The John Young family members were early settlers in the Town of Niagara who had to carve their way to find a new homestead. Their experience was not much different from all early settlers seeking new homes in virgin forests.
The Youngs came here in 1810 from Pennsylvania in a large Conestoga wagon, sometimes called an "Allegheny Frigate." Full of household goods and all kinds of provisions along with the passengers, the wagon was pulled by a team of five horses.
They came to the mouth of Gill Creek at the Niagara River on June 1, 1810, and had to halt their journey while they got out axes and went to work chopping. They had to cut a path through the thick forest, so they could move their wagon inland to a plot John Young bought from the Holland Land Company.
The future homestead was located east of Gill Creek, near where the intersection of Military and Packard roads is today. The family first made a temporary shelter, just a roof supported by poles, and slept there while work progressed chopping trees to make a clearing and using the logs to build a cabin.
The work was accomplished mainly by John Young and his two sons, Samuel and Christian. The next year, John Young sold the burgeoning farm to Samuel, and Christian bought adjacent acreage to create his own farm. In making these provisions, John Young might have had a premonition, because he died in 1812, shortly before the start of the War of 1812.
When the war broke out and news of the English and Indian raid reached Samuel and Christian, they, along with all others in the new settlements, packed up and fled to Livingstone County.
They all returned after the war and began farming again. Samuel and his wife were expecting their first baby and had to improvise means for taking care of an infant. Samuel used a little ingenuity and cut a long strip of bark from a whitewood tree. He laid this green strip in the sun on the roof of his cabin to dry out. It shrunk into a curved shape, just the thing for a cradle.
Their problems were compounded in 1816, when cold weather played havoc with crops. However, local Tuscarora Indians came to their rescue with enough corn and other food to tide them over until a crop could be harvested the following year.
Samuel and Christian Young, concerned about the education of settlers' children, built the first schoolhouse in the town.
The Town of Niagara in that period included what is now Niagara Falls, including the LaSalle section. An early settler in that section was Ferris Angevine, who came in 1830 from Vermont. He, too, had to hew a rough road through the forest in order to make use of his tract of 200 acres.
His son, Jackson Angevine, was 2 years old when his father settled here. When Ferris died in 1850, Jackson took over the property. He continued clearing the land and sold lots to other settlers, making himself a considerable fortune. It was on the site of Angevine property adjacent to the Little River that LaSalle's famed boat the Griffon had been built many years previously.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | March 23, 2010 |