Centennial history of Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, Part 166

Author: Stocker, Rhamanthus Menville, 1848-
Publication date: 1887
Publisher: Philadelphia, Pa. : R. T. Peck
Number of Pages: 1318

USA > Pennsylvania > Susquehanna County > Centennial history of Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania > Part 166

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1 Hezekiah Bushnell, of the sixth generation from Richard Bushnell, who came from England prior to 1636, and settled at Saybrook, Conn. and married Mary Marvin, daughter of Mathias Marvin, who came to Hartford, Conn., in 1635. From Richard there were Joseph, Nathan, Ebenezer, Ebenezer (2d) and Hezekiah.

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and did not shirk in time of danger. He arrested a ruffian single-handed, who had robbed a man, and brought him through a ten-mile woods and delivered him to the authorities. A pioncer in the temperance reform, and president of the first temperance society in the place, an anti-slavery Whig in politics, a con- sistent member of thic Congregational Church and an officer in the same, he breathed the free mountain air of his chosen home until 1851, when he died and was buried in the Ararat Cemetery. His children were Leonard A., Ebenezer, Albert, James C. and Eliza- beth, wife of Rev. J. B. Wilson.

Leonard A. attended school with a view of becom- ing a home missionary, but after marriage with Livera A. Sabin, both engaged in teaching for a time, when they took charge of the homestead. Here Mr. Bushnell changed his church relations from the Congregational to the Methodist Church, and was licensed to preach by the latter body. He finally re- moved to Lanesboro', where he was killed by a falling tree. Ebenezer taught school two years in Sussex County, N. J. Returning he bought one hundred acres of wild land where Ararat depot stands. After making some improvements he sold and bought a place on the main road, where he resided until 1863, when he removed to Wisconsin. Albert was a good citizen and after his admission to the bar of Susque- hanna County, removed to Susquehanna, where he met his death by an overdose of aconite, given by a friendly druggist, who was ignorant of its power. James C. Bushnell was born in 1820, only ten years after the first settlement, and has spent his life on the mountain outlook where his father first began. His entire school education consisted of fragmentary parts of eleven three months terms at the common school in Ararat, commencing in 1824, in a log school- house, fourteen by eighteen feet, with a large stone fire-place at one end, and two windows so high that the teacher could hardly look out, and concluding with the winter term of 1837. The demand for his labor precluded his attending school any more, but this did not complete his education. He has been a life-long student of books and observer of events, thereby securing a good practical knowledge of affairs. Inheriting the qualities of his father, he is a fearless exponent of what he believes to be right in the community. He is an advocate of temperance and occasionally contributes articles to the Independent Republican. He united with the Congregational Church in 1839, and has been clerk, secretary of the society and Sunday-school superintendent. In munic- ipal affairs he has been elected constable three times, auditor seven or eight times, and justice of the peace five times, and in 1882 he was mercantile appraiser. As executor, administrator and general counselor for the neighborhood, he is a trusted man. He is a ready writer and is the best informed man in the township in relation to its early settlement. He lias an extended view from his home, and is the only

descendant of a pioneer that retains the homestcad farm on the Harmony road for a distance of fifteen miles. Herman S. is his only living son.

Nathaniel West (1789-1880), born in Schoharie County, N. Y., worked for Mr. Catlin in Bridgewater in 1811. Returning, he married Sally Tuttle (1785- 1861), and in 1812 came to what is now Ararat and settled on forty-scven acres, where his son, Nathaniel Jones West, now resides. He added to his woodland tract, and cleared up a farm and made other improve- ments. He built his present residence in 1847, and had the first painted house in town. He was a member of the Congregational Church. His children are Augustus, a resident of Dwight, Ill; Millie, wife of John Gelatt, of Gelatt Hollow ; Ruth was the wife of Ransom Samson. Nathaniel Jones was born in 1819, and succeeded to the homestead He was married, in 1842, to Lucretia Williams, daughter of Shubael Wil- liams (1783-1867) and Ruth Morton (1790-1871), and has children,-Celia M., Sarah J., Abby E., Cecil, Emma, Emerson G. and Lamira; Lodema, of the original family, was the wife of Samuel Williams, of Ararat ; Emily, widow of Sherman Williams, of Ar- arat.

