Fitzwater
Settlers faced challenges as they journeyed to the area.
By FRAN DUMAS
Yates County Historian.
As the trip into the wilderness of western New York was a truly epic journey, families traveled in as large a group as could be induced to go together in at least one case, we have two independent accounts of a single such journey, that of the Fitzwaters, Davises, Mathewses and Joneses from near Philadelphia to the town of Milo in the summer of 1798.
The family of Malachi Davis Jr., 12 of them children, traveled in a single covered wagon pulled by four horses.
The trip of some 300 miles took exactly one month, beginning May 1 and ending June 1, 1798. The road was barely worthy of the name, passing over boulders, tree roots and stumps. A part' of it-passed through an area in northeast Pennsylvania called the “Forty-Mile Wilderness.” About halfway along this stretch lived a man called “Mad Anthony,” who preyed on passing travelers. The party avoided his house, and when Anthony and a few fellow desperados came calling, armed to the teeth, they were dissuaded from any further demonstration by the even better-armed men of the wagon train.
The party crossed the Susquehanna at Sunbury on a flatboat ferry. The wagons were ferried, that is, and the horses ridden across the shallow but very wide river (about a mile and a quarter at that point). The party proceeded up a stream called Trout Run, which they crossed 32 times within just a few miles.
George and Hannah Fitzwater and their six children also took everything they could in a single wagon. These were what were commonly known as “Conestoga” wagons, familiar to everyone from television. Their worldly goods comprised beds, bedding, clothing, a round mahogany table and single' chair, a frying pan an iron pot.
The farther north they got, the worse the road became. They saw no Indians, though that had been the chief anticipated hazard. The Fitzwaters remembered that Mad Anthony sold them milk that turned out to be half water; and his children, pretending to befriend the Fitzwaters’ young children, stole from them some keepsakes of calico and ribbon they carried in their pockets.
They, too, remembered Trout Run and the 32 crossings, along with the catches of fish that greatly enlivened the menu. While crossing the mountains, their horses nearly gave out, and they asked for help from a couple of travelers who happened along with their team. With this aid, they reached what they thought was the top and the travelers departed, but in the morning they saw still more peaks. They partially unloaded the wagon, carried half of it to the other side and unloaded that much, then returned for the stuff they left behind, crossed again and finally got their load back together. When a wheel broke, they were lucky enough to find, a man who could repair it, and tasted, maple sugar for the first time.
They passed Post Town (now Painted Post) - a single house; Savona, which had a tavern; Bartlett’s Hollow; and finally came up the Bath Road as far as modern Barrington, where the teams gave out entirely.
Mrs. Fitzwater rode horseback (no doubt sidesaddle, which is no fun) nearly the whole way, and the children (except for 2-year-old Rachel) walked. One of the boys was sent forward and got ox, teams from Samuel Castner (an old neighbor) to complete the journey. After, a year spent with him not far from Milo Center, the group of families settled around what is now Himrod.
Nearby were their other old neighbors John and William Davis, John Supplee, Silas Spink, Richard A Henderson and Adam Hunt, all of whom had come up within the past eight to 10 years. George Fitzwater’s farm and that of his father-in-law, John Mathews, adjoined. Where the farms met, a graveyard was laid out and today it’s still there, in the top right-hand corner of Grove Mount Cemetery.
The Davises and the Fitzwaters, Joneses and Mathewses are still traveling together.
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