Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Pleasant Valley: A History of Elizabethtown, Essex County, New York
In a work of the kind here undertaken it would be idle to pretend to originality. When the writer was a boy he played at the feet of Mrs. Mary Matthews, widow of Jacob Matthews, one of Elizabethtown's pioneer shoemakers. Mrs. Matthews, locally and familiarly known as Grandmother Matthews, lived in the home of the writer for over a year, being at that time nearly 90 years of age. She had often ridden on horseback, with a baby in her arms, following a line of blazed trees from Northwest Bay to Pleasant Valley, and her account of the hard ships and privations of pioneer days fell upon my ears at the formative period of my life. During my boyhood there were eight men living within the present limits of the town of Elizabethtown who had served as soldiers in the War of 1812, six who had fought for the United States and two for King George III, but deserted before the Battle of Plattsburgh, eventually coming here to settle, making good American citi zens. It was my good fortune to know all of these warriors, and to be on terms of intimacy with some of them - a case of growing up among History Makers. Over twenty years ago I decided to write Pleasant Valley, A History of Elizabethtown. Gradually the material has been collected and arranged. The writing of the history of this town has been delayed too long, as all the earliest settlers are in their graves. A few of the chil dren of the pioneers are yet living, at an advanced age, in townand its vicinity, who will please accept my grateful acknowledg ments for facts which they have so kindly furnished. I have em deavored to relate facts, as I understood them, without preju dice or exaggeration, and have let no opportunity escape me of rescuing from oblivion those facts which makes up the his tory of my native town - facts which must grow in interest and importance as time passes.
I am especially indebted to the late Oliver Abel, Sr., and his sons, the late Leander Abel and the venerable Charles L. Abel, (the latter for 60 years aresident of Buffalo, N. Y.) to Richard L. Hand and his son, Augustus N. Hand, Harry Hale, the late Judge Byron Pond and his youngest son, Levi S. Pond, Wil liam H. Roberts, Robert B. Dudley, W. Scott Brown, Judge Rowland C. Kellogg, John Drowne Nicholson, Henry Har mon Noble, the late James W. Steele, Arthur E. Coonrod, Clarence Underwood, Solon B. Finney, Daniel Cady Jackson, William Wallace Jackson, Dr. Midas E. Bishop, the late Bain bridge Bishop, Jerome T. Lobdell, Wallace W. Pierce, Alpheus A. Morse, Charles H. Noble, Dr. John G. Noble, the late Charles N. Williams, Milo C. Perry, Byron Pond Turner, Mrs. Ann Eliza Miller, Mrs. S. W. Osgood, Mrs. Ellen Burbank, Miss Adeline Post, Mrs. William Richards, Miss Sarah L. Calkin, Miss Annette Rowe, Miss M. E. Perry, Mrs. E. H. Putnam, Miss Alice E. Abel, Mrs. Caroline Halstead Royce, and last but n0t least to those venerable sons of pioneers Dr. R. J. Roscoe and Alonzo mcd. Finney, to whose sugges tions many essential features of this work owe their existence.
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