high ground from which the waters descend northerly, easterly and southerly. The surface of the land is considerably undulating, and the soil generally appears quite as well adapted to hop and grain growing as grazing. There are, however, a number of large dairy farms in the town. Owing to the large quantities of manure required to keep the hop fields in good yield, the dairy business has been found a profitable adjunct in the farming line. There is to me a something so homelike and lifelife in the appearance, at midsummer, of large fields of Indian corn, grain of various descriptions and potatoes, I can not resist giving utterance to the reflection, that such a people must abound in wealth, because they are not dependent.

The principal local points in this town are Crain's corners P. O., Jordanville P. O., Page's corners, and the Little lakes, Warren P. O. Andrustown still retains its local name, and here are found descendants of the German Palatines, who first opened the forest on Henderson's patent; the Shoemakers, Bells, Crains, Hoyers, and others. The Little lakes, whose waters discharge into the Otsego, are in the extreme southeast part of the town, three miles east of Richfield springs. The great western turnpike passes through the village located between these two small bodies of water. The white cedar swamp lands in this town are nearly as valuable as any other in it. The timber is used for hop poles.

§ 18. WILMURT

Is the largest town in the county, and probably in the state, and contains that part of the county commencing at the southwest corner of the town of Morehouse (in Hamilton county), and running westerly on the north line of the Jerseyfield patent, until it strikes the West Canada creek; thence continuing the same course of said Jersey field line, until it strikes the west line of Herkimer county; thence northerly, on said line, until it strikes the north boundary line; thence easterly, along the north bounds of said county, until it strikes the northwest corner of the town of Morehouse; thence southerly, on said line, to the place of beginning.

Within these boundaries are all those parts of Remsem

burgh and Vroman's patents, Adgate's, Brown's, Nobleborough, Moose river and Watson's tracts, and Totten and Crossfield's purchase, which lie in the county.

This town has trebled its population in five years, to be attributed to the increase of the lumber business, under the direction of the Messrs. Hinckley and others, who are largely engaged in that trade in the north part of the county. The legislature have heretofore appropriated $5000, to remove obstructions from the West Canada creek; obstructions which hindered the floating of logs and unsawed lumber from the sources of the creek, during the spring floods, to an extensive set of mills in operation near Prospect, Oneida county, where many millions of feet of boards, plank and other sawed lumber are cut out annually, and sent to market.

The machinery of these mills, and all the arrangements for booming and securing the logs, bringing them to the ways, where they are to be taken on to the saw carriages, and for removing the plank and boards when sawed, and disposing of the refuse stuff, are spoken of as being equal to any similar establishment in the country. The mineral regions of this town will be approached, if not immediately intersected, by the Saratoga and Sackets Harbor rail road.

In 1792, Alexander Macomb, of New York, purchased of the state 1,920,000 acres of land, at nine pence per acre, lying in the northern part of the state, and the same year John Brown, of Rhode Island, bought of Macomb, or obtained the title to, about two hundred thousand acres of that purchase, which was afterwards divided into eight townships, numbered from one to eight inclusive, and townships number one, two, six and seven were also subdivided into small lots. This tract does not lay on Moose river proper, and only a small triangular point of township number eight extends into Hamilton county. The westerly parts of towns one, two, three and four are in Lewis county. This has been many years called Brown's tract. According to Burr's map of the county, a northerly

branch of the Moose river runs through the southern portion of the tract. Mr. Brown visited his lands near the close of the last century, made some improvements in the way of opening roads, building houses and erecting mills, intending and expecting to make sale of them. Mr. Brown died, however, before he realized any of his anticipations, and no doubt a great many more men will die before that wilderness will be seen "to blossom as the rose." In 1846, the commissioners of the land office were offered five cents an acre for a considerable portion of townships one and two, but they refused to take less than eight cents an acre.

