USA > New York > Onondaga County > Pompey > Re-union of the sons and daughters of the old town of Pompey > Part 4
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33
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was offered for a wolf's scalp-there was imbedded in the soil, since upturned by the coulter, not only the utensils of peace but the weapons of civilized warfare-if warfare can be said ever to be civilized-guns, and cannon, and cannon ball; indicating advance in the arts both of living and kill- ing; showing that wherever man goes cruelty goes with him ; and that he is ever ready to unite the elements of destruc- tion with those of progress. It was because of this profu- sion of antiquities, no doubt, that, after modern chisels had done their artistic work, the soil of our town was chosen for the clandestine deposit of the Gypsum Giant; but he was a stranger, not a native-not indigenous, but imported-the only humbug, as with dne modesty we claim, Pompey ever turned out.
How different the scene this day from that presented to our fathers, as, at the close of the last century and the be- ginning of this, they elomb these hills, to plant here a new community. There were no roads to guide them up the wooded acclivity but the Onondaga's trail. Soon, however, they mingled the echoes of their industrious axes with the roar of the wild beast and the sigh of the wind. Cleared fields appeared. Fruit-bearing trees supplanted the tower- ing monarch, and grass and grain invited the sickle. The red man and the wolf, who had so long held a divided do- minion, retired before the rifle and the plow-reluctantly retired, for some still lingered to a recent day. The Indian, with his wampumed moccasins and beaded leggings, his sil- ver-banded hat and ornamented ears, his blanket and his bow, yet remain, vivid frescoes on the walls of our memory ; and some present, no doubt, remember when Bruin came over the hill, strolling and swaying leisurely on the green, as if to attend town meeting, then in progress. But, though native born, he was not permitted to exercise the rights of citizenship till he had shown a prowess worthy of it. Ac- cordingly, Major Case, the constable, stepped forth to test his credentials. The amiable visitor rose on his haunches to give the bailiff welcome, quickly struck his extemporized
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tip-staff from his grasp, and gave him the bear salute-a back-hug so pressing as to leave no doubt of its cordiality. Old Hawkeye, himself, would never have tempted it a second time. Possibly the grizzly stranger may have anticipated the service of some process upon him-for Bears, even to this day, in Wall street, sometimes receive such documents- as he put his mark of cancellation, like a railroad conductor, through many a summons and execution in the officer's pocket-book, till his teeth met in the Major's breast: who only escaped (to die from his wounds some three years after) when the axe of Canfield Marsh sank in the victor's skull.
The new settlement grew and flourished. Adventurous men and women, chiefly from the New England hive, came hither-bringing with them the Yankee's outfit of good habits, indomitable pluck, and a desire for education. This lovely village arose, eresting the mount, near two thousand feet above the sea-so high, that no Vesuvius can ever shower it, like ancient Pompeii, with its ashes; an elevation from which eye-shot may sometimes touch the blue of Ontario, some fifty miles away ; nested here, as it seemed, where old Hyem lived and feathered down his "beautiful snow ;" where two fountains, but a few rods apart, and bub- bling from the same field, send their sparkling salutations to the ocean-one, through the Susquehanna and the Chesa- peake, the other coasting the thousand isles of the St. Law- rence. It soon became a centre of influence; men of character and might, and genuine grit, were developed. For years this village was a power in the politics of the County and the State. When, some forty-seven years ago, a Senator from Onondaga applied to the Council of Appointment, at Albany, for the re-appointment of one Luther Marsh to the office of High Sheriff, De Witt Clinton slapped him on the knee, saying: "Squire Birdseye, I wish you to understand, that the good people on Pompey Hill cannot have all the offices in the State of New York."
I fancy, however, that the Sheriff received his re-appoint- ment, for as he was riding through Christian Hollow-as
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Edwards states in his "Pleasantries of the Bar"-he saw a man in the field suddenly drop his hoc and run for the woods. The officer quickly dismounted, tied his horse to the fence and gave pursuit. After a long chase he captured the panting fugitive, who gasped that it was what he feared. "Well," said the Sheriff, "I have no process against you now, but I thought I would let you know that if I ever should have, it wouldn't do you any good to run."
