and a rifle. This brought him to terms. He dropped the axe, and told Edwards that if he would engage that I should pay him for his vessel in case she should be lost, he would not cut loose. Edwards pledged himself that I would do so.
When I got on shore, I went to a man named Smith, who had a fishery, and a large boat with eighteen oars, and about forty Irishmen in his employ, and offered to hire his boat and hands. He was drunk, and told me with an oath, that I and my arks might "go to the d-1." He would neither let the boat nor his hands go. I went into the shanty of the Irishmen, and put- ting on an Irish brogue, told them of my distress. " The d-I take Smith, we will help our countryman, by my shoul boys," said their leader. They manned
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the boat, and the arks were brought to the shore in double-quick time. They refused to take pay, and I took them to a tavern and ordered them as much as they chose to drink. My friend Edwards and those jolly Irishmen saved my arks and cargo. Edwards is yet alive, and resides in Bath .*
The loss I sustained in flour and wheat this year was great, but I did not feel it to be any serious inter- ruption to my business. On my return, I concluded that I must suspend the purchase of wheat while that ruinous measure, the embargo, was in force, and fall upon some other scheme and project. So I opened a large distillery, which opened a market to the farmers for their rye-corn, and even wheat, which I converted into "fire-water," as the Indians very properly call it. Jefferson's embargo did not injure the sale of it, but the contrary, as whiskey was then worth by the barrel from eight to ten shillings per gallon, and all men, women, and children drank of it freely in those days. I converted much of my whiskey into gin, brandy, and cordials, in order to suit the palates of some of my tippling customers.
I purchased in the fall droves of cattle and sent them to Philadelphia. I also stall-fed forty head of the best and largest cattle in the winter, which I ship- ped on arks to Columbia, and drove to Philadelphia, where they sold to good advantage. This mode of sending fat cattle to market astonished the natives as we passed down the river. It proved to be a profitable business.
He died in March, 1851.
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In the year 1814 I sold my Cold Spring Mills to Henry A. Townsend for $14,000. I erected other mills at Bath. In 1816 I ran down to Baltimore about 1,000,000 feet of pine lumber and 100,000 feet of cherry boards and curled maple. I chartered three brigs and shipped my cherry and curled maple and 500 barrels of flour to Boston. I sold my flour at a fair price, but my lumber was a dead weight on my hands. At length, the inventor of a machine for spin- ning wool by water power, offered to sell me one of his machines for $2,500, and take lumber in payment. I closed a bargain with him, which induced me to em- bark in woolen manufacture. I obtained a loan from the state, and was doing well until Congress reduced the tariff for the protection of home industry to a mere nominal tax. The country immediately after was flooded with foreign fabrics, and but few woolen fac- tories survived the shock.
I will now close my narrative so far as it relates to- my own business concerns, with a single remark, that: although I have been unfortunate at the close of my business, yet I flatter myself that all will admit that I have done nothing to retard the growth and pros- perity of the village of Bath, or of the inhabitants of Steuben county generally, especially at a time when there were no facilities for the farmers of the county to transport their produce to market other than that which was afforded them by my exertions. And whether the people of Steuben or myself have receiv- ed the most benefit I leave for them to determine.
It would appear to be of very little consequence for.
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me to state the number of civil offices that I held during my residence in Steuben county. It will only show how far I had the good will of the people. First, I was appointed Justice of the Peace ; next, a Judge of the Court of Common Pleas, and Surrogate of the county. In 1816 I was appointed High Sheriff of the county, which office I held four years. I held the of- fice of Post Master of the village of Bath, about eight years. The good people of Steuben also elected me three years in succession to represent them in the Legislature of the State of New York .- For all these favors I felt then, and ever shall feel grateful.
This brief narrative is nothing more than a mere synopsis of some of the principal events of my life during the last sixty years. I find that all labor, whether of the hand or head, have become burthen- some, which will be a sufficient apology for its insuf- ficiencies.
NOTE .- Gen. MCCLURE, at the age of 64, again started " in pur- suit of the Far West," which he says " had got a thousand miles ahead of me," and located at Elgin, in Illinois, where he resided until his death in the summer of 1851.
