| 2. | William AULLS, Jr. was born on 21 Jan 1748 (son of William AULLS, Sr. and Elizabeth CALHOUN); died on 23 Feb 1816 in Steuben Co., NY; was buried in Pleasant Valley Cemetery, Hammondsport, Steuben, NY. Other Events and Attributes:
- Immigratn: 1767
- Note: 1775
- Note: 1793
- Census: 1810, Bath, Steuben, NY
Notes:
DNA:
MKM
Immigratn:
Of Scotch ancestry, William came to the United States from Londonderry, Ireland. He returned within a short time and came to the US again in 1771 when he settled in New Jersey after a short period of teaching in Boston.
Note:
From the Aulls genealogy: "About 1775, Revolutionary War action being too close for comfort, he decided to go to the Scotch-Irish settlement in the vicinity of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he again engaged in the mercantile and milling business. All of his children except two were born there. During his stay in Pennsylvania he served in the Revolution with Captain James Clark's Company, 6th Battalion of the Pennsylvania Militia. Sometime later he decided to sell his property and join a cousin by the name of Calhoun who had come over with him on his second trip from Ireland and settled and prospered in South Carolina. After liquidating his property, Aulls found inflation setting in and his Continental currency badly depreciated, so he gave up his plans to move south and subsequently decided to homestead in the 'Genesee Country' of New York State. The 'Genesee Country' included at this time all of western New York and northern Pennsylvania. There were few roads and most travel was over Indian trails, often with directions only by blazed trees. In the spring of 1793 William Aulls accompanied by his younger son Thomas, a lad of 16, made the journey by horseback from his home in Drumore Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, to a locality called Pleasant Valley, between Harnmondsport and Bath, New York, near the southern end of Lake Keuka. They built a small log cabin and planted corn and potatoes. Tom was left on the site by his father, who returned south in August for the rest of the family--his wife, stepdaughter, son, and six daughters. When near Pleasant Valley on his return trip, William sent his older son, Ephraim, by a short cut over the hills to join Tom. Ephraim found Tom sick, but with the arrival of the family in September 1793, he was soon restored to health. Their crops that fall were 63 bushels of corn and an abundance of potatoes. William Aulls decided to settle permanently in the Valley, so, in 1793, he purchased 200 acres of land from the Pulteney Estate of England, through the resident agent, and thus became the first settler of Pleasant Valley, New York. He and his wife were among the founders of the Bath Presbyterian Church, Bath, New York and William served as an Elder in 1811, as attested by a plaque in the front of the present church edifice. He was a commissioner of highways for the town of Bath in 1797."
Note:
"Thomas Aulls, settled with his father, William Aulls, in the town of Urbana in 1793 and about 1800 removed to the farm in the town of Wheeler, now occupied by his son Ephraim Aulls. He there made the first clearing and erected a log house and afterwards made a frame addition thereto. He gave diligent attention to clearing and improving his farm. He was the first justice of the peace in that part of the town of Bath afterwards set off to Wheeler. He was a good man and a member of the Presbyterian Church and died on the farm he settled about 1847."
Pleasant Valley--(Town of Urbana.)
The settlement in that well known prolongation of the bed of Crooked Lake, famed as Pleasant Valley, was the first made under the auspices of Captain Williamson, and was for many years the most prosperous and one of the most important in the country. The soil was exceedingly productive, and yielded not only an abundance for the settlers, but furnished much of the food by which the inhabitants of the hungry Pine Plains were saved from starvation. For the young settlers in various parts of the county, the employment afforded by the bountiful fields of the valley during haying and harvest, was for many years an important assistance. In the midst of pitiless hills and forests that clung to their treasures like misers, Pleasant Valley was generous and free-handed--yielding fruit, grain and grass with marvelous prodigality.
The fist settlers of Pleasant Valley were William Aulls and Samuel Baker. Mr. Aulls, previous to the year 1793, was living in the Southern part of Pennsylvania. In the spring of 1793, he made the first clearing and built the first house in the valley. In the autumn of the same year he brought up his family. The house which he built stood on the farm now occupied by John Powers, Esq.
Samuel Baker was a native of Bradford County, in Connecticut. When 15 years of age, he was taken prisoner by a party of Burgoyne’s Indians, and remained with the British army in captivity till relieved by the Surrender at Saratoga. After this event he enlisted in Col. Willett’s corps, and was engaged in the pursuit and skirmish at Canada Creek, in which Captain William Butler (a brother of the noted Col. John Butler), a troublesome leader of the Tories in the border wars of this State, was shot and tomahawked by the Oneidas. In the spring of 1787, he went alone into the West, passed up the Tioga, and built a cabin on the open flat between the Tioga and Cowenisque, at their junction. He was the first settler in the valley of the Tioga. Harris, the trader, was at the Painted Post, and his next neighbor was Col. Handy, on the Chemung, below Big Flats. Of beasts, he had a cow, of “plunder,” the few trifling articles that would suffice for an Arab or an Arapaho; but like a true son of Connecticut, he readily managed to live through the summer, planted with a hoe a patch of corn on the flats, and raised a good crop. Before autumn he joined by Captain Amos Stone, a kind of Hungarian exile. Captain Stone had been out in “Shay’s War,” and dreading the vengeance of the government, he sought an asylum under the southern shadow of Steuben County, where the wilderness was two hundred miles deep, and where the Marshal would not care to venture, even when backed by the great seal of the Republic. On Christmas day of 1786, Mr. Baker leaving Captain Stone in his cabin, went down the Tioga on the ice to Newtown as previously mentioned, and thence to Hudson ,where his family was living. At the opening of the rivers in the spring, he took his family down the Susquehanna to Tioga Point in a canoe. A great freshet prevented him from moving up the Chemung for many days, and leaving his family, he stuck across the hills to see how his friend Captain Stone fared. On reaching the bank of the river opposite his cabin, not a human being was seen, except an Indian pounding corn in a Samp-morter. Mr. Baker supposed that his friend had been murdered by the savages, and he lay in the bushes an hour or two to watch the movements of the red miller, who proved, after all, to be only a very good-natured sort of a Man-Friday, for at length the Captain came along driving the cow by the bank of the river. Mr. Baker hailed him, and he sprang unto the air with delight. Captain Stone had passed the winter without seeing a white man. His Man-Friday stopped thumping at the Samp-morter, and the party had a very agreeable re-union.
