The centennial history of the town of Dryden. 1797-1897.

Front matter

Fl23

Glass

JOHN ELLIS, " KING OF DRYDEN. "

Preface

It is hoped that the poorest part of this book will prove to be its binding, which is not as good as we might wish, but the best which the funds remaining at the disposal of the Committee could supply. In contemplating and providing for the mechanical part of the work, after deciding that the book should be supplied to subscribers at one dollar per copy, it was determined that the paper and print as well as the illustrations should be good, and then what was left of the proceeds should be devoted to the binding, which, if not very substantial, could be more easily renewed, if the inside should in the future be found worthy of new covers.

It has been the misfortune of many local histories to be the offspring of the greed of ambitious publishers, who furnished expensive volumes without much regard for historical accuracy. This cannot be charged against this undertaking, which is a labor of love and the outgrowtVi of a Centennial Celebration of the first settlement of the town of Dryden, the details of which are given in the concluding chapter of this volume. The same Executive Committee who had charge of that happy event have devoted their time and energies unitedly and gratuitously to the preparation of this work, each member paying for his copy the same as those who have not contributed their time so freely. But the burden has not been borne by the Committee alone. Many others have lent their aid and it has been surprising as well as gratifying to the writer to receive contributions of so much valuable material for this work, which in a little time would be hopelessly lost if not preserved by some such undertaking as this. It has exhibited the hearty good will and favor with which the efforts of the Committee have been seconded and sustained and has resulted in a much more comprehensive and complete history of the town than was at first contemplated. The number of subscriptions for the work, largely exceeding the estimates, has provided the financial means necessary to add more embellishments to the mere histoiy that at first could be hoped for. With two or three exceptions of special historical interest the portraits iv • PEEFACE.

wliicli api^ear have been provided upon the request of the Committee by the persons represented, or their friends, and the portrait of no hving resident of the township will be here found. Little attention liag been given in this work to the present, while the great effort has been to resurrect and preserve the past, representing so far as possible old land-marks and dwelling upon old habits and conditions as they formerly existed. The table of contents and list of illustrations immediately following will serve the purpose of a more complete index which it had been intended to supply at the end of the volume. Such a one had been parti}- prepared, but when the types were all up it was discovered that we had already occupied more than the space provided, and this feature was therefore reluctantly given up.

While it would be inadvisable here to attempt to mention all who have lent a helping hand to the preparation of this work, the writer wishes to acknowledge his special obligations to Chas. F. Mulks, of Ithaca, a descendant of the Ellis family, of Dryden, for his exhaustive and painstaking researches, of which this book has the benefit, and without which it would suffer, especiall}^ in the matter of statistics and genealogy, as well as in general accuracy. We are also under great obligations to Ex-Governor William Marvin, of Skaneateles, formerl}' a Dryden boy, now ninet}^ years of age, who, with his own trembling hand, has, by letters and manuscripts, answered many inquiries and supplied much information not otherwise obtainable.

To the members of the Committee, one and all, whose names are given upon the reverse of the title page, the public will be indebted for whatever shall be found worthy to be preserved in the future from this first attempt to accurately record and perpetuate at length the annals of the town of Dryden, G. E. G.

ERRATA— Page 94, for '• Chapter XXIV," read "XXV." Page 115, Una 8, after "and," read "pay of." Page 122, for "Israel Hoy," read "Hoyt. "

Table Of Contents

Prehistoric Conditions, - _ _ .

