USA > New York > Orleans County > Pioneer history of Orleans County, New York, containing some account of the civil divisions of western New York > Part 17
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OF ORLEANS COUNTY.
ber, intending to move to Michigan. He was now worth about fifteen hundred dollars and was twenty- nine years old.
He finally bought a tanyard at Gaines village of James Mather, and moved there Oct. second, eighteen hundred and thirty-five. Gaines was then quite a place of business. It had in active operation one academy, five dry goods stores, three groceries, one steam grist mill and furnace, three taverns, two churches, two tannerys, one cabinet shop, one large wagon factory, three law offices, three blacksmith shops, one milline- ry shop, one ashery, besides harness, shoe, and tailor shops, &c.
At Gaines Mr. Bidelman employed four or five men in his tannery, and five or six men in his shoe- shop generally.
In 1838, the Patriot War, as it was called, in Cana- da, closed. This part of the country had been in a high state of excitment for two years, the people de- siring to furnish aid to the Canadian rebels. Hunter's lodges, as they were called, were formed along the frontier for this purpose. Such a lodge used to meet in the upper room in Mr. Bidelman's Tannery, which was formerly occupied by the Free Mason's. Mr. Bidelman took great interest in this movement and gave an old cast iron bark mill to be cast into can- non balls. He gave the last gun he ever owned and a pair of boots, to fit out a soldier who went to Can- ada to join the insurgents.
A cannon, which had belonged to an artillery com- pany in Yates, in which Mr. Bidelman had held a commission as Lieutenant, was sent to the Patriots. General Winfield Scott passed through on the Ridge Road with some United States troops to maintain peace on our borders, and in a short time order was again restored.
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PIONEER HISTORY
The Ridge Road was then a great traveled thor- oughfare ; six to eight stage coaches passed through Gaines each way daily.
In eighteen hundred and forty-one Mr. Robert Ran- ney went in company with Mr. Bidelman in business as tanners, in Gaines, for a term of five years. They put in a large stock and worked it, but the business was not profitable for the partners. They had difficulty in settling their partnership matters, and on the whole, these five years were the most un- pleasant and unprosperous in business to Mr. Bidel- man of any like time in his life. Since closing with Mr. Ranney, he has been connected with his sons in business. He was Supervisor of Gaines in the.years 1842, 1845, 1846, 1853, 1854, and 1857.
DR. JESSE BEECH AND DR. JOHN HENRY BEECH.
The following extracts are taken from a memoir by Dr. John H. Beech, of Coldwater, Michigan, of him- self and his father, Dr. Jesse Beech, who was the pi- oneer physician of the town of Gaines :
"Dr. Jesse Beech was born March 20th, 1787, at Ames, Montgomery county, New York. He studied medicine with Dr. Lathrop, of Charleston, and with Dr. Sheldon, of Florida, N. Y. In those days medi- eal colleges were not accessible to students of ordi- nary means. There was a public prejudice against dissections, and the students of the two doctors named occupied a room in a steeple on a church in Charles- ton, where they dissected bodies. One of the class would stay in the steeple all day Sundays with their radarers to keep the hatch fastened down to exclude intruding boys.
Dr. Jesse Beech commenced practice at Esperance, N. Y., in the year 1813, and in February of that year married Susannah, a daughter of John Brown, of that place.
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OF ORLEANS COUNTY.
In the fall of 1815 he came to Gaines, where he met James Mather, with whom he was acquainted, and was persuaded to stop there, accepting a theory then believed in by settlers in that region, which was this : ยท Batavia must be the Gotham of the Holland Purchase Oak Orchard Harbor must be the commercial port. The great commercial highway of the country would be from the head of navigation on Oak Orchard Creek to Batavia. The country north of the Ridge was too flat and poor to be of any account, and the town second to Batavia must be on the Ridge where the road from Batavia to the lake crossed it. A kind of half shire town for Genesee county was then at Oak Orchard Creek on the Ridge. Genesee county would be divided at Tonawanda Swamp, and the new coun- ty seat would be Gaines.' Philetus Bumpus was then hunting bears where Albion now is, and the future greatness of Gaines was not dimmed by prospects of Clinton's Erie Canal.
Such was the theory. The canal made dough of the whole of that cake, and caused the whole country about here to change front.
James Mather, and Oliver Booth, the tavern keep- er, were active men in Gaines, when my father came in, both being very attentive to new comers, and Esq. Arba Chubb came in soon after. He was the best wit and story teller of the times, full of talk and re- partee, a most social and agreeable man.
