Chenango and Unadilla Valleys Fifty Years Ago
by S.S. Randall
Chenango Telegraph, February 14, 1872
The venerable President Dwight of Yale, having had occasion, towards the close of the last century [1700s] to journey down the Valley of the Chenango, from Utica [Oneida Co., NY] to the present site of Binghamton [Broome Co., NY], enthusiastically compares it to the celebrated Vale of Cashmere, and describes it as a fitting and genial retreat for a statesman or philosopher, wearied with the cares and tumult of the busy world, and desirous of a harbor of rest and secluded retirement, "the world forgetting by the world forgot." The lapse of nearly an entire century has divested this beautiful valley of much of its solitary seclusion by sprinkling along the banks of its sweet river a long succession of villages and towns, and a busy population; but long reaches of meadows, pastures, woods and groves, intersected by innumerable streamlets and hemmed in by hills whose gentle declivities mingle insensibly with the plains, still remain to vindicate the high appreciation of the distinguished traveler.
Among the most attractive of these villages was fifty years ago, and still is, the village of Norwich [Chenango Co., NY. Pleasantly situated, as all the world knows, on the west bank of the Chenango River, about midway between Utica and Binghamton, and with the Canasawacta on the south and west, forming a small peninsula, bordered by richly wooded hills, and comprising about a thousand acres of cultivated grounds.
Silas Cole, Maj. Thomas Brooks, a Massachusetts man who had taken part in Shay's rebellion, as well as in the Revolutionary war, Israel, Charles and Mathew Graves, Capt. John Harris, Stephen Steere, Samuel Hammond, Thompson Mead, Hascall Ransford, Dr. Jonathan Johnson, Peter B. Garnsey, Josiah Dickinson, William Munroe, Elisha Smith, Benjamin Edmunds and Treman Enos, were among the earliest settlers of the future village. At the period referred to in the sketches it consisted only of two streets, each about a mile in length, intersecting each other at the center, where a public common or "green", as it was called, was laid out on each side of the main street, running north and south. Just over the Canasawacta Creek, forming the southern boundary of the village, was the residence of Judge Casper M. Rouse and adjoining to this on the south, the "Gods acre" or grave yard, where the "rude forefathers of the hamlet" and their successors quietly repost,--
"After life's fitful fever, they sleep well!"
Of all these men, one only yet survives [in 1872], Charles Randall, the third son of Capt. John Randall, Senior, constitutes the only relic of that olden time. Capt. Randall, early in the century, emigrated from Connecticut to the Chenango Valley, and purchased the farm, a mile and a half below the present village, lately owned by Judge York, and now owned by Jeduthan Newton. The earliest trace of this eminent and now numerous family is said to have been found in the old Puritan records at Connecticut, in which occurs the brief announcement, "William Randall, fined ten shillings for lying." A fault shrewdly suspected of having been hereditarily transmitted. Master Randall Comfort, of Morrisanna, Westchester county, aged nine months, son of Dr. John E. and Mrs. Lucy Randall Comfort is, I believe, the latest off-shoot of the race.
Crossing the Canasawacta bridge, forming the southern boundary of the village, you passed fifty years ago [in 1822], on your right, the neat little residence of Thomas Prentiss, with its fresh coat of red paint and white trimmings, and a little beyond that on the same side, the house of one Deacon Stone--now, I believe, the residence of N.B. Hale, Esq. The deacon was the terror of all the mischievous boys in the village, by reason of his immense apple orchard, invitingly tempting to the youthful appetite, but vigilantly guarded by its stalwart owner, whose frequent and sudden descent, armed, with a heavy ox-goad, upon the unwary depredators, was the signal for a general and hasty stampede. Opposite to this was the residence of Consider Coomes, a well to do farmer, and dealer in leather, who was much more frequently, however, to be met with in the village with a roll of leather in his arms and an ancient clay pipe, never out of his mouth, dispensing oracular wisdom on all the topics and gossip of the day, among his acquaintances and cronies--embracing nearly all the entire male population. In fact whatever of any conceivable importance to any human being in his extended circuit was not known and fully mastered by Consider, in all its bearings, was scarcely to be deemed worthy of being known. He was equally at home in politics, religion, law, medicine, trade, history and philosophy--equaled only in the latter science by good old, quaint Uncle Joshua Aldrich, who, in his rural farm stead, a few miles north of the village, had sedulously perused the works of Robert Boyle--of whom Consider had never heard and contemptuously whiffed aside as a mythical personage. My worthy old friend Coomes, was however a good hearted, pleasant, genial and companionable man--somewhat crotchety, and careless of the conventionalities--but invaluable as a general retailer of news and neighborhood gossip.
To be continued
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