Some Things of Early Chenango - Read at the Chenango County Dinner
John C. Wait
Chenango Union, March 14, 1907
Notwithstanding Chenango's freedom from bloody frays, the military character of her inhabitants and her representatives is exhibited in the name of her parts or members. Her townships are named from places great in military history both as to places and persons. Governor Clinton and his land commissioners were students of the classics and of English history and they repeated names if not history. It may be that these names aided in saving Chenango from strife.
We had our Pharsalia, our Smyrna, our Plymouth, Preston, Norwich, Coventry and Oxford, and the metropolis of France and of Germany in our Paris and our Berlin. Nor was the Governor neglectful in biography, for we have our own country's great military and naval heroes in the names of Greene, McDonough, Smith, Bainbridge and Guilford. We have the father and discoverer of our continent in our Columbus. We have our Norwich, noted for its manufactories of hammers, silks, Pharmacal goods and pianos, and noted also as an art and musical center. Norwich, like her namesake, has always been a city of furnaces, foundries, mills and manufactories.
We have our great education center, classic Oxford noted for her beautiful surroundings, her blue-stone sidewalks and her shade trees. Oxford with its coat-of-arms, an ox crossing a ford, too, had its fortifications and military history, and it has been famous as a meeting and treaty-making place. Oxford's famous educational institution is by far the oldest institution of advanced learning in the county. In it hath sat the great Chancellor Kent when he held his first term of the court in Chenango County.
Smyrna, noted for its rugs, woven in the handloom from carpet rags, from calico and other dresses; famous for poultry shows, fine cattle and horses, Park Commissioners and Postmasters.
Pharsalia, the source of our beautiful Canasawacta, and the lovely Ganisganselet, the land of magnificent trees and of broad fields and pastures; also of hemlock-bark and apple-jack.
Coventry, famous for its quarries of native blue-stone and for the bold men that it has sent forth to do and dare.
Preston, the place between the victorious and the defeated, the city of treaties and the place where Cromwell overcame the Scots.
Plymouth, the sea-port town of the county, from the plateau of which the Spanish Armada was first seen, and from which the great Drake went forth to meet the Spanish flock (of Ducks), and from which Mayflowers sail every spring.
Otselic, which to the Indians meant fruitful, and its stream, Plum Creek, where the plums grow, has not lost its early reputation of fruits (of husbandry).
The gay city of Paris, as in 1870, succumbed in 1801 to a siege, succeeded by a revival, and became Sherburne.
Berlin over the hill to the east was more loyal to its country than to its adopted city, and retained the good old German cognomen. True to its instincts of name, it soon became the city of breweries and distilleries. Poverty came and rags became so common they started and maintained a paper mill to work them up and to give the people employment.
Berlin should not be confused with German, which was named after General and Judge Obediah German, one of the most prominent pioneers of the county. German is chiefly known for what is not known about it.
It, like Lincklaen, is a "stay-at-home," community; and both are chiefly noted, says a historian from Columbus, for the persons from whom they are named. It is my belief, however, that they "know butther" and a thing or two else. The lay of the land takes their products and trade to DeRuyter and Cincinnatus, and they acquire interests, join schools and churches in Cortland and Madison Counties, where their affiliations and connections are consummated. I hope there are some members here from German, Pitcher and Lincklaen who will make themselves heard at the first opportunity. We would like to know that we have some loyal sons and daughters from the GORE.
Smithville was in 1845 noted for her foundries and smithys,--where Vulcan kept his fires hot and smote the iron while 'twas hot, and if cold, until 'twas hot. It was the place to train life insurance men. It and ball-tossing made a quick eye and a strong arm, equal to an Arm-strong. Smithville became the home not of smithy's alone, but of the Smiths; not of the latter-day Saint.
Joseph the last named was from Bainbridge and Afton, being a part of Jericho, where he performed such miracles as the county had never known before, nor since, some in the waters of the Susquehanna, which was known to the Indians as the Muddy River, as the name signifies. This neighborhood was known in the early days as Jericho, and it is upon this ground that Joseph Smith, Jr., makes this claim of a residence in Holyland, (Jericho).
