Town of Conewango turns 200 years old

By Deb Everts CONEWANGO

— Time seems to have stood still in the town of Conewango.

One-room schoolhouses, sawmills, blacksmiths and shops of every kind necessary to sustain a self-sufficient lifestyle are scattered around the countryside.

Mixed among the Amish shops and farms are a few modern homes and non-Amish enterprises, but the overall feeling for visitors is they have traveled back in time.

Conewango derives its name from a Native American term meaning “walking slowly,” which is related to the slowmoving creek, according to enchantedmountains. com.

The area was first settled around 1816 and established as the town of Conewango on Jan. 20, 1823, from a part of the town of Little

Valley. In 1826 and 1832, Conewango was further divided, creating the towns of Randolph and Leon, respectively.

The Amish people arrived in 1949, but the first landholders were recorded by the Holland Land Company. The early settlers built crude log homes and carved productive fields out of the wilderness. Today, with the exception of the northwest corner of the hamlet of East Randolph, the town has no municipalities.

In addition to East Randolph, a number of small settlements sprang up within the town. Rutledge later became Conewango, Old’s Corners — also known as Conewango Station — is now Conewango Valley and Elm Creek was named for the unusual number of elm trees along the creek banks. Axeville was named from the occupation of an early settler who was an axe-maker, the Hollow is located about three miles north of Rutledge and Pope is a hamlet located nearly in the center of the town.

In the town’s early years, various businesses included a brick yard, three distilleries, a tannery, boot and shoe shops, a house of entertainment, stores, sawmills and grist mills, schools, wool carding and a cloth dressing mill.

Rutledge was home to the first settler, Eliphalet Follet, and his family in 1816. It was a village in the northwestern part of the town, along old Chautauqua Road. They named the little settlement after their original hometown in Vermont. Follet opened a house of entertainment as a stop for pioneers moving west along the same route. The place was quite up and coming in the early 1800s with two stores, a tavern, hotel, a blacksmith shop, a wagon shop, a post office, a physician, four churches and a library.

Other settlers soon came along, including Cyrus Childs in 1818, opening a tavern on the old Chautauqua Road in 1820. James Blanchard built a hotel in Rutledge and the first frame public house in town in 1827.

Two brothers, Nicholas and Thomas Northrup, came to the town in 1818. Thomas was the first town clerk. John Darling arrived from Vermont and settled in 1821. He was the first town supervisor.

Ann McGlasher and her four sons settled near Rutledge in the early years. Robert came in 1818 and was the first justice in town. James came in 1819 and Charles arrived about 1825. The latter two brothers made a great contribution in building Rutledge and the vicinity. They built the first frame house in town. In

1831, they built a large hotel with a large store and became successful merchants. The brothers were also large dealers in cattle. Years later, the other brother, Peter, settled in Rutledge.

Although considerable timbering took place in the town, dairy was the leading industry. Conewango is said to have some of the best farming and grazing land in the county.

With the dairy industry came a group of creameries during the mid-to-late 1800s in Conewango, Axeville, Rutledge, Highland and Elm Creek. Andrew Pope, a settler in Conewango, invented the “Pope Milk Pan,” which was patented in 1869.

In 1820, there was a log schoolhouse in the town. By 1870, 11 schools were found in the township. All the one-room schoolhouses, with the exception of the Amish schools, were absorbed into the Randolph Central School District.

In 1823, the Old Chautauqua Road was the only road that passed through the town. Built by the Holland Land Company to connect their vast land investment, the crude but passable highway ran from Albany to Mayville and was usable by 1812.

According to the Historic Path of Cattaraugus County, communications and shipping facilities were provided by the Atlantic and Great Western Railroad, which was the western division of the Erie Railroad and ran through the southern part of the town. The Buffalo and Southwestern Railroad had a station at Rutledge with tracks down the valley of Conewango Creek.

Little has changed in the town, but that’s the way its residents like it..