USA > New York > Tompkins County > Dryden > The centennial history of the town of Dryden. 1797-1897 > Part 9
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through some of the land of Mr. Hurd and was named from him. He was at one time captain of a Dryden company of light infantry and was for a long time a man of prominence in the town.
JAGGER, SERREN HALSEY, was one of the very early settlers, coming to Dryden about the year 1800 from "between the lakes, " probably from Ovid. It is claimed that he built one of the first frame dwellings in Dryden village, located on the lot between the present residences of Albert J. Baker and Henry Thomas. Here his oldest daughter, Betsey, who became the second wife of John Southworth, was born in 1805. He was a tanner and currier as well as a shoemaker and had a small tannery back of his residence where he employed at least one man, by the name of John Welch. This must have been one of the earliest mechanical industries instituted at Dryden Corners. Another daughter, Mrs. Prudence Stevens, now of New Woodstock, N. Y., was born here in 1816, and is one of the oldest survivors of those who were born in Dryden now living. She joined the Presbyterian church at Dryden in 1835. Another younger daughter is Mrs. Harriet Shep- ard, of Homer, N. Y. There were two sons, Serren H., Jr., and Mat- thew, both of whom have died leaving families.
LACY, JOHN C. (See special biography.)
LARABEE, ELIAS, was one of the original lot owners, who drew by ballot Lot No. 49 of Dryden, including what is now the southeast quarter of Dryden village. He served in the fourth regiment of New York Continental troops and drew a pension of forty-eight dollars per annum under the act of 1818. In September, 1825, he was indicted for the murder of Amasa Barnes and after trial in December following was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to fourteen years in the State Prison. This incident grew out of his shooting at some persons who were hanging about his house at night, and in the darkness he fatally wounded Barnes, who was a friend of his. This, so far as we know, was the only act of homicide ever committed in Dryden village, and occurred on the Goodwin lot just east of the Kennedy bridge. Shortly afterwards in view of the circumstances and his services as a soldier, Larabee received a pardon, after which he lived in Dryden village and on the Carty place near the Lake, until near 1850, when he died, over eighty years of age. The Corrington and Lawson fami- lies are descendants of his.
MARVIN, SELDEN, in the winter of 1808-9 moved, himself, wife (Char- lotte Pratt Marvin, formerly of Saybrook, Ct.), and five children, from Fairfield, Herkimer county, N. Y., on a sled-tradition says an ox sled-to Dryden, and settled on the hundred acres since known as the
6
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Albright farm north of the village. Some six or eight acres had been chopped over and partly cleared before his arrival. He was hospita- bly received and entertained by Mr. and Mrs. Barclay, who lived in a log house across the road and a little south. The Barclays were then elderly people, and although they had children, their names seem to have disappeared long since from among the descendants of the town. Mr. Marvin soon had his little log house built and his family moved into it. It was much like other log houses of the time-having a loft or garret above, and two rooms below, in one of which was a large, open fire-place built mostly of stones and without jambs. After a few years a lean-to was added in which there was a bed, a hand-loom and spinning wheels. His struggles to clear up his farm and at the same time to feed, clothe and educate his children, were like those of his neighbors around him, who undertook a big job when they, poor as they were and with scarcely any kind of labor-saving machin- ery, possessing but few agricultural implements, and these poor both in kind and quality, settled down upon lands covered by dense for- ests and undertook to clear them up and get their living out of them. Their faith was truly sublime !
Mr. Marvin had cleared up the greater part of the hundred acres and built a frame barn upon it in about 1824 or '25. He sold it to Elisha Albright in 1832, and moved himself and family to Chautauqua county. He was induced to take this step in part by a revival in him of the old pioneer spirit of adventure and change, and in part by his desire to buy land to make farms for his younger children, and to be settled nearer his two sons-Erastus the elder, who had settled at Kennedyville, in Chautauqua county, and Richard at Jamestown.
But man proposes and God disposes. Mr. Marvin never realized either one of these objects. He had journeyed, with his wife and sev- en little children in an old-fashioned two-horse lumber wagon, over a rough and long road and arrived safely and all well at his son's house in Kennedyville. But before he had had time to explore the country or buy a single acre of land, either for himself or his children, his son Erastus was taken sick and died of a fever and he himself and his wife died soon after. The three died within a month with the same fever and in the same house. Their remains repose in the cemetery at Jamestown. Such was the sad ending of Mr. Marvin's unadvised and ill-judged last attempt to establish a new home in a new country. He died at the age of fifty-nine years.
