CHAPTER V 



Ofescrva'Jcns m the Susquehanna Valley, Told by a 



Pioneer Octogenarian — Reveries and 



Reflections 



DURING the month of April, 18S0, I was with my 

 grandfather, WilHam French, m the Cowanesque 

 valley, Tioga county, Pa. We walked together about 

 ten miles, one day, to his old farm at Middlebury Cen- 

 tre, seeing a flock of passenger pigeons on the way. 

 He was then 88 years old and was hale and hearty. 

 His pigeon story was interesting, Cur it was of the 

 spring of 1810, when he had been only a boy of 18 

 years and had made his first trip mto Pennsylvania, 

 and at pigeon nesting time His father, Jeremiah 

 French, had served through the Revolutionary War, 

 and then traveled up the Susquehanna from his father's 

 farm, near Shamokin, to Bradford ( ounty, where he 

 soon married ]\Tiss Margaret Van Gorder and took her 

 to a farm on the Chemung river, nortn of Elmira, New 

 York. 



It was an old Indian clearing, Avhere my grand- 

 father was born and remained unrd 1834, when he 

 removed to the Pennsylvania forest, m Tioga county, 

 and made himself a home for all his remaining years 

 of life. He went to the Van Gorder home, on To- 

 wanda creek, during May, 1810, for a brief stay with 

 his mother's people, and to work a while in a sawmill 



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