Book Description

Excerpt from A History of the First Presbyterian Church, of Springfield, N. Y: Presented in a Memorial Discourse, by Recommendation of the General Assembly, July 16, 1876 Going back one hundred and fourteen years, to the year of our Lord, 1762, we find this now beautiful township, (then a part of Cherry Valley, ) with its many comfortable habitations, its school houses and its sanctuaries, its sweet hills and cultured vales, une unbroken wilderness, a wild and romantic country in deed, then with springs and brooks, rocks and dells, forest trees and wild mountain flowers, the charming lake calm as an infant asleep or sparkling as a gem set amid the hills. But no house of God was here, no human habitations, no cattle grazed among the pastures, no gardens or orchards of fruits beautified a single acre of the rich soil. The wild beast was here, the fox, the bear and the panther, and the wilder red man pursued his game the streams and amid the forests. In the year 1762, thirteen years before the war of the Revolution opened, the first settlements were begun, five families taking up lands, viz: that of John Kelly, Richard Ferguson and James Young in the eastern section of the town, also by Gustavus Klumph and Jacob Tygart at the head of the lake. Very few were added to the number until after the war, though here and there a house constructed of rude logs sprang up on some hill or within some secluded vale. Cherry Valley had been occupied for twenty years; a company of Presbyterians, originally from Scotland, but a portion of the Colony that coming in 1719 to Londonderry in New Hampshire, emigrated hither in 1741. Rev. Samuel Dunlop was their minister. Their growth, though the town then included many of the present surrounding towns, was very slow. In 1752, twelve years after the first settlement, there were but eight families in the place, and in 1765, twenty five years from the settlement, there were but forty families. It is difficult for us to form a just conception of the country as it was when the first five families commenced a house amid these forests and hills. Cherry Valley was but a little hamlet far out in the woods, a remote outpost of civilization in the distant west, as viewed by the inhabitants of New England and the dwellers on the Hudson. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.