M’Cluer Notes of 1828, 1829, and 1831
By Douglas H. Shepard, 2000
Among the Heman M’Cluer papers in the recent
acquisition from Mr. and Mrs. Tom Young
are three items of special interest, all notes that M’Cluer prepared to be used in the assessing process. They are for
1828, 1829 and 1831, and they give us some invaluable information not
previously available, as well as raising new questions to be looked into.
Of the
three lists, those for 1828 and 1831 appear quite similar; that for 1829 is
different. M’Cluer used small
notebooks. Two (1828 and 1829) are about
4 by 6 1/2 inches. The other (1831) is 3 1/4 by 8 inches. On each page in all
three, he inked in a series of columns. In 1828 and 1829 the column headings
are repeated at the top of each opening (two facing pages). In the 1831 list,
the columns are there, but the headings are given only at the top of one
opening.
The nine
1828 headings are for: Owners’ Names / Residency / Part of Lot / Lot Number /
Township Number / Range Number / Number of Improved Acres / Total Number of
Acres / Buildings on the Property and Personal Assets. The headings in the 1831
booklet are the same, but the 1829 list is different in several ways. 1829 has
only six columns because, as the third column heading indicates, all entries
are for part of Lot 14, Township 6, Range 12. (Those are the sections and
subsections of the original Holland Land Company survey. Lot 14 is the original
Hezekiah Barker farm holding, where
the center of today’s Fredonia lies.) Because he was concentrating only on the
Village, there was no need for M’Cluer
to have columns for other Townships or Ranges.
Another
difference is in the alphabetizing. The 1828 and 1831 lists are in reasonably
alphabetical order. That is, all the names beginning with A are first, then the
Bs, etc. (In 1828 M’Cluer missed
entering the E names, catching himself after three F names. He then entered the
Es and then went on to the rest of the Fs.) No attempt was made to keep strict
alphabetical order within the initial letter so that the 1828 “A” entries are: Allen, Aldridge, Adams, Abel, etc. This was standard practice
in all Pomfret assessment rolls throughout the 19th Century, and there is a
reason for it.
The 1829
list however has no alphabetical order: Walker,
Barker, White, Hewes, Thompson, etc. The order is, in a
sense, geographical, beginning on East Main Street (Squire White), then to Eagle Street (Edward Hewes), East Main Street (Henry Bosworth, James Mullett,
Benjamin Walworth), “Church Street”
(John Crane). In other words, M’Cluer’s sequence as he wrote out his
notes was the property he visited in order, although apparently not
house-to-house as a Census-taker might proceed. It may have been a matter of
getting permission to enter a piece of property, or having to come back at
another time.
There is
one other, very important difference between 1829 and the other two. In 1828
and 1831, Heman M’Cluer was an
Assessor; in 1829 he was not. Since its earliest days, Town of Pomfret
inhabitants had met annually to elect their Town officials, including
Assessors. At the Annual Meeting held at the Fredonia Academy in April 1828,
they voted to have three assessors: Joseph C. Truman, Ezra Williams
and Heman M’Cluer. In 1831 it was
Wilbur Gifford, Russell Fitch and Heman M’Cluer. But in 1829 the names were William Willcox, Thomas Osburn
and M. W. Abell. M’Cluer, who held other positions -- in
1830 he was one of the Commissioners of Highways -- held no elective office in
1829.
There
are many things to be learned from the M’Cluer
material. That he was not an Assessor in 1829, suggests that elected assessors
sometimes “contracted out” part of their assignment. Indeed, there is a great
deal about this early assessing process that we may begin to understand that
will be helpful to local historians and genealogists who use these sources
frequently.
