Landmarks of Monroe County, New York : containing followed by brief historical sketches of the towns of the county with biography and family history, Part 7

Author: Peck, William F. (William Farley), b. 1840; Raines, Thomas; Fairchild, Herman LeRoy
Publication date: 1895
Publisher: Boston : Boston History Co.
Number of Pages: 1160

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By Hiokatoo, who died in 1811, one hundred and three years old, Mary Jemison had six children, all of whom, in strict accordance with the Indian laws of descent, were called by her family name, for they were considered as Senecas, not at all because their father was of that nation but because their mother had been adopted into it. Strong drink, always the foe of the red men, was particularly destructive to this family. The oldest of Hiokatoo's sons, John Jemison, killed his half-brother, Thomas, in a drunken quarrel, then he murdered his own brother, Jesse, and finally he himself was killed by two other Indians, leaving Mary, in her old age, without a son to lean upon. John's as- sassins fled, but afterward returned and sent to Mary a wampum belt, knowing that her acceptance of it would be a token of forgiveness. The heart-broken mother declined to receive the symbol of blood-

LANDMARKS OF MONROE COUNTY

atonement, but told the messenger that she would never demand the lives of the culprits. There seems to have been no thought of punishing them in the white courts, though the country was pretty well settled by that time, but they could not bear the opprobrium that fastened upon them, so one left this region and the other committed suicide. These events occurred, not while the Jemisons were young, but after they had large families, the members of which did not inherit the vices of their fathers. One of Mary's grandchildren, a son of Thomas, after two years at Dartmouth college, became an assistant surgeon in the United States navy and died on board his vessel, with the respect of all his fellow-officers.

At the treaty of Big Tree Mary Jemison, who had long been promised a deed of land as her own, was given a large tract, containing seventeen thousand, nine hundred and twenty-seven acres, or about twenty-eight square miles, on both sides of the Genesee, near the pres- ent site of Geneseo. This was among the reservations excepted from the sale to Robert Morris, and it was known, till its first partition, as the Gardeau reservation. In the same cabin that she had built on the Gardeau flats in 1780, seventeen years before they became her property, Mary continued to live till 1831, when she sold out the last piece of her property and removed to the Seneca reservation then on Buffalo creek, where she died in 1833, about ninety-one years old, having been con- verted from paganism to Christianity some two months before her death.

Mary Jemison's life presents many interesting features, both as repre- sentative and as peculiar to herself. No instance can be found of a more complete change from one race to another. Having learned to read in her early childhood, that acquirement passed away from her soon after her entrance into captivity, and she never regained it. Although she strove to keep alive the knowledge of the English language by the daily repetition of the catechism that her mother had taught to her, that, too, gradually faded out of her mind, and it was with difficulty that she re- covered enough of it to act as interpreter or to hold converse with the white people who filled the fertile valley that was so long her home. For some time after she was carried off, a wave of longing to return to her own race would occasionally pass over her, but her feelings became

CONNECTING LINKS.

constantly more closely conformed to her surroundings. Not only did she never attempt to escape but she carefully avoided all efforts toward her recovery. When the Revolutionary war had ended and the gov- ernment had offered a bounty for the restoration of all captives held by the Indians, one of the principal Seneca chiefs had arranged with some men to have Mary taken back, by force if necessary, but she steadfastly refused to go, even hiding away to avoid the dreaded emancipation, while her Indian brother, between whom and herself there was always the tenderest affection, stood ready to kill her, with her full consent, if that should prove the only way to prevent her return. Even in her old age, when, the last of her sons having been murdered, she had no one to lean upon, she was urged to resume the status of her birthright and go back to the white people, among whom her position would be in- fluential by reason of her large estate, but she would not heed the ad- vice. Born an Anglo-Saxon, she had become an Iroquois, and so clearly was this fact established and recognised that when she wished to sell a portion of her land a special act of the New York legislature was passed, in 1817, to confer naturalisation upon her before the deed of conveyance could be signed and recorded.

