Old Stagecoach and Canal Inns in Lyons, N.Y.

 

Tollgate House at Fayetteville, N.Y.

 

"Slab City" in Cortland County

 Syracuse Post-Standard

September 24, 1933

 

  Forgotten Villages

Dutch Made Slab City

Thriving Little Hamlet

                      _____

First Grist Mill Now Used as Garage,

        Another Still Being Operated

                     ____

               By T. Elmer Bogardus

   One hundred and thirty-six years ago a pioneer struggled through the forest and undergrowth of southern Onondaga county sleeping by day and traveling by night to avoid hostile Indians.

   It wasn’t a long journey. It started at mopey Hill and ended on the top of a steep hill forming Tully valley and overlooking the swampy Tioughnioga river a few miles below the present Tully village.

   But although short, it was a difficult passage, and the man blazed a trail as he progressed so he could find his way back and not become lost in the maze of trees. The pioneer was named James Cravath, according to legend, and he was seeking the mile-square of land given him by the government.

   When he reached the hill he looked down and saw below him more woods and the swamp and, disheartened, turned back to Pompey Hill. The prospect of hewing those trees and conquering that swamp was too much, for the man already had grubbed some land in Pompey. But he returned the following year and built the town’s first home, a log cabin, on East Hill.

               Dutch Settled in Valley

   A year later came the hardy Dutch from Coxsackie, who heard  who heard Cravath had had not accepted is land grant. More fearless perhaps and more eager for homesteads, the Dutch went down into the valley and settled. 

   There was started Slab City, now a forgotten village on Route 11 in the town of Preble, Cortland County.  Slab City is a hamlet in the town of Preble, Cortland County, on US Route 11 southeast of Preble village.The Dutch came in 1798, and it wasn’t long before a thriving little hamlet was in the making.

   A school, the first in the town of Preble, was built in 1801 and the first teacher was Miss Ruth Thorp. The original building with few changes still stands, since it has been abandoned for six tears biome the children going to Homer for classes.

   Slab City received its name from the sawmills which sprung up on the Tioughnioga river. But those mills have mostly faded into history with the exception of the old Slab City cider, saw and grist mill owned and operated by Clayton Smith.

                           Grist Mill Built

   The first grist mill was built in 1805 by Samuel Woolson and rebuilt in 1827. The building is still intact and used as a garage and storehouse on the farm of Frank Fox.

   Directly behind the old mill are stone ruins of of a sawmill and the site of the dam which furnished water power many years ago. A cheese factory was built in 1863-64 by Moses and William Tallman , one of whom lived on the present  Fox farm, and the other on Earl Clark’s farm, directly across the road. It was Moses Tallman too, who started the Slab City mills now owned by Clayton Smith about 70 years ago. Following the first Dutch immigrants came Ryer Van Patten, another Dutchman, from Schenectady, in 1809. He was the great-grandfather of Mrs. Frank Fox. Mr. Fox’s came from the town of Homer in 1850.

  After Slab City was first founded it was in Onondaga county, but on April8, 1808, it became part of the town of Preble when Cortland county was founded. Not far from Slab City is another forgotten village, Baltimore, the history of which was related last week.

                       Not Much Lumber Turned Out

   Slab City once hummed with the activity of its saw, cider and grist mills. Thousands of fee of lumber were turned out every year from trees hewn from the steep hills of Tully Valley. The plank road on which was situated rang with the hoofs of fast horses, but these have been supplanted  by speeding motor cars on a fine cement pavement.

   In the distance is Mount Toppin, 1,700 feet above sea level, looking down on the ruins and memories of Slab City.

*Note: The area around the town of Preble was first settled in 1796, and the town itself was organized in 1808 during the same year Cortland County was created. Preble named after Commodore Edward Preble, a naval war hero. Slab City refers to a hamlet, a small settlement that exists in a larger town, where people first began to settle. This marker originally stated “Slab City: Site of Saw Mill 1800, Grist Mill 1806, School District No. 4 organized 1813, Present School built 1843” These were all important structures vital to the success of the town in its earliest stages.

 

       

Bronder's Hollow and Muller Hill

 Syracuse Post-Standard

July 1, 1934

Forgotten Villages

Mysterious Refugee’s Village Long Vanished

                            ____

Muller’s Stores and Mill Gone from Bronder’s Hollow

                            ____

By Elizabeth Pyke

   Seeking refuge from his enemies in the forest recess of hills above Chenango valley in what is now Madison county, did a future king of France , exiled from his native land during the reign of Napoleon, dwell incognito for several years in a mansion hewn from sturdy cherry trees. In a “hollow” among those hills he founded a settlement which after a brief colorful existence crumble back into forest wilds to become one of the forgotten villages of Central New York.

