The History of Cayuga County 1789-1879 page 419
Town of Scipio/Early Settlements
Bolts Corners. The old house in which he lived and died is still standing.
He died at an early day, about 1816. His family consisted of Betsey, who
was born a little south of Levanna, in Ledyard, December 5th, 1790, and was
the first white child born in the town, and probably the first in the county,
and who married a man named Sweetland, with whom she removed from the town;
Armarilla, afterwards wife of Joseph Jackson; Cynthia, afterwards wife of
Roswell Bennett; Amanda, afterwards wife of Cyrus Allen; Lucinda, afterwards
wife of Reuben Weed; and Welthy, Anna, Sarah, Gore and Augustus, the latter
of whom is the only one living - in Michigan.
Samuel Phelps, from Connecticut, came in soon after Watkins and settled at
Sherwood. His log house stood a little in the rear of the house now occupied
by S. W. Green. He afterwards built the north end of Green's house, and died
there. His children were Samuel, Erastus, Seth, Orpha, widow of Joshua Hill,
who is the only one living, aged about ninety, and another daughter who married
Joel Shemar.
Squire Gilbert and Captain Alanson Tracy, cousins, came in from Pittsfield,
Mass., in 1793. Gilbert settled first near Scipioville, and afterwards at
Bolts Corners, which was for some time known as Tracy's Corners from him,
but it subsequently acquired the former name from a family named Bolt, who
settled there between 1815 and '20, and kept tavern there several years.
One of the family, Augustus Bolt, is living a half mile north of Daniels
Corners. Gilbert subsequently removed to Venice, where he died about 1842.
Philander Tracy, a son of Gilbert's, went to Grand Rapids when young, and
died there a few years ago. Seneca, another son, also moved west. Two of
his children are living, viz: Kester, in Chautauqua county, and Ezra, in
Ohio. Alanson settled a half mile east of Sherwood, where his son Calvin,
who was born here in 1810, now lives. Clinton, a son of Alanson's, moved
to Ohio. Alanson was a man of great prowess, energy and perseverance. It
is related of him that once while upon a bear hunt, seeing a companion in
imminent danger of being embraced by a bear, he jumped astride the back of
the bear, which was standing erect upon his hind feet, and seizing him by
the ears, rode him until his bearship was clubbed to death. He died in 1852,
aged 81. In this year, (1793) on the 25th of June, the first marriage in
the town took place. The contracting parties were Wm. Allen and Betsey Watkins.
An important acquisition was made to the little settlement in 1794, in the
person of Elder David Irish, who it is said, preached that year the first
Evangelical gospel sermon known to have been preached in the County.* Elder
Irish was born in Paulington, Dutchess county, December 21st, 1757. At the
age of seventeen he became converted, was baptized and united with the Church.
He subsequently made some preparation for the ministry, and preached his
first sermon December 21st, 1787, the day he was thirty years old. He was
ordained in 1789, and after laboring three years in Eastern New York, removed
with his family to Scipio in 1794, at which time there was neither church
nor minister of any denomination, not only within the limits of this County,
but that vast fertile section of the State, now so populous and thrifty,
west of the counties of Oneida and Chenango. Wondrous has been the transformation
within the brief period of eighty-four years, a period covered by the lives
of many who are now living. Elder Irish came immediately from Stillwater,
and settled at Scipio Center, on the west half of lot 23. His house stood
directly opposite the present Baptist church in that village, on whose site
he was the first settler, but was joined in the spring of 1795 by Major Josiah
Buck, who took up the east half of that lot. He commenced at once the practice
of his vocation, holding religious services in the houses of that sparsely
settled neighborhood, and later in the log school-house, the first one in
the original town of Scipio, which stood on the site of the widow Perkins'
house, a mile north of Scipio Center, on the lot which Joel Coe took up in
1795. In 1801, he exchanged farms with his brother-in-law, Nathaniel Olney,
who came from Stillwater about that time and settled three miles south of
Auburn, in the town of Fleming. Irish, who served the First Church
*History of the Cayuga Baptist Association, 1851. Though we are not prepared
to deny the accuracy of this statement, there is good reason to question
it. It is seen that Elder Irish did not come to this County until 1794. There
is documentary evidence to show that Aaron Kinne, a missionary, who was the
first to preach at the settlements in Genoa, performed a marriage ceremony
in November 1793, near the Northville settlements, and although we are not
able to assert positively that he preached there at that time, it is highly
probable that he did.
The information on this page was transcribed to a digital format by
Roger A. Post
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1789-1879 by Elliott Storke
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