The History of Ivory, New York

by Harold E. Munson

1992(Revision 1, 2009)

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FORWARD

Harold Munson, my father, was born on Woodchuck Hill in Ivory, New York on December 2, 1924. He was the second of three sons of Edwin and Lucy (Bragg) Munson, but the first to survive infancy. He served in the Army during World War II, attended college at Alfred University, and worked for a time at Bell Helicopter in Buffalo. Pretty much all of the rest of his 68 years he lived in Ivory. He lived the majority of his years at his parents' farm on Woodchuck Hill Road, his parents' second farm on Ivory Road, and his own family's home on Bragg Road. From birth, to marriage, to family, to death, and to burial, much of his home life could be placed within a 2-mile circle centered in Ivory.As one who loved local genealogy and local history, he felt a responsibility to put down the history of Ivory in writing. Harold was gifted with an amazing memory, but knew that his memory could not survive him unless he wrote it down. He worked on this book, and some other papers on family histories, and died not long after their completion. In fact, this book was presented to the community for the first time at his funeral. I am describing this as a revision, but I am only doing this to be strictly honest. The only real change was taking the typed original manuscript and converting it to electronic form. Other changes are negligible. It is hoped that the conversion to electronic media will not have produced new errors.

Robert Munson, 2009

Note : Picture on the front cover is of Ivory Independent Baptist Church. Built in approximately 1897 (with additions in the back). It is the most recognizable building in the Ivory region, and was painted brown because of the song « Little Brown Church in the Vale. » Picture was taken approximately 2007.

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INDEX

Page #Introduction 5Settlement and Early Settlers 6Lumbering 18Financial Aspects of Lumbering 22Agriculture 25Quarrying 29Specialists and Artisans 30Highways 31Schools 32Cemeteries 34Religion and Churches 35Stores 38Post Office 39Military 39Oil and Gas 41Utilities 41The Law 42Organized Sports 42Unusual Events, Weather, etc. 43Flora and Fauna 46Maps 50-56

Families Mentioned in Settlement Name Page No. Name Page No.

Anderson 9, 12, 16, 17 Johnson 12, 17

Annis 12 Kinneston 14

Becker 13, 17 Lawson 14, 15

Bingham 9, 10, 11 Lee 12

Birt 11 Lindell 17

Bragg 7, 9, 10 Littlefield 11

Bunce 9, 13, 14 Long 15

Button 18 Love 9, 11

Carlson 16 McNitt 17

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Case 6 Munson 16

Cass 8 Nelson 13, 15, 16

Chase 13 Page 12

Colburg 16 Peterson 16

Colburn 14 Pope 8, 9

Comstock 8 Putnam 12

Covey 7, 8, 13 Quaintance 10

Cowan 7 Rhodes 9, 10, 13

Derry 17 Sandburg 15, 16

Eames 7 Scott 9

Eckman 17 Scudder 13

Elderkin 17 Smedley 12

Erickson 16 Smith 14

Farm 16 Staples 7, 10

Fenton 8 Taylor 7

Freay 17 Thayer 7, 8

Harrington 9 Towns 12, 13

Hill 12 Turner 14

Himes 17 Van Erden 18

Holmes 9, 10 Warn 14, 15

Hunt 10 Wasberg, Washburg 12, 15

Mill Operators Mentioned in Lumbering Section

Name Page No. Name Page No.

Ames 20 Fenton 19, 21, 22

Baker 21 Halladay 20

Becker 22 Kinneston 20

Birt 20 Lown 20

Bragg 21 Pope 19, 20

Cass 18, 19 Scott 21

Comstock 18, 19, 20 Staples 18

Covey 18, 19 Taylor 18

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Cowan 20, 21 Towns 20

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INTRODUCTIONThe term Ivory means different things to different people. For purposes of this account we are considering the area generally served by the Ivory School (Carroll No.7) after the consolidation which took place in 1902, plus the Carroll portions of Poland districts No.2 and No.3. This is the northeastern corner of the Town of Carroll plus a fringe (three Holland Land Company lots) of the Town of South Valley. Another approximate description is the watershed of the Cass Run plus lower Bunce Road and the Cass Corners areas. Note that the name. Ivory, is relatively new for the area—starting in 1898. Throughout this account we shall generally use current names for roads, physical characteristics, etc., with earlier names presented in appropriate sections.

The main physical features of the area are the deep valley of the Cass Run, running generally northwest from the western edge of Cattaraugus County to the Conewango Creek, and the hills on either side. The valley of the Cass Run forms one end of a pass through a high ridge; the other end of the pass is the valley of the Bone Run, which flows eastward to the Allegany River. Some have speculated that the pass was originally formed during an Ice Age, when the northerly flow of a pre-Allegany River was blocked and the dammed up water broke through the ridge. The same theory says that later, this channel also became blocked and the river forced its way through the ridges around Corydon and Kinzua, assuming its present course. A corollary to the theory says that a terminal moraine formed at the edge of the Ice Age glacier, resulting in the sand and gravel deposits on the hills around Ivory.

In any case, the valley was once considerably deeper than at present. It was reported during the drilling of the water well at the Ivory school that debris from a log was brought up from a depth of more than 200 feet.

When recorded history of this area began, there were no Indians living in the Town of Carroll but there was an Indian trail from the Allegany River to the Conewango, passing through Ivory. The trail did not follow the bottom of the valley, or any present road, because of swampiness; it skirted along the Woodchuck Hill and Emery Hill side of the valley on slightly higher ground. Early settlers used this trail until wagon roads were cut through the forest. The Indians had also built a fence of brush and limbs from a narrow point in the valley, near the county line, northerly up the hillside and on for perhaps two miles. The fence was high enough to impede the passage of deer and it contained gaps where hunters could lie in wait for game. According to Young's History, remains of the fence could be seen until about 1840.

At some time, Indians had a palisade near their trail on land now owned by Marvin Swanson <just north of the Ivory Cemetery>. Dr. Persell referred to it in his brief history of Carroll. We

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understand that it was identified by the symmetrical pattern of rotted posts which could be seen after the land was cleared and cultivated. Large numbers of Indian stone artifacts have been found throughout the area. Most of the local arrow heads which this writer has seen have been non-Iroquoian.

This part of New York State was purchased by a group of Dutch bankers and capitalists, known as the Holland Land Company, in the 1790's. The Company had the territory generally surveyed into six-mile squares (townships), and later broke the townships into lots. In our area these lots were approximately three-quarter mile squares, so there were about 64 lots in a township. Surveying into townships was complete about 1800, but subdivision into lots was not complete until the late 1810's. When the territory was organized into counties and towns, some towns were identical to Company townships, but many were not. The Company set up a central office for sale of land to individuals at Batavia, with a branch office at Mayville.

Sales of land in the Ivory area were very slow, probably because pine-forested land was not readily clearable for agriculture and the difficulty of getting pine lumber to market from here. In 1828, a group of eastern New Yorkers, sometimes known as the Cherry Valley Land Company, bought about 60,000 acres in Chautauqua County from the Holland Land Company for $1 per acre. The purchase included several lots in the Ivory area. The Holland Land Company commonly charged $2 or $2.50 per acre when selling to individuals.

The predominant feature of the Ivory area, and of the Town of Carroll as a whole, when white settlement began was a magnificent white pine forest. The pines were typically three feet or so in diameter at stump height, with some reaching seven feet. Interspersed were some hemlocks and hardwoods. The size of the trees, plus the fact that pine stumps remained solid in the ground for many years after cutting, made farming very difficult. However, the timber was a saleable commodity if converted into boards, structural lumber, and shingles -- and transported to market. By the time that Ivory was settled, a pattern had been established for transportation and marketing of lumber. Pine products were hauled by whatever means available to the bank of the Conewango and there assembled into rafts. Each Spring, the rafts were floated down the Conewango to Warren, then down the Allegany to Pittsburgh or on to Cincinnati. Some of this lumber is said to have reached New Orleans, but this required disassembly of rafts and rebuilding at Cincinnati, because of rapids on the Ohio.

SETTLEMENT AND EARLY SETTLERSEarliest settlement of Ivory was mostly concerned with the lumber business but there was always subsistence farming because the people had to eat and to feed their draft animals.

Young's History states that a Mr. Case, a brother of Laban Case of Kiantone, was the first settler in the area we are considering. The location of his homestead is unknown but was reported to be

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near the mouth of the Cass Run. The date is also unknown. The main reminder of his settlement is the fact that the stream where he lived became the Case Run and retained that name for many years. It has been the Cass Run for 100 years or more. In any event, Mr. Case abandoned his homestead, having never owned the property.

According to the Staples-Taylor Reunion history (prepared by grandchildren of the principals about 1900, and available at Fenton Historical Society), two brothers, Abraham and Scammel Staples, and their brothers-in-law, Moses Taft and Aaron Taylor, came to the Cass Run about 1816 and set up a saw mill. This mill was at the intersection of Route 62 and the Page Road. After a few years they sold out their interests, although Moses Taft operated a sort of boarding house for mill workers for a few more years. Aaron Taylor soon moved to Jamestown but maintained a financial interest in the area and became the ancestor of the Taylor families and some of the Emerys of Emery Hill and the Page Road.

James, Hiram, and Jonah Covey were living in the original Town of Ellicott, which included Carroll, by 1820, but whether they were on the Cass Run by that time is unknown. However, they took over the Staples- Taylor saw mill by the middle 1820's, and in the late 1820's started a new mill in Lot 23. They sold out their interests to the Fentons about 1831 and left the area. This writer does not know if John Covey, who settled on Woodchuck Hill from Westfield in the middle 1850's, was from the same clan.

Around 1820, the Eames family appeared in Carroll and Isaac Eames settled on what became the Thayer homestead. Samuel Babbitt seems to have settled in the same area about the same time. A number of other families who later became prominent in Ivory settled on the "fringes" of the area, including the Dickinsons on the Bunce Road, John Bragg and Vearon Eaton on or near the Wahlgren Road, in the early 1820's.

According to Young's History, James Cowan was the first permanent settler of the immediate Ivory area, in 1827. His home was at or near the Ivory Road-Harrington Road intersection. Other Cowans, presumably brothers of James, settled around the Ivory Road- Bunce Road intersection in the 1830's but moved away in the early 1840's; these included Samuel, George, and Ephraim Cowan. Two of James Cowan's sons, J. Milton and Clarence, and his one daughter, Lucy Cowan Thayer, spent their entire lives in Ivory. Grandsons Erie, Irwin, and Merle Cowan spent all or most of their lives here. Samuel and George Cowan moved to other parts of Carroll after leaving Cass Corners area; one of Samuel's sons, Addison Cowan, had a farm in Lot 14 during the latter 1800's.

About 1828, Hiram Thayer came into the area as a middleman in the lumber business. In 1828 he married Mary Eames, daughter of Isaac Eames, and soon bought out his father-in-law. He continued in the lumber business, did considerable speculating in timber land, and developed a relatively large farm. In 1842, he donated land for the original section of the Thayer Cemetery.

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Hiram and Mary Thayer had ten children. Their six sons: John, I. Warren, Ezra, H. Elmer, Frank Sr., and Orris at one time or another owned farms along or near the Ivory Road. Around 1880, various Thayers owned all the land on both sides of the Ivory Road from the Wahlgren Road to the Harrington Road intersection. Frank Thayer, Sr. kept the original homestead and the latter's son, Frank, ran the farm until his death in 1962. Ezra Thayer's farm, on Route 62, also remained in the family until the 1960's.

George W. Fenton, Jr, , and his wife, Mitta Howard Fenton, moved to Ivory in the early 1830's, after George and his brother, W.H.H. Fenton, had bought out the Covey interests in Lot 23. The writer has heard that their original house was a cabin on the present church playground, but by 1833 they had built the front part of the present Fenton home. Mr. Fenton had been born and reared near Frewsburg, while his wife had recently emigrated from Vermont. The Fentons had seven children: Thomas J., Wealthy, Martin, Ann Eliza, Laura, Lucy, and Alice. Thomas and Martin were always in the family lumber business but do not appear to have lived in Ivory after marriage. Ann Eliza married a John Frew (there were a number of John Frews) and he was also associated with the Fenton lumber business. Lucy Fenton married William Prittie, lived for a time in Detroit and Jamestown, then returned to the Fenton homestead. Her two sons, Wm. Harry and Roswell (who changed his last name to Fenton), operated farms, which had been part of their grandparent's original farm. Roswell's grandson, Thomas R. Fenton/now owns most of this property.

Pliny Cass came to Jamestown soon after the War of 1812 and it is likely that he bought land on the Cass Run before he moved here. Censuses indicate that he was in Ellicott or Carroll or Poland in 1820 and 1825, and in Carroll in 1830, '35, '40, '45, '50, and 1860. However, his oldest son, Judson Smith Cass, indicated birth in Pennsylvania in 1820. J. Smith and Willard Cass said in 1855 that they had lived in Carroll since about 1828, so that is probably the time when Pliny Cass and family moved to the Cass Run and took over the Staples-Taylor saw mill from Coveys. J. Smith Cass' son. Franklin, continued to own the original Cass property; in later years he bought one of the Thayer properties at the intersection of Ivory Road with Route 62 This intersection then came to be called Cass Corners. Both farms remained under family ownership until the mid-1900's, but were generally worked by tenants.

About 1830, Asa and Orsino Comstock, and probably Truman Comstock, came to this area. All of them bought land on the Bunce Road, but Asa soon extended his interests to the Harrington and Page Roads. He started saw mills near both roads. His first mill was sold to the Pope family, and soon afterwards to D. Harrington. In the late 1850's, Asa Comstock and family moved away. Truman Comstock seems to have sold out and departed in the early 1850's. Orsino Comstock died in 1861, after which some of the family moved to Frewsburg. Lyman Comstock, who came here after the Civil War and reared a large family near the Scott Road, is not known to be related to the earlier Comstocks.

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In 1832 or 1833, Jedediah and Lucy Pope and several children came here from Otsego County. At first they were on the Harrington Road where they took over Asa Comstock's first saw mill, but were soon in Lot 14, on the Ivory Road, where they established two saw mills. Son Chester G. Pope married Sarah Dickinson and lived here the rest of his life. Sons Jedediah, Jr., and Gershom and their families moved away in the early 1850's (Jedediah, Jr. moving to Minnesota), soon after their parents' deaths. Daughter Hannah married James Cowan and spent the rest of her life here. Daughter Edna married Samuel Cowan and appears to have lived in Ivory or on the Frew Run for the rest of her life. Daughter Olive married David Holmes and lived on the Bunce Road until the late 1860's. (See further information on the Holmes family in a later paragraph.) Another son was Dr. Timothy Pope, who was involved in family real estate transactions but whose name only appears in one Carroll census, 1850. Chester G. Pope's son Wm. Chester Pope, stayed on the family homestead until the 1890's and two of the latter's children, Frank Pope and Lena Littlefield, lived in Ivory or nearby for most of their lives. One of Wm. Chester's daughters, Emigene, married Edward Moore, of Frewsburg; their son, H. Otis Moore, founded Moore's Hardware.

