USA > New York > Steuben County > History of the settlement of Steuben County, N.Y. including notices of the old pioneer settlers and their adventures, 1893 > Part 6
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The pioneers of the town of Cameron were Joseph Warren, John Helmer, Samuel Baker, and Andrew Helmer.
This meagre notice of the settlement of the valley below the
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present town of Canisteo is the most complete that could be ob- tained from the best authorities to whom the writer was referred.
THE SETTLEMENT OF THE TIOGA VALLEY.
The first settlements in the Tioga Valley were made just over the Pennsylvania line, in the neighborhood of Lawrenceville. Samnel Baker, afterwards of Pleasant Valley, in this county, settled upon the open flat, at the mouth of the Cowenisque Creek, in 1787, and not long afterwards a few other settlers, the Stones, the Barneys and the Daniels, who also afterwards removed to Pleasant Valley, erected cabins in the wild grass and hazel bushes of the vicinity.
Col. Eleazer Lindley, a native of New Jersey, and an active officer of the " Jersey Blues " during the Revolutionary War, rode through the Genesee country previous to the year 1790, to find a tract of land where he might establish himself, and gather his children around him. The sickliness of the regions around Sen- eca and Canandaigua Lakes deterred him from locating his town- ship in the rich northern plains, and he purchased township number one of the second range, a rugged and most unpromising tract for agricultural purposes, but intersected by the fine valley of the Tioga. The healthy hills, the pure springs, and the clear beautiful river, descending from the ravines of the Alleganies, promised, if not wealth, at least freedom from those fevers, agues, cramps and distempers, which prostrated the frames and wrenched the joints of the unfortunate settlers in the northern marches.
In the spring of 1790, Col. Lindley started from New Jersey with a colony of about forty persons, who, with their goods, were transported in wagons to the Susquehanna. At Wilkesbarre the families and baggage were transferred to seven-ton boats and poled up the river, according to the practice of emigrants penetrating Ontario county by that valley ; while the horses and cattle, of which there were thirty or forty, were driven along the trails, or rude roads, on the bank. On the 7th day of June, 1790, the colony reached the place of destination.
Two sons of Col. Lindley, Samuel and Eleazer, and five sons- in-law, Dr. Mulford, Ebenezer Backus, Capt. John Seely, Dr.
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Hopkins and David Payne, started with the colony from New Jersey. Dr. Hopkins remained at Tioga Point to practice his profession. The others settled near Col. Lindley.
The river-flats were "open," and overgrown with strong wild grass and bushes. Plonghs were made by the settlers after their arrival, and as soon as these were finished, the flats were imme- diately broken, as on the Canisteo, with four oxen to each plough. The season was so far advanced, that the crop of corn was de- stroyed by frost, but a great harvest of buckwheat was secured. With buckwheat, milk and game, life was stayed during the first winter. History, looking sharply into the dim vale of ancient Tioga, smiles to see the image of "Old Pomp," a negro pound- ing buckwheat in a samp-mortar, from the first ice in November till the breaking up of the rivers in March, when canoes can find a passage to Shepard's Mill, on the Susquehanna. History also, in this connection, will embrace the opportunity to rescue Old Pomp from oblivion for the notable exploit of killing four bucks at a shot, and has the pleasure, therefore, of handing the said Pompey down to future generations as a fit subject for as much admiration as an intelligent and progressive race may think due to the man who laid low, with a musket at one shot, four fine bucks, as they were standing in the water.
Colonel and Mrs. Lindley were members of the Presbyterian Church, at Morristown, in New Jersey. In his settlement the Sabbath was strictly observed. Travelling missionaries were always welcomed, and when none such were present, the settlers were collected to hear a sermon read by Col. Lindley himself. In 1793, Col. Lindley was elected a member of the Legislature, and while attending the session of that body died in New York. Numerous descendants of Col. L. live in the neighborhood settled by him. His son, Hon. Eleazer Lindley, was, for several years, a Judge of the County Court. He died in 1825.
CHAPTER IV.
THE GREAT AIR CASTLE-THE CITY BUILDERS-CAPTAIN WIL- LIAMSON-NORTHUMBERLAND THE GERMAN COLONY-THE PASSAGE OF THE GERMANS THROUGH THE WILDERNESS.
