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

 Historic Sketch, Settlement of the town of New Berlin

by John Hyde

New Berlin Gazette, New Berlin, NY, January 6, 1877

Nature, in the fullness and plenitude of her creative power, fashioned a magnificent reservatory of spring water far up on the mountain ridge, between the Unadilla and Chenango rivers.  This large lake in the legends of the local Indians bore the name of "The Sleeping Fawn Waters."  It was a vast basin three or four miles in circumference and continually supplied with water flowing up from fountains beneath the interior and surrounded by lofty pines, sturdy oaks, intermingling with forest trees of lesser growth and with flower covered banks, it presented a splendid brilliant and unrivaled scene of nature's handiwork.  A spectator standing on the rocky eminence in his mind's eye might fancy the far off objects floating on the curling waves to be veritable wood nymphs that Indian tradition held were in morning mists or evening shades seen bathing and sporting on the blue waters when on closer inspection, the illusion is dispelled, the ethereal beings are only doe deer and their young fawns swimming across from one projecting point to another in search of food or perchance bathing their heated bodies in the cooling flood, or fleeing from pursuing hounds or wolves.

This primitive woodland scenery, well worth the poet's pen or artist's pencil, no longer exists.  The picture is blotted, defaced and its primeval beauty destroyed by the rude, undiscriminating hand of the innovator.  The woodman's axe has felled the lofty pines, the sturdy oaks and all the lesser trees of note that once encircled and made beautiful this inland sheet of water and the wildflowers are withered, no longer bloom on the banks, the Indian name is extinct and no longer remembered and the modernized name of Mathewson's pond is the substitute.

This Noah Mathewson, a strong, robust Rhode Islander, a native of a small hamlet on the western coast of the Atlantic ocean, emigrated into the 16th township, amongst the first settlers and built his log cabin on the high land near the pond which bears his  name and commenced clearing up his farm upon the economic principles of Yankee enterprise, which soon enabled him to change his humble log cabin into a commodious one-story framed dwelling house, it being one of the first framed buildings erected in the town and there it yet stands, and is now [-unreadable-] town.  He, with his family, lived through a long and laborious life of usefulness in that dwelling house.  The premises are now [in 1877] occupied by strangers.

Mr. Mathewson was a good farmer and brought his farm to a good state of cultivation.  He also united the trade of a carpenter with the mechanical knowledge of a millwright to his occupation of a farmer, and as a carpenter and millwright he was one of the principal workers and of much benefit to the people in the new settlement.  Many of his mechanical works yet survive him.  His son, Noah, resides on a farm near the old pond and is a successful farmer.

Stephen Skinner in the early times of the first settlers, located his habitation on the same highland ridge some miles north of Mathewson's farm and near the north line of the town.  the place is known as Skinner Hill.  He had a large family of children who settled in after grown up life round about him.  He was a thrifty farmer, a reputable citizen and belonged to the Episcopal church of which he was one of the supporters on its first establishment in New Berlin, soon after the beginning of the present century.

Stephen and Nathaniel Kinney were first settlers in the neighborhood of Mr. Skinner and made to themselves valuable farms.  William Robinson also was one of the first settlers in the same neighborhood.  He was a genial, pleasant neighbor, and left a good property to his children.  Mr. Ezra Huntly was also an early settler in the same neighborhood, a good farmer and industrious.  He built for his family residence a nice commodious stone dwelling house.