Elliott Scott had arrived in Carroll for the 1830 census. By 1838 he was living on the Scott Road and seems to have lived there the rest of his life. A son. Nelson, owned the property for a time. Elliott's older brother, Asa Scott, and the latter's family arrived about 1835 and settled in Lot 40, on Route 62. Asa's oldest daughter married Deuteronomy Harrington. Sons John and Henry Scott lived in the area the rest of their lives. Of John Scott's several children, Ella married H. Marion Bingham, Effie married Charles Bragg, and Sadie married William Rhodes and lived here or nearby most or all of their lives; sons Hiram and Loren were local farmers and carpenters. Henry Scott's only son, Lewis, lived on the Emery Hill Road and became the ancestor of the Scotts currently living in Ivory. Asa Scott had four other sons, Asa Jr., David, Lyman, and Jesse, who lived here for short times as adults but then moved away.

Richard Harrington and some of his family arrived in Carroll, probably actually Kiantone, in time for the 1830 census. In the 1835 Carroll census, and on his tombstone at Clarks Corners, he is referred to as Sir Richard. Son Deuteronomy bought the saw mill near the Harrington Road and lived on the property until his death in 1887. Five of "Duty's" children spent all or most of their lives in the Ivory area: Joel, Edwin, and Henry had adjoining farms during the late 1800's and first third of the 1900's; Isabell married James Anderson and lived on the Page Road, while Catherine married Erie Cowan, and later married L. Fenn Bunce, C. Ramon Harrington, Joel's oldest son, had farms in Ivory during the 1930's and '40's. Of Isabell Andersen's children, Claude lived on the Page Road until his death and Herman operated the Hazeltine Farm, as a tenant, on Emery Hill, from the 1890's to the 1910's. Catherine's only child, Nina Cowan married George Love and lived in Ivory until 1934. Joel Harrington lived six months past his 100th birthday.

Two of Richard Harrington's other sons also lived in the area for some time. Elijah was

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associated with "Duty" in the sawmill at times and lived at a number of locations, including Woodchuck Hill. We are not sure of the spelling of the other Harrington brother's name, but think it is Camaralzo. "Cam" appears in the 1835 and 1855 Carroll censuses. In the latter time period he lived on the Page Road; his son, Newton lived on the Page Road in the 1860's, then moved away.

David Holmes came to the area in the mid-1830's, married Olive Pope, and by 1854 was living on the Bunce Road, at its intersection with the Wigren Road. In the late 1860's, he and at least part of his family moved to Nebraska. There he died in a prairie fire. We understand that some of the family, including Olive Pope Holmes, returned to New York, but some remained in the West. A grand-daughter, Maude Holmes, married Albert Walrod and lived in Ivory part of the 1920's, '30's, and '40's.

Vine and Elizabeth Bingham and their family came here in the late 1830's, probably settling near Cass' mill. Both parents died within a few years, but sons Samuel, Aaron, and George, and daughter Marian (wife of Sidney Staples), lived in the area for all or most of the rest of their lives. The lower part of the Emery Hill Road was called Binqham Road for a time, after George Bingham, but the others lived on the Bragg Road. Another son, Marvin Bingham, also lived on the Bragg Road for a while but then moved to Town of Poland. Samuel Bingham's son H. Marion, grandson Fred, and great-grandson Richard lived on the Bragg Road or Woodchuck Hill for many years. George Bingham had two daughters, one of whom married Ernest Rhodes and the other married Henry Harrington.

Stephen P. and Esther Hunt moved to Ivory about 1840 and settled across the road from Pope's lower saw mill. Stephen died there in 1858 and Esther died there in 1886. Daughter Mary Ann married Joshua Bragg. Grand-daughter Emma Hunt married Addis Quaintance, then his brother Frank. There are a number of descendants in Ivory, but none with the name Hunt since the 1880's.

James Quaintance purchased an "undivided quarter" of Lot 24, where Minors now live on the Page Road, in 1837. However, he was not shown in Carroll censuses until 1845. After the 1855 census the family moved to State Line Run, but a number of them returned to Ivory in later years. These included Addis and Frank Quaintance, who successively owned the farm currently owned by Howard and Shirley Quaintance Cameron; Susan, who married Hiram Scott; and Thomas and Goerge, who lived here for shorter periods. Addis' son, Fred, ran a farm on the Ivory Road for a few years around 1900, and Frank's son, Lynn, lived on the homestead and ran the farm for most of his 99 year life.

Goodwin Staples' name appears in the 1825 and 1830 censuses, but we do not know where he was living at those times. He and his family are omitted from the Staples-Taylor reunion records so are assumed to have no direct connection. Prior to 1850, and perhaps as early as

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1845, he and his family were living on the Bragg Road, in Lot 8. Sons Sidney, Goodwin Jr., Daniel, and Henry, and daughter-in-law Julia Wample Staples (widow of Sewell) had families and lived in the area, mostly on the Bragg Road, for some years but had all left by 1900. Another son, Elihu Staples, worked on area farms but appears to have never married.

In 1850, Joshua Bragg bought land in Lot 8, on the Bragg Road, and his brothers, Joseph and James Bragg, bought land on the Bunce Road. Shortly thereafter, their parents, John F. and Betsey Bragg, moved from their home on the Wahlgren Road to Joseph's property. Isaac and Ezra Bragg also bought land on Woodchuck Hill in the late 1850's and 1860's. James Bragg also owned land and a shingle mill on Woodchuck Hill in the 1860's, but then sold out and returned to the Bunce Road. Joshua, Joseph, James, and Isaac spent all their lives in the area, while Ezra and his family moved to Michigan in the early 1870's. Of Joshua Bragg's family, Monroe and Edwin had farms here all of their lives, while Charles moved to other parts of Carroll and Lucy Bragg Bingham lived in Frewsburg. Joseph Bragg's only son, Melvin, stayed on the family homestead, as did the latter's son Herbert. Of James Bragg's five children, L.Delevan Bragg appears to have run the family farm on the Bunce Road until his untimely death, Fred rented farms in the area before moving North, and the others moved to the Towns of Poland or Randolph. (The Bragq Road in the Town of Randolph was named after William Bragg, one of James' sons.) Mary Jane Bragg, one of Joseph's daughters, married Clarence Cowan. Isaac Bragg's children, George and Iva (Mrs. Fred Bingham), divided his property and spent their lives here. Monroe Bragg's son Leonard, operated the family farm until his death, while daughters Lucy (Mrs. Edwin Munson) and May (Mrs. Roswell Fenton, then Mrs. Lee Minser) spent most or all of their active lives here. One of Fred Bragg's sons, Leon, returned to Ivory and operated the Henry Harrington farm in the 1930's and '40's,

In 1842, Calvin Bragg, brother of John F. Bragg, came to Carroll and by 1850 was living on the north slope of Oak Hill, in Lot 13 adjacent to Pope property, on a road which no longer exists. His son, Oscar Bragg, operated the farm until about 1895, when Calvin's widow died, then moved away. The South Valley branch of the Wheeler Hill Road, called the Bragq Road, was named after Lewis Bragg, one of Calvin's sons.

Amasa Littlefield and Azuba, his wife, were among the very early settlers in Carroll (about 1815), on the Frew Run. In the late 1840's, Azuba got property on the Scott Road in Lot 22, which her youngest son. Squire, soon bought from her. Another son, George, was involved in a number of real estate deals in Carroll, probably as part of his shingle-making business, and eventually settled on the Harrington Road, where Gladys Littlefield now lives; George's son, Eugene, and grandson, Harold, succeeded him on the homestead. Harold's son, George, lives on the property, across the road from the original homestead. Another son of Amasa and Azuba, Stephen, lived for a short time about 1870 on the Bunce Road. (The Stephen Littlefield who had a farm on Route 62, just across the Poland line from the 1890's to the 1920's, was a son of Squire Littlefield).

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Julia Littlefield Birt, daughter of Amasa and Azuba, had two sons, Amasa and Squire Birt. Both men and their families owned property on the land currently owned by Howard and Shirley Cameron and were involved with the saw mill there. Amasa Birt's daughter, Ida, married Floyd Lewis and lived at the creamery, which Mr. Lewis operated.

Daniel Hill and family came to Carroll about 1846 and settled on Lot 6, purchasing the strip which extends across the valley and includes the Bear Ring and the Cat Rocks. He or other members of his family maintained a quarrying business there at least into the 1880's, although they seem to have moved away before 1892.

In the mid 1840's, Reuben V. Love moved from central Chaut. County to the Frew Run, then in the early 1850's he purchased land in Lot 24 and established the Love farm, on the Emery Hill Road. One of his sons, Clarence, took over the farm after his death (1888), to be followed by the latter's two sons, George and Reuben. Lee Wasberg, a grandson of Clarence, bought out relatives about 1940 and operated the farm into the 1960's. The farm has since left the Love family.

In the early 1840's, Solomon Lee and family, who had been living in Canada although Solomon and his wife were Americans, settled on the northern half of Lot 16, on the Emery Hill Road. Mr. Lee seems to have never had title to the property and he left the area in the late 1850's. However, his daughter, Mary, married Aaron Bingham and lived on the Bragg Road for years. A son, Armon, lived for some years on the Bragg Road and was one of the founders of the Ivory Cemetery.

Solomon Lee's tenure on Lot 16 was followed by an English family, the John Johnsons. They owned the property (200 acres) for nearly twenty years, losing it in 1876 in a foreclosure. Thereafter, it belonged to the Hazeltine family of Jamestown who employed tenant farmers, until 1917.

About 1854, William Smedley and his family purchased part of the Pope property in Lot 14, where George and Norma Anderson recently lived. Mrs. Smedley's parents, Phineas and Phebe Annis, also moved onto the property, having lived elsewhere in Carroll for some years. Another in-law, Mortimer Putnam, also lived there, making a small village. William Smedley's son, John, kept the farm after his parents, and maintained ownership until about 1920. Phineas Annis' daughter, Mary, married J. Milton Cowan and remained in Ivory the rest of her life. Phineas' son, John Annis, moved up the valley and bought land in South Valley Lot #55, along the county line. John Annis' son, Miles, later extended the property both east and west; part of it is still owned by members of the Annis family.

Moses Page and his wife arrived here in the late 1850's and presumably settled in Lot 32 on the Page Road at that time. However, he also had title to land in Lot 16 in the 1860's, so there is some question where he first lived in this area. The oldest Page son, John, took over the farm on the

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Page Road, and two of the latter’s sons, Adrian and Fred, remained on the Page Road into the 1930's.

Stephen Towns and his family, including his father, moved to the property where Ruby Anderson now lives (in Lot 14) when he purchased the nearby saw mill. He died in 1868, but some of his family stayed here for some years. A son, Arthur Towns, had several children, one of whom, Alida, became Mrs. Frank Becker.

John Covey and two married sons, Willard and Harrison Covey, came here from the Town of Westfield in 1856 or soon after, and settled on Woodchuck Hill. They were the first known settlers in Lot 7. About 1870, Willard moved to the Town of Poland and Harrison moved to Ellicott. Alice Covey, a daughter of Harrison, married Wm. Chester Pope, and lived here most of her life.

John D. Scudder came from a Kiantone family, married Caroline Dickinson, lived for a time in Randolph, then purchased part of Lot 6, on the Ivory Road, in the late 1850's. His home was on the site of Lorena Scott's present house. Although he had five children, he enlisted in the Union Army in 1864 and. was killed within a month. His widow lived on the property for many years. A daughter, Rose, married John Smedley, and a grand-daughter, Bessie Scudder, married Fred Quaintance.

The Edward Waite family appeared in the Carroll census in 1860, having lived in other parts of Chautauqua County for years. By 1865, it would appear that the family was living in Lot &, along the county line, but they are not shown in the 1867 Atlas. In the late 1870's, son Oliver bought out his widowed mother and lived there the rest of life. Oliver Waite's daughters, Jennie and Myrtle, married Fred Bragg and Lewis Scott, respectively.

Isaiah Chase lived in Ivory only a few years during the 1850's, and is included here simply because his name, or the term. Chase Lot, occurs in many local deeds and other documents. Mr. Chase was a blacksmith and probably a land speculator who owned most of the northern part of Lot 23, which makes up most of the property currently held by Jeanette Swanson and Marvin Swanson. He sold out to G. W. Fenton, Jr., and left the area.

By 1855, there were some Rhodes living in Carroll and within a few years there were several families. It is not clear whether all were related, but some certainly were. In the late 1860's, Ira and Iza Rhodes settled on the Emery Hill Road in Lot 16 (currently Hagberg property) and lived there many years. Their three sons, Ernest, John, and William, and their three daughters, Emma, Frances, and Ellen, lived part or all of their adult lives in Ivory or nearby. Ernest was a stone mason and operated the farm of his father-in-law, George Bingham; after his wife's death Ernest moved out of the area. William Rhodes married Sadie Scott and had a farm on the Bunce Road. John Rhodes lived elsewhere in Carroll most of his life. Frances Rhodes married L. Fenn Bunce

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and lived on the Bunce Road. Ellen Rhodes married Gust Nelson and spent all her life in the Ivory area. Emma Rhodes and her husband lived on the Emery Hill Road for only a short time before leaving the area.

Lester Fenn Bunce, from the Town of Poland, bought land on the Bunce Road in the early 1870's and lived there the rest-'of his life. After the death of his first wife, Ellen Marsh Bunce, he married Frances Rhodes; after the latter's death he married Catherine Harrington Cowan. Two of his daughters, Irma Bunce Warn and Clara Bunce Harrington, lived in the Ivory area as adults.

Charles and Effie Kinneston and family came to Carroll about 1837. Generally, the family worked in saw mills or as tenant farmers, and usually did not own land in Carroll. William Kinneston and members of his family lived in the Ivory area part of the time. William's son, Ben. Franklin Kinneston, married Polly Towns and was associated with Towns' saw mill around 1870. A much younger daughter. May, married George Walters and lived for a time in the early 1900's on Woodchuck Hill in Lot 8.