WHILE our foremost pioneers were reaping their first harvests in the valleys of the Canisteo and Chemung, great schemes were on foot in the Capital of the British Empire for the Invasion of the Genesee wilderness. An officer of the royal army had con- ceived a splendid project for the foundation of a city in the midst of the forest, and, sustained by men of wealth in London, was about to penetrate its inmost thickets to raise up a Babylon amongst the habitations of the owl and the dragon.
The first purchasers of the Indian territory between the Genesee River and Seneca Lake had sold an immense estate to Robert Morris, the merchant. Morris had offered his lands for sale in the principal cities of Europe. The representations of his agents gained much attention from men of capital, and three gentlemen of London, Sir William Pulteney, John Hornby and Patrick Col- quhoun, purchased that noble estate which has since borne the name of the English Baronet. Their agent, Captain Charles Williamson, visited America, and excited by the reports trans- mitted by him, the associates indulged in brilliant dreams of the destiny of the wilderness which had fallen into their hands.
It was plain to see that the noblest forest of the Six Nations was soon to pass from the hands of those unfortunate tribes. This magnificent woodland, enclosed on three sides by Lakes Erie and Ontario, and that chain of rivers and slender lakes which divides our State into Central and Western New York, was already invaded by the forerunners of civilization. Traders had established themselves on the great trails. Explorers had marked cascades for the mill-wheel, and council groves for the axe. Tribe after tribe had first wavered and then fallen before the seductions of the merchant and the commissioner, and it was easy to see,
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that against the temptations of rifles and red rags and silver dol- lars, the expostulations of the native orators, who besought the clans to hold forever their ancient inheritance, would be power- less. Uneasy emigration was already pressing the borders of the whole western country, and, like water about to flood the land, was leaking through the barriers of the wilderness at every crevice. Wyoming rifles were already cracking among the hills of Canisteo. New England axes were already ringing in the woods of Onon- daga and Genesee, and most fatal of all signs, a land-ogre front Massachusetts sat in his den at Canadarque, carving the princely domain of the Senecas into gores and townships, while the wild men could but stand aside, some in simple wonder, others with Roman indignation, to see the partition of their inheritance.
It is not difficult to see what will be the end of this, thought the British castle builders. In half a century the wild huntsmen will be driven to the solitudes of the Ohio. This wonderful forest will have fallen, and men of Celtic blood and Saxon sinews will have possessed themselves of a land of surpassing richness. A city of mills will stand by the cataracts of Genesee. A city of warehouses at the foot of Lake Erie will receive at her docks tlie barges of traders from the illimitable western wilderness. Fields of fabulous fertility will bask in the sunlight where now the whooping pagan charges the bear in his thicket. Numberless villages by the rivers and secluded lakes will raise their steeples above the tree tops, while immeasurable farms will stretch from the shore of Ontario to the abutment of the Alleganies, and even thrust their meadows far within the southern ravines and hemlock gorges like tongues of the sea thrust far inland. It will be a re- gion of exceeding beauty and of unbounded wealth.
They further considered the avenues by which this western Canaan might communicate with the world without, and through which her products might pass to the sea-board. The maps re- vealed four natural avenues for commerce. One, in the north, led to Newfoundland fogs and the icebergs of Labrador. The second, opening in the hills of Cattaraugus, conducted to Mis- sissippi marshes and the Gulf of Mexico. The third offered itself in the north-east, where by tedious beating and portages, one might get into the Mohawk and float slowly down to New York
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Bay. But in the south-west, the Susquehanna thrust a branch almost to the centre of the Genesee country-a small but nav- igable river, the beginning of swift waters which might bear pon- derous cargoes in five days to the head of Chesapeake Bay. Men of judgment and experience, the statesmen and commercial prophets of the time, pointed to this river as the destined high- way of the west. According to the best of human calculation, the products of the Genesee, instead of being entrusted to the St. Lawrence, the Mississippi, or the perplexing channels of the Oswego and Mohawk, would inevitably seek this convenient val- ley, to be stowed in the rough river-craft, which, gliding down the swift waters of the Conhocton and Chemung, might enter on the second day the Susquehanna, and riding safely over the foaming rapids, plow in a week, the tide water of the ocean. Further- more, if in the course of centuries, civilized men penetrate those vast and wonderful wilds beyond the lakes, by what other road than this, is the surplus of Michigan and the north-west to reach the Atlantic ? The belief was not without foundation. Looking at the maps, even at this day, and observing how the north- western branch of the Susquehanna penetrates western New York, it would seem that but for the disastrous interference of the Erie canal and the unfortunate invention of railroads, the Conhocton valley might have been the highway of an immense commerce, and the roads leading to the port at the head of her navigable waters might have been trampled by tremendous caravans.
