Yours rustically,
M.
EAST BLOOMFIELD HISTORY
Mr. Editor:
In this year of celebrations connected with interesting periods of our
history as a nation, state, county, as well as town, one is much
inclined to look at the past as he sees it, in the main, most clearly
from his own stand point in life. And in so doing finds much of recent
date in the social as well as political events of his own town of
interest and pleasure to look at. Take for instance our little town of
East Bloomfield, settled in 1789, and now has a population of about
2700, about one-fourth of which are foreigners and their descendants
who began to settle here about 1840, and now owning some of our best
farms. Many of them make good citizens, but it is not a pleasant
thought to an old resident born here in 1817, that so many of our old
families
are giving way to strangers. But few farms or homes are now occupied by
the
posterity of those who felled the first trees, plowed the first furrows
and
rocked the first cradle in Western Ontario. But one farm in town is now
owned
and occupied by a son of the first settler. Elisha Steele still
lives
where his father purchased nearly one hundred years ago; is about 78
years
of age, as active and hearty as many men at 50, and whose golden
wedding
we celebrated Feb. 19, 1889. Another item of interest is our fertile
soil
and salubrious climate. No stagnant pools of water nor swamp holes to
breed
disease or invite epidemics. The only serious epidemic ever in town was
that
of 1813. A young M. D. who settled here a few years since said to the
writer,
"This is the healthiest place in the world, not much for me to do
here."
We stand high and dry, from 600 to 1000 feet above water level. It is
said
that the highest point of land on the road between Albany and Buffalo
is
about one mile west of this village. With a glass, I have seen from my
own
door Reed's Corners, thirteen miles away, plain enough to recognize
buildings
with which I am acquainted. Again it has been said of late that the
longevity
of the people of this country was on the increase, and judging from our
town,
I should think it was so. For instance only 13 have died this year
whose
aggregate ages is 910, an average of 70 years, not including infants.
About
fifty years ago a new cemetery was opened in this village in which we
count
about 700 graves and less than fifty of them those of octogenarians,
until
the present year during which five over 80 years old have been buried.
Referring
to a statement published five years ago, there were then twenty in town
over
80 years old, now, 1889, there were 31. Then, 1884, there were thirty
septuagenarians,
now they number more than fifty. The oldest person living, born here,
is
Myron Adams, Sr., now for twenty years a resident of Rochester,
90
years of age.
The oldest living in town and born here is Mrs. Betsey C. Hamlin, aged
88 years. Two ladies over 90 years old are now living in town thought
not born here. Also in 1875, we are credited with six nonagenarians the
same as Canandaigua. Phelps, the only town in the county ahead of us,
having nine, with a population much larger. Stephen Salmon, the
last of our 1812 veterans, died Nov. 26, 1889, aged 94. And the only
living memorial of that war, now with us, is Mrs. Laura Butler, aged
84 years.
Now, as to the late civil war, we enlisted 160 of our young men, many
of them the best; forty of whose names are engraved on a monument
erected
to their memory in our village park by a grateful people at a cost of
$6000. About twenty-five are still with us, as it were, to remind us of
the last bloody strife for the legacy left us by our forefathers, a
free government and liberal institutions -- doubly secured, we believe,
to us and our posterity by the valor and heroism of "our boys in blue."
E. B. W.