USA > New York > Tompkins County > Dryden > The centennial history of the town of Dryden. 1797-1897 > Part 5
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HISTORY OF DRYDEN. CHAPTER XIII.
THE PERIOD OF DEVELOPMENT-TRANSPORTATION.
We now enter upon the second quarter-century of Dryden's inhab- itation, extending from 1823 to 1847 inclusive, which, for the want of a more appropriate name, we shall refer to as the "Period of De- velopment." The term development might properly be applied to the entire period of Dryden's history, but we feel justified in ap- plying it especially here from the fact that during this particular time the town supported, and was developed by the aid of, its larg- est number of inhabitants, and the change of its territory from a " howling wilderness " to a productive, civilized country township was more rapid at this time than at any other. We shall not attempt to review the events of this period so much in their chronological order as was done in treating the "Pioneer Period, " but we shall view the development of our subject from several different standpoints, first giving attention to the matter of transportation.
As we have already seen, the earliest pioneer settlers came bringing their scanty supplies on ox-sleds with wooden shoes, the primitive " Bridle Road " presumably not being adapted to transportation by wheeled vehicles, even in the summer time. At the end of the first twenty-five years the principal thoroughfares had become passable by wagons and stages, the stumps having been removed, the low places being filled with corduroy crossing and the principal streams being spanned with pole bridges. Our highways are none too good at the present time, but we can realize that very much has been done, and much time and labor has been required, to bring them to. even their present state of development. Those of us who have occasion to use " woods roads " of the present day are not surprised to read the accounts of the frequency with which the early teamsters became " mired " in using the only means of transportation which was then afforded. In view of these circumstances we are not surprised to learn that the first mail was carried by a man on foot between Oxford and Ithaca from 1811 to 1817, and that the first stage commenced running between Homer and Ithaca through Dryden in 1824. Other localities seem to have been more early favored than ours in this respect and the Bath and Jericho Turnpike, chartered by the State in 1804, and later forming a part of the old Ithaca and Catskill stage ronte and still known as the "turnpike " from Slaterville to Ithaca, passing through the southwest corner of our town, was one of the
41
DEVELOPMENT-TRANSPORTATION.
early thoroughfares connecting the East with the West. But during the period of which we are now speaking transportation on the prin- cipal highways, in the absence of all other means, was very much em- ployed, and upon the Bridle Road between Dryden and Ithaca nearly, if not quite, a dozen local hotels or "Taverns, " as they were then called, ministered to the wants of travelers and teamsters, and in so doing conducted a thriving business. One of them was the Dryden Center House originally built and operated early in this period by Benjamin Aldrich, already mentioned among the early town officers.
- - -
1
DRYDEN CENTER HOUSE.
Unlike most of these country inns the Center House has not been per- mitted to run down, but under the management of its present proprie- tor, Gardner W. S. Gibson, has been repaired and improved so that it now presents a modern appearance, fully in keeping with its prom- inence in the early history of the town. Here for a long time town meetings were held and the official business of the town transacted and it is still patronized as the proper place for holding town cau- cuses. It was not uncommon in those days for such farmers as Ed- ward Griswold and Elias W. Cady to take a wagon load of produce to market at Albany, returning with a load of store goods, and at certain
42
HISTORY OF DRYDEN.
seasons of the year the roads to Syracuse were lined with teamsters returning with wagon loads of salt, lime and plaster, after having taken loads of farm produce to market. Towanda, then the head of navigation on the Susquehanna river, was also a favorite shipping point at which Dryden farmers marketed their produce.
The Erie Canal ("Clinton's Ditch" as it was derisively called in those times) was opened to navigation in 1825, and in the absence of railroads it soon became a great aid in the means of transportation. Some of the later settlers of this period, James Tripp, for example, who came in from Columbia county in 1836, shipped their goods by way of the canal and drove across the country with their horses and wagons. The Ithaca & Owego Railroad, the second to be chartered in the State, passed over a small corner of Dryden and was opened in 1834, but it was operated wholly by horse power in those days, and gave but little indication of the efficiency, as a means of transporta- tion, afforded by railroads of the present time. Still until the finan- cial panic of 1836, which was a temporary set back, this was a time of rapid growth and prosperity. Permanent buildings were constructed and manufacturing enterprises were instituted. The only brick dwell- ing ever constructed in Dryden village was built by John Southworth in 1836. The Mallory brothers, from Homer, in 1826 located on Fall Creek at a point since called from them, Malloryville, and there oper- ated a saw-mill, chair factory, carding and cloth dressing machinery and a dye house, employing from thirty to forty hands, and prosper- ing until their mills were destroyed by fire in 1836, when they re- moved farther west. One of these Mallory brothers (Samuel) recent- ly died at Elkhorn, Wisconsin, in his ninety-ninth year.