My father bought some land near the .Corners,' and brought my mother there the next spring. She found the 'house' only half floored and not all 'chinked.' The fire was built against the logs on the side which had no floor, over which the roof was open for the escape of smoke.
She was told that the rule of the settlement was that new comers must burn out three logs in the house walls before they could be allowed to build a
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stone back for a chimney ; and they must have had at least three 'shakes' of ague before they could be admitted to citizenship.
The records are silent as to when she burned out her three logs ; but it is said that she soon attained to the rank of full citizenship, having her first shake of ague on the fourth day after arriving in town. My father must have found the people much in need of a doctor, for I find on page seventy-one of his day book, previous pages being lost, a large amount of busi- ness charged for so small a population. The prices charged would now be deemed quite moderate, to wit .: Leonard Frisbie is charged 'To visit and setting leg for self 82.50.' Subsequent visits and dressings from thirty-seven and a half to seventy-five cents each, and so in other cases.
In 1817, 1818, and 1819, it took him three or four days to make a circular visit to his patients. They resided in Murray, east of Sandy Creek, at Farwell's Mills, in Clarendon, in different parts of Ridgeway, Barre, &c.
On these circuits the kind people treated him to their best, which was often corn cake and whisky, or Evans' root coffee, with sorrel pie for dessert, for the doctor and basswood browse for his horse.
I find a bill rendered in pounds, shillings and pence to my father by George Kuck, for general merchan- dise had at his store in West Carlton, in 1818. Ira Webb was at the same time in trade at Oak Orchard Creek, on the Ridge, but the principal merchants were located at Gaines.
In the spring of 1816, my father had about half an acre of corn 'dug in' among the logs near his house. When it was a few inches high a frost blight- ed the tops so that every leaf was held in a tight dead envelope. My mother cut off the tops with her scissors and a fair crop was harvested.
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OF ORLEANS COUNTY.
. In order to save the pig from the bears, its pen was made close to the house, and a piece of chinking left out to halloo 'shoo' through.
One day mother's attention was attracted by an unusual hackling of the pig. Looking through the crevice she saw a large rattlesnake coiled up in the hog-trough, with head erect, buzzing like a nest of bees. Fearing to attack the old fellow, she ran to the neighbors for help and when she returned the snake had gone.
In 1816 they had a patch of oats near the house from which the deer had to be driven frequently.
Their first child, and only daughter, Elizabeth, was born June 22d, 1817. She married Ezbon G. Fuller, and settled at Coldwater, Michigan, where she died in 1853. Their only son, your humble servant, was born September 24th, 1819. I think I must have been one of the first draymen in the county, as I remember when a very small boy seizing the reins and backing my father's horse and cart loaded with merchandise, part of which was a demijohn of aquafortis, down a cellar gangway. Some smoke and some hurrying were among the consequences.
A few years later a young clerk and myself sent a hogshead of molasses from a wagon down the same gangway at one 'pop.' The 'pop' carried away the heads of the cask and poured the sweet out to the rats.
At the age of fourteen I tried clerking in a dry goods store for Fanning & Orton, in Albion. After six months probation I felt no further inspiration or aspiration in that line and resigned, I presume with the hearty consent of my employers, though they flat- tered me by expressing their regret, which I thought was proof of their politeness rather than my ability. I then attended Gaines Academy until I was eighteen years old, when I commenced studying medicine with
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Drs. Nichoson & Paine, in Albion : afterwards with Dr. Pinkney, at Esperance, and graduating at the Albany Medical College in 1841.
I practiced my profession from the old homestead until 1850, then removed to Coldwater, Michigan, where I have been engaged in the same business since, except during the rebellion, in the greater part of which I served in the army as surgeon, first of Battery D. First Michigan Artillery; afterwards of Twenty-Fourth Michigan Volunteers, in the Army of the Potomac. The greater part of the time, besides performing my regimental duties, acting as Surgeon- in-Chief of the First Brigade, First Division, First Army Corps.
In January. 1842, I married Mary Jane Perry, of Clarkson, N. Y.
We have mentioned the anticipations of the people of securing the location of the county buildings at Gaines. The brick building standing on the hill south of the village, was built by contributions started with the intent to donate it to the county for a court house. It was originally three stories high, about forty by seventy feet on the ground. These anticipations of the contributors being blasted, they converted their building into an academy.