The imagination of the castle-builders was fired at this prospect. Such a flood, they argued, like the Abyssinian waters that swell the Nile, must enrich the valley through which it flows. In the midst of this valley must be a city-Alcairo of the West. Thither will all people flow. Caravans such as the deserts have never seen, will meet in its suburbs. Its market places will present all that picturesque variety of garb and manner which interest the traveler in an oriental sea-port. There will be seen the Canadian and his pony from the beaver dams of the upper province, the Esquimaux with his pack of furs from Labrador, the buffalo- hunter from the illimitable plains of Illinois, the warrior fron Maumee, and the trapper from the Grand Sault, while merchants from the old Atlantic cities will throng the buzzing bazaars, and
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the European traveler will look with amazement on the great north-western caravan as it rolls like an annual inundation through the city gates. The river, now narrow, crooked and choked with flood-wood, will become, by an artful distribution of the mountain waters, a deep and safe current, and will bear to the Susquehanna arks and rafts in number like the galleys of Tyre of old. Warehouses and mills will stand in interminable files upon its banks. Steeples, monuments, pyramids, and man knows not what beside, will rise in its noble squares.
This was the vision that greeted the eyes of the British adven- turers; and to found the promised metropolis their agent, a Scottish officer, crossed the Atlantic and went up into the wilder- ness clothed with plenary powers, and with unlimited authority over the Baronet's banker. Castles of ivory and towers of glass glimmered in his eyes far away among the pines. A more bril- liant bubble never floated in the sunshine. A more stupendous air castle never shone before human eyes. Would the glorious bubble submit to be anchored to hills, or would it rise like a bal- loon and float away through the air? Could the grand wavering air castle be made stone, and was it possible to change the vapors, the fogs, the moonshine, the red clouds and rainbows, out of which such atmospherical structures are made into brick and marble ? If any man was fit to attempt such a chemical exploit, it was the one entrusted by the associates with its execution.
Charles Williamson, the first agent of the Pulteney Estate, was a native of Scotland. He entered the British army in youth, and during the Revolutionary war held the commission of Captain in the twenty-fifth regiment of foot. His regiment was ordered to America, but on the passage Captain Williamson was captured by a French privateer. He remained a prisoner at Boston till the close of the war. On his return to Europe, he made the acquaint- ance of the most distinguished public men of England, and was often consulted concerning American affairs. On the organiza- tion of the association of Sir William Pulteney and the others, he was appointed its agent, and entered zealously into the schemes for colonizing the Genesee Forest. Captain Williamson was a man of talent, hope, energy and versatility, generous and brave of spirit, swift and impetuous in action, of questionable discretion in
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business, a lover of sport and excitement, and well calculated by his temperament and genius to lead the proposed enterprise. His spirit was so tempered with imagination, that he went up to the wilderness, not with the dry and dogged resolution of one expect- ing a labor of a lifetime insubduing the savage soil, but in a kind of chivalrous dashing style, to head an onslaught amongst the pines, and to live a Baron of the Backwoods in his Conhocton Castle, ruling over forests and rivers, after the manner of the old Norman nobles in England.
Having landed in Baltimore in 1791, and taken the steps re- quired by our naturalization laws, he received in his own name, from Robert Morris, a conveyance of the Pulteney estate, and begun immediately his preparations for the colonization of the estate. Of these preliminary movements, there is but little to be said. It appears that he corresponded extensively with men whom he sought to engage in his enterprise, that he opened com- munication with many planters of Virginia and Maryland, pro- posing a transfer of themselves and their households from the worn-out plantations of the South, to the fresh woods of the Gen- esee ; that he travelled much through the country and made active exertions by personal application and by advertisement to induce farmers and emigrants of the better sort from Great Brit- ain to settle upon his Northern lands.
