Sesquicentennial of Farmington, New York 1789-1939

FARMINGTON, NEW YORK37 for its acceptance. Yet it will be noted that to the end of his life Penn remained a Quaker. He must certainly have found the views of Friends broad and charitable enough to comprehend general and practical religion. Penn chose to resolve the ancient and difficult issue between church and state by the famous formula of Jesus. Though in actual practice he might have found the distinction of Caesar's concerns from those of God more difficult in the England of a Church established by law than the Judean Christians found it under the tolerant or indifferent pagan governors of the JulioClaudian emperors, Penn no doubt recognized that the epigram possessed the virtues of undeniable sanctity, authority, and apparent finality. It fitted excellently, moreover, into the contention most dear to him, that religion was not a matter of state concern at all but the most intimate object of the individual conscience. Erastianism he thoroughly and consistently detested. [To be concluded.] SESQUICENTENNIAL OF FARMINGTON, NEW YORK 1789-1939* By Alexander M. Stewart THE EPIC significance of Farmington in Ontario County, New York, is that Quaker farmers from the Friends' meeting in North Adams, Massachusetts, were the pioneers of all Quakerism in western New York, and also they were the first white men to bring their families into the vast forest of New York State west of Seneca Lake for the purpose of transforming the Sénecas' wilderness hunting ground into a white man's homeland. Jemima Wilkinson, the "universal Friend," a person of unusual religious qualities, but not a Quaker, who started the town of Jerusalem (region of Penn Yan, New York), arrived in the Seneca country about the same time, but did not purchase lands until later. There were others who arrived in the Seneca country in 1789, but the Quakers were the first to purchase land from * Part of a paper read at the New York Yearly Meeting at Keuka Park, New York, July 1, 1939. 38 BULLETIN OF FRIENDS' HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION the newly established Phelps and Gorham Land Office in Canandaigua. The Sénecas had had 170 years of experience with the French and English in 1789, when the Quakers appeared in the region of Farmington—a time of romantic exploration, a time of residence of many devout French missionaries, and a time of war and tragedy with regrettable events on all sides. During this early period the six million acres of western New York remained an unplowed wilderness, inhabited by less than six thousand Seneca Indians, and it was considered valuable only as it contributed to the fur trade. This wilderness covered not only all western New York but all of our now most populous States between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. When, ISO years ago, a Quaker first planted wheat in the soil of Farmington, the most amazing movement of English-speaking humanity and one of the most profound causes of modern civilization was begun. In one generation after 1789 nearly all the lands of western New York were occupied and most of the cities and towns were founded, and in a few brief years over a million civilized inhabitants came to live where less than 6,000 Sénecas had lived before ; and the ancestors of scores of millions of people flooded into the lands adjoining the old Seneca country and into the broad regions westward. Nathan Comstock at Farmington gave the first magic touch which transmuted the wilderness into such wealth of future ages as no man can count. The said Nathan Comstock and his two sons Otis and Darius from North Adams, Massachusetts, and Robert Hathaway, came to what is now Farmington in the summer of 1789, in time to fit the land and plant fall wheat. Nathan Aldrich came by boat also in 1789 via the Mohawk River-Oneida Lake-Seneca River canoe route. Otis Comstock remained at Farmington through the winter. His father, his brother Darius, Robert Hathaway, and Nathan Aldrich went back to Massachusetts to bring their families and friends. On February 14, 1790 Nathan Comstock, Nathan Aldrich, Isaac Hathaway, and others, and on February 15, Nathan Herendeen, started with ox teams from Berkshire County...