Edmund Sawtell is the great-grandfather of Lewis Way (Edmund Sawtell, Polly Sawtell, Hiram Way, Lewis Way)
Edmund Sawtell was a pioneer in upstate New York. The following was written in1892 by a grandson of Edmund Sawtell and published by the Advertiser, Union Springs, New York. He desires how his grandparents were the first pioneers of what is now Scipio in 1792.
RECOLLECTIONS OF A PIONEER
Early Times In This Region Graphically and Vividly Described.
(From the Ithaca Journal.)
One hundred years ago this summer Mr. Edmund Sawtell, and his brother, Levi, penetrated the great forest east of Cayuga Lake and located a tract of land at, or near the spot where now stands the village of Scipio. They erected a rude, log cabin, piled stones at one side for a fire place, left a large stump in the center for a table, drove sticks in between the logs for a bedstead, and then returned to their home in Binghamton where they remained until the following spring: and then started for their new home. Levi drove the cattle, while Edmund, with his wife and three children, the youngest only six months old, rode in a skiff down the Susquehanna to Owego. There they met Levi and were soon transferred from the skiff to an ox sled and commenced their tedious journey through "Owego Woods" to Ithaca, passing only one house in whole thirty miles.
Ithaca was then only a small hamlet with one store, one grist mill, one saw mill, and a few houses.
Leaving Ithaca they plunged into the almost trackless forest, most of the way cutting their own track for twenty miles. There they found their cabin and made their home; the only white person in all that region.
The brothers commenced clearing land on which to grow grain, and vegetables the next year. In the meantime they subsisted largely on nuts and wild fruits which grew abundantly, and on game of various kinds, that roamed unmolested through that vast forest, or played in the clear water of streams and lakes.
The cattle ate beech leaves and twigs in winter.
During the summer other men came to see the country, and were so charmed by its appearance that they took up claims. But no settlers came until the second summer. One day Mrs. Sawtell was in the woods, searching for a stray cow, when she suddenly met a woman, the first woman she had seen for over a year. She was scared at first but they soon became acquainted, and expressed pleasure that they were so near neighbors, there being only one mile between them.
There was no mill nearer than Ithaca and no hand mills as we have now. They had to improvise almost everything. A hole was dug in the top of a large hard wood stump, in which some corn was placed. A large stone was suspended over it, fastened to a pole that hung from the end of a large timber that rested in the middle on an upright timber twelve feet high. And on the other end of the sweep another stone was placed for a balance. Then taking hold of the pole and moving it up and down, the stone on the end mashed the corn. The finest was used for flour the coarser for samp. The first load of wheat that my grandfather Mr. Sawtell,took to Ithaca he sold for a shilling a bushel.
He gave nine bushels of whear for one pound of tea for his sick wife. The merchant said it was only to accommodate a sick woman that he would exchange a pound of tea for even that quantitly of wheat.
Slowly those brave pioneers advanced against many and hard obstacles.
A better house was built in a few years. The logs were hewn inside and a floor was made of strips of ash wood four feet in width and six inches thick, made smoth and jointed with an adz. Mr. Sawtell was very expert in the use of tools and made their home quite comfortable. His wife was also very ingenious. She spun flax and wove it into cloth; cut dies in blocks of wood and manufactured dyes from the bark and leaves of trees and stamped some of the cloth she made imitation of calico. Her maiden name was Gaines, she being a sister to Col. Gaines.
Nearly eight years passed before the first school was started; but parents taught their children to read and write, the principal books being the Bible and the "New England Primer." Every child of ten years of age was expected to repeat that whole primer, "shorter catechism" and all.
The first minister that held service there was a Baptist. Subsequently Zenas Riggs, a young man having the ministry in view, came occasionally and held Bible readings at the house of Mr. Sawtell, and later at the school house.
I cannot give dates of development and different improvements of Scipio and vicinity. They were steady, but not so fast as the development and growth of new places in our western states the past forty years, and I know noth of it after about the year 1814, when Mr. Sawtell and his brother left for a home near Buffalo.
Thinking some might be interested in its early history, I have written this
S J. A. Judd
Sprague, Washington
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