Page:History of Delaware County (1856).djvu/180

156 HISTORY OF delicious fish, the river is said to have been full of them — we being a regular disciple of Isaac Walton, it fairly makes our mouth water to think of them ; the women would go out with a pole and line, and in a few minutes catch enough for tea or breakfast; and to use their own expression, some of them would make a pan-full. Those were indeed the days of women's rights, when they were allowed to catch fish and manufacture their own clothes ; and we should like to be transported back to those good old times, were it only for a day or two, just to breakfast on those delicious trout, dine on samp-porridge, and sup on choice bits of dried elk-meat. Of wild animal, pan- thers, bears, and wolves, elk and deer, were plenty. Of bea- ver, otter, and marten, there were a few left, and they gave occasion for a few Indians to linger about the Delaware for the purpose of trapping. Thirteen elk were seen one day fording the river, near the village of Walton, and as they were all adorned with horns five or six feet long, we may well suppose it was a sight worth seeing. The first grist-mill in the town of Walton was built in 1793, by Captain Samuel J ohnson and Michael Groodrich ; its loca- tion was near or on the site of the mill at present owned by Abram Silliman, of that town. The millstones for this mill, (said to have been the first imported into the county,) were brought from Kingston on the snow, as far as Benjamin Bar- low's, in Stamford, from which place to Walton there was then no road, and they were compelled to leave the stones until the river opened in the spring, when the stones were lifted upon two canoes, which were placed side by side and lashed firmly together. In this manner they were floated to within two miles of their destination. This mill, as stated above, was erected in 1793, and a year or two afterward, Daniel Robison built another mill at the place at present occupied by Moses Wakeman, in the "Den. Robert North built the first frame house erected in the town