USA > New York > Steuben County > Bath > The official records of the centennial celebration, Bath, Steuben County, New York, June 4, 6, and 7, 1893 > Part 24
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In this little pocket-memorandum, which has bravely stood the ravages of ninety years, is a short entry made in the small handwriting of Charles Williamson, just as he was about to sail for England. It reads : "Jny 5, 1803. Paid Mr. Robinson for my miniature, $30. Paid for setting same, $30." That little miniature was a farewell gift to his charm- ing friend, "Madam" Thornton, and remained in her possession in this village until 1810, when she kindly presented it to his daughter, Ann, in Scotland ; and the country for which he had done so much, and to which he had given the best years of his life, was left without an image of his kindly face. That little miniature now hangs among the ancestral por- traits in the grand staircase of Lawers House, and opposite is a large bust portrait in oil, painted, probably, about 1790. We endeavored to obtain a photograph of this, and the genial Mr. Williamson promised to assist us.
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THE WILLIAMSON MEMORIAL.
Imagine my surprise when, after some correspondence, the following let- ter, teeming with the politeness and generosity of the author, was received. It reads as follows :
LAWERS, PERTHSHIRE, SCOTLAND, TREDEGAR LAWERS, CRIEFF, N. B. 1st MAY, 1893.
To James McCall, Esq., Bath, U. S. A.
MY DEAR SIR .- I send from this place to-morrow, as my gift to the Trustees of the village of Bath, an oil painting copied from the portrait of my grandfather, Colonel Charles Williamson. The said painting I hope the Trustees will place in the Free Library or the Court House or in any similar building that the Trustees may consider suitable. I may remind you that you saw the original portrait of my grandfather within Lawers House. And I pointed out to you the valuable sword presented to my grandfather by the Pasha of Egypt of that day, for the important service given ; and for the satisfactory political results following my grandfather's mission to Egypt, he received the thanks of England's House of Commons. My grandfather had the reputation in this country of being a brave and chivalrous soldier ; his regiment was the 26th-the Cameronians (and one of his great-grandsons is now an officer in that regiment and was wounded in the last Egyptian War.)
My grandfather was last sent on a commission by the British Govern- ment to report on the State of Havana, and, while returning to England, he was smitten with yellow fever and died at sea, A. D. 1808. My grand- father was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on July 12, 1757. I showed you my grandfather's watch, which I generally wear. I will look over some of my grandfather's papers, and, if I find memoranda of interest, I will send you copies of the same. I have before me a work of two volumes : "Travels through North America," by the Duke de la Rochefoucault. In that work my grandfather is most honorably mentioned, published A. D. 1799. Of my grandfather's life in America you know probably more than I do. In answer to your complimentary suggestion in letter of 21st March, 1893, you must excuse me saying anything about myself. I am,
Very truly yours,
DAVID R. WILLIAMSON.
Would that the distinguished donor were standing in my place to charm you with his manners, as I know he would, and to observe the wide-spread feeling of gratitude which I am sure is welling up in your breasts, to be thus honored by his gift. I confidently trust that you will treasure it as a precious souvenir and place it in some safe depository, where the men, women and children of this generation, and those that come after, can look upon those manly features and draw inspiration, energy and reverence from that good face.
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THE CENTENNIAL OF BATH.
Without further remarks, I therefore have the honor, on behalf of David Robertson Williamson, Esq., to present to the Trustees of the village of Bath, the portrait of its founder, its citizen and its friend.
MR. SMITH :
MR. PRESIDENT, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN :- It gives me great pleasure on behalf of the Trustees of this village, and on behalf of the citizens of Bath, to accept from Mr. McCall, the representative of David Robertson Williamson, this splendid painting and memorial of his ancestor and the founder of this village, Captain Charles Williamson.
We have assembled here today to commemorate his work and its results, and to hear from others fitting tribute in historical detail to the fruits of his great undertaking, and to listen to a recital of the perils he encountered and the difficulties he overcame. Surrounded by the monu- ments of a new civilization, the wide streets, the brick blocks, the com- fortable dwellings of our citizens, it is hard to conceive the courage and powers of endurance which the founding of a settlement in the heart of a wilderness required a hundred years ago.