It is not to be doubted that a special providence cares for orphans. Seven small children, the oldest not yet fourteen, were here suddenly
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deprived of both parents. In this emergency their elder brother, Will- iam, then twenty-four years old, took charge of the estate, moderate in amount, and the children. He found homes for four of them, Hen- ry, Harrison, Wesley and Harriet ( Tanner), among friends of their father and mother in Dryden. Homes were found for the others among friends elsewhere. The seven all grew up, married and settled in life. All became, too, by various means, well educated and have made useful and highly respectable citizens.
Mary Hibbard, the widow of Erastus, returned to her parental home in Homer carrying with her a baby boy. He died in New Haven, at the age of eighteen, while attending Yale college.
Mr. Marvin was born in Lyme, Ct., and was twice married. His first wife died in 1816. She was buried in the old burying ground in or near the village of Dryden. By her he had seven children. One of them, Richard, represented Cattaraugus and Chautauqua counties in Congress for several years, and was afterwards one of the judges of the Supreme Court in the Eighth Judicial District for twenty-four years. His home was in Jamestown, where he died in 1892.
Another son, William, was appointed U. S. District Attorney for the Southern District of Florida by President Jackson in 1835, and after- wards judge of the same district by President Polk. After the civil war he was appointed Provisional Governor of that state by President Johnson. He is still living in good health at Skaneateles, N. Y., and celebrated his eighty-ninth birthday last April, (1897.)
[For further particulars concerning Richard and William Marvin, and their portraits, see a subsequent chapter of this volume.]
By his second wife (the widow Vandenburgh whom he married in Truxton, from which place he brought her and her three children to Dryden in the bottom of an old fashioned sleigh) Selden Marvin had seven children, one of whom, George W., is a lawyer in Norwich, N. Y., and another, Harrison, has served several years as supervisor of our town and president of Dryden village, being now in the employ of the State Government at Albany.
Selden Marvin was a public spirited citizen, who generally attended the town and district school meetings. He was quite often elected a commissioner of highways and was for a considerable number of years trustee of the gospel and school lot. In politics he was a Federalist, but he was known less for his civic virtues than for his religious char- acteristics. He was a Methodist-a class leader and exhorter. The few Methodists in and about the village, consisting of Mr. Marvin, John Guinnip, Mr. Hunting, old Father Holt, and a few others whose
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names are not recalled, used to meet together on Sundays, sometimes in private houses, but more often in the old school house in the vil- lage. At these meetings the faithful prayed and sang hymns together. Mr. Marvin was their leader. He used to pray and exhort with great earnestness and power and in a loud voice which was often heard over half the village. A great number of persons in that day declared that they had been converted or greatly strengthened and comforted by his prayers and exhortations. His memory is still fragrant in the minds of a few persons yet living. He was an honest, simple hearted, humble minded, God fearing man, inoffensive and much beloved by his friends and neighbors.
SWEETLAND, BOWEN and JAMES, brothers, came from Vermont as young men early in the century and together owned and operated a saw-mill on the creek about twenty rods below the Woolen Mill, where the banks of the old mill pond can still be seen in the pasture lot of D. Bartholomew. Afterwards Bowen kept hotel where the Blodgett hotel was built later. The old building where Sweetland served as landlord, having been moved off and remodeled, is believed to be the house where Thomas Tamlin now resides on Union street, having been first occupied after its removal by Esquire E. H. Sweet, the nurseryman and shoemaker. Bowen Sweetland finally owned and occupied the Burlingame farm, one-half mile north of the village, where he died March 13, 1859, 72 years of age. His seven children all settled in the West except Bowen, Jr., who died in Dryden a few years ago, and Lucinda, who married Alanson Burlingame, Sr., and died in Dryden about thirty-five years ago.
James, after leaving the saw-mill, purchased the farm a mile east of the village which he afterwards sold to Bradshaw, and then removed to the Layton farm near the Lake, where he died in 1862, aged 74 years. His wife was Frances Wakely and his eight children all found homes in the West except two sons, George and Lafayette, still resi- dents of Dryden, and Sarah (Hiles), who recently died here.
