NOTE-The names were, many of them, wrong, in the transcript copied from. After such corrections as the author is enabled to make by reference to other records, there are yet, it is presumed, some errors. BENJAMIN BARTON. He was a native of Sussex county, New Jersey; born in 1771. When but seventeen years of age -in the year 1787—he accompanied his father to assist in driving a drove of cattle and sheep purchased for the use of the British Commissariat at Niagara. The route was the one that has already been described; the Indian trail, that was then the only route to Fort Niagara and Canada. On reaching the Genesee river, the party rested for a few days to allow the cattle and sheep to recruit, and while there, erected a small log cabin, for their own convenience, and the convenience of other drovers; which is supposed to be the first tenement erected by white men, between Whitestown on the Mohawk and the western frontiers of the state. Major Barton came to Geneva in 1788; and in the year 1790, purchased from Poudery, a Frenchman, who had married a squaw, (and to whom the Indians had given the land,) a valuable farm on the Cashong creek, seven miles from Geneva. This farm was formerly the site of an Indian town which had been destroyed by the army of Gen. Sullivan in 1779. More than one hundred acres of it had been improved from time immemorial; so long, that the stumps had rotted away, and there were a great many old apple trees growing upon it, many of which were more than a foot and a half in diameter. These were the only things on it that escaped the destruction inflicted upon all Indian towns he reached, by Gen. Sullivan. In payment for this farm, he gave all the money and property he had, even to parting with a portion of his raiment. He had great difficulty in getting the purchase ratified by the State, but succeeded finally, through the great kindness and assistance rendered to him by Gov. George Clinton. In 1792, Major Barton, was married at Canandaigua to the kind and affectionate companion who yet survives him, and with whom he lived nearly half a century. After his marriage he settled in Geneva, where his first child, a daughter, was born; and in 1794 removed on to his farm, where he continued to reside until the spring of 1807, when he removed to Lewiston in Niagara county. He was employed a long time by the Surveyor General in surveying the State military tract lying east of Ontario, to, and including Onondaga county; as well as rendering much service in that way in Ontario county. |