Chapter II: Preface: , 177 (1)

I.
KORTRIGHT AND UNADILLA.
1819-1840.

Birthplace and family history—Dr. Gaius Halsey of Kortright—The
Catskill Turnpike—The first stove—To Delhi for general
training—Erastus Root and the Rev. William McAuley—Reading
medicine—To Scranton or Unadilla?—Arrival at Kingsley’s Hotel, 179

II.
UNADILLA SIXTY YEARS AGO.
1840.

Houses then standing—Commodore Woolsey—The Norman H. Adams
house—The lower hotel—Martin Brook road, 193

III.
OLD INHABITANTS AND EARLY PRACTICE.
1840-1847.

Others who survived with the author from 1840—“Capt.
Horn”—Practical Jokes at Williams’s Store—The Carmichaels—A
Year’s Business—Harry Wolcott—A dead man brought to
life—Frolics with a three-year-old colt—Removal to Connecticut, 206

IV.
PANAMA AND CALIFORNIA.
1849.

Sailing away from New York—In the Chagres River—First view
of the Pacific—A long stay in Panama—Admiral Porter and C.
P. Huntington—The voyage up the Pacific Coast—Arrival in the
Golden Gate, 222

V.
SAN FRANCISCO AND SACRAMENTO.
1849.

A city of cloth tents—Gambling and curiosities in prices—A
perilous trip to Sacramento—Two board shanties make a
town—Sutter’s Fort—Samuel Brannon—Chances in real estate, 245

VI.
IN THE GOLD DIGGINGS.
1849.

Mining on the American River—A hole that lasted a season—Taking
turns as cook—Profitable practice of medicine—Other mining
parties—Two cities grow up in a night, 256

VII.
THE RETURN TRIP TO PANAMA.
1849.

The finding of a lost bag of gold—Desperately ill—Abandoned by
natives on the Isthmus—Saved by Capt. “Dick” Norton, 270

VIII.
JAMAICA AND THE RETURN TO UNADILLA.
1849-1850.

Health restored in the Atlantic—A look around Kingston—Settle
in Unadilla again—Origin of the word Unadilla—Men in the Civil
War—Charles C. Siver—Service in the War as surgeon after
Antietam, 276

IX.
MY CALIFORNIA DIARY.
February 12, 1849—November 11, 1849.

A record made in pencil and still legible—Interesting notes of
the experience—Last illness and death, 289

INDEX, 307

ILLUSTRATIONS.

The Susquehanna at Unadilla Village, _Frontispiece_

FACING PAGE

Map of the Original Village Lots in the Wallace Patent, 12

The Benton and Fellows Store, 60

St. Matthew’s Church, 86
First Consecrated in 1814, enlarged in 1845 and again in 1852.

The Second Bridge on the Site of Wattles’s Ferry, 92
Built in 1817, taken down in 1893.

Portrait of Joseph Brant, 156
Born about 1742, died in 1807.

Portrait of Dr. Gaius L. Halsey, 178
Born in 1819, died in 1891.

The Dr. Gurdon Huntington House, the oldest in the village, 198

The Original Unadilla, the “place of Meeting,” 280

THE PIONEERS OF UNADILLA VILLAGE.

1784-1840.

I.

BEFORE THE VILLAGE WAS FOUNDED.

1616-1784.

White men appear to have been in the upper Susquehanna valley in 1616, or about one hundred and sixty years before the Revolution. They came as explorers and then as fur traders. After them in the next century came missionaries to the Indians. Finally in 1769 arrived surveyors, owners of land patents and actual settlers. When the first Indian raids were made upon the valley in 1777 during the Revolution, thriving farm communities, composed mainly of Scotch-Irish, with a few Dutch and Palatine Germans, had been established at points from Otsego Lake down to the mouth of the Unadilla River.

One of these existed at the mouth of the Ouleout Creek and was called Albout; another was in the old paper mill region; another across the Susquehanna in what is now Sidney village and still another along the lower waters of the Unadilla River. The three settlements at the confluence of the Susquehanna and Unadilla rivers were sometimes known collectively as Unadilla, although the one on the site of Sidney was often designated separately as the Johnston settlement before the war and as Susquehanna Flats afterwards. While it is not unlikely that some of the Unadilla village lands had been occupied in that period, actual proof of this is wanting.

When the war closed, and settlers began to return to the valley, seven years had passed since those early pioneers were driven out. The country was again a wilderness in some respects more forbidding than when the settlers first entered it. Only the blackened logs of burned houses remained on many farms. Lands that had produced wheat and corn through several seasons in happier times were now overgrown with weeds, brush and briars.

No part of New York state, not even the Mohawk valley, had been more constantly the scene of depredations; none had been so often used as a route of travel for small armies of Indians and Tories on the one hand and of American patriot soldiers on the other; none had now become a land of such utter desolation.[2]

When the Revolution closed the earliest settlers to return came in 1784 and many were families whom the war had driven out. Others were men who had entered the valley as soldiers, or who had heard of its rich lands through others who were soldiers. Many went to the old paper mill region. Among these were the Johnstons who had formerly lived in Sidney, and, after spending a year on Unadilla lands, returned to Sidney again. The McMasters and William Hanna also settled in the paper mill region. Others went to the valley of the Unadilla River and still others to the Ouleout. All these men took up lands that had been occupied before the Revolution.