We know
there were usually three Assessors elected each year in this period. How did
they decide on which portion of Pomfret each would cover? Did they elect one of
their number to be “Chief Assessor”? Since M’Cluer
made his notes just on the then small Village when he was not an elected
Assessor suggests that the elected officials may have parceled out parts of
their “assignment” to others to help them in their work. As to those
assignments, in 1828 M’Cluer made
entries for property in Range 12, Township 6, Lots 1,2,8,9,14,15,26 and 31
(i.e.,the Village of Fredonia) as well as all but three of the 65 lots in
Township 5. The other two Assessors covered Range 11 (then within Pomfret) with
some duplication of M’Cluer’s
coverage in Township 5, Range 12.
We can
imagine M’Cluer, then, in 1828,
making a recording form in columns, as we see with the 1829 notebook, and
making his entries at each piece of property he came to. Once that was done, he
must have gone through the process again, but this time scanning his field
notes for all names beginning with A, entering them in a second notebook, then
entering the Bs, etc. The result would be the 1828 notebook we now have.
That
explains the arrangement in the assessment roll itself. In fact, by comparing M’Cluer’s 1828 notes with the final
version of the 1828 Assessment Roll, we find M’Cluer’s entries for any initial letter copied as a block exactly
from his notes followed by the same letter entries provided by the other two
Assessors. In other words, what we think of as alphabetizing is primarily a
geographical arrangement within each letter of the alphabet.
There is another
aspect of M’Cluer’s assessment notes
still to be considered, the fact that they include no assessments.
The
first version 1829 list and the second stage versions of 1828 and 1831 all make
note of the number and kinds of buildings and their sizes, something the final
versions, the assessment rolls themselves, do not do. In their place are the
assessed valuations. This makes clear the processes these officials went
through. They, or their hired agents, made tabular field notes within their
assigned areas, and then copied those notes into roughly alphabetical order.
Those second versions were conflated into one complete roll by copying each
letter in turn from the three sets of notes, but leaving off the building
descriptions. In their place was entered the assessed valuation of the land and
the buildings on it.
What we
don’t know is if each Assessor assigned his own valuation. Probably not,
because then it would have made more sense for M’Cluer to provide himself with an extra column in which to enter
the dollar amount. That means the assessed valuation was arrived at by a group
decision, or it was left to someone else to translate lot and building size
into dollar equivalents. Which alternative is the correct one remains to be
determined.
There
are some other aspects of these three sets of notes that need consideration. We
have seen that M’Cluer’s 1828
entries were copied verbatim into the final version, only substituting the
valuation in place of the building and lot descriptions. For example, where M’Cluer had an entry in his notes for
Merrit Allen on the northwest part
of Lot 31, Twp.5, Range 12, with 23 acres, 10 of them “improved,” and a frame
house; the final version has exactly the same, except that in place of the
frame house statement was substituted “$152” as the value of the real estate.
Not only
were his notes copied verbatim, it is quite clear he was the copyist. (They are
all copies, by the way. The “original” was deposited with the County Clerk and
a hand-written copy retained.) The handwriting of the final version is definitely
M’Cluer’s throughout, including some
personal idiosyncracies, such as retaining the old-fashioned long “s” (that
looks like an “f” without the crosspiece) in the middle of words, and spelling
“Bosworth” phonetically as “Bozworth.”
The 1829
notes must have been recopied into alphabetical order and then handed over
to whichever of the elected Assessors he
was working for. Therefore without knowing the order of M’Cluer’s alphabetical entries, they cannot be compared to the
final version in the same way as we did with the 1828. We do see, however, that
most of M’Cluer’s entries have been
supplemented by others. For example, M’Cluer
noted that within the small area he was assigned to canvass, Hezekiah Barker had 30 acres, 18 of them
improved; that was combined with someone else’s records to give Barker a total in the final version of
1829 of 80 acres, 35 improved. There are other modifications. Where M’Cluer had Asa Pierce on 1/16 acre, the final record was amended to read “Pierce & Mulford 1/16 acre.”
