Comstock's History Page Twelve

SOME OF THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF SCIPIO

CAYUGA COUNTY NEW YORK by Austin B. Comstock

I will be posting each page of this history separately. The index, posted on June 24, 2014 in 4 parts, provides the page numbers; you can also search the blog for a particular name appearing anywhere within it. 

The index is also published at  http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~nycayuga/ and will eventually have a link back to this blog.

I hope you find something new!

Page Twelve

Cornelius P. Ostrander, Adeline Ostrander, Oscar F. Van Marter, Daniel Cannon, Timothy Atwater, James Lyon and William Robinson, who died before the year ran out and it was the first natural death that ever occurred in this house, with the exception of Samuel Phelps who returned from Detroit to die of consumption in 1837. There was one suicide: Cornelius Ostrander. Then Isaac N. Brewster, Walter Battey, Frank C. Smith, Eugene F. Brewster, Morrell Georgia, Byron Hoffman, Edwin Brewster and Herbert Brewster. This hotel has been run as a temperance house since James Lyon ran it. This Lyon is not of the present Lyon family.

It has been owned since Samuel Phelps’ death by Erastus Hill, Leonard Searing, Jason Boughton, William P. Smith, M. B. Kerr, James Allen, C. P. Ostrander, William Rathbun, O. F. Van Marter, M. E. Cuyler, and by William Howland, Isabel Howland and now as a Hospital by Nellie Powers.

In 1828 there was built on the edge of the woods, where the house now in 1939 owned by -?- recently burned, stood, a new log house where the widow Lovett lived with her daughter. The house was then torn down, more land cleared, and a farmhouse built, which was owned at one time by Clement Dixon. He sold to Leonard Searing, then conveyed to William Wilson who in turn took down the frame house and moved a tailor shop from Poplar Ridge and added to it.

This property was owned later by John (James) P. Chase and Abbie (Able) Chase, his father, then by Hannah Griffin, Mrs. Byron Hoffman, C. F. Comstock, Emily Howland, and George Adams. After the house burned, the land was sold to J. D. Houck.

In 1825 a log house stood where Daniel Butler lived, occupied by widow Fulkerson who vacated in favor of Jacob Wilkerson, a renowned wood chopper whose son Alfred later was a renowned man of south eastern Michigan. Leonard Searing and wife commenced living together in a log house a little east of the house now owned by Mrs. William Desmond. Uncle Lock, great uncle to noted “Nasby,” lived in a house across the road from the orchard on the Searing farm. This farm was then owned by Dr. Kinney. After Dr. Kinney’s death the farm was sold to Charles Coffin, a sea faring man from Nantucket, who, with his family, lived on it until 1833 when he sold to Job Otis, a druggist from New Bedford.

Again to Sherwood of an earlier date.

Previous to 1819, Peter Brill carried on the blacksmith business with a shop about where the Frank C. Smith house now stands. This was later used as Slocum Howland’s plow factory.

END OF PAGE 12