Many people have been attracted by the freedom of savage life, and have abandoned civilisation therefor, but in most cases the change has been marked by a degradation that caused them to sink below the level of their associates. With Mary Jemison it was not so. She was always the friend of the white man, always the provider for the needy, always the meditator for the suffering and the oppressed. Many an execution did she witness, for witchcraft and other offenses, many a scene of fiendish torture did she behold, but, when it was possible, she interposed to prevent the worst atrocities. Her voice was often raised on the side of mercy, never on that of cruelty, and, though she some- times implored in vain, more than one life was saved by her entreaties. Her hospitality was absolutely unbounded, her integrity was never questioned, her character was above reproach. Two figures will always stand conspicuous upon the threshold of modern life in this valley, link- ing the passing with the coming race-Indian Allan and the White Woman of the Genesee.

LANDMARKS OF MONROE COUNTY.

CHAPTER IX.

SETTLEMENT OF THE WHITES.

The Twenty-Thousand Acre Tract-The Deed to Robert Morris-Settlement of the Lusks-Settlement of the Sheffers-Visit of Chateaubriand-Of Rochefoucault-Lian- court-Of Other Frenchmen-Settlement of William Hencher-Gideon King and Zadock Granger-King's Landing-Hanford's Landing -- Town Meetings, Schools and Churches -- Roads and the Mail Service -Tryon Town -- Castleton -- Carthage -- The Great Bridge -- The War of 1812 -- Defense of Charlotte.

Some time in 1789 Oliver Phelps opened an office at Canandaigua for the disposal of his new territory, and that was the first land office ever opened in the United States for the sale of forest lands to actual settlers. The first recorded deed of the soil in Monroe county, as transcribed in in the books of our county clerk's office from those in Ontario county, was dated and recorded on the 16th day of September, 1790. It con- veys from Joseph Smith to James Latta, for the consideration of one hundred and seventy-five dollars, a part of township number two in the "short range," one boundary line being the lake shore, another the Genesee river-that is to say, it comprised the present village of Char- lotte. The phraseology of the document is very loose, the area of the piece sold being not stated in miles or in acres and the only approach thereto being found in the words "one-fourth part of tract of land granted to me, it being one-eighth of township two," etc., so that it is wholly uncertain whether it was a quarter or an eighth or a thirty- second part of the township. Inasmuch as the deed states that Smith's title rests on a conveyance to him and Horatio Jones from Oliver Phelps, and as this deed to Latta was ordered to be placed on record by Phelps himself, as judge of the court of Common Pleas of Ontario county, it may have been considered unnecessary to precede its record by a deed, if there ever was one, from Oliver Phelps. A month later, on November 17, a deed, dated November 8, was recorded from Phelps and Gorham to Ebenezer Hunt, Robert Breck, Quartus Pomeroy,

SETTLEMENT OF THE WHITES.

Samuel Henshaw, Samuel Hinckley, Moses Kingsley and Justin Ely. The deed conveyed, for the consideration of six hundred pounds, twenty thousand and one hundred acres, less the one hundred previously given to Ebenezer Allan and which was expressly reserved in this instrument. With this exception the "Twenty-thousand- acre tract," as it has always been called, embraces most of the west half of Rochester and of Gates, with a small part of Greece. Starting from a point on the river bank, between the Holy Sepulchre and Riverside cemeteries, the line runs due west about seven miles, thence south about five miles along the western boundary of the towns named, thence east to the river, striking it a little north of Clarissa street bridge and following the stream for the eastern boundary of the tract.

On the following day the deed to Robert Morris was recorded, and it is remarkable that in that document-the original of which is preserved at Bath-the words " C, number one " should have been written over a manifest erasure, while the words "twenty-four thousand and thirty acres," which are applicable to another township, are allowed to stand. From this, and from the fact that on the map of Maxwell's survey the purchase of Hunt and others is given as that of township number two in range A, which is the larger piece, it is apparent that a change of lots was made at the last moment and that it was not thought worth while to go to the trouble of writing a new and correct deed for Morris. Such blemishes and inaccuracies in an instrument so important would be almost impossible as coming from any other source; in this case they are only characteristic.

