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Cornell University Library 1994.Settlement of
New York
A SKETCH of EARLY TIMES
*BY
URI MULFORD
CORNING, N.Y.Settlement of Steuben County
New York
A SKETCH OF EARLY TIMES
BY
URI MULFORD
COINING, N. Y.
Corning Journal Print
1909OFFICERS OF PAINTED POST CHAPTER,
SONS AMERICAN REVOLUTION,
1909.
President, Arthur Amory Houghton.
Vice-President, Delmar Matthews Darrin.
Secretary, John Laurens Chatfield.
Treasurer, Willard S. Reed.
Historian, Uri Mulford.
Chaplain, Rev. John Chester Ball.
Delegate to National Congress, Alanson Bigelow
Houghton.
Alternate Delegate, Frederick J. Townsend.
The Painted Post Chapter of the Empire State Society
of the Sons of the American Revolution, was organized in
the city of Corning, N. Y., December 28, 1908, and was in-
corporated under the Laws of the State of New York on
February 10, 1909.BANQUET TENDERED
THE PAINTED POST CHAPTER, S. A. R.
The first social gathering of The Painted Post Chapter,
of the Empire State Society, of the Sons of the American
Revolution, was held at Corning Club on the evening of
June 24, 1909. Ax> course dinner was served. Arthur A.
Houghton, President of the Chapter, was the host.
At the close of the banquet a paper on “The Settlement
of Steuben County” was presented by Uri Mulford, His-
torian of the Chapter. By a unanimous vote of the Chapter,
this paper was ordered printed in pamphlet form for dis-
tribution among the members of the Chapter and for place-
ment in its historical archieves.
Those present were: Compatriots Dr. Byron Pierce, of
Coopers Plains; Delmar M. Darrin, of Addison; Henry
Martin McCullough, of Lawrenceville, Pa.; Hon. Frank
C.	Platt, Fred J. Townsend, Arthur Erwin Iredell and John
Laurens Chatfield, of Painted Post; Arthur A. Houghton,
Rev. John Chester Ball, Harry A. Erwin, William J. Heer-
mans, Harry Hayt Pratt, Alanson Bigelow Houghton, Fred-
erick H. Fuller, Uri Mulford, Julian C. Drake, Herbert
A. Heminway and Willard S. Reed, of Corning. George
Hollister, of Corning, was an honored guest.
Regrets were received from Compatriots Clarence Ells-
worth Townsend, of Auburn; J. Towner Hayt and Lorenzo
D.	Oviatt, of Corning; Hon. George R. Sutherland, of
New York Citv; Willis L. Hamilton, of Campbell; Rear
Admiral E. S. Prime, U. S. N., of Huntington, N. Y., His-
torian of the Huntington Chapter, S. A. R.
Secretary.The Settlement of Steuben County
A historical sketch prepared for and presented at a
Banquet of members of u The Painted Post Chapter,” of the
Empire State Society, of the Sons of the American Revolu-
tion, at the Corning Club, in the City of Corning, N. Y.f
June 24th, 1909, by Urx Mulford, Historian of the
Chapter.
The speaker was requested by the President of this
Chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution to prepare
and present a paper on the Settlement of Steuben County,
New York. In complying with the request of our Com-
mander in Chief, I am mindful of the danger of burying
the members of the Painted Post Chapter beyond recovery
underneath an avalanche composed of parts of speech and
stale numericals.
Geographically speaking, Steuben is not a large County;
but,, in its historical connections, it is part and parcel of a
past whose range expands beyond measure; and it interlocks
with a moving present that embraces the best things in the
life of our Republic—a connection that fills the hearts of all
true sons and step-sons of Old Steuben with confidence as
regards the future.
During the settlement period of Western New York,
beginning about 1788, the Chemung Valley was the principal
Page Fivegateway between the Colonies and the Genesee Country.
Then the Genesee Country was a land without meets or
bounds, lying in the midst of a vast forest sea. Prior to
the purchase of the Massachusetts pre-emption right,
or fee of the land, in Western New York, by
Phelps & Gorham, and its survey for settlement, the
location of the Genesee Country was not clear in the public
mind. It had no definite place on the crude maps of that
day. Under an early Crown grant, the Colony of Massa-
chusetts held title to a strip of territory as broad as itself,
extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. By a com-
promise with this State, following the Revolution, Massa-
chusetts was given pre-emption title to the strip of land
described in the purchase of Phelps & Gorham. To them
Massachusetts in turn gave title. It was:
“All that part of the State of New York lying west of a
line, beginning at a point in the north line of Pennsylvania,
82 miles north of the northeast corner of said State, and
running from thence due north through Seneca Lake to Lake
Ontario; excepting and reserving to the State of New York
a strip of land east of, and adjoining the eastern bank of
the Niagara river, one mile wide and extending its whole
length.”