   History records no such interlude in the life of the 19th century French monarchs who sought haven in other lands during the supremacy of Napoleon. But history is sufficiently vague about the details of French royalty in exile to leave a tempting loophole for romantic surmises of Central New Yorkers who’s imagination has been stimulated by accounts of the mysterious French refugee. He secreted himself in a fortress-like dwelling in the inaccessible hills near Slab City, now Georgetown a century and a quarter ago. He lived there like a feudal lord of old France, although he called himself plain Louis Anathe Muller.*

                            Bullet-Proof Chateau

   This story had its beginning in 1808, when a Frenchman who never ventured forth without an armed bodyguard, purchased 2,700 acres of land in this isolated region, and employed 160 men, whom he paid in gold and silver, to construct a palatial, bullet-proof chateau on the summit of the highest hill on his estate.

   Beside a stream a mile southeast of his homestead, in a valley known to this day as Bronder’s Hollow after John Passon Bronder, one of the men who had accompanied him this country, the Frenchman who called himself Muller, established a village which contained two stores, a mill and a storehouse, as well as numerous dwellings.  

   During the half dozen years that he lived in this forest mansion, Muller’s reticence and eccentric conduct greatly stirred  the curiosity of his neighbors and gave rise to many wild rumors as to this identity, But never by an idle word did he betray his real story,  and then when after hearing of the collapse of Napoleon’s fortunes he departed jubilant to France , he left in his wake  a mystery which never has been explained  to the full satisfaction of his Central New York acquaintances or their descendants.

                                Home Burned

   The modern visitor to the site of the old Muller house, which was leveled by fire in 1907, must stretch his imagination to believe  that this was once the estate of a French nobleman. If he drives along the narrow country road that winds across the hills towards Bronder’s Hollow, he will pass densely wooded stretches that look as if they never had known the pioneer’s axe.

   A few bleak gray farmhouses with desolation staring through their painless windows, decrepit barns with doors that creak on rusty hinges,  and the shapeless frames of occasional abandoned automobiles  along the way are the only evidence that man ever conquered or cultivated this isolated territory. The stream beside which Muller established his settlement still meanders through Bronder’s Hollow, and in the picturesque old house  once run as a hotel by John Passon Bronder, Frank Stone today lives alone and raises crops on the site of the old vanished village. 

                               Village Gone

   There is left, however, no vestige of the stores, the mill, the storehouse, or the dwellings which once stood in Bronder’s Hollow. Mr. Stone recalls that his father, Samuel Stone  years ago tore down the remnants of one of the old stores and erected in its place a horse-barn which now in turn is falling onto decay. Mr. Stone’s farmhouse, the former hotel, is the only landmark which remains.

   Yet back in the days when Syracuse was just a “corners” in a dismal swamp, there was on the top of Muller Hill a clearing of several hundred acres where avenues of fine shade trees led up to an imposing mansion. Waters of an artificial pond sparkled in the sunlight, a strong high fence enclosed a park where deer, rabbits and other game roamed at leisure, and statuary embellished grounds which had been tastefully laid out with walks and shrubbery.  Here, in the heart of precipitous holland tangled forests was an estate quite befitting a nobleman whom rumor identified as a member of the royal family of France.

                                                            Muller Unhappy

    Bur despite the wild beauty of his forest retreat, despite the protection of his retinue of French servants, two of whom, armed and liveried, formed his body guard whoever he road abroad, and despite the companionship of his American wife and his two small children, Louis Anathe Muller was not a happy man. 

   Perhaps he was haunted by memories of a harrowing escape from the guillotine which had spilt so much aristocratic blood in France Unquestionably, he feared the vengeance of Napoleon and trembled lest some spy should penetrate his seclusion.

   When Muller departed for France after the downfall of Napoleon, he left his Central New York property  in the hands of an agent who proved untrustworthy , and two years later, in 1816, he returned to find his house stripped of its rich furniture, his garden covered with weeds, and his village forsaken.

   After viewing the wreck, he sold the land to Abijah Weston, a New York City merchant, for the sum of $10,500; and then went back to France, where no doubt he reclaimed a prouder name than plain Louis Anathe Muller, and calmly wiped out this American chapter  off the slate of his life with never a qualm for the throes of curiosity which were bound torture posterity when it encountered the mystery of Muller Hill.

                                                      Notes

*Louis Anathe Muller was a wealthy French émigré who in 1808 purchased 2,700 acres of land in what is now known as Muller Hill in Georgetown, New York. He lived on Payne Street in Hamilton, New York for a year with his wife and son while 300 acres of densely forested land was cleared by 150 men for a lavishly furnished fortress of a house measuring 70 feet by 30 with thick walls made of black cherry wood. Also on the property were a saw mill, several out buildings, fish pond and a game reserve enclosed by a stout palisade.

