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Archiver > NYDELAWA > 2004-07 > 1089562084


From: K Powell <>
Subject: RE: STEWART family
Date: Sun, 11 Jul 2004 09:08:21 -0700 (PDT)
In-Reply-To: <000001c46754$83422340$5e5cc318@Tom>


Some different reasons:

Land speculators. Some things never change.

My bunch went 1818, probably gathered at Goshen to head for Catherine, Tioga Co
(1836 Chemung, now Schuyler; part is now/still Veteran, Chemung). Speculators
Abiel Frye and I forget the other's name, probably? 1818 is known as the year
with no summer - glaciation peak, after that it slowly began to warm, 1850 is
the approximate end of that period that was so cold for about 400 years. Some
of those early 1800s folks at Tioga/Chemung starved to death, ate *anything*,
including a wild bean that was deadly poisonous to some.

(My bunch 2 Pine Bush, Orange County brothers, 2 sisters, McKinney; John
McKinney married Prudence Cook)

I hope you've been using Joyce Tice's site for Chemung research, a lot of
history there, even the 1790 Chemung, *Montgomery County* census.
http://www.rootsweb.com/~srgp/header.htm I have both volumes of the Towner
History of Chemung County.

I've not yet been to Delaware County but from pics and reading, compared to
more gentle land in Chemung County, Chemung looked *good* for growing.
McKinneys, McDougalls, others, took some of Chemung's higher elevations and
went to deforesting Chemung. And goshalldarngofigger, set up whiskey stills.

I get the idea that even by 1818, deforestation was still big business as it
was before the revolution in Delaware County. What good is money from trees if
there's no food, even to buy? The best patches for growing were already owned
by older generations, and you can only split those so far. Some people had to
move away to new land to try to deal with feeding their growing families.
Anyway, this is my WAG as to major factors: land speculators, hunger/cold,
better farmland.

I don't really know how similarly that accounts for another, earlier migration
group that went 1805-7 to Jefferson County; Cook, Horton, Fisher, others that I
know of, just in time to face the War of 1812. Refugee Sally Cook Fisher
(Prudence Cook's elder sister) fled temporarily back to Colchester, Delaware,
where more of her children were born, thus Stephen Fisher must have been with
her to make babies. That isn't reflected in 1810 & 1820 censi which enumerates
them in Jeff county, but proven by birth records she'd gone home to mom Dolly
Parker Cook.

Kaye in Texas

--- Tom Turiel <> wrote:
> I have not been reading all of the messages concerning the STEWART
> family, however; I too have found a connection between my Delaware
> county relatives and Chemung county people. In particular, two citizens
> of Davenport, a James Harlow 1813-1882 and Nancy McDougall 1814-1885
> were married in Davenport and by 1841 they were living in the town of
> Chemung in Chemung county.
>
> A simple response would be, "Go figure", but there certainly must have
> been a motivating force of some kind that would prompt an entire group
> of people to all move to the same county. Another "go figure" is why a
> collection inhabitants of New Scotland in Albany county and ancestors of
> the people that moved to Chemung county, would collectively move to
> Davenport in 1813. Does anyone else have any input to this quandary?
>
> Tom Turiel




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