A little berg on the great
Oriskany...
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Click
here to see the 1875 Beers map of Solsville.
Click here to
see the 1943 USGS map of Solsville.
A
really neat picture of Solsville from space – 1995 USGS
A Possible
View of 1860 Solsville Inhabitants
Solsville is a small community just north of
the village of Madison, in central New York.
It dates back to the late 1700s, when the first settlers started coming
in. The Oriskany Creek ambles by, with
its “Speckled Beauties, Shiners and Bullheads” in its year-round cold
waters. Dairy farming has been a
successful occupation in this area and, for a long time, there stood a milk
station on the west side of Solsville Road and a feed mill on the east. Area farmers would come to the station with
full cans on the back of their pickup trucks about twice or three times a week,
dump their milk, and usually “go across” to the mill to pick up a few
things. I can remember back to when the
mill was run by the GLF (Grange League Federation), and for a little kid, it
really was a pretty interesting place.
Before it was “The GLF”, it was known as the “Moses and Cronk
Mills”. For a pretty good little story
of the Moses and Cronk businesses, by Jay B. Moses, go HERE
and click on the link.
I’d go with my grandfather to the milk station when I was
a tot, and there was nothing like Grap saying: “Let’s go down and see John and
Juanita...” which, of course, meant candy to eat and gum to chew... John and Juanita Schumaker had a general
store on the corner in Solsville for as long as I can remember. The whole first floor was a general store
and they lived upstairs. I vaguely
remember there was another small store on the other side of Solsville Road, run
by the Wood family, that “sat back in” but it wasn’t like “Schumaker’s”. A long while back, that other little store
that sat back in was the original Post Office in Solsville. John and Juanita ran the Solsville Post
Office and sold everything from sneakers to cheese to jewelry to Christmas
cards to you name it, they sold it...
John died in 1973 and Juanita kept things going for only a short time
longer. Juanita left this life in 1993
and will be remembered as a kind and pleasant lady by those who knew her.
Once in awhile... after the morning business was
attended to, we’d “go across” to the Solsville Hotel to “see if the fish were
bitin’...” I don’t have much recall of
any of the “Hotel Denizens” of olden times, but I know there were times, by
looking over old census images, when folks lived there. From what I know, the hotel was a stopover
for folks from “the west” (Syracuse, etc) who knew about the shortcut to Vernon
Downs. I can remember though, that Duke
Winn (fondly known as “The Dukah from Paducah”) was the “Mayor of Solsville”
(Solsville never had a mayor in its life...).
And I can’t remember a time when Duke wasn’t wearing hip waders... And I remember Bob Washburn did the “soft
shoe” on the back of a hay wagon.
(An
excerpt from “Whatever happened to… G.L.F.” by Palmyra historian, Beth
Hoad: “The Cooperative Grange
League Federation Exchange, or G.L.F., was a unique institution of American
business enterprise when it was formed in 1920. It had a distinguished ancestry since one of its lines of decent
lay in the post Civil War movement of farmers who were known as the National
Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry – or simply the Grange. The G.L.F. founders actually built an
edifice of farmer cooperative business adequate to serve the needs of
agriculture for decades. According to
“Seeds that Grew” by Joseph G. Knapp, the real beginning of the cooperative
came at a meeting of the Conference Board after a proposal had been presented
to the New York State Federation of Farm Bureau Associations. W. L. Bean, the
newly-elected Grange president wanted to design a state-wide purchasing
association for all farmers in New York State whether they were Grange members
or not. After the usual todo, legalities and arguments, the G.L.F. was actually
formed on June 22, 1920, when it received its Certificate of Incorporation with
its headquarters in Ithaca, NY”.)
“The mill” in Solsville
started out on the west side of Solsville Road, when General Erastus Cleveland
built it in the early 1800s. General
Cleveland built a few mills on the Oriskany Creek, beginning in the mid
1790s. The first mill erected in the
area was above Solsville, more toward Bouckville. The area being discussed in the James H. Smith (1880) material is
a half-mile, or so, west of Solsville, near the old cobblestone house Albert
Edgarton lived in awhile back. Henry
Bond, from another well known earliest family, as Smith points out, built the
first in 1793. Bond was a Revolutionary
War veteran and, with his brother, Israel, also a veteran, were some of the
very first settlers. “The flats” that
Smith speaks of is, most likely, that land to the north of the only straight
stretch of “the canal road”, heading for Bouckville. His, like the first built by Cleveland, was for lumber. Henry left for Onondaga County after about
10 or 12 years in Madison. His partner
in land speculation and sale, Elijah Blodgett, very probably settled in Genesee
or Livingston County. The dam at “Lyons
Mills” still stands and, if one strains the eyes (and imagination) a bit, there
are shadows of a mill sitting in the dark on the far side of the dam.
