Traveling the Cherry Valley Turnpike

A Wintry Trip down the Cherry Valley Turnpike, 1839
Russell A. Grills

Nineteen year old Lincklaen Ledyard, the eldest son of the richest man in CazenoviIT^AlKa&y on a political errand for his father, Jonathan Denise Ledyard. The elder Ledyard was a regional power broker in the Whig party and the message his son bore needed to reach Albany as quickly as possible.
Among the many financial interests of the father was the presidency of the Third Great Western Turnpike Road Company, commonly known as the Cherry Valley Turnpike. With its western terminus in Manlius it wended it way eastward sortie seventy miles to the village of Cherry Valley where it joined another section of the Great Western Turnpike that reached the state capitol in Albany. f( ^ 0 § )
The road was begun two hundred and one years ago and opened in 1811 under the leadership ofLedyard's brother-in-law and foster father, John Lincklaen, land agent of the Holland Land Company and founder of the village ofCazenovia. From his elegant mansion, Lorenzo, he could was the daily passage of wagons and droves of cattle, mentally calculating the shower of nickels and dimes collected from the passers by. The turnpike was an important link in the state's budding transportation system remaining in private hands long after most other privately owned highways had thrown their gates open to public maintenance.
But that was before the construction of the Erie Canal and the primitive railways of the 1830s had sapped the life-blood from the road companies. The macadam pavement had become rutted, bridges needed shoring up and grass grew in the roadway. It was under these somewhat benighted circumstances late in December of 1839 when young Ledyard set out for Albany aboard a stage sleigh.
Arriving in Albany, Ledyard wrote to his father on January 1, 1840, and detailed his journey. "I arrived here at half past 7 o'clock! rather glad I was alive; performing the journey in one night and 31/2 days;- think of that once and give us an apostrophe to speedy
When young Ledyard reached Morrisville, he noted that the road was snow filled and that as he was the only traveler, proposed to the driver to change to a lighter open sleigh in order to make faster time. They reached Madison "in tolerable season," and again took a covered sleigh as two more passengers were added, a distiller and a dyspeptic "yankee schoolmaster who was returning to New England after two weeks of teaching the Dutch of Pennsylvania.
The stage sleigh proceeded to Bouckville "without any other interruption than getting out occasionally to lift out a horse which had got upset in the snow and unable to get up alone." A mile east ofRichfield Springs they were "brought up in a drift, through which the horses were unable to draw the sleigh." The horses were unhitched and Ledyard and the distiller proceeded on foot to the Springs with wind and snow blowing hard at their backs. Reaching the village at 4 in the morning the travelers waited for their luggage to be brought in before starting out again at 7:00 in an open sleigh with two drivers and a snow shovel for emergencies. The distiller declined to travel further.

They traveled to within three miles of Cherry Valley "after having shoveled out some drifts of minor magnitude, when the turnpike for full a half mile was filled with snow all of six feet in depth; the drivers shoveled an hour or more to get through, and finally turned out into the lot, the horse floundering to their backs in the snow."
In the meantime, Ledyard and the dyspeptic schoolmaster sought more comfortable quarters which was in the form of an "antiquated Dutch house" about a half-mile ahead. Finding it impossible to wallow through the turnpike or the adjacent field they altered their "hitherto direct course to the zigzagging of a rail fence, which we hugged closely for full an hour [before] we reached the house, my companion all the while complaining bitterly of being starved..."
Reaching the house first, the schoolmaster "bolted in and begged for something to eat, sometime before Ai came up and in fact continued eating til I got warm and everything in the sleigh ready for another start" we thought he would never be through. I could not bring my appetite to agree to anything I saw there."
The stage proceeded onward about a half mile and into another drift "worse, if possible than it 'illustrious predecessor.'" As the drivers tried to beat their way through the drift a "tremendous yelling and hallooing" was heard from the other side, coming from a group of "15 or 20 proprietors and drivers of stages from Cherry Valley on horseback and in a double sleigh drawn by four horses who had come out in hopes of meeting the western stage."
Rescued and escorted by "this cavalcade of horsemen" the travelers arrived in Cherry Valley "Amidst continued cheers and shouts... as if some great national victory had been achieved...," at about 4 o'clock have achieved fourteen miles for the day.
The next morning dawned colder and the wind blew harder but no new snow fell. The stage made 16 miles to Carlisle when it was unable to continue farther. "On Tuesday morning we started once more in a stage sleigh. It had only just stated when three more passengers were taken on.
At that point young Ledyard let his grievances flow. "This I protested against roundly; but all I could do could not prevent their getting in without force. Thinking, however, that more than likely as not we should be able to get along without them, I made no further resistance, and they got in, a lady and two men. I told them and the driver, if they got into limbo they should take care of themselves. We started again, and continued at a slow walk about a mile, where we were stopped by the snow- the horses being unable to draw us. The driver ordered us out-'they can't draw it'-'we must shovel.* The passengers all turned out but the lady and myself; I told the driver that when I got out it would be after I was fully satisfied the horses could not draw me-he began [to] whip the horses, but it was no go- they got down and he was obliged to unharness. I then got out and delivered myself on some of my feelings towards him, in such a manner that he will, probably, hold me in affectionate remembrance some time- and wishing him a fortnight's sojourn in that drift-started on foot for Sloan's Ville, five miles and was the first one through since the storm."
The stage sleigh arrived three hours later it having turned over and "spilt out the lady." The stage eventually arrived in Albany with all of its passengers "except our knight of the spelling book having deserted us."
Concluding his narrative of his journey, Ledyard wrote: "But I am here, at the American Hotel, and when I go home again it shall be by some other route than the C. V.

road. If I owned any stock in it even I should not wait till I got home before I sold it, if I could find a purchaser who would give me anything for it."
Ledyard's father, president and principal shareholder of the turnpike, did not find a buyer and the road struggled on until 1859, when it was finally thrown open to public ownership. It's usefulness to the upland villages along its route had succumbed to the shorter "plank roads" running north built to reach the Erie Canal and the ever-lengthening tracks of the railways.