USA > New York > Chautauqua County > Ellicott > The early history of the town of Ellicott, Chautauqua County, N.Y. > Part 34
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During the summer of 1886 a log house' was erected by Col. S. B. Winsor, aided by the old citizens of Jamestown and the neighboring country, in com- memoration of the early settlers of Chautauqua County. On September 1st it was dedicated. The ladies of the town prepared a dinner in honor of Judge Marvin and the Old Settlers,to which all of that class on the grounds were invited. Dr. G. W. Hazeltine had been requested to make a dedicatory address, to be followed by Judge Marvin, who was to remember the founder of James- town, and thank the Ladies for the sumptuous dinner they were expected to prepare, and in which no one
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was disappointed. The whole affair passed off in a manner agreeable to all concerned.
The occasion was the Semi-Centennial Anniver- sary of the Chautauqua County Agricultural Society, and as we have stated the log house was erected as a memori il of the early settlers of the county. A pam- phlet giving an account of the erection of the log house and containing an accurate picture of it, the dinner, by whom gotten up, and the names of the old people who partook, and the dedicatory speeches given in full, of which a thousand copies were printed and circulated, especially among young people, asking them to preserve the pamphlet and to be present at the Centennial Fair to be held on Marvin Park in 1936. Doubtless a few children who were present last September will be present on that occasion-then old people-with that little pamphlet, on Marvin Park in 1936. How encouraging the thought that we, although not there to see, will be remembered even for fifty years. But we have some misgivings. Will they not wanderabout enquiring, Who was Judge R. P. Marvin? Who was- but we stop, but such is fame.
We give the following extracts from the speeches on that occasion :
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FROM DR. HAZELTINE'S ADDRESS. *
Engaged as I have been for some months past in writing up the history of the town of Ellicott and the more prominent of its early settlers ; of fathers and mothers who lived in houses built of logs, of which the one before us is an excellent pattern, I have been led to reflect upon the immense labor they performed, and when I consider the hardships and privations they endured, and the care they took to establish within
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their borders the church, the school house, and the printing press, that you might live in elegant ease on farms of unsurpassed beauty, enjoying all these Christ- ian privileges, all of these educational advantages, all of these great sources of enlightenment, of power, of wealth, and of happiness; when I reflect upon all this, they become in my imagination, the most noble, praiseworthy people of which any country can boast. * * % *
A few days ago I was permitted to view a rude picture of a small log cabin and its surroundings, set in a small notch in the forest. The young friend who exhibited it to me, said it was taken by her grand- mother in the winter of 1815, and remarked that her grandfather came into the country from Vermont in the spring of 1814, and drove a team for some neigh- bors who were emigrating to Chautauqua ; that soon after his arrival he bought the article for 200 acres of land, and set to work and slashed and partly cleared a couple of acres, and built a small log cabin. "He hired the span of horses he drove into the country for three months, and when the time expired one of the owner's sons came six miles through the woods and helped him three days to get his cabin up,then took the horses home. After sowing some mustard and other seeds, and planting a bitter-sweet to be trained over the door and window, and planting a few seeds,and flower bulbs as Mary had directed him to do, he started for Ver- mont, walking nearly the whole distance, catching an occasional ride for a few miles. A short time after his arrival home his father gave him a yoke of oxen he had himself broke, and which he preferred to a span of horses, and a new wagon with a good canvas cover, and a small box of tools, but little else, as he did not
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think it best to draw a heavy load on so long a jour- ney.