The example set by the man whose lineaments are traced upon this picture may well encourage us all to beautify, to build up and make more prosperous this village of Bath. We accept this friendly gift in the same warm spirit with which it is tendered to us. We honor the ancestor, and extend most hearty greetings to his generous descendant who has so kindly remembered us on this occasion.
THE CENTENNIAL ORATION.
BY HON, SHERMAN S. ROGERS.
MR. CHAIRMAN AND FELLOW CITIZENS :- I accepted the invitation to address you on this occasion with pleasure, for this is my native town. Robert Campbell, my maternal grandfather, was one of the pioneers in Captain Charles Williamson's wilderness-settlement. Here my mother was born. My father began his professional life here, and for more than a quarter of a century was a resident of this village. My brothers and sis- ters, eight in number, were all born here. Here I spent my early man- hood, and began the serious work of life. Here I married my wife, her- self the granddaughter of an early settler, Dugald Cameron, and, although it is almost forty years since I ceased to reside here, I have always kept in touch with the old village, and if I can hardly claim now to be a Bath boy, I have never for a moment forgotten or been sorry that I once was one.
This little river tripping lightly through the meadows is as familiar to me as to the lad who has just escaped for the day from the school yonder that bears the name of Adam Haverling. Since my boyhood there have been many changes in hill and valley, but I have little difficulty in finding the old landmarks. Magee's Hill, where the sun went down, is not greatly altered. Doubtless, in due season, the sumacs will blaze across its front as they used to fifty years ago. The pine "thicket," whence "Tom" Hess and his hounds chased deer and foxes, and which then stretched miles away down the valley towards Hammondsport, has nearly disappeared. The deep woods which, in my early years, half encircled the pretty lake, whose rechristening you are to witness to-day, and stretched unbroken over the crest of Mount Washington, has given way to smiling farms ; but the lake remains pure and crystal as of yore. Veterans of the War have pos- session of the Eldorado farm, and the solid encampment that the State has there provided for them lends to it an aspect as strange as it is gratifying, but I can yet point out there, at the sharp bend of the river where it rushes against the steep rocks, the mysterious " Burke's Hole," to which "all the boys" said "no bottom had ever been found." The old storehouses at the "Basin," where it was said the arks used to lie, and those on the south side of the Bridge, too, have long since disappeared, but the Old Elm that was in its prime in Dugald Cameron's time, and many years before, still stands,
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wearing again its noble coronal, and promising to bud and blossom for other generations. Yonder is the grand South Hill with its primeval for- est, bearing a foliage of maple and ash and elm, of linden and birch and hemlock, as varied and as full and beautiful as it did when the ten plat- form rafts were a common sight on the river, swollen and impetuous with the spring freshets, at its foot. There, at least, Nature has kept her gentle seat quite undisturbed. There the partridge drums and the hermit thrush whistles its exquisite note as they did long years before the surveyors plant- ed the village, or Patterson, the hunter, led the first settlers into these pine plains. The "roll ways" from "Lyon's" down to " Baldhead " are no longer visible, but an old boy can yet discern their places by the younger and fresher growth that has reverently covered their nakedness.
There have been greater changes in the people. I might look in vain to-day for even one representative of many families well-known here in my boyhood, and here, too, is a great concourse of strange forms and faces. I am grateful, however, that there are also here some friends and neigh- bors, and many sons and daughters of the friends and neighbors whom I knew as the best of Bath in the years long gone by.
To a people young as that inhabiting this Western Continent a hun- dred years covers a vast tract of time. To older nations it is but a hand's breadth, but to us, viewing it from some standpoints, it seems a great part of eternity ; and when any community arrives at the dignity of a century's life it is not surprising that the impulse is irresistible to gather in the familiar places and recount the history of the past with its achievements great and small. The fittest do not always survive in the conflicts of men or nations, but the fact of survival is instinctively recognized as some indi- cation of worthiness. There mingles, therefore, in such a celebration as this, together with the neighborly instincts and a sense of kinship-be- cause so many of us feel that this town is our Common Mother-a becom- ing civic pride. In the "Genesee Country," just beyond your western borders, the Scotch captain who planted this village founded also what he supposed would be the city of Williamsburgh. Long years ago it ceased to be. Few at this day know that it ever existed, even in the imagination of its founder. He builded better here, and, remembering its early trials, Bath seems to be a true survival.