The 1831
notes present a more complex problem. We know that in 1831 M’Cluer was once again one of the elected Assessors. His notebook
entries for 1831 look exactly like those for 1828. They are “alphabetized” and
they fill 16 pages, just like the 1828 notebook. (1829 covering just part of
Lot 14 used four pages.) The difference -- and the problem -- is the
relationship between the 1831 notebook entries and the final version.
It is
clear from the handwriting that M’Cluer
did not write out the 1831 roll as he had in 1828. More significant are the
number of discrepancies between M’Cluer’s
notes and the final version, such as his entry for William Bond with land in the northwest part of Lot 14; the roll has the
southern part of Lot 22, Twp.5. There are many, many M’Cluer entries that don’t show up at all in the 1831 roll such as M’Cluer’s entry for the Carleton Todd Estate, which the roll omits
altogether. M’Cluer’s own property
he described as 17 acres, 12 improved. The 1831 roll describes it as 2 acres!
There
are always last minute alterations when property changed hands between the time
of the first “survey” and the final version written out in August. (Assessors
were elected in April and must have done their preliminary canvassing in the
four months following.) However, these discrepancies seem much greater than the
norm, such as with the 1828 roll. What is even odder is that many of M’Cluer’s 1831 entries are matched, not
in 1831, but in the 1832 Assessment Roll, when he was not an Assessor. His
notebook cover is clearly marked “Assessment of S.E. part of Pomfret -- By H. M’Cluer 1831,” so we must assume that’s
when he made his entries. Certainly, these are not the limited “subcontracting”
entries we saw in 1829, and they would hardly be done a year ahead of time
anyway. So how can we account for this? Consider just a few examples of the
problem. Where M’Cluer had the
Carelton Todd Estate of 1/4 acre,
and the 1831 roll had no entry, 1832 has the widow, Mary Ann Todd with 1/4 acre. Where M’Cluer
had Harvey Coats with 1 1/3 acres,
1831 gives him 120 acres, but 1832 has 1 1/3. And most dramatic of all, M’Cluer’s 17 acres with 12 acres
improved is given in 1831 as 2 acres, but in the 1832 Assessment Roll as 16
acres, 12 improved.
There is
one possible explanation for these discrepancies. These copies of the early
Pomfret assessment rolls were retained by the Town Clerk and passed on, no
doubt, to each new clerk in turn. It was not until 1867 or 1868 that the sheets
for 1811 through 1823 were brought together and bound into a single volume.
Those for 1824-1867 were bound into exactly matching volumes. In the volume
containing the assessment rolls for 1824-1832, some were bound in backwards,
and the first leaf of the 1829 roll somehow got bound in at the end of the 1832
roll. If we remember that some of the title pages are missing as well -- true,
for example for 1826, 1827, 1829, 1830, 1831 and 1832 -- then perhaps the rolls
for 1831 and 1832 were reversed. That is certainly something to be examined in
detail and, perhaps, corrected thanks to this gift of M’Cluer’s papers.
However,
there is much more to be gleaned from these papers as a closer look at those
1829 notes will show. What
follows is an alphabetized “translation” of M’Cluer’s 1829 original. It is reproduced here, because it is the
shortest but gives a good indication of the kinds of information he recorded.
The spaces between entries on a line represent progression from one column to
the next in his original. Although the standard form asked for how many acres
the property entailed, followed by how many acres were “improved” (i.e.,
cultivated or built on), M’Cluer
sometimes omitted one of the
measurements, probably when the structure on it took up most of the lot.
In his
original, most structures were designated by an initial letter such as H, B,
sometimes W. H. These can be read as House, Barn and Woodhouse. One interesting
omission is any reference at any time to what might have been written as O.H.
Whether omitting mention of a privy was out of delicacy, or because no house,
shop or office could be without one, is not clear. Nevertheless, that and a
well or similar water supply were two amenities that can be pretty much taken
for granted for almost all the property being described. In the “translation” that
follows, conjectural entries are put in square brackets with a question mark.