On the 24th of September Mary's things were put into the wagon and everything prepared for the jour- ney. At 5 o'clock the next morning John and Mary (these were the names of my grandfather and grand- mother) were married. The bountiful wedding break- fast was eaten, mingled with many tears, although nearly all the young folks present, afterwards found their homes where they lived and died, in Chautau- qua. After breakfast was over, John's brother and Mary's brother lifted her up and placed her in her seat in the wagon. Mary's father said a short prayer and kissed her good bye, and then went to John who was leaning on the ox yoke and said, 'John, take good care of yourself and Mary. You have my blessing. May you be prospered and have God's blessing. It is now time to start. Good bye.' John spoke to the oxen, they moved out of the yard, and the long wedding journey had commenced. We were given the whole history of their long journey of over six hundred miles to their home in the wilderness; that Mary, near Utica bought two cows with calves old enough to stand the journey, which she herself drove over 250 miles to the new home." My informant added,“ Grandmother did not have to drive much after the first few days, they followed, and seemed troubled if the wagon for a moment got out of their sight." I might give you an account of their whole journey, and of their first year and more at their new home. Suffice it to say they had hard labor and many trials to endure, but they were prospered and conquered all difficulties. We will add the comment of my young friend : " Yes, I am descended from early settlers of this county, but I
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do not wish to be any nearer to the first settlement of a country than I am now. It would not suit me to be married at 5 o'clock in the morning, get into a wagon full of furniture, and ride after an ox team for six weeks; live in a little log shanty with the wolves howling all about, and live on johnny cake and pork and deer's meet for five long years before I saw any of my old friends. I wouldn't do it for the best John in Chautauqua County, even if I loved him as much as my grandmother loved my dear old grandfather. At least, I now think I would not. I cannot positively say what might happen, but I am perfectly safe now in saying, I would not."
This, my friends, is but a fair sample of our fathers and mothers ; the picture is under drawn, not over drawn. * *
Duly considering these great labors and privations of the early settlers, you, their descendants, should have engaged the most silver-toned eloquent voice in this whole country to speak to you to-day, and to ded- icate this log house to their memory. It is an humble edifice, but in such they lived and died. If each of those logs were gold from the mines of California-if the roof thereof was silver from the deep bowels of the Rocky mountains-if its floors were covered with the soft carpets of Wilton-or with rugs from Persian looms-they would not half as well speak your affec- tionate remembrance, and the deep love you have, and which I trust your children will have to the latest gen- eration, for your fathers and your mothers, who wrest- ed the beautiful farms on which you live from a howl- ing wilderness, and left them-with the cattle on a thousand hills-to you a legacy.
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The hardy Saxon who had planted himself on the Atlantic border of this continent, claimed under na- ture's universal charter, the whole country to the Pa- cific coast as fast as he could send his sons to take possession. These settlements grew and their popu- lation rapidly increased. The ancient oak and pine fell before the stroke of the axe. We see them even before the settlement of this county passing over the Alleghany Mountains at the south of us, and up the chain of the Great Lakes to the north of us, making roads, building bridges, subduing the forests, and es- tablishing themselves on the border of the Lakes and on both sides of the Ohio even to the Mississippi. The wilderness is everywhere changed as if by magic into a civilized country, smiling with plenty. Such are the wonder working effects of industry, and our own county emerges from its wilderness state but slightly in advance of the planting of all the arts of industry and civilization over the whole continent, from ocean to ocean.
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I desire, my friends, that you should fully realize how rapidly this county has grown up. Within the memory of living men, it has been reclaimed from a wilderness whose only inhabitants were Indians and wild beasts. During that time, it has passed its in- fancy, the log cabin period, as well as that of its early manhood, yourgown boyhood days, in which the last land office payments were made, the stumps pulled, fences made, and good frame barns built and the first frame houses of the more forehanded erected, and to this has succeeded the period in which your own beautiful farms and palatial dwellings begin to appear.
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The hamlet of the Rapids has passed away. Jamestown, the village of your fathers, to which you were accustomed to come on horseback to mill, has spread out into the Pearl City, immense factories have supplanted the saw mills, and a hundred steam whis- tles summon thousands of busy operatives to their daily labors, instead of Aunt Nancy Prendergast's tin horn summoning the Judge and Alexander to din- ner.
