the last white habitation at Geneva, they pursued the Indian trail to the present town of Lima; where, finding a location to suit them, they erected a cabin and commenced making an opening in the forest. Going to the Indian lands at Canawaugus, they planted and raised a patch of corn and potatoes. Their location was about one mile south of the Indian trail, near the west line of the town. After some improvements upon their cabin, such as the luxury of a bark roof, and a hewed plank floor, and gathering the small crop they had raised upon Indian lands, they returned to the Susquehannah, and in the spring of 1789, Mr. Davison, with his family, consisting of his wife and her mother, and two children, came to make his permanent home in the wilderness. He was accompanied by Asahel Burchard, The family and household implements were conveyed in an ox cart, Mr. Davison and his companion sleeping under the cart, and the family in the cart, during the whole journey. Their route was Sullivan's track, the whole distance from the Susquehannah to where the Indian trail bore off in the direction of Canawaugus. They had bridges to build occasionally, and logs to cut out, before they left the track of Sullivan; after that, they had their own road to make for the greater part of the way to the place of their destination. The journey consumed three weeks. Davison raised a crop of oats and turnips, the first of any kind raised in Lima; and in that and a few succeeding years, cultivated Indian lands at Canawaugus. For two years, the family pounded all their corn in a stump mortar, getting their first grinding done at the Allan mill. Captain Davison and some of his Pioneer neighbors, took six or seven bushels of corn to Canawaugus, hired an Indian canoe, and took it down to the mill. On their return up the river, their canoe upset, and their meal became wet and unfit for use; a small matter to make a record of, some readers will say, and yet, let them be assured, it was no small matter with those new beginners in the wilderness. In 1790, Mrs. Davison's mother died; it being the second death in the Genesee country after settlement commenced. A daughter of Captain Davison, who became the wife of James Otis, of Perry, Wyoming county, was the first born white female west of Geneva. Captain Davison died in 1804, aged 41 years, after having become a successful farmer, and the owner of a large farm. Mrs. Davison died in 1844, aged 80 years.

Mr.

Dr. John Miner and Abner Migells, had settled in Lima, in the

summer of 1790; and it is presumed that Mr. Burchard had then brought in his family; as his name, as the head of a family, occurs in the census of that period. He still survives to enjoy the fruits of his early enterprise and life of toil. "He was," says a correspondent of the author, "always a kind and good neighbor, and much esteemed by the early settlers."

Lima was called, in an early period, "Miles' Gore," the fraction of a township having been purchased in the name of Abner Miles, or Abner Migells, as the author finds it on some of the early records. According to the recollections of William Hencher, he must have left Lima soon after settlement commenced there; as he was early engaged with his father in trading trips to Canada, and erected a public house at Toronto in the earliest years of settlement there.

The brothers, Asahel and Matthew Warner, Miles Bristol, and others, who were early and prominent Pioneers in Lima, the author hopes to be able to speak of in another connection. At present, he has not the necessary datas.

Reuben F. Thayer must have settled in Lima before the close of 1790. The venerable Judge Hopkins, of Niagara county, was in the fall of 1789, with a number of companions, returning to New Jersey, after a trading excursion. Passing Canawaugus, they assisted Gilbert R. Berry in erecting his first log house; and the next day, finding a "settler just arrived by the name of Thayer, with logs ready for a house," they stopped and assisted him.

Wheelock Wood came to Lima in the winter of 1795, locating upon the present site of the college, where he commenced clearing, and erected a log cabin. He remained there a few years, and removed to Livonia, and from there, in 1807, to Gainesville, Wyoming county. He died in 1834.

In an early period of settlement in Lima, ancient remains, and relics of French occupancy were to be seen in various localities. The "Ball Farm," so prolific in these, and so often alluded to by antiquarians, is within the town. Upon the farm of Miles Bristol, a short distance west of Lima village, upon a commanding eminence, the embankments and ditches of an ancient Fort were easily traced. In ploughing upon his farm, in early years, Mr. Bristol picked up several hundred pounds of old iron, chiefly French axes.

James K. Guernsey, in connection with the Nortons, of Bloomfield and Canandaigua, and afterwards upon his own account, was

the early prominent merchant of Lima. He removed to Pittsford, where he died in 1839. George Guernsey, of Michigan, is his son; Mrs. Mortimer F. Delano, of Rochester, is his daughter. For many years, his store in Lima commanded the trade of a wide region.

CHAPTER VI.

PIONEER EVENTS IN WHAT IS NOW WAYNE COUNTY.

In the winter of 1788, '9, John Swift and Col. John Jenkins, purchased T. 12, R. 2, now Palmyra, and commenced the survey of it into farm lots, in March. Jenkins being a practical surveyor, built a camp on the bank of Ganargwa creek, about two miles below the present village of Palmyra. His assistants were his nephew, Alpheus Harris, Solomon Earle, Baker, and Daniel Ransom. One morning about 2 o'clock, the party being asleep in their bunks, their fire giving light enough to show their several positions, a party of fonr Tuscarora Indians and a squaw stealthily approached, and the Indians putting their guns through the open spaces between the logs, selected their victims and fired. Baker was killed, Earle, lying upon his back, with his hand upon his breast, a ball passed through his hand and breast, mutilated his nose, and lodged under the frontal sinus between his eyes. Jenkins and Ransom escaped unhurt, and encountering the murderers - Jenkins with his Jacob staff, and Ransom with an axe drove them off, capturing two of their rifles and a tomahawk. In the morning they buried their dead companion, carried Earle to Geneva, and gave the alarm. The Indians were pursued, and two captured on the Chemung river. The nearest jail being Johnstown, it was feared they would be rescued; if an attempt was made to carry them there; what in later years would be called a Lynch court, was organized; they were tried and execu

ted at Newtown, now Elmira.

method, with the tomahawk.