CHAPTER VI.
CAPTAIN WILLIAMSON'S ADMINISTRATION-LIFE AT BATH-GRAND SIMCOE WAR-RACES-THEATRE- VINDICATION OF THE ANCIENTS-BATH GAZETTE- COUNTY NEWSPAPERS-THE BAR-PHYSICIANS.
CAPTAIN Williamson having, toward the close of the last century, fairly established himself at Bath, was the ! greatest man in all the land of the West. His do- minion extended from Pennsylvania to Lake Ontario ; a province of twelve hundred thousand acres owned him as its lord ; Indian warriors hailed him as a great chief; settlements on the Genesee, by the Seneca, and at the bays of Ontario, acknowledged him as their founder; and furthermore, by commission from the Go- vernor of the State of New York, he was styled Colonel: in the militia of the Commonwealth, and at the head of his bold foresters, stood in a posture of defiance be -- fore the Pro-Consul of Canada, who beheld with indig- nation a rival arising in the Genesee forests, and tak-, ing possession of land which he claimed for his own sovereign, with a legend of New Englanders and Penn- sylvanians, mighty men with the axe and rifle, and with colonies of Scotch and Irish boys, who cleaved to the rebellious subjects of the King.
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His was no idle administration. It did not content him to sit in idle grandeur in his sumptuous log-for- tress on the Conhocton, like a Viceroy of the Back- woods, feasting on the roasted sides of mighty stags, and eating luxurious hominy from huge wooden trench- ers with the captains of his host. Neither did he yield to those temptations which so often beset and overpower governors sent to administer the affairs of distant districts of the wilderness, who, instead of col- lecting tribute from the refractory aborigines, and keep- ing them well hanged, are forever scouring the woods with hounds, and beating the thickets for bears, to the great neglect of the royal finances. He galloped hither and thither with restless activity-from Bath to Big Tree, from Seneca to Sodus, from Canadarque to Gerundigut, managing the concerns of his realm with an energy that filled the desert with life and ac- tivity. People heard of him afar off-in New England, in Virginia, and in Canada. ) The bankers of Albany and New York became familiar with his signature, Englishmen and Scotchmen were aroused from their homes and persuaded to cross the ocean for Genesee estates, and hearty young emigrants of the better sort -farmers and mechanics of some substance-were met upon their landing by recommendations to leave the old settlements behind them, and try their fortunes in Williamson's woods. Pioneers from below pushed their canoes and barges up the rivers, and men of the East toiled wearily through the forest with their oxen and sledges. Not a few Virginian planters, with their great household, abandoned their barren estates be-
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yond the Potomac, and performed marches up the Sus- quehanna valley and over the Laurel Ridge in much the same style (saving the camels) as the ancient Me- sopotamian patriarchs shifted their quarters-young- sters and young ladies making the journey gaily on horseback, while the elderly rode in ponderous chaises, secured against catastrophes by ropes and props, and the shoulders of their negroes. Several such cavalcades came over the Lycoming Road. One is yet remem- bered with some interest by a few, as containing a pair of distinguished belles, whose fame went before them, and who were met on their descent, half frozen, from the mountains in mid-winter, at the Painted Post Hotel, by a couple of no less distinguished sprouts of North- ern gentility, one of whom was afterwards so fortunate as to gain the hand of one of the frost-bitten beauties.
The administration of the affairs of the estate be- yond the limits of this county, is not, of course, a mat- ter to be treated of with propriety in this volume. Much of the agent's personal attention was of course required in this, but he made his residence at Bath, and to life and doings at the metropolis, our attention will for the present be directed.
