THE HISTORY OF WEST MONROE
West Monroe, N. Y. 1839 to 1989
Edited by Lee and Elaine Mount (Summarized)
The beginnings of the town of West Monroe are sketchy because of limited record keeping that was done in the lands west of what was Albany and Montgomery Counties. In 1768 Sir William Johnson, as representative of the English, made an agreement with the Mohawk and Oneida Tribes of the Iroquois, that lands west of Rome and the Susquehanna were not to be open for white men to purchase. In 1772 all the land from this line to the western boundaries of New York were established as a new county named Tryon for the royal governor at the time. After the Revolutionary War, the lands in what became Oswego County were transferred from Indian to New York State possession. In a treaty with the Onondagas, Cayugas and Oneidas made in 1788 the Oneidas retained one half mile square every six miles along the north shore of Oneida Lake for fishing sites. All other Oswego County lands became State owned and by 1789 tracts of land were offered as bounty lands.
The tract in which West Monroe is situated was first purchased by John and Nicholas Roosevelt, and they, less than a year later in 1792, sold it to George Scriba. In that same year the first town was established, Mexico. The boundaries of the town extended from the mouth of the Chittenango Creek in the South eastern shore of Oneida lake west and north through Constantia and along the east part of Parish ending west of Lysander and Hannibal. Just two years later these latter two places were separated from the town of Mexico to become part of Onondaga County. Scriba began a settlement in 1793 at Rotterdam, which was his name for Constantia. He succeeded next in building a road to the mouth of the Salmon Creek which was completed in 1794 or the spring of 1795. A section of that road went through land that became West Monroe. Scriba had the surveyor, Benjamin Wright, layout townships in his tract that were an average of forty square miles each. To township # 12, which later became West Monroe, Scriba gave the name Delft for a city in Holland which was his native land. In 1796 the town of Mexico lines were redrawn to include land north of Oneida Lake from Fish Creek to the Oswego River, along Lake Ontario to the Black River and along it as far as Lyon’s Falls and then by a line between Leyden and West Turin back to Fish Creek.
Settlement in Delft began in 1806 when Martin Owens, Abel Ames, Joseph B. Ames, Ebenezer Loomis and Sylvanus Allen located their farms in the township. The land was purchased for $2 or $2.50 an acre. These early settlers cut down the trees and constructed log dwellings. They most likely had a team of oxen, since they were the most economical beasts of burden. Rather than wagons, sleds were more useful in the timber strewn terrain, not only in the late winter and early spring, but also when the ground was bare. Possessions would have included a feather bed, a couple of splint bottom chairs, some crude table service, two iron pots, a gun for hunting and a few items of linsey-woolsey clothing. On arrival they brought some provisions such as flour, a side of pork and potatoes.
Three of these early residents moved away: Martin Owens to Wisconsin in 1847,
Ebenezer Loomis to Cicero in 1830 and Sylvanus Allen to Lysander in 1841. Allen
returned to West Monroe 1854 and died in 1865 at the home of one of his sons.
In 1808 the township of Rotterdam, together with Delft and Breda (now Hastings) were organized as a town apart from Mexico. The new town was named Constantia. That same year Deacon Smith came from Massachusetts and settled near what became the West Monroe-Hastings town line at Mallory. That first year he built his house and began the first saw mill in the town. It was completed the next year. In the year 1810 Hiram Nickinson also from Massachusetts settled on
lot 75 which was located at the north east corner of what is at this writing Gulf Bridge and Hellinger Roads. Also that year a group of fishermen from Cape Cod came to West Monroe, having heard about the salmon in Oneida Lake. The families, which included those of Enoch Nickinson, Captain Walker and his five sons, soon found that the fishing business could not sustain them and those who stayed in the town turned to farming.
That same year the first school was built of logs on the main road about a mile west of the where the Munger home now stands. The first teacher was Caroline Barnes. The next year Deacon Smith erected a frame building to be the first hotel in the area. He operated it through the war of 1812, which ended in 1814.
For the next several years few new settiers came into the town. Those who were
here replaced their log dwellings with frame construction and gradually prepared more land for farming. Roads were opened through the woods to connect the points of settlement. The County of Oswego was formed from Oneida and Onondaga Counties in 1816.
ANCESTORS WHO POPULATED THE TOWN
A large number of settlers came into the area in 1820. They included Samuel Atherton, Aaron Raymond, John Pierce, Samuel Baker, John Wilson, Joseph Stall, Eleazer Slocum, Isaac Simmons, James Simmons, Silas Penoyer, Riswell Gates, James Penoyer and Amasa Davis. Most of these settled in the area subsequently named Union Settlement. Aaron Raymond built a saw mill in the town in 1821.