Of those pioneers we have, in several cases, full and authentic records. One who settled on the Ouleout was Sluman Wattles, who came from Lebanon, Connecticut, in 1784 and took up lands below Franklin village where he was to remain a potent factor in the life of all that region for the remainder of his life. Another was Timothy Beach who settled at the mouth of the Ouleout. Another, in the same region, was James Hughston and still another Nathaniel Wattles, who opened a hotel near the Sidney side of the present upper village bridge.

Before a bridge was built Mr. Wattles maintained a ferry at that point to which his name was given. Wattles’s Ferry for many years was the point of destination for scores of pioneers who each season crossed the wilderness from the Hudson to the Susquehanna and here entered boats in which they and their household possessions were transported to points further south and west.

Another pioneer, and the ancestor of a large family that still survives in the Ouleout country, was Isaac Hodges who arrived in 1789 from Florida, Montgomery county, where he must have known the Johnstons and others who came to this valley from that place. The family had been settled in Florida for some years, Abraham Hodges before the war being one of the well known citizens of that part of the Mohawk valley. Isaac Hodges’s son Hezekiah in 1790 settled on the farm where William T. Hodges spent his life. It is recorded of Hezekiah that he planted the first apple orchard known in that neighborhood. It became the parent orchard of many others.

These men had all been a few years in the country before others came to plant the settlement that grew into Unadilla village. Some of the founders of the village arrived from the same towns in Connecticut whence had come the men of the Ouleout. Here in the stream called Martin Brook they found a water power which would drive a saw mill, then a pressing need of the country, and which soon afterwards drove also a grist mill. Here one of them opened a hotel, another a store, and a third became a physician—facts which laid the foundations of a small community in which ere long were to be centered many vital interests of a large frontier territory.

Finally in 1800 an old primitive road, running from Catskill to Wattles’s Ferry, was improved into a turnpike. It became the model road in all this part of the state, and was destined to remain for more than a quarter of a century the main highway of trade, travel and settlement. Contemporary with the opening of this road, was the coming of Curtis Noble and Isaac Hayes, two young merchants, whose enterprise and success gave the final weight of influence to causes already operating for the founding on this soil of the village which, for half a century, was to control a larger sum of interests than any other within a radius of perhaps twenty miles.

Indeed the origin and early growth of nearly all the upper Susquehanna villages came from similar causes. Usually a store and a saw and grist mill determined the site. Mills were established near the mouths of streams tributary to the main waterway. Hotels and stores naturally followed. Centers were thus established, around which other enterprises and homes soon were gathered. With Cooperstown, Oneonta, Otego, Unadilla, Sidney and Bainbridge the genesis is practically the same.

As time went on, other circumstances, added to what lumbering and agriculture had done, led to newer progress, such as the Catskill turnpike that aided Unadilla, the Esopus one that helped Bainbridge, the Charlotte one that made for the welfare of Oneonta, or those later circumstances, which, before the era of railroads set in, made Oneonta and Bainbridge centers of the stage business for the whole valley. All these villages, save Cooperstown and Bainbridge, were founded on lands in the Wallace patent.

The sketches which follow relate to one alone of these villages; but Unadilla might serve as a type of them all. It is a village with whose annals the circumstances of birth and an eighteen years’ residence on its soil have helped to make the author familiar. Many of its leading citizens of a past generation he knew in boyhood. Its highways, hills and streams remain the most familiar and among the fairest he has ever known.

The lives of the men who founded and built up this village may be assumed to possess interest to those who were born in that village, or who have made it their home. No wise man can be indifferent to the founders of any place bearing such relations to himself, any more than he can be indifferent to the founders of his native land in a larger sense. In a very forceful way such men have helped to make him what he is, and what he must forever remain. They are

“dead but scept’red sovrans
Who still rule our spirits from their urns.”

Out of the very soil on which one is reared appear to spring forces fixing deep marks on one’s nature. One is not alone a native of his birthplace, but in some considerable degree a product. No fact is more familiar in biographies, whether of great or small lives, and for example in the life of Dickens. The fondness of Dickens for ships and salt water was life long because Dickens, like his own Copperfield, had been “born within sound of the sea and its eternal nevermore.”

This influence springs not from climate altogether; nor from soil or landscape. More than to any of these influences perhaps it is due to inhabitants, older and wiser than he, by whom his tendencies were directed, if not actually shaped. Such as these are the unacknowledged teachers of us all. As of the founders of states and of cities, so of those who found villages and small settlements: they definitely give to communities their character. They still exert their sway long after they have ceased to speak and toil.

The primary interest in these sketches now is, and must continue to be, local. And yet, in a sense, those quiet annals have wider value. Small as this village has remained, the charm of its site and the beauty of its streets have impressed all visitors. The place, moreover, stands otherwise apart, and stands with some eminence, as an example of a New York village at its best.

For three quarters of a century, Unadilla remained thoroughly isolated from the great world beyond its borders. Until the nineteenth century had two-thirds passed away, it had neither railroad, nor canal, nor any near communication with one. At Catskill, or at points in the Mohawk valley, for a long series of years, its people could first reach a larger world, and then the undertaking involved a journey on wheels, in some cases of ninety miles, through a rough country. Even in Civil War times, a day’s journey by stage was still necessary in order to reach a railway and learn the war news; while the war had some years passed away, when a railway first came to its own doors.

How that event gradually changed this community those know best who have known the village both before and since the invasion. Before it occurred, growth and character proceeded almost wholly from local forces, which were mainly strong and otherwise beneficent. Whatever was good and productive, proceeded out of the place itself—out of the virtues that lay in its own people, who were very largely of New England stock.

