As early as 1803, additional water had been secured from the river through a small raceway dug by John Bissell and a man named Mason. The volume of water was further increased by a dam thrown across the river at the head of this raceway. The lumber industry having expanded, other mills had been erected further up Martin Brook, thus interfering with the supply of water, and making it necessary to obtain a new source from the river. The original raceway, still called the Binnekill, was a much smaller affair than the present one. By using a pole one could leap across it. It is not unlikely that some water always flowed through from the river, except when the water might be very low. It became an easy matter to enlarge the volume by deepening the bed. Evidence exists above the present river dam on the island side that an earlier dam had been built there running diagonally up the stream, instead of straight across as now. M. W. Duley, who owned the property for many years and often made repairs to the present dam, held to the opinion that the original dam was a primitive affair constructed of brush and stone like an eel rack dam.
There still exists in Mrs. Sumner’s hands a certified copy of the contract for the sale of this property to Sampson Crooker in 1803, as made by the owners, Daniel Bissell and John Bissell. It provided that Mr. Crooker should have “the privilege of opening the artificial raceway called the Binekill wider if necessary to supply the mill with water and throwing out the dirt on the bank of said Binekill, together with all the privileges and appurtenances unto the said land, sawmill and Binekill[13] belonging, and also the dam on the river.” With the mill, the raceway and the dam Mr. Crooker acquired a considerable tract of land, in lots 98 and 99 of the Wallace patent, on which were houses inhabited by Brewster Platt and Elijah Ferry.
The contract further specified that Mr. Crooker should have “the privilege of digging a ditch through on the line between said Livingston’s land and said Bissell’s land from the mill to the river, on condition that Livingston stop the water where it now runs into the river.” For this property Mr. Crooker was to pay eleven hundred dollars. He was described as “of Canton, Greene County.” Mr. Crooker probably erected the grist mill soon after 1804. It was standing in 1808 and he owned the property until finally sold to Joel Bragg. Mr. Crooker’s home stood on the site of the L. B. Woodruff house in a lot which then embraced also the St. Matthew’s Church ground and the cemetery. His brothers George and Jacob soon followed him to Unadilla from Cairo.[14]
From Sampson Crooker these mills passed to Joel Bragg, whose life was one of the most stirring and impressive to be found in these annals. Mr. Bragg was a native of Vermont. With his father early in the century he went to Chenango County. The father seems to have been a “Vermont sufferer”, one of those who were deprived of their Vermont lands by the settlement of the disputes growing out of the New Hampshire Grants, and had received land in Chenango County as compensation for his losses. About the year 1812, Joel Bragg came to Unadilla and purchased land that had been a part of the original Daniel Bissell purchase. He built a new hotel on the site of Mr. Bissell’s hotel, and when this was burned he rebuilt it. George W. Reynolds of Franklin, a few years ago, recalled how in 1828 he had stopped at this hotel with his father, finding it “full of brawny men whose business seemed to be hauling logs to the sawmill and boards to the Delaware at Walton for rafting to Trenton and Philadelphia markets.”
After Mr. Bragg bought the grist and sawmill property from Mr. Crooker, he met with a second misfortune. The mills were burned. It is related that, on the morning after the fire, Mr. Bragg was seen coming down the street smoking a pipe and with an axe over his shoulder. Asked where he was going, his reply was, that he was starting for the woods to cut timber for a new mill. This illustrates the indomitable pluck of Joel Bragg. He not only erected a new sawmill but the stone building used for the gristmill was his work.
Later on Mr. Bragg built the present brick house belonging to the Dr. Gregory estate, making the bricks himself, in the lot between the schoolhouse grounds and the railroad station. This was not long after 1837. Students at the old Academy can recall the ditches that formerly existed in that ground, where clay had been taken out to make bricks. The land being marshy there, these ditches were commonly full of water and became populous with frogs. I well remember going there with other boys to catch these frogs with spears, roasting their legs at the fire we built nearby.
Mr. Bragg died in 1870 at the age of eighty-five years and ten months. A son of his who was reared in this village rose to honors elsewhere,—Edward S. Bragg. He was born in Unadilla in 1827, was educated at Hobart College and read law in the office of Judge Noble. Admitted to the bar in 1848, he soon removed to Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, where he had held several offices before 1860, and in that year became a delegate to the Charleston Convention which nominated Stephen A. Douglass. He became a captain in the army in 1861 and rose to the rank of Brigadier-General, with which he was mustered out in October, 1865, having served in nearly all the campaign of the Army of the Potomac. He was a delegate to the Democratic conventions which nominated Seymour, Greeley and Cleveland. The first nomination of Cleveland was seconded by him in a speech which became celebrated all over the country for its allusion to Tammany Hall’s opposition to Cleveland, General Bragg saying Cleveland was admired “for the enemies he had made.” General Bragg has been repeatedly elected to Congress where he was always a conspicuous figure on the Democratic side. He was seriously mentioned as a candidate for President on the Sound Money Democratic ticket, to run during the first Bryan campaign.
These village mills have had many names contemporary with their owners. Besides the Bissells and Mr. Bragg, the owners have included N. F. Brant, Albert T. Hodges, M. W. Duley and H. Y. Canfield, the present owner. Historic among industries in this village they stand. Elsewhere in the town, few, if any, pioneer mills still remain, and fewer still have any work to perform. Even here the familiar hum of wheel and buzz of saw, which aforetime were often the only sounds that the village heard in still summer afternoons, and which formerly were often heard through the night time also, now seldom startle even the most listening ear. What piles of logs have I not seen gathered about that site in boyhood times; what sleigh-loads have I not seen pass through village streets, now and then to climb upon their tops for a ride to the mill site to watch their unloading! Grass is now growing close to the highway where logs once were piled to the utmost limit, and seldom does any sound emerge from either mill roof or shed.