Clark Colburn and family settled on the Bunce Road in the early 1860's, and some of the family lived there for about 30 years. There were representatives of the family, elsewhere in Carroll, into the 1940's.

Royal Smith and his family appeared in the 1855 Carroll census and did not appear again until 1870. By that time they were living on Route 62, between its intersections with the Harrington and Page Roads. Members of the family continued to live there until nearly 1940.

William and Mary Turner lived on the Ivory or Bone Run Road at the high point of the valley, near where the Arndt family now lives, from the 1860's until they died in the 1890's.

The earliest settlers were generally from New England or from north-eastern or east-central New York. Most of the New Englanders were from Massachusetts or Vermont. Settlers from other countries were uncommon until immigrants began to arrive from Sweden.

Starting in 1851, there was substantial migration from Sweden to Ivory and nearby areas, mostly from the district known as Småland, in the south-central part of the country. Some of the immigrants purchased farms which had already been started by "Yankees", but probably most of them bought cut-over timber land on which there had been no previous settlement.

Two families named Lawson, unrelated as far as we know, were the first Swedes to come to the Ivory area, and they settled on the fringes. Andrew Lawson and his wife and partly grown children came about 1851 and bought the John Bragg property on the Wahlgren Road. They lived there the remainder of their long lives; a daughter, Mary, married Elmer Thayer. John Lawson and his wife settled in Lot 57, South Valley, at the end of the Bragg Road, about 1851. John and

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his family moved to Jamestown after about thirty years; meanwhile, John's brother, Charles Lawson, had settled on part of the same land. Charles and his wife lived here the rest of their lives; one daughter, Lydia, married Elmer Warn and another daughter, Vera, married Orsell Birt.

Swedish settlement in larger numbers started in 1870. Charles Wasberg (there are several spellings of the name) purchased 30 acres in Lot 15, on the lower plateau of Woodchuck Hill, and lived there until his death in 1915. A daughter married Monroe Bragg, another married Frank Pope, another married Harry Prittie, and still another married John A. Warn, all of whom had farms in the area. A son, Alvin, married Ethel Love and operated a farm on the Emery Hill Road in the 1910's and 1920's. Charles' brother, Andrew Washburg, and the latter's wife settled on Lot 7 near the county line on Woodchuck Hill, in 1873. The family moved away about 1898, and, of the very large family, only son Lawrence seems to have lived in Ivory after that time.

In 1871, John P. Warn bought 30 acres in Lot 15, adjacent to the Wasberg property, and later purchased part of the Pope land in Lot 15. In the late 1890's, he bought the Chase Lot, in Lot 23, in the break-up of G. W. Fenton, Jr.'s estate. After his retirement, son Martin got the original Warn homestead, sons Edwin and Elmer divided the Chase Lot. Son Frank Warn purchased two farms along the Ivory Road in Lot 14; the latter's son, Howard, succeeded him on that property and owned it until his death in 1983. Elmer Warn's son, Vernon, also farmed Elmer's property until 1967.

By 1875, Charles Warn had bought part of the Scudder land on the Ivory Road, and he and his family lived there into the early 190O's. Two more Warn brothers came to the community during the next few years. Andrew Warn lived briefly on Woodchuck Hill in Lot 8, then worked for G. W. Fenton, Jr., and after the latter's death, purchased part of that farm, in Lot 23. Andrew and his family left Ivory in the early 1900's, but one daughter, Alice, married Allen Cass. Gust Warn bought 50 acres in Lot 7 which had previously belonged to Andrew Sandburg, in 1881, and stayed there 30 years; his son, John A. Warn, kept the farm for a few more years, then moved away.

By 1873 or '74 (per Chautauqua County Gazetteer), Solomon Long, Peter Nelson, and Andrew Lawson (a different. Andrew Lawson from the one mentioned earlier) were living in Lot 7 on Woodchuck Hill. Long and Lawson had bought, out Willard and Harrison Covey, while Nelson had bought cut-over timber land. Solomon Long was a brother-in-law of the Warn brothers, while Mrs. Peter Nelson was a sister of Solomon Long. Probably Gust Long settled on South Valley Lot 56 about the same time. All of the four men spent all or most of the rest of their lives on those farms.

Of Solomon Long's several children, Ervin Long took over the family farm, added Lawson's and some other property to it and owned it until 1934, when he bought a farm on the Ivory Road which he owned until his death in 1957. Solomon's daughter, Sarah, married Swan Lindstrom

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and that family lived on the former Gust Long farm from about 1917 until the late 1930's. Gust Long's son, Victor, operated the family farm for a time prior to 1917, then bought the original John P. Warn property in Lot 15 and lived there until about 1940. Descendants of both Solomon and Gust Long still live in the Ivory area. All of Peter Nelson's family left Woodchuck Hill by the late 1910's; his daughter, Anna, married John Rhodes.

Another member of the Warn clan, Martha Agusta, married Henry Colburg, and this family lived on the former Hunt farm, on the Ivory Road, from the late 1880's until the early 1900's. Andrew Sandburg had come to the United States in time to serve in the Civil War, and had settled on Oak Hill. About 1875 he purchased the Ezra Bragg homestead on Woodchuck Hill and lived there until 1881. Charles Peterson came to this area about 1870 and lived for more than 20 years on Route 62, then bought the former Staples property and lived there until his death. His bachelor son, William, lived in the area until 1971.

Gust Munson came here in 1884, living on Route 62, then on three different properties in Lot 8, on the Bragg Road, before moving to adjoining land in Poland in 1902. Two of his sons, Edwin and Rudolph, owned and ran the Ivory Store in the middle 1910's. Edwin Munson married Lucy Bragg and had farms on Woodchuck Hill and Ivory Road between 1921 and 1965.

The Nels Anderson family settled in S.V. Lot 57 in the 1890's. Members of the family occupied the homestead until the mid 1930's. Son Alof Anderson operated farms on Woodchuck Hill and the Ivory Road in the 1920's and early '30's, before moving to Town of Poland. Gustaf Farm and his mostly grown-up family settled on Woodchuck Hill, on the former "Gulf Road", during the 1880's. Gust Farm, Jr. lived on the property until 1938. Two other members of the family, Emily Farm and Charles Farm, occupied nearby homesteads on Woodchuck Hill during the 1910's and early 1920's. Only one of Gustaf Farm's several children ever married, and there were no surviving grandchildren.

Gust Nelson arrived in Ivory about 1890, married Ellen Rhodes, and spent the rest of his life on a farm on the Emery Hill Road. His son, Karl, lived on the Ivory Road until death in 1985.

The Oscar Carlson family purchased the Calvin Bragg property in Lot 13 in the late 1890's and lived there for some years. A son, Edwin Carlson, operated a farm in Lot 14 on the Ivory Road around 1920.

John Erickson purchased the former John Lawson property in S.V. Lot 57 in the 1880's, and lived there for some years. His daughter, Hilma, married Victor Long in 1910 and lived in the Ivory area until about 1940, when the family moved to the Town of Poland. One of the latter family's daughters, Leone, married Carl Lindstrom and has lived on the former Cass property on Route 62 since about 1950.

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There were several other Swedish families who came to the area in the 1890's and stayed here for relatively short times, including:

The John Carlson family in Lot 8 and S.V. Lot 56;The Freay or Frey family in Lot 14 and S.V Lot 56;The Aaron Lindell family in the eastern part of S.V. Lot 57;The Charles Erickson family on the Emery Hill Road.

In the 1910's, the Aron Eckman family came to the Bragg Road in Lot 8, then bought a farm on the Emery Hill Road where they lived until 1937. A daughter, Agnes, married Howard Warn and lived here until her death in 1983. A great-grandson, Stephen Eckman, currently owns the former Love farm on Emery Hill Road.

Since the beginning of settlement there have been many families who lived here for short times and then moved on, and the preceding listing is by no means exhaustive. Some of these other people made a particular impact on the community and are mentioned in later sections of this paper. There have been a number of families who came to Ivory after the period generally covered in the preceding account and lived here for many years. A brief mention of some of these people follows:The McNitt family purchased a large farm on the Page Road in the 1910's and it is still owned and operated by descendants. A granddaughter, Juanita McNell, with her first husband Willard Covey and second husband, Robert Minor, has maintained this continuity.

The C.P. Anderson family bought a farm on the Ivory Road, in Lot 14, in the 1910's, and daughter Ruby Anderson still lives there. A son, George L. Anderson, owned and operated an adjacent farm from about 1950 until 1988. Another daughter, Irene, married Lyle Becker and lived in Ivory until 1978.

William Derry and family bought the former Charles Warn property, on the Ivory Road in the late 1910's, and the family has owned it since then. For some years, from the early '20's to the early '40's, the property was rented out, but son Edward (Ted) Derry lived there from the early '40's until his recent death.

William Johnson bought the former Ira Rhodes farm on Emery Hill Road in the early 1900's, and his family lived there until the early 1940's, when the property was sold to Raymond Himes. About ten years later the farm was sold to Nelson Hagberg, whose family still owns it.

In the early 1950's, Frank Elderkin and his family moved to the former Scott property on Woodchuck Hill, and the road going past their home became known as the "Elderkin Road". The three Elderkin sons all live in the area.

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Frank Becker married Alida Towns and lived in and out of Ivory from the early 1900's until 1954. Most of this time was spent at a couple homes on the Ivory Road, but in the early part of the period the family moved from one lumbering site to another. Son Lyle lived here until his death in 1972. Elton, a bachelor brother of Frank Becker, lived on the Ivory Road until about 1980.Guy and Gertrude LaBar Van Erden Button came to Woodchuck Hill in 1934. Gertrude and sons Kenneth Van Erden and Arthur Button live on the Emery Hill Road at this time Raymond Himes married Pauline Scott and came here about 1930. His brother, William Himes has lived on the Bragg Road since about 1951.

Charles Wheeler lived on the Bunce Road from about 1900 until 1958.

The "high water mark" of settlement, both Yankee and Swedish, was reached about 1900. Homesteading on cut-over forest land came to an end. Causes were varied, including a reduction in Swedish immigration, changes in agriculture, reduction in part-time employment in lumbering and stone-quarrying, and the closing of the Woodchuck Hill school. Population on the hills began to decline, and this was accelerated by the automobile, since some roads were impassible in Winter and early Spring. By the early 1920's, the Scott Road was uninhabited. By 1930, there were only two homes left in the South Valley part of Woodchuck Hill, and these were abandoned by 1940. Oh the same hill, in 1932 there were two houses in Lot 8 and four in Lot 7 still occupied; by 1947, only one of the six was still used as a home. About 1960, a new pattern of "settlement" started, with new houses being built on unused farm land; at first this was mostly confined to areas with paved roads, but since has spread to side roads. However, as of 1991, the only buildings on Woodchuck Hill near or across the county line are recreational cabins or hunting camps.

LUMBERINGThe first known lumbering operation in the Ivory area was that of Aaron Taylor, Moses Taft, and their brothers-in-law, Abraham and Scammel Staples. They set up a saw mill at what is now the intersection of the Page Road with Route 62. Information on this mill and the efforts involved in establishing it is to be found in the reunion history of the Staples-Taylor family, and does not appear in the usual Chautaugua County or Town of Carroll histories. Because of low creek banks and a wide, rather flat valley, it was impractical to dam the stream to operate the mill. Instead, they dug a race from a point on the Cass Run about a quarter-mile upstream and brought it to the mill location where it could drop back into the stream channel. Presumably they also took advantage of water from the Page Brook. Abraham Staples was the millwright of the operation, and he had to go to Pittsburgh to buy saws, gears, and other hardware, and then row it or pole it up the Allegany and the Conewango before he could set up the mill. Until flatboat traffic (as described in Hazeltine's History of Ellicott) was established, great personal effort was required to set up any type of manufacturing around here. It is believed that work on the mill race started in 1816, but it must have taken a couple of years to get into operation. In any case the family partnership broke up after a few years and the mill was then operated by the

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Coveys. (The Staples-Taylor history did not know whether the mill was run by Coveys or Comstocks, but collateral information would seem to identify the new operators as Coveys.) Only a few years after that, by the late 1820's, Pliny Cass moved to the location and took over the mill. He may have already actually owned the property. Cass moved the saw mill about 75 feet, and he and his son, Judson Smith Cass, operated it for many years. It was being run in 1855, but the 1867 County Atlas does not show it, so it may have closed by the end of the Civil War.

After leaving the mill at Route 62, Hiram, James, and Jonah Covey moved up the Cass Run and started to set up a saw mill in Lot 23, back of the present church parsonage. They apparently never owned the property but must have had some sort of contract; however, they did purchase part or all of Lot 14 but seem to have let that deal drop when they left the area. About 1831, they sold their interests in the would-be mill to George W. Fenton, Jr. and his brother, Wm. H.H. Fenton, who continued to develop it and to purchase the southern and center sections of Lot 23. By 1836, G.W. Fenton, Jr. had bought his brother's interest and had built the front part of the present Fenton house.

During the next few years, Mr. Fenton purchased most of Lot 22 and all of Lot 8, and developed the most productive saw mill in the Town of Carroll. The site was just below the confluence of two fair-sized brooks with the Cass Run. A small dam with a gutter-mi Ie long mill race (part of which is still evident) produced a large pond and a final drop of 18 feet onto the water wheel. The mill was able to operate year-around, while other mills ran only in the Spring. Mr. Fenton also set up a shingle mill which operated with water from the same race. (Young's History states that the shingle mill was discontinued after the great flood of 1865, but there is documentary evidence that it was running 1869-1872.) In the 1850's and '60's, Mr. Fenton bought parts of Lot 15, most of the rest of Lot 23 (the Chase Lot), and parts of South Valley Lots 56 and 57 to provide additional raw material for his operation.

After G.W. Fenton, Jr.'s death in 1895, his mill was owned by his sons, Thomas J. and Martin L. Fenton. They converted the mill to steam power about 1900; it burned in 1910 and was not rebuilt. Mr. Fenton was also involved in numerous real estate transactions in other parts of Carroll. Sometimes alone and sometimes with partners, including his sons, he purchased substantial areas in South Valley and set up other saw mills and shingle mills which were run by operators under contract.

The Pope clan started a saw mill on the Cass Run, near the Harrington Road, soon after they arrived in 1832 or '33. In 1836, two of the brothers bought part of Lot 14, about one and a half miles upstream. They may have sold the Harrington Road operation to Asa Comstock at that time, although Comstock may have been a partner, both before and after 1836. Within a few years, all interests in the Harrington Road mill were sold to Deuteronomy (Duty) Harrington, and Mr. Comstock transferred his attention to the Page Brook. Dates are uncertain because Duty Harrington was running the mill before he had title to the property. Mr. Harrington or his family

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continued to run the saw mill into the early 1900's, having converted to steam power sometime after 1867. It is noted that much of the hemlock lumber used to build the Ivory Church in 1897 was sawed at that mill.