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It is only a little more than 70 years ago that the town of Ellicott was set off from the town of Pomfret, then including the present towns of Carroll, Poland, Kiantone and a part of Busti. Where Jamestown now stands there was not a single inhabitant, not a tree had been cut or a log cabin erected. The location was known in the north part of the county as the Rapids. The wild deer then lapped the brackish water of which he is so fond at the crossings of your principal streets. Seventy years ago there were less than 150 inhabitants in the whole town of Ellicott, as then organized, but those settlers had come to stay, to live here and to die here. Nine of those hardy pioneers of seven decades ago, came together at my father's house, up to that time the usual meeting place, and named their home, the hamlet by the rapids, Jamestown, in honor of James Prendergast, the noble, generous hearted founder of this locality. The nine in their surroundings saw the promise of a future village, and more than one in fevered dreams had seen the spires and pinnacles of a future city, towering heavenward on yonder hills.
Those few years only intervene between us and our present environments, and the days when
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Through the deep wilderness where scarce the sun Can cast his darts, along the winding path The pioneer is treading. In his grasp Shines his keen axe, that wondrous instrument That like the fabled talisman, transforms Deserts to fields and cities. He has left The home in which his early years were passed, And led by hope, and full of restless strength, Has plunged within the forest, there to plant His destiny. Beside some rapid stream He rears his log walled cabin. When the chains Of winter fetter Nature, and no sound Disturbs the echoes of the dreary woods, Save when some stem cracks sharply with the frost; Then merrily rings his axe, and tree on tree Crashes to earth; and when the long keen night Mantles the wilderness in solemn gloom, He sits beside his ruddy hearth, and hears The fierce wolf snarling at the cabin door, Or through the lowly casement sees his eye Gleam like a coal of fire.
[Alfred Street.
Where we now stand was called the Fly, and was the chosen home of the bear, the panther, and the lynx. And what is it to-day! Marvin Park ; a proud name which it will continue to wear as long as the city of Jamestown continues to stand on yonder hills. Yet in its infancy, Chautauqua is proud of it, and the name it bears. Chautauqua county has as much reason to be proud as any other county of the Empire state. Proud of her early settlers and their beautiful daughters, the women of to-day ;- proud of her judges, and of her learned men ;- proud of her daily and weekly newspapers ;- proud of her schools ;- proud of her manufactories ;- proud of her working classes, in whom there is taint of neither socialism or anar- chy ;- proud of her farmers and mechanics; and proud of yonder beautiful lake, which, God grant, may forever bind her together, one county, one people. Cursed be the man or set of men, who ever attempt to
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divide Chautauqua county; to cut in twain old Jadau quuh, the medicine waters of the ancient Senecas. Bet- ter for them that mill stones be fastened around their accursed necks, and they cast into the "bottomless hole" opposite to Long Point ;- court house or no court house, Chautauqua county first ;- court house afterwards. We are proud of Chautauqua lake, with the greatest and most unique Educational Institution at one end and the Pearl City and Marvin Park at the other, and surrounded on all sides by the most beautiful land- scapes in the world. We have a right to be proud, and who shall chide us for being proud.
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Where can you find a more beautiful and service- able piece of ground anywhere than will be this Mar- vin Park when completed? And we trust Judge Mar- vin and his son, Robert Marvin, will not fold their hands until they have completed it according to their original designs. Jamestown is proud of its environ- ments. And this county from Dunkirk on the north to the "boot jack" on the south,is proud of Jamestown,a few long-haired or bald-headed politicians to the con- trary. The people of this county are proud of Chautau- qua and all her belongings. And I now say to the ven- erable Judge that although it will be long before this county forgets his legal learning and his statesmanship, nevertheless, when the marble marking his resting place in Lake View Cemetery on yonder hill shall have crumbled into ruins, and his achievements at the bar, on the bench, and in the counsels of the nation are forever forgotten, Marvin Park will remain in name as in reality, a blessing and a joy to this people, and a monument unto himself forever.
Half a century ago the south part of this county
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had not ceased to be a wilderness, and save the few who lived near the saw mills where boards were cheaper than logs, the inhabitants lived in log houses, houses like unto this you have here erected. Our fath- ers wore coarse clothes made from cloth, wove by our mothers on looms in log houses like this; our mothers! the best, the handsomest, smartest, most energetic wo- men that ever lived.
