Delaware County 245 



of each of the six confederated nations, Mohawks, Oneidas, Tus- 

 caroras, Onondaga, Cayugas, and Senecas. Delaware County lay 

 to the east of this line — " the line of properties." 



The only part of the present county claimed to have been occu- 

 pied by white settlers prior to the Fort Stanwix treaty is in the 

 present town of Middletown. Those adventurers were of Dutch 

 extraction and came from Hurley, Ulster County, about 17G3. 

 Sidney and Ilarpersfield were settled at about 1770. 



The great mass of the early settlers came from New England. 

 Scotch families, however, flocked in at various times, choosing the 

 hills and uplands for their homes. This is accounted for partly 

 by the fact that the Dutch and later settlers had taken up many 

 of the low-lying lands, and partly because of the general poverty 

 of the Scotch, which led them to select the cheaper lands. It is 

 quite possible that their fond memories of the mountains from 

 which they came had an additional influence upon their choice. 



During the Revolution the pioneers were driven out but they 

 returned to their abandoned farms at the close of the war. 



DEVELOPMENT OF INDUSTRY 



Lumbering early formed one of the great industries and as late 

 as 1860 the county was surpassed in the number of saw mills 

 only by S'teuben and Oneida. The lumber was cut in winter and 

 in the spring it was built into rafts and floated down the Delaware 

 river to Philadelphia. 



In the extreme southern part is a section on which the original 

 forest still stands. In this section lumbering operations and the 

 manufacture of wood products, including wood alcohol and 

 acetate of lime, offer employment to a large number of people. 



Tanning was extensively followed as long as hemlock timber was 

 available. Millions of feet of hemlock timber was cut for the 

 bark and left to rot in the woods. The making of maple sugar 

 was, from the earliest times, a prominent occupation. 



As the forests disappeared, butter making was adopted as the 

 industry best adapted to the soil, Bovina being the pioneer in that 

 occupation. Rye, oats, buckwheat, corn, and potatoes were raised, 

 but usually for home consumption only. The great question in 