Here in many families dwelt a quality in refinement, the things which, in these matters, mean culture—fineness of feeling, elevation of sentiment, a sense of the obligations which worldly independence confers and a good breeding—which isolation could not deny to the place, and which isolation probably did much to bestow upon it.

Boys who knew that culture and were blessed by its influence, boys who are now men and have travelled far, may well reflect, as more than one of them has done, that in vain have they sought to find that culture developed in finer or sweeter state elsewhere.

To New England the obligation for that is unquestionably large; but this cannot explain all things. When we say that in this inland New York village thrived for almost four score years a bit of New England transplanted in the west, we must add to the statement that it thrived in an isolation so complete that, what was best in New England culture, here came to florescence in full degree.

It is a common enough experience to find men and women showing a partial fondness for their early homes. Out of this isolation of Unadilla has sprung, I think, a very partial fondness for the place among those who knew it in the early forties, fifties and sixties. What Webster, on a famous occasion said of Dartmouth college, they might say of this village: it is a small place, but there are those who love it.

The men who led in this work of village foundation are little known to the present generation. Many of them lie buried in St. Matthew’s churchyard, and headstones mark their graves, familiar places to all who frequent that enclosure. But few are the visitors who know anything of the story of those strong and valiant souls.

II.

THE VILLAGE SITE AND THOSE WHO CHOSE IT.

1784-1800.

The site of Unadilla village comprises nine lots of the Wallace or, as it would be better to call it, the Banyar Patent, since its real owner was neither Alexander nor Hugh Wallace, but Gouldsborough Banyar. They are lots 92 to 100, inclusive. Each runs in a northeasterly direction on lines generally parallel. The lots are of somewhat varying widths with lengths of perhaps ten times the widths. Besides Mr. Banyar the non-resident early owners from whom the settlers obtained their titles included eminent citizens of Albany County—John Livingston, the Lansings and the Van Vechtens—who seem to have acquired their holdings from Mr. Banyar. At first leases on the redemption plan were given. Several pioneers had long been here before they acquired actual titles, although others purchased soon after coming; but it was not until 1811 that the last village lot passed from an alien owner to an actual settler.

The records of those early transactions are not complete. Searches made for the author leave several gaps to be filled. It was not a universal custom in those times to record deeds. A buyer often accepted the old deeds from the man from whom he purchased. Even in cases where deeds were eventually recorded several years might have elapsed after the purchase. In the period from 1772 until 1791, during which Unadilla was part of Tryon, or Montgomery County, no records exist of any sales by Mr. Banyar or of any sales to or by the Livingstons, Lansings or Van Vechtens, searches for the same having been made for the author in vain at Fonda. In Cooperstown the author has fared better. Here titles to almost any lot can be traced back to the formation of the county in 1791. From these records alone has it been possible to prepare the appended account of first sales to settlers.[3]

First to purchase outright, so far as the records show, was Aaron Axtell, the pioneer blacksmith of the village, who was here before 1794. In August 1795, he secured a part of lot 93 for £110. He made the purchase from Mr. Banyar. Lot 93 lies in the western end of the village. Mr. Axtell’s house stood on the site of the future Owens or Salmon G. Cone residence just beyond the railroad crossing, which some twenty odd years ago was burned. In 1810, Uriah Hanford had become the owner of this lot.

Mr. Axtell was of Welsh origin, and another of the name who came to Unadilla was Moses Axtell. Moses Axtell had lived in Boston before the Revolution, where he was one of the famous party who disguised themselves as Indians and threw the tea into Boston harbor,—the act by which, in the trouble with the Mother Country, the gauntlet was definitely thrown down by the Colonists. Moses Axtell afterwards fought in the battle of Lexington and at Bunker Hill.

Next as a purchaser came Solomon Martin, who in June 1796 secured lot 96, embracing perhaps 150 acres. He paid for it the sum of £141 5s. The sale was made by the Van Vechtens. Like all these lots it ran back to the hills for a distance of about a mile from the river bank.

The third purchase was made by Daniel Bissell. In August 1796 he obtained from Mr. Banyar lots 99 and 100, comprising nearly 400 acres, for which he paid £345. These lots extended from the extreme eastern end of the village down to about where St. Matthew’s church stands. Mr. Bissell sold a part of lot 100 in 1801, to his kinsman Guido L. Bissell for $250. Another part of the same lot he sold to Solomon Martin in the following year for $450.

Gurdon Huntington was the next purchaser. He did not acquire title, however, until 1800, which was about ten years after he came into the country. He then purchased from John Livingston a part of lot 98 for $352. Probably Dr. Huntington had already erected on this lot, the yellow house that still stands in the rear of the building long used as the post office. He seems to have built the house while occupying the land under a lease with the privilege of purchase.

Aaron Axtell in 1803 purchased a further part of lot 93 from William Fitch and Sarah, his wife. He paid $1400 for it, which would indicate that improvements had been made by the former owner. Mr. Fitch had a house in the village before 1803. As Mr. Axtell bought his first part of lot 93 from Mr. Banyar, Mr. Fitch’s part had, of course, originally been purchased from the same owner.

Stephen Benton, in 1804, became the owner of lot 95. He purchased it for $1095 from Peter Betts who then lived in Bainbridge and whose wife was Eliza Fitch, a sister of Amasa Fitch, an early settler on village land. Peter Betts owned other lands in the Wallace patent below the village. He, with William Fitch and Jonathan Fitch, had secured titles to land within the village limits somewhat earlier than the settlers already named; but the Cooperstown records give no clue to the date of their purchases which indicates that he made the purchase before 1791. There were Fitches in Lebanon, Connecticut, and these men perhaps came into the country with the Wattles families in or soon after 1784, which would make them the first settlers who took up village lands.

