02/12/06

The Town of Gainesville
by Stanley Rutherford

     The original name of the Town of Gainesville was Hebe.  It was formed from Warsaw February 25, 1814.  It took it's present name from General Edmund Pendleton Gaines, hero of the War of 1812.  It is Township 8, Range 1 of the Holland Land Purchase.
     William Bristol engaged in surveying the town.  Mr. Bristol was so impressed with the land and timber that he purchased land on both sides of the East Koy Creek in the village.  His brothers, Richard and Charles came from Columbia County and Elnathon and George from Vermont and settled here.
     James Cravath, from Preble, NY, purchased four lots along the Gainesville and Wethersfield town line.  It is almost impossible to ascertain in what order the earliest settlers arrived.  The 1810 census lists heads of households who do not appear on land records and land records list names that do not appear on the census.
    John Patterson appears to be an early settler on the Delhi section in 1806, the same year Berzilla Yates, Native of Massachusetts, took up his 351 acre claim south of Rock Glen, along Route 19, with Lewis and Wheelock Wood as neighbors.
     Pearl and Ithuriel Flowers settled west of Gainesville Creek and north of Hardys about 1806.  Russel Post settled at North Gainesville, as did Hosea Sheffield from Tioga County.  Nehemiah Park Jr. acquired land the same year and settled three years later on the Center Road and was elected town clerk.
     Daniel Bannister was first to settle on the site of Silver Springs.  The next year Benjamin Cole made his home in the woods south of the village, now 19A.  Other early arrivals were Bezalul Beeds, Jared Money and Jedediah Green.  William and Noah Wiseman settled in 1810.  William lived in the town until his death at age 75 years of age.  He raised five sons and two daughters.  Elisha Brainard came from Madison County, NY to lot 18, near where Letchworth Central School is now located.  Willard and Gideon Thayer came from Massachusetts in 1806.  They settled north of Silver Springs on Silver Springs Road and Evans Road.
     Other early pioneers were William Broughton and John Woodruff who settled west of Silver Springs.  Others listed in the 1810 census may constitute the very earliest settlers in town.  They are David West, Abraham Fuller, Joseph Potter, John Frasier, Isaac George, Isaac George Jr., Ziphe George, Jesse Keyes, Elisha Sinamon, Elisha Daw, John Everton, Appleton Bagley, Elisha Allen, Lewis Hancock, Elisha Merks and David Beardsley.
     Peter and Elizabeth Jenison were early settlers of North Gainesville.  Their son, Reuben, was one of the founders of the church there.  Henry Bush, who came from Painted Post in 1811, resided north of Silver Springs and following the death of a son, founded the Bush Cemetery.  The Kellogg family settled on lot 3, south of School Road on 19A.  Elijah Kellogg, who died in 1845, was a private in the Connecticut Militia in 1777.  William Post and family came to Gainesville in 1815 from New Jersey.

   This history goes on with chapters: Churches, Wars, Industries, Hotels, Physicians, Education, Notable Natives, Cemeteries, Agriculture, and Century Farms.
    For the full story, see Historical Wyoming, Vo. XXVIII, July 1991

Original Purchasers of Land, from Holland Land Co.,
as printed in Beers, History of Wyoming County, NY 1841-1880, pg 190
reprinted by Heart of the Lakes Publishing, Interlaken, NY 1994

1806 - John Patterson, part of lot 53; Reuben Orris, part of lot 42; John Grant, lot 18; Barzilla Yates, lot 23; Pearl Flowers, lot 43; Dwight Noble, part of lot 8; Stephen Perkins, part of lot 8; Russell Post, part of lot 31; Hosea Sheffield, part of lot 31; William Fuller, part of lot 22; Wheelock Wood, part of lot 22; William Thayer, part of lot 7; Lewis Wood, lot 32.

1807 - Nehemiah Park, lot 47; Appleton Bailey, lot 28; Ithuriel Flower, part of lot 49; Manton Davis, part of lot 44; William Thayer, part of lot 15; Daniel W. Bannister, lot 5.

1808 - Archelaus Price, lot 36, Benjamin Cole, part of lot 3.

1809 - Bezeleel Beede, part of lot 45; Jedediah Green, part of lot 62; Francis Ellingwood, part of lot 19; Samuel Fuller, part of lot 1; Jared Money, part of lot 37.

1810 - Noah Wiseman, part of lot 48; Gaius Blower, part of lot 48; Joseph Parker, lot 30; Daniel Cargill, part of lot 3; Leonard and Ethan Cooley, part of lot 45; Joab Wetherbee, part of lot 55; John Hoxie, part of lot 55; Simeon Gibson, lot 56; Davis Wood, part of lot 21; Otis Wood, part of lot 21; Philip Reed, lot 6; Stephen Potter, part of lot 44.