Born 75 Years Too Soon
Mrs. Southwick was a woman of progressive ideas, an eager reader of newspapers and periodicals-an abolitionist-a champion of woman suffrage and an ardent admirer of Susan B. Anthony. At one time, she adopted the costume of Amelia Bloomer. For all of which, she was sometimes laughed at-the price imposed for thinking twentieth century thoughts seventy-five years ahead of time.
Stephen, unlike his wife, was no reader and preferred time-honored ways. He was once persuaded to employ a thrashing machine but not liking the noise and confusion, returned to the old time flail. Childless themselves, Mr. and Mrs. Southwick remedied the condition by adopting and rearing twelve children.
In 1820, another Southwick family came to the region. Enos, Stephen's uncle. He built his log house on the comer where, later, James Rosenburg resided. Enos Southwick was fond of raising fine fruit, particularly peaches. A peach tree grew in every corner of his rail fence bordering the highway; a benediction in their bloom, and a benefaction in their fruit, for the trees were planted for the wayfarer.
A Torrential Life Begins
Enos' s son George Southwick was born in 1810 near Kerr's Corners in such a torrent of rain that the little bark covered cabin of Abraham Tucker, where the event took place, could not withstand the downpour and it was necessary to protect mother and child with an umbrella. He was ten years old when he came to the Comers and, in his life of 92 years, never traveled there-from farther than Niagara Falls. One journey, which in age he labeled his "meanest scrape”, was to witness the hanging of the three Thayer’s. He was fifteen, and sustained by a pocketful of fried cakes, made the trip, to and from Buffalo, on foot. On the corner in those days lived Tibbets and Rebecca Soule. Their granddaughter, Anna, who made Quaker bonnets to order, became the wife of George Southwick and in a log cabin, near the site of the present Conlisk dwelling on the east hill overlooking Gowanda; they "set up housekeeping."
Pioneer in Mental Fields
Another of this name, long identified with Rosenburg, was Mr. Joseph Southwick. Although not a pioneer resident, he was a man not afraid to pioneer, in fields of thought, whether of farming, philosophy, or politics, and was able and valiant in defense of his opinions. In 1881, he was the candidate chosen by the Greenback party for state senator.
The Southwick’s are descendants of that historical Quaker of Salem, whose children, for adhering to their faith were, about 1653, offered for sale as Barbados slaves by "dark and haughty Endicott, the ruler of the land.” John Greenleaf Whittier, in his poem, Cassandra Southwick, tells the story.
Zoeth Allen, who sleeps in the little cemetery at Rosenburg, was the father of the Allen family in this vicinity .He came from Danby, Vt., where his record proclaims him a man of consequence: selectman for nine years, representative in the Legislature four years and Justice of the Peace twenty- seven years-in those days the longest term ever served. It is family legend that Ethan Allen, who took Fort Ticonderoga "in the name of Jehovah and the Continental Congress," was the same blood as the Rosenburg Aliens.
A Life of Beauty
The first member of the Allen family to come to Collins was Zoeth's son, Isaac. In 1815, at the age of twenty-two, he left his bride, Lydia Barlett, with her parents in Vermont and started west to make a home. The next spring, his young wife, a girl of twenty, came to the unfinished cabin with no chimney and a blanket hung for a door. When roads were laid out, they found themselves far from any track. In 1831, a frame house was built one- half mile south of the cabin-the Allen homestead. The Witt family is the present owners of this farm. Isaac Allen's daughter, Mrs. Drusilla Stoddard, has left many interesting pen-pictures of her father. Especially beautiful is the following: "I never knew one," she writes, "who seemed to live, as it were, in sympathy with all God's creatures more than he: When very old and feeble, he would sit for hours feeding the birds with crumbs, or looking out upon the trees and fields. I once asked him what he saw to amuse him so long. Pointing to the fir trees, he answered in Whittier's words: "How the robin rears her young, how the oriole's nest is hung."
Put His Neighbors in Verse
Isaac's son, Joshua, succeeded to the old homestead, which by this time comprised some 300m acres of land. Aside from being an excellent farmer and an able town executive, Joshua Allen was something of a poet. His rhymed descriptions of local events, sometimes read at farmers clubs and other gatherings, were enthusiastically received. The following excerpt is from some verses, in which each neighbor gets a kindly characterization, read at a Lyceum at the Comers, when Enos, Stephen and George Southwick, Phileman Walden, Ahaz, Isaac and Daniel Allen, Hosea White, Levi and Nelson Taft, Austin Shaw, Wm. Press, James Rosenburg and many others who have passed, were present to join in the laughter they created.