Jonathan Fitch in 1805 sold to Jacob Hayes the land he lived on in lot 94. For a part of that lot Mr. Hayes paid $800. Here again improvements obviously were included in the purchase price. Mr. Fitch is known to have had a house in the village at that time.

Next among the purchasers came Solomon Martin a second time. He bought lot 97 from Mr. Banyar in 1807, paying £153 14s. On this lot stood General Martin’s house and store. He at this time was the largest land owner in the village. After his death in 1816, the estate was said to be “land poor.”

The records now proceed to the purchase made by Daniel and Gilbert Cone, in 1811. This was lot 92 which lay beyond the Axtell purchase. The Cones bought of the Lansings and paid $563.39 for the tract. Three years later they sold one acre of it to Niel Robertson for $400, which must have included improvements. From Mr. Banyar in 1813 the Cones bought another lot for $501.25. This was lot 108, but it was outside village limits.

Daniel Bissell who in some respects is the most interesting of these pioneers was a native of Lebanon where he was born in 1748. He married in that place Sarah Wattles and was approaching forty years of age when, about 1792, and perhaps earlier, he came to Wattles’s Ferry. In Lebanon he had already become a man of varied and useful activities. He possessed a considerable tract of land there and papers now owned by Harriet Bissell Sumner show that he had had many transactions with Sluman Wattles. A paper characteristic of the period, containing an “account of Benjamin Bissell’s estate that Daniel Bissell took”, names pistols valued at £2, a greatcoat valued at 12s., leather breeches at 5s. and one gun at £1, 12s., 6d. Another paper signed “Jonathan Trumbull, Captain-General”, who was the original “Brother Jonathan”, his home being in Lebanon, is dated in 1773 and excuses Daniel Bissell from military service owing to “a lameness of the arm caused by fracture and a pain in the chest caused by a sprain.”

Still another paper dated in March 1792 gives a list of articles delivered to Daniel Bissell from the estate of Mr. Fitch. It includes one large kettle, valued at 8s., one meal chest at 3½s., one small feather bed at 30s., one pair of saddle bags at 6s., one small bedstead 10s., and one copy of Gibbs’s “Architecture”, 24s. Some of these articles no doubt found their way to the new settlement. Mr. Bissell had a family of nine children, three or four of whom had reached their twentieth year. He brought with him the large sum of $7,000 in specie, which completely filled a good sized basket.

One of the recorded facts in Mr. Bissell’s life is that he kept the first hotel. A license issued to him, though not the earliest in the town by five or more years, still exists with the seal attached. It is signed by Solomon Martin, in whose hand the whole paper is written, and by Peter Schremling and Gurdon Huntington. By virtue of law these gentlemen, Commissioners of Excise for the town of Unadilla, say they “do hereby permit Daniel Bissell to retail strong and spirituous liquors according as it is in said law made and provided, from the date hereof until the first Tuesday in May next after this date.” The license is dated September 9, 1799.

Mr. Bissell’s relations with other settlers are shown in several letters. One from Noble and Hayes, of which he was the bearer, dated in 1806, is addressed to Bogardus and DuBois of Catskill, and informed them that the Unadilla merchants sent by Mr. Bissell three barrels of wheat, with other articles which were to be sold “if you can and credit us the avails.” Another from Dr. Huntington was addressed to Packard and Conant of Albany. Dr. Huntington sent by Mr. Bissell a few rags and said “I expect you will give four dollars for rags, or more, and if they do not come to the amount of the paper [the rags were to be exchanged for writing paper] I will be I suppose in Albany in about two weeks and will settle for the same.” The date of this is November 1808, when Dr. Huntington was a Member of the Assembly.

About the same time came a relative of Daniel Bissell, though not a near one, Guido L. Bissell, Mrs. Sumner’s ancestor. He was born in 1769 and was the father of that other Daniel Bissell whom many men and women can still remember. He was also the father of Hannah Bissell who became the wife of John Veley. In 1796, as Mr. Bissell’s account book records, “John Barsley began to work for me”, and in the following spring “Sevenworth began to work for me.” In this ancient volume, another entry under date of Franklin, March 23rd, 1798, is this: “I promise to Guido Bissell 15 shillings on demand, being for value received, John Pooler”, and still another, “Mr. Guido Bissell and I have settled and find a balance of 2 pounds due said Bissell on account, James Hughston.” Mr. Bissell for some time was engaged in trade. His book has many entries of sales of “jane”, velvet, cloth, etc., as well as charges for work done by himself and men whom he employed. He did some of the work in building Wright’s store in 1815, and when St. Matthew’s church was built made note of “work on the church five days by Mr. Beadle.”

A numerous and influential family in Connecticut had been the Bissells. John Bissell, a pioneer of Windsor, and believed to be the ancestor of them all, was the first white man who ventured across the Connecticut River from Windsor, where he built a house and began the East Windsor settlement. For forty-four years his descendants, Aaron Bissell and Aaron Bissell, Jr., filled the office of town clerk. In Windsor in the last century was a Daniel Bissell and a Daniel Bissell, Jr. The latter performed secret service for Washington, that won for him a badge of merit. Members of this family have been prominent in various walks of life. One of them was a Protestant Episcopal bishop.