As noted above, the Pope family began to buy land in Lot 14 in 1836. Over the next several years they purchased the rest of Lot 14, part of Lot 15, and part of Lot 6, so they owned over 500 contiguous acres around 1850. They proceeded to set up two saw mills on the Cass Run, the upper one being back of the barn currently owned by Kenneth Peterson, and the lower one near Howard Cameron's buildings. The upper mill was operated for many years by Chester G. Pope. Probably his sons ran it after his death, in 1872; we do not know when it closed.

Chester G. Pope's brothers left Carroll in the early 1850's, and the lower mill, along with 130 acres, was sold to Robert Lown,in 1855. The new owner sold mill and land to Stephen Towns in 1858. The Towns family, including at times sons-in-law Squire Birt and B.F. Kinneston, operated the mill into the early 1870's. It appears that the mill was converted to steam power sometime between 1855 and 1867. Amasa Birt, a brother of Squire Birt, took over by 1875 and added a shingle mill and planer. According to Ivory Church records, Amasa Birt planed lumber for building the church in 1897. After his death in 1903, the mill presumably closed.

As noted earlier, Asa Comstock operated a mill on the Page Brook after having run the mill on the Harrington Road. His new mill was in Lot 24 on land now owned by the Minor family. It is not now clear whether Mr. Comstock started the saw mill or took over one which was already there. James Quaintance had purchased the property, or at least part of it, in 1837 from Nicholas Doloff. Mr. Quaintance remained at or near the site until after the 1855 census, but seems to have given up title well before then. Data in the 1855 census indicate rather limited production from the saw mill, but that year may not have been typical. About 1857, Mr. Comstock sold out and moved away. The property changed hands twice before Samuel Halladay and Ezra Ames bought it in 1861. The saw mill was shown in the 1867 Atlas; it was probably closed by the time Ames and Halladay left the area, about 1880.

The deed for the Chase Lot (in 1854) included a statement that part of the property could be flooded by James Cowan's dam, and that Mr. Cowan could raise the creek level by nine feet. According to a paper by Mrs. Effie Parker, James Cowan set up a mill on Lot 23 between 1838 and 1840, and this involved the dam referred to above. It was located on property currently owned by Gladys Littlefield. This is not shown on the 1854 Chaut. Co. map so was probably not operating at the time.

However, the Chaut. Co. map showed a shingle mill in the area of the present Woodchuck-Emery Hill Road intersection, in Lot 16, ascribed to an L. Cowen. We assume that this person was James Cowan, who had previously owned about half of Lot 16 and was listed as a shingle mill operator in the 1855 census. (The family name was usually spelled Cowen at that time, and

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there was no L. Cowen in Carroll at the time). A deed to that part of Lot 16 indicated the presence of a shingle mill which some unnamed previous owner of the property was permitted to run. It is possible, of course, that Mr. Cowan was sawing shingles in 1855 at his original saw mill site, in Lot 23, but this seems unlikely.

We do not know when the Cowan family stopped running their own mill, but James' oldest son, J. Milton Cowan, was managing Fenton's mills at Ivory by 1869 and continued in that capacity for some years. The latter's oldest son, Irwin Cowan, worked at that same job in the 1890's and until the Fenton mill closed, in 1910.

The 1854 Chaut. Co. map also showed a mill race on the Cass Run in Lot 40, midway between its mouth and Route 62, and indicated that it powered a shingle mill. It would appear that this was on property owned by Asa Scott, so the Scott family probably ran it. The 1855 census indicated that John Scott, oldest son of Asa Scott, operated a shingle mill. In 1854, John Scott purchased a few acres of land along the Page Brook, in Lot 24, where the 1867 Atlas showed a shingle mill. This writer believes that John Scott's 1855 mill was located on the Page Brook, and that the Scott shingle mill on the Cass Run was inactive by 1855.

From real estate transfers, it is apparent that several different people owned the Page Brook site over the next 20 years, and it is not clear who operated the shingle mill after John Scott, or when it closed.

The 1867 Atlas shows a shingle mill in Lot 7, where the Woodchuck Hill Road crosses a large brook. James Bragg purchased the surrounding 120 acres, in which Joshua and Joseph Bragg already had a contractual interest, in 1859. James Bragg kept the property and presumably ran the mill until about 1870, when he sold out to Henry Scott. Mr. Scott kept the land and the mill until his death in 1901, but had probably stopped shingle production well before then.

Downstream from James Bragg's mill, in Lot 15, Isaac Bragg set up another shingle mill in the late 1860's. Presumably the mill closed when Isaac died in 1886. The bed pieces for supporting the water wheel were still evident in the 1950's.

According to Young's History, Franklin Baker operated a steam-powered saw mill in the "northeastern part" of Carroll in 1859. This must have been on Fenton property in Lot 8, and it must have been a short-lived operation. It seems likely that Baker Brook, a tributary of the Little Bone Run, got its name from him.

As the pine forest was cut, it did not replenish itself. Cut-over land which was not cleared for farming became covered with hard woods. By 1870, at least, saw mills were cutting some chestnut, white wood (tulip), cucumber, and basswood. As the furniture industry grew and the amount of pine declined, hardwoods became a larger and larger part of the business. By the

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1890's, the pine timber in the area was essentially gone. Roswell Fenton's journal refers to the cutting of "the big pine" tree near the Derby brook (in the South Valley part of Woodchuck Hill) in 1912 by himself and Victor Long. He obtained 104 linear feet of logs from the tree; unfortunately, the diameter of the butt log was not given.

In the winter of 1907-08, there occurred the last big lumbering operation of the area. Thomas J. and Martin L. Fenton had the timber removed from "the 96 acres" on Woodchuck Hill (S. V. Lot 56) and hauled to their mill in Ivory. The "woods boss" was their nephew, Wm. Harry Prittie, while Gust Farm, Jr. had the contract for hauling. Much of the community had employment in the operation.

The 1894 Chautauqua County History stated that Fenton's mill was the only one in-Carroll still operating with water power; a few years later this was also converted to steam. Shingle making required very clear pine timber, so that manufacturing gradually died. Lumbering continued on a smaller scale since most of the area was still wooded, but practices changed considerably. The steam engine, followed by the stationary gasoline engine, made it possible to take the saw mill to the woods instead of hauling logs long distances to the mill. During the 1910's, '20's, and '30's, there were a number of these semi-portable mills in the area. Frank Becker and his family were particularly active in this type of operation, moving their mill from wood lot to wood lot.

The advent of motor trucks resulted in a new mode of operation. It became practical to haul logs long distances to a large central mill. At first this involved mostly specialties, such as veneer logs, or individual varieties, but after World War II sawing came to be limited to a few, widely scattered mills. There have been no operating saw mills in Ivory for some years, although there is a rather steady stream of logs being hauled away.

FINANCIAL ASPECTS OF LUMBERINGAlthough the original pine timber was a tremendous natural resource waiting to be harvested, converting it to money was no easy task. With essentially no local market and rivers the only means of transportation to the distant points, marketing was difficult and risky. The Staples-Taylor Reunion history relates that one year, the raft containing part or all of their year's production broke up near Franklin, PA. Some years the price of lumber was as low as $7 per thousand board feet, delivered at Pittsburgh, according to Young's History. As will be shown presently, $7 per M was fairly close to the direct costs of production in the early days, leaving nothing for indirect costs, overhead, etc. As a consequence, foreclosures were not uncommon. Some people were more fortunate and became wealthy in the business. It is not surprising that some mill operators sold their production on the bank of the Conewango to speculators or to other operators. Shingle makers, of course, had to make special provisions to get their product to market.

First of all, a saw mill operator had to purchase the site for his mill and a nearby source of

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timber, or at least make an agreement with a property owner. The Holland Land Company generally sold land in the area for $2 or $2.50 per acre, but most of the land around Ivory had been sold to speculators by the time lumbering operations started here, Several whole Lots were purchased by the Cherry Valley Land Company in 1828 for $1 per acre, but their resale price necessarily included a profit. In 1842, they sold 200 acres, the northern half of Lot 16, for $3 per acre. About the same time, a creditor of James Cowan bid in 162 acres in the southern part of Lot 16 for about $1.50 per acre, at a sheriff's sale. By the 1850's, some timber land sold for $3-$4 per acre, although cut-over land was bringing $10 per acre. The Civil War brought a temporary inflation in timber prices, and in 1863, 120 acres in Lot 15 sold for about $130 per acre; after the War, G.W. Fenton, Jr. purchased the same property for an unknown price, removed part of the timber, and then sold the land for $20 per acre; one can only surmise that the speculator who paid $130 per acre lost money. In 1883, T.J. and M.L. Fenton bought out Gov. Reuben Fenton's interests in a large tract of timber land in South Valley for about $40 per acre.

In 1855, the census taker collected considerable information about saw mill and shingle mill operations in the Town of Carroll. Presumably the data were given by the mill operators and are reasonably accurate. Twenty-one mills were listed in Carroll, and those in the Ivory area are given below:

Operator Product Quantity Value Location (per writer)John Scott Shingles 300 M $ 600 Page BrookJ. Smith Cass Boards 120 M $1200 Cass RunDuty Harrington Boards 200 M $2000 Cass RunJames Cowan Shingles 200 M $ 800 Emery Hill RoadChester Pope Boards 160 M $1600 Cass RunRobert Lown Boards 130 M $1300 Cass RunAsa Comstock Boards 40 M $ 400 Page BrookG.W. Fenton, Jr. Boards 800 M $8000 Cass Run

From the census information it is evident that pine lumber was valued at $10 per thousand board feet at the time. This value was probably fairly consistent over many years, but subject to temporary fluctuations caused by depressions and the Civil War. By the 1870's, the drying- up of the supply and the continuing demand caused significant changes in pricing. The considerable difference in reported price per unit for shingles, between the two mills may have been due to some of Cowan's shingles being hand-split instead of sawed.

Most of the mills hired no extra labor, in-1855. When they did, they paid $19 or $20 per month.

In 1855, the saw mills in the Ivory area were averaging 200 board feet per log. The two shingle mills were averaging 1000 square feet per log. The difference was partly due to the difference in thickness between boards and shingles, but the main difference was due to the fact that shingles

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were commonly cut from logs which were too large for board mills. We do not know the maximum size of logs which could could be handled by the local mills, but have heard accounts of butt logs which were burned where they fell because there was no use for them. (In this writer's barn are a number of pine mill-slabs from that period, which were used for a scaffold; calculations indicate that the largest logs involved were about 36 inches in diameter.) In 1855, some of the saw mills in the immediate Frewsburg area were averaging only 100 board feet per log and were probably running out of better material. At that time, "one-inch" boards were more than one inch thick and the heavy saws produced a wide cut.

Significant amounts of pine timber were used in framing barns and bridges, but this material was hand-hewn on the spot and we have no information on quantities or costs involved. 12"X12" timbers, 40 feet long, were not uncommon and some still exist in the area.

The 1855 census made no specific mention of hand-split-and-shaved shingles, but these were in significant production. According to Bragg family traditions, three men were splitting and shaving shingles in Lot 7 during the early 1850's for the Myers' interests for five bits ($0.625) per thousand. As time went on, pine shingles appear to have become relatively more important than pine boards.

(Much of the following information was abstracted from a group of contracts and other documents relating to Fenton's operations and now in the possession of Thomas R. Fenton.)

Costs of cutting and hauling logs can be estimated from a couple of these contracts. In 1862, Joshua Bragg and Stephen M. Hunt agreed to cut 500 pine logs on Fenton's property in Lot 8 and deliver them to his mill for $35 per hundred logs. In 1883, Goodwin and W.J. Staples contracted to cut and haul logs from Lot 8 and from S.V. Lots 56 and 57 for $40 per hundred pine logs and $50 per hundred of other kinds; some logs were already cut/ and they received $12 per hundred for hauling them. In both contracts, the distance from the forest to the mill was two to three miles so this certainly entered into the cost. Assuming that the yield from these logs was comparable to the 1855 census figures, Mr. Fenton was paying $1.75 to $2.50 per thousand board feet to get logs cut and hauled to his mill.

By 1869, J. Milton Cowan had been hired to run Fenton's saw mill and shingle mill, and contracts covering the period from 1869 to 1874 are still available. Cowan received $2 per M for sawing logs furnished by Fenton and $2.25 per M for custom sawing. For sawing shingles, Cowan received $1.75 for sawing Fenton's material, $2.25 per M for custom work. Statements at year end for some of those years indicate that a number of local farmers were bringing in logs for custom sawing and that an increasing percentage of production was hemlock and hardwood.

In 1868, Mr Fenton contracted with Alonzo Marsh, a local professional rafter, to float lumber and shingles to Cincinnati. For this project. Marsh received $2.50 per M for lumber and $0.30 per M

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for shingles.

Assuming that these expenses were representative for the whole period up to the time that shipment by water was discontinued, a saw mill operator had to receive about $6.50 plus capital and overhead costs per thousand board feet, just to break even. Some years that did not happen. Unexpected floods, shifting channels in the river, etc., could prevent the product from even reaching market. Although the railroads provided a much surer means of reaching distant markets, much of the best pine timber was gone by that time, and the local market was able to utilize much of the production.

It would appear that pine shingles became relatively more valuable than pine boards as time progressed. In 1873, Amasa Birt contracted with G.W. Fenton, Jr. to cut all the pine timber on the south middle part of Lot 22 (on the slope of Oak Hill). Mr. Birt had his own saw mill and shingle mill. The best of the timber was to be used for hand-split shingles; the second best was to be sawed into shingles; the remainder was to be sawed into boards. Unfortunately, the contract did not show prices.

In 1869, Isaac Bragg agreed to sell 100 thousand or more, if possible, of pine shingles to G,W. Fenton, Jr. at $3.60 per M for "No. 1", $1.80 per M for "No. 2". As part of the contract, Mr. Bragg had to deliver his product to the bank of the Conewango for loading onto a raft.