   Louis Muller lived on this estate from 1809 through 1814. In the wake of Napoleon’s defeat, he left his property in the hands of a caretaker and temporarily packed the family off to New York City while he returned to France. Returning in 1816, he found the house picked clean and the caretaker long gone. Shortly thereafter he sold the property and left for parts unknown. In 1905 the house burned to the ground. 

   Many articles have been written on the mysterious identity of Louis A. Muller. There were rumors he was French royalty fleeing from the wrath of Napoleon but there is no evidence to support that claim. Samuel Buell Sisson (1883-1947), Colgate Class of 1905 and Colgate University trustee (1938-1945) extensively researched Muller’s identity in the 1930’s and 1940’s. Sisson’s father, Eugene Pardon Sisson, was born in the Muller house in January 1845. Eugene Sisson was principal of the Colgate Academy from 1888 to 1889 and 1895 to 1896 and taught Mathematics at Colgate from 1912 to 1921.

   Samuel Sisson research led him to believe that Muller was a General in the King Louis XVI of France’s Life Guards. After the royal family were captured, Muller and Angel De Ferriere, another officer in the same unit fled and eventually came to New York and purchased land in Madison county. Historical marker for Muller house on Muller Hill Road in Georgetown one mile or so west of the intersection with Chapin Road. An extensive collection of Muller’s  is in Special Collections (M2044) at Colgate University Archives.

Muller's Estate Sale

The sale of Muller's estate to Abijah Weston can be found in book of deeds L beginning at page 515. Altogether the deed conveys 1,628.5 acres of land, the house, barns, grist mill, saw mill and other improvements for the sum of $10,500. It was commonly thought that Muller was French royalty living under an assumed identity; some even voice the possibility that he was the Comte d'Artois who later became Charles X, King of France. Others have said he was Charles Ferdinand, the Duc de Berry son of King Charles X. Only two things will ever truly be known about the man on Muller Hill. First he was French, and second we will never know who the mysterious man truly was.

"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.

 

New Stage Line Between Chittenango and Ithaca

 Onondaga Register, Onondaga Hollow

Wednesday, January 26, 1825

   New Line of Stages. - A new line of Stages has recently been established, to run three times a week, from Chittenango, by way of Cazenovia and Homer, to Ithaca. From the well known characters of the proprietors, Mr. E. Cary, of Chittenango, and Mr. P. Westerman, of Homer, the public may rely upon regularity and good accommodations, and we hope they will be amply remunerated for their exertions. 

                    Hotchkiss House was an old time stagecoach tavern in Maple View. It still stands.

                       Maple View - A  Crossroads Community

                                       By Richard Palmer

   Union Square (Maple View after 1907) was once an important crossroads of two main thoroughfares - what is now Route 104 from Oswego to Rome east and west and today’s Route 11 north and south, then known as the “Old Salt Road.”

   Center of activity and then facing east was a tavern on the northwest corner, the first proprietor being Robert Kelly who was succeeded by his father-in-law, John B. Davis.

 This hostelry was also the change station for the daily stages. What a thrilling sight it was to see the four horse teams dashing by, the states swaying to and fro, accompanied y the sound of 16 shot hoofs pounding on the paved surface of the road.

   The term, the old Salt Road, was in as common use then as Route 11 is today. Large caravans came from the northern counties for their supply of salt from Syracuse. Also traveling the roads were stagecoaches which fascinated the boys such as Ebenezer H. Virgil.   After a brief stop the stage sprang away, Virgil, exclaimed: “It’s settled. I’m going to be a stage driver.”  From that moment the boy’s ambition focused on attaining a knowledge of stage driving and the handling of horses. He was not interested in farming.

                                                                   Ebenezer H. Virgil

Virgil was born in Egremont, Berkshire County, Massachusetts on September 26, 1808 and in 1810 moved with his parents, Abram and Laura Virgil,  to Fabius. In 1820 they moved to Union Square. But farming was not for him.  He apprenticed to an experienced stage driver and it wasn’t long before Ebenezer became an expert with the reins. 

In 1827 he went to Auburn and got a job as a driver for Colonel John M. Sherwood, the famous stagecoach proprietor. Sherwood was impressed with the young man he immediately hired him as a driver  on the route between Auburn and Geneva where he remained for a year.

One of Sherwood’s rules was one requiring a frequent change of drivers from one route to another.  The reason for this rotation was to prevent drivers from forming too many acquaintances, especially at layover places.  In 1830 he temporarily relinquished stage driving to become a clerk for the Thorpe & Sprague stagecoach concern in Albany. 

After working both as a clerk and a driver, in 1841 he developed an express business between Albany and Montreal which  led to the founding of the National Express Company.  He died December 4, 1892 at his home in Troy.

