Wordless Wednesday: WIllard Chapel

 

Wordless Wenesday: Animal Land

 

Upcoming Jefferson County Meetings

 

Dry Creek

 

Dry Creek. Sounds like a pretty safe place to be. Well, not always— spring rains come down, snow melts off and the creek becomes anything, but dry.

Dry Creek is the name of the stream that meanders through Fillmore Glen State Park in Moravia. The stream makes many of the beautiful spots that draw people to the park. Follow the gorge trail through the park and you are walking beside Dry Creek most of the way. Large pieces of shale line the bottom of the creek in spots. Waterfalls, both small and medium-size are abundant along the trails when the water flows plentifully. Wooden bridges meander back and forth across the stream. Hiking to the far point of the trail or driving to a parking lot nearby, you can see the dam that was created to hold the water back and form a pond that has beavers living there. You can even walk across the top of the dam to the head of the hiking trails from the end that comes down to the pond from the parking area. Yes, a lot of Dry Creek is anything, but dry.

Nearer the front of the park, a driveway dips down and fords the creek on the way to a parking lot for picnickers and hikers. Kids enjoy riding their bikes down through the water. As a kid, I nicknamed it “the bike car wash.” There is a footbridge beside it if you don’t want to get your shoes wet, but still want to cross from one side to the other. Just beyond this, the creek separates campsites from camping cabins. A bridge in the camping area carries cars and RVs to the farther side with a rumble that sounds like thunder. A great thrill to listen to especially for young children.

Upon the hill behind the campground is Dry Creek cemetery. It can most easily be reached along the trail that leads from the campground to the back playground at the nearby elementary school. This cemetery is no longer in use. It was the first burial ground for the village of Moravia. Many of the earliest settlers are buried there along with their families. There are some sad rows of stones where whole families of children are buried, some with death dates within days or weeks of each other. Obviously, with dates like this, some illness swept through this family and perhaps the village as well. Although many recovered, many apparently didn’t.

Why was the cemetery abandoned? A severe storm in August of 1863 caused flooding across the state. Dry Creek was certainly no exception and flooded. It flooded so bad that it took about an acre of soil at a depth of twenty feet that was swept away from the cemetery! Along with this dirt, sixteen coffins were swept away into the torrent of water. As they were tossed about, many of the coffins struck against branches or each other causing them to open and expose the body within; which was then swept up into the water as well. Amongst the corpses was that of Lieutenant Stoyell, a prominent citizen that was recently deceased. About half of the coffins and corpses were recovered by the next day.

After having a number of smaller floods before this massive one, the citizens of Moravia were tired of dealing with this problem. Samuel Ely Day donated land to the north of the village, high on the hill, for a new cemetery. And thus Indian Mound Cemetery was created where local citizens are buried to this day. Ironically, the first burial in the cemetery was that of Mr. Day, himself.

Wordless Wednesday: Saint James Church, Skaneateles

 

Wordless Wednesday: Fort Ticonderoga part 2

 

Wordless Wednesday: A Winter Wonderland from the 70's

Wordless Wednesday: Fort Ticonderoga

 

Catamount Tavern

 

The Catamount

 “Ethan needs us at Ti! Ethan needs us at Ti!” 

The shouts rang out throughout the countryside. But what did this mean and where was it?

Ethan Allen needed troops to take Fort Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain in New York State. The time was May 1775 along the border of New York State in what would become Vermont. Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain boys would mount a dawn attack taking back the fort from a British garrison. This would be the first battle won by the Americans in the Revolutionary War.

Why were riders sent out across the countryside with such a cry? The Green Mountain Boys were not a regular army. They were more like Bo and Luke Duke from the 1970’s tv show The Dukes of Hazzard. They were good old boys— a group of men coming together for a cause they believed in. Originally formed in 1770, their initial goal was to defend the rights of property owners. They were mostly farmers with tradesmen thrown in as well. They came from the farms in the hills and mountains of Vermont as well as some areas in the easternmost part of New York. All of them rallied under the leadership of Ethan Allen.

Only about a hundred men were rounded up for that early dawn siege. However, it was enough and the British fell. Not only a strategic spot at the south end of Lake Champlain but cannons from Fort Ticonderoga were also used the following spring in the successful siege of Boston. It was a morale booster and provided key artillery for the Continental Army.

How was this all planned and where was it all planned? Men met in a small tavern on the hill on the edge of Bennington Vermont. It was the headquarters for Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys. The tavern was the Catamount tavern owned by Stephen Fay and originally called simply Fay’s Tavern. However, when New York was trying to take over the land of present-day Vermont, a stuffed catamount was placed in front of the tavern and it became better known by that name. What is a catamount? It is a mountain lion, a wildcat, or a bobcat, or probably at least a dozen different names in different regions of North America.