He established his centre of organization and correspondence at the village of Northumberland, situated on the Susquehanna, at the mouth of the West Branch of that river, then a place of much consequence, and one which at this day, though somewhat de- cayed, retains an ancient and old fashioned respectability of ap- pearance not to be seen in the dashing young town of New York, west of the Mohawk. To this old town we owe at least civility. For a time, during the infancy of our county, it was one great reliance against starvation and nakedness. It supplied us with flour when we had 110 grain, with pork when we had no meat, with clothes when we were unclad, with shoes when we were unshod. It sent us our mails, it fitted out caravans of emigrants, it received with hearty cheer our gentlemen when weary of riding over the desolate Lycoming road. Many impudent villages of the north, which now like high-headed youngsters keep their fast
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telegraphs, smoke anthracite coal, and drive their two-minute locomotives, as if they inherited estates from their ancestors, were, if the truth must be told, once shabby and famished settlements, and when faint and perishing were saved from actual starvation by this portly old Susquehanna farmer, who sent out his hired men with baskets of corn, and huge shoulders of pork, with orders to see to it that not a squatter went hungry. By extraordinary good luck these lean squatters became suddenly rich, and now arrayed in very flashy style, with Gothic steeples and Moorish pavilions, and all such trumpery, driving their fine chariots, and smoking their sheet-iron funnels, they laugh most impertinently, and we may say ungratefully at the old Quaker who had compas- sion on them, when they lay starving in the underbrush. These things, let the lumberman remember, when from his raft he sees the white steeple of Northumberland relieved against the dark precipice beyond ; the west branch meanwhile pouring its flood into the lordly Susquehanna, and renowned Shemokinn Dam, the Chiarybdis of pilots, roaring below.
In the winter after his arrival in America, Captain Williamson made a visit to the Genesee by way of Albany and the Mohawk. In the upper valley of the Mohawk he, passed the last of the old settlements. From these old German farms the road was but a lane opened in the woods, passable only on horseback, or in a sledge. A few cabins, surrounded by scanty clearings, were the only indications of civilization which met his, eye, till he stood amongst a group of cabins at the foot of Seneca Lake. The famed Genesee estate was before him. Surely few city builders of ancient or modern times have gazed upon districts which offered less en- couragement to them than did the wild Iroquois forest to the hopeful Scot. A little settlement had been commenced at Canan- daigua. The Wadsworths were at Big Tree. The disciples of Jemima Wilkinson, the prophetess, had established their new Jerusalem on the outlet of Crooked Lake, and scattered through the vast woods, a few hundred pioneers were driving their axes to the hearts of the tall trees, and waging war with the wolves and panthers. Beyond the meadows of the Genesee Flats was a forest as yet unknown to the axe, which harbored tribes of savages waver- ing betwixt war and peace. British garrisons, surly from discom-
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fiture, occupied the forts at Oswego and Niagara ; colonies of Tories, including in their numbers ,of infamous renown, dwelt on the frontiers of Canada, on lands allotted to them by the crown, and there were not wanting those amongst the military and polit- ical agents of the provincial government who incited the jealous barbarians to the general slaughter of the backwoodsmen.
Wilderness upon wilderness was before him. Wilderness sur- rounded the white ice-bound lakes above Erie, and spread over plains and mountains to the fabulous prairies of which the Indians told tales too wonderful for belief. The British troops and a few French settlers near Detroit, with a few traders and agents amongst the Ohio tribes, were the only civilized occupants of the far west. In the southern districts of the estate there were small settlements on the Chemung and the Canisteo, accessible only from below by the rivers. There were settlements on the upper Susquehanna and at Tioga Point.
In the following summer Captain Williamson determined to open a high road from Northumberland to the Genesee. The only road leading to the north from the mouth of the West Branch followed the valley of the Susquehanna, which at this point, to one going above, begins a long and unnecessary ramble to the east. A direct road to the Genesee would cross a ridge of the Alleganies. An Indian trail, often trod during the Revolu- tion by parties from the fastnesses of the Six Nations, ran over the mountains ; but to open a road through the shattered wilder- ness, which would be passable for wagons, was deemed impos- sible. After a laborious exploration, however, by the agent and a party of Pennsylvanian Hunters, a road was located from " Ross Farm " (now Williamsport) to the mouth of Canascraga Creek, on the Genesee, a distance of one hundred and fifty miles. This road was opened in the ensuing autumn by a party of Ger- man emigrants.