MRS. EUNICE WALKER, widow of the late Ezra Walker, is one of the oldest inhabitants and the earliest settler now living in the township. She is the daughter of Benjamin West, born in Albany County, N. Y., in 1797. She came to Ararat in 1813 with her parents, who settled on the Harmony road, on the farm joining the Tyler farm on the south, where Freeman had made a sinall clearing and erected a barn. William West came first, and built a house upon the lot. His name also appears as one of the constituent members of the Congregational Church. He afterwards removed to Masonville, N. Y. Her father died about 1816, and was buried on the Tyler farm. She became the mother of ten children, five of whom are living, and only two remain in the township. Her husband, Ezra Walker, was a man of powerful frame, always engaged in clearing land, building walls, making turnpike road and like work requiring energy and strength, and his large, well- cleared and walled farm was the last clearing in- habited on the Harmony road in the township, going south, as late as 1840. She lived to hear the locomo- tive whistle and see a railroad depot within a few rods of her present residence.

JUSTIN LEE DOYLE .- His parents, John and Ann (Snow) Doyle, came from Connecticut about 1816, and settled in the western part of Ararat, where D. Hines now resides, the tract taken up comprising now several farms adjoining. Here they resided until 1835, when the father and his son John went to Illinois, where the father died and John settled subsequently in Kansas, where he resides in 1887. The children of John and Ann Doyle were Thomas L. (1799-1870), cleared up a farm in Ararat, and resided in the town- ship until his death ; he has one son, William, a res-

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HISTORY OF SUSQUEHANNA COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA.

ident here; Justin Lee, born in Connecticut, May 30, 1803, died in Ararat, June 27, 1876 ; Mary, married Abram Wrigley, and both died in Abington, Pa .; Fanny, wife of Joseph Bloxham, of Ararat; John married Sarah Brush, a daughter of his step-mother, and went West with his father; Julia married Gard- ner Avery, and resided in Ararat; and Abby became the wife of Philip Matteson, of Abington. John Doyle's second wife was the widow of Ard Brush, formerly Mary Treadwell, and the mother of Samuel Brush, of Brushville, in this county, by whom he had no issue. Justin Lee Doyle was thirteen years old when his parents came to Pennsylvania, and settled in the then wilderness country of the present town- ship of Ararat. During his boyhood he acquired a fair education from the meagre opportunities offered, and learned the trade of a stone-mason, which he fol- lowed more or less during his early manhood. In 1833 he married Lydia Ann Ward Avcry, who was born in Otsego County, N. Y., in 1817, and whose parents, John (1774-1844) and Eleanor Griffith (1772-1840) Avery, settled in Ararat from Otsego County in 1826, and whose sketch may be found in this volume. Mrs. Doyle survives her husband, and is a woman of known benevolence in the community, possessing those characteristics of her sex which make her a useful member of society and a benefit to all with whom she may be associated. Their children are Lucetta M., born in 1836, was a teacher for sev- eral terms, and married, in 1856, Leonard O. Baldwin, a farmer of Ararat, whose parents settled in the town- ship from Connecticut in 1816; and Emeline D. (1841-65), also a teacher, became the wife of Alfred W. Larrabee in 1862, but only survived her marriage three years. Two years after his marriage Mr. Doyle bought fifty acres of land, partly improved, the present residence of his widow, upon which he erected, five years afterwards, in 1840, the present house. Here he spent the remainder of his life, an industrious, kind-hearted and honest man. Mrs. Doyle added to this homestead some sixty acres, the whole of which she conducts in general farming.