Permanent settlements began in Monroe county on both sides of the river in the same year. The fifth sale of Phelps and Gorham was to Caleb Hyde and others, of Lenox, Mass. Of this land fifteen hundred acres, near the head of Irondequoit bay, was set off for John Lusk, though there is a doubt as to how he obtained his title, some saying that he got it direct, as one of the original grantees of Phelps, while the statement is made otherwise, with a degree of particularity, that he bought that fifteen hundred acres from the Indians, and that then, find- ing that his title was imperfect, he bought one thousand acres over again, paying twenty-five cents an acre for it. There may have been some double dealing about it. John Lusk certainly came to this region

LANDMARKS OF MONROE COUNTY.

in the summer of 1789, with his son Stephen, fifteen years old, and a hired man, crossing Cayuga lake on a raft and swimming their cattle behind them. Arrived at their destination, they camped at once, made a clearing, built a log cabin and sowed twelve acres with wheat, which they obtained from Ebenezer Allan, on the other side of the river. To establish communication with his place they cut a road through the woods to the mouth of Red creek, to which point the wheat was carried in a canoe. Attracted by the novelty of these proceedings; Indians often called at the farm, having come across the lake from Canada and passed up the bay, on their way to Canandaigua to get their annuities. Far more unpleasant visitors were the fever and ague, which prostrated the new settlers for several weeks, when, on their recovery in the au- tumn, they went back to Massachusetts, only to return in the following spring, when John Lusk brought his whole family with him, coming all the way from Schenectady by water.

If the Lusks were the pioneers of Monroe county on the east side- with the insignificant exception of the tory Walker-so the Sheffers, who were close upon their heels, were the forerunners of the west side, with the exception of the erratic and fleeting Indian Allan. Peter Sheffer, then more than eighty years old, came here from Lancaster, Penn., with his two sons, Peter and Jacob, some time in 1789, it is not known in what month, but probably in the fall, for his deed from Allan was, as previously stated, dated November 23. Allan's farm was by far the most attractive piece of land in the country at that time, most of the soil being cleared of its forest trees and nearly sixty acres of it put under cultivation, besides which there was a comfortable log cabin standing upon it. With all these improvements, Allan sold the farm for two dollars and a half an acre, or eleven hundred and seventy dol- lars, using a part of the money to put up the grist mill at the falls, which would not have been completed otherwise. The beginnings of so many things are connected with the Sheffer family that it may be well to mention some of them here, even at the risk of repetition in another part of this volume. In 1790 Peter Sheffer, junior, married Elizabeth Schoonhover, the daughter of a family that came in the spring of that year to Dugan's creek, a little south of Scottsville; on the 20th of January, 1793, their first child, Nancy, afterward the wife of

SETTLEMENT OF THE WHITES.

Philip Garbutt, was born; in 1795 Jacob Sheffer, one of the pioneers, died. Those were the first events, each of its own kind, 1 that occurred among the white settlers, in what is now Monroe county, or anywhere west of the Genesee river. The first frame dwelling-house in all that region was put up by the younger Peter Sheffer in 1797, the lumber being obtained from Allan's saw-mill, the nails and other iron used in the con- struction being brought from Geneva.

Turning aside for a moment from the active industry of the early settlers, it may be interesting to note what was thought and said and written about the new country by travelers whose curiosity led them to visit the great West in much the same spirit as that which impels explorers of this day to visit the recesses of the African forests. As we owe to the intelligence of the Frenchman Charlevoix our first descrip- tion of this region, so we turn to a distinguished compatriot of his for another sketch of the same locality, when the occupants seen by the former writer were about to be succeeded by those of another race. In 1790 Chateaubriand, poet, philosopher and statesman, came over here from France and passed through this part of the state, on his way to Niagara falls, coming from Albany as directly as possible. Here is what he says about it, in his " Voyage en Amérique :"

" The American population is now making toward the concessions of the Genesee. The government sells these concessions more or less dear, according to the excellence of the soil, the quality of the timber and the course and number of the streams. The abodes within the 'clearings' here offer a curious mixture of wildness and civilisation. Within the recesses of a forest that had previously heard only the yells of savages and the noise of wild beasts we often come across a patch of cultivated land and perceive at the same time the cabin of an Indian and the habitation of a white man. Some of these finished homes in the woods recall the tidiness of English or Dutch farmhouses ; others, half completed, have but the dome formed by the standing forest trees for a roof. I was received in some of these habitations and found often a charming family, with the comforts and refinements of Europe and all this within a few steps of an Iro- quois hut. One day, after traveling some hours without finding a trace of habitation, I perceived the signboard of a tavern hanging from the trunk of a tree on the side of the road. Hunters, farmers and Indians meet together at these caravansaries, but the first time I reposed in one of them I asseverated solemnly that it would be the last. Enter- ing, I stood stupefied at the aspect of an immense bed constructed around a stake ;