The execution was after the Indian
They were taken back into the

woods, and blindfolded. One of the executioners dispatched his victim at a blow; the other failed; the Indian being a stout athletic fellow, parried the blow, escaped, was followed by a possee, who caught and beat him to death with stones and pine knots! This was the first trial and execution in the Genesee country. Horrid and lawless as it may now seem, it was justified by then existing exigencies.

During the summer, John Swift moved into the township, erecting a log house and store house at "Swift's Landing a little north of the lower end of Main street, Palmyra.

Before the close of the year 1789, Webb Harwood, from Adams, Berkshire county, with his wife came in and erected a cabin on the rise of ground near first lock west of Palmyra, upon the farm now owned and occupied by Dennison Rogers. He was accompanied by Noah Porter, Jonathan Warner and Bennet Bates, single men The author is disposed to regard Harwood as the Pioneer, although it is generally supposed that Gen. Swift had previously brought in a family. No family but that of Mr. Harwood and David White

NOTE.-The Indian party had their hunting camp near the surveyors, and had several times shared their provisions; the incentive was hunger. One of them that escaped was "Turkey" well known in after years upon the Genesee river. He had a sear upon his face, the mark of a blow from Jenkin's Jacob staff. During the war of 1812, he contracted the small pox upon the frontier; came to Squaky Hill. The Indians dreading the spread of the disease, carried him to a hut in the pine woods near Moscow, where he was left to die alone. Earl recovered. He was the early ferry man at the Seneca outlet. There have been many versions of this affair. The author derived his information from the late Judge Porter, and from Judge John H. Jones, whose informants were Horatio Jones and Jasper Parrish, who were present at the trial and execution. He has also a printed account of it in the Maryland Journal, of April 1789. Alpheus Harris was living a few years since, if he is not now, at Spanish Hill, a few miles from Tioga Point. He says the Indians were "tried by committee law."

NOTE. John Swift was a native of Litchfield County Connecticut. He took an active part in the Revolutionary war, and at its close, with his brother Philetus, was an emigrant to the disputed territory in Pennsylvania. He held a commission, and was at the battle of Wyoming; and was also engaged in the "Pennamite" war, where he set fire to a Pennamite block house. He became a commissioned officer in the earliest organization of the militia and in the campaign of 1814 upon the Niagara Frontier, he was commissioned as Brig Gen. of N. Y. volunteers. In reconnoitering the enemy's position and works at Fort George, he captured a picket guard, and while in the act of receiving their arms, one of the prisoners shot him through the breast; an attack from a superior British force followed; the wounded General rallied his men, commenced a successful engagement, when he fell exhausted by his wound. "Never" says an historian of the war, "was the country called upon to lament the loss of a firmer patriot or braver man." The Legislature voted a sword to his oldest male heir. The gift fell to Asa R. Swift of Palmyra who was drowned in Sodus Bay in 1820 or 21 by the upsetting of a boat while engaged in fishing. The sword is now in the hands of Henry C. Swift, his son, a resident o. Phelps. His companion Ashley Van Duzer, was also drowned; his widow a sister of Mrs. Gen. Brooks, became the wife of Gen. Mills of Mt. Morris, and now resides at Brook's Grove. The Rev. Marcus Swift, of Michigan is a son of Gen Swift.

is enumerated in the census taken in the summer of 1790. Mr. Harwood died in 1824. Wm. Harwood, of Ann Arbor, Mich. igan is a son of his; his daughters became the wives of Isaac Mace, of Perry, Wyoming co, and Coe, of Kirtland, Ohio.

The settlers that followed, in 1790, 91, '92, in the order in which they are named, or as nearly so as the author's information enables him to arrange them, were:- Lemuel Spear, David Jackways, James Galloway, Jonathan Millet, the Mattisons; Gideon Durfee the elder, his sons Gideon, Edward, Job, Pardon, Stephen, and Lemuel; Isaac Springer; William, James and Thomas Rogers; John Russell, Nathan Harris, David Wilcox, Joel Foster, Abraham Foster, Elias Reeves, Luther Sanford; and to what was Palmyra, now Macedon, in addition to those that have been named, Messrs, Reid, Delano, Packard Barney, Brown, Adam Kingman, Hill, Lapham, Benj. and Philip Woods.

Lemuel Spear, was a soldier of the Revolution, as most of the Pioneer settlers of Palmyra were. He was from Cummington, Mass. The family came on runners, before the breaking up of the ground in Feb '90, with two yoke of oxen, some cows and sheep, having little more than a bare track and blazed trees to guide them from Vienna to their destination, a mile above Palmyra village, where Mr. Spear had purchased land of Isaac Hathaway, for twenty cents per acre. The season being mild, they turned their stock out upon the open flats, some of which had been cultivated by the Indians, where they got along well through the winter and spring; the family consisting of the parents and nine children, living in a covered sleigh and in a structure similar to the Indians camp, until they had planted a few acres in the spring, when they built a log house. Bringing in a year's provisions, and killing deer whenever they wanted fresh meat, or bartering for venison with the Indians, they got along very well until after the harvest of their few primitive acres of crops. In the first winters, the Indians camped upon the flats and were peaceable, good neighbors, hunting and trapping, occasionally getting a beaver, the last of a colony, selling their furs and skins to traders and bantering their surplus venison with the new settlers. Lemuel Spear died in 1809; his surviving sons, are:- Ebenezer Spear, of Penfield, Abraham Spear, of Jeddo, Orleans county, Stephen Spear, residing upon the old homestead. A daughter is the wife of Dr. Mallory, of Wisconsin.