One of the distressing occurrences of this time, but one which we do not feel at liberty to omit from our History, which professes to speak of all the prominent events, resulted from the connection of the murderer, Edward H. Ruloff, with the town of Dryden. In the year 1842 he served as a school teacher in Dryden village and numbers of his pupils are still residents here. He came originally from the province of New Brunswick. On December 31, 1843, he married Miss Harriet Schutt, a lovely Dryden girl seventeen years of age, who had been one of his pupils. They moved to the town of Lansing. In 1845 a daughter was born to them, but shortly afterwards the wife and daughter disappeared, the only visible means of their disappear- ance being a large strong wooden box with which Ruloff was seen to drive away in a wagon towards Cayuga Lake.
He was soon after arrested in the West and brought back to this
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IMMIGRATION AND EMIGRATION.
county; the bottom of the lake was dredged for the box in vain, and, there being no direct evidence of murder, Ruloff was finally sentenced to ten years in State's Prison for abducting his wife. Having served his term he was released and disappeared from public view until the year 1871, when he was convicted of participating in a robbery and murder at Binghamton, for which he was executed. He was a singu- lar character, being a profound and diligent student, and his career was an interesting, though terrible one, afterwards being made the sub- ject of magazine articles upon moral insanity, of which it seemed to furnish a striking example.
CHAPTER XIV.
IMMIGRATION AND EMIGRATION.
If we examine a small inland body of water, such as our Dryden Lake -- known to the early inhabitants as "Little Lake "-we shall find that it is connected with a small stream known as the inlet and a larger one called the outlet. During the spring floods the inflow is greater than the outflow, the result being that the water rises in the lake until it reaches what is called "high water mark." Then during the dry summer and autumn, as the inflow is rapidly decreased while the outflow continues unabated, the supply of water is reduced until " low water mark " is reached. Now, if we will picture to ourselves our town of Dryden as the dry bed of a lake, to which the tide of im- migration commenced to flow in 1797, and continued to flow rapidly until 1835, when the increasing outflow of emigration exceeded the diminishing inflow of immigration, and has so continued ever since, we shall have in mind before us the comparison sought for, to cor- rectly illustrate this subject. Many of the early inhabitants or their children continued their migrations to points farther west. For ex- ample we have seen that a number of the children of Captain Robert- son, the first freeholder of the town, early sought new homes in the West, where they have made reputations for themselves. Of the five Lacy brothers all of whom settled here in 1801, four in later years moved on further west, while only one, the father of the late John C. Lacy, remained. Until we come to consider it carefully, but few of us can realize the great and continuous drain which has been made upon the older settlements of the East to build up and populate the Great West during the past seventy-five years.
The writer was strikingly reminded of the reality of this fact upon
44
HISTORY OF DRYDEN.
his first visit to the West some twenty-five years ago. At the end of his journey he found himself in an inland town of the state of Michi- gan, imagining himself to be a stranger in a strange land. Having occasion to call upon a justice of the peace he stopped at the first office which displayed a sign of that character, hesitating to introduce himself as from Dryden, N. Y., doubting whether the inmate of the office had ever heard of such a place. Mustering up his courage, however, he ventured to state to the officer where he was from, and you may imagine his surprise upon the magistrate's extending his hand saying : "Why, I used to live in Dryden, " and he immediately commenced inquiring about some of the old citizens of Dryden, whom he had known here thirty years before. A gentleman who happened to be in the office reading a newspaper, here interrupted by saying : ". I never lived in Dryden, but my wife used to be a resident of that town." The surprise and revelation was complete, and further ex- perience in states farther west has confirmed the fact, that the great western part of our country is thickly sprinkled over with inhabitants who have either themselves been at some time residents of Dryden or whose ancestors came from our town. Hardly a city of any size or a county in any of the Western States can be found to-day which has not some inhabitants who in this way derive their origin from the town of Dryden. They are found among all the classes and condi- tion of the Western population, from the farmer and common laborer to the Legislators and Judges, the town of Dryden having recently furnished to one of the newly formed Western states its first elected governor.