He was a man, I think, of pretty strong impulses. Mr. Sedgwick has just told me that, at a time happily now past, when political hostility implied personal as well, a bitter opponent, who was usually kept in salutary restraint by the will and physical endowments of the Sheriff, presumed, on the occasion of seeing a wounded right arm in a sling, to press his personalities so far that he received an argumentum ad hominem from the left, which sent him not only against but through the door-latch and hasp and hinge giving way-and the offender fell, at full length, in an adjoining
At another time, Mr. Sedgwick tells me, a Deacon from a distant part of the town, while waiting for blacksmith Davis's services, was accustomed to tie his team to one of a cherished row of sapling maples-now, as you can see, quite fully grown-which the Sheriff had planted in front of his house. One of them was nearly girdled by the teeth of the horses, at which the Deacon received an indignant remon- stranee and prohibition. The next time he came to town, however, he repeated the offence, whereat the Sheriff cut the reins and let the horses run. Fortunately, only the wagon was seriously damaged ; but the lesson was thorougly taught, and the Deacon, ever after, gave a wide berth to the maples.
The Academy of Pompey-to build and maintain which the early settlers, with a large wisdom, sacrificed so much- was presided over by a succession of accomplished scholars. Among, and of the earliest of them, the Rev. Joshua Leon- ard, remarkable as a linguist and mathematician-with a
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condensing engine in his head-and of so sweet a voice that when from the pulpit he gave out his favorite hymn, Wes- ley's, "Jesus, lover of my soul," and joined in singing it, both audience and choir stopped, entranced, that they might hear the minister carry it through alone. He was succeeded by Rev. Eleazar S. Barrows, a sermonizer of much power, Dr. Edward Aiken, Henry Howe and Flavius Josephus Lit- tlejohn. This institution, standing so long alone in Central and Western New York, drew to this conspicuous summit crowds of youth from the surrounding counties
When Victory Birdseye, with his large and accurate learn- ing, and the eloquent Baldwins, and Sedgwick, a man of strength, and Daniel Gott, with memory of steel and voice of deep and solemn music, displayed their powers before a Justice of the Peace, the entertainment richly repaid the thronged attendance.
Here Henry Seymour, that courtly gentleman, laid the foundations of the fortunes, social and political, of the fu- ture Governor.
But new times came on. Great arterial thoroughfares were established on easier grades, and our native village has been compelled to stand aside, somewhat solitary in her loftiness and her lovliness, and see the increasing inland travel and freightage of the country passing by her, as, in its transit between the commercial East and the abounding West, it veined the distant valleys. The law of gravitation is a mighty ageney in advancing or retarding the growth of localities, and determining the routes of trade. We may not soon expect to see a railroad depot on the top of Holy- oke, nor cotton mills on Mount Washington. A position in alliance with the eternal laws of Nature receives perpet- ual aid from an exhaustless fund in the sky. And so it has occurred that our native peak, though rejoicing in its beau- ty, its fertility, its healthfulness and its traditions, has not been able to solicit the currents of modern traffic up its steep sides. They seek, rather, the furrowed channels and the level plains.
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And therefore, also, has it happened that through the last half century, Pompey has sent away so many of her sons and daughters, to fulfil, elsewhere, their various spheres of duty; taking nothing from the homestead but the dowry of good birth, fair education and strong constitutions-the last not the least in the long struggle of life. In a letter from a brother on the Pacific coast, he says: "Though the frosts are on my head I feel like a 'colt.' " I must confess to some- thing of the same exuberance, as if the tonic oxygen of these hills, inbreathed in youth, still continued to invigorate.
Though Pompey, as we see, still remains a pleasant place to stay at, yet it has certainly been, as Webster said of his own New Hampshire, an excellent place to go from. Ac- cordingly, these Onondaga highlanders have swept down on the lowlands and invaded the valleys. When, not long since, the Census Marshal inquired at my door the names, ages and birthplaces of the inmates, he could hardly think us serious when he was told that the owner was born on Pompey Hill and his wife in Cherry Valley.
Indeed, they seem to have interlinked themselves with distant parts of the world, for, when the late Jas. T. Brady was in Rome, he desired his brother, Judge John R. Brady, of New York, to tell me that he had paid his respects to my cousins, the Pontine Marshes. Now that was a branch of the family quite intimate, in his day, with our sponsor, Pompey Magnus, who used to visit them and traverse their estates, whenever, as he often did, he led his legions along the Ap- pian Way.
And now, to-day, for the first time.since their dispersion, does a common impulse move her children to return-and they come bearing their sheaves with them. The thousands under this tented roof, and the thousands for whom there is not room, attest the interest felt in this family festival.