An entry followed by a colon means the entry after the colon was written above
the first. This was almost always “2 St” or something similar to indicate that
the structure was two stories high, significant in a Village with a majority of
one-story structures and important in determining property values.
One of
the most interesting -- and unique -- bits of information M’Cluer provides is the dimensions of almost all the lots and
structures listed. He used a dot or period between the numbers which is here
given as an x, such as House 18 x 26, i.e., a House 18 feet wide by 26 feet
deep. Sometimes he wrote an entry like “40 sq.” That could mean 40 square feet
or 40 feet square, and surely the latter must be the case. For example,
Buckland Gillet’s barn is described
as “20 Sq.” A structure that was something like 5 feet by 4 feet would hardly
be called a barn, so it must mean a square building, 20 feet on a side. These
bits of shorthand are used in all three lists.
The 1829
list given here in alphabetical order with the “shorthand” expanded is a good
example of the details available to us now in all three lists. The “M,” “NE,”
and “SM” (Middle, Northeast and South Middle) kinds of entries are M’Cluer’s rough approximations of
where, in the 360-acre Lot 14, this particular piece of property lies.
T. G. Abel M 6
acres 5 3/4 acres House 69x61: 2-stories Tavern Woodhouse 70 feet 2 Barns 30x40 Shed
John Barker NE 5
acres 2 acres 1/3 House
Henry Bosworth M 1/3
acre 1/3 acre House 24x34: 2 stories Barn 12x28 Shop
14x24 Woodhouse
Nathaniel Barret,
See: John Crane
Leverett Barker M 3
acres 3 acres House 28x38: 2 story brick Barn 26x36:Woodhouse &
K(itchen?) T[anning?]
H[ouse?]
Shop
20x28: 2 stories House
24x32
Obed Bissel EM 4
rods Shop 20x30
Albert Bissell
(Hull) EM 10 rods House
18x34: 2 stories
Hezekiah Barker 30 acres 18 acres House
30x40: 2 stories
Old
House 20x30 Woodhouse Barn 30x42 Shed
C[arriage?]
House 28x30
[Barber, See: Stockwell & Barber, all crossed out. Joshua Turner inserted]
Ephraim Beardsley WM 1/3
acre 1/3 acre House 26x34: 2 stories
Winsor Brigham SM 3/4 acre 3/4
acre House 18x26 Barn
[Barker Lot, See:
Gillis & Hart]
[R. Buck, See:
Wm. A. Hart]
John Crane EM 1/10
acre 1/10 acre Office 16x26 Personal $750.00
Savage (?) lot: 1/14 acres (?) House
Barn
[See: Stephen Savage]
John Crane )
> M 1/4 acre House
60x30 Smut [house?]
Nathaniel Barret )
Pearson Crosby EM 8
rods House 26x34: 2 stories
[Elllis Doty,
crossed out, See: S. Stevens]
Douglass & Robbins SE 5 acres Still House 40 feet square: 2 stories
Mill
30x50:2 stories Barn 28x120
Henry C. Frisbee EM 1/4 acre 1/4
acre House 24x34: 2 stories
Woodhouse
16x32 20x30 Office: 2 stories
& Lot 20x45
Thomas Gillis (?)M 1
1/2 acres 1 1/2 acres House 20x32: 2 stories Woodhouse etc. 16x32 Barn 8x24 Shop
16x20
Gillis & Hart (Barker Lot) 8 rods Shop 16x18
Buckland Gillet EM 1
acre 1 acre House Woodhouse Barn 20 feet square
1/2 Shop
Edward Hewes 1/4 acre 1/4
acre House Barn 28x30
Seth W. Holmes
(?) E 7/16 acre House
20.29 Barn 20x30
[Hammon ? See: Micah
J. Lyman]
[Hart, See: Gillis & Hart]
Edward Howard EM 3/4 acre 3/4
acre House 20x32
[Howard, See: Norton & Howard]
William A. Hart
or R. Buck WM 3/4 acre 3/4 acre Shop
A.