TANNER, ABRAHAM and WILLIAM T., two brothers, from Petersburgh, Rensselaer county, N. Y., after serving in the War of 1812, came to Dryden. Their younger sister, Hannah (Griswold), had preceded them, she having come with Amos Lewis, and it was a visit to her which resulted in the early settlement here of her brothers. They were blacksmiths and opened a shop together near where the Brad- shaw house is now located, one mile east of the village, but Abraham, on account of his health, was obliged to seek lighter work, and, after some experience as a merchant, which was not altogether successful
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and as hotel keeper where James Lormor, Sr., recently resided, he became postmaster and justice of the peace, offices which he held for more than twenty-five years, and in administering which he gave very general satisfaction. His first wife, whom he married in 1818, was Asenath Wakely, after whose death he married for his second wife Betsey Lum, by both of whom he left descendants.
William T. continued in the blacksmith business and afterwards with his sons embarked too largely in the manufacture of wagons, and failed. In 1820 he married Polly West, who survived him, and by whom he had a large family of children. Both of these brothers were men of excellent character and good common sense, but both seemed to have been wanting in some of the sterner qualities which go to make up a thoroughly successful business man.
THOMAS, MICHAEL, left the state of New Jersey in the summer of 1811, traveling northwest, seeking a home in the wilds of New York. After prospecting some time among the lakes he came to Dryden Sept. 11, 1811, and bought one hundred six acres in the south-east corner of Lot No. 48, for which he paid $430.23 in sound money of the State of New York and received a good warranty deed, still in possession of the family, from Egbert Benson, executor of John Lawrence, who died a resident of New York city but who had been an extensive dealer in Dryden real estate. Four cows, two span of horses, two covered wagons well filled and one thousand dollars in money then constituted his worldly possessions in addition to his land.
His family at that time consisted of seven children, the youngest one of whom was the only child of his second wife, who accompanied them. Four more children were born to them in Dryden. The oldest, Martha, or Mattie, was already married to the ancestor of the Space family in Dryden, Jacob Space, who at this time accompanied his father-in-law in his migration from New Jersey, and located where his son William now lives. Eliza married Sanford Bouton and moved to Virgil. Fannie married Edward Cole and died in Freeville. Polly married William Sutfin and lived in Freeville. John married Sophia Bowlby and moved to Bath. Joseph married and lived in New Jersey. Michael married for his first wife Catharine Trapp, and for his second wife Ellen Swart, and lived near Dryden Lake, where he died in March, 1897, 87 years of age. Anna married twice and is still living near the Black River in the northern part of the state. Charlotte married George Bouton, a clergyman of the M. E. church, and became the mother of Ex-Mayor C. D. Bouton, of Ithaca. William married Catharine Caswell and is still living in the house originally built by
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his father in 1824, and in which he was born a year later, the house having since been extensively enlarged and repaired. Malvina, the youngest of the family, married Almond Trapp, who was the youngest. of a family of eleven children, and both are living near McLean.
Grandma Thomas, as she was, in her old age, familiarly called, had a good memory and often told amusing and interesting incidents of this journey from New Jersey to Dryden and described many in- stances of the privations and hardships of pioneer life. The south half of Lot No. 48, with the exception of a small clearing where the wagon house on the Thomas farm now stands, was then covered with a heavy growth of timber. Fish and game were plenty, bears being common, and it was no unfrequent sight to see deer in cold weather when the snow was deep feeding with the cows near the barn. A jug is still preserved in the family which was used in the pioneer journey to carry milk for the children, it being over one hundred years old.
South street was then located where is now the lane to the barn- yard, west of the clearing, which contained a log house and barn and a grove of small elm trees. One of these elm saplings which is de- scribed as being, when the Thomas family came there, "no larger than a chair post, " has grown with the growth of Dryden, the trunk of which is now sixteen feet in circumference near the ground and is one of the largest if not the oldest elm tree in the township.
Michael Thomas and his wife worked hard in clearing up their farm and lived long to enjoy the fruits of their labor, he having died in 1858 at the ripe age of 92, while she, being thirty-two years his junior, survived him twenty-seven years.
THOMAS, JOSEPH, SR., a brother of Michael, was an early pioneer of Dryden from the same family in New Jersey, among whose children were Joseph, Jr., and John Thomas, who resided only a few years ago near where Walter Thomas, the son of John, now lives, and Mrs. Abram Carmer and Mrs. George Tripp, all of whom are .represented by numerous living descendants.
