Slavery

It will be new perhaps to most readers, to learn that there was one attempt upon the Holland Purchase, to subdue the forest with slave labor. Two of the early settlers of Orangeville, Jushua Mitchell and Adiel Sherwood, married the daughter of a Mrs. Wood, from Maryland, who came into the country with them bringing ten slaves. Involuntary servitude proved a difficult anomaly in the backwoods of the Holland Purchase. The moral sense of the new settlers was manifested, as was alleged, by encouraging the Negroes to escape from time to time; prosecutions were instituted against one or two of the neighbors. In the end most of the slaves liberated themselves. It was no difficult matter for them to walk over to Canada, or in fact, in almost any direction they chose to go. One of the last of the lot was sold to Mr. Keyes of Batavia, and will be remembered as the only dark feature in the history of that very respectable pioneer tavern, to which allusion has before been made.

Taken from: Pioneer History of the Holland Purchase… by O. Turner, 1850

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Rowe was the first tavern-keeper in Batavia; his location was nearly opposite the present land office, but afterwards changed, Mr. Ellicott making his five hundred acre reservation there. He became the founder of the “Keyes’ stand”. Under the administration, first of Rowe, and afterwards of Wm. Keyes, this stand was well known in all early times. It was the home of the early settler, when he had business at the land office; about its yard used to be seen the huge covered wagons that transported goods from Albany to Buffalo, and in the War of 1812 it was often the headquarters of the officers of the army. It was the tavern of early days.

Taken from: Pioneer History of the Holland Purchase… by O. Turner, 1850

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