This land was sold in 1788 to Phelps & Gorham by the
State of Massachusetts, subject to the title of natives. About
six million acres of land were thus conveyed. But the name
Genesee Country first embraced, indefinitely, the region of
Page Sixcountry within the bounds of the State of New York affected
by the Sullivan Expedition, in 1779, when he overcame,
demoralized and scattered the Seneca Indians and the rem-
nants of a few confederate tribes.
Beginning at the Genesee river, at the time of the Wyom-
ing massacre, thence westward to the Niagara frontier and
Lake Erie, was a wilderness abounding with game. This
extensive region constituted the hunting ground of
the Senecas, and was by them most carefully guarded
against poachers. Within its limits were no Indian villages.
But along the Genesee, and thence eastward throughout cen-
tral and southern New York, about the shores of the various
lakes and along the bottom lands of numerous rivers and
brooks, to the vicinity of the encroaching white settlements
that marked the western boundary of advancing civilization,
were Indian villages surrounded by or near td well cared for
and exceedingly productive plantations. The Senecas, Cay-
ugas, Onondagas, Oneidas, Mohawks and Tuscaroras were
farmers as well as hunters. And it was the permanent
homes of the Senecas and Cayugas that General Sullivan
burned, and their growing crops that he destroyed, even
to cutting down their apple and peach orchards.
From Chesapeake Bay up the Susquehanna and the Che-
mung rivers to the Painted Post was a natural passage way
by water into the Genesee Country. It was the way traveled
in and out by all the tribes of the Six Nations in going to
Page Sevenand from the Southern seaboard. In fact, there was no other
'‘all water'’ way in and out of the Genesee Country. Tioga
Point was from ancient days a place of Indian rendezvous
from whence tribesmen embarked in canoes on foraging
expeditions to the far South, sometimes finding rich spoils of
war in Florida and about the Gulf of Mexico. It was from
Tioga Point the hostile Indians and their Tory associates
moved, upon Wyoming and from there, also, they advanced
upon Cherry Valley.
The lower Susquehanna River was discovered in 1608
by Captain John Smith, of Virginia, but he did not ex-
plore it.
The first white men to reach Tioga Point were three ven-
turesome Dutch traders who came across the wilds from
Albany, in 1614, and were made captives and held by the
savages for about a year, and then allowed to go down the
Susquehanna River in a canoe.
General Sullivan with an invading army of 4,000 men,
took Newtown the 29th of August, 1779, scattering about
1,500 Indian warriors and some 200 British soldiers. Shortly
before the battle of Newtown began, the Indian braves sent
their old men, squaws and children up the Chemung river
to the Painted Post, there to await events; and when disaster
came to the Indian fighters, Indian runners were sent on to
warn the non-combatants to flee via the Conhocton and the
Genesee rivers to the Niagara, while the defeated braves
led Sullivan’s forces a wild chase via Catherine’s Town,
Page Eightaround Seneca Lake to Geneva, Canandaigua and thence to
the heart of the Genesee bottom lands. A detachment of
the Sullivan Continentals sent from Newtown up the Che-
mung River, had a lively skirmish with Red Skins at Bloody
Run, just east of Gibson, town of Corning, and overpowered
the enemy. These Continentals destroyed wigwams and
crops at Painted Post and Little Flats. Sullivan’s men
destroyed in all 40 Indian villages, some of whieh were
composed of substantial log houses built in imitation of the
homes of the frontier white settlers. That expedition took
the heart out of the Indian owners of the Genesee Country,
and never again did these Indians attempt united resistance
to the whites. But there followed for a number of years
occasional cases of killing of whites by Indians, and of kill-
ing of Indians by whites.
Consider the Senecas! They were the leading tribe of
the Six Nations. For ages the Senecas had defended the
Confederation against aggressions by strong bands of Red
Men dwelling to the north and in the west.
At the time William the Conqueror conquered the sav-
ages of the British Islands, the Indian tribes of New York
State were warring upon each other when not being warred
upon by tribes from elsewhere. To defend themselves
against predatory attacks the Senecas and other Iroquois
tribes established well built places of refuge. Having no
iron tools to work with, the Indians first burned down trees,
burned them into, sections, then took these sections and stood
Page Ninethem on end side by side in trenches dug for the purpose,
filled in the earth, and thus erected palisades that enclosed,
in some instances, several acres of land. Inside these stoutly
constructed fortresses, with a single opening arranged to be
closed in case of need, wigwams were erected and large
stores of corn, dried berries and fruits, and dried meats were
buried.