George Phillips settled near the lake on the west side of the road to the harbor. Linus Walker purchased the west side of the same lot taken up by Phillips. Mr. Walker drowned early in the winter of 1829 while skating on the lake in what has been described as a state of insanity. In later years, two of his five sons accidentally drowned.
Between 1830 and 1840 the population grew to 908. Some of the heads of households who arrived during this time included Freeman Burr, Russell Kinyon, James D. and Benjamin Spencer, Jerry Cronon, James G. Caldwell, Jerry Letts, C.W. Pattat, M. A. Raymond, Lewis Rill, George Getman, Abram Buskin, Azor Hoyt, Horace Spencer, George C. Hoyt, Augustus G. Jewell, Joseph Shaw, Peter Phillips, Abraham and Joel Merchant, Lucius and Marcus Patterson, Philip Rea, Henry Stall, Benjamin G. Lewis, Willet Miller and Edward Dundin.
A school was built in Union Settlement about 1830 and another at West Monroe. The first store was erected in 1834 by Charles P. Jewell on the north west corner of what is now Route 49 and County Route 11. The building still stands little changed from its beginning. The town population continued to grow from then on. Sometime in the thirties Pliny Draper built the first hotel. He sold the business to James and Horace Spencer, and they sold it to Eleazer Slocum in 1840. Slocum had arrived in the town in 1825 and erected a log cabin. The farm on which the hotel stood had originally belonged to one of the earliest settlers, Abel Ames. Mr. Slocum ran the hotel until his death in 1850. At One time two other hotels were located in the town. They were kept by Captain Owen and Captain Allen. Charles Jewell eventually moved his business to the east side of the creek to the store, which is at the present time known as Nu Mart. Finally his business was housed in the rear of what was the Wightman house, now owned by Calista Munger. The store which Charles Jewell vacated was run successively by Henry J. Jewell, Ichabod Spencer, Henry and James Baker, Henry E. Miller, J. E. Sperry, W. H. Ray and James Burr.
There are some interesting facts on record in Landmarks of Oswego County (1895) about a few others of the early inhabitants of West Monroe. Edward Duerdin took as his second wife Caroline Barnes, the first school teacher in the town. Their son, Oscar, who was born in West Monroe in 1826, also became a teacher at the age of 19 and at 21 was elected superintendent of schools for the town. Rev. William Nutting, who was born in Otsego County, came to West Monroe in 1825. He was a Free Baptist preacher and also laid out and cut many of the roads in town. Peter Phillips came from Columbia County and had a son, Elijah (born in West Monroe in 1828), who was a boater on the Erie Canal. Another, Josiah Allen came to the town in 1836 with his family. He had been born in Massachusetts; died in West Monroe in 1845. Josiah's wife Lucy lived to be 92, dying in 1889. Freeman Burr was born in Madison County in l817 and arrived in West Monroe in 1845. He is one of seven children of one Aaron Burr.
On the 21st of March, 1839 the New York State Legislature passed an act to divide the Town of Constantia in the County of Oswego. All that part of Constantia known as township number twelve of Scriba's patent was erected into a separate town to be known by the name of West Monroe. The first town meeting for the election of officers was to be held in the house kept by John M. Wadsworth on the first Tuesday of May next. When the supervisors and overseers of poor met to divide the property and funds of the towns, they were to divide the poor of the towns in the same ratio that the property was divided. The first town meeting was actually held at the home of James D. Spencer. A list of town officers then and for succeeding years is in a chapter following. No church buildings or religious societies were yet organized, but services were occasionally held in private buildings. The settlement known as Little France organized the first church meeting in 1835. This community of French and German Catholic people erected the first church building in 1842 on land given by Anthony Besanson. The Presbyterian Church was the next one built in West Monroe on Whig Hill in 1849. The land had been donated to the church by James Caldwell, who settled in the town in 1837 from Ireland. The pastor was Rev. Samuel Leonard. Rev. Leonard was born in Shewsbury, Vermont in 1800. He received his education at Williams College in Massachusetts. In addition to the Whig Hill Church he founded one in Constantia and Cleveland. In 1844 Union Settlement opened a post office. Silas Penoyer was the first post master and remained in that position for the 16 years it was open.
In the decade between 1840 and 1850 lumbering became an important business in the town. Several mills were built. A landing was constructed on the shores of Oneida Lake to accommodate the lumbermen and others. Among the heads of household who settled here during that time were Merritt Burgess, Warren Burgess, J.E. Phillips, Curtis Harding, Alvin A. Raymond, W. C. Humphrey, and H.A. Smith. The 1850 census shows a total of 1197 residents. The majority were listed as farmers, but there were also 3 lumbermen, 9 laborers, 42 coopers, 3 shoemakers, 3 sawyers, 5 carpenters, 1 carpenter/joiner, 3 blacksmiths, 1 millwright, 2 clergymen, 1 stone mason, 1 inn keeper, 1 merchant 1 tailor, and 4 boatmen. Those who had settled in West Monroe by then had come from other parts of New York, all parts of New England and the countries of France, Germany, Switzerland, England, Ireland, and Canada.