This history of the settlement of new countries is always interesting. Few things are more strongly stimulant to the imagination. The spec- tacle of great bodies of men and women turning their backs upon their old homes and every familiar object in search of more fruitful lands and a larger life ; the story of a brave and determined few, who, in search of spiritual liberty, dare the dangers of a stormy and unknown sea and every peril of a wild and inhospitable land ; what more than these can stir the blood and quicken the imagination and arouse the sentiments which most
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exalt and ennoble ? In a less degree the same is true of that pioneer life which the ancestors of many of us led. The family traditions of young men and women, strong only in the possession of sound bodies and stout hearts and mutual affection, parting from the homes of their youth and seeking new homes in the unbroken forest, braving the perils of wild beasts and wild men, of storm and flood, devoting their lives to the sever- est labor and undergoing privations of every sort, this is the story of the pioneer's life, and this is the story of the first white men and women who broke in upon this wilderness.
It is not my purpose to dwell upon it. With it you are familiar, and in the order of these Centennial exercises it belongs to others. I would, therefore, if I may be permitted to do so, address you more in the vein of reminiscence, and that, too, chiefly of Bath as I knew it before the rail- road invaded the Southern Tier. In doing so I may now and then import from one period into another, for it is difficult to speak with perfect accuracy on such themes. One need not be a lawyer to be impressed with the unreliability of human memory.
To the great majority of my hearers, probably, most of what I have to say in this vein will seem ancient history, for it is a fact of common observation that the measurements of time are most unreal if they far transcend the limits of personal experience. It is only a hundred years since Charles Williamson built the first log cabin in the Conhocton wilder- ness, but to every young person present the story of that early settlement seems as far remote as the pitching of Abraham's tents on the plains of Shinar. I beg you, therefore, to believe that I shall not attempt to ex- haust my subject.
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Before the dawning of my memory of men and things in Bath, the work of the pioneer had been substantially done. All that strange and pictur- esque life that Captaim Williamson initiated in the backwoods, which Mc- Master in his little volume has described so well, and with such wealth and felicity of illustration-a sort of pioneer advance on horseback, as it were, which, after Williamson's departure from the scene, was compelled to dismount and go on foot- had long passed. The log theatre had disap- peared. The race course, for the most part, was grown up with small pines and oaks. The distillery near the foot of Magee's Hill had been dis- mantled or had fallen into a state of "innocuous desuetude." At the south end of the old wooden bridge across the river one or two, and a little further down two other old store-houses were still standing, relics of the time when the commerce of the West,-meaning the Phelps and Gor- ham Purchase and the outlying districts,-was expected to seek the sea- board by the Conhocton, the Chemung and the Susquehanna, but their uses had been almost forgotten.
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THE CENTENNIAL OF BATH.
The hill sides, with the exception of the clearing on Magee's Hill were still covered with forest, but the river valley was well cleared and culti- vated, while to the north, as far as Gallows Hill, there were fields grown up here and there to small oaks. Beyond that on the main road were heavy woods of yellow pine, with here and there a clearing and here and there a farm, till the Cold Springs were reached, and there were grist and woolen mills, a saw mill, and the mansion and farm known as Uncle Harry Townsend's. Thence on to Hammondsport was a well settled country. On the Marengo road were the Haverling farm, the Marengo farm, and still further on the farms of the Brundages and John Faulkner. Following the River Road west, as it now lies in my memory, the valley was cleared and cultivated as far as Avoca, but the hillsides, in the main, were still crowded with forests, out of which, however, as well as from the hill land bordering the valley, had been cut most, but by no means all of the great white pines. The hemlocks had not yet come into their estate and were a humble and uncared-for multitude.
Below the village the most notable object was the Springfield mansion, a relic of early grandeur, with its long semi-circular avenue of Lombardy poplars.
A little farm house on the west side of the Lake, near the highway, was the property of the village watchmaker, Elisha Hempstead, and sixty rods or so farther towards the village the farmstead of George Newcomb. There are a few here to-day who will recall the delusive sign over his horse-barn : "Entertainment for Man and Beast."
Between Newcomb's and the village there was no other building until upon Morris Street was reached the residence of my grandfather, Robert Campbell. It is still standing ; but the great wood-colored weather-stained barns, which made the place notable in those days, have long since disap- peared. You will bear with me, I am sure, if I hold your attention for a few moments in the discharge of a pious duty to the memory of this mod- est and excellent man, whom not only the whole village loved and respected, but who was in those days "Uncle" to the entire county. He was an old man as I first recollect him. Born in Galston Parish, Ayrshire, about the year 1765, he was left an orphan at a tender age, and, as he has told me, not very kindly cared for by a kinsman, he often sought tempo- rary solace at the house of William Burns, and well remembered Robert, the gudeman's gifted son.
After serving a seven years' apprenticeship to the trade of a joiner, he emigrated in his early manhood to this country, and found his way, from Philadelphia I think, to Bath about the year 1793. Here he became a prosperous mechanic ; built many of the early mansions of the village ; and bought a large farm on its eastern border, the remnant of which is now the property of your distinguished townsman Judge Rumsey. Of his
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sons, the youngest, William, an old and worthy citizen of this town, alone survives. The late Lieutenant-Governor Robert Campbell was his second son, and the present Comptroller of the State of New York, the Hon. Frank Campbell, a grandson. My mother was his only daughter. He died at his residence in this village in June, 1849, and was, I think, almost the last survivor of the earliest group of settlers in this town.
The village at the time of which I speak must have had, I should say, a population of about twelve hundred people, of which, perhaps, two hun- dred were blacks.
John Magee's fine new house at the head of Morris Street, Robert Campbell's at the foot of that street, my father's house on Steuben Street (the lot corners now on Campbell Street), the old McClure house with a Grecian front just above the junction of Steuben and Morris streets, and Col. Bull's brick house at the head of Liberty Street, marked, with suffi- cient definiteness for my purpose, the limits of the village, except that be- tween the junction of Morris and Steuben, on the road to Belfast Mills, there were a number of little half-tumbled-down houses occupied by col- ored people, and at the mills General George McClure had erected the fine mansion which afterwards, for many years, was occupied by the late Judge Constant Cook. This house is now held, I believe, by Judge Cook's youngest son, Mr. Edwin Cook. St. Patrick's Street (now Washington) had been laid out a broad avenue, but was little more than a cow pasture. I think Dr. Simpson Ellas and Thomas Pawling, the carpenter, then lived on the sites occupied by them and their descendants for many years. John Thomas, the colored man, had a cabin not far west of Dr. Ellas's. These, as I remember, were the only houses between General McClure's and the farm house on the old race course, so long occupied by that worthy man, James May, and between that point and the place where the McMaster house now stands was an extensive forest of yellow pines. In effect, Mor- ris. Steuben and Liberty streets included the entire village. In the center was Pulteney Square, on the east side of which were built the Court House and Clerk's Office, substantially on their present sites, and the residence of Mr. McCay, the local agent of the Pulteney Estate; on the west side, at the south-west corner, was the stone jail. Then came the Steuben County Bank and the residence of John R. Gansevoort, formerly Dugald Came- ron's, on the corner of the Square and Morris Street. On the south side, at the westerly corner of the Square, was the saddler-shop of that gener- ous and hearty citizen Captain Moses H. Lyon, and close at hand the store of William S. Hubbell, and, I think, also that of Henry Brother. Then came the Land Office, the Presbyterian Church, a symmetrical wooden structure of the conventional New England type, then the residence and law office of William Woods, and the residence of Edward Howell and the law office of the brothers Edward and William Howell. On the north
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side at the corner of Liberty Street were, on the east, the Eagle Tavern and on the west the Clinton House. But I must not further particularize these descriptive facts. They are interesting to the survivors of that early time, for at the mention of these old places a thousand memories come crowding to their minds.