AGRICULTURE As noted earlier, farming was made very difficult for the original settlers by the large pine trees. In most of Chautauqua County the land was covered with hardwoods whose stumps rotted in a few years. In Carroll, pine stumps or roots remained solid for a generation or more. According to Young's History, the introduction of the stump-pulling machine (a large nut and screw arrangement which was supported over a stump and turned by an ox or horse attached to a stout wooden sweep) about 1850 permitted a larger scale farming. When the earlier censuses reported the family occupation, almost every head of family was called "farmer", but it only meant that their income came from the land; it did not seem to matter whether from timber, handicraft, or conventional farming. Actually, nearly every family in the area had to do some subsistence farming in order to survive.

Some of the New York State censuses listed number of animals, quantities of various kinds of produce, and home manufactures for each household. From these data one can estimate the relative importance of agriculture. For instance, the 1835 census reported that John F. Bragg, farmer, had only one acre cleared, although we know from other records that he had owned the property for nine years; actually, he was a cooper and made his living by fabricating pails, barrels, etc. from pine staves which he cut from his timber.

As stump-pulling machines became available, and pine timber decreased, land clearing

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progressed quite rapidly. Land owners found that a pine stump, set on its side with roots extending, made a good barrier so fences were constructed from them. Occasionally one can still find the remains of a stump fence, but they were quite common into the 1930's. When barbed wire was introduced in the late 1800's, fence making with stumps ceased. Some of the Swedes brought a knowledge of dynamite with them, and later land clearing was mainly done that way. At best, pulling pine stumps by machine was a slow, hard process. In 1874, George and Martin Tibbetts contracted to remove the stumps and build a fence from them on 30 acres of the "Chase Lot" (currently owned by Marvin Swanson) for $40 per acre for G.W. Fenton, Jr. The Tibbetts were to use Fenton's machine and to have the use of a house; the job was expected to take more than a year. In the same period of time, Mr. Fenton was paying hired farm operators $30 to $40 per month.

At the death of Reuben V. Love, in 1888, his obituary stated that when he bought his farm (early 1850's) only three acres had been cleared; by 1888, all 90 acres (except for a sugar bush) had been cleared.

Small scale subsistence farming fitted into the smaller lumber operations quite well. All hauling and skidding of logs was done in Winter and most lumber sawing was done in early Spring. There was only minimal farm work in Winter because there was little dairying and few farm animals. A farm typically had a team of oxen, a cow or two, one or two young cattle, a few sheep, a pig or two, some chickens but no horses. Crops included corn, wheat, oats, potatoes, and flax, often in fractional acreages. Almost always there were a few apple trees.

As more land was cleared, population in the nearby villages increased, and transportation improved, local agriculture increased and tended to become more specialized. By the early 1870's, Reuben V. Love was keeping enough dairy cows to make butter manufacture and sale practical. G.W. Fenton, Jr., through hired operators, was probably also making and selling butter, but was mainly raising steers for market.

Starting about 1885, a creamery was set up on the Ivory Road near the site of Howard Cameron's present house and remained in operation until March, 1911. Floyd Lewis, son-in-law of Amasa Birt, ran it. The mill pond associated with the original saw mill near the site provided ice which was stored to preserve butter during hot weather. The creamery only separated cream from the remainder of the milk and made butter. Local farmers brought their milk to the creamery, then took the skim milk back home where it could be fed to calves or pigs. After the closing of the local creamery, one of several in Carroll, milk was hauled to the Merrill-Soule plant (later to become a Borden's plant) in Frewsburg. This utilized whole milk, not just cream.

While the local creamery was functioning, raising of calves for veal or "baby beef" on skim milk became an important side line. Each year buyers would come through the area, and at an agreed upon time would drive their purchases to a railroad terminal, usually Randolph. Local boys

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would be obtained along the way to help in the drive.

In the creamery days and to a lesser extent afterwards, milk production was largely seasonal. Most cows gave birth in the Spring and greatly reduced their production in the Fall. Often, cows were deliberately "dried off" in the Fall to minimize cost of feeding and problems with hauling milk. In more recent years, milk processors have attempted to modify this natural practice by paying appreciably more for milk in the Fall and Winter than in the Spring and Summer.

When milk processing was transferred to Frewsburg, hauling became a very time consuming chore. Farmers took turns hauling each other's milk. When motor trucks became available, around 1920, they were the preferred means of hauling, and owners of trucks took on the job as a significant part of their income. In Ivory, Ervin Long, Victor Long, and H. Allison Scott became milk haulers.

The market for whole milk brought about a progression of regulations, in regard to cleanliness, milk temperature, and building construction, etc. In the creamery days, regulations were minimal and milk was commonly delivered in 30-gallon cans with a spigot near the bottom; skim milk went home in the same cans. After the change-over, milk had to be delivered in special 10-gallon cans which were washed and scalded at the plant. Each farm was required to have a "milk house" with cold water, separated from the barn, for keeping milk over-night. Many of the requirements seemed to have little bearing on the quality of the product but had a significant effect on cost of production, so many small farms simply dropped out of the business.

Eventually, in the 1950's, the Frewsburg milk plant closed. In the 1960's, refrigerated bulk storage tanks were required on each farm which produced milk for most of the milk plants which were still open. By 1991 there are only a few milk producers left in the area. Much land which was once devoted to dairying is either growing up to brush and trees or is rented by larger scale farmers.

The dairy industry was initially made possible by the invention and development of the mowing machine and associated equipment. Along with haying tools came the reaper and the threshing machine. It appears that these kinds of equipment became prevalent in the 1870's, although the scythe and the cradle remained in general use for many years. The horse replaced the ox as the primary draft animal, and by 1900, oxen were practically gone. Reportedly, the change-over was made because mowers and reapers were geared for the speed of horses and would not operate properly when pulled by oxen; a change in gear ratio would have solved the problem, but this was not done. Threshing machines were powered by semi-portable steam engines.

In the early 1900's, stationary but semi-portable gasoline engines became available to run buzz rigs, threshing machines, root cutters, and ensilage cutters, and farmers started to build and use silos. In the 1920's, gasoline powered tractors were introduced to the area; only after rubber tires

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were put on them in the 1930's did they become popular. In 1940 there were few farms which had no work horses left on them. By 1950, most work horses were gone.

Throughout the period from the beginning of the threshing machine era until its end in the 1950's, there were just a few of the machines in the area and an owner took his thresher from farm to farm during the season. The practice was repeated with ensilage cutters after silos were introduced. Neighbors exchanged labor so that threshing and silo filling were almost social events. Bigger farms began to have their own machinery, the combine replaced the reaper-thresher operation, the field chopper and blower replaced the corn harvester-ensilage cutter combination, and dairy farms became fewer, so the practice of sharing labor generally ended in the 1950's. Various members of the Love family operated threshing machines from their beginning until the 1920's; during that period, farmers commonly stored grain sheaves in their barns so the threshing season was extended until late in the Fall. During the 1920's and early '30's, Frank Becker and family ran a thresher. Later, Harold Littlefield and Lee Minser did threshing, while Glen Scott did silo-filling on custom bases until the practices essentially stopped. Machine operators from nearby communities also did some of the local work.

In the early days of subsistence farming, with all sowing and harvesting being done by hand, there was no requirement for large fields, level land, etc. With appreciable areas of level land covered by mill ponds and swamps, settlers tended to farm hill sides. Thus, the slopes on either side of the Ivory valley which are now permanent pasture or covered with brush were once cultivated.

With the growth of population in villages and in Jamestown came an opportunity for the sale of various farm produce, especially potatoes. The better-drained hill farms produced superior quality potatoes, and these were a major source of income for some. This writer has heard an apparently reliable report of a worker, one of the Staples family, I believe, who dug and picked up, entirely by hand, 100 bushels in one day. At first there were no potato bugs and no blight. These plagues, which can now be controlled by chemicals, plus a change in diet gradually reduced the importance of potatoes as a local crop.

Early subsistence farming involved a number of crops and a variety of animals. As homespun cloth was phased out, flax was no longer raised. Most farmers stopped raising wheat because they could buy flour more conveniently. Larger acreages of oats and corn were raised as animal feed. People continued to keep small flocks of sheep long after they stopped spinning wool themselves because there was a market in Jamestown. However, by the late 1930's, only Frank Thayer and Howard Warn were keeping any sheep, and these were disposed of during the 1940's. Pigs were rarely kept for anything except home use, and this practice has continued on a limited basis. Chickens were kept for home use, but after the opening of the local grocery store they attained greater importance; the store was able to sell eggs so the manager accepted them in trade for other groceries. This sort of practice continued through the 1930's. A few people kept

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larger flocks of chickens and sold eggs and broilers, but this mostly stopped after World War II when integration of the poultry-chicken feed industries made local production non-competitive.

There has been limited production of some other agricultural products for the commercial market. Buckwheat has been raised through years, usually when a wet Spring has prevented planting of another crop. During the 1930's and '40's, a cannery at South Dayton contracted with local farmers to grow peas; to facilitate the business, the company set up a machine which shelled the peas in Frewsburg. During the late 1960's and '70's, some green bean growers from Erie County rented farm land in the area to produce part of their crop.

QUARRYINGSomewhere near the 1900-foot elevation level there is a thick layer of sandstone running through the hills, and this outcrops in two areas overlooking the Ivory valley. Both formations, the Bear Ring and the Cat Rocks are in Lot 6. The Bear Ring is quite evident from the main highway, especially when leaves are off the trees.

About 1846, Daniel Stone and his family came here and started cutting building stones out of the boulders or cliff. In 1850, there was an Irish immigrant, Thomas Farnall, working with Mr. Hill. Thereafter it appears that there was a continual business for perhaps 50 years. It is not clear whether the Hill family owned the business all of that time. Daniel Hill, Senior died before the 1860 census and Daniel, Jr. died before the 1880 census. The latter's family moved away prior to the 1892 census, apparently, but stone cutting continued. The high water mark of the business would appear to have been about 1875, with several full- time workers, including Arthur Towns. Family traditions indicate that a number of the Swedish settlers worked there on a part time basis. One story about the operation is that one worker was kept busy undermining a section of cliff, which would then be split off; when it dropped it would hopefully roll down the hill where it could be worked on more readily.

The cut stones were used for foundations, ornamental fence posts, and (when polished and carved) for tombstones. According to the late Lynn Quaintance, some of these stones served as foundations for the old iron bridges across the Conewango and Cassadaga Creeks. The availability of Portland cement eliminated much of the need for the product and the business seems to have died about 1900.

The area is blessed with substantial sand and gravel deposits and these have been used for road building and for making plaster, mortar, and cement. The first utilization was sand for plaster and mortar; the finest sand was dug from the lowest slope of Woodchuck Hill, in Lot 15 along its western boundary. There have been numerous gravel pits, some of which have only been used for incidental making of concrete by the landowner and his neighbors. The first large pit was opened on the Fenton property in 1933 or '34 to provide gravel for rebuilding and paving the Ivory Road. Wallace Fenton reclaimed the site and returned it to cropland about 1950. About

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1940, the Town of Poland opened a pit on the Peterson property in Lot 8, next to the Poland line. When Geo. Anderson, Jr. purchased the Peterson farm, in the late 1960's, he opened a new pit near the Bragg Road. Both pits are currently inactive. In the 1970's, the Carroll Hwy. Dept. took a considerable amount of gravel from Marvin Swanson's farm, removing a somewhat hemispherical mound which some had thought was an artificial "Indian mound", due to its unusual shape. In the late 1980's, the same Highway Dept. opened a new pit on the Cameron property in Lot 15.

SPECIALISTS AND ARTISANSMillwrights and blacksmiths were necessary from the beginning of the lumbering business to set up saw mills and keep them in repair. Frequently a blacksmith set up shop near one of the larger mills. The Staples-Taylor reunion history notes that Abraham Staples was the millwright for their mill and then worked at various other mills after the family business closed. A blacksmith was necessary to fabricate tools and even nails. Horse-shoeing was a very minor part of their work initially, because of the small number of horses, but oxen which skidded and hauled logs were often shod. The 1867 Atlas shows a blacksmith shop near the site of Cass' former mill and another at the Woodchuck-Emery Hill Road intersection. Probably John Scott operated the latter shop. During the 1850's, Isaiah Chase had his shop on land he owned near Fenton's mill. Phineas Annis and Mortimer Putnam, who lived near the late George Anderson's former home, worked as smiths, wrights, or carpenters during the last half of the 1800's.

Late in the 1800's, machine-made nails became available and steel tools could be readily purchased, so blacksmithing changed. The chief work now involved shoeing horses. A shop was set up near the Ivory Road-Emery Hill Road intersection; Elmer Warn operated this shop for some years around the turn of the- century, and it appears to have been the only blacksmith shop in the area at the time. After he purchased the property where Marvin Swanson now lives, Mr. Warn continued to do incidental smithing at his farm.

Some men who worked as wrights or blacksmiths also worked as carpenters, particularly as the need for the first two occupations decreased. John Scott, Phineas Annis, and Mortimer Putnam were among this category. Hiram and Loren Scott, Lewis Scott, and Charles Warn were local carpenters in the late 1800's and very early 1900's who combined their trade with farming. Barn construction as well as some of the earlier plank house framing involved mortise-and-tenon fabrication methods and required quite specialized carpentry skills. The mortise-and-tenon construction generally went out of practice prior to World War I. Merle Cowan worked from about 1900 to 1930 and seems to have been the last professional carpenter living and working in the area. There was almost no construction in the area during the Great Depression and World War II. Thereafter, changes in materials, methods, and electric tools permitted people to handle their own carpentry work on a do-it-yourself basis, and professionals tended to serve larger areas.

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According to the Bragg family reunion hostory, John F. Bragg maintained a cooper shop at his home throughout his long career (about 1825-1880). The 1860 census lists William Hunt and Byron Hunt as coopers but they were probably living in Frewsburg at the time. By the 1870's, barrel and wooden pail fabrication appears to have become somewhat mechanized and staves were produced in quantity in at least two shops in Frewsburg, so traditional coopering died as an occupation

Axel Anderson, on the Bunce Road, maintained a family business on his farm, turning out wooden screws for furniture factories during the early 1900's.