Indian Occupation, _ _ . -

The Approach of Civilization,

Contents

Furtliei' History of the North-Avest Section,

Further History of the North-east Section,

Further History of the South-east Section,

Chapter II. India.n Occupation

Although there is no record that the town of Dryden was ever the site of any permanent Indian settlement, there is abundant evidence that the Indians occupied it as a hunting; ground. The little Hint arrowheads which are still found, especially along the banks of the streams and upon the shores of the Lake, are unmistakable proof of the presence of the Indians, and the chips of flint, the waste product of the rude manufacture of these arrowheads, and other implements of stone found frequently about the shores of the Lake, indicate that at some time they had tliere at least a temporary encampment. The nearest Indian villages of which we have any authentic account were the habitations of the Cayugas, near the present site of the city of Ithaca, and extending on both sides of Ca^'uga Lake to its outlet. Central New York, when first known to civilization, was the home of the " Iroquois, " a term applied first to five and afterwards to six confederated Indian tribes, which included the Cayugas, and is said tohave constituted the most powerful force of Indians on the American Continent. We may perhaps claim some significance in the fact that the territory which now constitutes the central and western part of the Empire State was once the home and hunting ground of the victorious Iroquois, the conquerers of all the neighboring tribes. It was said that such experiences had the New England tribea of Indianssuffered from the Mohawks — the eastern branch of the Iroquois — that the very mention of the name of " a Mohawk " caused them to flee with terror. The Iroquois had recently conquered the Adirondacks on the north and the Eries and Hurons on the west, and after becoming known to white men, in one of their southern excursions, they rescued from their enemies the whole tribe of Tuscaroras of North Carolina, whom they brought home with them and adopted as the sixth branch of their nation.

The conditions and habits of these aborigines form an interesting study to those who have investigated the subject. The first white men to go among them, except occasional fur traders, were the missionaries of the French Jesuits, who for a century prior to the English occupation of their territory, had lived and labored among them in the vain effort to effect their conversion to their form of Christianity. These, like other American Indians, from the first seemed to take much more naturally to the vices than to the virtues of their white brothera

INDIAN OCCUPATION. 5

and the sacrifices of those zealous men, who left their pleasant homes in France to live and work among the Indians of North America for their education and development in the Christian faith, were worthy of better success than resulted. But the reports which these French 'Catholic priests sent back to their native country of their experiences among them are now found carefully preserved in French monasteries, and constitute one of the most interesting and trustworthy sources of •our knowledge of the actual condition in which the Indians were then found. The " relations " (as they are called) of one Father Carheil, who spent over twenty years of his life among the Cayugas, and who in the year 1672 describes Lake Tiohero (now Cayuga) and the beautiful country surrounding it, with its abundance of fish and game, have thus recently been resurrected and translated into English, throwing much light upon this subject so interesting to the antiquarian.

In the French and Indian wars, which preceded the Revolution, the Iroquois, in spite of the French priests, took sides with the English, and rendered efficient assistance in the conquest of Canada from the French. When the War of the Revolution followed between the English colonies and their mother country, the Iroquois at first decided to remain neutral, but the most of them were afterwards persuaded to join their old allies, the English. This exposed the outposts of the colonies to a merciless enemy in the rear, and the frightful massacres of Cherry Valley and Wyoming were among the results. Fortunate it was for the early settlers (jf our locality that these bloody times passed before they ventured into the Western Wilderness.

To avenge these outrages and to punish the hostile Indians and drive them from the neighborhood of the advance settlements, an invasion of the Iroquois country was executed in the year 1779, known as " Sullivan's campaign, " which, after a battle with the combined forces of Indians and Tories near Newtown (now Elmira), resulted in their complete defeat, followed by the subsequent overrunning of the Indian country and the destruction of their villages, including those along Cayuga and Seneca lakes. This campaign, forming a part of the Revolutionary Avar, planned by Washington and executed by Generals Sullivan and Clinton with a force of about five thousand men, •detachments of which marched within a few miles of the town of Dryden, and perhaps within its borders, resulted in the complete humiliation of the fierce Iroquois, and opened the way for the subsequent purchase and settlement of this section of Western New York, over -which up to that time they had held absolute sway. With the exception of the Oneidas, who had remained friendly to the colonies, and a part of the Onondagas, whose descendants still remain on their reservation near Syracuse, the Iroquois were driven from this part of the state never to return in large numbers. Some took refuge in Canada and along the Niagara frontier, others, including a number from the Cayuga and Seneca tribes, were colonized in the extreme western part of this state, while most of the Cayugas were induced to make their homes in the Indian Territory, where their descendants now reside in considerable numbers. Tlius it happened that the early pioneers of our town escaped all annoyance from hostile Indians, who had been effectually driven out of the country before any settlement was attempted.

