USA > New York > Tompkins County > Dryden > The centennial history of the town of Dryden. 1797-1897 > Part 20
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HISTORY OF DRYDEN.
and others of this Scotch-Irish descent, temporarily settled in Orange county, N. Y., where Thomas, the oldest son of the McGraws, was born in the year 1808. After another sojourn of two years in Delaware county, they moved to Dryden, where they founded the "Irish Settle- ment " in 1811.
It seems, at first thought, surprising that the early settlers should many of them have sought their homes in the most inaccessible and least productive portions of the township, but we must remember that the qualities of the soil in the different local- ities were not known then as they are now, and the higher hilly lands were then considered more healthful than the low lands of the valleys, which, in early times, while the swamps were being drained and subdued by their first cultivation, were subject to epidemic fevers, which in those days pre- vailed with malignant se- verity and caused the pre- mature death of many of the inhabitants.
As pioneers, Isaac Teers made his home on what is now the Cole place, and JOHN MC GRAW, John upon what is now known as the Miller farm, while the McGraw family lived on the Hammond place, in the old log house then standing about four rods north-east from where the frame house on that farm is now located. In this log house Joseph, Jr., was born in the year 1812 and John in 1815, their only sister, Nancy (Clem- ent), being older than either. There was still another son, Henry, a bright, promising boy, who died under twenty years of age.
As already stated, the father was a weaver by trade, a man of fair education for those times, a great reader and a good talker, being able to quote from a good memory much of what he had read. The moth- er was a woman of intelligence, possessed of a quiet and amiable dis-
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THE MCGRAW FAMILY.
position, and very much loved and respected by her friends and neigh- bors. Both lived to old age, residing in the fifties a half-mile north of " Dryden Corners, " and later at Willow Glen, where they both died. Their oldest son, Thomas, who, as we have seen, was born in 1808, died before he was thirty years of age. He is spoken of by those who knew him in terms of the highest admiration and is described as a compact, well built, handsome fellow, with good features and a face beaming with intelligence, naturally easy, graceful and attractive in his manners, and large-hearted and generous in his disposition. His early business enterprises as a merchant at "Dryden Corners" were successful and, had he lived to full maturity, his prospects seemed equal to if not greater than those of his younger brother, John, who became a millionaire. His early death was greatly lamented at the time. He left a young wife, Sarah Ann (Southworth), who afterwards married Henry Beach and after his death Dr. D. C. White, all of whom she survived and is still living in New York city.
Joseph McGraw, Jr., also became a Dryden merchant and, in 1840, built the brick store now kown as the Hardware block on the south- east of the Dryden four corners. He afterwards went into mercantile business with George W. Phillips in the brick store on the opposite corner, thus forming a partnership which resulted in a long and ex- pensive as well as an unprofitable litigation for both parties. Joseph afterwards turned his attention to farming, bringing into the country improved breeds of farm stock, and finally retiring to Ithaca, where he resided when he died, in the year 1892. His first wife was Sarah Clement, by whom he had two children, Sarah Jane (Simpson) and John, both of whom were survived by their father, but both of whom left surviving issue. By his second wife, Sarah A. Sears, he had five children, all of whom are now living, viz : Thomas H., at Poughkeep- sie, N. Y .; Lettie (Gauntlett), in Ithaca, N. Y .; Georgie (Curtiss), and Joseph W., at Portsmouth, Mich. ; and Frank S., at Buffalo, N. Y.
With the exception of a son of Nancy Clement, the children and grandchildren of Joseph McGraw, Jr., are the only descendants of the original McGraw family of Dryden which now survive.
John McGraw, the youngest and most noted of the children who reached maturity, was in some respects different from the other mem- bers of the family. The others, like their father, were sociable and loquacious, while John was reserved and sedate, but all were pos- sessed of a gentle dignity which was characteristic of all of these brothers. The florid complexion, with light or sandy hair, which pre- vailed in the family, found an exception in John, whose hair was black.
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HISTORY OF DRYDEN.
We are told that his father obtained for him a position as a clerk with Daniel J. Shaw, who was then a Dryden merchant, at a salary of eight dollars per month, one-half of which was given to his mother. In after years he said that one of the happiest moments of his life was when, after working for his employer for the first few weeks, he vent- ured to ask him one evening after the store was closed if he was satis- fied with his services, and received the reply, "More than satisfied." Upon the death of his older brother, Thomas, John succeeded to his business, in partnership with their common father-in-law, John South- worth. Soon after this, in September, 1840, his only child, Jennie McGraw-Fiske, was born in the house since owned by Erastus Lord, nearly opposite to the Southworth homestead, and in 1847 his wife, Rhoda (Southworth,) died of consumption.
