Skip to content

The Manuscript

I obtained this manuscript from Bill Mutch of Slaterville. Bill remembers that many years ago he walked into the Chanticleer Bar in Ithaca and sat down with an old friend, Harry Lawless. Harry said that he had something to give Bill, went out to his car, and returned with the manuscript of Silo Saga.

...continue reading "Forward"

Lois O'Connor was a feature writer for the Ithaca Journal, well known for her Crossroads Comments. In this article, published on August 30, 1956, she describes her visits with several Caroline families: Malcolm and Jean Sloan, Bessie Barnes, Meredith and Hazel Brill, and Florence Henry.

Crossroads Comment By Lois O'Connor

Sea Captain Drops Anchor at Farm in Caroline

“I can’t imagine a farm in New York. It sounds as silly as a cow in a skyscraper.”

So a friend in Dublin, Ireland, wrote to Mrs. Malcolm Sloan when she heard that the Sloans had purchased a farm in Upstate New York. “Over there, they can’t imagine what New York State is like outside of New York City, Mrs. Sloan told me when I visited her at Anchor Farm on the Midline Rd. out of Slaterville.

“In all the books, no one ever tells how wonderful Upstate New York is,” said Mrs. Jane Tayler, Mrs. Sloan’s mother, who is visiting here from Donaghadee, County Down, Ireland.

...continue reading "Lois O’Connor visits Slaterville Families"

Ithaca Journal, July 19, 1870

The following full history of the Town of Caroline, from the pen of a valued correspondent, we gladly transfer to our columns.1.

The town of Caroline occupies the southeast corner of the county of Tompkins, and alphabetically heads the list of its nine towns. It is bounded on the north by Dryden, (originally township No. 23 of the Military Tract), east and south by Richford, Berkshire, and Candor in Tioga county, and west by Danby. The general surface is hilly and upland, broken into long, gentle ridges of arable land admitting of cultivation from the valleys to the hill-tops, which frequently attain an altitude four or five hundred feet.

...continue reading "A Sketch of Caroline’s Early History"

Ithaca Daily Journal, August 20, 1904, p. 6

SLATERVILLE RESORTERS MISTAKE HIM FOR A SAVAGE.

Claims to be A Now Arrival from Gormany Who Had Lost His Way While Walking from the Sea To Villace In Pennsylvania.

The finding of a half starved foreigner in the wood near Slaterville Springs, who had lost his way and because be could not speak English had been unable to make people understand that he needed food, caused quite a sensation among the fashionable summer people in that village yesterday,

...continue reading "Man Half Starved Found in Woods"

Susan Elizabeth Linn Sage (1819–1885) was the wife of Henry W. Sage. Her genealogy and a few biographical facts have has been laid out in a previous post about the Linn family. She was first cousin to Frances Peters, wife of James Richard Speed of Slaterville, who was the son of Dr. Joseph Speed, an early settler of the town.
...continue reading "Fatal Runaway Accident"

1

Henry Linn Speed

I have been spent many an hour recently swimming in the great sea of genealogy at Ancestry. For much of that time I was exploring the roots and branches of the descendants of Dr. Joseph Speed, a prominent early settler of Caroline. Henry Linn Speed was the son of James Richard Speed (1815–1864) of Slaterville and Frances Peters of Philadelphia (1818–1901). (James was the son of Dr. Speed.) When I read in his obituary that he was the great nephew of Mrs. Simeon De Witt, I decided to find the details of this connection.

...continue reading "The Linns"

1

Back in June I read an article in the New York Review of Books about the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. The article mentioned Robert Goodloe Harper, who supported the act on the grounds that “freedom of the press did not allow ‘sedition and licentiousness’”.

This name tripped a switch in my memory. Before going into that, I’d like to report a bit about Harper, who was prominent in his day, but has now been almost totally forgotten, as is the fate of most prominent people.
...continue reading "The Goodloe Harpers of Slaterville"