WEST, JOHN, and wife lived in Rhode Island in 1798, where their son Gardner was born May 7th of that year. In some way they caught the " Western fever " of those days and with a brother, Mason, came as far as Fairfield, Herkimer county, N. Y., where they bought a home together and where their daughter Mary (Aunt Polly Tanner) was born July 21st, 1803. The partnership between the two brothers was not entirely satisfactory, as is usually the case under such circum- stances, and in 1805 John came out to Dryden prospecting for a new home still further west. As the result he sold out his possessions in
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Herkimer county to his brother and moved his family to Dryden, where they arrived in February, 1806, with all their goods on an ox- sled. They stopped temporarily in a log house which stood in the orchard near the house where Harrison Hiles now lives, which was then, or shortly after, the home of Joshua Holt, known also as "old Father Holt." Together with Benjamin Tucker they purchased the greater part of Lot 28, one mile and more north from Dryden village, and Mr. West built for himself a log house, where his son, William West, was born May 18, 1806. Their next eldest child, Percy Hiles, was born there June 12th, 1808, on the same farm where she now re- sides with her son John, the log house being located where the or- chard now is. She will therefore be ninety years old next June and is able to furnish more details of the early events of those years than most other old people now living. One brother (Nathan West) and three sisters (Sally M. Draper, Flavilla Hiles and Lovina Clark) were afterwards born. A frame house was built where the house of her son, John W. Hiles, is now located, when she was ten years old (1818), and up to that time her father, John West, had nothing but an ox team. Some time after, he purchased one horse, but Aunt Percy says that the roads were not suitable for horses to travel on in those days. Nearly all of the children of John West will be recognized as familiar characters to the people of Dryden village, and his descend- ants now living here are numerous.
WHEELER, DEACON SETH, served in the War of the Revolution, at the close of which he married Rebecca Eliott, of Boston, and lived in Croydon, N. H. In the spring of 1804, he, with his oldest daughter, Rebecca, and son John, came to Dryden, prospecting for a new home in the West. Being pleased with the country Seth and his son re- turned in the fall for the rest of the family, which included, in all, his wife and ten children. They came with one ox team, three horses, and two wagons, carrying all their worldly goods, including about one thousand dollars in money, with which was purchased one hundred eighty acres of land one mile north of Dryden village on both sides of the highway still known as the "Wheeler road, " being premises now owned by S. C. Fulkerson, James McDermott, and E. P. Wheeler. In 1822 a commodions frame house was built, replacing the log cabin which had accommodated the family until that time. Seth Wheeler was a fluent talker, a man of marked ability, deacon in the Baptist church, an earnest exhorter, holding meetings frequently in the neigh- boring school districts. He died in 1828 aged 72, and was buried with his wife, whose death preceded his, in the old cemetery east of
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the village, where a double slate slab still marks the location of their graves.
Of their children, Rebecca married Eliseph Sanford and moved to Greenwood, Steuben county, N. Y. Betsey married Jared Todd, of West Dryden, and afterwards, with eight children, moved to a new place in Michigan, named from them Toddville, where their descend- ants are now numerous. Susan married John Pettigrove and moved to Owego, some of their descendants now living in Ithaca. Lucy and Polly died unmarried. Seth, Jr., married Amantha Lacy, lived on the east part of the farm and died without surviving issue. Enos, the an- cestor of the most of the family still living in Dryden, married Mary Blair, and was a successful farmer, a genial and public spirited citi- zen, a school trustee and an active member of the Presbyterian so- ciety of Dryden. He died in 1867. John also left descendants living in Dryden, married Eliza Blair, was a Methodist, and moved from Dryden before his death. Salinda, born in 1799, is still living, at the age of 98 years, with her son in Litchfield, Mich. [Since the foregoing was in type for printing this book, news is received of her death in February, 1898.] She married William Marsden Blair, and one of their daughters is the wife of Representative Flickinger, of Ohio. Anna, the tenth child, married Anson Cook and moved to Michigan, where their descendants still reside.