Solomon Martin came to Unadilla some years before 1790. In 1792 he already had a store here. He was a native of Woodbury, Connecticut, one of the oldest towns in that state outside the Connecticut River valley, and was a son of another Solomon Martin, descended from one of the first settlers. The family was English and one of them, Captain John Martin, went around the world with Drake. They were entitled to bear arms and had for their motto “Sure and Steadfast.” Solomon was born June 15, 1762. His name is given by Cothran among natives of Woodbury who served in the Revolution, although he was only a boy of thirteen when the war began. His title of general—a militia title, I believe—belongs to a late period in his life. In 1792 he was a captain and in 1806 a colonel. He served in the war of 1812.

His store in Unadilla was the first set up. Its site was on Main just west of Martin Brook Street. Here also he lived, the house and store having been built together. At a late date he appears to have been in partnership with Gurdon Huntington. Many years afterwards there stood near the present White store block a building called the Dr. Huntington store. It was afterwards moved to the site of the present L. L. Woodruff residence and then conveyed to the street that fronts on the river where it still stands adjoining the churchyard grounds. Solomon Martin had a distillery as early as 1803, when Guido L. Bissell charged him “to work at trough at stillhouse 18 shillings,” “to work in the still house 6 shillings”, and again “to work on the still.”

Solomon Martin and Sluman Wattles had close business relations. Mr. Wattles sold him boards “delivered to your store” in 1792, and in the same year charged George Johnson 3 pounds, 17 shillings for “goods taken at Captain Martin’s store.” In 1794 he charged Martin 6 shillings as “fees for license”, and the same year Roger Wattles with “an order on Solomon Martin for three quarts of rum for 7 shillings.” When Martin was in the Legislature in 1806, Sluman Wattles sold him a yoke of oxen “which he agrees to allow me as much for as he can sell them to the McAlpins for and answer the same to Lansing at Albany towards the Mill place which I bought of him (Lansing) between now and the last of August next.” Martin appears to have made his journey to the State Capital in a conveyance drawn by these oxen.

Solomon Martin’s wife was Susan Scott of Catskill, whom he married in 1796. In 1816 he died, and Mrs. Martin with her four sons and her unmarried sister continued to occupy the home in Unadilla for many years. He was elected Supervisor in 1798, 1799, 1800, 1801 and 1802. He was Sheriff of Otsego County from 1802 to 1806, and was twice a Member of Assembly. His business relations were large. Among plaintiffs in suits before Sluman Wattles in and about the year 1794, Martin often appears, some twenty suits and confessions of judgment in his behalf being entered.

During his term as Sheriff, Martin became associated with a murder case in a way that gave his name considerable notoriety. Stephen Arnold of Burlington had so severely whipped a girl six years old that she died of her injuries. Arnold was tried, convicted and sentenced to be hanged. On the day appointed for the execution, thousands of people assembled to witness it in an open field on the banks of the river in Cooperstown. An address was made by a clergyman, the prisoner spoke a few words, Sheriff Martin adjusted the rope, and then, while the assemblage was breathlessly waiting for the final scene, Martin produced a letter from Governor Lewis granting a respite. It appeared that this letter had reached Martin early in the morning and it was now past noon. His excuse for his conduct was that he and a few others whom he had consulted thought it would be improper to make the letter public except on the scaffold.

Solomon Martin’s permanent memorial in this village is the stream that bears his name. It was formerly divided into two streams running through village lands, and then coming together, thus forming an island. When the owners of land on and near this island desired to erect buildings they thought it proper that the brook should be confined to one channel, and accordingly attempted so to make it.

More than half a century has passed since that step was taken, but the stream in high water time is still true to its old time habit: the brook pushes out to the westward and asserts dominion over its old time territory. All the efforts of two generations to prevent this again and again have failed. Across this stream on Main street originally stood a wooden bridge. At the sides horses could be driven down for water. A stone arched bridge erected a great many years ago, admirably took the place of this primitive structure and so remained until 1893, a striking monument of the care with which it was built.

Solomon Martin for many years had a sawmill on this brook. It stood a short distance above the tannery site and here for many years the road came to an end. The building of this sawmill goes back of the year 1796. Solomon Martin, his store and his sawmill were long since gone. They are all forgotten to this generation. A dark stone slab marks his burial place in St. Matthew’s churchyard. Meanwhile the unruly brook remains forever to strengthen recollections of his name.

Further up this stream other sawmills were afterwards built. What was the dwelling house adjoining these mills still does duty there as a home on a different site, and here in their old age long lived Lewis, or “Luke”, and Edward Carmichael. Beyond that site Martin Brook now possesses a newer and more lasting memorial of individual enterprise. Athwart the stream have been erected imposing dams of stone serving reservoirs and standing as firm and permanent as the hills that form their abutments. Solomon Martin had been nearly forty years in his grave when was born the citizen of Unadilla who in that secluded ravine was to erect these enduring and beneficent structures,—Samuel S. North.

Gurdon Huntington, whose home for many years was in the historic building that still stands at the corner of Main and Martin Brook Streets, came to Unadilla before 1794, and here he lived until 1830. He was a native of Franklin, Connecticut, which lies within a few hours’ walk of Lebanon, Daniel Bissell’s home. His father was Deacon Barnabus Huntington, and he belonged to the sixth generation in descent from Simon Huntington, a noted early emigrant from England who sailed for the new world in 1633 with his wife and children, and on the voyage over died and was buried at sea. From his surviving sons a very distinguished family of descendants were to be raised up in many parts of this country—Samuel who was governor of Connecticut and a signer of the Declaration of Independence, Samuel who was governor of Ohio, Daniel the artist, and Collis P., the railroad magnate, whose home in early life was in the Susquehanna Valley at Oneonta.