HIGHWAYSEarly settlers took advantage of Indian trails, but these were very limited because, for generations, Indians had only passed through the area, not lived here. Those early settlers going from Frewsburg to Kennedy would cross the Conewango north of Frewsburg and travel on the west side of the Creek , then recross the Conewango in the Doloff Flats area. Presumably the road from Frewsburg to Ivory was cut through over a period of years in the late 1820's and 1830's. The Bunce Road was also established in the same period, but it continued north from its intersection with the Ivory Road and connected with the Harrington Road. The 1867 Atlas shows this extension still in existence, but it must have been discontinued soon thereafter. The Scott Road appears to have been started by the mid-1830's. The Harrington Road was probably started in the early 1830's; there was a "Y" in it, with the north leg of it crossing the Cass Run at Harrington's mill and then becoming part of the present Page Road. The western end of the Page Road did not exist in 1854 but is shown in the 1867 Atlas. The section of road crossing the Cass Run at Harrington's mill was officially discontinued before 1867 but continued to be used by local residents for many years. The Emery Hill Road and the Bragg Road were started in the 1840's and were generally completed by 1854. The Woodchuck Hill Road was not laid out until the late 1850's or early 1860's, as was the Elderkin Road. The "Gulf Road" branch of the Woodchuck Hill Road was not shown on the 1867 Atlas map but must have been constructed soon thereafter; it washed out in 1938 and was never rebuilt but remained on road maps for about 30 more years. The Warner Road (County Line Road) was not laid out until the 1890's, but the part of the road which is entirely in South Valley probably existed as a logging road for some years prior. The names of some of these roads have changed through the years. The lower part of the Emery Hill Road and the lower part of the Bragg Road were once the "Bingham Road". The upper part of the Bragg Road was "Staples Hill". The Ivory Road was "Pope Hollow Road".

There were other roads which are not shown on existing maps which existed for some years. A logging road ran from the Ivory Road near Fenton's mill pond easterly along a tributary of the Cass Run, then steeply up the slope to the "flats" of Woodchuck Hill, finally connecting with the Woodchuck Hill Road. This seems to have been discontinued in the 1870's, but not before John P. Warn's, Peter Warn's, and Charles Wasberg's homes had been built along it. Presumably, the Coldspring Road was laid out or extended to serve the Warn homes after the logging road was

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abandoned. Before the Woodchuck Hill Road was made, there was a road going up the steep ravine on the present Derry property from the Ivory Road to Woodchuck Hill; this may have assisted the stone quarrying operation on the Bear Ring as well shingle making in Lot 7. Still another road ran from the Ivory Road on the former Howard Warn property to the Oak Hill Road, past the Calvin Bragg home.

From the early days until the beginning of the automobile age, roads were essentially a local responsibility. Area residents paid part or all of their "state and county" taxes by providing labor for upkeep of neighborhood roads. This labor was coordinated by the elected Town Road Commissioner. Even after this system ended, local farmers often plowed the roads near their homes with home-made snowplows and dumped stones into holes which developed in the roads in Spring.

The local roads were quite inadequate for motor traffic, particularly in Winter and early Spring. Many automobiles were simply given a rest for part of the year. Gradually, "dirt" roads were changed into "gravel" roads and snow-plowing was practiced. This writer remembers two occasions, in the 1930's, when fire trucks got stuck in the mud on highways on their way to fires. In the 1910's the Frewsburg- Kennedy Road was widened and black-topped; about 1957 the highway was rebuilt and some curves near the Cass Run crossing were eliminated. The Ivory Road, from Cass Corners to the county line was rebuilt and black-topped in 1934-'35. Similar work on the Bone Run Road was not completed for three or four years afterwards. In the 1950's, New York State adopted the Erwin Plan (named for State Senator Erwin) which gave financial assistance to towns for bringing rural roads up to modern standards. The Bunce Road was the first of the area town highways to be black-topped. In the 1960's and early 1970's, the Emery Hill Road, lower Bragg Road, Elderkin Road, and Harrington Road were reworked and black-topped. As of 1991, the Scott Road has been widened and gravelled, but not surfaced.

SCHOOLSThe original school in the area was located on a road which was a northern extension of the Bunce Road, in Lot 32. The date when it opened is unknown , but the deed to the property was recorded in 1839. Sometime between 1854 and 1867, this school was relocated to Route 62 near the Cass Corners intersection and it remained there until 1902, when it was closed. It was commonly called the Thayer District.

The school at Ivory probably opened in the early 1840's and was located near Jeanette Swanson's present house. In 1869 it was voted to build a new schoolhouse a short distance away near Fenton's mill, but construction was not complete until 1872 or'73. The "new" school remained in operation until 1951, the last three years as part of the Frewsburg Central School system.

Reportedly, the original school on Woodchuck Hill opened in 1856. The building was a log structure located at the corner of the Bragg and Elderkin Roads in Lot 8. Sometime in the 1880's

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a new frame structure was constructed along the Elderkin Road in the south-west corner of Lot 8. Like the Thayer District school, this district was consolidated into the Ivory district (Carroll No.7) in 1902. Generally the Woodchuck Hill district only served people in Carroll Lots 7 and 8, and South Valley Lots 56 and 57; however the school census for 1901-'02 shows 20 students (all of Swedish or mixed-Swedish parentage).Education was relatively informal in the early days. Monroe Bragg, born in 1856, remarked that he had to go to school until he had gone through the available textbooks, after which he was free to quit. By 1900, students were required to attend school until age 16, but after age 12 only had to attend 60 days per year. Parents commonly sent older boys to school on stormy days and kept them home when there was outdoor work to be done. About 1900, one of the local schools stayed in session until July 1 because the teacher, who owned a farm on Frew Run, had called school off during planting season. Also about 1900, a young man who worked in Fenton's mill asked the teacher if he could attend in order to learn English properly. The teacher agreed and had him sit at a double desk with a child who understood Swedish, but did not generally speak it; this informal adult education apparently worked because C.R. Nelson went on to become a highly successful businessman in Jamestown. (Roseland Park was his gift to the city.)

The three area schools were limited to eight grades, maximum. If a child or his parents wished further education it was possible to go to Frewsburg's Union Free School after 'the mid-1870's. Students who did this either provided their own transportation or boarded in Frewsburg. It was general practice for students who did not want further education to remain in eighth grade an extra year or two until they reached 16. This writer remembers when perhaps one-third of the Ivory school pupils were eighth graders.

In 1935,the Ivory district began contracting for bus transportation from the Ivory school to Frewsburg and started sending eighth graders as well as high school students. In 1937, seventh graders were also sent to Frewsburg. Starting in 1938y the school bus ran the length of the Ivory Road and delivered some elementary students to Ivory as well as transporting Junior and Senior High School students to Frewsburg. After centralization in 1948, buses picked up and delivered students on some of the side roads as well. The first school buses were large, usually old, automobiles which had extra seats which could fold into the backs of the front seat. Until centralization, the buses were owned by the operator, who performed his service as a contractor.

The consolidation of three districts into one, in 1902, resulted in a rather large population for the Ivory school, but the building was large enough to accommodate it. (At this time it is not clear why the building was made so large when it was constructed; perhaps the people were thinking of other community functions.) A number of people in the former Thayer district found themselves closer to Frewsburg than to Ivory and obtained permission to transfer. It required only a vote of the taxpayers in attendance at the respective annual school meetings. At least one farm transferred to the Springer district (Poland No. 3). It appears that such permissions were generally granted. However, residents of the Woodchuck Hill district had no such option

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because of their remoteness from any other school. Probably the consolidation was a factor in the depopulation of the area; in any case, a number of families with small children moved away within two years. One family, the Nels Andersons, attempted to resist by sending children to Upper Mud Creek (Town of Randolph) and to Emery Hill (Poland#2) but these were not practical solutions and the students finally attended the Ivory school. The distances to school was nearly three miles for a number of children. After consolidation there were 40 to 50 pupils in the Ivory school, some years.

As noted earlier. Ivory (Carroll No 7) was incorporated into the Frewsburg Central School district in 1948, but the school building was kept open as part of the new district for three years. Even before centralization a few students from Emery Hill and the Springer Dist. (which had already closed their schools) attended the Ivory School under an agreement with Frewsburg; Frewsburg had agreed to take those students but did not have enough room in certain classes.

While the rural schools were functioning, each district had a meeting of taxpayers every year, in May. At this meeting there was election of officers including a trustee (sometimes there were three), a collector-treasurer, and a clerk, plus any other business which might be in order. The trustee hired the teacher, any custodial help (including someone to start fires on cold mornings), and ordered fire wood and any other school supplies. Repairs or modifications to the school property required authorization by the taxpayers. In the early days, teachers commonly had an 8th Grade education, or its equivalent, and were usually men. By the latter 1800's, teachers were usually high school graduates and were mostly girls or women.

The school houses served as community centers from their beginnings. Political meetings, dances, and various religious services were held in them, and there appear to have been no governmental restrictions on their use.

CEMETERIESEarly settlers established two small cemeteries in the late 1820's or 1830's. The first was on the northern extension of the Bunce Road, near the location of the first school. The second one was across the road from the present Ivory Cemetery. People found shale rock at the first site and another cemetery was started back toward the Ivory Road , but still along the Bunce Road extension. There may have been only one burial in the third location. It is believed that the latter location was too wet. The Emery Hill Road cemetery was also considered unsatisfactory, but the reason is unknown; it was even unknown in the 1890's, when a member of the Thayer family wrote a short history of the Thayer Cemetery. Most of the information in this account comes from that source.

In the Fall of 1842, a meeting of the residents of the Thayer District and the Pope Hollow (Ivory) District selected'- a site for a new cemetery. They decided on the site of the present Thayer Cemetery and Hiram Thayer donated a half acre for the purpose. The founders of the cemetery

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were listed as: Hiram Thayer; George, James, and Samuel Cowan; Calvin and John Bragg; George and Samuel Bingham; James and John Quaintance; Asa and Elliott Scott; Chester and Jedediah Pope; Deuteronomy Harrington; Simon Sutton. Over the next 20 years, all known bodies were removed from the three earlier cemeteries and re-interred in the Thayer Cemetery. By the 1870's all lots had been sold.

In 1897 additional land was purchased on the South and West sides from Frank and Minnie Thayer, and a strip of land for a roadway on East side was purchased from Frank and Nora Cass in 1898. The cemetery now had room for expansion, but meanwhile a new cemetery had been started along the Emery Hill Road and demand for burial space had significantly diminished. In 1977 the trustees of the Thayer Cemetery voted to turn over assets and the responsibility for maintenance of the cemetery to the Town of Carroll.

The present Ivory Cemetery seems to have been started because of inadequate space in the Thayer Cemetery. In 1879, eight men from Woodchuck Hill or the upper end of valley purchased a plot of land from G.W. Fenton, Jr. along the Emery Hill Road. They were Henry Scott, John P. Warn, Charles Warn, Charles Wasberg, Solomon Long, Peter Nelson, Andrew Lawson, and Andrew Sandburg. In 1881, Armon Lee and J. Milton Cowan bought an adjoining piece of land of the same size. In spite of the difference in time of purchase, and the fact that each group operated independently, there was obviously cooperation because each plot was divided into 64 lots and they shared a driveway along their mutual boundary. In the Lee-Cowan section there are records of deaths prior to 1881, but the children involved may have been reburied. The two sections operated as private cemeteries for more than thirty years, selling lots to those needing them but taking no responsibility for burials or any maintenance except the exterior fence. Lot owners commonly came once or twice a year and mowed the grass on their individual lots with a scythe. Unfortunately, a number of families with burials on the Lee-Cowan section moved away, leaving areas completely untended. In 1914 a number of local residents organized the Ivory Cemetery Association and obtained title to the cemetery property from the original grantees or their heirs. Mrs. Kate Bunce has been credited with being the prime mover in this change. The Association then sold lots, set up charges for maintenance, and provided the maintenance.

In the 1960's, Wallace Fenton donated land for an additional 56 or slightly more four-grave lots and a drive-way; and Mrs. Gladys Hill, widow of Vernon Warn, gave property of comparable size but roughly triangular shape on the east side. Since burials started, about 1880, there have been about 400 interments; a precise count is impossible because no records were kept in the early years.

RELIGION AND CHURCHESIn the late 1830's and early 1840's the Baptists and Methodists, respectively, organized churches in Frewsburg. Until that time, people wishing to attend a formal church service had to go at

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least as far as Kiantone. Certainly there were itinerant preachers who held meetings in homes prior to then. The records of the Frewsburg Baptist Church note that G.W. Fenton, Jr. provided a substantial part of the money to construct their church building in 1847, and that deacon Phineas Annis, who moved to Ivory a few years later, was head carpenter. When the Methodists' church building was constructed in 1844, James Cowan provided planks set on shingle bolts for pews.

By 1860 and probably earlier, religious services were being held in the area schools. Sponsors were sometimes local laymen and sometimes itinerant preachers. Peace Justice Thomas J. Fenton's notes include legal action taken against disturbers of a preaching service in the Woodchuck Hill school in 1862. Verbal traditions say that some of these services were of the "Holy Roller" type. A regular Sunday School became organized at the Ivory school and continued through the warmer months until the building of the Baptist chapel adjacent to the school, in 1897.

The Swedes who settled in the area were all members of the State Church of Sweden (Lutheran), but some were unhappy with certain aspects of that denomination. In 1880 a Swedish Lutheran church was organized in Frewsburg and its first officers included Solomon Long, Charles Warn, Andrew Sandburg, and Andrew Lawson from the Woodchuck Hill-Ivory area. About the same time, Swedish dissidents formed the Mission Covenant churches on Oak Hill and at Frewsburg, with a number of members from Ivory. A layman from the Oak Hill congregation sometimes held services, in Swedish of course, in the Woodchuck Hill school. The large Warn clan seems to have been split between the Lutherans and the Mission Covenant. Children from both Swedish groups as well as "Yankees" of varying denominations attended the non-denominational Sunday School at the Ivory School.

In 1891 there was a well-organized series of revival meetings at the Ivory School, headed by Herve Georgi, a grandson of G.W. Fenton, Jr. The meetings were well attended, well supported, and cut across denominational lines. A considerable number of unchurched people professed salvation, and as a result a concensus grew that there should be an organized church in Ivory. Mrs. Charlotte Cowan, local teacher, wife of the head sawyer in Fenton's mill, a member of the Methodist Church, and very active in the Ivory Sunday School, is credited with convincing G.W. Fenton, Jr. to give land for location of a chapel. Mr. Fenton was in his 80's at the time; he included a bequest of 0.57 acre, adjacent to the school, to the Frewsburg Baptist Church for the site of a chapel. He died shortly afterwards, in 1895.

Interest continued to grow and then Frank Cass donated $100 to start the project. With this and other gifts on hand or pledged, the Frewsburg Baptist church appointed a building committee consisting of members living in the Ivory area. These were Joel Harrington, chairman; Edwin Harrington, treasurer; L. Fenn Bunce, secretary; William Rhodes, John Smedley, and Andrew Warn.

