Aaron Axtell in 1803 purchased a further part of lot 93 from William Fitch and Sarah, his wife. He paid $1400 for it, which would indicate that improvements had been made by the former owner. Mr. Fitch had a house in the village before 1803. As Mr. Axtell bought his first part of lot 93 from Mr. Banyar, Mr. Fitch’s part had, of course, originally been purchased from the same owner.
Stephen Benton, in 1804, became the owner of lot 95. He purchased it for $1095 from Peter Betts who then lived in Bainbridge and whose wife was Eliza Fitch, a sister of Amasa Fitch, an early settler on village land. Peter Betts owned other lands in the Wallace patent below the village. He, with William Fitch and Jonathan Fitch, had secured titles to land within the village limits somewhat earlier than the settlers already named; but the Cooperstown records give no clue to the date of their purchases which indicates that he made the purchase before 1791. There were Fitches in Lebanon, Connecticut, and these men perhaps came into the country with the Wattles families in or soon after 1784, which would make them the first settlers who took up village lands.
Jonathan Fitch in 1805 sold to Jacob Hayes the land he lived on in lot 94. For a part of that lot Mr. Hayes paid $800. Here again improvements obviously were included in the purchase price. Mr. Fitch is known to have had a house in the village at that time.
Next among the purchasers came Solomon Martin a second time. He bought lot 97 from Mr. Banyar in 1807, paying £153 14s. On this lot stood General Martin’s house and store. He at this time was the largest land owner in the village. After his death in 1816, the estate was said to be “land poor.”
The records now proceed to the purchase made by Daniel and Gilbert Cone, in 1811. This was lot 92 which lay beyond the Axtell purchase. The Cones bought of the Lansings and paid $563.39 for the tract. Three years later they sold one acre of it to Niel Robertson for $400, which must have included improvements. From Mr. Banyar in 1813 the Cones bought another lot for $501.25. This was lot 108, but it was outside village limits.
Daniel Bissell who in some respects is the most interesting of these pioneers was a native of Lebanon where he was born in 1748. He married in that place Sarah Wattles and was approaching forty years of age when, about 1792, and perhaps earlier, he came to Wattles’s Ferry. In Lebanon he had already become a man of varied and useful activities. He possessed a considerable tract of land there and papers now owned by Harriet Bissell Sumner show that he had had many transactions with Sluman Wattles. A paper characteristic of the period, containing an “account of Benjamin Bissell’s estate that Daniel Bissell took”, names pistols valued at £2, a greatcoat valued at 12s., leather breeches at 5s. and one gun at £1, 12s., 6d. Another paper signed “Jonathan Trumbull, Captain-General”, who was the original “Brother Jonathan”, his home being in Lebanon, is dated in 1773 and excuses Daniel Bissell from military service owing to “a lameness of the arm caused by fracture and a pain in the chest caused by a sprain.”
Still another paper dated in March 1792 gives a list of articles delivered to Daniel Bissell from the estate of Mr. Fitch. It includes one large kettle, valued at 8s., one meal chest at 3½s., one small feather bed at 30s., one pair of saddle bags at 6s., one small bedstead 10s., and one copy of Gibbs’s “Architecture”, 24s. Some of these articles no doubt found their way to the new settlement. Mr. Bissell had a family of nine children, three or four of whom had reached their twentieth year. He brought with him the large sum of $7,000 in specie, which completely filled a good sized basket.
One of the recorded facts in Mr. Bissell’s life is that he kept the first hotel. A license issued to him, though not the earliest in the town by five or more years, still exists with the seal attached. It is signed by Solomon Martin, in whose hand the whole paper is written, and by Peter Schremling and Gurdon Huntington. By virtue of law these gentlemen, Commissioners of Excise for the town of Unadilla, say they “do hereby permit Daniel Bissell to retail strong and spirituous liquors according as it is in said law made and provided, from the date hereof until the first Tuesday in May next after this date.” The license is dated September 9, 1799.
Mr. Bissell’s relations with other settlers are shown in several letters. One from Noble and Hayes, of which he was the bearer, dated in 1806, is addressed to Bogardus and DuBois of Catskill, and informed them that the Unadilla merchants sent by Mr. Bissell three barrels of wheat, with other articles which were to be sold “if you can and credit us the avails.” Another from Dr. Huntington was addressed to Packard and Conant of Albany. Dr. Huntington sent by Mr. Bissell a few rags and said “I expect you will give four dollars for rags, or more, and if they do not come to the amount of the paper [the rags were to be exchanged for writing paper] I will be I suppose in Albany in about two weeks and will settle for the same.” The date of this is November 1808, when Dr. Huntington was a Member of the Assembly.