While a Dryden merchant, Mr. McGraw became interested in lum- ber speculations in a small way, which prepared him for his future success upon a large scale in that line of business, first in Allegany county, and afterwards in Michigan, where he operated near Bay City one of the largest lumber mills in the country. He at one time resid- ed in New Jersey and again in Westchester county, N. Y., after taking for his second wife, Nancy Amelia Southworth, who died in 1857. He afterwards retired to Ithaca, where he married Jane P. (Turner,) wid- ow of Samuel B. Bates, who survived him, he having died in the year 1877, possessed of a fortune of over two millions.
Of John McGraw, the late Henry W. Sage, at one time his partner in business, said : " He was upright, prompt, true, and sensitive to the nicest shade of honor. His active, practical life was a living exponent of that within, which abounded with faith, hope, courage, and fidelity -the qualities which make up and stamp the noble man." He was the donor of the McGraw building to Cornell University and in his latter years was president of the First National Bank of Ithaca.
Of his only child, Jennie McGraw-Fiske, who survived him, we have spoken more fully in the chapter devoted to the Southworth Library, of which she was the founder.
CHAPTER XLVI.
THE BENJAMIN WOOD FAMILY.
Benjamin Wood was born in 1789, at Scituate, Providence county, R. I., and died at his well-known home in Dryden, on Lot 32, Wood- lawn. He was directly descended from the Rhode Island off-shoot of
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THE BENJAMIN WOOD FAMILY.
the Judge Elijah Wood family, of aristocratic English or Welsh ex- traction, which settled Gorham, Mass., in the seventeenth century, and in that day flourished its coat-of-arms. Of this Rhode Island branch, came Benjamin Wood, Sr., of Revolutionary fame, born about 1740, who was everywhere and widely known as "Captain" Benjamin Wood, having been a captain of "Minute Men" of Providence county, R. I., who did good service in the Revolutionary War. He kept the "Way- Farers' Inn " at Nitmug Hill, near a famous quarry of that celebrated stone in Scituate. The entertainer of that day of no books and no newspapers, or almost none, was the general and local news head- quarters of a locality. Captain Benjamin was a man of great influ- ence, often the arbiter of local disputes, and one who shaped public opinion upon the general or local questions of interest, so that his fine physique and affable manners at his popular hostelry quickly in- dicated him as a leader against Indian or British encroachments. His military title was easily won in that way. He is said to have worn it well. He died at great age at the above place. Of his numerous but unfortunate family of twelve children, two came to their deaths by ac- cident and only one lived to mature age, Nathan, born at the place above-named, about 1764, who died at Albion, Mich., in 1846. At the breaking out of the Revolutionary War, he became, at twelve years of age, the body servant of his father in his campaigning tent life. Growing up in the easy habits of camp life, Nathan became a man of no force of character and never better than a second man on his job. As such he married Amy, the daughter, of pioneers Thomas and Alice Stone Hammond, who have already been referred to in Chapter 39, and with them removed to the wilderness of Chenango Valley in 1803. He worked as a brick-maker in the different brick works of his broth- er-in-law, Daniel Hammond, through his pioneer pilgrimages in Che- mango Valley, Willow Glen, and lastly on Lot 32 of Dryden, the Lemi Grover brickworks corner.
From Nathan Wood and Amy (Hammond) were born Lydia, Benja- min, Nathan Jr., Polly, and Martin B. Wood. Lydia married Orrin Squire, who also assisted in the above-mentioned brick works, and later established those on West Hill, Ithaca. They built the log house in the first clearing at Woodlawn about 1820. This was located forty rods west of Woodlawn cemetery, where the clearing had been made before Maher Wigton's time, by Andrew Grover, Sr., but his title had proven false, and he had to abandon it. From them is descend- ed, with a few others, Mary Squire, wife of David B. Howard, auditor of the Wabash Railway System, St. Louis, Mo.
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HISTORY OF DRYDEN.
Polly Wood became the wife of John Robertson, the first miller at the first grist-mill in West Dryden, built by Capt. George Robertson on the north side of Fall Creek, between his house and the house of the late Casper Miller. They have left a very few descendants near Albion, Mich.