Mr. Baker brought his family up from Tioga Point, and lived here six years. During that time the pioneer advance had penetrated the region of which the lower Tioga Valley is a member. A few settlers had established themselves on the valley below them, and around the Painted Post were gathered a few cabins where now are the termini of railroads--the gate of coal and lumber trade, bridges, mills and machinery. Elsewhere all was wilderness.. The region, however, had been partially explored by surveyors and hunters. Benjamin Patterson, while employed as hunter for a party of surveyors, discovered the deep and beautiful valley which extends from the Crooked Lake to the Conhocton. Seen from the brink of the uplands, there is hardly a more picturesque landscape in the county, or one which partakes more strongly of the character of mountain scenery. The abrupt wooded wall on either side, the ravines occasionally opening the flank of the hills, the curving valley that slopes to the lake on one hand, and meets the blue Conhocton range on the other, form at this day a pleasing picture. But to the hunter, leaning on his rifle above the sudden declivity--before the country had been disfigured with a patchwork of farms and forest--the bed of the valley was like a river of trees, and the gulf, from which now rise the deadly vapor of a steam sawmill, seemed like a creek to pour its tributary timber into the broader gorge below.
In his wanderings the hunter occasionally stopped at the cabins of Tioga, and brought report of this fine valley. Mr. Baker did not hold a satisfactory title to his Pennsylvania farm, and was inclined to emigrate. Capt. Williamson visited his house in 1792, (probably while exploring the Lycoming Road,) and promised him a farm of any shape or size, (land in New York, previous to this, could only be bought by the township,) wherever he should locate it. Mr. Baker accordingly selected a farm of some three hundred acres in Pleasant Valley--built a house upon it in the autumn of 1793, and in the following spring removed his family from Tioga. He resided here till his death in 1842, at the age of 80. He was several years Associate and First Judge of the County Court. Judge Baker was a man of a strong practical mind, and of correct and sagacious observations.
Before 1795, the whole valley was occupied. Beginning with Judge Baker’s farm, the next farm towards the lake was occupied by Capt. Amos Stone, the next by William Aulls, the next by Ephraim Aulls, the next by James Shether. Crossing the valley, the first farm (where now is the village of Hammondsport,) was occupied by Capt. John Shether, the next by Eli Read, the next by William Barney, the next by Richard Daniels. Nearly all of these had been soldiers of the revolution. Capt. Shether had been an active officer, and was engaged in several battles. Of him, Gen. McClure says:--He was Captain of Dragons, and had the reputation of being an excellent officer and a favorite of Gen. Washington. He lived on his farm at the head of Crooked Lake in good style, and fared sumptuously. He was a generous, hospitable man, and a true patriot.” The Shethers were from Connecticut.
Judge William Read was a Rhode Island Quaker. He settled a few years after the revolution on the “Squatter lands” above Owego, and, being ejected, moved westward his household after the manner of the times. Indians pushed the family up the river in canoes, while the men drove the cattle along the trail on the bank. Judge Read was a man of clear head and strong sense of orderly and accurate business talent, and was much relied upon by his neighbors to make crooked matters straight.
The Cold Spring Valley was occupied by Gen. McClure in 1802, or about that time. He erected mills, and kept them in activities till 1814, when Mr. Henry A. Townsend entered into possession of the valley, and resided in the well known Cold Spring House till his death in 1839. Mr. Townsend removed from Orange County, in the state, to Bath in 1796. He was County Clerk from 1799 to 1814--the longest tenure in the catalogue of county officers.
Mr. Lazarus Hammond removed from Dansville to Cold Spring in 1810, or about that time, and afterwards resided near Crooked Lake till his death. He was Sheriff of the county in 1814, and, at a recent period, Associate Judge of the County Court.
Census:
The 1810 Federal Census of Bath, Steuben, NY lists a William Aulls with 1 male age 17-26, 1 male over 45 and 3 females age 17-26 and 1 female over 45.
Buried:
Find A Grave e-Memorial
William married Elizabeth DANIELS on 11 Oct 1772 in NJ. Elizabeth was born in 1746; died on 17 Aug 1823; was buried in Pleasant Valley Cemetery, Hammondsport, Steuben, NY. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]
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1792 - 1867 (74 years)
