Miscellaneous, Early Days of White Store

Legends of Our Valley - Part 1

White Store, Norwich, Chenango Co., NY

Mrs. E.J. Richmond

Chenango Union, Feb. 14, 1884

 

A celebrated poet said, while gazing enraptured upon its loveliness:  "The Unadilla valley is the gem of all the valleys in this State, and I have looked upon most of them."  To most of us who are now upon the scene of action, the changes in its scenery are not marked, yet we have heard from the lips of those who saw it long ago, stories which we will try to preserve in a series of sketches entitled "Legends of Our Valley."

 

We do this the more cheerfully as the vacant chairs of these venerable fathers and mothers bid us remember the shortness of time, and that soon all that remains of us will be only a memory.

 

"Evergreen Cemetery" [White Store] contains the names of many of these early settlers in our valley.  There, side by side, sleep representatives of six generations, from the heroes of revolutionary fame to the prattling child, who, laying down its toys, went forth to meet the reaper Death, and to dwell with the angels.

 

Not far from the entrance sleep two, who we well remember as preaching and worshiping in the old Union Church whose towers bear the dates 1820, the year of its erection, and 1876, the year of its last reconstruction.  We have heard a silver haired veteran, Jewett Sage, years ago fallen asleep, speak of some of the first religious meetings held in our valley at the house of John Eastwood, opposite Evergreen Cemetery, and on the east side of the Unadilla.

 

There were no wagons nor roads, only as marked trees designate them, and when Mrs. Sage, the mother, came with them to the meetings they drove oxen attached to a wood sled, yet the services were not neglected.  It was by no means a rapid way of traveling, and when, as was sometimes the case, the travelers were benighted before they could reach their home so many miles away, and the howling of the wolves fell upon their ears, it was by no means enlivening music.  All the settlers within many miles were counted "neighbors," and most of the new comers, fearing malaria on the heavily timbered "flats" or valley lands, bought farms on the highest hills around.

 

To one of these, Lemuel Cornell, Mr. and Mrs. Sage and their son Jewett, decided to make a neighborly visit, though the six or eight miles which intervened could not be traveled rapidly by oxen.  But an early start and quick trips gave them several hours for social chat, and the boy Jewitt felt some misgivings when he saw how low the sun had sunk in the west when they started on their return trip.

 

The stupid oxen seemed to him to move never so slowly, and no amount of whipping or urging seemed to quicken their pace.

 

At length, while they were still some miles distant from home, the sun went down, and not long after the ominous howl of a wolf was heard on a distant hill.  It was answered by another, and another, in different directions, and at last they all could not help knowing that a circle of wolves had scented they prey, and were drawing nearer and nearer every moment.  That last half mile was one of agony, but at last the home lights beamed like messengers of hope on the terrified travelers, and they heard the angry snarls of their pursuers as they entered the home yard with devout thankfulness that they were saved from a terrible fate.