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Work started almost immediately. At this time we do not know how the design was selected. In March,1897, the corner stone was placed. The head carpenter, Albert Lake, from Fentonville, was hired for $2.25 per day. Other labor was donated by the community. Foundation stones were cut locally. (There is some question about the latter item: John Smedley promised to provide them; however. Warn Family tradition says that John P. Warn cut them from a boulder on the Loren Scott property.) Henry Harrington's saw mill and Amasa Birt's planer provided much of the lumber. Total cost of the building was about $1800, only $500 of which was borrowed. It was dedicated on Nov. 7, 1897. The church building was very much a community effort and the community consisted of church-goers of several denominations, so the building committee guaranteed use of the building by any other evangelical denomination having membership in the community, when not in use by the "Baptist Society". This guarantee has been used mainly for funeral services, and probably not at all since about 1950. The ownership and leadership were strictly Baptist, and members were carried on the roll of the Frewsburg Baptist Church.

There were about 40 members who attended the chapel in 1897, but a considerable number were added within a few years and arrangements were worked out whereby trustees, deacons, and treasurers were elected to serve specifically at either Ivory or Frewsburg. In areas of common interest, of course, officers of both groups acted together; Frank Warn and Monroe Bragg were particularly involved in the building of the new parsonage in Frewsburg, in 1924. By 1914, Ivory paid one-third of the minister's salary, and after 1925 this was increased to 40%, with parsonage maintenance also pro-rated.

In 1953, the Frewsburg Central School officially closed the Ivory School, and by terms of the original deed, the property reverted to the heirs of Thomas J. Fenton. These heirs, children of Clora Fenton Bowers, gave the property to the Ivory Church. It was necessary for the church to incorporate. This was accomplished in 1954, under the name, "Ivory Independent Baptist Church". A few months later the congregation voted to sever any contractual ties with the Frewsburg Baptist Church and to call its own minister. The former schoolhouse was converted into an eight-room parsonage during 1954-'55, with Howard Cameron in charge of reconstruction. The first minister. Rev. William Shroyer, was called in 1955.

The church has received additional gifts of land from Edwin Munson, Wallace Fenton, and Harold Swanson for playground area and enlargement of its parking lot. The parking lot currently extends over a filled-in portion of the former Fenton mill race. The church also bought a piece of land in 1978 from Ralph Long, Jr. to extend the playground. In the Fall of 1958, work was started on an addition to the south-west end of the church building which ultimately included the chancel, office, eight Sunday School rooms, downstairs auditorium, and furnace room. These areas required several years to complete. About 1970, a baptistry was installed in the chancel, making unnecessary the use of a mill pond or the Cass Run for baptisms.

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In 1963, a group of members under the general leadership of Howard Cameron, but including the then-minister. Rev. Robert Waite, left the Ivory Independent Baptist Church and set up a new organization, "Trinity Chapel". The new organization met for several years in the basement of the Cameron home, then constructed a church building near Frewsburg, completing it in 1973. A major incentive for the new church was the "charismatic" theology of its leadership.

A couple of unusual events in the life of the Ivory church will be mentioned here: In 1929, a lovelorn bachelor with a history of mental problems took out part of his frustrations by generally vandalizing the interior of the church building; his behavior was set off by the wedding of a young lady whom he had admired but never dated. It should be noted that the wedding in question had not taken place in the church; in fact, there was probably no wedding held in the church until the late 1930's. In 1947, at a baptismal service held in the Cass Run, behind the church building, it was necessary for a man to stand guard with a rifle because a bull in the pasture had become enraged; it had seriously gored five horses earlier that day, charging through barbed-wire fences to carry out its attacks.

The church building has served as a community center, somewhat supplanting the school building in that regard. While the school was in operation, some extra-curricular activities were held in the church. Until the early 1950's, a large number of funerals were held in the church, whether or not the deceased had ever attended the church. Prior to the availability of the building, funerals were held in family homes. In more recent years there have been fewer funerals in the church, and all have involved deaths of active church members. Since the late 1930's there have been weddings in the church, some not involving church or community families; prior to that time, formal or semi-formal weddings were held in family homes, although it was much more common for the wedding party to go to the parsonage of the officiating minister.

STORESThere does not appear to have been any grocery or general store in Ivory until the late 1890's when Ivon Stockwell constructed a small two-story building at the Emery Hill- Ivory Road intersection and set up a store. He and his family lived on the second floor. The building also housed the local post-office at least part of the short time it was in operation. It is not clear just when Mr. Stockwell left the store, but about 1905 Adam VanderWark had it. In the mid- 1910's, Edwin and Rudolph Munson took it over and ran it until early 1917 when it burned. This was the last store on that site. Some of the store-keepers took orders and delivered groceries by horse and wagon to outlying homes. They commonly accepted eggs in payment for groceries. The store seems to have been a gathering place where news and gossip was exchanged by male members of the community.

After the loss of Munson's store, Albert Walrod, from Clark's Corners, bought the Irwin Cowan

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property and built a new store across the Ivory Road from the earlier one. This store functioned off and on at various levels of operation until about 1930. The building has since been moved slightly and enlarged to become the Miller home.

In the 1920's, Ernest Comstock and family, living at the corner of the Harrington and Ivory Roads, put in gasoline pumps and conducted a sort of confectioner's store in the body of a former bus. The next owners, the Earl Bennetts,got rid of the bus in the mid-1930's and moved the store into their house and included some groceries. Successive owners, Melville Clark, Millard "Pete" Waid, and Paul Burch maintained the gasoline pumps and the grocery business into the 1970's. While Mr. dark owned the store, in 1951, there was an attempted burglary in which he was slightly injured,

POST-OFFICEIn the latter 1890's, the Federal Government decided to set up a post-office in the community. However, a new name was required since no more two-word names were acceptable. For many years the valley was called Pope Hollow, and before that it was Covey's Gap. Local residents were asked to submit suggestions. According to Ellen Rhodes Nelson, Clarence Love picked the name Ivory off a box of soap in the local store, and it was accepted. The post-office was established in Stockwell's store about 1898, with the store-keeper as post-master. The post-office lasted only two or three years (closing date is uncertain) because the Rural Free Delivery (RFD) system took over. However, the name Ivory stuck. "Ivory" post-marks are collectors' items; this writer has only seen one specimen.

As a sidelight: Clark's Corners received and then lost its postoffice in the same period and under the same conditions as Ivory.

To meet the Government's demands, the community name was changed to Ivesville after an early settler who had long since departed. When this post-office died, the name Ivesville died with it, and the community was Clark's Corners again.

MILITARYThere were no known Revolutionary War veterans in the Ivory area, but there were several veterans of the War of 1812, including Isaac Eames, Samuel Cowan, John Covey, and Sir Richard Harrington. All of this latter group moved here after the war. As far as is known, no local residents served in the Mexican War.

A large number of area boys and men served in the Union Army during the Civil War, and it is impossible to identify all of them. In the 1865 NY census, each family was asked to identify any members who had died in military service. Twenty- three were listed in Carroll. The list included some whose families had recently moved to Carroll and omitted those whose families were not available for questioning. Ivory area fatalities included:

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Asa Comstock, son of Orsino Comstock, 9th NY Cav., taken prisoner by guerrillas, never heard from again

Alonzo Mason, had lived on Emery Hill at the town line, 14th NY Inf. died of a stroke while in service

Sewell Staples, son of Goodwin Staples, 112th NY Inf., missing in action at Fredricksburg, presumably killed in action.

Ludon Hunt, son of Stephen P. Hunt, 7th NY Sharpshooters (112th Inf.) killed in action at Petersburg

John D. Scudder, lived on Ivory Road, brother-in-law of Gov. Fenton, 188th NY Inf., killed in action-

John M. Cowan, son of Geo.W.Cowan, 10th PA Inf., died of wounds at South Mountain, MD (Antietam Campaign)

Horatio Benson, had worked as sawyer in local mills, 7th NY Sharpshooters, died at home from disease contracted in POW camp

Charles Smith, son of Royal Smith, 9th NY Cav., died in a POW camp.Willard Cass, son of Pliny Cass, 112th NY Inf., died of sickness in an Army hospital

Of the above, Benson and Cass were listed in the 1865 Ellicott census, while Smith was listed in Poland.

In addition, Leroy Cowan, another son of Geo.W.Cowan, died shortly after the census was taken, the result of wounds suffered at Winchester. Nelson Harrington, son of Camaralzo Harrington, died of wounds following the first Wilderness battle.

For those who survived the War and lived until the 1890's or so, the government was quite generous with pensions.

Ned VandeWark died in the Philippine Insurrection during the Span.-American War. His parents were tenant farmers in Ivory at times.

During World War I, Royal Smith, son of William Smith who had lived on Route 62 but had moved away prior to the war, died in service. A number of other area young men served in the military but all survived.

During World War II, Herbert Van Erden, son of Mrs. Gertrude Button, who lived at the time on Woodchuck Hill, was killed in Belgium while serving in the 14th Armored Division. Three members of the Alvin Seekins family were wounded in action. A number of area clans suffered losses during the War, but among branches which had moved away. Among the descendants of Deuteronomy Harrington there were at least four fatalities and there were two deaths among Solomon Long's family.

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Several local boys served in the Korean conflict, but all survived. In the Viet Nam action, Philip Kidd, son of William and Ellen Seekins Kidd, of the Ivory Road, was killed while serving in the Marine Corps.

OIL & GASIn the early 1890's, drilling for oil started in the Ivory area and continued sporadically for perhaps 15 years. We understand that the quantities which were found were insufficient to justify further operation. About 1920 there seems to have been renewed interest and an organization called Ivory Oil Company was formed. We do not know whether it did anything beyond selling stock and leasing some land. It is reported by the family that Harry Prittie occasionally dipped oil out of an abandoned casing on his property and earned incidental income from it.

The energy crunch starting in 1973 resulted in a renewed interest in local resources, concentrating on natural gas. A number of wells were drilled, approximately 4000-5000 feet deep, and in the early 1980's Columbia Gas Company installed a 13" transmission through the area to tap those wells. Drilling generally stopped about 1986 because of the drop in natural gas prices. Land owners who got wells on their property benefited not only from royalties but from access to gas for their own use.

The energy crunch referred to above also resulted in a great increase in the use of wood as fuel. For many years wood had been largely supplanted as fuel, first by coal and then by oil and propane.

UTILITIESBy about 1902 there were a very few telephones in the area. While the Woodchuck Hill school was still functioning (it closed in June of that year),Leonard Bragg fell from a tree there and shattered his elbow; his sister ran to Clarence Love's home, on Emery Hill, to telephone a doctor. During the next several years telephone lines were rapidly extended, and by 1920, telephone service pretty well blanketed the area. About 1930, the old "central" system with a local operator was replaced by automatic equipment by the Jamestown Telephone Company.

Electric service reached Ivory about 1931 gut did not extend much onto the hills for several years. Some homes were not reached until after 1950.

Prior to the availability of electricity, most homes were lighted by kerosene lamps, as had been the case since the 1860's. (The early settlers used candles.) However, some time in the 1920's acetylene lights were introduced and a number of local homes obtained them; they required a supply of calcium carbide which reacted with water to produce the gas. The chemical reaction took place in a tank which was buried in the ground, and the acetylene gas was piped to the individual light fixtures. These systems were replaced when electricity became available.

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Windmills seem to have never been very popular in this area but a few farms had them for pumping water or charging batteries. During the 1800's, the Love family had one which powered a small flour mill or grain grinder.

THE LAWFor many years there was a resident peace justice who dispensed justice in local civil disputes and minor criminal cases. These men also officiated at some weddings. Our information on them is limited to some published family information and the notes which two of them have left.

Samuel Cowan and Jedediah Pope are mentioned as justices who performed weddings in the area prior to 1850. We have no further information on their legal activities.

Thomas J. Fenton was peace justice throughout the 1860's and he made quite readable notes on his cases. Most of those cases were local civil claims, although two involved minor criminal charges, and one of the latter appears to have been a Frewsburg situation (a charge of public intoxication against a woman). Most of the time Mortimer Putnam acted as constable. A few cases involved trial by jury but it does not appear that lawyers were involved in any of them. Court was held in Justice Fenton's office near the saw mill.

Reuben V. Love was peace justice for several years in the 1870's. Like Mr. Fenton's cases, most of them were civil claims, but the local Ivory cases were a minority. Many of them involved plaintiffs and defendants from the Town of Poland and some were Frewsburg concerns. Perhaps this was the beginning of the end of the strictly local justice. Ira Rhodes acted as constable in most of the local cases. Justice Love's most serious case involved a charge of rape against two Town of Poland fellows; after arraignment he remanded them to the custody of the Poland constable from whom they escaped, and there the account ends. Presumably this put the case into the hands of a higher court.

ORGANIZED SPORTSIn the first decade of the 1900's, local young men organized a baseball team which played games with similar teams from nearby communities. Their home field was on Edwin Harrington's property, some distance back from the Ivory Road on the south side of that highway. Baseball had been a popular local pastime at least since the 1870's. The story is told that Henry Harrington, born in 1862, commented that in his day, players did not wear baseball gloves; when told that the current baseballs were much harder than those of the 1870's and '80's, Henry demonstrated that he could handle the position of catcher, barehanded. The Ivory team seems to have flourished until World War I. The advent of the motor-cycle greatly facilitated transportation of the team to other towns for games. None of the Ivory team appears to have gone on to professional baseball although a number of players from neighboring communities did, including Ray Caldwell from Onoville, Hugh Bedient from Levant, Harry Eccles from

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Kennedy, and "Swat" Erickson. During the final years of the Ivory team the manager was Elton Becker, who had been one of nine brothers (originally from Clark's Corners) on the Becker Nine team.

About 1930, some people whose names are unknown to this writer, cleared brush and trees to make a course which went steeply up the slope of Woodchuck Hill on Derry's land, ending at the edge of the plateau on Ervin Long's (now Arthur Button's) property. Motorcycle hill climbing contests were held on the course for two or three years. This writer remembers just one of the contests; two or three cycles were able to make it all the way to the top. Paying spectators were down in the valley on the Derry farm and could see all of the action from there.

About 1939, the Jamestown Ski Club leased a hillside from the owner of the Ivory Store (property currently part of the Swanson farm) and set up a small ramp for a ski-jump. At the time the hillside was cleared for pasture and relatively smooth, though steep. Jumps of about 60 feet were attained by experienced skiers. A number of meets were held. World War II closed the operation and it was not reactivated later.

About 1954, a Mr. Lilienthal from Randolph leased land from H. Allison Scott and cleared a track through the woods up the hillside to the vicinity of the Cat Rocks, and back. It was intended to be a course for sports cars in which the contestants ran against the clock. A very few meets were held over a two year period, and then the project died. Probably most sports car owners found the course too damaging or potentially damaging, to their vehicles.