The first settlers of the Genesee Country found the
remains of such Indian forts near Canisteo, near Elmira,
near Waverly, and near Geneva, and elsewhere in Central
and Western New York. But not one of these forts had seen
service for six or seven centuries, according to the story
of the trees found growing amid their ruins. This fact
indicates that, some seven or eight hundred years ago, the
American savages discovered that peace by mutual agree-
ment produced more satisfactory results than everlasting
strivings. It demonstrates how the various Indian tribes,
then occupying the soil of two-thirds of the State of New
York, joined hand in hand for the common defense and
mutual help. The Five Nations thus united were Invincible.
They prospered. As the years rolled by, for want of
practice, they forgot the art of collective warfare. They
became as children.
When the French got a foot-hold in Canada they began
to press the Iroquois. Incursion after incursion of maraud-
ing French adventurers, accompanied by scalp-hunting In-
Page Tendian allies, wrought havoc in the land of the Iroquois. These
acts of aggression cost the French the friendship of the Five
Nations—later augmented by the admission of a sixth tribe,
the Tuscaroras—and lost to the French the American Conti-
nent.
Next into the land of the Iroquois came the English,
with William Johnson, a crafty Irishman, as Commissioner
of Indian Affairs for the Crown. Johnson came over in
173 7 or 1738. He made his headquarters on the Mohawk,
in the northern section of the State of New York.
Johnson furnished each Indian that applied a complete
hunting outfit, including gun, tomahawk and scalping knife,
and filled him to the chin with strong rum, all free of
charge, on condition that the subject of his Christian charity
should forthwith go “scalp hunting” among the French and
the Indians under French influence.
The resourceful Johnson also encouraged the propagation
of what he, at least, deemed an improved order of Red
Men. He entered so zealously upon the work of producing
Indian half-breeds, that when he was called hence, in June,
1774, an inventory revealed something like two hundred
semi-savage Johnsons, from simple fractions to decimals.
Too much Johnson and the consequent feeling of kinship-
friendliness that extended from Johnson Hall throughout
all the land of the Iroquois, with the bare exception of the
Oneidas, caused troublesome complications between the
Page ElevenAmericans and the Red Men of the State of Mew York.
The head of the herd of Johnson, the Johnson sons—pure
blood and mongrel—and the Johnson squaws, all sided with
the English, whence William Johnson got his “Sir,” and
also extensive grants of the choicest of New York State
lands.
During the middle period of the eighteenth century the
Iroquois were crowded from all sides of their vast posses-
sions. They knew the story of Lake Champlain and of
the slaughter of the Pequoits in Connecticut by Mason.
They understood how the presence of white settlers destroy-
ed hunting grounds. Consequently they became greatly
alarmed when the settlement of Wyoming, on the lower
Susquehanna, began. They held a council and protested
against such settlement, as a violation of treaty rights. Wil-
liam Johnson also entered protest in behalf of the Indians..
Encouraged by the Johnsons most of the Six Nations, during
the Revolution, took sides with the Red Coats, hoping
thereby to save their hunting grounds and to reopen the
gateway to the south.
'The Wyoming territory was claimed by Connecticut
under a Crown grant that extended from “sea to sea,” just
as Massachusetts claimed Western New York State. Con-
necticut people began to flock to the settlement of Wyoming
in 1762. Pennsylvania land speculators attempted to dis-
possess the Connecticut settlers, attacking their title under
the Crown grant. The Pennsylvania Company induced set-
tlers from their State to move into the Wyoming Country.
As a result of these counter claims arose contentions which
Page Twelvefor a dozen years prior to the beginning of the Revolution
led to battles between rival white occupants of the soil, blood
being shed, buildings and crops burned, people driven from
their homes, and great bitterness of feeling engendered.
At the outbreak of the Revolution, Wyoming became quiet.
Most of the heads of families were Revolutionary soldiers.
Finally the Senecas seem to have came to believe that by
wiping out the white settlements of Wyoming, while many
heads of families were absent, they could repossess the land
for themselves and restore ancient conditions. Thus was
brought about the massacre of Wyoming, in August, 1778.
Like conditions caused in this same year the massacre of
Cherry Valley, in this State. The year following, General
George Washington sent General John Sullivan with a
force of 4,000 men, to punish the Senecas and lay waste
their homes and destroy their growing crops.
The Sullivan Expedition resulted in the permanent
occupancy of the Genesee Country by white settlers, as soon
after the close of the Revolution as it was possible for them
to flock here from the various States represented by the men
of his expedition.
