Reminiscences; Personal and Other Incidents, Early Settlement of Otsego County [New York]

Notices and Anecdotes of Public Men; Judicial, Legal, and Legislative Matters; Field Sports; Dissertations and Discussions

Levi Beardsley (born November 13, 1785 in the Town of Hoosic, New York) originally created this manuscript for the benefit of his children. Fortunately, with encouragement, he revised and expanded his work for publication. This extensive work covers a wide variety of topics interspersed with the author's personal and family matters. "Many incidents have been introduced, that will let the reader into the habits and modes of life at the early settlement of the country; and these modes, though greatly modified by improvements, inventions and advances, within the last sixty years, are not very dissimilar to those still adopted by frontier settlements thousands of miles to the west. "The truth is, that the life of all pioneers in new countries, is beset with hardships, difficulties and privations, that few can realize who come after them." The wide range of topics, too numerous to list in full, include: English Puritan ancestry, early recollections, forest scenery, primitive mode of extracting teeth, military enrollment and brigade training, murder of Huddleston and execution of Van Alstine, political matters, senatorial convention (1813), Grand Island, Chautauque County, incidents in justice's courts, exemption of homestead and household effects, elected to the assembly (1825), visit to Ohio (1826), visit to Upper Lakes (1836), outbreak of cholera, election of Nathanial P. Tallmadge to the U.S. Senate in 1833, legislative matters, anti-bank feeling and the repeal of bank charters, common schools, Col. Stevens of Hoboken and his project for a railroad in 1811, charter of Central Bank, visit to Cherry Valley (1850), tombstone records, Unadilla hunts, hunting deer on the Maumee, habits and intelligence of animals, reflections on capital punishment and the execution of Professor Webster, slavery and the alienation between the North and South, reflections on the War with Mexico, and much more. An appendix gives further details of the battle of Bennington which was touched on in the first chapter.

Levi Beardsley

(1852), 2012, 5.5" x 8.5", paper, 590 pp.

ISBN: 9780788419720

101-B1972