In the early spring of 1789 the desire to move westward seized upon Benjamin
Morehouse, of Dutchess County, N.Y., and it was not long before he set
out with his wife, three children and a few goods, on his way towards
a new country. His progress as far as Oneida was comparatively easy,
but from that village he had no path to follow but the Indian trail from
Oneida to Onondaga. Arrived here, he found the territory as wild
and unsettled as he could wish. His nearest neighbor was miles away,
the forests had never echoed to the ring of a woodsman's axe, and the fields
had never been tilled but by the Indian. And with the eye for scenic
beauty possessed by so many of America's pioneers, Benjamin Morehouse looked
about him and saw that the country was an ideal home. So at a place
about three and a half miles west of Manlius Village, then known by the
Indian name of Kasoongkta Flats, he quickly built a log house. In
1790 he changed his home into a tavern, which afterwards became noted in
Onondaga as the place for meeting of both civic and military character.
Life at the tavern was not one of ease, nor was the place where extravagance
in the matters of diet was permitted. In 1791 Mr. Morehouse went
on foot to Herkimer and obtained thirty pounds of wheaten flour, and at
Westmoreland, Oneida County, he had a plow share sharpened by a blacksmith,
both of which he carried home on his back. The flour
lasted the family nearly a year.
From 1790 to 1800 settlers became more numerous in this vicinity.
In 1791 Dr. Holbrook, the first physician of the town, located
in Jamesville. In the same year John Young settled at Orville, the
place being called "Youngville" for some years. He opened a tavern
there, and became the first Justice of the Peace in the town. In
1795 was built the first school house for Jamesville; this was situated
east of the village. The first school house in Jamesville was
built in 1806. A saw mill is among the early necessities of a new
country, and in 1895 one was built by Oliver Owen, and in it was cut the
lumber for the first frame dwelling in this neighborhood, and which was
built two years later by Jeremiah Jackson.
In a pretty rural cemetery about a mile south of Jamesville is a marble
slab bearing the inscription: "Moses DeWitt, Major of militia and
Judge of the County Courts; one of the first, most active and useful settlers
of the county." It was after this man that the town of DeWitt was
named, when on April 12th, 1835, it was divided from the town of Manlius.
At the organization of Onondaga county in 1794, Moses DeWitt was appointed
Judge of the Courts, Surrogate and Justice of the Peace, and in that year
also chosen supervisor of the town of Pompey.
Jamesville took its name from the "Jamesville Iron and Woolen Factory"
which was started, we believe in (unreadable) by Stephen Hungerford,
and which in 1809 was incorporated by the state legislature.
The name of the village was first published on July 4th, 1810, when a great
celebration was given in honor of the event.