In 1787 the nrst settlers brought the frontier line up the
Susquehanna to Tioga Point. There the following year
Lieut.-Col. Eleazer Lindsley, a prospector from New Jer-
sey, arrived for'the purpose of locating, to find all the avail-
able land taken up. He at once pushed on via Catherine’s
Page ThirteenTown to the fine lands along Seneca Lake, south-east of
Geneva, at a point called Apple Town, and laid out several
township strips. But on account of trouble between the
State and a company of land speculators who had in 1787
without warrant induced the Indians to make a “999” year
lease of the soil east of Seneca Lake, Lieut.-Col. Lindsley
retraced his steps to Newtown and came thence on horseback
along a well-worn Indian trail to the Painted Post. In
June, 1790, this land seeker, with his own family and five
other families, established a settlement in the town of Lind-
ley, which then became the Western outpost of civilization in
Southern New York.
A brief review of the events that led to the surrender
to the whites of the Indian title to the soil in this County
is in place. In 1787 Phelps & Gorham purchased of the
State of Massachusetts its pre-emption right to all Western
New York. The following Spring, Oliver Phelps left his
home in Granville, Massachusetts, with men and teams, and
after considerable road making reached Canandaigua, N.
Y., in May. There in Rev. Samuel Kirkland, a well estab-
lished missionary among the Indians, he found a willing
helper in his efforts to secure a surrender to Phelps & Gor-
ham by the savages of their right to the soil. An attempt
was made by Phelps with the aid of Kirkland to get the
Indians together for a treaty at Canandaigua, but it failed.
The next month Phelps met a number of chiefs of the Six
Page FourteenNations at Buffalo Creek, and there preliminary arrange-
ments for a treaty were made. Under Indian usage the soil
could not be disposed of without the consent of all the
tribes affected, including squaws as well as warriors and
chiefs. So a general treaty was called and held at Canan-
daigua. It began the latter part of July and continued well
into August, 1789, lasting for twenty days in all. Over
2.000 male and female Indians attended, and after pow-
wowing and feasting until the last of the fat cattle supplied
by Oliver Phelps had been devoured, the Senecas concluded
an agreement that forever relinquished to Phelps & Gorham
their right to over 2,000,000 acres of land, embracing a
strip from Lake Ontario to the Pennsylvania line, west
of Seneca Lake, known as the “Genesee Tract.”
Phelps & Gorham at once set surveyors at work, divid-
ing it into townships six miles square and for convenience
mapping the same into ranges; the towns numbering from
east to west and the ranges from south to north. Thus
Caton, the south-east or comer town of the purchase, was
Town No. 1, Range x, and was commonly known in early
days as “Number One.”
Following the treaty at Canandaigua of July-August,
1789, settlers began to come into the Genesee Country, as
well as into all Central New York. Three-fourths of these
pioneers were Revolutionary soldiers; most of them had
first come this way with General Sullivan.
Page FifteenThe first white habitation to be erected in Steuben County
was probably the home and trading hut built at Painted
Post in 1784, by William Harris, an Indian trader.
In December, 1790, there were three settlements in
Steuben County—Lindley, with six families and 34 persons,
including seven negro slaves; Erwin, five families, 25 per-
sons; Corning, ten families, 59 persons—all three places
lying within the township of Painted Post. The population
of all Ontario County, of which at that time Steuben was a
part, was 960.
Not all the Seneca Indians were satisfied with the bargain
they had made with Oliver Phelps. To patch matters up, a
treaty was held the following year, in 1790, at Tioga Point,
which was attended by a large number of Indians. Again
the Indians got restless, and killed a few whites; and whites
killed a few Indians. President Washington, then in the
first year of office, met Cornplanter and some other discon-
tented chiefs in Philadelphia, and reached an understanding
that made for peace. This conference was followed by a
general treaty, held at Newtown on the Chemung, in June,
1791, which was largely attended. This treaty was noted
for its displays of Indian oratory, on the part of Red Jacket,
who was ably met by Col. Pickering, of Wyoming, then
United States Secretary of War. It was attended by the
chiefs of the Cayugas, Onondagas and Senecas, and secured
the settlers of Central and Western New York from molesta-
tion by Indians.
In 1791, Ontario was granted representation in the New
Page SixteenYork Assembly and Eleazer Lindsley, of Lindley, was the
first man elected to represent the County in the State Legis-
lature. Steuben County was taken from Ontario in 1796.
It was named for Maj.-Gen. Frederic William Augustus,
Baron de Steuben, Tactician of the Revolutionary Army.