When Eleazer Slocum died in 1850, his son John assumed the hotel business and continued to run it except for an eight year period, which histories do not explain. A Free Will Baptist Church was built in about 1854 on property owned by John Slocum. The pastor at the time was Elder Hanson. The membership eventually disbanded and the building was then used by the Seventh Day Adventists and others. In 1856 William Counterman, whose forbearers were Dutch, married the daughter of Rev. Leonard, Hannah. He was a cooper and then turned to farming first in Constantia and then in West Monroe, where he also was post master at one time.
The population in 1860 had reached 1,416. There were at that time nine school districts which had 513 children in attendance. Next to farming, coopering was the most prevalent occupation with 90 listing that in the 1860 census. There were also 17 carpenters, 14 teachers, 4 sawyers, 4 blacksmiths, 3 stone masons, 3 preachers, 2 lumbermen, 2 mill wrights and a joiner, brick mason, shoemaker, boatman, merchant, fisherman, brewer, wagon maker and contractor. At a town meeting on September 6, 1862 it was resolved that West Monroe would pay each volunteer who joined the Union Army to fulfill the town's quota $20 upon his mustering in. The names of those who served from West Monroe number 82.
Over the next twenty years, during and after the Civil War, West Monroe grew to a population of over 1300. Orson, the son of Josiah Allen, who was mentioned above, was born in Chenango County in 1828 and began to farm in West Monroe in 1849. Orson married Almedia Oyer daughter of Jacob and Elizabeth Oyer. In 1860 they moved to Iowa. Orson served in the Civil War with the cava1ry and was discharged with a disability. In 1862 they returned to West Monroe to live on the Oyer farm. Charles Smith, born in New Hampshire, arrived in 1861 and married Eunice Phillips, who was the daughter of Peter Phillips. Charles farmed 125 acres. Harvey Smith (born in Parish) purchased a saw mill in 1862 and 430 acres of timberland. When a post office was established in that locality in 1885 Harvey Smith was post master. In 1862 Ranson "Jerry " Letts (born in Parish) married Ann Nutting, the preacher's daughter. The post office became known locally as the Jerry Post Office in his honor. In 1863 Constant Pattat, whose father Jacob was born in France in 1832, bought the store in Little France. It carried general merchandise, agricultural implements and hardware. He established the post office in Little France in 1876 and served as post master for 12 years. When Christjohn Ludeman arrived from Mulenburg Germany in 1865, he was too late to serve in the Civil War .That first winter in West Monroe he chopped wood. After three years he brought his mother and a brother to the town. He married a daughter of Joseph Phillips, Mary, in 1872. Solomon Graves who came to the town from Vienna, Oneida County, bought a canal boat, which he ran for 4 years, before turning to farming. He came to own 295 acres. Alvin A. Raymond started up a single stone grist mill in 1875, the first in the town. Before that residents took their grain to neighboring towns for grinding.
The population of West Monroe by 1880 was 1,314. A decade later it had actually decreased to 1,100. In 1882 the small hotel and tavern owned by John Slocum was razed and a grander one, which is shown in the photo, was erected. It housed the only hostelry in West Monroe. By 1885 Edgar Wightman and his father-in- law., Cyrus Cross succeeded J. E. Sperry in the mercantile business on the east side of what had been named Slocum Creek across from the Jewell store. Wightman was born and raised in Parish. Mr. Cross was married to Laura Penoyer. The pastor at the Presbyterian Church, Rev. Leonard died in 1886. He held the distinction of being the oldest Mason in Oswego County at the time. The church became connected to the one in Constantia by the end of the century. That same year Cross and Wightman opened a cheese factory and in 1889 sold it to William Mutter. In 1887 Francis Piguet moved to West Monroe from Cicero. He farmed and then turned to manufacturing shingles and barrel heading in 1893.
The Methodist Church was established in 1890 and a building built under the pastorate of Rev. C. H. Bassett. In 1891 Gilbert Burr, born in West Monroe in 1856, established a mercantile and agricultural implements business. Butter was a specialty in his store. Prior to that from 1873 through 1892, he taught school in the winter. At the end of the 1890's there were eight school districts known as I11-West Monroe, 112-Mud Settlement, 113-Whig Hill, 114-0strums, 115-Toad Harbor, 116-Union Settlement, 117 -Nutting, and 118-Green. In 1882-3 there were 227 children attending. The value of the school property was $3,810. The state support of the schools was $962.07 and local taxes collected for them totaled $736.26. Through the years of the 19th Century postmasters were Edgar M. Wightman, W. H. Ray, John Slocum and J. W. Phillips.