Martin B. married Phebe, sister of Hon. Ezra Cornell, and became a banker of considerable means, but died suddenly, leaving a very few descendants at Albion, Mich.
Some peculiarities of the life of Benjamin Wood may well be scanned to see if they do not furnish the " cause and cure for hard times," of which our later nineteenth century citizen delights to complain. He was, in all respects, the opposite of his father, Nathan, taking the make-up of Captain Benjamin, for whom he was named. Born to the hard crusts of rocky Rhode Island, his push made him, at an early age, a good mechanic in cooperage, brick making, and the use of edge tools ; and he was a model farmer, always alternately plying the voca- tion which promised the best returns. Two rules of his life grew out of this condition : "Never risk your eggs all in one basket" and "Every trade is worth one hundred dollars to its owner, to fall back upon. " Coming to Chenango Valley, N. Y., in 1803, with his grand- parents' party (Thomas and our pioneer, Alice Stone Hammond, and their son Daniel's family) and working in every trade through Oxford, Sherburne, and farther up that valley, he met, wooed, and won in 1807, a beautiful, strong, healthy girl, Miss Mary Bonesteel, of Ger- man parentage, who, with ancestral thrift, was working her way from her birthplace, Warren's Bush, near the line of Montgomery and Her- kimer counties, down through this valley, doing work at the best price for every one who could raise money enough to pay for it; which, in those days, even outwitted the gold basis of to-day, to find. He was eighteen years and she seventeen years old and their entire capital on both sides was good health and the Yankee grit for work ; he had a corn meal sieve, and she a good feather bed; each had a few cents only in money, and clothes for simple decency, both homespun and homemade, and that was all, she being a beautiful girl and he a brave, ambitious young man. We have heard of but one Dryden man who started married life with less capital than this, and made a nice success of it-Nathan Dunham, of Etna, whose wife, Millie, owned three ducks, and he had to borrow a dollar to pay the parson's fee.
From the marriage of Benjamin and Mary Wood, sprang eleven children : Elmira (Bristol), Mary Ann (Cornell), Lydia, Orrin S., Mer- ritt L., Emily (Dunham), Harriet (Dunham), Caroline, Norman B.,
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THE BENJAMIN WOOD FAMILY.
Otis E., and Cordelia M. (Chase), all of whom, excepting Lydia and Caroline, who died single, lived to full age, married, and reared chil- dren.
After the birth of their second child, Mary Ann, in 1811, they found that the constantly growing scarcity of money made it impossible to sell for money a day's labor, or one article of produce, in the newly developed territory of Chenango Valley or westward. Just then the incipient factory system of Southeastern New England, struggling for its very existence, had received a stimulus, not so much from National betterment as from the coldness of foreign relations, placing a check upon imports, and presenting a prospect of a speedy second war with England, and only the factories were paying ready money for wages. The next three years, to 1814, by reason of the war, were prosperous ones, and having gone there in 1812 to enjoy them, they had saved some ready money, but the reactionary collapse came, the factories were all crushed, and all work and money pay stopped. During their stay there Benjamin's skill with edge tools as a worker of wood had intro- duced himself into the repair and improvement of reeds used by the factories for weaving. His pretty good natural foresight satisfied him that for the next few years, at least, clothes, which must be had, must be raised upon the frontier farms and made of wool and flax, at home, with such exchanges of these products for cotton cloths as might be made with such factories as might run. Chenango Valley, N. Y., which, many years later, became quite famous in cotton industries, had just taken a taste of them when their collapse came, but Benja- min believed that the rapidly settling sections of Western New York might foster this factory work, and it proved so.
When the Rhode Island stoppage came he immediately took his family, then consisting of himself, wife, three children, his parents, and youngest brother, Martin B., all of whom were dependent upon him, and putting upon one ox-team, all, except such as could walk, started with all their earthly goods, upon an early winter trip for Che- mango Valley and farther Western New York. Reaching Albany, after considerable suffering, they found the ice too thick for the ferry and too thin to cross with teams and goods. After a day or two of delay, the ice thickening, they, with the stretch of all the chain, rope, and other possible ties, between the oxen and the vehicle, and scattering out the party to the utmost, crossed in safety, wended their way this time to Sherburne, in Chenango Valley, and a little later, soon after 1818, to their few years' home in fertile Quaker Basin, just east of DeRuyter. Here grew the acquaintance of Ezra Cornell, a lad of nine, from Crumb
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HISTORY OF DRYDEN.
