the Oneida County History center
A Homestead, A Waterwheel, and Power Dam By Janice Reilly
This year, 2020, marks one hundred years that members of the Zegibe family have resided in their homestead on Mohawk Street in New Hartford. Herb Zegibe lives in the old stone house built in 1802. Written in white chalk on a beam found when Herb remodeled is: “started March 1802, framed in April 1802. Signed: McBride.” Herb is the youngest son of Abdoo and Stella Slade Zegibe. His brother George lives next door; he was Supervisor of the Town of New Hartford from 1975-1981. Abdoo immigrated to the U.S. with his father, Elias, in 1906 from Bayrouth, Syria; Abdoo was 11 years old at the time. A plague destroyed their flock of sheep in the old country; they joined relatives living in Utica. Abdoo married in 1920, bought the property from Johnny R. Jones’s widow in 1920, and raised eleven children here. Across the road from the homestead, readily recognizable to all who pass by, is the entrance to Heron Landing, marked by the original waterwheel that Abdoo built because he needed electricity for his cow barn and farmhouse. “Ab was getting nervous with the kids carrying lamps out to the barn with the hay and straw around,” Stella said. There was a real good creek that originated in the Graffenburg Springs; it ran through Zegibe’s pasture. Ab said to himself: “I’m going to build a dam and get electricity.” Rural electrification had not come to isolated spots in the country as yet.
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