Gurdon Huntington was born on July 3rd, 1768. He was educated by his father’s pastor, the Rev. Dr. Nott. One of his schoolmates was that Eliphalet Nott who rose to much eminence as president of Union College. The boy read medicine in Connecticut and then came to Unadilla. In 1798 he married Esther, the only daughter of Benjamin Martin of Woodbury, Connecticut. Benjamin Martin was Solomon Martin’s eldest brother.

Dr. Huntington “became a successful and deservedly popular physician” in Unadilla. His practice is known to have extended to places distant forty or fifty miles from home, and one may well believe the statement that “a more welcome visitor never entered those scattered homes.” In this laborious field he made journeys by day and night and often wended “his solitary way along almost untrodden paths”, forded unbridged streams and yet was a “cheerful and happy man”, as well as a “skillful and prosperous physician.” He is said to have accumulated in his time “a handsome property.” He was a man of genial manners and by nature companionable.

Dr. Huntington was elected supervisor of Unadilla in 1803 and again in 1809 and 1811. For seven years he was town clerk. He served four terms in the Legislature—in 1805, 1806, 1807 and 1808. In 1813 he removed to Cairo, Greene County, where he died in 1847 at the age of seventy-nine.

In this early pioneer history, other names besides these are found—Adam Rifenbark, Seth Abel, Capt. Uriah Hanford, Jacob Boult, Abel Case and Jonas Sliter. Each was here before the eighteenth century closed. Capt. Hanford came before 1796 and was a freeholder in 1809. He died here more than thirty years afterwards. He was the father of Theodore Hanford. Jonas Sliter dates as far back as 1795 and probably several years further. He seems to have belonged to the family which settled in the old paper mill region before the Revolution. Perhaps he came back as soon as the war closed. Seth Abel was living in the town before 1798 and long served as tax collector and pathmaster. Abel Case was probably here before the century closed. In 1809 he was a freeholder and in 1810 a commissioner of highways. He owned land that joined Solomon Martin’s and was one of the first vestrymen of St. Matthew’s Church. Guido L. Bissell worked on his wagon house and roofed over his barn in 1806. Jacob Boult was living in the village in 1800 “near the bridge” and was still a resident in 1837. Giles Sisson was living on the river road above the village before 1808. Still another name is William Wheeler, to whom in 1797 Guido L. Bissell sold “15 lights of sash for 7 and 6 pence”, “290 feet of timber for 10 shillings and 1300 shingles for 1 pound.”

The life story of these pioneers is really a history of this settlement in its formative period. Their activities widely differed, and so did their importance. But all were among the first pioneers and they all had a share in laying the foundations.

III.

TWO FRONTIER MERCHANTS.

1800.

While Solomon Martin, Gurdon Huntington and Guido L. Bissell had sold goods in Unadilla before the century closed, the first merchants, in any large and permanent sense, were Curtis Noble and Isaac Hayes. Among settlers who came after the century had just ended, special distinction belongs to both men. They were contemporary in their coming with the building of the turnpike, and both were young, Mr. Noble being twenty-five and Mr. Hayes twenty-four. Here they remained in partnership until Mr. Noble died more than a generation afterwards. Their varied activities extended far along the valley and to the north and south of it. They were typical frontier merchants, a class of whom New York State in those times had many examples—men of youthful energy, largeness of aims, honorable purposes, capacity for toil and fine mercantile instincts.

Curtis Noble was descended from Thomas Noble, an Englishman who reached Boston as early as 1653. Descendants of Thomas Noble make up a genealogical record filling a book of more than 600 pages. He settled in Westfield, Massachusetts, and there died in 1704. His eldest son, John, was the first white man who settled in New Milford, Connecticut, and there in 1750 was born John’s son Elnathan, and in 1754 his son Jesse.

Elnathan Noble in 1794 bought for $750 a farm of 100 acres in Otsego County on the Butternut Creek in what is now New Lisbon. When he moved to the farm in April of that year, there was a log house on it ten feet by twelve, with an elm bark roof and a chimney of sticks and clay. In a cart covered with tow cloth and drawn by two yoke of oxen he arrived early in May with Johanna Bostwick, his wife, and their one daughter and four sons, finding the land heavily timbered, the settlers few, and these chiefly Dutch or German.

Here Elnathan Noble lived until his death in 1824, his funeral being conducted by the Rev. Daniel Nash, known better as “Father” Nash, with whom he had long co-operated in support of the Episcopal faith. Jesse had followed him to New Lisbon, and Jesse’s son Thomas found in Unadilla a wife in Eliza Ann Beach, daughter of Abijah H. Beach, by whom he had eight sons, Whitney B., George N., Edward B., Thomas H., Carrington T., John Henry and Clark. Jesse’s daughter Hetty became the wife of the Rev. Russell Wheeler, the first rector of St. Matthew’s church in Unadilla.

Elnathan Noble’s eldest son Curtis did not go to New Lisbon with his father. He had already entered upon a mercantile life at New Milford in the store of Elijah Boardman, where also had been employed his future partner, Isaac Hayes, and there Curtis Noble remained until 1800 when he and Mr. Hayes formed their partnership and set out for Unadilla. In that year Mr. Noble married Mr. Hayes’s sister, Anna, who survived him until 1865 when she died at eighty-four.