Captain Williamson dwelt in his stronghold on the Conhocton, in high style, like a baron of old. All the expenses necessary to support the state which such a regent should maintain, were borne by the boundless fund which he controlled. Gentlemen from far countries came up to the woods on horseback, and were entertained sumptuously, as the gallant captain's feudal prototypes were wont to welcome to their castles
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straggling crusaders, pilgrims and foreign knights. There was an abundance of gentility in the land, both sham and genuine. Sometimes the admiring wood nymphs, who had heretofore seen only ill-favored and bare-backed pagans striding through the forest, beheld a solitary horseman, finely dressed in the most ap- proved fashion of the cities, trotting down the inter- minable lane of pines, followed at a respectful distance by his servant (a spectacle which this good republican county has not seen for many a year), and sometimes Captain Williamson himself might be seen dashing in gallant style through the woods, with a party of riders from the Hudson or the Roanoke, mounted on full blooded horses, while a functionary from the baronial kitchen brought up the rear, with luncheon and a basket of wine. There were, moreover, asses in lions' hides, who came down with a great flourish, and passed themselves off for real Nubians. A few old settlers have occasion to remember one of these gentry, a certain captain, "a great big man, and a mighty fine gentleman, with ruffles in his shirt, and rings on his fingers," who contracted to build Captain Williamson's stupendous Marengo barns, and one day went off in a portly and magnificent way, without paying his carpenters.
The Pine Plains were unable to support such courtly personages, and indeed the good stock of working men and farmers who tilled the land, found the soil so un- gracious, that they were not a little straightened for the means of supporting life. Captain Williamson transported his first flour from Northumberland, and
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a quantity of pork from Philadelphia. Afterwards these luxuries were obtained as best they could be. Flour was brought on pack horses from Tioga Point, and a treaty of commerce was entered into with Jemima Wilkinson, the prophetess, who had established her oracle on the outlet of Crooked Lake, where her dis- ciples had a mill and good farms. The first navigators of Crooked Lake carried their cargoes in Durham boats of six or eight tons burden, which they poled along the shore, or when favoring breezes filled their sails, steered through the mid-channel. These primi- tive gondoliers have lived to see the end of their pro- fession. Notwithstanding these resources, the village of the Plains was sometimes reduced to great straits. The Canisteo boy brought over his bag of wheat on a horse, threw it down at the door of the agency-house, and was paid five silver dollars the bushel. He drove his bullock across the hills, slaughtered it at the edge of the village, and sold every thing from hoof to horn for a shilling the pound. He led over a pack-horse laden with grain, paid all expenses, treated, and took home eighteen dollars. One old farmer remembers paying two dollars and a quarter for a hog's head, "and it was half hair at that." "Bath was just like San Francisco," says.an old settler on the comfortable farms of Pleasant Valley, "straw was a shilling a bunch, and every thing else in proportion. Money was plenty, but they almost starved out. They once adjourned court because there was nothing to eat. If it hadn't been for the Valley, the Pine Plains would have been depopulated. After court had been in
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session two or three days, you would see a black boy come down here on a horse, and with a big basket, foraging. He would go around to all the farms to get bread, meat, eggs, or anything that would stay life. Bath was the hungriest place in creation. You could'nt trust a leg of mutton to anybody but the land-agent."
The citizens of the county made court week a kind of general gathering time, and the larders of Bath were sometimes speedily exhausted. The prudent juryman before setting out from home, slung over his. shoulders a bag containing a piece of cold pork, and a huge loaf of bread; for no one knew to what extre- mities the ministers of justice might be reduced.
Nevertheless the affairs of the metropolis went on finely. The county prospered. The river was partially relieved of incumbrances ; roads were opened ; bridges were built ; farms were cleared. In 1796, or about that time, Captain Williamson resorted to sundry bold devices to arouse the backward people of the East, and to spread the fame of his realm throughout the land. Before entering upon those subjects, however, there is a martial affair which must by no means be lightly passed over-the grand Simcoe War of 1794. The memory of this has almost perished. Few of the good people know how a high and mighty potentate of the North once rose up in wrath against.Captain William- son, and threatened to come down upon him with the King's regiment, to storm his villages, to plant his ar- tillery, if necessary, under the ramparts of his strong- hold on the Conhocton, and to restore the Pine Plains with the rest of Western New York, to the Crown of
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Great Britain. This is really the bloodiest paragraph in the annals of Steuben County, and must be carefully treasured.