Across the road from the mill in Solsville was a cheese
factory, owned by the third Phelps son, Ambrose. That cheese factory would become home for the Moses and Cronk
mill, then G.L.F, and finally, Agway.
For much of the early 1800s, the Phelps family, through Ambrose, owned
much of that land to the east of Solsville Road. From the 1875 Beers map, you can see that most of the pasture and
field in the southeast quarter of Solsville was that of Ambrose Phelps’.
The old railroad depot nestled
in with the cheese factory. For some of
the best research, regarding the rails running through Solsville, I recommend
John Taibi’s work at Northern
Division Bridge and Building Department.
John has put a great deal of work into his Ontario
& Western Railway Page and by my accounts is a great source of
knowledge. Solsville was on the
Northern Division and Utica Branch of the O&W, located at milepost
254.19. It’s symbol was “S”, regarding
the telegraph. The 254.19 signified how
many miles it was to Weehawken, NJ; it’s origin.
A
different type of box related to signals was this wooden affair that held
signal flags and torpedoes. One of the flags would undoubtedly have been a red
one for stop signals. The others might have been a green and a white flag for
flag stops for passenger trains or a yellow flag for a daylight indication that
train orders were to be picked up. The small bottom compartment was full of
torpedoes when this box was found. (Torpedoes are an explosive charge in a
metal packet [modern day torpedoes look like a small, square ravioli; older
ones were lead sheet rolled like an oversized cigarette] that have lead straps
on the ends that hold the torpedo to the railhead. Two torpedoes placed 150'
apart are a signal of danger ahead.) The S is the telegraph code for Solsville,
where this box was located in the operator's office. Click
here to see an a photo of this “box”.
( John Taibi )
As you are reading, some familiar names will
come up from the town of Madison that might help in your search for your
people. However, I thought I had found
a goldmine when I got to the part about Willis Phelps setting the rails through
Solsville, but, as is a common occurrence, was disappointed to find that this
Willis was, very likely, William Phelps from Oswego County, a railroad
superintendent. As for H.J. Edgarton,
who contracted to build the depot in Solsville, (as well as Bouckville and
Pecksport,) that man was probably Henry J. Edgarton. Henry was the son of James Edgarton, who was a younger brother to
Sally Edgarton, who married Ambrose Phelps.
You can get a pretty good idea of what the Solsville depot looked like,
if you see the one in Bouckville. And
while you are looking the architecture over, keep in mind that H.J. Edgarton
was paid $1900 for building it. How
things change... In the 1880 US census,
James and Henry Edgarton are found living under the same roof in Manchester,
Arkansas. Their graves are marked with
stones at Madison, NY.
“The Pond” at Solsville was man made, with the erection of a dam, and
has changed in complexion over the years.
Today, the earthen trestle still stands, holding what is left of the
spring fed pond from dumping directly into the Oriskany. Solsville was early in the production of
electricity with its dam while, at the same time, creating what may have been
known as Sunset Lake, but surely, The Solsville Pond. The Chenango Canal ran north of the big pond but south of Canal
Road. With the demise of the canal and
no need to maintain the old faculties, things like locks and aqueducts broke
down. Especially with the aqueduct
above Solsville letting go, the Oriskany began to run true again. Sometime in the early 1960s, the dam began
to erode in its center section, allowing the pond to slowly drain. There is a short run of the Oriskany, in
Solsville, where the water is deep and the path is straight, holding onto its
past as a canal. Above the old
aqueduct, the Chenango Canal is still true to Bouckville. (If you have a taste for Water Cress, you
will find it just above the aqueduct.)
Just below Lyon’s Pond, with a bit of work, you can find the grave of a
lock. From Solsville to Lyon’s Pond,
the old Chenango Canal runs mostly to the north of the Valley Road.
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Index
