Gazetteer of
the State of New York: Embracing a Comprehensive View of the Geography, Geology,
And General History of the State, and a Complete History and Description of
Every County, City, Town, Village, and Locality. With Full Tables Of Statistics.
By J. H. French. Syracuse, N.Y.: Published By R. Pearsall Smith
1860.
Page 629.
WHEELER 5-- was formed from Bath and Prattsburgh, Feb. 25, 1820.
A part of Avoca was taken off in 1843, and a part of Urbana in 1839. It is an
interior town, lying N.E. of the center of the co. Its surface is a high,
rolling upland, broken by the valleys of Five Mile and Ten Mile Creeks and of
several small lateral streams. The soil is a shaly and clayey loam, well adapted
to both grazing and tillage. Mitchellville (p.
v.) contains 20 houses; and Wheeler Center (Wheeler
p. o.) 1 church and 15 houses. The first settlement was made in 1799, by Capt.
Silas Wheeler, from Albany co. 6 Rev. Ephraim
Eggleston (Bap.) conducted the first religious service, in 1802. There are 2
churches in town; Presb. and M.E.
5 Named from Capt. Silas Wheeler, the
first settler. Capt. Wheeler served during the Revolutionary War, and was at the
attack on Quebec and stood near Montgomery when he fell. He was 4 times
taken prisoner during the war. He died in 1828, at the age of
78. 6 Nathan Rose, Wm. Holmes, and Turner
Gardner settled in town in 1799; Col. Jonathan Barney and Thos. Aulls in 1800;
Phillip Murtle in 1802; and Otto F. Marshall, and others, named Bear, Ferval,
and Rifle, in 1803. William, son of Jonathan Barney, was born Nov. 1, 1801, and
died Dec. 1, 1802, - the first birth and death in town. Hon. Grattan H. Wheeler
was a party to the first marriage. Capt. Wheeler built the first
sawmill, in 1802; and Geo. W. Taylor the first gristmill, in 1803-04. John Beals
kept the first inn, in 1820; and Cornelius Younglove, the first store, in 1835.
The first school was taught by Uriel Chapin. "Capt.
Wheeler's first trip to mill is worthy of record. There were, at the time
when he had occasion to 'go to mill,' three institutions in the
neighborhood where grinding was done, - at the Friends' settlement, at Bath, and
at Naples. The millstones of Bath had suspended operations, - there being
nothing there to grind, as was reported. Capt. Wheeler made a cart, of
which the wheels were sawn from the end of a log of curly maple; the box was of
corresponding architecture. Two young men went before the oxen with axes
and chopped a road, and the clumsy chariot came floundering through the bushes
behind, bouncing over the logs and snubbing the stumps, like a ship working
through an ice field. The first day they reached a point a little beyond the
present village of Prattsburgh, a distance of six miles from their starting
point, and the second moored triumphantly at the mill at Naples." -
McMasters's Hist. Steuben Co., pp. 195-196.