Those readers who desire to follow more minutely the details of " Sullivan's Campaign " will find the journals of the officers of that expedition, with full explanatory notes and maps, given in a large volume recently published by the State, a copy of which can be found in the Dryden village school library.

Chapter III. The Appeoach Of Civilization

The War of the Revolution was practically ended in 1781, two years after Sullivan's Campaign was carried out against the Indians of Western New York. Within the next ten years the remnants of the Iroquois confederacy ceded their lands, by various treaties, to the State. Conditions favorable to the settlement of this locality were thus rapidly developed. Other sections of the country, both north and south of us, more readily reached by means of navigable lakes and rivers, were already occupied by the pioneer settlers, while the ridge separating the head waters of the St. Lawrence from those of the Susquehanna^ of which our town forms a part, was still uninhabited. In February^ 1789, the N. Y. State Legislature passed a law for surveying and setting apart for the use of its soldiers of the Revolution w^io then survived, a large section of land between Seneca and Oneida lakes afterwards known as the " Militar}^ Tract," comprising nearly two million acres, and including the town of Dryden, w^hich was designated in the survey as Township No. 23. This tract was surveyed in the years 1789 and 1790, and divided into twenty-six townships, to which two more were afterwards added, making twenty-eight in all, each being about ten miles square and containing one hundred lots of about one mile square each. Dryden is one of the few to retain nearl}^ its original di-

THE APPEOACH OF CIVILIZATION. 7

mensions. The little notch which formerly existed in the southeast corner of the town before the seven lots were set off to Caroline, was caused by the overlapping of the territory known as the Massachusetts Ten Townships upon the Military Tract, the West Owego Creek, which rises in Dry den near the southwest corner, being the west boundary of the former. The lots of Dryden were surveyed in the year 1790, by John Konkle, of Schoharie. In the southeast corner of each lot was set apart one hundred acres, known and frequently referred to in old descriptions, which are brought down into deeds of even this date, as the " State's Hundred Acres, " which the owner had the option of exchanging for an equal number of acres of the U. S. lands in Ohio ; and out of each lot was reserved a piece of fifty acres, known as the " Survey Fifty Acres, " which was retained by the surveyor for his services, unless redeemed by the owner at eight dollars. So poor were the early inhabitants in those daj-s, and so scarce was mone}', that many of them were unable to raise the eight dollars necessary to save the Survey Fifty Acres of their lots even on these terms.

Out of each township one lot was reserved for gospel and school purposes and another for promoting literature, the gospel and school lot in Dryden being No. 29 and the literature lot No. 63. The other lots were dra^vn by ballot in the year 1701 by the New York soldiers of the Revolution, each private and non-commissioned officer being entitled to cb'aw one lot. A copy of the " Balloting Book " containing the names of the soldiers of the Kevolution by whom the lots of the town of Dryden were originally drawn, can now be found in the Tompkins county clerk's office. This method of distribution of the land of the township by ballot, accounts for the fact that the early settlers of the town did not come in large colonies from any particular part of the older settlements, bat came- singly or in small groups from localities widely separated.

Prior to this time all of the western part of the state was embraced in the old county of Montgomery, but in the year 1791 Herkimer and Tioga counties, the latter including Dryden, were set off from Montgomery and in 1794 Onondaga county, then made to include all of the Military Tract, was formed and set off from Tioga and Herkimer. Thus our Township No. 23 was, from 1791 to 1794, a part of Tioga county, becoming in' 1794 a part of Onondaga county, and so remained until it was ajjpropriated to form a part of the new county of Cayuga in 1799, and was afterwards set off' to form a part of the present county of Tompkins upon its organization in the year 1817.