WHITMORE, PARLEY, was Dryden's early merchant, druggist, post- master, justice of the peace, and scrivener. No History of the town would be complete which did not take notice of him, although our data concerning him are very incomplete. He came to Dryden early. was postmaster in 1812, and in his latter years here he lived on South street about where the I. P. Ferguson house now stands, and his store was on what is now the church corner. He seems to have been, finan- cially, somewhat dependent upon Capt. Edward Griswold, who fur- nished, to a great extent, the capital stock invested in his business, his goods being brought by teams from Albany, on the return trip from marketing loads of pioneer produce. Those who knew him say that he was a valuable man in a new country, although he seems to have been too easy and indulgent to become a successful merchant. He was somewhat more intelligent and better acquainted with the rules of law and ways of business than the farmers about him. He administered justice among them very fairly and settled many of their disputes without suit, drawing up for them their contracts and other papers. Old Dryden village deeds and contracts are usually ac- knowledged before or witnessed by him. We are not able to learn
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that the town supported any lawyers in the Pioneer Period and still, strange as it may seem, (?) under such guidance as Squire Whitmore gave them, the people lived and prospered. He had two sons, Philo, who long ago married and settled in Corning, and George, who mar- ried and lived in Ithaca, but we are unable to learn of them now and it seems that we shall be obliged to confess that Dryden has lost trace of the race of one of its earliest citizens and benefactors, Esquire Whitmore.
CHAPTER XXIV.
DRYDEN VILLAGE IN THE DEVELOPMENT PERIOD.
Whitney's saw-mill, located on the site of the present Woolen Mill, must have called into existence the first use of water power in the village. Its origin was very early in the century and it remained in use as late as 1845, very nearly up to the time when the stone walls of the new Woolen Mill were erected in about the year 1850 by A. L. Bushnell. The origin of the Woolen Mill dates back to 1819 when the first " clothing works, " as they were then called, were established by Benjamin Lacy. A flume from the saw-mill pond carried water to drive the carding-machine, fulling-mill and cloth dresser of those times, which constituted the " clothing works," the yarn being spun and the cloth woven on the hand wheels and looms of the neighboring farmers. Such cloth finishing machinery, used to finish the home- made cloth of that period, was quite frequently met with throughout the country. Ethel Barnum, who first came to Dryden with his brother-in-law, Samuel Williams, in the year 1818, and was the father of our Ralph W. Barnum, became the proprietor of this enterprise after the death of Mr. Lacy, but he died soon after, in 1823. It was not until after the property was sold to Bennett & Gillett, about 1844, that cloth was actually woven there, a brand of "sheep's gray" cloth being manufactured by them which had a local reputation for good quality among the farmers.
The village had no grist-mill until 1831, but Benjamin Bennett came down from Locke the year before and, after carefully looking over the ground and measuring the fall of water which could be obtained for power by combining the lake outlet with Virgil Creek, selected the site of the present stone mill, upon which a wooden building was then erected for a grist-mill. Edward Davidson, a brother-in-law to Ben- nett, became a partner with him in the enterprise. They purchased of
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Cyrus Rummer the right to construct and maintain a raceway from Virgil Creek over his premises and sold to Tabor & Blakeslee a water privilege where the Kennedy tannery is now located. They were obliged to purchase of Michael Thomas and John C. and Garrett Lacy rights to conduct in a raceway the water from both streams across their premises, and thus the present grist-mill water privilege had its origin in 1831. Lyman Corbin afterwards purchased the property and in 1845 replaced the wooden grist-mill by building the present stone structure.
About the year 1824 there came from Middletown, Conn., Asa Phil- lips, a young man of some prominence in Dryden's history, whose brothers were Dr. John W. Phillips, of Dryden, and Dr. George W. Phillips, of Ithaca, both registered at Ithaca in the years 1820 and 1821 respectively. He first came as a school teacher, married in 1828 a niece of Daniel J. Shaw, who had been a Dryden merchant, and be- came postmaster under the appointment of President Andrew Jackson on March 3, 1831-a position which he held until his death, July 4, 1843. He was a partner with Moses Brown in the mercantile business and was an influential member of the M. E. church of the village, for which the first church edifice was erected in these times. His son Robert A. Phillips, now a real estate dealer of Washington, D. C., was born in Dryden village in 1833, and has contributed some interesting data derived from his residence here, which continued until 1850. He relates that within his recollection the United States mail was brought into Dryden Corners daily in a four-horse thoroughbrace coach, the driver blowing a long tin horn as he entered, loud enough so that it was heard throughout the whole settlement. The postage on a single letter was then eighteen pence (182 cents). Eggs were then received at the store in exchange for goods at five cents per dozen, and butter at from ten to twelve cents per pound, but wheat was higher then than now, the average price being about $1.50 per bushel.
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