1st DEED OF RECORD ALLEGANY COUNTY COURTHOUSE
The first deed recorded in Book 1 of
Deeds of Allegany County, NY is drawn between Pierre DuPont de Nemours and John B. Church & wife, Angelica Church.
(From Times Herald, Olean NY – April
1966)
DUPONT OWNED ANGELICA LAND
By Dorothy Godfrey Wayman
One of
America’s wealthiest families, the DuPonts, can trace their history back to Allegany County.
Victor
Du Pont de Nemours went with Countess Marie D’Autremont to Angelica and bought a tract of land adjoining hers.
However, a brother, Irenee DuPont de Nemours persuaded Victor to join him in New Jersey.
Records from the
period tell how Victor sold a household servant to Augustus D’Autremont before leaving the settlement for New Jersey.
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Looking Into The
Past – Part 2
FRIENDS TEAM UP TO EXPLORE ALLEGANY COUNTY
By Dorothy Godfrey Wayman
A
family tragedy drove 23 year-old Philip Church, young lawyer educated in London and son of the so-called richest man in America, into the wilderness that today is Allegany County.
John
B. Church and Alexander Hamilton, first U.S. Secretary of the Treasury under George Washington, had married daughters of General Schuyler of Albany.
Young
Philip Church early in 1801 had acted as “second” to his cousin, Philip Hamilton, in a duel fought at Weehawken, NJ. The pistols were a pair, gold mounted with barrels 11 inches long,
that John Church had brought from his English home.
Alas,
young Hamilton was killed in the duel as Philip Church looked on. Duelling from medieval times was socially accepted among “gentlemen” as the way to settle a quarrel or an insult.
John
Church, the father, had himself earlier faced Aaron Burr in a duel provoked by Burr over a difference in politics, and on that same Weehawken spot on July 12, 1804, Aaron Burr, the traitor
to the new U.S. Government, would kill the brilliant statesman, Alexander Hamilton, in a duel.
SICK AT HEART from the death of his young cousin, Philip Church plunged into the wilderness of Western New York to head a survey of the 100,000 acres purchased by his father but held
in the name of Alexander Hamilton, since John Church had not completed the residence term for becoming an American citizen.
At
Almond, by pre-arrangement, Church arrived with tools and supplies for camping and met Major Moses Van Campen, John Gibson, John Lewis and Stephen Price. They doubtless hired some Indians
or half-breeds to do the chopping of trees for a transit line and for paths for horses and pack animals.
VAN
CAMPEN knew plenty of Indians. He grew up in Northumberland County, PA., and in the Revolutionary War accompanied General John Sullivan in the northward expedition against the Indian
allies of the English army. In the Spring of 1782, Van Campen was captured and forced to run the gauntlet between a row of squaws armed with clubs. He ran so fast that he reached the
last pair without a blow having struck him, and he knocked down the last two squaws.
THE
INDIAN braves greatly admired his agility and offered at Fort Niagara to exchange 14 new prisoners if they could have custody of Van Campen. However, the British sent Van Campen to
Quebec and then to New York (held by the British) where he was exchanged for an Englishman captured by the colonists.
In
1780 Van Campen’s father and younger brother had been killed before his eyes on their farm although Van Campen managed to escape after a hand-to-hand struggle with an Indian armed with a
tomahawk.
Both
Phillip Church and Moses Van Campen were expert marksmen. In a friendly match with rifles, they once fastened a small bit of white paper to a tree with a nail. It was agreed they would,
in turn, march a measured distance, wheel around and fire at the tree. Van Campen drew first shot and pinged his bullet through the center of the paper. Church then drilled his shot on
top of Van Campen.
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(Times Herald, Olean
NY – April 1966)
Looking Into The
Past – Part 3
ARISTOCRATS FOUND REFUGE IN ALLEGANY COUNTY
By Dorothy Godfrey Wayman
When
the French guillotined their king, Louis XVI, in 1793, many French aristocrats sought refuge in America. One sanctuary was in Pennsylvania’s northern wilderness, aptly named Asylum.