W. Kinsley M 30x45 1/30 acre House
27x37: 2 stories Spafford
House
Micah J. Lyman (Hammon?) M 5 rods Store 24x32: 2 stories
E. H. Mulford EM 1/2
1/2 1/16 3 Houses & Lots Tavern House
3 story
House House 2 Barns
James Mullet EM 1/3
acre 1/3 acre House 30 feet square 20x25: 2
stories
Barn 19
feet square
Stephen May EM 1/6
acre 1/6 acre House 20x24 Woodhouse
Orren M’Cluer EM 1/4
acre 1/4 acre House 18x24 K[itchen?] Woodhouse Personal $200
M’Cluer & Walker EM 1/5 Store
20x40: 2 stories Barn
20x30
James Mark 1/4 acre House Shop 20 feet square
Edward H. Mulford SM 2
3/8 acres 2 3/8 acres House
James Norton EM 1
acre 1 acre House 16x22
Norton & Howard EM 3 acres 3
acres Shop: 2 stories Saw mill
Amos Palmer EM 16
(?) 16 (?) House 10x26 Barn 1/2
Shop
Asa Pierce EM 1/16
acre 1/16 acre House Tavern Barn &c.
$1000
John Pierce M 1/20 1/2 House 22x32: 3 stories
Arnold Russel M 1/4
acre 1/4 acre House Barn 18x20 Woodhouse
[Robbins, See: Douglass & Robbins]
Spafford, See: Kinsley
P.H. & G. Stephens EM 4 acres 4 acres House 30x26: 2 stories
Stephen Savage [M 1/4
acre 1/4 acre: all crossed
out] 1/12 acres
[House
20x34: crossed out] [Barn 20 feet
square: crossed out]
Thomas W. Stephens EM 1/4
acre House 16x30 Shop 26x36: 2 stories
Barn
18x20
S. Stevens EM 1/4
acre Store 26x36: 2 stories
[Stockwell & Barber: crossed out] WM 1/6 acre 1/6
acre Blacksmith
Shop House 20x30: 2 stories
Isaac Thompson EM 1/4
acre 1/4 acre House
Chauncey Tucker M 18x45 Office frame (?)
Carlton Todd
Estate M 1/4 acre lumber
Joshua Turner EM 1/2
acre 1/2 acre House 20x38 Shop 16x28
? 3 rods
ground
[Joshua Turner,
See: Stockwell & Barber crossed out]
Lewis B. Walker EM 60
by 132 All House New House 24x34: 2 stories
Benjamin Walworth EM 3
acres 3 acres House 24x32: 2 stories Kitchen Woodhouse Barn frame
Squire White EM 17
acres 12 acres House 26 feet square: 2 stories Barn 22x32 Office
14x16
Alpheus Winchester EM 1
1/2 acres 1 1/2 acres House 20x32
Barn
& Other 26x28 Bake House 18x20
[Walker, See: M’Cluer & Walker]
Nathan Webster EM 3/8 acre House
20x2
Elijah Webster EM 3/4 acre House
18x30 Woodhouse Barn
20x30 Shop 20x40
What,
then, have we learned that was not known before, just from a few of the 1829
entries?
The very
first entry in this alphabetized version is Thomas G. Abell’s large hotel (where 1 Park Place now stands). M’Cluer tells us that the 69 by 61
foot, two-story “house” is a tavern, that is, an Inn. On the six-acre lot are
also to be found a long Woodhouse (stoves in every room?), two good-sized barns
(customers’ horses), and a shed (wagons and buggies). This is the property that
Hezekiah Barker sold to Thomas Abell (the elder) on 9 May 1814.
