Chenango and Unadilla Valleys Fifty Years Ago
by S.S. Randall
Chenango Telegraph, April 3, 1872
Early Courts
At the close of the Revolutionary War, all that portion of the State lying west and north west of Albany, including the present Hamilton, Fulton and Montgomery Counties, together with all the southern tier of Counties west and south of Ulster, formed the County of Tryon. This name was changed in 1784 for Montgomery. Four years later, in 1788 , the town of Whitestown, now a part of Oneida County, was organized, including within its boundaries, Oneida, Herkimer, Otsego, Chenango and Tioga: comprising what up to 1821 was known as the "Western District" of the State. In 1791, Herkimer, Tioga and Otsego Counties were formed from portions of Whitestown. The south lines of the present towns of Columbus, Sherburne, Smyrna, Otselic and Lincklaen, constituted the southern boundary of Herkimer, while Tioga, included on the north the present towns of Pitcher, New Berlin, Pharsalia, Plymouth, and North Norwich. Newtown Point (the present flourishing city of Elmira) and Owego were the county seats of Tioga. In 1798 Chenango County was erected from parts of Tioga and Herkimer. Hamilton and Oxford were the shire towns, or County Seats, and up to 1808, the County jail was continued at Whitesboro.
The first County Court, or "Court of Common Pleas and General Sessions of the Peace," was held at the school house in Hamilton near the dwelling of [-unreadable-], the second at Oxford, and afterwards alternately at Hamilton and Oxford. The first Circuit Court was held at the "Academy" in Oxford, on the 10th of July, 1798, presided over by the Hon.. James Kent, one of the Justices of the Supreme Court. No business was transacted and after remaining in session one hour, the Court adjourned sine die. Was this "Academy" here referred to the same with the one we attended twenty-four or five years later? Mr. Mygatt can probably inform us. The second circuit was held at Hamilton, in July 1799, by the Hon. Jason Radcliff, with precisely the same results. The spirit of litigation--at least on a scale sufficiently large to warrant a resort to the Supreme Court--seems to have been quite dormant in the Chenango Valley at this early period. On the 30th of June 1900 however at Hamilton "school house," the failing hearts of the legal fraternity must have rejoiced in a real bonafide Ejectment suit--John Doe, ex dem, Benjamin Walker, and Solomon Perkins, vs. Richard Roe, represented on this solemn occasion, before the Hon. Morgan Lewis, by one Elijah Bond. Whether Mr. Doe succeeded in recovering possession of the "messnage, lands and tenements," of which the nefarious Richard Roe, backed up by the unprincipled Elijah had "with force and arms," evicted and routed him, the historian has omitted to inform us. In 1802, Peter B. Garnsey made his first appearance in the Circuit Court, presided over by Judge Kent, as counsel in an ejectment suit. In 1804 at Oxford, before Judge Ambrose Spencer, the name of Stephen O. Runtan of that village first appears as a counselor, and at the same place in May 1806, at Oxford, Mr. Justice Daniel B. Tompkins presiding, Henry Vanderlyn made his debut in an action for breach of contract--doubtless in his most flowing and courtly manner, "If your Honor please, gentlemen of the jury." In this year Madison was taken from Chenango and Oneida, and North Norwich elevated into a half-shire with Oxford. Here a Mr. Hill was tried, convicted and sentenced in 1800 for the murder of a child, but the sentence appears to have been subsequently commuted for imprisonment for life by the Governor.
The name of James Birdsall, as counsellor, first occurs in the Circuit of 1808, Judge Joseph C. Yates presiding. In the case of Peter B. Garnsey, vs. Seth Garlick--subject of controversy unknown; probably trespass, as their lands adjoined. The Courts in North Norwich were held at the old "Meeting House," demolished some twenty years since, but which I well recollect--having on one occasion, been present at the hearing of a church investigation--partly clerical and partly political--of charges preferred against Col. Jarvis K. Pike, and on which he was triumphantly acquitted. Here, too, on the 8th of June, 1809, before Mr. Justice Smith Thompson, William M. Price, James Clapp and David Buttolph, first appeared as counsel in the case of Stephen O.. Bunyan vs James Birdsall. Subsequently during this year, the County seat was permanently located at the village of Norwich, and the first or old Court House built on the site occupied by the present stone imposing structure.
To be continued
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