from ROMAN CITIZEN newspaper, Rome, Oneida County, New York, Wednesday, August 14, 1850
 

                                                                      Rome as it was in 1813.
 

What a sorry looking place was Rome in 1813, the land owned lst the Village and about it by a few individuals, unwilling to do anything to build up the place for fear of helping each other, and the few inhabitants unable to contend against this unhappy influence (but thank Heaven that influence is among the things that are past.)   At that time there were near 1,200 inhabitants in the village.

Fort Stanwix, where the bloody scenes of the old French war and the trials of the Revolution with the Mother Country were enacted, was in a ruined state.  A few of the pickets in the embankment were standing, the old Block House in the centre of the Fort, the ditch about three-fourths the entire length partly filled up with rubbish and grown over with elders and bushes --a few of the cannon formerly used, lying in its enclosure.  The Fort occupied the block between what is now James and Spring street on the west and east side, Dominick and Liberty streets on the south and north sides.

The dwellings of the Messrs. Foster, Mudge, Draper, Stryker, Cole, Wights, and many other buildings are on the site of the Fort.  There were the stores of Messrs. Smith & Hubbard, Benedict & Elliott, Gurdon Huntington, Wm. Wright, L. Green and Blair & Lynch, made up the mercantile part of the place --here and there was a small mechanics shop.

The old store in which in the early settlement of the country the Mssers. G. & H. Huntington made a fortune, stood near the Old Canal, occupied by them as an office.  Opposite was a small 7 by 9 shop, one story high, kept by Mr. M_____, as a Grocery Store.  Above it was a tavern house kept by a Mr. Gilbert and below the shop was Judge Dill's dwelling house.

Over the Old Canal Putnam's tannery where Parker's Store House now is, beyond this was a dreary swamp with a road cut through it and laid with logs, leading to Verona.  A hotel was kept where the American now stands by a Mr. Lee and adjoining it a story-and-a-half house kept by Doctor White.  The old Jail and Court House were on the public square; the public school house stood on the same, the old meeting house in the village, facing the square had been built some 8 or 9 years and not painted, the tower boarded over to keep out the snow and rain, it might have been taken for an old Still House instead of a house of worship by strangers.

The roads that were not Corderoy were poor and those inhabitants who came to the Fort to trade, did not want for exercise in riding over them.  The farm between the Village and the Ridge Mills was then leased by the George Clinton's estate, by a Mr. Kenyon, and but partially cleared, run over by briers and so poor that he could not get a living, and it was sold to the Messrs. G. and H. Huntington at ten dollars per acre, by a contract made with Mr. L. (one of the proprietors of the Village.)  John Barnard built about thirty small houses one story, 20 by 16 feet scattered all over the then settled part of the village and not painted, looking more like shanties than comfortable dwellings.

No paper was then published in the village, we had but three mails per week from the east, and such a mail, reader, it almost filled a peck basket.  When the stage-horn gave notice of its approach, what a rush for the Post Office [then kept on James street in a small building in front of J. Hatheway's house,] there would be as many as twenty anxious ones to receive the weekly news from New York [city], after a week's time in traveling all the way.  It was not treated then as it is now, thrown on to a track and drawn up to the village and then drawn into the office over a rough pavement by some thoughtless fellow but carefully taken into the arms and deposited in the room and orders given by the Hon. Post Master to us waiting plebeans, "Gentlemen, this is the United States Mail, please all of you to be seated while we proceed to open it."  Well, peace to his ashes, he was a good man, one of a former generation; we shall not soon see his like.  The generation then on the stage are most of them passed away, and a new set of men have been actively engaged in building up a fortune for themselves and improving the village, surrounded as it now is by a rich farming country constantly improving in intelligence, virtue and wealth, with the finest Plank Roads in the State centering here and a number more to be completed this season.

Rome Village now contains about six thousand inhabitants as good blocks of brick stores, pleasant dwellings with broad well graded and paved streets as can be found.  An abundant water-power can be brought into use when inhabitants please to turn their attention to manufacturing purposes, all these advantages combined will make it a desireable place for the man of business to locate permantly.
                                                                                                                                       M.
N.B.  At some future time I will tell what Rome now is and its prospects.