At the organization of Orleans county, the village of Gaines contained three stores, three asheries, three tanneries, two taverns, one chair factory, one carriage factory, one cabinet shop, three blacksmith shops, one distillery, one cloth-dressing and wool-carding establishment, two brick yards, one printing office where a newspaper was published, one hat factory, and one saddle and harness shop. Works requiring motive power were driven by horses.
The first chapter of royal arch masons in the county No. 82, was organized at Gaines. Dr. Jesse Beech was HI. P. in 1826.
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OF ORLEANS COUNTY.
Previous to 1825, Col. Boardman's Cavalry was a marvel in the eyes of us youngsters. Dr. Jesse Beech was its surgeon.
I find by an old receipt among my father's papers, that Gaines Basin, in the canal, was excavated by a subscription fund, subscribed mainly by Guernsey, Bushnell & Co., E. & F. D. Nichols, and James Mather.
Dr. Jesse Beech was a temperance man even to total abstinence, enforcing his principles by banishing de- canters and wine glasses from his sideboard -- a pro- ceeding rather unusual in those times.
He was a fine horseman and occasionally officiated as marshal on public occasions. He was always ex- ceedingly particular in his dress and personal appear- ance, and always wore an elaborate ruffle shirt. His dress never was allowed to interfere with business re- quiring his attention, and sometimes, when off pro- fessional duty, he would go into his field where his men were clearing land, and though he was small in stature, he would show by his agility and energy in working with his men that he was a match for their stontest.
A few of the last years of my father's life, he kept a store of drugs and medicines on sale in connexion with his practice as a physician and surgeon.
In February or March, 1826, he was hurt by a vicious horse from which he suffered greatly as long as he lived. He died March 4th, 1829. His widow afterwards married Captain Elihu Mather, and re- moved to Coldwater, Michigan, where she died March 16th, 1869.
J. H. BEECH."
OLIVER BOOTH.
Oliver Booth was a well-known tavern keeper on the Ridge Road in Gaines. He came here from
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Wayne county in the spring of 1811, and settled on the farm north of the Ridge and east of the Oak Or- chard Road in the village of Gaines. He cleared his farm and built a double log house, with a huge chim- ney in the middle. Here he kept tavern a number of years.
His house was always full of company. Travelers on the Ridge Road stopped here because it was a tavern and there was no other. Here he dispensed a vast amount of whisky, -for everybody was thirsty in those days,-and some victuals to such strangers as were not acquainted with the proverbial filthiness of the kitchen.
After Gaines had become a village, and laid claims to the county seat, and people had come in who wanted more style, and whose stomachs could not stand such fare as Booth's tavern supplied, another tavern was opened and Booth sold out and moved away. He finally settled in Michigan where he died.
No description of Booth or his tavern would be complete without including Sam. Wooster. Sam's father lived in the neighborhood, and he (Sam.) then a great lazy boy, strayed up to Booth's tavern, where by hanging about he occasionally got a taste of Booth's whisky in consideration of bringing in wood for the fire and doing a few other chores. For these services and the pleasure of his company, Booth gave him what he ate and drank, with a place to sleep on the bar-room floor. His clothes did not cost much. He never wore a hat of any sort, seldom had on stockings or shoes. Nobody can remember that he wore a shirt, and his coats and pants were such as came to him, nobody could tell how or from whence. Sam. never washed his face and hands, or combed his head, and his general appearance, shirtless and shoe- less, with his great black, frowsy head bare, his pants
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OF ORLEANS COUNTY.
ragged and torn, and his coat, if he had any, minus one sleeve, or half the skirt, to one who did know him might befit a crazy prisoner just escaped from Bed- lam. Yet Sam. was not a fool or crazy. His wit was keen and ready, and his jokes timely and sharp. He would not work, or do anything which required much effort any way. He was a good fisher however, and with his old friend Booth, he would sit patiently by the hour and angle in the Oak Orchard, or any other stream that had fish, perfectly content, if he had an occasional nibble at his hook.
One year while he lived in Gaines, some wag for the fun of the thing nominated him for overseer of highways in the Gaines village district, and he was elected. He told the people they had elected him thinking he was too lazy to attend to the business, and would let them satisfy their assessments by mere nominal labor on the road; but they would find them- selves much mistaken, and they did. Sam. warned them to work as the law directed. He superintended everything vigorously, and every man and team and tool on the highway within his beat had to do its whole duty promptly that year at least.