The settlement of Bath began 1793 Bath was colonized
by settlers brought overland from lower Pennsylvania by
Charles Williamson, agent of an English Association which
had purchased from Robert Morris the former holdings of
Phelps & Gorham, some 1,200,000 acres afterwards known
as the Pulteney Estate. Williamson was not a success as a
colonizer, considering the money he spent.
To be told that there were slave holders in Steuben
County in its pioneer days may surprise some of the sons
of the strenuous Abolitionists of the Civil War period.
Slavery in its beginning in this country was as much of a
Northern as a Southern institution, and strictly according
to the Scriptures. The first white settlers in this land bunched
together at Jamestown, Salem, Lynn, Boston, Saybrook,
Easthampton, Manhattan, etc., along the seaboard, for
mutual help and protection. They took advantage of the
most convenient natural conditions, crowding gradually back
from the sea, up the rivers and around inland lakes, gleaning
their livelihood from forest, land and water. There were
few men that cared to work for the going wages of the
times, when nature’s bountiful offerings were theirs for the
taking. Some of the settlers induced Indians to work, but
Page SeventeenRed Men did not take to the class of labor desired by our
fathers—it was squaw work—and, besides, they had other
heads to scalp. So black men and women and children were
brought from across the seas into the Colonies of Massa-
chusetts Bay, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Penn-
sylvania, etc., to help the founders of this Republic plant
the Tree of Liberty.
The Pilgrims who went from England to the Nether-
lands and then came to America under English auspices; the
Puritans of England, dissenters of dissenters; the Holland
Dutch, and all the rest of the early Europeans having a
part in planting the Thirteen Colonies, were in more senses
than one kith and kin. Three hundred years ago the com-
mon everyday Briton and the plain Hollander were so near
alike one could not distinguish between them in worship
or battle. They spoke the same language, with slight vari-
ence in pronunciation. They were just “Folks.” Every
New England settlement in its beginning was a church or-
ganization. The man who could not pass inspection in the
church could not vote nor hold office. The thing that could
not be proved by the Holy Scriptures, or that was not allow-
ed by the settlement pastor, must not be done. And so the
“Blue Laws” originated. They fitted the period. We
need not be ashamed of the “Blue Laws” nor of the men
who enacted them.
The historian Macaulay, commenting on the tendency
to sneer at the Puritans, says: “No man ever did it who had
Page Eighteenoccasion to meet them in the halls of debate, or cross
swords with them on the field of battle.” Bancroft says of
them: “The Knights of old were brave from gallantry of
spirit; the Puritans from fear of God. The Knights were
proud of loyalty; the Puritans of liberty. The former
adorned society by graceful refinements; the latter founded
grandeur on universal education.”
The Pilgrims and the Puritans brought their convictions
across the sea with them; they stood by the stuff no matter'
whence the attack came; they created the “Stars and Stripes,”
and endowed the flag with the kind of a living soul possessed
by no other national emblem. And of such were the pioneer
settlers of Steuben County. We have reason to feel proud
of our ancestry and thankful for our inheritance.
To the restless plottings of mongrel Indians most of the
troubles of the settlers were due. Such Indians had none
of the virtues but all of the faults of their white fathers.
The real Indians were a simple folk. They lived as near
the level of a wild animal as was possible. They lacked
initiative. They were not inventive. In all the annals of
Indian activities in this section, we find that the Indians did
just one praiseworthy thing—they planted a stake beside a
river hard by, and daubed it with a stain, and so furnished
our Chapter with a name. That “painted post” was a
marker, we are told—but when we ask what it was meant
to mark, no one can tell.
Page NineteenThe black bears of Potter County, Pennsylvania, imitat-
ing the example of their ancestors, are wont to gnaw and
claw the bark from the side of a growing tree, as they pass
from place to place in the forests, to indicate to other black
bears that they have been there and will return again. So
Indian wisdom and bear instinct seem to be off the same
piece.
Writing at Morristown, N. J., in the Spring of 1778, one
of the first men to come into this section to settle, said:
UI am about to start out for the Genesee Country; I shall
go to the Painted Post.”
In a broad sense, “the painted post” of the Senecas,
marked the territory. It was a guide post understood by
the Indians. It gave location to a place in a wide expanse
of wilderness country.
But the name of “The Painted Post Chapter, Sons of the
American Revolution,” stands for something other than
geographical location. As sons of men who brought the
Revolution about and fought It to a finish, we will immor-
talize the old painted stick.
In the hands of our zealous Secretary it will bud, bring
forth branches, and roots, and in due time become a veritable
Tree of Liberty.
We will nourish the Tree, not for ourselves alone, but
also for those with whom we associate in the walks of life—
and more, preserve it as an inheritance for those who will
occupy when we have run our course.
Page Twenty