Submitted by Barbara Andresen
From ROMAN CITIZEN newspaper, Rome, Oneida County, New York, Wednesday, September 18, 1850
MARCY
Inhabitants -- Location -- Soil and Early Settlement
The town of Marcy, unlike any other town in the county, has no village, no manufacturies, no merchant's store in it, and but few mechanics -- it is strictly a farming town and finds an easy market at Utica for its produce, lying as it does west of Deerfield, within 6 or 8 miles of the City.
The town is 6 miles by 4, and was set off from Deerfield in 1832. The town of Deerfield was set off from Schuyler the same year that Oneida county was set off from Herkimer, which was in 1800.
There is in Marcy 300 voters and about 1800 inhabitants. The south part of the town bordering on the Mohawk River opposite Whitesboro, is rich splendid land, making the best farms --the north part of the town laying over the high lands that rise about one and a half or two miles from the Mohawk, and joins the town of Trenton is good land for pasturage or grain of every kind. The west part of the upland contain some fine farms for dairying and farmers are doing something at it. The whole town would make an excellent dairying town, did the inhabitants turn their attention to it. The soil is good for grass, the most of it being a gravely mould --no waste land and the timber mostly cleared off.
The first settlement was in the year 1790 and 1791, when the Messrs. Wilson, Warner, Baldwin, Collins, Sherman, Johnson, Hill, Cary, Kent, Edick, Cooper and Ranny, commenced clearing their farms, mostly on the Mohawk Flatts, and the farmers on this glade of land have most of them become wealthy, and as intelligent and enterprising, as any in the county.
The writer has often thought how little does the European, in his tour of the States, learn of the true character of our farming population; --driven by steam through our large cities, he sees but little city life, and farming population is hardly noticed, to find out their worth you must visit them at their own fire sides, share their hospitality, learn there, their intelligence and moral worth; you will find most of them well-informed in all that concerns their true interests, and the affairs of State --social in their habits, hospitable to the stranger and kind to their families, possessing many of the qualities of our puritan fathers, although they may be of the sixth or seventh generation --yet, you discover many of their best qualities. Such, reader, is the great body of the farmers of Oneida County. Doubtless Louis Phillippe in his predestinarian tour from the Mississippi across the mountains of Pennsylvania, learned more of the true character of Americans than he ever did by reading the works of tourists, or visiting our large cities.
There are some fine views to be had on the
hills of Marcy elevated as they are above the Mohawk, on the road from
the stone school-house (opposite Oriskany Village,) to Stittsville you
pass over the west end of the hill as it descends towards Floyd.
You there on the farm of Mr. Dankman, have a fine view of the City of Utica,
with its noble manufactories and fine buildings spread out before you in
their beauty and richness and of the Oriskany, with its different villages
until it loses itself in the hills of Madison county. West the Village
of Rome makes no mean appearance to the eye of the beholder --and still
west, you behold the great Aluvial Flatt, stretching out as far as the
eye can see. In viewing this great Flatt, the thought first entered
the mind of the immortal Clinton, that the waters of the Erie and Hudson
might be united by means of a canal, and he lived to see it completed,
and when the enlargement is done, it will be a monument of pride and glory
to the State of New York dispensing blessings to millions yet unborn.