Travel today can be quite wearisome, especially air travel in these days of delays, crashes and invasive security checks. But travel in the 19th century was worse.
In 1805, William Wisner settled on a farm just east of Olcott. William and his brother David arrived together, and their father, David Sr., came a short time later.
Their history is detailed in a journal kept by DeLilah Wisner Merritt, who wrote of frontier pioneer life and a rather harrowing trip to Michigan.
She wrote that her older sister Sarah in 1822 married Abraham Wisner, their father's cousin. Abraham's father, Jehiel, was an itinerant Baptist minister who established the first Baptist church in Newfane in 1829.
"He preached there for three years," she wrote, "and received a total of $24 in cash for his services." She noted that ministers and teachers usually received most of their compensation in board and lodging or in farm produce.
Abraham and Sarah moved to Michigan, and a plan to join them was the occasion of DeLilah's trip. She wrote that the trip took several weeks.
DeLilah married Isaac Merritt on Sept. 29, 1830. In the spring of l836 they decided to go to Michigan and embarked "on what proved to be a long tedious journey. Father accompanied us as far as the Niagara river and bade us goodbye." They traveled in a wagon, taking their stock with them with the idea of settling in Michigan.
They stayed in a cabin overnight in Niagara Falls, and the next morning Delilah "had my two children, William and Albert, to dress, cows to milk, breakfast to get and beds to put back into the wagon so we could get started as early as possible.
"The second night we stayed in a private house with a hospitable Quaker family, a beautiful place between the mountain and lake. We traveled about 25 to 30 miles a day. There had been heavy rains that spring, consequently roads were bad and bridges gone or condemned."
William, "an active restless child," fell out of the wagon, and the two front wheels ran over his legs. "Of course, he was badly hurt, but no bones broken. We thought the sand saved him."
The horses went to the edge of a lake to get a drink of water and "the horses sunk in the sand and could not pull the wagon out." She added, "No one was in sight. We were terribly frightened. We took everything we could find out of the wagon but to no purpose."
Two young Frenchmen came along riding horses. They were "true gentlemen of their stamp" and, even though there was a language barrier, the Frenchmen knew what was needed. "By signs, they helped get the horses off and hitched to the back of the wagon while they pried and pulled it out."
That night they stayed at a private house of the French family and, fortunately, one man there could speak English.
When they arrived at her sister's place, they planned to buy a farm of their own, but only had paper money, which was not universally acceptable in those days. Isaac Merritt had to travel to a nearby city to get gold for his paper money so he could buy a farm.
Isaac returned and bought a farm but, apparently, things did not work out too well. In less than a year, Isaac took his family back to Lockport, bought a farm at Johnson's Creek and sold his Michigan land.
During this period, DeLilah wrote, she saw her first train and then took her first train ride. Her husband, Isaac, died of cholera in 1853. Descendants of the Merritts were involved in the Merritt Manufacturing Company in Lockport.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | March 16, 2010 |