If all of the western population who can trace their origin directly or indirectly to the town of Dryden, could have been brought together at our Centennial Celebration, the whole township would have been taxed to its utmost to furnish accommodation for the vast concourse of people, and the grounds of the Agricultural Society would have been inadequate to furnish them standing room.
In view of these facts it is no disparagement to the town that its population has decreased for the past sixty years. The Great West has continually been offering superior advantages to our young men, the more ambitious and adventursome of whom have been and still are taking advantage of these opportunities, leaving behind the more conservative (and shall we say less enterprising?) to till the same farms and pursue in a quiet way the same avocations as was done by our fathers before us. And yet, in spite of this drain upon the best life blood of the population, we shall submit to those former residents
45
LUMBERING.
who shall from time to time revisit us, that we have not permitted the town to run down in its enterprise and productiveness, but that with the aid of improved machinery and better buildings and methods, the farms, as a whole, have been improved and rendered more pro- ductive, while the general business interests of the people, with bet- ter means of manufacture and transportation, and superior education- al advantages, have not suffered in comparison with the earlier times. There is coming a limit to this outflow of population, the Great West is filling up, and the time is sure to come when the tide of migration will ebb back to our shores, and then the town of Dryden will support a greater and we trust a more prosperous population than ever before.
CHAPTER XV.
OCCUPATION OF THE INHABITANTS.
During this " development " period Dryden was emphatically a lum- bering town. Agricultural operations had been developed sufficiently to support the population, but the surplus product of the township at this time in this era of building was mainly pine lumber of a superior quality. This did not need to seek a distant market but was in ready demand at the low price which then prevailed of from four to five dol- lars per thousand feet by the country immediately north and east of us, which was not well supplied with pine timber. The following statistics concerning Dryden are gathered from the second edition of "Spafford's N. Y. Gazetteer," published in 1824, and furnish valuable data bearing upon this subject of the occupation of the people :
Number of grist-mills in town, 4; saw-mills, 26; fulling-mills, 2; carding-machines, 4; distilleries, 5; asheries, 4; population, 3,950 ; taxable property, $208,866 ; electors, 733; farmers, 2,005; mechanies, 132 ; shop-keepers or traders, 4; number of families, 634; acres of im- proved land, 14,323; number of neat cattle, 3,670; number of horses, 674 ; number of sheep, 6,679; number of yards of cloth manufactured in families in 1821, 37,300! ! Number of school districts, 20; public school money in 1821, $576.05.
We observe from this record the small number of horses kept com- pared with cattle ; the small number of store-keepers compared with the number of farmers and mechanics, and the small amount of tax- able property, not being one-fifth of what the farm buildings of the town are to-day insured for in the Dryden and Groton company.
In the year 1835 the number of saw-mills in operation was fifty-
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HISTORY OF DRYDEN.
three, all employed in working up the great quantity of timber, mostly pine, which produced the ready money for the people, the predomi- nance of which industry greatly retarded other farming interests. The picturesque fences of pine stumps, now disappearing, but which have served their purpose in this form for half a century, often attract the attention of strangers and are reminders of the former abundance of pine. Any person who has occasion to pass through the wood- land remaining on the Dryden hills to-day may observe the large weather-beaten but almost imperishable pine stumps still standing in the woods, from which the wealth of pine timber was taken in this peri- od of our history. Every merchant of those times kept in connection with his store a lumber yard, where he received from his customers lumber in exchange for goods. John McGraw, then a clerk in a Dry- den village store, obtained his first lessons in the lumber business in handling the local pine timber of the town, from the profits of which he obtained his start in the financial world, and afterwards applying his experience thus obtained to larger operations elsewhere, he amas- sed the fortune which netted over two million dollars to his estate after his decease. Dryden must then have presented the appearance of a vast lumber camp, the fifty-three saw-mills, all run by water power, giving employment to a great many men in cutting logs, draw- ing them to mill, and manufacturing and marketing the lumber, opera- tions all requiring much more labor to produce the same results then than now. Like all lumbering communities Dryden did not present a very advanced or refined state of development in that period, and John Southworth, who was a keen and careful observer of men and things in those times in which he participated, used to say in after years that the Dryden farmer, who occasionally took out of his clear- ing in those days to the county seat of this or an adjoining county with his ox team a load of lumber, or perhaps a cargo of charcoal, or sometimes a few barrels of potash salts leached from the ashes gathered after the burning of his fallow, when he was interrogated by the tradesmen to whom he sold his products as to where his home was, would admit with no little hesitation and embarrassment, that he lived "just in the edge of Dryden."