It is thus seen how it happens that all of the records of land titles of the town of Drydeii, prior to 1817 and subsequent to 1799, are found in the clerk's office of the county of Cayuga, the records of our own county commencing with its formation in the year 1817. Township No. 23, while in Montgomery count}', was included in the political subdivision of Whitestown ; upon its incorporation into Tioga county in 1791 it became a part of the old town of Owego ; but when it was absorbed by Onondaga county it was at first included, in its political existence, with the present townships of Enfield and Ithaca in the original town of Ulysses, the organization of which dates back to the formation of Onondaga county in 1794. On Feb. 22, 1803, Township No. 23 was set off by itself, having been previously named Dryden bj- the commissioners of the land office, in honor of John Dryden, the English poet. The townships of Ithaca and Enfield remained a part of Ulysses, in their political organization, until four years later.

But few of the soldiers of the Revolution came and settled upon the lots which fell to them. The old veterans of those days, like some of later times, cared more for their present comfort than for an opportunity of finding new homes in the wilderness of the Military Tract. Nor can the old Revolutionary soldiers, after having passed through the hardshijjs involved in the seven years' war with England, be blamed for shrinking from the privation and suffering incident to pioneer life in a new country. Many of them disposed of their titles for a mere trifle. For instance it is said that the original owner of the lot of 640 acres upon. which the Dryden Center House now stands, sold it for a coat, hat, one drink of rum, and one dollar in money, and that the soldier who drew Lot No. 9 sold it for one " great coat. " " Land sharks" existed even in those days and many of the soldiers' claims to the territory of Dryden were bought up for a trifling consideration by speculators in the East, who lield them for advanced prices, at which they were sold to those who became actual settlers.

So great a length of time elapsed between the drawing of the lots and the actual occupation of them, and so many loose and fraudulent transfers were made of them in the meantime, that the uncertainty of titles resulting was one of the troubles which vexed and disappointed the early settlers, much more than we of the present day can realize. Some, however, of the original owners retained their lots and occupied the lands which the government had given them as a bounty for their services. As an example, Elias Larabee, who drew Lot No. 49, including the southeast quarter of Dryden village, came and lived for a long time upon his lot, and one of his descendants, Daniel Law-

THE APPEOACH OF CIVILIZATION. 9

son, a pensioner of the War of the Rebellion, still owns and occupies a small part of it.

The town having- been surveyed in 1790 and the lots being draAvn in 1791, the next question was how were these possessions in the wilderness of the Military Tract to be reached. The first settlers had already arrived at Owego and Elmira by way of the Susquehanna and Chemung rivers, while others had come to Syracuse and Auburn by way of the Mohawk and Seneca rivers and the lakes, and settlements had been commenced in and about Ithaca and Lansing, on the banks of Cayuga Lake, by parties who had taken these routes, but there was no direct practicable way to reach from the oast the elevated watershed lying between the two, until a road was cut through the woods from Oxford on the Chenango Eiver to Ithaca at the head of Cayuga Lake, which was done in the years 1793, 1794 and 1795, by Joseph Chaplin under a contract from the State. Mr. Chaplin was the first settler in the town of Virgil and we quote from Bouton's History of that town, pages 9 and 10, concerning him and his work as follows :

" To facilitate the settlement of this section of the country, a road was projected connecting Oxford with the Cayuga Lake, to pass through this town [Virgil.] Joseph Chaplin, the first inhabitant, was intrusted with this work. The instrument by which he was authorized to engage in it was authenticated on the fifth of May, 1792. He spent that season in exploring and survejdng the route, the length of which is about sixty miles. He came to Lot No. 50 [of Virgil], which he owned and afterwards settled, erected a house and prosecuted his work, having a woman to keep the house and cook for workmen. The work of cutting and clearing the road was done in 1793-4; so that he moved his family from Oxford over it in the winter of 1794-5, employing six or seven sleighs freighted with family, furniture, provisions, etc."

