TOWN OF BATH. 



171 



Even now it has proved so, for at this day [1800] a bushel 

 of wheat is better worth $1 at Bath than 60 cents at Geneva. 

 This difference will grow wider every year; for little, if 

 any additional improvement can be made in the water com- 

 munication with New York, while that to Baltimore will 

 admit of very extensive and advantageous ones. Its pres- 

 ent efforts are but those of a child, compared with the manly 

 strength it will soon assume. I visited Capt. Williamson's 

 mills, a little west of Bath, on Conhocton Creek, which 

 before the winter sets in will be made navigable fifteen miles 

 higher up ; at least a farmer there promises to send an ark 

 down from thence in the spring. The navigation of the 

 Susquehanna will then extend to within six miles of the 

 Canandaigua Lake." 



This prospect gave Bath its early importance among the 

 settlements of Western New York, and induced its founder 

 and others to conceive of it as destined to become, at no 

 very distant day, the inland commercial metropolis of the 

 State. The remarks of Hon. William H. Seward, already 

 referred to, at the Astor House festival, will set this matter 

 in a clear and interesting light. Addressing the members 

 of the Legislature, he said : 



" Gentlemen, — It seems to me that we can improve this 

 festive occasion by considering how intimate is the relation 

 between the city and State, how essential each is to the 

 other. There is a town in the interior of the State, far 

 away, in what was lately known as the secluded, seques- 

 tered part of it, Bath by name. Many of the representa- 

 tives of the rural districts know it well, the members from 

 Steuben can speak for it. Of this town I wish to speak. 

 It is a beautiful but quiet one, situated in the delightful 

 valley and on the banks of the Conhocton, a tributary of 

 the Susquehanna. But those who know it well have re- 

 marked that it has a broad and magnificent plan, imper- 

 fectly filled out. There are houses on corners designating 

 streets and avenues without inhabitants. In short it was 

 laid out for a great city, but has long since renounced all 

 ambitious pretensions. You do not know how this has 

 happened. Well, if on your return to Albany, you will 

 call on my excellent friend [Mr. Street], the State Libra- 

 rian, he will give you a small duodecimo volume, published 

 in- the year 1800, containing an account of a journey per- 

 formed by an English gentleman, in the short space of six 

 weeks, from the city of New York all the way to Niagara 

 Falls. That traveler visited Bath, then in the day-spring 

 of its growth, and he recorded of it that it was destined to 

 become the greatest commercial metropolis of the State of 

 New York. The Hudson was only a short arm of the sea. 

 It did not penetrate the interior far enough to take a hold 

 of the trade of the country. Bath was to receive all of it 

 that could be diverted from the channel of the St. Law- 

 rence, and the market of Quebec, and send it down through 

 the Conhocton and the Susquehanna to Chesapeake Bay. 

 Had that calculation been realized, Bath might have been a 

 city like Albany, and New York would have been a city 

 over which the President could have had but little ambition 

 to preside." 



When these expectations were entertained the Erie Canal 

 was not thought of It was. not till 1804 that Gouverneur 

 Morris first suggested to Simeon De Witt the idea of " tap- 



ping" Lake Erie, and carrying its waters across the country 

 to the Hudson Biver, and the idea of transportation by rail- 

 roads was one of at least a quarter of a century later. 



Mr. James Geddes himself, the chief surveyor and engi- 

 neer of the Erie Canal, passed up the Chemung River and 

 explored the whole interior of the State in 1792. While 

 at the Falls of the Genesee, he remarked in his journal that 

 that cataract unfortunately '^ spoiled the navigation" of the 

 Genesee River, and expressed the opinion that the wheat 

 from the rich Genesee country, just then beginning to be 

 opened to settlement, would have to be transported south- 

 ward " by the Newtown Creek." Sixteen years later he 

 was at the same falls with his leveling instruments, survey- 

 ing a route which was to convey the rich products of the 

 Genesee country and of the West, not southward by the 

 tributaries of the Susquehanna, as he then guessed, but 

 eastward to the markets of New York and Albany. That 

 great enterprise, first conceived in 1804, introduced to the 

 Legislature by Joshua Foreman, of Onondaga, in 1807, and 

 completed under the eminent statesmanship of Be Witt 

 Clinton, in 1825, revolutionized all the early ideas of politi- 

 cal economists respecting the avenues of transportation, 

 and left many a promising town-site shorn of its earl}? 

 promise, and far away from the Jiigh ways of trade and com- 

 merce. Bath only shared the common fortune of hundreds 

 of other future great cities. Then came the period of rail- 

 roads, which have still further changed the expectation of 

 many a promising locality, and have almost rendered natural 

 water-courses and even canals a non-essential factor in the 

 calculations of commerce and transportation. 



Bath, for many years before the construction of the Erie 

 Canal, was the most active and important place in Western 

 New York. Being situated at the head of navigation on 

 the Conhocton River, and in direct and rapid water com- 

 munication with Philadelphia and Baltimore, it drew in the 

 trade and commerce of a large section of tributary country ; 

 became the seat of many enterprising merchants, the home 

 of many families of wealth and influence, and the centre 

 whence legal talent and learning were dispensed over several 

 adjoining counties. No village founded in the wilderness 

 ever became so famous in a few years or assumed at so green 

 an age so many of the concomitants and airs of a city. Before 

 the place was two years old Col. Williamson had a theatre 

 in full operation, and a race-<30urse which attracted visitors 

 from beyond the Hudson and the Potomac. Nor were 

 these amusements, which served to advertise the new settle- 

 ment, the only features of its rapid development. Institu- 

 tions of a more permanent and solid character soon took 

 root and flourished, schools and churches were founded and 

 fostered, and an influential bench and bar aided in givino; 

 strength and tone to society. The press, also, was one 

 among the earliest institutions of Bath, in which this village 

 took the lead of all others in Western New York, establish- 

 ing the Bath Gazette and Genesee Advertiser in the year 

 1796, when the settlement was only three years old. 



The growth of Bath has been permanent ; and although 

 it has not realized the enthusiastic visions of its founder, it 

 has at least attained the rank and dignity of a beautiful and 

 substantial shire-town, stretching across the ancient valley and 

 spreading its white skirts upon the feet of the adjacent hills. 