Timothy I. Simonds came originally from Con- necticut to Wayne County, and from there he re- moved to Ararat and settled, in 1817-18, in what was then known as the Eleven-Mile Woods, a vast wilder- ness that lay along the base of the Ararat or Moosic Mountains. There was a track through from the Newburg turnpike to Starrucca. He went into the wilderness three and one-half miles from any neighbor, and was the pioneer settler of East Ararat. The settle- ment is sometimes called Simonds' Settlement, in his honor. He found about one acre chopped and a log cabin partly rolled up. He was a hunter, and deer, bears and wolves were plenty then. He married So- lona Toby, cleared up a farm, and died eventually in Mount Pleasant. Of his family of fourteen children, three girls and three boys arrived at the age of matu- rity. Lorenzo D., who resides on the homestead, is

the only one that remained in the township. Zaccheus Toby, a brother-in-law of the elder Simonds, came the year following, and took up the farm adjoining. The next settler in this immediate neighborhood was Daniel Ogden, who came a few years later and cleared the farm where John May resides. Of his family, Elisha, Truman and Lemuel settled in the vicinity.

Horace Hathaway came from Otsego County, N. Y., about 1836, and bought a small improvement, in- cluding a log house, in East Ararat. He made further improvements and spent the remainder of his life there. His wife, Thankful Brooks, was of a good family. Their family consisted of eight children, -- Caroline, wife of Abraham Truex, resided in Herrick township; Walter F. married Harriet N. Hall and remained on the homestead; Heman P. is a resident of Carbondale; Maria, wife of Apollo Slocum; Rosa- lia, wife of Nelson M. Benedict, of Starrucca; William E. resides in Binghamton (his son, H. H. Hathaway, is an agent on the road) ; Josiah; Mary, wife of David Anderson, of Carbondale. Horace Hathaway was a Presbyterian when he came here; but there being no church of his choice, he joined the Methodist Church, and his family all became members of the same church. Heman P. is a local preacher and a strong advocate of prohibition. He was the candidate of that party for State Senator at one time. Charles Hathaway, a grandson of Horace, has the homestead. Rev. Levi Silvius, a local preacher, resides in this neighborhood.

James Dunn came from Edinburgh to New York in 1790. The barracks that had been occupied by the British troops were still standing. Mr. Dunn was a graduate of St. Andrew's College, and he went into a store as a clerk. He removed from the city to Coxey, and engaged in store-keeping. Here he became ac- quainted with Maria Van Syke, a Dutch girl, whom he married. He bought cord-wood, which was then used for fuel in the city, and it fell in price and ruined his business. He moved to Delaware County, and from there to what is now Ararat, in 1820. He lo- cated in the wilderness, by Dunn Pond. Here, remote from neighbors, without friends or money, he and his family of eight stalwart sons and three daughters ap- plied to the forest for support, sometimes being for thirty days without bread. They bore upon their shoulders to the nearest settlements venison, fish, furs, window-sash made from rived pine bolts, and exchanged them for family necessaries. Mr. Dunn was an intelligent man and a Mason of high degree. He could wear the green mantle. His eight sons averaged one hundred and eighty-five and a half pounds apiece, and Peter Dunn thinks that they could lift as big a rock as any family in the State. They worked together for many years, and have been seen in the field, all mowing, while their father was spreading the grass. Peter and William made the first purchase of three hundred and twenty acres, and

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they added by subsequent purchases one hundred and fifteen acres more. They split slabs to cover their first log cabin, which was at the head of the pond where A. N. Tucker now lives. They were mighty hunters, and James and Andrew averaged fifty deer each per year for a number of years. Marthers, or Matthews, the murderer of Colonel Brooks, fled from Wayne County, the scene of the murder, in June, 1828, and in his flight he reached a dense forest. Aided by the tinkling of a cow-bell, he found his way to the cabin of Mr. Dunn. He came there with his hat off, and the cannie old Scotchman suspected him. About

had a family, and died in the township; Hannah lived in New York ; James Dunn, Jr., died in Kan- sas; Andrew moved to Minnesota; Joseph resides on a farm in Ararat; Peter and Jane were twins: Peter is living in the township, near the lake which bears the family name; William is dead; and Polly is the wife of James Tinker, of Clifford. Peter is about seventy, and relates many personal adventures as a hunter. He was attacked by a wounded buck that he seized by the butt of his antlers and bore his head to the ground, whence it never rose. He pursued a panther around a clump of laurel and rods into the

J. B. Blotherm

midnight Mr. Dunn heard his dog barking furiously, and raising the window, he saw two horsemen, John Lyon and Alexander Burns, who inquired if a man had been seen or was there. "Hist!" said Dunn ; "don't talk so loud; he is here." And he was there, in a trap; for those strong Dunn boys were only too ready to seize the unlucky Matthews and help to bind him; and John, one of the sons, helped to escort him into Wayne County, where he confessed his crime, was tried and executed at Bethany. Mr. Dunn and his wife died at the advanced age of eighty-seven. Their children were Robert, who moved to Wisconsin; Bal- tus, who raised a family and died here; John also

thicket, with nothing but a beech club, but the pan- ther would not stand his ground.