A son-in-law of Brown, Mr. Charles F. Herreshoff, went on to the tract a few years after the death of Brown, for the purpose of making permanent improvements upon it and bringing the lands into market. This project was quite as. visionary, far more expensive, and in the end, more fatal to the projector, than the antecedent one had been to Brown. Herreshoff expended a large sum of money in clearing up the lands, repairing the former mills built by Brown, and erecting new ones, in building houses and opening roads, and at one time had gathered around him some thirty or forty families. He also erected some iron works in township number seven, and actually succeeded, it is reported, in making about one ton of iron. But Herreshoff's outlays were large, and it required something more "to speed the plough" than could be raised on the tract, or from the proceeds of the iron; he therefore resorted to the expedient, which he doubtless had often indulged in before, of drawing on his friends in Providence for the needful means to consummate a dearly cherished object. The draft was returned to him protested; he felt dishonor keenly, and deliberately shot himself through the head with a pistol. He was ardent, ambitious, probably visionary, and could not have had much practical experience of the business he was engaged in; and if he died" as a fool dieth," it was a choice

of evils with him. He preferred death, a suicidal exit from the world, to the crushing endurance of mortified feelings, groping his way through life in poverty, and as he thought, covered with dishonor.

After Herreshoff's death the people he had brought there left the settlement, and iron works, mills, barns and houses, with one exception, went rapidly to decay. It is understood that sometimes one and then another family has been found bold and hardy enough to keep watch and ward on the tract since Herreshoff died. A great portion of the tract, if not all of it, has been sold for arrears of taxes and bid in by the state.

In 1815, a Mr. Noble, a venerable patriarch, and nephew of the patentee of Nobleborough patent, had found his way there through the woods, and was enjoying a wilderness life as he best could in a green old age. It will be observed that this large tract was purchased of the state by Arthur Noble in 1787; he made some improvement on these lands as early as 1790, and then erected a sawmill and had some boards sawed out which he took to Ireland. The settlement broke up and another effort to colonize the tract, in 1793, was made with the like success. The remains of a grist and sawmill were seen at this settlement about the year 1811 by Mr. William Bensley of Newport. Mr. Noble must have been influenced by a monomania like that of John Brown's, when he caused a carriage road to be cut and cleared to his lands, over which he passed in his coach. Mr. Noble sojourned for a time at Little Falls while his experiments in the woods were going on, but finally returned to Scotland, where he died many years since. There are large quantities of excellent timber on the lands in this town, of almost every description, except pine, found in our northern latitude. Portions of the surface are broken and stony, and other portions can be brought under cultivation and will make fair grazing lands. The iron mines of this region are spoken of as rich and inexhaustible.

§ 19. WINFIELD

Contains all that part of the county, beginning in the west bounds of the county, where the same are intersected by a line run due east from the northeast corner of township number twenty of the Twenty townships, so called, and running thence easterly to a bound on the south side of the Utica and Minden turnpike at the southeast corner of the town of Litchfield; and then south thirty degrees west to the bounds of the county; and then along the bounds of the county easterly, southerly and westerly to the place of beginning comprising within its bounds parts of Bayard's, Lispenard's and Schuyler's patents.

This town was settled by whites before 1800, but at what period I am not able to state; probably between that time and 1790. A small part of it lay within the limits of the Old England district until the municipal organization of the counties in this part of the state into townships took place. Its area is not large, containing only about fifteen thousand acres, as returned by the assessors. The soil is good and highly productive. More attention has been here given to wool growing than any other town in the county. The products of butter and cheese, as given by the census returns, show that this branch of industry has not been forgotten.

Several streams which flow southerly into the Unadilla river, have their rise in this town and Litchfield, and afford very considerable facilities for milling and mechanical pursuits, which have not been left unimproved. The Great Western turnpike passes through the southerly part of the town, which, before the days of canals and rail roads, was a large thoroughfare thronged with stages, carriages, teams and droves of cattle, but now almost a solitude.

The village of West Winfield, whose population is nearly four hundred, is located very near the west bounds of the county. It contains an academy incorporated by the regents of the university. I refer the reader to another chapter for a more particular description of this institution. The locality is pleasant and healthy. A bank organized under the laws of the state has recently been established in