1 The only qualification of this recital is with regard to the first birth. The statement has been made that Alfred, son of Simon Stone, was born on the east side of the river, in 1792, but the month has not been given and there may be a mistake as to the year,

LANDMARKS OF MONROE COUNTY.

each traveler took his place in this bed, with his feet toward the center stake, and his head toward the circumference of a circle, in such a manner that the sleepers were ranged symmetrically, like the spokes of a wheel or the sticks of a fan. After some hesitancy I introduced myself into this machine, and was falling asleep when I was rudely awakened by the snoring of my grand diable of a Dutch guide, who was ex- tended fast asleep at my side. I never felt greater horror in my life. I threw myself out of my bunk, cursing cordially the usages of the first settlers, and went to sleep in my manteau under the light of the moon."

Three years later another Frenchman, still more celebrated, the Mar - quis de Talleyrand, was in this vicinity, stopping for some time at Mt. Morris, and after his return home he read before the French Institute, in 1797, a paper describing his adventures in this country, but no record of that document seems to have been preserved.1 Still another tourist of that vivacious race, self- exiled, like the others, by the dangers that enshrouded all the aristocracy, was here about that time. The Duke de la Rochefoucault- Liancourt, in his "Travels through the United States of North America, the Country of the Iroquois and Upper Can- ada," gives a minute account of everything that he saw over here. He alludes to Charles Williamson's complete authority over all the vast tract of the Pulteney estate, speaks with admiration of the enterprise that he had displayed in building roads erecting mills and clearing woodlands, and contrasts his glorious career with that of a dissipated courtier or a mercenary stock-jobber. Starting from Bath in June, 1795, the duke traveled this way on horseback through Canandaigua- or Canandarqua, as he calls it-where the following incident occurred :

" A party of Indians came to demand justice upon an American soldier, who had murdered two Indians from motives of jealousy and revenge. The business, however, was hushed up by the payment of two hundred dollars for each Indian, which is the settled price of compensation in such cases, and the soldier remained at liberty. Not so, however, when an Indian murders a white man; in this case the assassin is delivered up to the Americans and hanged. And thus it is that a people which makes its boast of honesty, justice and equality can connive at the most flagrant perversion of justice, to the eternal disgrace of both the executors and its victims. The treatment of the Indians and the servitude of the negroes have branded the fair face of American freedom with an odious stigma, which the government should strain every nerve to efface."

Passing on to the Genesee river, the duke notes on the way the sur-

] I have caused a thorough search to be made for that paper among the archives of the great national library in Paris, but it could not be found there. The reports of proceedings of the Institute for the troublous decade that closed the century are very defective.

SETTLEMENT OF THE WHITES.

prising fertility of the soil and the venom of the mosquitoes, but he is more interested in observing the manner and mode of living of the new inhabitants, of which he remarks as follows :

" The dwellings of the new settlers are commonly at first set up in a very slight man- ner; they consist of huts, the roofs and walls of which are made of bark, and in which the husband, wife and children pass the winter, wrapped up in blankets. They also frequently construct houses of trees laid upon each other, the interstices of which are either filled up with loam or left open, according as there is more or less time to fill them up. In such buildings as have attained to some degree of perfection there is a chimney of brick or clay, but very often there is only an aperture in the roof to let out the smoke, and the fire is replenished with the trunks of trees. At a little distance from the house stands a small oven, built sometimes of brick, but more frequently of clay. Salt pork and beef are the usual food of the new settlers; their drink is water and whiskey, but there are few families unprovided with coffee and chocolate."

The land on both sides of the river filled up less rapidly than had been anticipated. Still, the stream was steady, if not swift, and into the new region families kept moving, preceded, in most cases, by a father or an elder son, who would make a clearing and then return east for the other members of the household. When the Lusks came back in 1790 they brought with them Enos Stone, whose brother Orange came here a few weeks later and settled in what is now Brighton, near the "big rock and tree," that still remain on East avenue, the only landmark now in the county that is directly connected with Indian councils, some of which are known to have been held at that spot. There Mrs. Stone entertained, in 1797, the Duke of Orleans-afterward King Louis Philippe-and his brothers, the Duke of Montpensier and Count Beaujolais, who were escorted hither from Canandaigua by Thomas Morris, to see the falls of the Genesee. Later in 1790 two other Stone brothers, Israel and Simon, no relation to the pair first mentioned, settled in what is now Pittsford, and with them several others, whose names will, no doubt, be given in the sketches of the several towns.