EDWARD BLOXHAM came from Bloxham, Oxford- shire, England, about 1830, and first located in Scott township, Wayne County, Pa. He soon after came to Ararat township, and took up one hundred acres of land in the wilderness, where Titus Shafer now lives His brother Joseph came shortly afterwards and took one-half of the lot. They rolled up log cabins, and cleared up farms. Edward eventually sold his part to his brother Joseph, and purchased a small improve- ment where Alanson Hobbs resides, and cleared up that place. He began to raise potatoes for the Car-

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HISTORY OF SUSQUEHANNA COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA.

bondale market, and found a ready sale for all that he could produce, as the potato rot which was destroying the crop elsewhere did not reach him until five years after it had destroyed the crop in other localities. Being thus favored by a kind Providence, he succeed- ed in paying for his land. He also made from one thousand to sixteen hundred pounds of maple sugar, which he could readily exchange with merchants for such things as he needed. This was the beginning of financial prosperity for Mr. Bloxham and his family. Soon after the war he sold out to Alanson Hobbs and removed to Jackson, where he now resides, aged eighty-one. He was born in 1806, and his first wife, Elizabeth Gillett, was also a native of England, born in 1807, and was the mother of his eight children. His second wife, now living, was Margaret Foster. The children are Edwin C., a blacksmith, resident of Boonton, N. J. ; Joseph B., 1831; William G., who lived on a farm adjoining the homestead, until he died, in 1882, aged forty-nine; James H., a farmer, who lives about one-half mile from the Presbyterian Church, of which he is an elder (he is an exemplary and influential man in the community, and has reared his family under the influences of a Christian home; he has the characteristics of the Bloxham family, and is an industrious and highly respected man) ; Elizabeth Ann (1838-87) was the wife of J. Nelson Sartell ; Althea, wife of Omer Olin, a farmer in Jackson; Arthur E. was killed at the first battle of Bull Run ; Elix H. resides on a farm near J. C. Bushnell's. The family are Presbyterians.

JOSEPH B. BLOXHAM obtained his education in the common schools of Ararat, which he attended whenever he could be spared from work, having to travel two miles over the snow-drifts of Ararat to reach the school-house ofttimes. He worked for his father until past twenty, when he went to the Del- aware River, in Wayne County, and worked at raft- ing for Deacon Courtright about one year, when he returned to Ararat and worked for Hull, Guernsey & Co., at Mud Pond saw-mill, one year. He then went rafting, and returned to Jackson, and hired to L. Bryant, from whence he was drawn home sick with rheumatism, from which he did not recover in six months. He next bought one hundred and thirty acres of wild land of Henry Drinker, and proceeded to clear up a farm. When twenty-seven years of age he married Mercy Beers (1834-78). Their children are Ellis O., Earnest A., Jennie M. (wife of V. O. Stearns), Melvina (wife of Luliel Carpenter), Grant W., Burtram J., French L., Byron W., Ida, Irena. After the death of his first wife he married Deatte, daughter of Henry Pope, and they have one child- Lelia. By subsequent additions and exchanges Mr. Bloxham now has a farm of something over two hun- dred acres. He is a stock-raiser and dealer, keeping generally about forty head of cattle. Rolla Carpen- ter and he started a store when the railroad was being built, and run it for two years, occupying part of

Carpenter's house, when he purchased Carpenter's interest and moved the goods into a store which J. A. Payne had built. After two years' partnership with Mr. Payne he sold out to him. Mr. Bloxham is a hard-working and prudent man-qualities which have secured him a competency. He has contributed com- mensurate with his means to church interests and charities, and, with his family, worships with the Presbyterian Church of Ararat.