The
French aristocrats did not care for log cabins and venison in a hemlock forest and when in 1802 Napoleon came to rule France and offered amnesty to the wealthy, educated nobility, many of
them went back to France.
However, others had heard of John Church and Alexander Hamilton’s purchase of 100,000 acres of forest in Allegany County and went there.
Thus
in Angelica, in the heart of the wilderness, there was a group of highly cultured French nobility, associating with the British-educated Church family. It is not surprising that Alfred
University traces its beginning back to the first schoolmaster in Angelica—Bethuel Church—who opened a “select school” in 1836.
A
LEADER in the Angelica settlement was the widow of Hubert D’Autremont, Countess Marie. She had been at Asylum. A son, Louis, went back to France in 1802 with the Duc D’Orleans and
became secretary to Talleyrand in Paris. In 1806 she bought land in Angelica and her other sons, Alexander and Auguste, went with her. Her sister, Marie, who had been a nun in France
before the Revolution joined her. The Countess died in 1809 at 64. Her sister died a year later. She was 52.
Augustus D’Autremont, although he would have been a Count by rank in France, kept a general store in Angelica and, in 1809, Victor Dupont sold to him “for two hundred dollars, my black
wench named Charlotte with her boy now four weeks old, said girl to serve Mr. D’Autremont for 20 years after which I warrant her free and the boy to serve Mr. D’Autremont for 28 years as
the law directs.”
IN
1815, Philip Church himself put on record with Town Clerk, E. Van Wickle that living in his household were a female slave, Mary, with a two-months-old baby Catherine, a female slave,
Chloe, with a 3-year-old son, Henry, and also a female slave, Deane, and her 10-year-old daughter, Lucy. The last two had been John B. Church’s property in New York City and were brought
to Angelica when he retired there.
Obviously no social disapproval was earned by slave-holding in Angelica in the early 1800’s for the man elected as Town Clerk, Evart VanWickle, recorded that the female slave Elcey, in his
family, had given birth to a boy named Perry, in August, 1816.
Two
hundred dollars for “a black wench and her child” was a fair price when tea, imported from China in sailships, cost $1.25 a pound in Angelica, and 26 pounds of venison shot in the forest
around Angelica could be bought for 78 cents.
In
those days the nearest post office was at Bath, NY, and a man had to go there, or send a trusted agent, and pay 20 cents for each letter addressed to him. A man’s wage for a 12-hour day
was 62 cents, so a letter had to be important to be worth ransoming. And mails to Bath came only once a month. In 1811, Philip Church had a turnpike road built through from Angelica to
Olean, where mail service was quicker.
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(Times Herald, Olean
NY – April 1966)
Looking Into The
Past – Part 4
CHURCH PICKS BELVIDERE FOR MANSION
By Dorothy Godfrey Wayman
After
surveying the 100,000 acre tract (now Allegany County) in Western, New York, Philip Church returned to Philadelphia to arrange for building a house in the wilderness and to see the girl he
wanted to marry, provided she was willing to live in the wilderness.
As
architect he engaged Everett Van Winkle. The house was to be built in 1802 in the county seat young Church had named “Angelica” after his mother, daughter of General Philip Schuyler. Her
sister, Elizabeth had married Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury in Washington’s Cabinet.
The
frame house, painted white with green blinds (still standing and occupied by Mrs. H. Lee Newman on E. Main St., Angelica <1966>) took time to build. First a saw mill and a grist mill had
to be built. Tools, nails, pumps, pipes and furniture were sent from New York. The favored route at the time was up the Hudson by ship and then by wagon or ox-team by a road Church had
blazed.
CHURCH WAS IN LOVE WITH Anna Matilda Stewart, daughter of Gen. Walter Stewart of Philadelphia and when the house was ready in 1805 they were married and went to live in Angelica.
Not
long after, Philip’s father, John Church, made known a desire to move from New York City to spend his declining years near his son.