On the west side of the river the first settler after the Sheffer family was William Hencher, who was a refugee from Massachusetts, where he had participated in Shay's rebellion. In August, 1791, he came here from the east, stopping at the mouth of the river a while with the tory Walker, then crossing the Genesee and keeping on to Long pond, where he build a hut, the first white habitation on the shore of the lake between

LANDMARKS OF MONROE COUNTY.

the Genesee and the Niagara. This he occupied with his family in the following year, feeling no security in that advanced outpost of civilisa- tion till Wayne's victory on the Miami river, in 1794, crushed the spirit of the savages. From that conflict the Senecas, who had gone westward to participate in the struggle, came back to this state in a humble frame of mind ; if the battle had gone the other way many of these frontier settlements would have been extinguished in blood and fire. That peril having passed, Hencher found that his next danger of destruction lay in the rattlesnakes, which infested the country in surprising numbers, and it was not till he abated that nuisance that he feft justified in pay- ing for his six hundred acres of land a second time, his first title having proved defective, a circumstance by no means unique, as it seems.

Oliver Phelps, having, in some way, got back one-half of the Twenty- thousand-acre tract, which he had sold to Hunt and others in 1790, in- terested his townspeople of Suffield, Conn., in his western speculations, and some of them determined to become actual settlers in the new country. In 1796 Gideon King, Zadock Granger and others, of the old town, migrated to this wilderness and made a careful examination of the river on both sides, from Allan's mills to the mouth of the Genesee. The beauty of the scenery induced them to purchase land and make a location on the river bank, on the west side, about four miles south of the lake, at a spot where the depth of water would allow the passage of boats and where there was a smooth plateau, only slightly above the surface of the river and sheltered from the west winds by the high bluff in its rear, while a natural declivity close by invited the construction of a road to the upper level. In other words, it seemed the one spot on the river adapted for a permanent landing for lake vessels when trade and commerce should be drawn to the Genesee by the growth of pop- ulation. Three thousand acres at this spot were conveyed to King, and as much more to Granger, and then they returned to Connecticut, but their sons came on, with their families, at the end of the year. Although it was the dead of winter, the new comers built at once several log houses on the high bank, getting the lumber for the roofs and the floor- ing from Allan's mill, three miles away. In the spring of 1797 Gideon King returned to his new home, built a large house for himself and his family on the road leading from the present Lake avenue to the land-

SETTLEMENT OF THE WHITES.

ing, graded the steep roadway down the bank of the river, began the construction of a dock upon the lower plateau and died in the following year. Upon the monument, erected in 1830 and still standing over his remains in the old burying-ground near the site of his home, are these words: " The Genesee fever was mortal to most heads of families in 1798, and prevented further settlements until about 1815."

This little hamlet, the dock below and the cluster of families on the bank above, was generally known as King's Landing till 1809, when, the original settlers having moved to other localities, the seven Hanford brothers came here from Rome, in this state, bought a part of the land, erected the Steamboat Hotel, which for many years was one of the best-known stopping-places on the line of travel along the Ridge road, and extended the facilities of the dock by the construction of ware- houses, so that the place, which now exists only in memory, became known as Hanford's Landing. In those early days it stood apart from its nearest neighbors, as may be judged from the following statement from the journal of John Maude, an observant Englishman, who came through this part of the country in 1800 and stopped at Allan's mills :

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Landmarks of Monroe County, New York : containing followed by brief historical sketches of the towns of the county with biography and family history, Part 7

Author: Peck, William F. (William Farley), b. 1840; Raines, Thomas; Fairchild, Herman LeRoy Publication date: 1895 Publisher: Boston : Boston History Co. Number of Pages: 1160

Author: Peck, William F. (William Farley), b. 1840; Raines, Thomas; Fairchild, Herman LeRoy
Publication date: 1895
Publisher: Boston : Boston History Co.
Number of Pages: 1160