CHAPTER VI
OLD-TIME LOVE AND RELIGION
Enough has been recorded to show the general character of Cooperstown as it existed at the close of the eighteenth century. A more intimate view of its life at this period is suggested by a package of faded letters, some of which are here printed, not as supplying historical data, for in this they are quite lacking, but because whoever reads them with imagination begins to breathe the atmosphere of the time of their writing, and in the charm of their feminine confidences discovers a side of frontier life that is not otherwise revealed.
The letters were written to Chloe Fuller, who visited in Cooperstown for some years at the home of Dr. Thomas Fuller. The doctor's wife before her marriage, although not related to him, had the same family name, and Chloe Fuller was her younger sister. Chloe Fuller became celebrated as a village belle, and it was said that she had more beaus in constant attendance than any other girl in Otsego. Dr. Fuller was a favorite with two generations of young men in the village, for he had also two young daughters, who, a few years later, became noted for their qualities of mind and daintiness of apparel. Eliza and Emma Fuller were blue-stockings who knew the value of pretty bonnets and gowns. In the early days of the Presbyterian church, the sabbath splendor of their entrance at divine service, always a little late, and with the necessity of being ushered to the very front pew, divided the devotion of the worshippers. Eliza Fuller became the wife of Judge Morehouse, and established the traditional hospitality of Woodside Hall.
Forrest D. Coleman
The Worthington Homestead
Chloe Fuller married Trumbull Dorrance, a descendant of Governor Jonathan Trumbull of Connecticut, and her daughter, becoming the wife of John R. Worthington, was long identified with Cooperstown as mistress of the White House, the Worthington homestead built in 1802 on Main street. The letters belong to the period of Chloe Fuller's girlhood: