In the latter part of the 17th century, during the active lives of the second and third generations, the lands of the patent were allotted to individual ownership. The several owners then built substantial stone houses at nearby points in the valley. The "Gumaer stone house" of the present day was built. The "Cuddeback stone house," now standing, near the log house by the highway, near a small run of water just south of Port Clinton and about one mile due north of pioneers knoll, was built by Jacob Caudebec and his sons.
This has been occupied by six generations of the Cuddeback family. It is still firm and substantial and a comfortable home. The Swartwout's possessed Seneyaghquan.
These stone houses, generally irregularly rectangular, were most substantially built. Entrance was usually through a large double door, horizontally divided, opening into a large "fire room" at one end, while at the other end of the house was a smaller room, used as a dining room or a "state bed room," where a "Slawbank" or a "half headed bed" was ever ready for the visitor.
The large heavy "lug pole" was replaced later by the light moveable iron crane with its iron hooks, pots and kettles in the great broad fireplace. Andirons and creepers were later added to the household equipment. The ceilings showed great logs and rafters rough hewn and supporting a board floor or roof with its heavy bark covering.
The attic, beside providing sleeping apartments, had near the chimney, a room with an opening to chimney and place to smoke bacon, ham and beef; also a room for grains, storage, etc.
The large deep cellars contained bins for potatoes, apples, turnips, beets, etc., barrels for salted beef, pork, game and fish—tubs of sausage, headcheese, etc., and firkins of butter, eggs—shelves filled with fruit, etc., barrels for cider, vinegar, etc.
In the earlier years, the tables were of boards and the dishes, platters, etc., were mostly of wood, so were the trenches, the borols, the tankards, the spoons of laurel wood and the plates of birch bark. Bottles and drinking cups and noggins of leather and sometimes of the thin hard shell of the gourd of horn. Later pewter dishes were substituted. Food was plentiful. Wild native fruits were in abundance, as huckleberries, strawberries, blackberries, grapes and cranberries. Wild turkey abounded in flocks. Wild geese and ducks by the thousands, and pigeons in flocks to obscure the light, and here were also pheasants, partridge, quail, snipe. These, with the products of the soil made life worth living, and secured the settlers comfort and prosperity.
The Indians, friendly and helpful, taught the planting and the raising of Indian corn, their "gunney wheat" or "turkey wheat"—a native American food—the grinding and the cooking of it and the preparation of many kinds of most nutritious foods from it, samp porridge, suppawn, new samp, succotash, using their handmade mills, their stump and sapling mortar also. They had great fear however of windmills. They were also most helpful in killing, securing and preserving game and fish for winter use. In turn, they learned to secure wild honey. With wonder they called the bees "English flies"; called the maples "sugar trees" as they boiled the sap and gathered the sugar.
They joined in the winter sports and pastimes as fox hunting, squirrel killing, bear bayting, and for a generation lived most peaceably with the settlers.