It was an attractive and significant little village that sat here among the hills. Small as it was it had a distinct and distinguished individuality. The time has passed for such villages. It is not probable another will ever be planted or grown. The railroad and the electric telegraph with what they represent make it impossible. In those days Bath was almost as far from New York as it is now from Hawaii. Few of its citizens had ever seen a half dozen consecutive copies of a daily newspaper, and yet they were intelligent men. It was a stage center, but the stage routes for the most part stretched away into regions still more remote from the cities, centers of intelligence and incident. The great events of the village day were the arrivals of the northern and eastern stages. "Is the Geneva in?" " Is the Owego in?" were the evening salutations of the mildly inquisitive citizens. The stage driver's horn was the music of the setting sun. The day's work over and the evening chores done, the more earnestly intelli- gent citizens wended their way to the post-office and sat on the counters until the mail, with its handful of city weeklies and semi-weeklies and its scant tale of letters, had been distributed ; but the majority did not in- dulge in a taste so vigorous. The next day, or even later, when some neighbor should have told them that there was a letter in the post-office for them, would do very well.
There were no "hustlers" in Bath in those days. If not beneath the dignity of the subject and the occasion I might perhaps say that Capt. Williamson must have been one-and died without knowing it. But I can personally recall none (unless it were Simon Watkins) in that decorous and deliberate village until the locomotive had invaded the Southern Tier. That was the opening of the new era, and Levi C. Whiting, Postmaster, Captain of the Eagle Fire Company, Captain of the Bath Artillery and Commander of the "People's Barge"-the favorite "store" of the village -was " on deck" to receive it.
But to return. In this little village was every essential element of dig- nity. If it had not great age, full forty years had ripened it, and it was distinctly at the head of the forces of civilization for a large territory. Corning had not picked the shell; Hornellsville was little more than a backwoods lumber camp; Avoca, a cluster of houses with a tavern and blacksmith shop; Penn Yan was a comparative parvenu many miles away ; Elmira, or Newtown as the ancients called it, still further distant, had not yet begun to feel the gracious impulse of commerce on the Chemung Canal. Bath sat among the hills in quiet self-possession and stateliness.
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There was the seat of justice. Nowhere in this or any other land was jus- tice administered with greater decorum and dignity than by Judge Robert Monell at the Circuit and Oyer and Terminer, and George Cunningham Edwards in the Common Pleas. There, too, was the land proprietor's rep- resentative. About the stiff rooms of the Land Office there was a seclu- sive chilliness that spoke of English aristocracy and a plethora of capital that must seek relief by investment in countries far remote. Far up the little valleys, where the farmer's wife weaned her child on vension and hominy, and the little clearing was in throes with its first wheat and pota- toes; over the hills in the lumber camps, everywhere through Steuben and Allegany counties. the agent of Sir William Pulteney and his successors was a dread potentate who wielded more than Jovean thunderbolts.
Here, too, was the Steuben County Bank, with the great gilded eagle and half eagles on the pediment of its Grecian front, and its power over financial life and death-bearing on the face of its bills the figure of the famous German baron, and the signatures of those solid men, John Magee and William W. McCay as Cashier and President.
Here, too, was the seat of political power. John Magee, one of the most remarkable men the county has produced, had represented the dis- trict twice in Congress. Daniel Cruger had been representative in Con- gress and Speaker of the State Assembly. Captain Ben Smead, typical Jeffersonian-Jacksonian editor, from the snuffy seclusion of his little .: sanctum in the Eagle Tavern Block, with the consciousness of power and its responsibilities, instructed the unterrified Democracy of the region in the duties of citizenship through the Steuben Farmers' Advocate; while Charles Adams, in the Constitutionalist, carried on a plucky but losing fight for the Whigs-for Steuben was nothing if not Democratic, as that term was then understood-and it was only when the Democratic brethren were not in harmony that a Whig had the least prospect of success at the polls. It was, indeed, a great political event when that popular gentle- man, Henry Brother, made his first winning contest for Sheriff.
Nor were the citizens of Bath, at the time of which I speak, unmind- ful of the dignity of learning or unskilled in the conventional amenities of social life. From the traditional period of the early glories of the vil- lage the women of Bath had been noted for their beauty and the generous hospitality of their homes, and who that ever saw Madam Thornton, even in the stately decadence of her fortunes, will doubt that the minuet and cotillion in Bath would answer the most rigorous demands of the Eastern cities ?
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