CHAPTER VI.
HARDSHIPS OF THE NEW COLONY.
It is no small undertaking to reduce heavily timbered lands to farms, especially where there are few, if any, kinds of timber of any market value, as was the case in the Oswego wilderness subdued by this Massachusetts colony and others who settled in with and around about them. All the land had to be cleared twice, and much of it three times, of some tons per acre of encumbrances. First, the trees must be felled, cut up, rolled into heaps, and burned to ashes. Then the huge stumps must take a few years to decay, and then be torn out, piled up in heaps, and also burned. Last, but not always least in labor and cost, a burden of stones had to be drawn off from portions of most of the farms and piled in heaps or wrought into walls. But our colonists were sober, diligent, and persevering, and under their cheerful toil the wilderness was reduced to fruitful fields. The temporary log houses and stables soon gave place to comfortable buildings; and the "clearings" met as the woods disappeared before the ax.
The log chapel dwelling, sacred though it was as God's house and heaven's gate, was one of the first to disappear. A goodly frame house was just covered and its floors laid, but no partitions set up, when it was gloriously consecrated by a most powerful quarterly meeting.
This was in the summer of 1823. Rev. Goodwin Stoddard was the presiding elder, a mighty man when fully aroused. Sunday evening he preached in the new house during a fearful thunderstorm, and seemed girded like Elijah running before the chariot of the king. While Jehovah spake in the clouds, and for a long time the heavens seemed to be "a sheet of flame." He also spake by his servant, and the response from the people was in tears and sobs, groans and shouts; and at the conclusion of nearly every sweep of the preacher's wonderful flights could be heard above the whole a shrill shout from the hostess, followed by a tornado of amens! When the sermon closed the storm ceased, and the "slain of the Lord were many." Memorable night! The people found neither slumber nor weariness, and when the morning dawned very few had not found a brighter dawn.