Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER XII. KIRKLAND. Tins is a most interesting section of the county. Its college and seminaries of learning render it, not only tho literary and scientific emporium of Oneida County, but of central Now York. The religious societies of the town are if tho highest order, and their early records show them as models for their eotemporaries and successors. The settlement of this town was commenced in March. 17S7, the first emigration having consisted of eight families. Some little uncertainty exists as to the names of all tin- Leads of these eight families, but as to five of them there is no dispute. Moses Foot and his three sons, Bronson. Luther, and Ira, and his son-in-law Barnabas Pond, were of the number ; and there is but little doubt that Levi Shearman and Solomon Hovey were two of the eight; but whether Ludim Blodget or Timothy Tuttle made the eighth, must remain a matter of uncertainty. But this is a question of very trifling importance, for in the month of April succeeding, we find the names of Blodget and Tuttle, Samuel Hub- bard, Randall Lewie, Cordial Storrs, John Bullen, and Capt. Cassety, father of Col. Cassety,— the pioneer of Oriskany Falls,—among the settlers. Capt. Moses Foot was the leading spirit of the emigrants. In the fall previous (1786), an exploring party of the settlers came from the German Flats to Paris Hill, followingthus far the "Old Moyer Road," an Indian trail leading from Buffalo to the valley of the Mohawk, at a place some distance below Utica, where a Dutchman named Moyer kept a tavern. The exploring party left Paris Hill and came to the elevated plain near where Daniel P. Northrop and this widow Mary Baird now reside, and here the party divided, a part wishing to commence operations at this place, whilo the others proceeded to the si...