Within that period we have developed from a small village into a small city, and that development has been healthy, strong and vigorous. What is to be the future development ? Without claiming to be a prophet, we answer, in the future, as in the past, our course is to be onward, right onward, until you cele- brate on Marvin Park, by the side of this log house, the centennial as you do to day the semi-centennial of the organization of the Chautauqua County Agri- cultural Society, and hereon hold a Fair of the coun- ty's products. You cannot prevent this onward move- ment if you would; you are bound to pass through an- other fifty years of advancement and prosperity. On- ward, right onward, is to be your course. Let others, less fortunate in their location, with less backbone, and less favored by nature, do all the growling. It is far better to live three miles away from a small lake with a crooked outlet, and by the side of a swamp like this, with "Bob" Marvin to sow it with hills of gravel, and to reap such an abundant and substantial harvest of Park and Fairground, than by the biggest lake on the con- nent. I say Fairground, for I most sincerely believe that this society will here hold an annual fair until yonder outlet shall forget its crookedness and become straight.
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There are few here who have not seen a log cabin before ; many of you have lived in one, and climbed its perpendicular ladderto the spacious loft and there slept as sweetly and soundly as in the most elegant residence of which this county can boast. It was in such buildings as this your stalwart fathers lived when they reclaimed from the unbroken wilderness the farms which are now your beautiful homes. You have erected this log dwelling to their memory and to the memory of your mothers, In no other way could you as well have shown your love and affection for them.
And now we dedicate this house of logs as a monument and memorial to the pioneer settlers of Chautauqua County; and I charge those who from time to time may be the officers of this association, or who have the care of Marvin Park, to guard it and see that it is kept sacred to the purposes for which it was erected ; as a memento of the past, sacred to the mem- ory of the settlers of this great county, as it was and is and always shall be-Chautauqua. Bounded on the north by the possessions of our pleasant friend and neighbor, Mrs. Victoria Albert-Coberg Canada, on the east by the remaining portion of the Empire State, on the south and west by the farms of the heirs of Mr. Penn, and by E. Pluribus Unum to the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean-Chautauqua County-the Yankee center of all creation-and so may she remain, one and undivided unto the end of time. We charge you to furnish it with the spinning wheel, both great and small, and with the loom, for it was with the aid of these that your mothers manufactured the first cloth that covered your poor bare backs. I charge you to rightly arrange the roomy fire place, and erect the
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chimney of sticks and untempered mortar, and make fast therein the proper lug pole, or if you will, the pon- derous crane, well supplied with hooks and tramels. For it was before a fire built of four-foot logs in such a fire-place, your mothers baked their johnnycakes on boards hewed from the ash and the maple. It was from such lug poles that they suspended their pots and kettles containing the venison and the bear's meat and potatoes, and prepared the frugal daily meal ; over which your fathers expressed their deep thanks, and asked the blessings of Almighty God. We charge you to keep the hearth thereof well swept and the cosy benches in the jambs in good order. For it was in those warm corners that many of you courted the girls, then dressed in linsey-woolsey of their own man- ufacture, who have since proved so true and faithful helpmeets through the best part of your lives. We charge you to see that the windows thereof are kept in good repair; when a glass is broken see that it is immediately renewed; if that is not possible, a clean piece of white paper must be substituted ; old hats and bundles of rags must not at any time be allowed, for they speak louder than words, of laziness and unthrift. We charge you to see that the door thereof is in good order; the hinges of wood well greased to prevent any unpleasant, or from sleep awakening squeak; the latch in good order, and the latch string hanging out; for the log cabins and houses of your fathers were not only their homes, but they were also the asylums of the way worn and of the traveler lost in the wilder- ness.
As charged, you are expected faithfully to per- form and to deliver this log house,with its fire place,its chimney and its chimney corners, its lug pole in good
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condition, its hooks and its tramels, and all utensils, its wheels and its loom and other furniture, its win- dows and its door, with proper latch and hinges, to your successors at the Centennial fair, to be held on Marvin Park in 1936, fifty years from to-duy, at which time the young people here to day are invited to take their places at the dinner table prepared for the old settlers of Chautauqua County, and listen to the inter- esting address to be delivered on that occasion.