There was at least one tragedy in the course of local sports. In 1914, twenty-one year-old Arthur Cash (descended from the Towns family) died from internal injuries after being struck by a baseball.

UNUSUAL EVENTS, WEATHER, ETC.There are no statistics available on weather details in Ivory, apart from the Jamestown Weather Station. These Weather Station data are generally applicable but sometimes are not. However, the Weather Station was not established until about 1923 and its location has varied from Jamestown City Hall to Buffalo Street Fire Station to a water pumping station in the Cassadaga Valley; direct comparisons of some its own information (particularly minimum Winter temperatures) are unreliable.

In general, the valley in Ivory gets less snow fall than Jamestown, but the hilltops sometimes get substantially more. During the night of October 11-12,1988, Jamestown received a little snow, the Ivory valley received about two inches, while the tops of Woodchuck and Emery Hills got a foot or more.

The coldest month, as far as we know, was February, 1934. Weather Bureau data would indicate

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that January, 1977, was as cold, but this is due to the change in location of the station. In 1934, most thermometers in the valley showed temperatures lower than -40 F one morning although temperatures on the hills were in the -20F's. Many fruit trees which had survived for a generation or two died that year.

The heaviest single snow fall since records have been kept was a two-day storm which included March 17,1936. A total of 36 inches was noted in Jamestown, and the local amount was probably the same.

In addition to the heavy snow and low-temperature records, the 1930's included some of our driest weather and warmest summer temperatures. These coincided with the time of the Dust Bowl, farther West.

The greatest flood in the area probably occurred in early April, 1865, based on some eye-witness accounts. Young's History notes that Fenton's shingle mill was discontinued at that time (presumably washed out), but we know that the mill was either restarted or rebuilt. That flood occurred because of a late Spring, in which a heavy snow pack melted in a heavy rain. A similar set of circumstances in April, 1947 also resulted in a heavy flood.

According to the National Geographic, about 30 inches of rain fell in a single day in Smethport, PA, in June, 1942. The Jamestown Weather Bureau reported less than three inches. Apparently Ivory received an amount between the two figures, but certainly closer to the Jamestown total. In any case, water running through a field on Emery Hill washed out the foundation on one side of the Hazeltine barn during that storm. All bridges on Woodchuck and Emery Hill Roads were washed out, but, of course, that has happened on other occasions.

All of this part of New York State experienced the loss of daylight one Sunday afternoon in the early Fall of 1950 or '51. By about 2PM, it was nearly as dark as a cloudy midnight and remained that way for more than two hours. Then there was dusk until regular night-fall. The cause of the phenomenon was smoke from Canadian forest fires infiltrating a heavy cloud pattern.

Ivory has had its share of accidents, tragedies, etc., most of which are long since forgotten. Contrary to what one might think now, there were frequent traffic accidents in the horse and buggy days and many farming and logging accidents. Only a few will be mentioned here.

Rose Scudder Smedley died in a buggy collision in 1906. In 1903, Gustaf Farm died when a wheel came off his wagon and he was thrown onto the road. One of the latter's sons, Victor Farm, had died in a logging accident. More recently, Tracy Wadsworth, working for Martin Fenton's lumber company, was critically injured by a falling limb on the Alvin Seekins property along the Emery Hill Road; Mr. Wadsworth survived but was never able to work again.

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Two area men, Manley Seekins and Stanley Bragg, died in separate accidents involving the Jamestown to Warren trolley. Both went to sleep on the tracks while waiting for transportation.

In 1962, the former Harrington homestead', then owned by Steve Ellis, burned; Steve's wife, Ruth Ellis, died in the fire.

Not quite so tragic, but illustrative of conditions of a by-gone era, was the experience of Amelia "Molly" Peterson, widow of Charles Peterson. She lived on the Bragg Road, across from the present gravel pit. One Winter evening in the mid-1920's, she decided to visit Anna Munson, who lived about three-quarters of a mile away, with no road in between. Molly lost her way, became disoriented, and wandered around until she collapsed. Elmer Munson saw her tracks in the snow the next morning, not far from the Munson home, and followed them until he found her. She survived with frozen feet and lived for several years, but never regained her health.

The death of Manley Seekins has been mentioned. He had purchased the former Lindell property in S.V. Lot 57 in the 1910's, with more than 200 acres of woods. After his death, his somewhat handicapped wife married a logger named Richard Johnson. Johnson proceeded to sell logs, then the tops, and finally the property itself. Roswell Fenton bought the land, apparently with a life-lease arrangement. It was well known that the family had appreciable liquid assets, with the husband in complete control. One night in late October,1927, he heard a noise outside the house and went out with a gun, according to the wife. When he did not return, she somehow notified neighbors in the next day or so. (Notification may have been difficult since the home was very isolated.) Roswell Fenton was reported to have called area banks to freeze Johnson's accounts, and area men conducted a search of the farm and woods, but to no avail.

About sixteen days after the disappearance, Edwin Munson was on the property with horses and wagon to haul out wood which he had cut from the tops he had purchased. He found Johnson's body near his wood pile with a bullet wound in the head and his gun along-side. Mr. Munson (this writer's father) always said that the weapon was a rifle, but a newspaper account called it a revolver. The Cattaraugus County authorities were called; Randolph deputy W.A. "Dick" Bragg (originally from Ivory) and a coroner investigated. Johnson's death was declared a suicide, the County placed Mrs. Johnson in the County Home, and was able to take the assets. A number of people felt that there had been a severe mis-carriage of justice, but a thorough investigation would have been expensive and perhaps inconclusive, considering the state of forensic science at the time. There were family reports that Dick Bragg was dissatisfied and wished to go further, but relative old-age, illness, and subsequent death prevented it. There were rumors that checks signed by Johnson were presented for cashing after his disappearance. Mr. Munson claimed that he had personally searched the immediate area where he ultimately found Johnson and that the corpse was laid out, as if for a funeral. Finally, Johnson seemed to be "on top of the world", financially and otherwise, before his death.

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In a very unusual accident around 1960, Harold Hammond, who lived on the property which became the Town of Carroll Land-Fill, was killed by being run over by his own track-laying vehicle. He was using it to skid logs near the Scott Road, had parked on an embankment, and was working below the embankment when it somehow rolled forward and over him.

When small recreational vehicles became available, in the early 1960's, Woodchuck Hill and the Scott Road were prime areas for exploitation. There have been numerous broken broken bones and countless minor injuries as a result. The most serious accident to-date occurred when a snow-mobile ran into a cable which was stretched across a driveway at Anderson's gravel pit off the Bragg Road. The snowmobile was was being operated cross-country at night; one of the two people on the vehicle was killed.

<Additional Note: The author, Harold Munson, died not long after completing this book, December 30 th, 1992. He was cutting timber behind his house on Bragg Road on that day, when he failed to return home at sunset. A subsequent sweep of the woods behind his home by his son, son-in-law, neighbors, and the local fire department resulted in finding him underneath a large log, dead. It is thought that he had been limbing the tree he had cut down when the log shifted in the mud and rolled on top of him. His funeral was at Ivory Baptist church (where he served as deacon), and is now buried at Ivory Cemetary (where he served on the Association, and as sexton).>

FLORA AND FAUNAAs noted earlier, the predominant feature of the area when white people first arrived was a forest of white pines. In among the pines were hemlocks and a variety of hard woods. If there were any tamarack, spruce, or balsams, they were certainly not numerous. It seems likely that the steepest slopes of Woodchuck Hill were mostly covered with scrub hard wood, as they are now. As pines were cut, the hard woods among them flourished and replacements were almost all hard woods. The softer varieties of hard wood, including chestnut, cucumber, basswood, and tulip (usually called "white wood" in spite of its greenish color) had some commercial value, but were commonly used for local needs. Cucumber became a substitute for pine for barn timbers and clapboards, and was commonly used to make hay racks, sleds, etc. Chestnut logs were sometimes cut into boards, but was commonly used for fence rails, fence posts, and railroad ties; later it served very well as a structural base for veneered furniture. In addition, the nuts were almost a gourmet item and were highly saleable. The chestnut blight reached Ivory in the early 1920's and destroyed them.

For many years, people were quite selective of varieties for fire wood, preferring sugar maple, white beech, and yellow birch. They would use white ash, black cherry, and hickory when necessary, but usually rejected soft maple and the oaks. As late as 1900, soft maples were burned in large piles when land was being cleared. Sugar (hard) maples had other uses besides fire wood; from the earliest days their sap was condensed into syrup or sugar, and they became a valuable source of furniture lumber. Black cherry and red oak also became valuable furniture

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lumbers, the latter going into and out of style, then repeating the process. Hickory and white ash were used for axe and tool handles, which was a rather limited market. After the ball bat factory was set up in Akeley, white ash became commercially valuable. White oak and iron wood (hop hornbeam) were initially valuable because of their strength for ox yokes, tools, wagon wheels, and (for a time) automobile wheel spokes; these applications are now mostly history. Farmers used planks of such materials as beech, soft maple, and the oaks for barn floors and scaffolding.

After the start of the furniture industry and up until World War II, there was a general demand for crating and boxing material. The softer hardwoods, cucumber, tulip, basswood, and poplar, were preferred but some others, like soft maple, were also used if they could be nailed while still green.

In addition to chestnuts, the forests included two or three varieties hickories and butternuts, which had edible nuts. The bitternut hickory nuts were not considered edible, nor were acorns. There appear to have been no black walnuts growing in Ivory.

There were other varieties of trees, of course. Elms became very numerous along creek banks and were considered nearly worthless. The Dutch Elm disease reached the area in the 1960's, killing most of them. Scattered near the top of Woodchuck Hill, and perhaps on Oak Hill/were occasional pepperidge trees (black gum) which normally grow farther South. In among the rocks of the Bear Ring and the Cat Rocks and in other places where timber is not too competitive are sassafrass, dogwood, June berries (shadblow) and the honeysuckle shrub (June pinks). The latter has been extensively transplanted to lawns throughout southern Chaut. County. There are a great variety of other plants and wild flowere growing in forests, fields, and swamps. Special mention should be made of ginseng, which is a small plant growing in the woods to which the Chinese have ascribed special properties and for which they have paid high prices; it is currently "protected", but has been an item of some commercial interest here in the past.

During the pine lumbering days, forest fires were quite common, being fueled by the residual boughs and tops. The last big one in Ivory swept across Woodchuck Hill in 1902. After a fire had gone through an area which was not intended to be cleared, a heavy growth of wild red and black raspberries would appear. After two or three years, these would be supplanted by blackberries, before finally returning to forest. Families with a number of children supplied themselves and often had berries to sell.

The multiflora rose was introduced in the late 1940's.

At this time it is impossible to assess quantitatively the amount of animal life which existed here when white people first arrived. Early accounts refer to plentiful game, but with a small human population and a large area, there is no good means of comparison. It is reported that hunting was particularly profitable at gaps in the Indian fence along the county line. However, it seems

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safe to say that, compared with the present, there were fewer deer, fewer song birds, more large predators, but probably no beavers or opossums. The pine forest provided limited sustenance for deer and small birds. There was sufficient game to supply dietary needs of the earliest settlers, and fur was an important source of money for many.

As settlement progressed, and in the absence of legal restrictions, deer became less and less common and had probably disappeared by 1870. They reappeared in the early 1930's, migrating north from Pennsylvania, and now are present in large numbers; a winter-time herd of more than 200 individuals has been present on the Fenton farm at times.

Wild turkeys are said to have ruined the first field of wheat which G.W. Fenton, Jr., planted, sometime in the 1830's. Like the deer, these soon disappeared. Turkeys were reintroduced by the State in the 1950's and are now quite common.

A number of the early settlers passed down stories about wolves, and apparently there was great fear of them. Some people reported that they spent the night in trees when they were unable to get home before dark. From the distance of 160-170 years, these fears would seem to be exaggerated, but they were very real at that time. Concentrated attempts to exterminate wolves in the 1830's killed very few of them, and the last one reported in Chaut. Co. was killed in 1852.

Beavers had been pretty well eliminated from the area by Indians as the result of the early fur trade. The animals began to make a comeback in the late 1920's or early '30's, as the result of deliberate restocking efforts. Beavers have even followed the Little Bone Run to a source on Woodchuck Hill, at the county line, and built dams there.

Elk and lynx were reported in the area, but have been long gone. There have been persistent reports of wildcat sightings in recent years, usually around the Cat Rocks, but no one has produced a specimen.

Black bears have managed to survive but generally live South and East of here, passing through and raiding bee hives on occasions. The usual fur-bearing animals, raccoons, foxes, minks, weasels, muskrats, and skunks, appear to have been present throughout history; trapping of these animals has always been a local source of income. For many years, starting about 1920, Edwin Annis made a business of buying pelts and reselling them to fur processors. This writer remembers when the pelt of a "black" skunk or of a muskrat was worth nearly a day's pay for an adult. During the late 1930's and early '40's, Alvin Seekins, who had a farm on the Emery Hill Road at the time, mainly supported his large family by hunting and trapping.

Small game, rabbits, snowshoe rabbits,red, black, and gray squirrels, partridge (ruffled grouse), and woodchucks have thrived in our area. The fox squirrel has become rare in recent years.

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The porcupine has survived, at least in part because of a belief in earlier days that it was protected; it was the one animal that a person who was lost in the deep woods could catch and kill for food, without firearms. The opossum is a relative newcomer to the area, being native to the South. About 1900, a local boy caught an opossum in a trap and charged a few cents admission for a viewing.

The Cass Run has always had a reputation as a good trout stream. For many years the State and Rod & Gun groups have stocked the stream, and brown trout more than two feet in length have been caught.

Ivory is a few miles North of the usual northern limit of the rattle snake, in this part of the country. However, there are reliable reports of a rattlesnake being killed at the Bear Ring during quarrying operations, and another being killed at Isaac Bragg's shingle mill, all more than a hundred years ago.

With reference to our bird life, turkeys and partridges have already been mentioned. There is a great variety of small birds, common to this part of the country. One slightly larger bird, the whip-poor-will, is seldom seen, but its distinctive call in the Spring was the signal a few generations ago that children could now go bare-foot. There are two or three varieties of hawks, the ubiquitous crows, and turkey buzzards. Along the Cass Run and in the swamps are great blue herons and a smaller heron, commonly called the shike-poke. In recent years some ducks have been raising their families here. There have been many attempts to introduce the pheasant as a game bird, but our Winters and the local foxes are not cooperative.

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