280 



HISTORY OF STEUBEN COUNTY, NEW YORK. 



Barnliart $40 for a new milch cow, and drove her home. 

 Boiled rye and milk was the staple article of food for the 

 winter of 1818-19. The next crop was wheat, raised on 

 a field opposite the old burying-ground. The soil was too 

 poor to make straw, but good grain was produced in short 

 scattering heads near the ground. This was pulled and 

 threshed on a bed-quilt. His income while farming was 

 produced from the burning of charcoal, in which he was an 

 expert. 



The necessity of a school becoming apparent, in Decem- 

 ber, 1818, he notified the scattered settlers to attend a 

 meeting which was held Bee. 25, 1818, at the house of 

 Rufus Stone, in school district No. 8, pursuant to a notice 

 given by John Brail, by order of P]lisha W. Brockway, 

 commissioner of common schools. William S. Lemen was 

 chosen moderator; Rufus Stone, clerk for the district; 

 Rufus Stone, Chauncey Bay, and William S. Lemen, trus- 

 tees ; David Stone, district collector. The following reso- 

 lutions were adopted : 



*' Resolved, That the forks or corners of the highway at or near the 

 house of John Brail be the site for the school-house. 



" Resolved, That those persons that do not deliv^er their part of the 

 lumber by the 8th day of January next at the site of the school- 

 house that their portion of the lumber shall be assigned over to some 

 other person by the trustees, and that the money be collected of said 

 delinquents and paid over to the said assignee or assignees. 



" Resolved, That the said school-house be built of plank, twenty- 

 one feet long and eighteen feet wide. 



" Resolved, That the trustees raise by tax $73, to be appropriated 

 to building said school-house in the aforesaid district. 



"■ Resolved, That each person liable to pay taxes in said district 

 pay one day's work towards building said school-house when called 

 upon by any one or more of the trustees, and that the said day's labor 

 be gratis. 



" Resolved, That the amount of lumber persons deliver at the site 

 of the school-house as aforesaid shall apply towards his part of the 

 before-mentioned tax. 



^^ Resolved, That this meeting be adjourned to the 9th day of Jan- 

 uary next, to be holden at the same place. 



'' [Signed,] V^. S. Lemen, Moderator. 



" KuFUS Stone, Clerk." 



This meeting marked an epoch in the history of Sandy 

 Hill. Some of the resolutions seem to be arbitrary, but in 

 those early days everything had to succumb to the necessity 

 of the case. On the 16th day of January, 1819, twenty- 

 two days after the first meeting of this district, the meeting 

 convened at the same place according to adjournment, and 

 the first resolution passed was in these words : 



'' Resolved, That the school-house be finished so far that there can 

 be a school kept therein within seven days, and that the school com- 

 mence on the 25th inst." 



The lumber used was only valued at $3.50 per thousand 

 feet. 



A month from the date of the first meeting, Elisha W. 

 Brockway was teaching the first three months' school, for 

 $13.50 per month. An assessment of half a cord of good 

 wood was made for each scholar. The walls were notched 

 and laid up like logs, and the fireplace, like that of Grand- 

 pap Brail, was liberal in its proportions. The windows 

 shoved sideways ; the door, at one corner of the building, 

 swung upon wooden hinges, and the desks were wide 

 boards placed in a standing position against the walls. 



Weeks and months of labor were expended in cutting, 

 notching, and gouging these desks full of images and 

 strange devices. The seats were heavy slabs, with legs 

 driven into auger holes. A water-pail, dipper, hickory- 

 splint broom ; a high, straight-backed, splint-bottomed 

 chair for the teacher, and a long, blackened, wooden poker 

 for the fire, comprised the necessary furniture. In 1819, 

 Mr. Brockway was again hired, to be paid partly in wheat 

 at " the April price," which was about $1 per bushel. In 

 1824 wheat was hauled to Rochester and sold for forty 

 cents per bushel. In 1825 the old fireplace gave way for 

 a stove, which was paid for by the first tax collected by 

 warrant. The old school-house was remodeled in 1836, 

 after the cholera, and in 1845 abandoned for a new one. 

 During its existence this school-house was the educational, 

 social, and religious centre for a large scope of country. 



In the old burying-ground, a few rods west of where the 

 school-house stood, where rest the remains of many of 

 the pioneers, an inscription reads : " John Brail. Died 

 Dec. 2, 1860, in the 90th year of his age." Inscribed 

 upon many of the stones are the terrible words, " Died 

 of cholera." 



In 1834 the tide of German emigration turned towards 

 Sandy Hill and the north of Steuben County. In August 

 the families of Mr. Bolinger, Rider, Kersh, and Schu 

 came by way of the Erie Canal to Buffalo, one of their 

 number dying on the way of cholera. The families, num- 

 bering 18 persons, moved into the old Brail house, and 

 soon after Mrs. Brail was taken sick. The next day, August 

 24, she died. The doctors reluctantly admitted that the 

 disease was contagious. The funeral, for which large prep- 

 arations had been made, was abandoned. On Sunday 

 morning one of the daughters died ; three of the emigrants 

 were dead or dying. Samuel Lemen led a band of volun- 

 teer nurses, composed of Zera Blake, Samuel G. Dorr, Mr. 

 Driesbach, Rufus Stone, Joseph Acomb, Andrew Brail, 

 John Brail, Jr., and others, doing all that men could do to 

 arrest the spread of the disease. None of these ever fully 

 recovered from the eff'ects of their terrible watching. Mr. 

 Blake was made an invalid for life. The rough coffins 

 were made in the old school-house. Mr. Blake took a load 

 of boards back into the woods, half a mile distant, and 

 constructed two temporary buildings, and the two remaining 

 sick, Mr. Bolinger and Mr. Rider, were carried thence on 

 stretchers. Before arriving at the foot of the hill, Mr. 

 Bolinger died ; a day or two later, one of Mr. Rider's 

 daughters died. A strict guard surrounded the contagion, 

 and no intercourse was permitted with the outside world. 

 Mr. Schu was the only one who recovered. Brandy and 

 loaf-sugar were largely used as preventives. On the 4th of 

 September, Simeon Decker died. Five days later his father, 

 Samuel Decker, came down the old Indian Trail, on horse- 

 back, to get lumber for his wife's coffin. Going home from 

 the burial, he, too, was attacked, and died before morning. 

 September 15, Mr. Acomb, one of the nurses, died. Andrew 

 and John Brail, Jr., John P. Faulkner,. Mr. Driesbach, 

 and Samuel Lemen buried him in the field near the house. 

 All night long the sentinel watched at the barn where his 

 young wife and four children had taken refuge, passing the 

 preconcerted signal, " All is well I " that it might be 



