EW ENGLAND'S sons carried the habits and manners, NEW the wooden clocks and spinning wheels, and the indomitable thrift of the little land forever to be known as "mother." Step by step the most eager spirits moved forward to spy out the rich spots of the wilderness and take possession as best they might. Although ever moving forward, they never lost the homing instinct, but built New England farmhouses and villages, with whitewashed fences, raised New England beans and planted New England orchards. . . . In this way New England moves westward, carrying her whole household with her, her churches, schools, customs, laws, industries. E. P. POWELL. CHAPTER III NEW ENGLAND AND NEW YORK The first westward movement of New Englanders was naturally toward the neighboring states, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Previously there had been exoduses from Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut into Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. Indeed, the northward drift was far more evident than the westward movement up to the time of the Revolution. By 1780 the northern tier of the New England states was fairly well settled— Vermont as far north as Middlebury and Newbury, New Hampshire, up to the White Mountains, and the rivers, valleys and seashore of Maine as far east as Calais. But by the time the war with England was over, the tide of travel began to turn decidedly westward. The last fifteen years of the eighteenth century saw many departures from Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Vermont, of those who felt the lure of the land that lay toward the setting sun. Though they did not travel far in comparison with later expeditions, enough persons went and then dispersed themselves widely enough to impart a New England coloring to the New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania of that day. The best general volume on this subject is "The Expansion of New England," by Lois Kimball Mathews. In her interesting series of maps one locates the New England settlements in the Middle States from decade to decade. These maps show that by 1820 many settlements in central New York as far north as Malone and as far south as Binghamton were of New England origin. New Englanders too had edged their way into a good bit of both northeastern and northwestern Pennsylvania and had established themselves also at points in northern New Jersey. But it was upon central and western New York that the touch of New England was most pronounced. Counties like Oneida and Onondaga continue to this day to reflect in their external aspects and the characteristics of their inhabitants the New England from which most of their sturdiest settlers came. Here are just a few of the many groups. In 1783 Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard sent thirty stalwart fishermen, including both Quakers and Puritans, to Hudson to plant the one New England settlement on the Hudson River. A year or two later began a little exodus from Plymouth, Ct., to Kirkland, N. Y., that eventually included five families, who with families from Brimfield, Mass., became the |