                                            ___

This interesting article describing Maple View appeared in the Pulaski Democrat on November 6, 1912:

Union Square House To Be Popular

                     ____

The Old Hotel of Stage Days Will Become

    a Wayside Inn for Tourists.

                     ____

   With the opening of the Union Square Pulaski State HIghway, or at least that portion with is completed, and the consequent addition of passing tours has been attracted to the famous old Union Square Tavern, which stands in the hamlet of that name a few miles east of the village of Mexico.

   The tavern is one of the last of the chain of hostelries which flourished in the days when travel overland was by mail coach and when  Oswego was on the route of western immigration.  To look at the quaint old-fashioned frame building, there is nothing in in its appearance or its surroundings  to suggest that at one time in the history of the county it was the center of activity and knew business such as no modern hotel can ever hope to to attain.

   In the weather beaten and creaking sign board swinging in the wind on rusted supports there is no suggestion of the number of travelers who passed beneath it in the days of the prosperity of the hotel and the sign today is the only intimation that the tavern is not an unusually large farm house.

   Before the days of railroads and when the middle west was being settled travel was solely by stagecoach or by packet canal boat and steamer on the river and lakes and  and the most direct route from the east to west was across the Stage from Rome, through Union Square, the junction of three trunk line routes to Oswego, whence streamers went westward on the lakes. It was in these days that the tavern flourished and din its time there was no better or more favorably known hotel on the country.

   It was kept by Judge Avery Skinner, father of Attorney Timothy W. Skinner now living at an advanced age in the village of Mexico. The highway from Rome to Union Square was planked and the stages made some remarkably fast trips. Relays of six horses were used the first stop  being at New Haven, where another tavern was located. Changes of horses with made with rapidity of modern fire department teams and every effort  was made to waste as little and make as much time as possible.

   The passage of the stage coach was more of an event in those days than the advent of a presidential candidate and when it thundered along the planked highway, with  horses on the run and coach swaying an swinging from side to side with passengers hanging on with hands and teeth, the sight was more inspiring and full of action than the Twentieth Century Limited making its best time.

   The Union Square Tavern was more important than most of its kind because of the junction of three heavily traveled highways, and it was there that many passengers topped over night rather than on to Oswego. Then, too, it was about the half-way stop between Watertown and Syracuse and in autumn could not accommodate the guests who stopped there nightly. 

  It’s a comparatively simple matter today to walk walk into a store and purchase a sack of salt for five cents or less, but in  those days salt was a scarce and valuable commodity which cost time and money. Syracuse was the salt center and farmers throughout the North Country in the vicinity of Watertown, when the fall work was done, would drive from their farms to Syracuse and return with a year’s supply of the seasoning.

   In that time of the year the tavern knew its busiest times, according to Mr. Skinner, who remembers well in the days of his youth about the old hotel. One night three hundred teams stopped there and hundreds of men spent the night on the ground in the tavern yard grouped around huge wood fires, while the night was noisy with the sound of stamping and moving horses.

   But the construction of railways and the bettering of market facilities did away with the necessity for traveling hundreds of miles for salt and with the success of the first steam railroad assured, one by one the old taverns passed away through lack of business, and the Union Square hotel is one of the few in the State which remained and which as continued to do business. 

   Today to eke out a living in connection with the hotel, and until the construction of the highway brought a few boarders, the farm received more attention than the hotel. 

                               

   A portion of the Skinner Tavern was cut off, and the building moved to face south and State Route 104.  It became the home of the Newton family, and is presently occupied by Frank Newton, and for the summer months, his mother Barbara Newton joins him.  The inn was replaced on the corner by a gas station.

   In the mid 1900s what was then known was the old Union Square House was purchased and remodeled by Frank E. Hotchkiss who at the time was in the real estate business. Known as the Hotel Hotchkiss, it prospered, mostly catering to travelers. His motto was was “Mother Does the Cooking.” He was referring to his wife, Hattie.  He died on November 7, 1924.

                                             ________

  [A post office was established at Union Square on December 8, 1823 with Avery Skinner as postmaster. He is credited with being the founder of Union Square.  The name was changed to Maple View on February 9, 1907 when Erwin E. Parsons became postmaster.  The post office, located in a trailer,  was closed on May 14, 1990. The last postmaster was Terry Howell. She had been postmaster for 15 years.]

  

 ___________

(Sources) Troy Times, October 11, 1890; A Leaf of Express History - Mr. E. H. Virgil and The National Company.  Argus Company, Printers, Albany, 1880. 

*His parents, Abram (June,1 1788-19 March 1840) and Laura Lovice Hatch Virgil (1795-1829) are buried in Maple View Cemetery.

Mail contracts up for bids in 1841  - Mail Proposals by the Post Office Department,  New York Evening Post, March 19, 1841