"Lazyville" in Madison County

 Waterville Times, December 3, 1931

Deserted Village in Madison County

Hamlet of Fifteen Houses Now Eery Place - Surrounded by Forest on High Land of Georgetown - 

Norwich-DeRuyter Railroad Recalled

Did you know that there is in Madison county a deserteed village, a settlement in which today there resides not a soul? Yes, it was in reality a village or settlement, a collection of 15 houses, but with no commercial buildings. It was not a logging camp or other specially constructed

settlement, but a hamlet that grew up naturally. And in what a location.

   This settlement was in the Crumb Hill section of Georgetown and went by the euphonious name of Lazyville. It as on one of the highest points of the town and is completely surrounded by forest. As one drives through Georgetown toward South Otselic, there is a road just west of the village that leads to the Muller Hill section. Take this road and drive along for about a mile when a fork in the road will be noticed. Take the left-hand fork and go as far as your auto can proceed. It isn't much of a road after you leave the forks, and finally you will find that an auto can go no further. From there on it is a hike of about a mile to reach Lazyville. And when you get there you will find

little. 

   There are three frame houses, several slab-sided houses and one or two log cabins. Several of the buildings have tumbled down and all present a woe-begone condition.Until about a year ago a man resided there, but he was overcome by lonesomeness and moved to Georgetown.

   Jerome Brown is believed to have been the first settler of Lazyville. He made a clearing in the forest and built a home. Others came and built there, the Davenports, Shermans, etc. Today all are gone. The only industry that graced Lazyville (Jerome Brown is also credited with

naming the hamlet) was a sawmill. This was put in operation by Ral. Merchant at the time the Norwich-DeRuyter branch of the Midland was built.

   At that brings up another question: How many know that at one time there was a railroad between Norwich and DeRuyter? Few living today know of this and those who are have almost forgotten it. The road went right over Crumb Hill in Georgetown and down into DeRuyter. The grades were excessive and an engine could pull only a small train over the road. In many places there were long and high trestles, and it was quite a stunt for the boys of the section to walk across these trestles.

   Frank Stone of Brander Hollow recalls a Sunday School excursion that was run over the road from Norwich to Ithaca. This was some 55 years ago. The train had seven or eight coaches and each was packed to capacity. The trip to Ithaca was made all right, but on the return home the engine could not pull the train up the grade from Quaker Basin to the crest of Crumb Hill. The train stalled, backed down into DeRuyter and waited for another engine to come from Cortland to boost them over the grade. Many were late in doing their evening chores that day.

   The railroad was operated only a short time and proved too expensive to operate for the returns received, and it was finally abandoned. The roadbed and grade are still plainly seen but the rails and ties were removed long ago.

Syracuse Post-Standard

July 8, 1934

Forgotten Villages

Lazyville Never Had

   Chance to Be Village

                      ____

Poor Land and Shiftless Population

Prevented Growth of Hamlet

                      ____

  Perhaps Lazyville has no right to be listed among the forgotten villages of Central New York, for strictly speaking, it never was a village and it is not forgotten. Yet it would seem an oversight to neglect its vagabond lure.

   Even in the days of its prime, Lazyille did not rate as a village. It was just a cluster of shacks and farms isolated in a forest-fringed valley among the hills of Southwestern Madison county.

   Lazyville never had a store or a blacksmith shop or even a church like most of the other communities that once thrived and now are forgotten in Central New York. Had its inhabitants developed enough energy to start a store or a blacksmith shop, it would have ceased to be Lazyville.

                     People Pugnacious

  Perhaps it ought to have had a church, however. The story is told that folks in Lazyville not only were lazy, but were so pugnacious that before its present name was coined the settlement was popularly referred to as Battle Creek.

   Only once in its lackadaisical career was Lazyville stirred from its indolence. That was when a branch of the New York, Ontario & Western railroad was laid between DeRuyter and Norwich, and the area showed transient prospects of development.

   In those days, a man named Ral Merchant is said to have put a sawmill into operation in the little settlement. Owners of the railroad, however, soon found that their new branch lime was raking in debts instead of profits, and it was discontinued.

  Lazyville then sank back into its former apathy, and the sawmill went into a decline. Today, all traces of it have disappeared.

  Many of the forgotten villages of Central New York are so completely forgotten that even old-timers-shake their heads and deny ever having heard of them when their names are mentioned. But young as well as old folks in Southwestern Madison county know about Lazyville. 

 “Just follow the road over the hill,” they will advise you with a confident smile -if you interrupt their farm

labors to ask the way.

  So you turn off the. main highway a few miles east of DeRuyter, and drive along a narrow, unimproved road that winds through a lonely country-side. An unexpected fork temporarily baffles you. The road to the left ascends abruptly, and remembering that Lazyville lies “over the hill,” you probably will go  astray—to the left before you discover, a mile or so later, that after all the road to the right is the right road to Lazyville.

                           Deserted Farmhouse

   A tumbledown, deserted farmhouse on the crest of a rise which commands a generous view of rolling, thickly wooded hills greets you as you finally curve into Lazyville. In the valley below, stands another forlorn house, which apparently once was painted yellow. There remains little else to indicate that this was ever a settlement. 

   It is a dozen years or more since any one has lived in Lazyville, although farmers occasionally drive teams there to cut wood. Last to leave was farmer named Starr Palmer, who had found living in Lazyville too much like living in Lonesomeville. Two years ago, a log cabin with toppled-in roof lent a picturesque touch to the Lazyville landscape, but since then it has met the fate of other vanished dwellings of the settlement. Apple trees and berry bushes grow wild on the slopes descending from the lone, storm-battered farmhouse on the Lazyville hill.

                         Bullding Ruined

   Inside the building, scraggly hay is scattered about the floor, and a glance through the front window reveals a broken-down staircase upon one step of which reposes a very rusty berry-pail. Even if the inhabitants of Lazyville had been of a more industrious nature, the soil of the region is not adapted to cultivation. A farmer acquainted with its qualities once described the land as “so poor that a woodchuck would have to carry its lunch if its started across it.”

   But Lazyville has its attractions. The air is fragrant. Daisies,.butter-cups, and the red-orange “devil's paintbrush” blossoms-spatter the hill-sides with color, while tall grasses nod lazily in the summer breeze. It is not hard to understand why the settlers there were tempted to snooze in the noonday sun.

   Lazyville is said to have been dubbed first by a thrifty farmer dad Jerome Brown who lived in its vicinity and was vastly scornful, of the shiftless habits of his neighbors.

                      Vouches for Sale

   Frank Stone, who runs a farm a mile and a half from Lazyville in Bronder’s Hollow, vouches for the story that Brown once, upon being asked in DeRuyter where he lived, replied satirically that  he hailed from a neighborhood where folks were so lazy the place ought to be called Lazyville. It was the sort of name that was bound to stick. Today, the names of most of its settlers have been forgotten, and its history has deteriorated into legend, but Lazyville continues to be a mecca for countless visitors whose fancy has been captivated its whimsical name.