(from William Cooper, A Guide in the Wilderness:
Or the History of the First Settlement in the
Western Counties of New York, 1810)
FROM 1776 TO 1785 the pioneer movement exploded. The Scotch-Irish sprang across the mountains of North Carolina and Virginia to settle eastern Tennessee. Using the Cumberland Gap, they crossed into Kentucky. Settlers moved into the Shenandoah and Susquehanna Valleys. They pushed up the Monongahela to Fort Pitt and thence down the Ohio River. General “Mad Anthony” Wayne finally secured that area with his 1794 victory at the battle of Fallen Timbers and the Treaty of Greenville.
William Cooper, father of the novelist James Fenimore Cooper, acquired a land patent for forty thousand acres in 1785 at the headwaters of the Susquehanna River. There, on the shores of beautiful Lake Otsego, New York, he founded Cooperstown, where “if you don’t like the weather, wait ten minutes.” His family was large, his capital small. He raised some money, purchased the land, and resold all of it to prospective settlers on fair terms with time payments. By 1806, Cooper could boast that he had “settled more acres than any man in America,” and the families within his land patent were happy and prosperous.
His wisdom lay in locating settlers close enough, sixty together, so that one neighbor’s surplus and skill could satisfy another’s needs. His success lay in a sense of duty to his landowners, timely improvisations, hard work, and persuasive leadership. “Let me be clearly understood,” wrote Judge Cooper about developing land on the frontier, “that no man who does not possess a steady mind, a sober judgment, fortitude, perseverance, and above all, common sense, can expect to reap the reward, which to him who possesses these qualifications, is almost certain.” From his Guide in the Wilderness: Or the History of the First Settlement in the Western Counties of New York, here is William Cooper’s 1810 account of the struggle, survival, and prosperity of his settlement.
IN 1785 I visited the rough and hilly country of Otsego, where there existed not an inhabitant, nor any trace of a road; I was alone three hundred miles from home, without bread, meat, or food of any kind; fire and fishing tackle were my only means of subsistence. I caught trout in the brook, and roasted them on the ashes. My horse fed on the grass that grew by the edge of the waters. I laid me down to sleep in my watchcoat with nothing but the melancholy Wilderness around me. In this way I explored the country, formed my plans of future settlement, and meditated upon the spot where a place of trade or a village should afterwards be established. In May 1786 I opened the sales of 40,000 acres, which, in sixteen days, were all taken up by the poorest order of men. I soon after established a store, and went to live among them, and continued so to do till 1790, when I brought on my family. For the ensuing four years the scarcity of provisions was a serious calamity. The country was mountainous; there were neither roads nor bridges. But the greatest discouragement was in the extreme poverty of the people, none of whom had the means of clearing more than a small spot in the midst of the thick and lofty woods. Their grain grew chiefly in the shade. Their maize did not ripen. Their wheat was blasted, and the little they did gather they had no mill to grind within twenty miles distance. Not one in twenty had a horse, and the way lay through rapid streams, across swamps, or over bogs. They had neither provisions to take with them, nor money to purchase them. If the father of a family went abroad to labour for bread, it cost him three times its value before he could bring it home, and all the business on his farm stood still till his return.
I resided among them, and saw too clearly how bad their condition was. I erected a store-house, and during each winter filled it with large quantities of grain, purchased in distant places. I procured from my friend Henry Drinker a credit for a large quantity of sugar kettles; he also lent me some pot ash kettles, which we conveyed as best we could; sometimes by partial roads on sleighs, and sometimes over the ice. By this means I established pot ash works among the settlers, and made them debtor for their bread and labouring utensils. I also gave them credit for their maple sugar and pot ash, at a price that would bear transportation. In the first year after the adoption of this plan I collected in one mass forty-three hogsheads of sugar, and three hundred barrels of pot and pearl ash, worth about nine thousand dollars. This kept the people together and at home, and the country soon assumed a new face.
I had not funds of my own sufficient for the opening of new roads. So I collected the people at convenient seasons, and by joint efforts we were able to throw bridges over the deep streams, and to make, in the cheapest manner, such roads as suited our then humble purposes.
In the winter preceding the summer of 1789, grain rose in Albany to a price before unknown. The demand swept the whole granaries of the Mohawk country. The number of beginners who depended upon it for their bread greatly aggravated the evil, and a famine ensued, which will never be forgotten by those who, though now in the enjoyment of ease and comfort, were then afflicted with the cruelest of wants.
In the month of April I arrived amongst them with several loads of provisions, destined for my own use and that of the labourers I had brought with me for certain necessary operations. But in a few days all was gone, and there remained not one pound of salt meat nor a single biscuit. Many were reduced to such distress, as to live upon the roots of wild leeks; some more fortunate lived upon milk, whilst others supported nature by drinking a syrup made of maple sugar and water. The quantity of leeks they eat had such an effect upon their breath, that they could be smelled at many paces distance, and when they came together, it was like cattle that had pastured in a garlic field. A man of the name of Beets mistaking some poisonous herb for a leek, ate it, and died in consequence. Judge of my feelings at this epoch, with two hundred families about me, and not a morsel of bread.
A singular event seemed sent by a good Providence to our relief. It was reported to me that unusual shoals of fish were seen moving in the clear waters of the Susquehanna. I went and was surprised to find that they were herrings. We made something like a small net, by the interweaving of twigs, and by this rude and simple contrivance, we were able to take them in thousands. In less than ten days each family had an ample supply with plenty of salt. I also obtained from the Legislature, then in session, seventeen hundred bushels of corn. This we packed on horses backs, and on our arrival made a distribution among the families, in porportion to the number of individuals of which each was composed.
This was the first settlement I made, and the first attempted after the revolution. It was, of course, attended with the greatest difficulties. Nevertheless, to its success many others have owed their origin. It was besides the roughest land in all the state, and the most difficult of cultivation of all that has been settled; but for many years past it has produced every thing necessary to the support and comfort of man. It maintains at present eight thousand souls, with schools, academies, churches, meetinghouses, turnpike roads, and a market town. It annually yields to commerce large droves of fine oxen, great quantities of wheat and other grain, abundance of pork, pot ash in barrels, and other provisions. Merchants with large capitals, and all kinds of useful mechanics reside upon it. The waters are stocked with fish, the air is salubrious, and the country thriving and happy. When I contemplate all this, and above all, when I see these good old settlers meet together, and hear them talk of past hardships, of which I bore my share, and compare the misery they then endured with the comforts they now enjoy, my emotions border upon weakness, which manhood can scarcely avow.