Hill, and Mary Ann Wood, the child of five years, which in 1831 rip- ened into matrimony.
Benjamin had, through these years, kept up a small trade in weav- er's reeds and reed repairs, and in their exchange for cotton cloths sold by him to frontier farmers and small dealers; but he also real- ized that he had not reached out far enough in Western New York for the location of his weaver's reed manufacturing industry, because the chief customers must be the occupants of frontier farms who needed to use his reeds in the manufacture of their wool and flax product for clothes. Accordingly, in 1819, he located near Willow Glen, Dryden, N. Y., led there by his uncle, Daniel Hammond, and lived for two years in the house first east from the Chas. Cady residence of later years, still continuing large gardening operations, of which he was very proud and from which he always derived a living. In 1821 he fol- lowed this Uncle Hammond to the Supervisor Grover corner of Lot 32, Western Dryden, taking the first fifty acres east of said corner, now Woodlawn, and at this location first established a regularly locat- ed weaver's reed manufactory, in connection with labor in the uncle's brickyard, and with felling the huge pine forests to bring forward his new fertile farm, which he thus increased to two hundred acres.
The success of Benjamin and Mary Wood lay in the management of family and business. The first duty of every one of their eleven children, and of other motherless ones left to their care, numbering fifteen in all, was to be every moment in school. Out of school-hours every child was made to scrupulously pursue, both boys and girls, such home labors as were allotted, according to age and strength, so that every one became a source of profit at ten years of age, and near- ly all of them at seven years. No playing was done by old or young, in the place where work belonged. The weaver's reed shop fur- nished work for all, at leisure farm seasons, for nearly thirty years, and was then sold out and abandoned. The farm-house work was always systematically divided, so that the family, usually consisting of twenty members, were all profitably employed. To Mary Ann, until her mar- riage to Ezra Cornell in 1831, fell the duty of spinning and weaving every yard of cloth, both flax and wool, worn by the entire twenty persons. Nothing was bought which could be raised from the farm, whether of food or clothing. Whole grain was rarely fed or sold, but the coarse parts were used as food for animals, and hay, straw, or other fodder was never sold, being required for animal food or bedding, and to absorb the liquid fertilizers to make the farm lands better. Smok- ing, drinking, and profanity were strictly forbidden, and not a member
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THE BENJAMIN WOOD FAMILY.
left the family with these habits. A most exemplary farmer, his fences and buildings were neatly kept ; and his lands, well tilled, constantly gained in fertility, so that he became, along with Colonel Brewer, Will- iam Carman, and such men, one of the first presidents of Tompkins County Agricultural Society. The same rigid money habits were rec- ognized on the farm, and on public days a son was allowed twenty-five cents pocket money for himself, for dinner, and, to meritorious mem- bers, if allowed a horse, twenty-five cents more for its dinner. In these times on all public days most young men of all grades, sons or hired help, will present a five-dollar bill to be changed for their rail- way fares.
Sylvester Snyder, whose unequaled habits of thrift were formed on this farm, in fifteen years of labor upon it, mostly at twelve dollars per month, $144 dollars per year, put away regularly nineteen dollars for boots, clothes, hats and expense moneys for an entire year, and $125 dollars was "salted down" and was used to pay for sixty acres of the best land in Lansing when he began to farm for himself. There is a pattern for boys who earn farms.
Benjamin Wood had an executive ability which was his fotrune. He was a true American " boss ;" he took the charge of his work, in per- sonal brain work ; he did his regular day's hard hand labor with every hired person, asking no one to do more than he. At the same time he always shrank from public office honors ; never would accept any office but overseer of highways ; always wanted and always had that honor, and his highway was so well kept that in his later life it was the only one in town which became infested with horse racing, and hence was a source of chagrin to him. Although Woodlawn was naturally a cold, wet farm, it became a model one, and the water was so well kept going from it, and from the highway, that the neighbors below de- clared it to be a genuine misfortune to live below so wet a farm as his.
Benjamin Wood and his friend Col. William Cobb, of the opposite end of his school district, were the first clamorers for the Eight- Square Brick School-house, and were the first persons to furnish graduating scholars from it, to higher schools, from that school dis- trict. Under his advice, Mr. Smith Robertson, one of his most effi- cient employees, accepted two and one-half years of school there, as teacher, at thirteen dollars per month, the same price he had there re- ceived as farm hand, and which led to his preparation just after at Homer Academy, and his graduation from Union College in 1843.