In a rather stunning explosion of rhetoric, a certain Fourth of July orator thus sounds the prelude to a kind of epic anthem, in which he indulges, in view of the threatened conflict with the Powers of the Pole. " Hark ! what sounds are those which arise from the " lowering North ! Lo ! the great Unicorn of Albion " begins to moan in the forests of Canada, and that " other red quadruped which rides rampant upon the " British shield, begins to growl in an offensive and im- " pertinent manner from the bristling ramparts of To- "ronto. War's mighty organ murmurs in distant " caverns, and clouds like black war-elephants, raise " their dusky backs out of the waters of Lake On- " tario."
Further quotations from this sonorous document will be refrained from. Humbler imagery will suffice to illustrate the passage of arms between Captain Williamson and the high and mighty Viceroy of Upper Canada. It is not generally known to our citizens what an enemy arose against us in our infancy, and how the infant settlement, like a sturdy little urchin, squared itself in defiance against the veteran bruiser, who offered to bully it out of its rights.
It is well known that although by the treaty of 1783, the British agreed to evacuate forthwith all military. posts held by them within the territory of the United States, the forts at Niagara and Oswego were held under various pretexts until the year 1796. Certain
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claims of sovereignty over certain lands in Western New York, were asserted by British officers, and their presence, their influence over the Indians, and the in- trigues of their agents, caused much apprehension and annoyance to the settlers. Captain Williamson, as we have seen, was interested in a settlement at Sodus. On the 16th of August, 1794, Lieut. Sheaffe, a British officer, called at that place, " by special commission from the Lieutenant Governor of his Britannic Majes- ty's province of Upper Canada," and in the absence of Captain Williamson, left a letter for him, demanding "by what authority an establishment has been ordered at this place, and to require that such a design be im- mediately relinquished."
The potentate by whom this order was dictated was Colonel Simcoe, an officer, who, we believe, served with some distinction at the head of a re- giment of loyalists in the Revolution, a gentleman undoubtedly of ability and discretion, and esteemed a good Governor by the Canadians, but one who felt sore at the late discomfiture of the Royal arms, and who appears to have embraced the delusion for a long time entertained by British officers of the old school, of the possibility of marching through America with a brigade of grenadiers. The Duke de la Rochefoucault Liancourt, a French traveller, gives us the key to Col. Simcoe's character and aspirations .- " He dis- "courses with much good sense on all subjects, but his " favorite topics are his projects and war, which seem "to be the objects of his leading passions. He is ac- " quainted with the military history of all countries.
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" No hillock catches his eye without exciting in his " mind the idea of a fort which might be constructed "on the spot, and with the construction of this fort he " associates the plan of operations for a campaign, es- "pecially of that which is to lead him to Philadelphia."
Col. Simcoe, then, had a professional hobby. He looked at banks and bráes with the eye of Major Dal- getty, and believed that hills were made for castles, harbors for forts, and knolls for " sconces." Of Phar- salia and Agincourt, of the Retreat of the Ten Thou- sand, and the flank movements of Gustavus, of the tac- tics of Gideon and the forays of Shishak, of battering- rams and bomb-shells, of torpedos, catapults, pikes and pistols-of such was the conversation of Col. Sim- coe. Of marching from Niagara through the wilder- ness like a Canadian Hannibal, of routing the back- woodsmen and making captive the audacious William- son in his stronghold among the mountains, of emerg- ing from the forest with drums, clarinets and feathers, of riding over the stupified farmers of Pennsylvania, and trailing his victorious cannon through the streets of Philadelphia, of hiding the humiliation of Saratoga in a blaze of glory, and of generally grinding to pow- der the rebellious enemies of the King-of such were the dreams of Col. Simcoe.
As the first step toward the attainment of these magnificent results, the Viceroy of His Britannic Ma- jesty stole a barrel of flour.