Mr. Hayes was born in 1776. His father was Thomas Hayes of Ilminster, Somersetshire, England. Mr. Hayes in 1798 was sent by Mr. Boardman to the Western Reserve of Connecticut, now a part of Ohio, under contract to clear up a tract of land, sow grain and otherwise prepare the way for settlers. These lands were in the present township of Medina.

Early in 1800 Mr. Hayes had returned to New Milford and entered into his agreement with Curtis Noble to conduct a business “as merchants or shopkeepers in the State of New York at such place as may by them be thought most proper under the name and firm of Noble and Hayes for a term of time not less than ten years.” They contributed each at the beginning one thousand dollars. Mr. Hayes was soon afterwards to increase his amount, while Mr. Noble had the privilege of doing so. Each was to “devote his whole time and attention to the business, use and benefit of the said company.”[4] Instead of ten years this partnership continued for nearly forty. Formal settlement was finally made in 1841 with George H. Noble and Charles C. Noble as executors of their father’s estate.

These Unadilla pioneers came by way of Catskill, the turnpike being then in process of construction. On reaching the river they stopped at the Wattles’s Ferry hotel and soon concluded that the lands across the stream offered the most promising site they had seen for their enterprise. Here was the terminus of the turnpike over which their goods could be brought from Catskill and from here down the Susquehanna could be sent in boats the produce of the country which they expected to acquire in exchange for goods.

Their first stock of goods arrived on a Saturday, when they were living in the house afterwards called the Priest house, a close copy of the Gurdon Huntington house. It occupied the site of the present Horace Eells residence. In one of the rooms of this dwelling the goods were opened and on the following Monday Mr. Hayes on horseback made a tour of the Ouleout country and the upper Susquehanna, announcing to all the inhabitants that a new store had been opened. Solomon Martin, who had a rival store, predicted disaster for the new firm. But Mr. Hayes’s tour brought a crowd of customers at once and a large trade was soon secured.

In the following year the firm was able to send a large quantity of local produce to Catskill and Baltimore. Pearl and pot ashes, pork, bacon, wheat, cattle, dried apples and eventually whiskey became staple articles of export. An old account book records that in 1808 Mr. Noble, on one occasion, sold 30 barrels of pot ashes “for cash in York”, and in 1809, “588 pounds of rags.” Shipments to Catskill were made by well known residents of the town—John Pooler, John Carley, Aaron Axtell, James Hughston and others. The business eventually grew to large proportions. Wheat, rye and corn were grown in vast quantities and everyone was overburdened with the stock on hand. In a single week the firm was known to ship to Catskill 3,000 bushels of wheat, which meant 90 sleigh-loads. These circumstances forced the firm into distilling rye and corn into whiskey, and for this purpose the stone building, afterwards used as a tannery was erected.

Between Unadilla and Baltimore regular ark loads of produce made journeys down the river. As described to the author by the late Clark I. Hayes, these arks were from 20 to 30 feet long and from 15 to 20 feet wide, the depth being from 3 to 4 feet. Boats similar to them were in general use on inland waters at that period. On the Mohawk the favorite boat was called the Schenectady boat, which was “a broad and shallow scow some 50 feet in length steered by a sweep oar of 40 feet and pushed upstream by man power.” On these boats when the river was high 10 tons of freight could be carried.

The ark proper was the invention of a Pennsylvania farmer named Kryder living on the Juniata. In 1792, when flour and lumber were dear, he first resorted to this kind of boat in order to reach Baltimore, and thus realized an excellent profit. The ark afterwards came into very general use all along the upper as well as the lower Susquehanna. In favorable water 80 miles a day could be traversed. Mr. Kryder’s first ark carried 300 barrels of flour. Later ones were large enough to bear the weight of 500 barrels. It was by means of these boats that the vast grain product of Central and Western New York was for many years transported to southern markets.

The arks of Noble and Hayes were loaded at a cut in the river bank that may still be seen opposite their old store. Having been hauled near the bank, planks were thrown out to the arks from the shore. In seasons when the water was at its most favorable stage,—which was usually falling high water that enabled a boat to be kept in the centre of the stream,—loading was done at other points in order to start several arks at one time. All the products of the country went down the river in these arks—at least all for which a market existed at the end of the journey. They were loaded sufficiently well to draw from 20 to 24 inches of water. From three to five of them were usually coupled together in line and placed in charge of an experienced pilot who understood the course and currents of the stream. Men with long oars steered them at each end of the line under directions from the pilot.

Lumber intended for Baltimore went in rafts which were put together at places along the river where some quiet eddy could be found near a sawmill. One of the best spots of this kind near Unadilla was the eddy below the Condensery which formerly covered a large territory that has since been filled in by the action of the water, leaving scarcely a trace of the water area that formerly existed. After making their sales in Baltimore, Mr. Hayes or Mr. Noble went on to New York to purchase goods, shipping them by way of the turnpike.

Refuse grain from the Noble and Hayes distillery was fed to cattle and hogs. It was a common thing to slaughter from 200 to 300 hogs in the fall, and to feed half that number of cattle through the winter. In the time of Jefferson’s Embargo the firm met with heavy losses. Mr. Hayes used to tell how a supply of crockery that had cost $1200 just before the Embargo was raised was afterwards worth only $112.