Afton and Bainbridge, being in the valley of a great stream like the Susquehanna, have not had the intimate acquaintance with the capital city and other portions of our county which other townships have which depended upon the Chenango Valley for barter and trade. The main thoroughfare from Albany to Binghamton being along the valley of the Susquehanna, their produce and commerce found another outlet than that of the Chenango Valley. Guilford also shared her trade between the Chenango and Susquehanna valleys, and these townships are noted chiefly for their dairy products and the distinguished men whom they have furnished.
McDonough, has furnished to Norwich her Hills, Rays, Johnsons, and Ensigns. Men known throughout the county to travel under the banner of success. She produces prize supervisors as other townships do pumpkins, right from the field.
Greene is famous for her manufactories and enjoyed all the advantages of other River towns. Being near the forks of the two streams with the Chenango River, and nearest to Binghamton, she has occupied the most enviable location of all towns of the county. Greene has been called, and with some reason, the Philadelphia of Chenango, the city of Rest and Love.
Pharsalia and Pitcher must have been the land of Skenando, or of lofty hemlocks. For years these townships sent their loads of tan bark down the old plank road, through Plymouth and along the bank of the Canasawacta. For cross dogs, tan bark with a jug of apple-jack under every load, and beautiful girls were these places chiefly known. Who of you of the village high schools do not remember the girls from Pharsalia.
With what prodigious ideas did our forefather select the names of these places, and with what fond hopes did they anticipate that they might equal or even excel the great manufacturing places of England and Europe from which they were named? With what hopes was Paris named after the metropolis of France and located upon a river that was to equal the river Seine, with what anticipations of its 2,700,000 inhabitants did they imagine the hills of Chenango Valley covered with the spires of great cathedrals, and the Chenango River bridged with beautiful structures? With what disappointment did Paris become plain Sherburne?
With what proud feelings did our ancestors view the younger generations grow up with the names of such heroes as Smith, Preston,, McDonough, Bainbridge, Columbus and Greene for household words? How many of us today know the biography of the namesake under whose star we were born and reared?
Chenango is distinctly cosmopolitan in the names of her towns and villages. She has her Greek Pharsalia, her Syrian Smyrna, her English Plymouth, Preston and Coventry, her German Berlin, her French Paris, her Scotch McDonough and her Dutch Lincklaen, but it is an interesting fact that notwithstanding a considerable part of her inhabitants are Irish, the county contains not one Irish name, unless it be Greene.
Our Editors--Though Chenango has not within her bounds the fields of bloody battle, Indian massacres and carnage, she had furnished political and social controversies that would pale the civil disturbances of other counties.
Of these one of the most interesting, by reason of the later prominence of the individuals, was that between the Republicans, known as the "Bucktails," and the Democrats, described as the "Republican Agriculturists," resulting in a row between John F. Hubbard, Sr., and Thurlow Weed. This continued from 1817, when Weed first came to Norwich, throughout his stay there (1821). It resulted in a horsewhipping incident by Mr. Lot Clark, a champion of Hubbard, in which Thurlow Weed was the unfortunate sufferer. This probably occurred in 1819, for in 1818 Mr. Weed bought Mr. Hubbard's printing establishment, with an agreement that Hubbard should not establish another paper. Hubbard is charged with forthwith purchasing a printing press and materials, and continuing his paper, for breach of which contract Weed obtained judgment of damages of $336, which is said to be of record in our County Clerk's Office.
As late as 1833 the echo of these bitternesses is to be found in the county papers. Hubbard was high officer of the Masonic Society and Weed was a strong and rank anti-Masonic advocate, which increased the tension. Things evidently got too hot in Chenango for Weed, and he transferred the "Agriculturist" to Samuel Curtis, Jr., and went to Onondaga County, and in 1822 he was the editor of the Rochester Telegraph, and in 1826 of the Anti-Masonic Enquirer, and in 1830 of the Albany Evening Journal.
Hubbard's new Norwich Journal was merged with the Oxford Republican in 1844, and became the Chenango Union. It was the second newspaper started in Chenango County and was founded by Phinney and Fairchild at Sherburne in May, 1806. It had a predecessor in the Western Oracle, issued in 1803 by Abraham Romeyn at Sherburne Four Corners, one of the largest places in the county at the time. It was discontinued in 1808 or 1809.
To be Continued
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