How this exploit was performed,-whether the store- house was approached after the style of Turenne, and the clerk summoned to surrender the key of the pad-
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lock, in the words of the Grand Turk at Constanti- nople ; whether hoops were respected and staves treated considerately, according to the usages of the Black Prince and other mirrors of courtesy, we cannot say, though the Governor undoubtedly overhauled his libra- ry and reviewed Rollin's History before he attempted a manœuvre which was probably without a precedent in the " military history of all nations." The particu- lars of this fell swoop of the Canadian war-kite do not appear in the few books hastily consulted on that sub- ject,-loftier matters, the evacuation of forts, the movements of emissaries, and the correspondence of functionaries, being solely discoursed of in those. Old settlers, however, aver that a quantity of flour belong- ing to Capt. Williamson was seized by the British and carried off.
Capt. Williamson resented the affront in a spirited manner. A sharp correspondence followed between himself and the trespassing parties. The cabinet at Washington took the matter in hand. The prospect looked, to the men in the forest, decidedly warlike. The "black war elephants," which the orator saw rising out of the billows of Ontario, it may be believed, shook their bright and glittering tusks with evil pur- port, while those other surly quadrupeds which dis- played themselves in such an ill-tempered manner on the " bristling ramparts of Toronto," undoubtedly in- dulged in demonstrations equally hostile and alarming. Captain Williamson had reason to believe that in the event of actual hostilities, the vengeance of Col. Sim- coe might seek him in his own city. He determined
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to make ready for the blow, to rally the woodsmen, to picket the public square, and to entertain the Canadian Hannibal and his legions with such a feast of smoke, steel, and sulphur, as those fire-eaters alone could re- lish.
Gen. McClure in his manuscript says, " The ad- ministration at Washington apprised Capt. William- son of the difficulties that had arisen between this country and Great Britain, and required him to make preparations for defence. He therefore received a Colonel's commission from the Governor of New York, and immediately thereafter sent an express to Albany for one thousand stand of arms, several pieces of can- non and munitions of war. He lost no time in making preparations for war. He gave orders to my friend Andrew Smith to prepare timber for picketing on a certain part of our village and ordered that I should erect block-houses according to his plan. The work went cheerily on. We could rally, in case of alarm, five or six hundred, most of them single men. Our Colonel organized his forces into companies. I had the honor of being appointed Captain of a light infantry company, and had the privilege of selecting one hun- dred men, non-commisioned officers and privates. In a short time my company appeared in handsome uni- form. By the instructions of our Colonel we mounted guard every night,-exterior as well as interior. Most of our own Indians, whom we supposed were friendly, disappeared, which we thought was a very suspicious circumstance."*
* Mr. Henry McElwee, of Mud Creek, was employed by Col. W.
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The young settlement, like the infant hero of old, seemed likely to be attacked in its cradle by a serpent ; and although the backwoodsmen, even of Canisteo, were too considerate to strangle the British Empire aggressively, and without an act of Congress author- izing such violence, yet it is quite apparent that had this great power seen fit to assail Col. Williamson's little province, the consequences would have been dis- astrous either to the one or the other. Every thing was made ready. Further movements of those "black war-elephants " and the rest of the hostile menagerie were awaited with interest. How soon will the snort- ing charger of Simcoe prance upon the banks of the terrified Conhocton, while his gloomy grenadiers stride through the forest with fixed bayonets and frowns. How soon will the flags of St. George flaunt under the Eight-mile Tree, or field pieces roar under our splin- tering palisades, while all the Six Nations, yelling in the under-brush, drive the wolves distracted. The apprehension of invasion was probably not very alarm- ing, yet sufficiently so to excite patriotism and visions. The lonely settler, sleeping in his cabin far in the fo- rest, the loaded rifle standing at his bed side, the watch- ful hounds growling without, dream that his house is assailed by seventy or eighty Esquimaux, painted like rainbows, and led on by George the Third in person, while Lord Cornwallis supports his sovereign with a ninety-gun ship and a bomb-ketch.
to cut white oak saplings eighteen feet long and eighteen inches thick at the butt, to be used for palisades, in enclosing the Pulteney Square. A great many of these were cut and peeled ready for use.
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