With Elisha Luther came his son, Martin B. Luther, whose death in the summer of 1890 removed a citizen of much personal worth and superior intellectual endowments. He had been supervisor in 1841 and 1842 and was a justice of the peace for several terms. He was an authority on titles in the Wallace and Upton patents and was a surveyor of long experience. He was prominent in Masonry. He joined to wide reading a clear and large understanding. Mr. Rogers[19] did not exaggerate in describing him as “a man of great capacity, much modesty, an honored citizen, a good farmer, and a gentleman of unquestioned honor.”
On the Unadilla river a large family of the name of Spencer settled,—so large indeed that a part of that neighborhood was known as “Spencer Street.” The father was Jonathan Spencer and one of the sons was Orange Spencer. These men appear to have first settled here before the Revolution. Following them were several families to whom they were related by marriage, sisters of Jonathan being the wives of Jeremiah Birch, Jonathan Stark and Jeremiah Thornton.
Mr. Birch was the grandfather of Albert G. Birch.[20] Jeremiah Birch came soon after the Spencers and was from the same locality in Montgomery County. He as well as the Spencers had served in the Revolution in the Third Regiment of Tryon County Militia and probably was at Oriskany. Mr. Stark made his home on the Horace Phelps place and died about sixty-five years ago. Another relative of Jonathan Spencer was Jalleal Billings, who was a son of one of his sisters. He settled near the bridge that now crosses to Shaver’s Corners. Mr. Billings’s mother had for her second husband Enos Yale, who settled in that valley several years before the eighteenth century closed. Mr. Yale was prominent in town affairs.
To this same valley, near the mouth of the river, some time afterwards came another family named Spencer. Their ancestor, Amos Spencer, originally was from Connecticut and had served in the Revolution. He had settled in the town of Maryland, Otsego Co. On the Unadilla river settled two of his family, Simeon and Porter, who afterwards came to the village, leaving descendants, some of whom are still living there.
Samuel Rogers, the ancestor of P. P. Rogers, came to Unadilla before 1795. Four children and his wife came with him. They settled first on the Gates place above the Salmon G. Cone farm, but went afterwards to the Unadilla river. Mr. Rogers was a native of North Bolton, Connecticut, where he was born in 1764, and his wife a native of the neighboring town of East Windsor. He died in 1829. Mr. Rogers was one of those shoemakers who have been remarkable for other things than their trade. He worked at that trade for the most of his life, but had great love of books and was possessed of much knowledge in several directions. Like Sluman Wattles, he was a typical pioneer of the best class, a man who could do many things and do them well. He was a practical surveyor and knew enough medicine to have practised it. He had learned some law, and after he was fifty-five years old acquired a good reading knowledge of the Latin language. Judge McMaster, who knew him well, said: “There was no man in this society in his time of so much intellectual culture as Mr. Rogers except the minister, and not always excepting him.”
Mr. Rogers’s son Jabez was long a resident of the village, as was his grandson, Perry P. Rogers, whose later life was spent in Binghamton where he died in 1894, to the regret of every person who had known him. He had a most intimate knowledge of the early settlers of this part of the valley. He was born on the Unadilla river, but in boyhood went to Steuben County and thence to Buffalo, where he was admitted to the bar. He came to this village in 1857 and practised law here until 1871, when he went to Binghamton and there spent the remainder of his days. He lies buried in St. Matthew’s churchyard. My school mate, his son Joseph, grew up in this village, and in the churchyard sleeps.
At the mouth of the Unadilla river grist and saw mills were owned at the beginning of the century, if not earlier, by a man named Nickerson. Sixty or more years ago they had passed into the hands of Harry Hoffman. The farm where Delos Curtis lives was occupied by John Abbey, the Bryan farm by Silas Scott. Seth Scott is an early name connected with the Thomas Monroe farm, and another name connected with it is Phineas Reed, who built the stone house in 1832. On a portion of this farm lived Major David Francis, who came into the country as early as 1790. His house stood near the creek that crosses the highway where the road turns off to East Guilford. Older residents well remembered many amusing stories of this man.
Seth Scott and his brother Silas had arrived as early as 1796. Seth’s wife was Amy Birch, an aunt of Albert G. Birch. Silas Scott, William D. Mudge, father of the late William L. Mudge of Binghamton, and Jesse Skinner all lived in this neighborhood and married sisters named Lee, daughters of Philemon Lee. Of this family of Scott was “Granther” Scott, who kept the first toll bridge at Wattles’s Ferry. Henry Dayton, who surveyed many of the first town roads, lived where Julius Utter more recently lived. Jerome Bates was another early resident on the Unadilla river. He was a carpenter and with the builder Bottom erected the house on the Bundy farm. Here also settled Zachariah C. Curtis who died in 1891 in his ninety-second year. His parents were from Stratford, Connecticut, and had settled in Madison County. About 1800, he was born. Mr. Curtis settled on the Unadilla river in 1823, where he was a pioneer in the cultivation of hops. For many years his yard was the only one in the southern part of the county. Mr. Curtis was the father of J. Delos Curtis.