Bennington, Vermont is better known today as the site of the battle of Bennington, which actually took place across the border in New York You will find on the street that leads to the famed Bennington Monument a granite and copper statue of a catamount. Looking away from the street, you will find a stately house built likely during the Victorian period. The tavern was built on this site in 1769 and stood until a fire destroyed it in 1871. General John Stark planned the Battle of Bennington in this tavern. As well, in 1775, the Vermont Council of Safety— Vermont's only independent form of government— met here.

The Catamount Tavern was an important part of the Revolutionary War in this part of our new country. For me, the tavern has some different connections that make it important.

The first connection is that of the tavern keeper, Stephen Fay. He was the grandson of John Fay and his first wife, Mary Brigham. John would later marry Susanna Shattuck and one of their four children was David. David who was the father of Deacon John Fay. Deacon John surely must have at least known of his cousin in Bennington. He lived in Southborough, Massachusetts in the eastern part of the state. Did these cousins ever meet? I wonder because Deacon John was my 5th great-grandfather.

And that battle that John Stark planned. The battle, that before it he famously stated: 

"There are your enemies, the Red Coats and the Tories. They are ours, or this night Molly Stark sleeps a widow!" 

Spoiler alert: Molly Stark slept just fine, she was not a widow that night. The Battle of Bennington took place a few miles west of the tavern in an area known as White Creek in present-day Washington County, New York. There is a park there today, and the land touches on the land once owned by Seth Chase. His tavern is less than a mile off the battlefield, and they must have seen at least some of the battle that day. Seth Chase is yet another of my 5th great-grandfathers.

Seth Chase's Tavern today

So much history is tied up in that one tavern that existed during the Revolutionary War, both the countries and my own personal history.

Willard Psychiatric

 As a child, I heard about Willard and had a vague understanding that it was a hospital for people with mental problems. It seemed to be a common threat among parents in the area that “you’re driving me to Willard.” My mother had a twist on it that I was going to have her driving the bus. But what was this really?

Officially it was Willard Asylum for the Chronic Insane and was located in Ovid, New York. A group of Victorian buildings situated between Seneca and Cayuga Lakes in the Finger Lakes region, they were intended to be a better alternative for people with mental disorders and other illnesses that rendered people incapable of taking care of themselves.

And it was better. Willard was better than the almshouses of the early 1800s where people were crowded in together, both the poor and those in need of mental help with no regard to their condition or health status. Here at least doctors and medical staff attempted to treat and take care of the patients. Little was known as yet about mental health conditions, but they did their best to care for people that were often left at the doorstep and forgotten about by their families.

New York’s Surgeon General, Dr. Sylvester D. Willard was the main person behind the founding of the hospital which bears his name. Abraham Lincoln signed off on the proposal for a state-run hospital just 6 days before his death. The doors opened to patients in 1869 and they soon came flooding in. People in all kinds of conditions came from various places, especially almshouses across the state. One even arrived in a chicken cage! As so little was known about mental health in these times, it quickly became a dumping ground for undesirables. Both severe mental and physically handicapped people were sent here,. Others were sent for such things as “feeble-mindedness” and “nervousness,” As you can surmise, all kinds of people were sent to Willard in this time period.

I have come across letters where a distant cousin had been sent here. Her husband visited her once or twice, as well as her son, and thought she might be improving. From the husband’s descriptions, it sounded like she had what today might have been defined as severe depression, or perhaps she was showing the early signs of dementia. It is hard to decipher what is wrong with her. She seemed to have an appetite, yet needed to be fed, and this might be why she only stayed a little over a month or so before passing away, It is especially sad when you realize her family must have wanted her home, and although the doctors gave little hope, probably were hoping for some sort of recovery. Her husband describes the trains he has to take to get there from Auburn and the fact that he had to spend the night in Geneva.

The campus was built like many other Victorian-era institutes. There was a women’s side and a men’s side to it. Violent and non-violent patients were kept in separate areas. The administrative buildings were in the center. Originally it was supposed to be an agricultural college before Cornell University took over that role. Therefore, there was plenty of land that would be used for gardening and raising produce for their kitchens.

Although there were various entertainment facilities and patients were allowed to walk the grounds at will, it was very much a hospital. No patient could leave the grounds without permission. Electro-shock and ice bath treatments were used and there were operating theaters on the grounds. Likewise, there was a morgue and a cemetery where patients were buried with only a number to identify who was in each grave. My cousin was perhaps one of the luckier ones as she was returned to the family after her death and buried in the family plot next to where her husband would be buried upon his death in a few years.

The asylum operated until 1995 when it closed completely. Today the campus is shared by New York States corrections and a residential drug treatment program. Both areas are kept secure for obvious reasons and the old buildings can be seen just from the nearby roads that surround the old campus.

Wordless Wednesday: Montezuma Refuge

 

Wordless Wednesday: Elizabeth Cady Stanton