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Elm Hill Farm As I Knew It
Bertha Dodge Nellis
1935
Introduction
The day that I finished reading Louis Bromfield’s The Farm, I remarked to my daughter Eleanor, “Why I could write a story of our family that to the family would be as interesting as The Farm . (That was written primarily for some members of the Bromfield family.) On the instant Eleanor was fired with enthusiasm and exclaimed - “You should, O do, do”. And she has never forgotten, but has constantly reminded me and urged me to make the attempt; So because I love to think of Elm Hill Farm as I knew it and the people who have lived on it, and rather expect to get real pleasure from the reminiscence: I rush in where angels perhaps might fear to tread.
It is to be a simple account of some of the important or interesting incidents told me by older members of the family and of my own memories and viewpoint. It is written for the next generation, for I realize that there are some things that I am the only one of my generation left in the family to recall. But it is due to Eleanor’s enthusiasm and encouragement, that I have been mulling over in my mind things to tell about, and that I am making the attempt to pass them on.
Part I.
There are certain people greatly interested in just about anybody’s genealogy, who find a real pleasure in tracing back ancestry. Such an one was our dear friend, Mrs Moxley. For our sister Minnie, Mrs Moxley, who had at her command the material of the Boston libraries, looked up the beginnings of the Dodge family in America.
Mrs Moxley wrote out the information she acquired and gave it to Minnie, but through some inadvertence, Minnie lost the paper. I have seen the same statement made in an obituary of one Daniel Dodge of Rockland, Sullivan County, New York and I understand they have been published in books concerning the early history of the Dodge family.
This is the beginning of the Dodge family in America. In 1646, one Tristram Dodge and his three sons came from England to Block Island in a sloop “with their women, their servants, and their cattle.” There they settled. Later some members of the family moved to New London, Connecticut. From New London I suppose the families scattered through parts of New England.
The first member of our family whom I can speak of with certainty is Silas Dodge, my great grandfather. He owned a farm in or near Henly, Massachusetts. When I was a little girl of five Father and Mother “took a trip” to New York City and New England visiting relatives. They took me with them, and I vividly remember being lifted up onto the top of a great granite boulder that was in the brick yard of the house where great-grandfather Silas used to live - he was long dead then - and being told that Grandfather used to play on this rock when he was a little boy. The house was unpainted, I very dimly remember it. It did not seem large, even to my child’s eyes. I fancy a living was hard to wrest from the stony fields and steep hillsides.
If great grandfather had any daughters I do not remember hearing them mentioned nor do I know whom he married. He had four sons: Eben, Thomas, Charles, and Luther. There were descendants of Eben living in Syracuse by the name of Diefendorf. Charles and Luther “went west” - one to Detroit, I think Luther, and one to Ohio.
What a pity that when there are with us who might tell of a day gone by and the people who lived in it, we are so absorbed in the present, or so full of dreams of the future that the past is “over and gone”, and we do not think to “remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations; ask thy father and he will show thee; thy elders and they will tell thee.” I have information about Silas’ family from my Father’s lips, but even he did not seem to know much about his father’s family. If now I could ask him, I might find he know more than I can remember his telling us.
When one is clearing land, and building a shelter, and marrying a wife, and rearing a family, it is pretty absorbing business. So I fancy Grandfather Thomas who did all these things may not have told a great deal of his old home and family in Hawley, and Father was like many for the rest of us - eager about his own life and busy in its duties and pleasures.
In 1816 young Thomas Dodge settled in what was then the town of York, Livingston Co. by the side of Wolf Creek. He had served in the war of 1812. I can see in my mind’s eye the blue army coat with big round silver, at least silver-colored, buttons which Mother, at house cleaning time, took out of the chest in the kitchen chamber, shook and aired against the depredations of moths, and put back. I suppose as the years went by the moths conquered , and Mother didn’t see why anyone would be interested in an old moth-eaten coat, or even the buttons. How I wish she had saved the buttons!
When young Thomas came home from the war he must have reached man’s estate - he was born in 1792. The family was large and it was time for him to look out for himself. What lead him to the beautiful Genesee Valley? Was it even then “Young man go west”? Some one must have told him about it, or did he see it as he served in the war? Where he served I do not know; I wonder.
After the Revolution, and following the Clinton-Sullivan expedition, the Genesee Valley become a promised land to many. When Thomas made his claim or bought the land, the great flats of the river were owned by the Eadsworths, and he settled just over the first rise of ground, about 10 miles north of Moscow, now called Leicester.
He build his log house on the north side of the Creek, about opposite the barn of the McKercher-McLean-Dodge-place. Until recent years the great maple tree which stood in the brick yard was still standing. Father told me many times how they used to play in its shade. The creek has changed its course somewhat, and the floods and erosion of many years have washed away the back yard, the tree, and, I fancy, even the site of Grandfather’s log house. What a pity!
Soon after Grandfather established himself, he must have become interested in Phoebe Forbes, for Dec. 11th 1817 they were married.
Phoebe Forbes was the daughter of Jotham Forbes, one time fifer in the Revolution (see the pension record I have in my possession.) I do not know when the family came from Upton, Mass. to New York State. I have been told that Phoebe rode on a pillion behind her father. The home they lived in was about three miles from where Grandfather settled, up the Teed Hill road and beyond the Ira Whelk place across the rod. The house was still shading the last I knew, but in sad disrepair.
What heavy and almost endless tasks must have been the lot of young Thomas and Phoebe - I hope the log house was completed. However I'm sure they were full of courage and ambition - they had to be to accomplish what they did, they were young and well, and love was there.
The next year, 1818, Nov. 4, the first baby came, and died the day it was born. A family record in a Bible is a cold thing. The November fourth must have been a tragic day. It was a real pioneer life they had to live, not much medical or surgical skill at hand.
Those were the days of large families. Om May 31, 1820 Jotham Forbes Dodge was born. He had such an odd nickname, "Jote." He died before I was born, but I heard others int eh family talk about 'Uncle Jote, and I never could see how "Jote" came from Jotham.
Then there was Amelia Louise, born March 17, 1823 - more about her later - and Father, who was James Lloyd, born July 25, 1825, and Thomas Augustus born October 27, 1827, and Catherine Lydia born Dec. 25, 1829. So to Thomas and Phoebe cam six children.
They had good taste in names, for all have both beauty and dignity with is something to be desired when conferring on a baby a thing he must carry with him through life.
(TBC)
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