It was in 1792 that Silas Halsey of Southampton set sail in a
sloop for New York, taking with him a hired man and a Negro
servant. After reaching New York he transferred his baggage to a
sloop bound for Albany, where he crossed a portage from Albany
to Schenectady over the sand hills and plains, to avoid the
Cohoes Falls on the Mohawk. At Schenectady he purchased a boat
and "poled" and rowed up the river to the place where Rome is
now located. Here he transported his boat by wagon to Wood
Creek, and rowed down the creek to Oneida Lake and Seneca River
into Seneca Lake, and on to Lodi Landing, a distance of about
500 miles from Southampton. The weather was favorable for
exploration and he selected a tract of land on lot No. 37 in
Ovid. Here he started an "improvement," cleared off the
underbrush and built a small log house. Wheat was sown on about
six acres without plowing, and the seed harrowed in with a
rough, wooden tooth harrow of those days.
Mr. Halsey secured a quart of apple seeds from Indian Orchard at
Cooley's Point, and planted them with care, forming probably the
first nursery in that region. Having established his homestead,
he returned to his home in Southampton and in April 1793, Mr.
Halsey left Southampton with his family consisting of his son
and wife and children, also his son-in-law and his family,
numbering in all 18 persons. After a trip of six weeks they
landed in May at Cooley's Point, and soon reached their new
home. Their neighbors were located from two to 15 miles distant
in various directions through the dense wilderness, broken only
by an occasional Indian trail, or the corn fields of the
Senecas.
Judge Halsey, with an enterprise and public spirit that
distinguished him through a long and useful life, built a grist
mill on which proved to be a valuable asset to the region.
Before this mill was erected the nearest point where grain could
be ground was the village of Rome and one near Penn Yan, which
was built in 1790, and here the first bag of grain, was ground
in western New York. This was used by the settlers in the region
round about until Mr. Halsey built his mill above the falls of
Lodi.
Through untiring industry and sound judgment Mr. Halsey and his
family worked and prospered in their new home. Mr. Halsey died
at the ripe old age of 90 years.
During the years after the Revolution, many of the settlers of
eastern Long Island seemed to get restless and a number of them
migrated to the "New Country" along the Mohawk River in upper
New York State.
Among the prominent men who moved to the "New Country" was Gen.
William Floyd of Mastic. When he returned to his large estate in
Mastic after the war, he soon went "upstate" and began to
buy land along the Mohawk river in Westernville. By 1803 he had
established a home there similar to his ancestral one at Mastic,
and in that year moved there with his family.
It seems strange that he should have left his life-long home at
the age of 69 to start life all over in another part of the
state, but it may have been that he felt his son, Nicoll, who
had seven children, needed all the room in the family homestead.
So in his new home on the bank of the Mohawk River, he lived
until his death in 1821, which brought to an end the life of
this native Long Islander, whose name will ever hold an honored
place in the history of our country , and as one the signers of
the Declaration of Independence.