The fortunes of this German colony formed quite a perplexing episode in Captain Williamson's history. "The time when Ben Patterson brought the Germans through " is yet remembered by a few of our aged citizens. The simplicity, the sufferings and the terrors of these Teutonic pioneers were sources of much amuse- ment to the rough backwoodsmen, and their passage through the
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wilderness and over the wild Laurel Mountains, was in early times an event so momentous, that although the matter has strictly but little reference to the history of this county, it may nevertheless be permitted to recount their frights and tribulations.
It seems that Mr. Colquhoun, who conducted the business affairs of the Association, became acquainted in London with a certain Dr. Berezy, a German of education and address, who engaged to col- lect a colony of his countrymen, and conduct them to the Genesee lands under the auspices of the associates. Captain Williamson seems not to have favored the scheme, but while living at North- umberland in 1792, the colony arrived, and it fell upon him to devise some plan of disposing of this very raw material to the best advantage. There were about two hundred of them, men, women and children. Though stout and healthy enough, they were an igno- ant and inexperienced people, accustomed to dig with the spade in the little gardens of the Fatherland, and as unfit for forest work and the rougli life of the frontiers as babes. Captain Williamson, with his high and hopeful spirits, did not lay the matter deeply at heart, but encouraged the honest folk, and filled their heads with fine tales, till they saw almost as many balloons hanging afar off over the wilderness as the enthusiastic Briton himself belield.
It was determined to send them over the mountains to the Tioga, thence by the valleys of that river and of the Conhocton, to Williamsburgh, on the Genesee. It was necessary to give the emigrants in charge to some reliable and energetic guide, who would see to it that they did not fall into the rivers, or break their necks over the rocks, or be crushed by falling trees, or be devoured of bears, or frightened out of their wits by owls and buzzards. Benjamin Patterson, the hunter, who was well acquainted with the German language, and in whose judgment and resolution Captain Williamson had entire confidence, was employed in this capacity. He was abundantly provided with money and means. Seven stout young Pennsylvanians, well skilled in the use of the axe and the rifle, were chosen by him as assistant woodsmen, and these and the Germans were to open the road, while the guide, in addition to his duties as commander of the column, undertook to supply the camp with game.
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It was in the month of September when the emigrants appeared at the mouth of Lycoming Creek, ready for the march to the Northern Paradise. The figure of the Guide, girt for the wilder- ness, with his hunting shirt, belt, knife and tomahawk, appeared to the simple Germans rather an odd one for a shepherd who was to lead them over Delectable Mountains to meadows and pleasant brooks. It seemed rather like the figure of some hard-headed Mr. Great-Heart, arrayed with a view to such bruises as one must expect in a jaunt through the land of Giant Grim and other unamiable aborigines ; and when the seven stalwart young front- iersmen stood forth, girt in like manner, for warfare or the wilder- ness, visions of cannibals and cougars, of bears and alligators, of the bellowing unicorn and the snorting hippopotamus, were vividly paraded before the eyes of the startled pilgrims.
A little way up the creek they commenced hewing the road. Here the Germans took their first lessons in wood-craft. They were not ready apprentices, and never carried the art to great perfection. We hear of them in after years sawing trees down .* The heavy frontier axe, (nine-pounder often,) was to them a very grievous thing. They became weary and lame; the discomforts of the woods were beyond endurance, and their complaints grew longer and more doleful at each sunset. But in a few weeks they found themselves deep in the wilderness. The roaring of torrents, the murmur of huge trees, the echoes of the glens, the precipices, at the feet of which ran the creeks, the forests waving on the mountains, and crowding the ravines like armies, were sounds and sights unknown to the pleasant plains of Germany. When it was night, and the awful howling of the wolves all around scared the children, or when the crash of great trees, overturned by the high and whirling winds of autumn, woke the wives from dreams of home, or when the alarmed men, aroused in the mid- watches by strange uproars, looked out into the darkness to see enormous black clouds sailing over head, and the obscure cliffs looming around, while goblins squeaked and whistled in the air, and kicked the tents over, then they all gave way to dismal
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