But it seems that when he had completed the road as far as Virgil he was persuaded by some settlers from Kidder's Ferry (near Ludlow- Tille) to continue the road from Virgil through to that point, as it tlien contained more inhabitants than Ithaca. Having done so he presented his bill to the Legislature, which rejected it on the ground that he had not complied with the terms of his contract, which required the road to be built to Ithaca. He then returned and in the year 1795 cut the road through from Virgil to Ithaca known as the " Bridle Road," and thus became entitled to his pay, the first road opened by him being now known as the old State Road, extending between the towns of Urvden and Groton and through Lansing to the Lake.

The foregoing is the version of this matter Avhich has appeared in the local histories previously published, but it is now claimed, with better reason as it seems to us and more consistently with the conditions which are known to have then existed, that the Bridle Road was the trial route first partly opened by Chaplin, and which the state government refused to accept because it did not terminate as required by the contract at a point on Cayuga Lake, the early Ithaca settlement being at least a mile from its nearest shore ; and that he then fulfilled the letter of his contract by afterwards opening the old State Road to Kidder's Ferry, leaving the first route only a bridle path which Capt. Robertson, as we shall see hereafter, was obliged to widen in order to reach with ox teams by way of Ithaca his site on Lot 53 of Dryden.

We are told that in this work of cutting these new roads through the wilderness, Mr. Chaplin was assisted by his step-son, then a young man, Gideon Messenger by name, who is the ancestor of the present Messenger family of Dryden and the uncle of H. J. Messenger, of Cortland. From Bouton's History we learn that this same Gideon Messenger was the first town clerk of Yirgil in 1795, afterwards its supervisor, and that he passed over the State Road from State Bridge, in the eastern part of Yirgil, to Cayuga Lake, before there was a single habitation in the whole distance. (Bouton's Supplement, page 39.)

CHAPTER lY.

THE FIRST SETTLEMENT.

It seems to be conceded that the first actual settler in the town of Dryden was Amos Sweet. Our information upon this subject is derived almost entirely from the "Old Man in the Clouds," the fictitious name of the author of a 'series of articles published in "Ramsey's Companion, " the first newspaper published at Dryden, in the years 1856 and 1857, and which were, in fact, compiled by the editor from the information afforded by old men, then living, but since dead, and in that way preserved. We quote from the first number as follows :

" It was in the spring of 1797, that a man by the name of Amos Sweet c me from the East somewhere, and, after ascertaining the location of his lot, put up a log house about ten feet square, just back of where now resides Freeman Stebbins [now John Munsey] in this village, where himself, his wife, two children, his mother and brother all lived.

THE FIEST SETTLEMENT. 11

This woitld seem to be a very small and I'ude habitation to the people of our present gay and beautiful village. It was built of logs about a foot thick ; these were halved together at the ends and the cracks chinked in with split sticks and mud. The house was eight logs high, covered with bark from the elm and basswood. Through one corner an opening was left for the smoke to pass through, there being no chimney or chamber floor. The fire-place was composed of three hardhead stones turned up against the logs for the back, and three or four others of the same stamp formed the hearth, these being laid upon the split logs which formed the floor. Inasmuch as there was no sash or glass in those days in this vicinit}^ their only window consisted of an opening about eighteen inches square cut through the logs, and this, to keep out the inclement weather, was covered with brown paper, greased over to admit the light. The door was also in keeping with the rest of the house, being composed of slabs split from the pine and hewn off as smooth as might be with the common axe. The hinges were of wood and fastened across the door with pins of the same material, serving the double purpose of cleet and hinge. In this house, thus built without nails and with benches fastened to the sides of the house for chairs, eating from wooden trenchers and slab tables much after the fashion of the door, did this little family of pioneers live. "