Of the eleven children of Benjamin and Mary, Elmira became a teacher, married John S. Bristol, and died in 1847. Her husband,
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HISTORY OF DRYDEN.
and their two sons, M. Channing and Charles H., became successively Superintendents of Construction of the Western Union Telegraph Co., , a most responsible and lucrative place ; in charge at Chicago of all their vast work west of the Alleghanies, through the Middle, Western, and Northwestern states and territories to the Pacific coast, and all along that coast. Mary Ann became the wife of Ezra Cornell, of Uni- versity fame, and from them were descended Ex-Governor Alonzo B. Cornell, Franklin C. Cornell, chief financial officer of Ithaca Savings Bank and Ithaca Trust Co., and other children, mostly of Ithaca. Ly- dia, born in Rhode Island, died single. Orrin S. and Otis E. Wood will be mentioned in Chapter LII of this volume. Merritt L. married successively, Caroline B. Sage, and Adelia M. Irish ; no children. His business has been successively superintendent of telegraphs and su- perintendent of railways, and he is now an orange grower in Florida. He was instrumental in bonding Ithaca for the original one hundred thousand dollars for the building of the railway now known as the El- mira & Cortland Branch of the Lehigh Valley System. Emily married Jonathan Dunham, whose family of three children, married, live in the North-west. Harriet married Jonathan Dunham, and died soon after, without children. Caroline died unmarried. Norman B. married H. Anna Spencer, and is simply missing in the North-west. Cordelia M. married Alonzo Chase and has three daughters, all living at Redfield, South Dakota.
CHAPTER XLVII.
JOHN SOUTHWORTH.
The subject of this chapter impressed those who personally knew him as a man of no ordinary ability. His long life, extending through- out a large portion of our Century Period, during which he accumulat- ed a princely fortune, had a marked influence in the town of Dryden. He was born at Salisbury, Herkimer county, N. Y., September 26, 1796, and died in Dryden, December 2, 1877. His ancestors were from Massachusetts, and his father, Thomas, in August, 1806, came to Dryden with his family, which included John, then a lad ten years of age.
Thomas, who was a tanner and currier by trade, and a man of moderate means but of exemplary character and habits, first located in Dryden upon a farm of eighty acres which he purchased at Willow Glen. Afterwards he lived with his son at Dryden village, where he died in July, 1863, 91 years of age.
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JOHN SOUTHWORTH.
Soon after coming to Willow Glen, young John was sent off some distance with his father's team, which he took the liberty of trading for another. The exchange, like most of his dealings in after life, proved a fortunate one, but his father was greatly displeased that his son should have taken such unauthorized liberties with his property, and reproved him severely, predicting certain disaster as the result of such precocious tendencies. When John was twenty years of age, he married Nancy, a daughter of Judge Ellis, and purchased fifty acres of land adjoining the farm of his father. He was then obliged to borrow the money in order to pay for a pair of steers with which to do the team work on his farm. After a few years he sold out his first purchase of land and bought the farm in Dryden village which af- terwards became his homestead. In these ear- ly years he developed a remarkably quick and ac- curate judgment as to the value of property, which followed him through life and enabled him to ac- quire a fortune, while others, with the same sur- roundings and with more JOHN SOUTHWORTH. toil, barely made a living. In a dozen years from the time of his start in business for himself, he was worth as many thousands of dollars.
His first wife died March 16, 1830, while he was living in the house where Will Mespell now resides, on East Main street in Dryden vil- lage. By her he had five children, viz: Rhoda Charlotte, who died December 14, 1847, having become the first wife of John McGraw and the mother of Jennie McGraw-Fiske; Sarah Ann, who became suc- cessively the widow of Thomas McGraw ; Henry Beach, and Dr. D. C. White, and who is still living at an advanced age in New York city; John Ellis, who became a successful man in business, but who died in
14
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HISTORY OF DRYDEN.
early manhood in New York city without issue; Nancy Amelia, the second wife of John McGraw ; and Thomas G., who married Malvina Freeland and still lives at Rochelle, Ill. John Willis and his children are the only descendants of Thomas G., and the only living descend- ants of John Southworth by his first wife.
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