£l)c iTanncv's iHontljlw iMsitov. 



39 



pel led In tlie magnificent Genesee river water- 

 falls, from her rich country trade and the various 

 mauufhctures into which she has grown, than 

 perhaps any other town or city upon the waj 

 which we have yet called — Batavia, further on, 

 is also a beautiful village grown into wealth 

 from the trade of n rich fanning country which 

 surrounds it. For nearly thirty miles out ol 

 Buffalo to the eastward until recently a rich and 

 beautiful soil has been in the ownership and 

 possession of the Indians who in a few cleared 

 spots carried on n slovenly agriculture and made 

 every thing look as we might expect poor land 

 to look. Rapid and cheeriiy has been the action 

 upon this fine territory since it was opened to 

 purchase from the Holland land company to 

 whom it belonged as soon as the Indian title was 

 extinguished. A community of Germans some- 

 thing on the plan of property by the Shakers 

 has pitched upon a portion of this land with 

 wealth anil means to carry on improvements 

 which are made in the best style of the country 

 from whence they have emigrated: these new 

 lands have also presented a temptation to indi- 

 vidual settlers, many of them probably from 

 Yankee laud. In this part of the country an 

 abundance of magnificent trees is not yet esti- 

 mated as the timber trees so valuable in New 

 Hampshire. The trees upon the Indian reserva- 

 tion of Erie county are girdled or cut down to 

 be got rid of in the easiest and least expensive 

 manner possible. The cap stone to the base of 

 our pyramid of towns is Buffalo, on this occasion 

 made the place of the greatest and most noble 

 agricultural exhibition of the country. When 

 we consider that this already great city, whose 

 buildings and widened extended streets seem to 

 be upon a larger scale as she is destined to be- 

 come of enlarged dimensions in the great trade 

 flowing to, and by her, has entirely grown up 

 since the war of 1813, during which the earlier 

 erections were laid in utter desolation by fire as 

 its inhabitants were annihilated by the sword of 

 a mixed civilized and savage atrocity prompted 

 to cruelty by the feeble pretext of retaliation for 

 American cannonades and burnings on the Brit- 

 ish side; the mind is lost in wonder at the ex- 

 tent of business which an entire area of country 

 in the great West settled and grown up as ol 

 yesterday, has opened to the Atlantic trade. 



The generous enterprise of this new city of 

 Buffalo had made ample preparation for the 

 great annual festival of three days which collec- 

 ted not only citizens from a distance within the 

 Empire Slate, but citizens from many and most 

 of the Slates at a still greater distance. Buffalo 

 was the city to bring together the fresh products, 

 the giant animals and vegetables of the country 

 to be found both east and west. From Loin; Is- 

 land to the upper lakes whatever was calculated 

 to show off agricultural and horticultural skill 

 upon a fertile soil was here to be found: not on 

 ly implements of agriculture, but machines and 

 inventions exhibiting and evincing mechanical 

 ingenuity and contrivance characteristic of the 

 times saving and standing in the place of man- 

 ual labor and wonderfully cheapening products, 

 might here be found. The elegant taste ami 

 skill of the fair sex volunteered to add to the in- 

 terest of the scene — the productions of cotton, 

 wool and flax, the fine work of the fingers in 

 the useful ornaments of the person and in all 

 the various articles of fancy, attracted the atten- 

 tion of crowds greater than could gain ready 

 admittance. A single person in the vast multi- 



tude obtaining egress within the ample ground 

 enclosed for this exhibition, what with the num- 

 ber and magnitude and almost endless variety of 

 animals, of vegetables and fruits and flowers, 

 and the efforts of handiwork skill, in things of 

 fancy and use; — a single mind at one view was 

 incompetent to grasp the know ledge necessary 

 even to give it u description. For the particu- 

 lars we might refer to the papers of the day ; 

 and in a condensed form in the last as in 

 the former years will be shown in that excel- 

 lent vehicle the Albany Cultivator what the 

 grand exhibition for the benefit of the farmers 

 of the Empire State was for the year 1848, as it 

 had been in previous years. Indeed the life and 

 soul of the N. Y. Agricultural Society seems to 

 have emanated from the sparkling intelligence 

 which brightens the pages of that paper: to 

 such men as Tucker, Howard and Prentice, does 

 Agriculture owe much of the spirit of enterprise 

 which is placing the occupation of the farmer 

 at its proper elevation. 



The three days of this exhibition at Buffalo 

 were to us a feasting of reason and an overflow- 

 ing of soul. On this theatre, just on the eve of 

 an excited Presidential election, that subject was 

 forgotten in the more appropriate subject of the 

 farmers' joy. All the public bouses were full on 

 our arrival Tuesday morning; but while we 

 were inquiring for quarters, an old family friend 

 and legislator, whose fine dark flowing hair had 

 become whitened with the frost of twenty -five 

 additional years, the fire of whose piercing eye 

 had in no sense abated, broke upon us, with an 

 invitation at once to his family which we had 

 never before seen. This gentleman, who has 

 been both a representative arid a senator, is of 

 the younger part of the Langdon family, every 

 one of whom of that name has either deceased 

 or left the Slate — a family whose name becomes 

 the more venerated as the groupe of acquain- 

 tance of the original patriots grows less and less. 