The following is a list of the taxables in Ararat township in 1855 :

David Avery, Abner V. Avery, Chauncy Avery, Samuel Avery, Daniel Avery, Henry Abel, William Archer, John Beaumont, Benjamin Boothroyd, Erastus Ball, James C. Bushnell, Joseph Bloxham, Edward Bloxham, Jos. B. Bloxham, Thomas Burman, Charles Belcher, William Belcher, Ziba Bowell, Thomas Bowell, Ahel P. Borden, M. L. Bennett, Maria Baker, Philip T. Baldwin, Silas S. Baldwin, Shuhael A. Baldwin, Edwin L. Baldwin, Silas N. Brooks, Leonard A. Bushnell, Benajah Bushnell, Albert Bushnell, Ebenezer Bushnell, Horace Barnes, Thomas Bosket, Ohadiah L. Carpenter, Wm. Carpenter, Rolla Carpenter, Thos. L. Doyle, Wm. O. Doyle, Justin L. Doyle, Jos. Dunn, James Dunn, Andrew Dunn, Peter Dunn, William Dunn, Guernsey, Hall & Co. (saw- mill), Amasa Herrick, Walter T. Hathaway, Horace Hathaway, William Hathaway, Robert Kay, Lewis Low, Charles W. Latham, Taher Lewis, Timothy Newton, Truman Ogdeu, Elisha Ogden, Edward Pool, Otis Slocum, Edson Stone, Norman Stone, William Sabin, N. P. Sartell, Lemuel L. Snow, Chester Scarborough, Franklin B. Slocum, Apollo Slocum, Wilson Stone, Sabin Tucker, Wm. Tooly, John Tooly, Geo. N. Todd (grist and shingle-mill), Jabez Tyler, Williston K. Tyler, E. D. Tyler, Julius Tyler, Lucy Thayer, Erastus Washburn, Edward Warner, Francis Warner, Lyman Washburn, Norman Washhurn, Joseph Wash- hurn (2d), Frederick A. Washhurn, Sherman Williams, Gilbert Williams, Shuhael Williams, Oliver Williams, Samuel Williams, Sherman Wil- liams, Palmer Walker, Edmond L. Worth, Cyrel Worth, Wareham B. Walker, Jonas Walker, D. S. Walker, Parley Walker, Alonzo Walker, Edmund Worth, Nathaniel West, Ebenezer Witter, Nathaniel J. West, Benjamin Wheeler, P. Spencer.

Peter Carlin moved from New Jersey to the Lake country. In his travels, about 1810, he stopped at Jonas Avery's and worked on the Newburg turnpike. Here he formed the acquaintance of Ruth Fuller, daughter of Consider Fuller, who settled in Brooklyn in 1804. He went into Jackson with James Cargill. Sr., about 1814, and was one of the first settlers there. He made no less than seven commencements in dif- ferent townships, and rolled up as many log cabins, until he finally built a cabin over the hill from Latham's, in Ararat, and Drinker said he should never be disturbed on that land, as he had done more than any other man to bring settlers into the place. He was nearly eighty-eight and his wife was nearly ninety-seven when they died. He was a good speci- men of the old-time squatter. Of their children, Susan was the wife of E. L. Baldwin ; Sally, wife of C. W. Latham, who settled where he now resides in 1849, and made most of the improvements on that farm; Cornelius lives near Binghamton; Lucinda married Parley Walker, and raised a family (after his death she married William Witter) ; Minerva, wife of Rolla Carpenter; Roxanna, wife of Daniel Avery.

Shubael A. Baldwin came from Windham County, Conn., in June, 1816, and finally settled southwest of Bushnell's, and cleared up a good farin. They both died in 1871, aged seventy-nine. Their children

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were Miranda, wife of Enos Dow; Shubael R. and Alfred, residents of Homer, N. Y. ; Charles W., dead; Harriet, wife of Apollos Turner; Leonard O., who resides on the homestead ; and Lyman E., who died in Binghamton. Philip T., Silas S. and Edwin L. were brothers of Shubael A., and came about 1816. They were unmarried, and resided together a number of years, their sister, Clara, keeping house for them, where the Widow E. L. Baldwin lives. Their farm was the last clearing on that road for several years. Clara became the wife of Thomas Doyle. Philip T. was a pensioner of 1812. He was an industrious man, made several beginnings, and died at an ad- vanced age unmarried.