A great change has taken place since that time. The pine timber lands, so valuable to the lumbermen, but after the removal of the tim- ber, so beset with obstacles in the shape of the pine roots and stumps, so troublesome to the agriculturist, have at length been subdued and reduced to cultivation, and prove to be possessed of rich and enduring qualities of fertility. The disposition of the Dryden farmers to devote
47
THE DEVELOPMENT PERIOD.
their efforts to dairying instead of grain-raising has tended to improve rather than diminish the natural resources of the soil. In place of the original pine timber, excellent farm buildings have been supplied, and the Dryden farmer is no longer ashamed to acknowledge the location of his home. In fact his tendencies now seem to be in the other ex- treme, and subject him to the charge that he believes that his town was created a little better than the rest of the world in general. The interest which was manifested in the celebration of Dryden's Centen- nial, is proof of the pride which her inhabitants now take in acknowl- edging and honoring their native town.
CHAPTER XVI.
REVIEW OF THE DEVELOPMENT PERIOD.
We have failed to mention the war with Mexico, which occurred during this period from 1846 to 1848, resulting in the addition to our country of a vast amount of western territory, including California. This war did not excite great interest in the state of New York, and so far as we can learn no organized effort was made in Dryden to pro- mote it, and no volunteers, except perhaps a few scattering adven- turers, went from Dryden to engage in it. It was a Southern measure, not over popular at that time in the North, although in its results it proved to be important and highly beneficial to the country at large.
This was an era of prosperity in which the value of real estate and other property maintained a healthy improvement. As the water power used by the saw-mills ceased to be required for that purpose on account of the rapidly decreasing supply of saw logs, attention was given to other kinds of manufacturing to which these water powers were adapted ; and hence many of the mills and factories of the town date back to this period.
During this time stoves to a great extent took the place of the old- fashioned fireplaces, and tallow candles furnished the means of house lighting in the evening, supplemented toward the end of this period by sperm oil lamps and an explosive burning fluid compounded of cam- phine and alcohol.
The anti-slavery movement developed largely during this time. The census of 1820 shows that there were then held in the county of Tompkins fifty slaves, of whom thirty-two were held in the town of Caroline, nine in the town of Hector, six in the town of Danby and three in Ulysses ( then including Ithaca), but none were then held in
48
HISTORY OF DRYDEN.
the towns of Dryden, Groton or Lansing. In the preliminary draft of this chapter we said that we found no evidence that negro slavery ever existed in the town of Dryden. We had learned that Edward Gris- wold kept in his family an old negro by the name of Jack O'Liney, who had once been a slave, but who seems to have been harbored by Mr. Griswold as a subject of charity. Further investigation develops the fact that Aaron Lacy, who came to Dryden in 1799, while he re- sided on the Stickles corner in Willow Glen, bought and kept as a do- mestic servant, a slave girl by the name of Ann Wisner, remembered by some of the older people as " Black Ann," who was sent to school by her master in the Willow Glen district in those early years, and who, after her emancipation moved to Ithaca and has since then fre- quently revisited the family of her former master. In the will of Aa- ron Lacy dated in the year 1826 and recorded in the surrogate's office of Tompkins county in book B, page 69, this slave girl is bequeathed to his widow, Eliza Lacy. Perhaps other slaves were held in Dryden, but we learn of no others, and slavery was abolished in the whole state of New York early in this period, July 4, 1827.