Although Sam. loved whisky and drank it whenever it was given to him, for he never had money to buy anything, he never got drunk. He never quarreled or stole or did any other mischief. Bad as he looked, and lazy and dirty as he was, he was harmless. When Mr. Booth sold out and moved to Michigan, Sam. went with him and lived in his family after- wards.
A few months after landlord Booth got his double log tavern going, a man rode up to the west front door , each half of the house" had a front door, and asked Mrs. Booth if he could get dinner and feed his horse there. She sent her daughter, then ten years old, to show the man where he could get feed for his
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horse in the stable, and she went to work getting his dinner.
Having taken care of his horse, the stranger came and took a seat by the front door of the room where Mrs. Booth was getting dinner and commenced talk by saying :
"Well, Mrs. Booth, how do you like the Holland Purchase ?"
" O, pretty well," she replied, "I think it will be a good country when it is cleared up."
" What place did you come from Mrs. Booth ?"
" We came from down in the Jarseys."
"Is the country settling abont here very fast ?"
"Yes, quite a good many settlers have come in."
"How is it about the mouth of Oak Orchard, are they settling there much ?"
"No they are not, that cussed old Joe Ellicott has reserved all the land there and wont sell it."
Just then Mr. James Mather passed by, and seeing the stranger sitting in the door, whom he recognized as Mr. Joseph Ellicott, the agent of the Holland Land Company, he turned to speak to him. As he came up, Ellicott motioned him to be silent, fearing he would pronounce his name in hearing of Mrs. Booth and end the fun. After a salutation to Mr. Mather, Mr. El- licott said to Mrs. Booth :
" Has old Joe Ellicott then really reserved the land round the month of the Creek."
"Yes, the devilish old scamp has reserved one or two thousand acres there as a harbor for bears and wolves to kill the sheep and hogs of the settlers."
Ellicott asked " What can induce uncle Joe to re- serve that land ?"
She replied, "Oh, the old scamp thinks he will make his Jack out of it. He thinks some day there will be a city there, and he will survey the land into city
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OF ORLEANS COUNTY.
lots and sell them. Ah, he is a long-headed old chap."
Ellicott walked into the road and talked with Mr. Mather a few minutes till being called to his dinner he said to Mather : "Don't tell Mrs. Booth who I am until I am out of sight."
After Ellicott was gone, Mr. Mather went over and Mrs. Booth asked him who that old fellow was who got dinner there ?
He replied, "it was Mr. Joseph Ellicott, from Ba- tavia."
"Good," says she, " didn't I give it to him ? Glad of it ! Glad of it !"
Mr. Booth was unable to read or write, and he was accustomed to keep his tavern accounts in chalk marks on the walls. Thus, for an account of six pence, he made a mark of a certain length ; for a shilling, a mark longer ; two shillings, longer still, and so on. He distinguished drinks, dinners, horse feed, &c., by peculiar hieroglyphics of his own inven- tion.
Booth, the tavern keeper, must not be confounded with Oliver Booth, 2d, better known to the old pio- neers as "Esq. Booth," who owned and resided on the next farm west, which lay on the west side of Oak Orchard Road, and north side of the Ridge. Esquire Booth was among the very first settlers of Gaines vil- lage. He was not related to the tavern keeper. He was born in Granby, Connecticut, in 1779, and set- tled in Gaines, in 1810. He removed to Michigan in 1833 and died there.
Esq. Booth was the first Supervisor elected north of Tonawanda swamp to represent the town of Ridge- way, then the whole of Orleans county, in 1813. He served several years as a Justice of the Peace. He
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was an odd man in appearance and manners, but upright and honest.
JAMES MATHIER.
James Mather was born in Marlborough, Vt., July 23d, 1784. His family are said to be descendants from Rev. Increase Mather, President of Harvard University, who received the first degree of Doctor of Divinity, that was conferred by that college. Mr .. Mather came to Gaines in the summer or fall of 1810, to look out a place for his settlement. There was then some travel on the Ridge Road, with a prospect of more when the country was settled. The Holland Company had establised their land office at Batavia, and it seemed to him sure that in time a village or city would grow up at the mouth of Oak Orchard Creek. The Oak Orchard trail was then marked from Batavia to the lake, and Mr. Mather shrewdly pre- dieting a village would be founded where that trail crossed the Ridge, took up some four hundred acres of land lying on each side of the Oak Orchard Road and south of the Ridge, on which he afterwards set- tled and resided while he lived.
