The first settlers were mostly German Palatinates from Schoharie and the Mohawk.  The German was the language of common conversation, and so continued until Dr. Lindsay and Asa Emmons came into the settlement.  At this time the Emmons and Lindsay families were the only ones that made the English their exclusive language.

These German settlers were a patient and persevering people, and betook themselves to the task of felling the forest and rearing homes for themselves and their posterity, with a noble and praiseworthy resolution.  Beneath the sturdy strokes of the axe, the wilderness slowly but gradually disappeared around their rude homes, and in the place of the gloomy forest, fields of waving grain appeared on every side to cheer and encourage the industrious woodsman.  The forests abounded in the most ravenous animals, such as bears, panthers and wolves, while along the river and creek bottoms the ground was at places almost literally covered with poisonous reptiles.  The climate was severe, and the country remote from the frontier, yet notwithstanding the obstacles and discouragements that beset them, these were not sufficient to cause the settlers to relax their efforts to rear comfortable homes for their descendants.

The following story I have taken from Priest’s Collection, for the reason that the scene of the exploit is said to have been near our town boundaries: 

“Ben Wheaton was one of the first settlers on the waters of the Susquehanna, immediately after the war, a rough, uncultivated and primitive man.  As many others of the same stamp and character, he subsisted chiefly by hunting, cultivating the land but sparingly, and in this way raised a numerous family amid the woods, in a half starved condition, and comparative nakedness.  But as the Susquehanna country rapidly increased in population, the hunting grounds of Wheaton were encroached upon; so that a chance with his smooth-bore, among the deer and bears was greatly lessened.  On this account Wheaton removed from the Susquehanna country, in Otsego county, to the more unsettled wilds of the Delaware, near a place yet known by the appellation of Wait’s Settlement,[A] where game was more plenty.  The distance from where he made his home in the woods, through to the Susquehanna, was about fifteen miles, and was one continued wilderness at that time.  Through these woods this almost aboriginal hunter was often compelled to pass to the Susquehanna, for various necessaries, and among the rest no small quantity of whiskey, as he was of very intemperate habits.  On one of these visits, in the midst of summer, with his smooth-bore always on his shoulder, knife, hatchet, &c., in their proper place, he had nearly penetrated the distance, when he became weary, and having come to the summit of a ridge (sometime in the afternoon) which overlooks the vale of the Susquehanna, he selected a convenient place in the shade, as it was hot, for the rays of the sun from the west poured his sultry influence through all the forest, where he lay down to rest a while among the leaves, after having taken a drink from his pint bottle of green glass, and a mouthful of cold Johnney cake from his pocket.