A great change in the customs in regard to the use of alcoholic and spirituous liquors took place during this time. As we have seen, in 1824 there were five distilleries of whiskey in operation in the town and we are told that everybody in those days made use of it. Intoxi- cating liquor of some kind was considered a necessity to be furnished at every raising of the frame of a new building, and no farmer could commence haying without providing a supply of strong drink for the use of himself and his help during this laborious operation in those times. Tradition says that for the raising of the frame of the Presby- terian church edifice in Dryden village, which occupied a week in the year 1819, a large amount of whiskey was supplied to the volunteer workmen. Whether, as is sometimes claimed by old people, the whis- key of those days was so pure that it had none of the pernicious ef- fects which attend the intemperate use of the modern article of the same name, is fortunately not within the province of history to deter- mine.
In reviewing the first fifty years of Dryden's inhabitation we cannot but be impressed with the great progress and improvements which had been made, and doubtless the inhabitants of 1847 considered that the limit of progress in art and science had then almost been reached, and that but few improvements could be expected in the future. Yet at that time not a single mowing machine, reaper or family sewing machine had ever been brought into the township, the first of the for-
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THE DEVELOPMENT PERIOD.
mer, an Emory mower, having been brought into town by Elias W. Cady in 1850, and of the latter the first was a Grover & Baker sewing machine presented to Mrs. John E. McElheny by her brother, Vol- ney Aldrich, of New York, in about 1857, the cost of which was one hundred thirty dollars. At that time people came from as far as West Dryden to see a machine which could " actually sew," and that same machine is still in active use.
Up to this time not a single bushel of mineral coal ("stone coal" as it was called in those days) had ever been introduced, the first, as we learn, being a barrel of blacksmith's coal brought in from Ithaca as an experi- ment by Obed Lindsey and Jim Patterson in 1850. Kerosene oil had then never been heard of, and it was some time before "stone coal" was used here for heating houses, the term "coal" then being universally ap- plied to charcoal, which was used much more commonly than now.
We believe we are safe in stating that up to this time not a single steam engine, either stationary or portable, had ever been introduced into the town except where the D. L. & W. R. R. now crosses the south-west corner. On that old road in 1840 it was attempted to use the first locomotive, but without success until it was sent back to Schenectady to be enlarged and improved. When returned it was so heavy that it wrecked one of the bridges and was abandoned until about 1847, when steam power first became a practical success on this old line of railroad.
In concluding this chapter we quote two stanzas from a centennial poem written by a lady who was born in our adjoining county of Cort- land and who is a relative of the Hammond family in Dryden, as follows :
" Where women sat beside their looms, A hundred years ago, And wove in cloth the threads they spun Of linen, wool, and tow, Now great King Steam, in work shops large, Like some old giant elf,
Gets up with angry puff and roar And does the work himself.
"The poor, old stage coach lumbered on, A hundred years ago,
O'er rugged roads and mountains steep, Its progress was but slow ; Now, through the mountain's heart, and o'er Deep chasms, yawning wide,
With iron steeds, in palace cars, How fearlessly we ride." -Luranah Hammond.
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HISTORY OF DRYDEN. CHAPTER XVII.
THE CIVIL WAR PERIOD-SLAVERY.
It is with a consciousness of our inability to do the subject justice that we undertake to record the history of Dryden in connection with the War of the Rebellion and the great events which immediately pre- ceded and followed it, occupying the third quarter of our Century Period, and extending from 1847 to 1872. It was no slight misunder- standing or sudden outburst of jealousy or anger which caused the en- lightened and usually sober-minded people of our country-North and South-to engage with all their might in a fierce and bloody con- flict lasting over four years, sacrificing hundreds of thousands of lives and expending billions of money, involving in its results the very ex- istence of the nation itself. No section of the country stood more loy- ally by the government, freely offering up its treasure and the lives of its best citizens for the support of the Union and the cause of freedom in this desperate struggle than did the town of Dryden, and none can claim a greater interest in, or credit for, the result. In the darkest days of the conflict, when the draft riots in New York city indicated weariness of the war, and the votes of the majorities in some sections seemed ready to declare the war a failure, our people continued to roll up increasing majorities at the polls for the war party, and with a firm determination to win, promptly responded to all calls for men and money. To the extent in which she participated in it, the history of this war is the history of Dryden and will be so treated.
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