In 1880,
Levi Risley wrote a reminiscence of
the Village as he remembered it in 1821. In referring to Abell’s Hotel, he said, “The log tavern of Hezekiah Barker was removed for this building [Abell’s] in about 1815.” It was not
torn down, but “removed.” What became of that 1808 log house/inn was never
mentioned by Risley or anyone else
since that time. However, if we look down to M’Cluer’s entry for Hezekiah Barker,
we find that his property (what was left of the original farm) contained a
two-story House, 30 by 40 feet and the “Old House” 20 by 30 feet. We know that
the two-story house was built as 21 Day
Street (today’s Post Office stands on its foundations), so the “Old House”
must have been moved across the Common, then a grassy, treeless square, perhaps
to the 23 or 25 Day Street location to serve as temporary living quarters while
the grand new house was going up.
What the
Leverett Barker entry tells us is
that his property included the two-story brick home erected in 1821 at Day and
East Main streets (today’s Barker
Museum). Besides the house itself, there was a barn, a woodhouse, and a
separate kitchen. That explains the traces of the back kitchen including the
outside stairs still visible in the foundations under the Museum. (There is
also the original well in the side yard, now under the Belden Gallery of the Museum.)
Leverett
Barker’s property also included the
small, wooden house he had built in 1811 for himself and his bride, Desire,
daughter of Hezekiah and Sarah Barker
(no relations). That stood at 21 East Main
Street along with the two-story Leather Shop (19 E. Main Street) set back a bit from the street, and the Tannery
behind them. (Those buildings burned in the fire of 1868.)
The
combined John Crane/Nathaniel Barrett entry refers to a long building
divided into shops or apartments. The “Smut” notation refers to its common
name, “the Smut House.” The Fredonia
Censor of 8 February 1871 explained “Starr’s
store [32 West Main], Palmer’s meat
store [30 West Main] and the
buildings torn down to make room for Maynard’s
store [34 West Main] were together
known as the Smut House from having been built with the proceeds of the sale of
a patent for a smut machine [to remove the smut or fungus from wheat]. The
first floor was occupied as dwellings and in the second story the Censor was printed [in 1822].” The Censor of 18 February 1880 added that it
was “the largest house covered with shingles, at the time it was built.”
Note
that M’Cluer did not mention that it
was two stories high, perhaps because it was such a well-known structure. He
did give the dimensions, however, an impressive 60 feet along Main Street.
Quite a contrast with its neighboring shops of 14 and 16 feet frontages.
The E. H.
Mulford entry describes his Tavern
at 2 West Main and a building at 6 West Main. (The enterprising Mulford then built a connecting section
at 4 West Main to create the rambling
Union Hotel described in M’Cluer’s
1831 notes [not given here] as a single structure, 65 by 30 feet, that is, 65
feet fronting on Main Street, west from the Water Street corner.)
The
Chauncey Tucker entry (“18 x 45 office frame”) probably means he
had the framing up for what would become his office. This is corroborated by
the fact that he is not included in the final 1829 Assessment Roll, but only in
that for 1830 when his office must have been completed.
The
Squire White entry is particularly
interesting because it helps clarify the one photograph (ca. 1855) that we have
of his home. This 1829 entry tells us that the main house was two stories,
square, 26 feet on each side and with a 14 by 16 foot office. The office would
be the smaller wing to the left in the photograph. (Dr. Daniel D. Reiff pointed out in his Architecture in Fredonia:1811-1872 (p.20)
and in the revised version, 1811-1997 (p.32) that the small wing to the left
was probably the original log cabin of 1809, improved and sided to blend in
with the new main section.) Not only does this add to our knowledge of the main
house, it also helps date the right-hand wing in the photograph (kitchen?) as
post 1829.
From
this sampling of M’Cluer’s notes we
can see how much we have learned about the pioneer inhabitants of Fredonia,
what the Village looked like (indeed, it should be possible to construct an
accurate, scale model from these notes, if we wished) and how the assessing
process worked.
A
fitting description of the gift by the Youngs
of that little black box and its contents is one once applied to poetry,
“infinite riches in a little room.”