We cannot permanently return to the home we left so early. We may not deck with our cots her upswelling dome, nor hang them on her slopes, nor join our hands in
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friendly cordon around her base. Our lines are cast, some by the eastern, some by the western sea, while others dot the intervening space; and there we dwell, enriched only by boyhood's possession of these high citadels. But one there is-our good President, Daniel P. Wood-who is not willing that a day shall pass without regaling his eyes and refreshing his soul with glimpses of the sightly top: and who has so chosen his home, that, from the observatory in his own grounds at Syracuse, he may send at will his lov- ing glances through fourteen miles of sky, to the beloved towers of Pompey.
We tread the ancient green, where the athletes used to gather to jump, to run, to wrestle, to throw and catch the rapid ball and pitch the heavy bar. The intervening years, and all the cares and din of active life, are, for the moment, swept away, and we seem again to partake in
"Those healthful sports that graced the peaceful scene, Lived in each look, and brightened all the green."
Was there ever a daintier wrestler at arm's end-our fa- vorite game-than Palmer, a slender and cultured youth. whose fustian coat seemed made to withstand the grips of the strongest, but which, while it enclosed the lithe and graceful form, the strongest could never lay upon its back ? When, with electric spring, he gave his toe-lock trip, how often have I seen the sturdiest champion, who had been al- lured from a distance by the fame of our Olympians, go down.
Since Asahel-"as light of foot as a wild roe"-overtook the Hebrew Captain, could man ever swallow the ground like Gridley?
We revisit the strawberry fields! Has any one forgotten the Birdseye lot, by the old barn, flush with its lowly treas- ures, where summer strewed the earth with fragrant rubies, too lavish to be hidden beneath the clover? Whose taste gave realization to the quaint saying of an English writer, "Doubtless God might have made a better berry, but he never
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did." A little cousin came up from Onondaga to make a visit. He erept into this crimson field through the fence he was too small to surmount, and when his capacities were sat- isfied, he sought in vain the fissure by the broken rail. A passer by, hearing his despairing sobs, inquired the cause. "I came,' the urchin cried, "to Pompey Hill to see my cousin, and can't find the hole out." More fortunate have we been in retracing our steps to the well remembered haunts.
We stray among the orchards ! Even to this day, through the memories of more than forty years, can I pick you out, whether in the orchards of Elihu Parsons, or Jasper Bennett, or Merrit Butler, or in the bordering Sedgwick nursery- which seemed a garden of the Hesperides-the very trees, if standing, which bore the golden prizes of the autumn; delicious globes, which Eve nor Adam could have resisted- which Atalante would have lost the race for-which would have comforted King Solomon, and their nectar stayed him with flagons-and which, whether by your leave or without your leave, it were hard to blame a boy for taking; apple- trees as worthy to play a part in the history of the world as the one which gave Newton the suggestion of an universal and planetary law-as the one under which the great rebel- lion was quenched at Appomattox.
But, alas ! the full tufted pear tree in my father's garden, so long and widely known, has bowed its bowery head be- fore the vandal chopper-no longer a stimulus to rising with the lark, lest earlier boys should find the juicy bells shaken down from grafts by the night winds. Oh, Woodman, thou should'st have spared that tree on whose limbs many a Sun- day school lesson has been learned-honored for service ren- dered, for its fair fame, and for the menories clinging to every bough. This tree, the cradle of the robin and the nursery of song-and the windmill, beating the air with its mighty wings-and the liberty pole, from whose top the bunting caught the earliest gales, are missing features in
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which the present reality differs from the youthful photo- graph.
We walk again the halls of the old Academy, and listen for the arma rirumque cano, or for the lisping echoes of Gre- cian verse.
We turn in to the venerable mansions in which we were first launched on this ocean of human life-an ocean some- times lit up with roseate clouds, sometimes swept by relent- less storms, but ever its gulf stream bearing us on to a des- tination and a destiny which only heavenly revelation can interpret.
Reverently we press the verdure between the hollowed mounds and marble records on yonder ridge-a place of taste, suggestiveness and beauty-from whence extends an un- broken circle of lovely landscape, till the earth rounds it out of view. There, is the history of our town, carven in stone. There, are its biographies; short and condensed, but vera. cious and comprehensive, recording the two great events in each one's life-birth and death-the Alpha and Omega; no, not the Omega-but rightly viewed, the Alpha, rather, of another life. And there, on the very crown of the knoll, with dewy eyes, and thronging memories, and holier re- solves, I trace the letters of a mother's name.
