Afton History, by Rev. Jacobs - 1886

Afton, Chenango County, NY History

by Rev. Jacobs

From the Indian trail to the iron rail; from the flint and steel to the Lucifer match; from the dinner horn to the steam whistle; from the stage coach and four miles an hour to the steam engine and sixty miles an hour; from the bake kettle and crane, to a kitchen range; from the power of muscle to the power of brain.  These are notches on the tally stick of time, and as we count back they seem like the tread of a giant.  If time be measured by the changes it brings, the progress and improvements, the multiplied facilities it holds, the little notches may stand for ages.

 

The old man of today who has registered his four score years has lived longer, by this measure, than the men who lived beyond the flood.

 

Just one hundred years ago [as of 1886] Mr. Elnathan Bush commenced the settlement of Afton, not by intention but by compulsion.  Afton had nothing to come to but the Indian trail, the flowing river and the fertile valley.  His raft, a rude structure built at Unadilla, on which he placed his family and a few goods and started for Owego, where he expected to make his future home, got broken up or stuck in the mud on one of the Chamberlin islands, and Afton has suffered from similar disasters ever since. The man who undertakes to navigate our side walks in the season of mud, will be reminded of the experience of the first settler.  Mr. Bush remained, not in the mud but on the shore, till 1799, when he removed to Bainbridge.  In Mr. Bush, Afton lost a good citizen and Bainbridge gained one of her representative families, some of whom yet remain.  A cemetery on the farm of Joseph Bush is the resting place of the ancestors of the family.

 

The Albany and Susquehanna railroad was undertaken more than 40 years ago.  The legislature was petitioned for a charter and aid to help build the road from Binghamton to Albany, a distance of 142 miles, through a section of the state containing rich farming land, valuable timer and much undeveloped wealth, but shut in from tide water with no marker for its products except at great expense.

 

The building of the Albany and Susquehanna railroad was the commencement of a new era in southern central New York.  It was first thought to be only a small one horse road, but it has come to be a trunk line, part of a continuous line from Philadelphia to Montreal, with double truck already built a large part of the way. We ought to have cheap coal and cheap transportation, but for some reasons not apparent, coal is higher, though so near the mines. than at Albany or Boston. There must be quite a good deal of circumlocution in R.R. matters.

 

I may say some things of the "railroad war" in my next.  How they fought with engines, how Jim Fisk did not steal the road, and how some think if he had and it had been made a branch of the Erie instead of being leased to the D.&H. Canal Co., coal would have been cheaper and freights the same as on the Erie.