But the title to the lot upon which Mr. Sweet built seems to have been defective and one Nathaniel Shelden appears to have had the real ownership, for in 1801, he compelled Mr. Sweet and his family to leave it. Elsewhere Mr. Sweet is spoken of as a "squatter," or one having no title, and Mr. Shelden is represented as using "fraudulent means" to dispossess him, but charity for both of these early pioneers compels us to believe that the difficulty grew out of the great uncertainty and confusion which then existed as to the titles derived from the old soldiers of the Eevolution, some of whom had undertaken to sell the same lands several times over to different parties. At any rate Sweet was compelled to leave his pioneer home in 1801, and soon after, as the account says, " he sickened and died, and his remains, together with those of his mother and two children, " were buried directly across the road from the Dryden Springs Sanitarium. The house remained for some time after, for we are told that it was used as the first school house for the children of the early settlers in the year 1804.

The new log cabin constructed during the summer of 1897 on the grounds of the Dryden Agricultural Society was built of green

HISTORY OF DRYDEN.

chestnut logs and modeled after this first pioneer house in Dryden. It is intended to be preserved and it is hoped it will long remain as a relic of that kind of architecture, once so prevalent here, where now only the decaying remains of, two or three log houses can be found in the whole township.

^m

The fact that we now find no signs of the graves where Mr. Sweet and his family are said to have been buried, strikes us at first as singular, but a little reflection and an examination of the customs of the early settlers in that regard, supplies us with the explanation. The pioneers had too much to do to spend much time or effort in the burial of their dead and were too poor to go to much expense in such matters. Mr. Bouton, in his History of Virgil, says that the first gravestone in that town was erected in 1823, although deaths had occurred there from its earliest settlement. He also explains their method of selecting places for the burial of their dead, which seems to us strange. We quote from pages 13 and 14 of the Supplement, where he speaks of a stranger who lost his way and perished in ;^the woods, and mentions that he was buried near where he was found.

THE FIRST RESIDENT FREEHOLDER. 13

" Only a few families at tliii time (1798) resided in the tt^wn, Avhicli extended over ten miles of territoiy. There was no public burying ground and it was not possible to know where it would be located. ^ * * Families buried their dead on their ow-u premises, and others, strangers and transient persons, were permitted to be laid in these family grounds. Ultimately it came to pass that one or more of these grounds came to be considered phblic, in a subordinate sense. There ■were a large number of them which continued in use after the public ground w-as opened. "

Grave-stones as seen in old cemeteries, where any existed at all, w^ere then of the simplest character, many being made of native fiag-stones, and the coffin of the pioneer was a coarse wooden box manufactured by the local undertaker, fifteen dollars paying for the very best.

When w^e come to think of it, a cemetery would not be much of an institution in ^n early settlement in the woods, especially where the living inhabitants had all they could do to keep soul and body together. Far different is it in a community of a century's growth^ wdiere now^ our cemetery tombstones, many of them imported from Italy and Scotland, represent the expenditure of very many thousands of dollars, and the earth beneath them already envelops the forms of the ever-increasing, yet silent, majority.

Chapter V. The First Resident Freeholder

While Amos Sweet was the first man to take up his residence in Dryden, he seems never to have held permanent title to any of its real estate, and, so far as we can learn, he left no relatives or descendants from whom any of the present inhabitants can trace their ancestry. We know not whence he came, except from the " Old Man in the Clouds," wdio says that he came from " the East somewhere," and our short story of his appearance and residence here is an unsatisfactory and a tragic one. We have already given all the facts which we can learn of him except the statement derived from an old obituary notice of Seth Stevens, a relative of the early Rummer family in Dryden, which relates that Stevens, while probably residing in Yirgil, helped to build the first log house in Dryden, presumably the Amos Sweet house. We have accidentally come across his signature as a wdtness to an old Dryden deed, which shows that he could write, an accomplishment at that time none too common.