When the Embargo was imposed however, it not only affected the stock of merchants favorably but the farmer’s produce unfavorably. Grist mills had been busy with heavy crops all through the autumn of 1807 in anticipation of high prices, due to the foreign demand; but when the ports were closed, the demand ceased and farmers often found themselves in possession of a staple article for which they could not get the cost of the labor put into it—the sowing, reaping and grinding. The loss in New England to each family because of this measure was reckoned in 1808 to be about $100. Thousands of men were ruined by it, and notices of sheriff’s sales covered tavern doors and guide posts at forked roads. Men in those days could be sent to jail for debt and thus in New York City during a period of less than a year 1300 persons were imprisoned. That city has been described as looking “like a town ravished by pestilence.” Streets were deserted and grass grew on the wharves.

Isaac Hayes in 1804 built the house in which his son so long lived—the house still occupied by descendants of his. It was for many years regarded as the finest residence on the road between Catskill and Ithaca. This may readily be believed, for in 1804 the common dwelling house was a log hut, while the three “yellow houses”, then standing in the village, one of which the Huntington house still survives, were fine modern residences.[5] Mr. Hayes’s house for that time was indeed a palatial country mansion. A remarkable feature of it was the height of the rooms, as may still be seen; they are as high as rooms in many dwellings of our day. Remarkable also was the design of the house—the elevation, the mantels, above all the circular stairway. In the existence here of that edifice in those early days lay a sign of the culture which someone has said “corrects the theory of success.”

On the island opposite this house formerly existed a race-course. It does not appear to have been in use long, however,—perhaps not for more than two seasons. A temporary foot bridge was erected across the stream, made of planks resting upon benches having legs long enough to keep the planks above water. This bridge was wide enough for two persons to pass. After the races were over it was removed. Horses and carriages reached the island by the fordway.

Mr. Hayes’s activities in this community, apart from his mercantile business, were wide and varied. He was postmaster for many years, supervisor in 1805, and for seven other years, and was elected to the Legislature in 1811 and in five other years. He had an important share in founding St. Matthew’s Church. He had come from the home of Congregationalism and did not embrace the Episcopal faith until some years after he came to Unadilla, when he joined with others in promoting the services held by “Father” Nash. He was a vestryman, warden and treasurer of the Church for many years and was senior warden at the time of his death, which occurred in 1857 at the age of eighty years and ten months.

Isaac Hayes’s wife was Sarah, daughter of Benjamin S. Mygatt, of New Milford. To the same family belonged the late Henry R. Mygatt of Oxford and his sister, Mrs. Frederick A. Sands, of Unadilla. The two families of Noble and Hayes, as already shown, were related by marriage, Mrs. Noble being Mr. Hayes’s sister. No family accounts were kept at the store; each took what it needed. Eventually the two family homes contained twenty children. One of these children survived elsewhere until 1892; when he died in Bennington, Vermont, at the age of eighty-three,—Joel M. Hayes.

Thomas Hayes of Ilminster had seven children besides Isaac. They were Abraham, Polly, Jacob, Hannah, Daniel C. and Thomas. Abraham’s daughter Anna married Dr. David Walker, who succeeded Dr. Huntington as the occupant of the “yellow house”, and whose brother Francis built the house across the street that was long the home of the late Henry S. Woodruff. Dr. Walker lived in Unadilla as late as 1835, and finally died in the West. A daughter of Jacob Hayes, Julia Ann, became the wife of Col. A. D. Williams, for many years a merchant in Unadilla, of whom more will be said hereafter.

Isaac Hayes’s daughter Sarah Ann, who was born in 1815, became the wife of the Rev. Louis LeGrand Noble, a cousin of Curtis Noble, whose career as a clergyman began in the historic St. Peter’s Church in Albany and included successive charges in North Carolina, Catskill, Chicago, Glens Falls and Hudson City, New Jersey. He became in 1872 professor of English literature in St. Stephen’s college at Annandale. He was a friend of Thomas Cole, the artist, became one of his executors, edited his papers, and wrote his life.

Like Mr. Hayes, Curtis Noble was active in many affairs apart from his own business. He was supervisor in 1825 and 1829 and held the office of town clerk for a longer period than any other citizen of the village has ever done—from 1805 to 1824. A story that has survived to this day is that he once brought down with his gun from the top of a pine tree a Susquehanna shad. This was strictly true. He had shot a hawk and with the hawk fell a shad which the hawk had taken from the river.

Curtis Noble’s eldest son was Col. George H. Noble, whose wife was Sherman Page’s daughter, Elizabeth Butler. He was a man of extensive knowledge and deeply impressed those who knew him. For some time he was engaged in business in the brick store at Main and Depot Streets. The stone part of the Arnold residence was built by him. Colonel Noble at one time edited a paper called the Unadilla News. In 1840, Edward H. Graves had started a paper called the Susquehanna News, which Col. Noble purchased of him in the following year and changed the name. After a brief career it was followed by the Weekly Courier, of which Edson S. Jennings was editor.[6] Colonel Noble died in 1847 at the age of forty-two.

Curtis Noble’s second son was Charles Curtis, a graduate of Union College who became a lawyer at Owego, but after his father’s death returned to Unadilla. He was County Judge in 1843, and a Member of Assembly in 1849. He died in 1851 at the age of forty-five, while on a visit to Owego, where he hoped a change of air might improve his health. By way of Deposit, the body was brought back to Unadilla by rail and from Bainbridge a funeral train of thirty carriages conveyed it to Unadilla. His stone law office, near the house where his widow long afterwards lived, stands as a familiar relic of his career.