TOWN OF FREMONT. 



299 



child born in the town. Miss Lydia Everett taught the 

 first school. The first death in the town was that of Mrs. 

 Amos Baldwin, which occurred Dec. 12, 1815. Ira Travis 

 was an early settler to the south of Mr. Eathbun, in the 

 valley of Big Creek. Solomon and Jacob Conderman were 

 early settlers between Baldwin's and Job's Corners. Capt. 

 Joseph Bartholomew, from Washington County, father of 

 Eber Bartholomew, settled south of Job's Corners in the 

 southeast part of the town. 



The road from Fremont Centre to Hornellsville, six miles 

 distant, winds among numerous round knobs of cleared land, 

 rising from twenty to eighty feet above the surface of the 

 rolling lands which they obstruct, and overlooks deep, nar- 

 row openings, dark with hemlock, or green with growing- 

 grain. Before these were cleared, they were the haunts of 

 w\olves, wild-cats, and beasts of prey ; furnishing a secure 

 retreat from the pursuing hunter. Past these to the south, 

 close beside a beautiful grove of beech and maple, is the 

 residence of Morrison Harding, one of the leading farmers 

 of the town, where Lemuel Harding, his flither, settled in 

 1816. 



Soon after, Oliver Harding, a soldier of the Revolution, 

 who left the Wyoming Valley at the time of the massacre, 

 moved into the place with his other sons, Oliver, Jr., Jus- 

 tus, Abram, and Henry, giving the name of Harding Hill 

 to that part of the town. Samuel Sharp settled w^est of 

 Harding soon after. 



Elisha Strait, who came in 1815, was the first settler in 

 the north part of the town, and was joined on the south by 

 Edward Markham and Francis Drake, in 1816. 



Jerry Kinney and George Nutting, Barnet Brayton, 

 Henry Cotton, and Leonard Briggs formed a settlement at 

 the head of the west branch of Neil's Creek, in 1819. 

 When these settlers came, there was a camp of some 20 

 Indians on the Cotton place, in the valley, where they 

 hunted during the season. 



Henry Cotton, who came from Washington County, still 

 lives with his son, Samuel Cotton, on the old homestead. 



The first clearing in the vicinity of Haskinville was made 

 by Alexander Kelly, father of Charles Kelly, on the Isaac 

 Rath bone place, half a mile east. 



James Rider, father of L. M. Rider, and William Has- 

 kins came together from Saratoga County in 1818, and set- 

 tled across the creek from Henry Cotton. 



William Holden made shingles in a little log house, in 

 1834, and had a few acres partially cleared, but soon after 

 sold out his improvement to William Haskin, who moved 

 there and opened the first tavern in the towu, on the same 

 ground, in 1836. The village, which has grown around the 

 old tavern, is situated in a deep valley near the head of 

 Neil's Creek, and consists of a store, hotel, cheese-factory, 

 shoe-shop, and twenty residences. Half a mile above is a 

 saw-mill. 



A mail-route from Wallace's to Hornellsville, by stage, 

 passes through, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. 



Half a mile over the hill, to the west of Haskinville, in 

 a sheltered little valley, is the beautiful farm of Leadran 

 H. Benjamin, the present supervisor of the town. Here 

 his father, Silas Benjamin, located, when he came from Ot- 

 sego County, in 1834. 



In 1820 Grideon Maynard, from Cayuga County, settled 

 on the high dividing-ridge near the Methodist Episcopal 

 church, making the first settlement in that vicinity, on the 

 farm now occupied by his son, Richard Maynard. In the 

 northwest corner of the town Stephen Holden, father of 

 Jedediah and Stephen Holden, Jr., settled in 1816 on land 

 still occupied by his sons. From this high divide may be 

 obtained a most comprehensive view of that part of Steuben 

 County west of Bath and north of the valley of the Canisteo 

 River. The lands, which are here high and rolling, present 

 the appearance of a general level, cut through with occasional 

 valleys and ravines, from which show the tops of standing 

 timber ; while beyond the view blends into a line of nearly 

 level farms and skirts of woodland to the east. To the 

 south and west the more distant hills of central Allegany 

 and southern Steuben blend with the hazy skies beyond. 

 From here, looking to the southeast, may be seen the vast 

 level of cleared farms in eastern Fremont, at Job's Corners, 

 where the first hardy adventurer, Job B. Rathbun, located 

 far beyond Dansville, towards Bath, in 1812, when those 

 two towns were the great business centres of an almost 

 unbroken wilderness. These high and airy points were 

 selected first by the pioneers, and their trails were marked 

 along the tops of all the ridges long before the opening of 

 roads through the more difficult vallej^s. Long before these 

 hills were bared the noblest game of the forest had fled. 

 In 1818, Daniel Upson, the miller, killed the last elk seen 

 in the town ; but wolves remained much later. An early 

 settler, who penned his little flock of sheep in a high 

 inclosure, was astonished to find two wolves with them in 

 the morning, unable to climb the high walls which sloped 

 inward, and too much alarmed at the situation to have a 

 taste for mutton. Sometimes a wolf would be tracked to 

 the '' knolls" in the south part of the town, when a gen- 

 eral hunt would be instituted, the retreat surrounded, and 

 close figuring ensue on the division of the bounty, which was 

 from $40 to $60 apiece on each wolf" killed in the town." 

 It is related how a shrewd hunter for several years guarded 

 the secret of a she wolf's retreat, stealing her young and 

 rearing them until old enough to take a bounty, and how 

 he trapped wolves where they were plentiest, leading them 

 home securely tied, to kill them in his own town " accord- 

 ing to law." Sometimes, too, these early settlers were 

 in want of bread. Mr. Upson, the miller, relates how 

 when he had been repairing his mill, and started it on Sat- 

 urday night, the settlers, who were waiting with backloads 

 of corn, forced him to grind all night and far into the Sab- 

 bath, that their little ones might have bread. 



The lumbering of the town has ceased to furnish em- 

 ployment, but little timber being left, except upon the 

 waste land along the ravines, and some beautiful groves 

 upon the uplands, which are reserved for the manufacture 

 of maple-sugar in the spring, which is still a profitable in- 

 dustry in favored seasons. The roads are generally superior, 

 and the scenery varied and picturesque. Buildings are of 

 modern construction, the open fireplace of the fathers 

 having almost entirely disappeared. 3Iany of the farmers 

 of the town are engaged in active business pursuits during 

 the winters. Four cheese-factories are in operation in dif- 

 ferent parts of the town, located respectively on Big Creek 