"The next I'll tackle-Abraham Patch-
I s'pose you think I've got my match!
But I will soon get through with him;
So hark my friends, and I'll begin-
His dark thick, beard once looked quite strange,
But now, behold the mighty change !
Since first our midst he came,
Beards, quite a common thing have grown,
And his, no more commands the ken
Of silly maids and feeble men.
He is a man of quite good sense
And profits by experience
And never twice in the same trap,
Will he be caught by any chap.”
Soule Family Talented
Tibbets Soule, head of the Collins branch of the Soule family, settled in Rosenburg about 1823 and his sons acquired farms in the vicinity. Ostensibly farmers, these men were more inclined to other pursuits; Stephen William was a teacher, a school commissioner and served on term in the state assembly. Thomas was a land surveyor and teacher, and Jonathan, a Quaker preacher of ability. Perhaps, in their scholastic learning, they harked back to their ancestor, Geo. Soule, a Mayflower passenger who, it is recorded, possessed a "liberty."
In 1834, the Levi Taft family traveled from Dan by in a covered wagon and spent a summer in the cheese room of their kinsman, Isaac Allen, while their house was being built. On an August day about nine years later, daughter Drusilla and young Jonas Cook, accompanied by her cousin, Cynthia Taft and Mr. Mark Bailey rode to Keu's Comers and at Patterson Keu's tavern, by Justice John Sherman, became Mr. and Mrs. Cook and Mr. and Mrs. Bailey in a single ceremony. Before Mrs. Kate Wright built her new home east of the Corners, there stood on the site an old-fashioned farmhouse filled with pioneer relics. This was the home of Mr. and Mrs. Cook, and perhaps the most treasured of the objects exhibited to their visitors was the old rush bottomed chair in which Mr. Cook's sister Abigail Taft, sat during her long trek from Vermont to Collins.
Rosenburg Corners acquired its name from James Rosenburg, a man of dominating efficiency. He came to the locality about 1846 and purchased the Stephen William Soule farm on the corner, now owned by Mr. Walter Strickland. Mrs. Rosenburg was a daughter of Isaac Becker, who in 1831, came to clear and cultivate the first Becker estate in the neighborhood. As time passed and his sons grew, there appeared a series of prosperous Becker farms each owned by an equally prosperous Becker.
The Munger family moved to Rosenburg in 1839, first to the old Thomas Soule farm and in 1853 to the one now occupied by Mr. Ray Tolman. Mr. Clark Munger, whose death occurred in 1913, was well known throughout this territory. He was profoundly interested in local history and credit is due him for collecting and preserving much that might otherwise have been lost. It is said, that rambling through old cemeteries in search of data was so habitual, that his horse would automatically stop at every burying-ground on the road.
Development of Schools
The earliest schools were held in private homes; there was the Isaac Allen School, the Joshua Allen School, the Jonas Cook School and others. The first schoolhouse was of logs and located east of the old cheese factory. Its first teacher was Hannah Coburn. It burned in 1831 and a frame building was erected on the present site given by Stephen and Waity Southwick. Because the schoolhouse was used for funerals and other meetings, a new and larger building was required and in 1849, one was constructed by Myron Walden for $300 and the old house sold to James Rosenburg for a workshop. Fire again visited the district in 1887 and in 1888, the little white schoolhouse that stands on the corner today, was built and Miss Clara Allen headed its list of instructors.
Along with the rest of the countryside, the Corners shared the anti-Masonic excitement of 1829 when a citizen of Lodi was alleged to have been in a boat on the Niagara River with Morgan before the latter's disappearance. Nor did the rumors that the world would end on a certain day in 1843 leave them unshaken. A good Free Will Baptist woman of the vicinity narrates her granddaughter, so firmly believed these prophecies that "grandpa" harvested the crops and stored the winter vegetables under most voluble protests and admonitions that they would never be needed.
In preparing this story of Rosenburg Corners, the writers were greatly aided by Mrs. Elbert Ingraham and her pioneer map of the southwestern part of the town of Collins, showing the lots of the township, the names of the farm owners, the roads, the creeks and other details. This map was drawn and blue-printed by her nephew, Mr. Eber Russell, under the direction of Joshua Allen, Clark Munger and Mrs. Ingraham's mother, Mrs. Harriet Pearsons Press.