We give a hearty hand shake to those we left here and who yet remain, some of whom are patriarchs indeed, whose vigor vouches the salubrity of this upland village ; and we interchange with each other the recollections of the past, the gratulations of the present, and the best wishes for the future.
But list! I hear the Marshal's trump summoning us to a more attractive feast in yonder wood. Let us go thither.
[ The President .- We will consent to adjourn to the grove for dinner, now awaiting us, on condition that Mr. Marsh will afterwards continue his remarks.]
After dinner he was called on to resume.
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If you will insist on making two bites of a cherry, I am afraid your ivory will touch the cherry pit at last. This breezy grove is not unfamiliar ground. Though in yore a frequent resort, it was never the "shade of melancholy boughs;" and to-day the hills break forth into singing, and all the trees of the grove clap their hands. Never, in the olden time, when Fays nestled under every leaf, and Dryads
"and sylvan boys, were seen, "Peeping from forth their alleys green,"
and Romance ruled the hour, have I known the holt so charmed with wood nymphs, nor these shadeful branches drop such manna on the tables. I knew, yesterday , that the coming hours were filled with good assurances, for when, toward nightfall, while bordering fields on either hand waved their bearded heads with a growth unequalled even in the fat soil of the valleys, we breasted the uprise, wet with the tribute of the passing clouds, as our native village burst on the sight, lo! God's seven prismatic colors came and blent and bent in beauty their glorious span, against the dark ground of the retreating storm, pointing, with rain- bow promise, to the heart of the hamlet.
When I came up the hill I brought another Hill with me- one J. H. Hill, from Lenox. He was a Delphinian and Pompey born. We knew him in boyhood as Hull Hill, and he has acted, ever since he came, as if he owned the whole hill. I speak with some severity, for, with insufferable au- lacity, he has doubted my veracity. I would have him know that the word of a Pompey boy is steadfast, and that though his foot may be on his native heath, his name is neither Micawber nor Munchausen. I beguiled his way with many a story of our good old town; how the sun earlier rose and later set, than elsewhere ; how Borcas whistled and Euroclydon roared ; how we jumped from barn roofs into the deep drifted snow; how many yards we leaped, how many miles we ran; how, at dawn, we used to brush the morning gems from the meadow grasses in quest of the er-
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rant kine; how we learned to skate by the roadside and to swim in the goose pond; how long leagues of wild pigeons, week after week, in their annual migration, winnowed the air with million wings : how the brook at Pratt's Falls, after pouring its energies through crank and cog, in grinding the neighbors' grain, shoots the perpendicular abyss of a hun- dred and sixty feet-down which, one day, a woman fell, but escaped unhurt ; with many another truthful recollec- tion-all which, as he should, he greedily devoured, till I came to a story of the steeple, at which his unfaith arose, and he declared it threw discredit on all the rest. Now, there are many here who know that when our church steeple was completed, Smith the builder, ascended to the very top of the spire, and, twining his limbs in the tines of the fork, hung with his head downwards, suspended only by his legs ; at which Dominie Chadwick strode out in front of the church, and cried loudly to the reckless architect, "In the name of Jehovah, God Almighty, I command you to come down." Now, though I have brought some twenty of our best citizens to verify this incident, and though it is attested in the Gov- ernor's address, yet Hull Hill still doubts. He is a Judge, somewhere down in Massachusetts. I wonder what rules of evidence he has established for his Court ? a tribunal where parties should always demand a jury on questions of fact, and never trust to the stubborn incredulity of the Judge. I felt this imputation the more keenly, as I left this burgh with a fair record ; for, about that time, Nathaniel Baker- whose son is owner of this grove-desired me to bring a bag to his house; which done, he filled it to the mouth, as full as Benjamin's sack, with butternuts, saying, " There, Raw- son, I give those to you, for you " are the only boy in town who hasn't secretly visited my nut grove." No doubt Hull Hill was there-every dark night.
[Mr. Hill :- I am converted.]