 Hon. John Langdou, the son of Judge Wood- 

 bury Langdon, has resided at and near Buffalo 

 some twelve or fifteen years: his lady, a sister 

 of the wealthy family of Ladd, of whom was 

 the deceased philanthropist William Ladd, who 

 spent much of his life in gratuitous devotion to 

 the cause of peace and to the melioration of the 

 sufferings of the imprisoned for crime and for 

 debt, is the mother of seven daughters, some of 

 them settled in life, and all of them, like polish- 

 ed stones, fitted for ornament or for use either at 

 the fireside of home or in the social circle. It 

 was an unexpected introduction to scenes of by- 

 gone days that are hardly now familiar to the 

 present generation. Walter Langdon. the young- 

 est brother of John and married to the daughter 

 of John Jacob Astor, departed this life in the 

 city of New, York a few months before the mil- 

 lionaire. 



From our friend on this occasion we learnt of 

 the Langdon family what had never before come 

 to our knowledge, that Woodbury Langdon, af- 

 terwards the judge, was the elder of John and 

 introduced him as captain and supercargo of 

 one of his own ships into that career which 

 crowned him ultimately with success in a private 

 fortune, as it gave him the ability to furnish the 

 means to sustain that gallant valor and enter- 

 prise which shone conspicuously in New Hamp- 

 shire from the commencement to the close of 

 the war of the revolution. A sister of Gov. 

 Langdon, whom we remember to have seen in 

 the year 1810, married a Mr. Barrel, of whom 

 she was a widow then residing in the Governor's 



family : another and the youngest sister, married 

 to a British surgeon by the name of Goldthwait, 

 living with whom she recollected well as the 

 acquaintance of Andre, who suffered ignomin- 

 iously punished as the instrument of Arnold's 

 treason. The excellent wife of John Langdon, 

 with her only daughter, long a widow and now 

 resident of Philadelphia, was also present at our 

 visit at the family mansion now nearly forty 

 years ago : that mansion, elegant yet as an an- 

 cient wooden structure, is the present property 

 and residence of the Rev. Dr. Burroughs, who 

 has officiated constantly as the acceptable rector 

 of the first episcopal church of New Hampshire 

 longer than any other living clergyman of the 

 Stale. The son informed us that Judge Woodbury 

 Langdon had become wealthy as a merchant 

 prior to the revolution: he was absent in Eng- 

 land on business at the opening of the revolu- 

 tion when his brother John headed the enter- 

 prise before the battle of Lexington of surpris- 

 ing and taking away the armaments at the mouth 

 of the Piseataqua. Lord North attempted to in- 

 gratiate the elder Langdon into the British inter- 

 est by offering him the office of Governor of the 

 colony: this offer be declined ; and returning to 

 the country lie was imprisoned in the city of 

 New York. He owned the Hamlin privateer, of 

 which the late Elijah Hall, afterwards an officer 

 with John Paul Jones, was the third lieutenant. 

 Judge Langdon was a member of the State le- 

 gislature as late as the year 1708, when with a 

 few only be recorded his name in disapproval of 

 the celebrated alien and sedition acts of John 

 Adams. John Langdon, for twelve years the 

 first senator and presiding officer of the Senate 

 of the United States, was found with the few 

 republicans of New England as early as 1793 a 

 voter in the minority to admit Albert Gallatin as 

 a member of this first deliberative legislative 

 body on earth. Gallatin was then excluded as a 

 senator, but took his place in the house of re- 

 presentatives as a member from Pennsylvania, 

 in which he qualified himself for a display of 

 those eminent talents which rendered him the 

 right hand man of Jefferson, second only to the 

 amiable father of the Constitution and afterwards 

 President, the worthy Madison. 



The present Rockingham bouse at Portsmouth, 

 completed in 1793, was the elegant residence of 

 Woodbury Langdon after his retired life. Evi- 

 dence of his wealth may be gathered from the 

 liict that the building of this mansion involved 

 an expenditure of $40,000. There were no 

 such bricks then made in New Hampshire as 

 those of which this house was built. Not only 

 were the bricks brought from Philadelphia; but 

 the Judge had his gang of quaker masons from 

 that city to lay the bricks. The house is proba- 

 bly the most perfect building ever erected in the 

 State: it stands yet as a model of good taste 

 and thorough work in the trades of both the ma- 

 son and carpenter and of the true taste and skill 

 of the architect. 



A rapid journey on Thursday in the crowded 

 cars to the Niagara falls kept up our activity for 

 one of the three days of the Buffalo fair. Our 

 first visit to witness this great scene of attraction 

 was in 182(i, when the two sides could be view- 

 ed otdy by crossing as low as Lewiston. The 

 second visit, in 1833, seven years afterwards, in 

 which, with Lewis Cass then Secretary of War 

 as a companion, we rapidly passed over the 

 grounds of the two battles of Chippewa and 

 Lundy's lane, taught us to think it safe crossing 

 directly at the foot of the falls and in the midst 



