Historic Sketch, Settlement of New Berlin, Chenango Co. NY

 Historic Sketch of the Settlement of the Town of New Berlin

by John Hyde

New Berlin Gazette, New Berlin, NY, September 9, 1876

Jeremy Goodrich

Jeremy Goodrich came up from the land of steady habits and wooden nutmegs and settled in New Berlin [Chenango Co. NY], towards the last days of the last century [ca 1799].  He married Lydia Downing a daughter of widow Abigail Downing.  She at that time lived in a log house on Capt. Samuel White's farm, nearly opposite the old Brewery where it then stood.  After their marriage, Mr. Goodrich, his wife and mamma Downing, as she was familiarly called, resided together as one family the remainder of their lives.  Mr. Goodrich commenced manufacturing black salts into pot and purlash.  For this purpose, he bought the salts from farmers who, when clearing their lands in burning the log heaps, took the ashes occurring therefrom, and leeched the ashes and boiled the lye into black salts.  In the new settlement of the town, the business of clearing the lands and boiling black salts, as the term was used by back woodsmen, was an important affair, for that was the only product relied on to obtain money to pay for their farms.  No other product could be sold for money in those primitive days of the early settlers.  Mr. Goodrich's ashery was on the north side of the village creek near the North Street bridge, where he had a long row of potash kettles set in arches to boil salts into potash and ovens to make purlash.

The business was profitable to him and advantageous to the settlers, making a market for their salts.  In the spring days might be seen ox trains with sled loads of salts coming down the mountain paths in every direction and wending their way to Goodrich's ashery, with their loads and when arrived await their turn to have their salts weighed and receive their money.  On such occasions, the crowd of business seemed almost equal around the ashery to the cheese and butter business, in modern times around the depot.  In the one case, the money obtained from the sale of the proceeds was applied in payment of farms in the other in payment of luxuries mostly.

Mr. Goodrich became the owner by purchase from Samuel Anderson, the land where the ashery stood on both sides of the creek, down to the Unadilla River.  On the south side of the brook, he built a small house where for a time he sold merchandise and in the progress of business he erected a large, wood building fronting the East and North streets. The eastern part was made into a dwelling for the family, and the other part was made into a large store in which he carried on the mercantile business for many years, in connection with his potash and purlash business.  He also kept tavern in that building for a while.  He was postmaster some years.  In that home dwelling, Mr. Goodrich, his wife and her mother resided until their decease.  Their habits were peculiar, seldom mingling in social intercourse with their neighbors.

Mr. Goodrich, somewhat deficient in common school education, was nevertheless, a correct businessman in all his dealings.  He had a capacity to determine things rightly, but he was much aided in all his affairs by the assistance of "Mrs. Lydia," a term he always applied to his wife, and mamma Downing, who took an active part in the selling of the goods, and he never made a bargain without first consulting with "Mrs. Lydia and mamma."  It was an old and right observation that "they were his right-hand men."

After the lands became cleared up and the facilities for making potash no longer existed, he closed up the business and built a tannery on the creek near the river.  In that business he was successful and made it his principal occupation during the remainder of his life.  He also purchased a piece of land on the south side of the East Street extending from South Street down East Street to the Charles  Medbury homestead lot.  On the corner lot opposite his store, he kept bees in large numbers of hives.  That place of ground is now [in 1876] occupied by a tavern and the hum of the busy bee colony in their daily toil, is changed into the humdrum discordant sounds of bar room loungers.

Mr. Goodrich died in 1830, at the age of 62 years, leaving a valuable property earned by his industry and the help of his female coworkers, but no child to inherit his estate.  Mamma Downing survived him eleven years.  She died in 1841 at the age of 93 years.  She was born nearly a quarter of a century before the Revolution and retained the full vigor of her mental faculties to the last period of her existence.  The writer of this article wrote her will but a few months before her decease and makes the statement from personal knowledge in regard to her mental faculties.  She was a remarkable woman.

The Goodrich estate was made the subject of long, acrimonious litigation after his decease, by the distant relatives of his wife.  As the usual event of such things, lawyers claimed thousands on the dead man's estate and consequently in the final distribution, between the legal profession and wranglers, a few thousand dollars only found lodgment with a granddaughter of Mr. Jeremy Goodrich's wife.  Thus, ended the Goodrich property. A few years after his decease his tannery caught fire and was consumed but has never been rebuilt.

No relation now owns any part of his estate which he died seized of. On the bank of the creek where his store business was carried on, now [in 1876] stands two sumptuous, enticing buildings [pool halls].  Within are large [magnificent] and splendid rooms furnished with tables covered with rich green prize cloth.  On the tables are number of round balls of different colors and long slender poles and around these tables may be seen young men, youth and middle-aged men day after day and night after night, toiling and working with anxious faces, pushing with those long poles, the balls around on the table, gradually melting away the patrimony their ancestors acquired by honest labor. The store part of the Goodrich building has been taken down and the place remains vacant, except a small round music building erected on the corner.  The Goodrich dwelling for the family remains and is now [in 1876] owned and occupied by Lewis Brown, a son of the late Judge Barnabas Brown, one of the oldest settlers and who will be noticed more particularly in a subsequent article.