Before removing to Gaines, Mr. Mather had resided for some time in the town of Russia, Herkimer coun- ty, where he manufactured potash which he sent to the Canada market by way of Ogdensburg. He was in this business when the embargo declaring non- intercourse with Great Britain was proclaimed. He continued his trade however, and by the skillful dis- tribution of a few dollars among the government offi- cials, his ashes were allowed to pass the lines and his profits were large.
In the winter of 1811, he broke up his establish- ment in Herkimer county and removed to his land in Gaines. A younger brother, Rufus Mather, assisted by driving a team of two yoke of oxen before a sled
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OF ORLEANS COUNTY.
which was loaded, among other things, with three potash kettles. There was no bridge over Genesee River, at Rochester, and Rufus attempted to cross on the ice near where the canal now is. In the middle of the river the ice broke and let the loaded sled into the water. Rufus succeeded with great difficulty in getting out without loss, and followed the Ridge to his destination, and stopped at the house of Cotton Leach, west of the present village of Gaines. Rufus remained and labored for James the next summer. James Mather had ent down the trees on a small spot south of the Ridge, on the Oak Orchard Road, near where his son George Mather now resides ; but no clearing within the bounds of the village on the Ridge had then been made.
Rufus Mather says he felled the first tree in the vil- lage of Gaines, on the Ridge Road. That tree stood on the west side of Oak Orchard Road. A piece of land was soon cleared there and James Mather built his log house on that corner in the spring of 1811. He married Fanny Bryant February 15th, 1813. She was born in Marlborough, Vermont, October 28th, 1788.
In the winter of 1813, they commenced house keep- ing in the log house Mr. Mather had built on his lot, and remained there during the war, when so many went away.
Mr. Mather always kept open house, according to the custom of the country there, though he never professed to keep tavern; entertaining every one who applied to him for accommodation as well as he could, and his house was generally full of newly arriving emigrants who were waiting till their own cabins could be built, or of such casual strangers as came along.
Oliver Booth, afterwards the tavern keeper, stop-
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ped with Mr. Mather when he first came in, until he got his own house built and fitted up.
Soon after Mr. Mather settled in Gaines, he set the potash kettles he brought with him and commenced buying salts of lye, or "black salts," of the settlers as soon as settlers came in and made them. These salts he boiled down into potash and took them to the mouth of Genesee River, or the mouth of Oak Orchard Creek, and sent them to Montreal to a mar- ket. He paid for these salts in salt fish, iron, leather, coarse hardware, and a few axes, chains, and such tools as farmers must have, which he obtained in ex- change for his potash, and took care to sell at a fair profit, and with these things he paid some money. He was in fact almost the only source from which those who did not bring money with them got any to supply their wants.
Early in the spring of 1811, Mr. Mather finding his provisions getting low, went to the Oak Orchard Creek, at the head of Stillwater, from the lake, with two men and a seine and caught three barrels of fish in a few hours. These he drew to the Ridge with his oxen and took them to Black Creek Mill, a few miles south of Rochester, and with these fish and money, he . bought wheat and pork, got his wheat ground and took it home, and so he was well supplied the first year with these provisions. About the time Orleans county was organized, he built a large brick build- ing for a tannery, in which with his brothers and others he carried on tanning a number of years, though he never worked at that business himself. He dealt considerably in land, at one time owning a large farm where Eagle Harbor village and flouring mills are now built, and several large farms in other places. From the rise of value in these lands, and the profits of his speculations, he became wealthy. ITe died August 29th, 1854.
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OF ORLEANS COUNTY. 259
Mr. Mather had seven children.
Louisa, who married Wheeler M. Dewey. She died many years since.
Dwight, who died in youth.
Adeline married Paul H. Stewart.
Eunice married Daniel F. Walbridge.
George married Mary Ann Crane. He resides on his paternal homestead.
Ellen married Hon. Noah Davis, of Albion, late a Justice of the Supreme Court.
Mary married Howard Abeel, a merchant of Albion.
ELIHU MATHER.
Elihn Mather was born in Marlborough, Vt., July 26th, 1782. He was a tanner by trade. He came to Gaines to reside in 1825, and went into business with his brother James in his tannery and working his farm.
In the great antimasonic excitement arising from the abduction of William Morgan, Mr. Elihu Mather was indicted as an accessory to the crime, and tried at Albion and acquitted. The trial occupied ten days. Mr. Mather continued to reside in Gaines until 1851, when he removed to Coldwater, in Michi- gan, where he died JJanuary 29th, 1866.
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