Page:History of Delaware County (1856).djvu/163

DELAWARE COUNTY. 139 alborigines^ had been built more tlian five hundred summers ago ; its location was on the plain west of the burying-ground, containing about three acres of land, enclosed by a mound of earth, and the whole surrounded by a ditch, provided with suit- able entrances. In the early settlements it was known by the appellation of Fort Ground. There were also Indian forts at Oxford and Grreen, on the Chenango river, whose existence is still preserved also by tradition. The first death of which we find any account, in tbe town of Sidney, was that of a young Indian, in the year 1775, who became enamored with a beautiful young squaw of the Mo- hawk tribe, and who was on a visit to the Susquehanna. The Indian made his proposals of marriage, which met with a formal rejection, the fair object of his love having been pre- viously betrothed to another. Unable to brook so sad a dis- appointment, the young man proceeded to Johnston Cove, where he obtained a poison, the musquash, or wild parsnip- root, of which he took and ate in her presence, and survived but one short hour. He was also the first person entombed in Sidney burying-ground. The year of 1787 will long be remembered as the year of the great famine among the early settlers of the Susquehanna, and it was only through the instrumentality of Greneral David Bates, who succeeded in procuring two boat loads of flour from Northumberland, Pennsylvania, that they were saved from actual starvation. The first grist-mill on the East Branch of the Delaware was erected by Abram Fuller, in the year 1778, near the Unadilla Forks; he was his own mechanic — millwright, carpenter, and blacksmith. Judge Courtney, of Sidney, is a grandson of old Mr. Fuller. The first raft o~f lumber that ever descended the Susque- hanna, was run by Captain David McMasten and others, to Ilarrisburg, in Pennsylvania, in the year 1795.