After Dr. Hazeltine had taken his seat, Judge Richard P. Marvin arose and spoke substantially as fol- lows:
What shall I say, not what should be said? The mind takes in, in a moment of time, what may re- quire hours to utter in speech. I have thought of the numerous families of the early settlers in Jamestown and this part of the county, and the peculiar charac- teristics of these families are strongly marked ; and the idea had occurred to attempt a description of them, and there entered into my mind dozens of these fam- ilies. I am compelled to abandon any such attempt. I will refer only to the founder of Jamestown-now the city-whose Christian name, James, was given to the village by its earliest inhabitants. The family con- sisted of James Prendergast, his wife, Nancy Thomp- son Prendergast, and an only son, Alexander, then a small boy. Mr. Prendergast was at an early day, ap- pointed one of the county judges, and hence was known in all parts of the county as Judge Prender- gast. It must suffice in my very brief remarks to say that Mrs. Prendergast was universally beloved on ac- count of her own lovely character. No account was ever kept by her of her charities to those who for a
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time, struggling with the difficulties of a new settle- ment, literally in the wilderness, needed temporary aid and encouragement. She was a good, a noble wo- man, of Scotch ancestry.
The life and character of the Judge has been of- ten sketched. When I say he was the right man in the right place do I not say all that it may be neces- sary to say here. So saying implies that he used what for those days were quite ample means, in erecting mills, a necessity for a large extent of country, then rapidly filling up by those brave, sturdy settlers, who were to make Southern Chautauqua what she now is; by assisting the building up of the village. rendering aid and encouragement to all worthy enterprises. His son grew up in the village here. After his father, in 1836, sold his Jamestown property, the family for a time lived in Ripley, and then moved into the town of Carroll, now Kiantone, some six miles south of Jamestown. Here the Judge owned a large tract of valuable farming land, largely improved at the time. It was here that the son, Alexander, developed a taste for farming, based upon a sound judgment. The
management of this large property left mainly to Alexander, and to him, I was think, more than any other man in the county, for many years, we were indebted for the great improvement in cattle, especially the Durhams or Short Horns. He imported some of the best specimens of this favorite breed of cattle, and as his herd in- creased, he sold, upon reasonable terms, the young full bloods, and their descendants are to be found, more or less pure, in all parts of the county, and they appear at all our agricultural fairs as competitors for prizes. But, my friends, say what I may of your indebtedness to
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him for improved methods of farming and of improv- ing the breeds of cattle-these dwindle into nothing- ness when we contemplate Alexander T. Prendergast's great nobleness of character. He stands in the front rank of nobility viewed as a generous, charitable man, As such he is far above my feeble praise. I should have stated that Alexander, after his mother's death married in Ripley, Miss Mary Norton, who became the female head of the family; she is still living and present with us this day, and all that it may be proper for me to say here is that the union was a happy one. They had two children, a boy and a girl. The girl, a beautiful and promising one, was taken from them at the early age of about ten. The boy, James. attained early man- hood. His character was noble and worthy of imita- tion by all young men. As he was the sole heir appa- rent of his father's large wealth, liberal advances were made to him. He conceived the idea of erecting in this village a monument to the memory of his grand- father and to the family, and he purchased the lots on the corner of Main and Third streets and erected the beautiful block known as the "Prendergast Block." James served one term in the legislature of the state, probably the youngest member in it. He died after a short illness, at the age of 31 years. Naturally thought- ful, he had prepared the drafts of a will, by which he gave the Prendergast Block for a Jamestown library. This paper was found, after his death, unexecuted, and here was at once exhibited a noble trait in the charac- ter of his father, Alexander, who was the heir of his son, James. He declared instantly, that the intention of James as manifested by the unexecuted paper should be carried into full effect. An act of legislature was procured incorporating the James Prendergast Library
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