Some honor have these sons of Pompey rendered to their native town. But they are present, and I may not recount it. I may only say that one of them, Horatio Seymour,
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rising to many a station of trust, has filled the highest office in our State. I see him-plainly as at this moment-as he stood by the pillar, glibly scanning his dactyls and spondees, the first day I entered the Academy. We began our ad- miralty studies together; lie, as a shipwright, whittling buoy- ant vessels out of corn stalks; while I, the mariner, for want of other water than the clouds dropped on us-a habit they have not forgotten, you perceive-fearless of reefs or cyclones, navigated the stately flotillas-in the rain trough. And af- terwards, under the tuition of Capt. Alden Partridge, at Middletown, we pursued our military education together, which fitted him, as Governor, to be the ex-officio Command- er-in-Chief of the forces of the State ; and me, to marshal- pleadings. I take some credit for this production of Pom- pey, for, but the nuptials at which my grandfather officiated, you would have had no Governor talking to yon to-day.
Another, Charles Mason, who, at West Point, from the beginning of his course standing at the head of each succes- sive class, took, at last, the highest of the graduating honors, though many of his competitors-among them the late leader of the late Confederate armies-have since won distinction for superior abilities. He has since administered the Patent Office, and given law from the Supreme Bench of Iowa.
Another, Henry W. Slocum, also a West Point graduate, as a Major-General in our army, consecrated his sword and rare abilities to the service of his country, in her recent con- test for life.
And still another, George II. Williams, a representative in the National Senate from distant Oregon-fresh from his labors in the accomplishment of the great international treaty-the inauguration of a new mode of determining dis- putes between nations ; a new departure in the settlement of belligerent claims; a victory of civilization, in which arbi- trament takes the place of war; where arguments are not pointed by bayonets, nor rounded reasons rendered from columbiads ; where Peace no longer stands with ensanguined
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feet, lifting her misty head above the smoke of battle : a sacred stadium in the journey of our race a millenium herald in the East.
You come, also, from professional chairs, from Congres- sional seats, from high judicial stations, from sculptor's stu- dios and places of influence, and some stand in rank with the kings of finance. While others of us assemble from less conspicnous, though not less laborious posts of duty in the world.
But a celebration of hermits, unsunned by the smiles of Pompey's daughters, would have bereft our programme of its cheer. They also come with an equal enthusiasm. The voice of one of them, Mrs. Miller, has just wafted its musi- cal reminiscenses to our ears. Yon Laurel, it is true, shad- ow's a vacant chair, around the brow of whose destined oc- cupant Grace Greenwood, its bays might fittingly be bound, and who speaks to us to-day only in her song: but then, in consolation for her absence, our Greenwood is full of Graces. at sight of whom we sigh to be foresters, and to spend our days in the witching shade.
Some there were, starting life with us, or not long before, who are not here; or, if here, not visble through the vale. Among them, Charles Baldwin, the genius of our town-not permitted to acquire the future honors to which his gifts seemed so justly to entitle him. Judge Hiram K. Jerome, from Palmyra-of Pompey growth-has just told me that it was his fortune to room with Baldwin in yonder office of Daniel Gott, and that neither Joshua A. Spencer, nor Henry R. Storrs, nor Elisha Williams more deeply impressed him as a speaker. In a Masonic address, he came to speak of the origin of that ancient fraternity. Some, he said, placed it at the time of Josephus, others even earlier ; but for himself, if called on to state the period, he should say it was at the time when the Almighty said, "Let there be light and there was light."
And Scabred Dodge, the giant of our town-physical and
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intellectual-whom I have seen toss a barrel as a plaything, its hoops and staves tumbling together in their fall, and of whom I remember to have heard Joshua Leonard say-no small praise to those who knew the men-" his attainments in mathematics are superior to those of Dr. Aiken, Priest Barrows and myself, all combined."
I said this was the first time the children of Pompey had gathered, from their scattered homes, to the bosom of the mother. It probably is the last. Other and younger gen- erations may come. This, it is likely, never again. So there is joy for our re-union, and there is sadness for our parting. And many a day shall go by, and many a year close on its bleak December wing; but the radiant hours which have inlaid this social re-union shall glow and purple with thoughts of the princely hospitalities which have wel- comed home the Pompey legion-true to the memories of their ancestral hearth-stone. And oh, how much richer are we for the fond meeting of heart with heart ; and back to our busy haunts we take fresh inspiration from this beacon hill-top, that ever looks up to the heaven's broad face, lit by God's constellation of watchful stars. And now, having climbed the upland together, and together mingled vur joys, and hopes, and recollections, and pledged anew our fealty to the dear old eminence, we will descend, as pilgrims from a sacred shrine, with the maternal blessing on our heads, and giving back, as with one voice, the filial benediction, " May the summits of Pompey, as they catch the earliest and latest gleam of the sun, so also receive, and ever retain, the favor of our Lord."
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