CONSEQUENTLY, Philip Church decided to leave the gracious, white-painted house to his parents, and build nearby an estate of his own on 2,000 acres overlooking the Genesee River.
Van
Wickle, the English architect Philip Church sent to Angelica to build a house for his bride in 1802, was elected Angelica’s first town clerk. It was he, presumably, who drew the plans for
the stone and brick mansion Philip Church built overlooking the Genesee River.
THE
HOUSE he planned was ready for Philip Church and his wife to occupy in 1910. It was built of native stone quarried on the property and of hand-made bricks, fired at the site. It is
owned today <1966> by Mr. & Mrs. Robert B. Bromeley of Bradford, PA.
Philip
Church planned it as self-supporting estate. In 1811 he journeyed to London and brought back seeds and merino ram imported from Spain. To get the ram from New York City to Angelica, he
had a special chaise built—a high-wheeled gig with a crate for the ram suspended beneath. Wool was important on the frontier for clothing and blankets. Church’s 2,000-acre farm could
pasture many sheep, cows and horses and buildings for men to tend them.
The
big stone house, Villa Belvidere, was looked after by Negro slaves and Indian servants. His wife, Anna Matilda Stewart Church, was on friendly relations with the Seneca Indians. They
even invited her to their Harvest Festival while her husband was in England. She went to watch the dance and took gifts of food with her.
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(Times Herald, Olean
NY – April 1966)
Looking Into The
Past – Part 4
HAMILTON-BURR PISTOLS WERE TAKEN TO ANGELICA
By Dorothy Godfrey Wayman
(TIMES HERALD – April 15, 1966)
A pair
of matched dueling pistols played no small part in John Church’s decision in 1806 to move from New York to Allegany County, where his son, Philip, had successfully developed family land
holdings.
One of
the star-crossed pistols had taken the life of a family friend, and in the hands of Aaron Burr would be used to deadly purpose again.
BURR’S AIM was first tested against Church himself, and although faulty then it was true enough later against Alexander Hamilton, his wife’s brother-in-law.
John
Church had made a “crack” at a dinner party in New York that the Holland Land Company had “forgiven” a $20,000 “loan” to Aaron Burr, vice President of the United States under Thomas
Jefferson. Burr promptly challenged John Church to a duel. The two and their seconds met on the dueling round at Weehawken, N.J. Burr’s bullet missed it mark. John Church’s aim struck
a metal button on Burr’s coat, and lodged in his fancy vest beneath.
Burr
evidently wanted no more of such proven marksmanship. He shook hands with Church and accepted an “explanation” that Church was repeating “common gossip” in his dinner anecdote.
THE
SAME pistols that Church had brought from London, gold-mounted with 22-inch barrels were borrowed in 1804 by Alexander Hamilton for the duel in which he was killed by Aaron Burr.
Hamilton had known that Burr was a traitorous man who had wild dreams of setting up a republic in what is now Texas and then was Mexico, in order to ensure perpetuation of slavery.
HAMILTON had exerted his statesmanship to defeat Burr for vice president in 1800 and for governor of New York State in 1804. He died a martyr for his country and the victim of the
out-moded custom of settling disputes by pistol.
John
Church was heart-broken by Hamilton’s death and made up his mind to retire from the world of politics and business. In 1806 he and his wife came to his son’s white mansion in Angelica for
their last years.
THE
DUELLING pistols that John Church brought from London—the costly gold-mounted, accurate-shooting pistols that had taken the lives of Alexander Hamilton’s son Philip in 1801 and of the
great Hamilton himself in 1804—were brought to Allegany County when Church and his wife retired to live there.
John
Church had lived several years in Paris after the Revolution with friends like Talleyrand and Lafayette from his years as quartermaster with the French Army in 1775-1783. He had then gone
back to his native England and served as a member of Parliament, before settling and taking up American citizenship. When he retired to Angelica in 1806, he brought along his French cook
whose son, Louis Antoine Godey, became publisher of the first American fashion magazine for women—the famous Godey’s Lady’s Book.