OLIVER HARPER .- Mrs. Mary Tyler says : "The spring after I came to Ararat to live I was at Harford on a visit. Oliver Harper called at our house and asked Mother Tyler if she would get him a dinner. He asked for boiled eggs, and while she was getting them ready he leaned against her bed and fell into a sound sleep, so she could hardly wake him to eat his dinner. He told Mrs. Tyler that on going down the river he left his wife at Windsor with a young babe, and that he was anxious about her, that he had already traveled forty miles that day, and was going home that night, twenty miles farther. He stopped next at Hezekiah Bushnell's, and got some tallow to rub on his chafed limbs. He was pursuing his jour- ney towards home, and was waylaid and shot by Jason Treadwell on the Harmony road, not far from where the Catholic burying-ground is in Susque- hanna. Mr. Bacon, in the presence of Hezekiah Bushnell and others, dipped his finger in the victim's blood and wrote ' O. H.' on a stone, and set it up on the bank, just outside of the road, at the same time remarking to his companions that human blood will remain a long time on stone. J. C. Bushnell remem- bers that stone, and the inscription was plainly to be seen for twenty-five years."

INDUSTRIES .- Hunting, trapping, sugar-making and clearing land were the first industries of the peo- ple. . Where land was cleared and all the timber burned upon it, the ashes enriched the soil, when not made an article of merchandise. Sometimes the settler burned up too much; in this connection the experience of Burnham, a brother-in-law of John Snow, will illustrate an extra burn. He chopped a fallow of eight or ten acres in the midst of a dense forest. After it was dried sufficiently, he applied the torch one day, but there was no breeze stirring, and the fire would not burn, and he left it. During the night a whirlwind arose in that little circular chop- ping and fanned the latent spark to life, and contin- ued in intensity until the flames shot high above the tree-tops, killing the standing timber for rods around, and crackling and roaring more terribly than thunder, so as to arouse the distant neighbors. Next day the scene of the fire was visited by many. The land was nearly cleared, the brush and much of the larger

timber was burned up. The fire had licked up the rich loam of decayed vegetable matter, and left but a thin subsoil, in which the owner could cast his seed in fruitless hope. The ashes were driven into circu- lar drifts, so that they could be shoveled up by the cart-load and carried to the ashery, but all this ruined the land. Burnham left in disgust after wait- ing in vain for the first crop.

Asheries and Charcoal .- Making potash or pearl- ash and burning charcoal was a common business with the early settlers. From his highland home Mr. Bushnell has seen many coal-pits burning at the same time. The coal-pit was formed in some natural depression, or by excavation, into which a large num- ber of hard-wood logs were closely packed, the inter- vening spaces being filled with smaller timber. This was covered with straw and earth, so that there could be no draft excepting at the flues prepared at the sides of the pit. These pits were watched night and day for ten or twenty days to prevent any outbreak of the flames. When it became evident that the wood was charred, the fire was extinguished by clos- ing the flues. These pits would hold from three hundred to eight hundred bushels of charcoal, worth from three to six cents per bushel, and was used by blacksmiths and tinsmiths. There is a relic of the ashery business in the pasture of George Knight, near Joseph Dunn's. Here John Doyle and sons made potash from 1820 to 1825. They felled large maples and burned them for the ashes, which were worth from three to six cents per bushel. The pro- cess of manufacturing was to leech the ashes and evaporate the alkali in large, shallow iron kettles to dryness, producing a grayish mass containing about forty per cent. of carbonaceous matter. A process of refining was added to some of the larger asheries, whereby the product was converted into pearlash, containing about fifty per cent. of pure potassa.

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Centennial history of Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, Part 166

Author: Stocker, Rhamanthus Menville, 1848- Publication date: 1887 Publisher: Philadelphia, Pa. : R. T. Peck Number of Pages: 1318

Author: Stocker, Rhamanthus Menville, 1848-
Publication date: 1887
Publisher: Philadelphia, Pa. : R. T. Peck
Number of Pages: 1318