hurd house - castile, new york
history
These excerpts come from "The Genesee Country and Especially the Story of Castile" by Katherine Barnes:
SETTLERS COME TO CASTILE
On the nineteenth day of July, 1816, the Ziba Hurds came in an
ox cart from Vermont with their three children, Eliza, nine, Norman,
eight and Hannah, two. They stopped on the Allegany Road where
Raymond Bowles owns. It used to be called the Ira True farm. At
that time there was a vacant log cabin on the place, for Lemuel
Eldridge, who had owned it, had moved down into the Whaley Tavern.
Robert and his family were living at the Mill.
FIRST SCHOOL IN CASTILE
It was characteristic of these pioneers that they should start
building a schoolhouse almost before they built their own homes,
in spite of discouraging weather. They were here to stay and took
the weather in stride. They built the school halfway down the road
that ran west from the Tavern about forty rods from the corner.
Ann Bennett was selected as the first teacher.
Norman Kurd (Hurd?) went to the "raising" and told in detail how they
did it. All the men in the neighborhood helped to cut the logs and put
up the building and make the crude furniture.
The first religious meeting was held in this schoolhouse that
had just been built, and the gathering was neither Baptist, Methodist,
Presbyterian, or Christian in denomination. There was no minister
present. Mr. Hurd read from Watts sermons, which he had brought
from Vermont. Mr. Stanard led in prayer, and they all sang. Norman
said the singing was good. We wonder whether they sang "Faith of
Our Fathers."
ZIBA HURD PLANS TO REMAIN
These meetings were held until cold weather came and Ziba went
back to Vermont after much-needed supplies. In l953, Mr. Barnes and
I went to Tinmouth, Vermont, to see the place where Ziba Hurd came
from. There was nothing there except a little old church that looked
to be a hundred fifty years old. Not a person around for miles. As
we climbed up and up over the stony roads and into the mountains,
we didn't wonder that they came to New York. But before he went,
Mr. Hurd made the trip to Canandaigua and bought 400 acres of land
consisting of Lots 50, 51, and part of Lot 54. Mr. Hurd paid $1476 for this
land, and the deed was delivered on May 19, 1830, showing that it was all
paid for at that time.
Before he went back to Vermont, Ziba Hurd was to clear a piece
of land in what was to be the Village of Castile. No Indians or other
settlers had ever touched an axe to it. It was a deep, dense forest
primeval. He hired two men, James Whitman and Simon Young, to
clear ten acres between Main and Buffalo Streets. This area was
chosen because a branch of Wolf Creek ran through it, and there was
also a good spring. These two men lived in a shack made of elm bark
while they were doing the job. It was sowed to winter wheat that fall.
In addition to the ten acres which Whitman cleared, Ziba had cleared
the land included in that site that has been known for years as the
VanArsdale place. On this land, Ziba proposed to build a home.
He erected a lean-to log shanty on the other side of the street to live
in while he built his home.
Having done this, he went back to Vermont, leaving his wife and
three children in the new raw Genesee Country. When he returned in
the spring, he brought with him two yoke of oxen, two cows, two
potash kettles, one double wagon, and several hundred yards of
cleansed cloth. (Fullers earth was a kind of marl or clay used in the
cleansing, and a fulling mill was the one where hammers beat the
cloth until it was cleansed.) Of course, Ziba could hardly come alone
with all that cavalcade, so his brother-in-law, Jonathan Gilbert, and
his mother, Lucinda Hurd, came back with him. Ziba and Sally were
thirty years old, having been born in 1786, while the mother was fifty.
THE EARLIEST MILLS OF CASTILE
Almost the first thing Mr. Hurd did in the spring of 1817, besides
starting to build a home, was to build an ashery so he could manufac-
ture potash. This was the only article for which he could get cash.
The potash was packed into tight casks, and sent to eastern markets,
where it went into chemicals and fertilizers. Local coopers often
produced these hard wood casks. Sometimes the farmer sold to the
local ashery or to a trader the ashes at eight or ten cents a bushel.
Black salts sold from $3 to $4 a hundredweight. Probably Ziba Hurd
took his black salts to Moscow (now Leicester) and sold them for $70 a ton.
ZIBA HURD'S OTHER ENTERPRISES
Early in the spring of 1817, Ziba Hurd started making maple sugar,
using the two potash kettles to boil the syrup. He put in flax and spring
wheat, and vegetables on the land he had cleared. From the quarry
he drew stones for the basement of his new house. He had the lumber
sawed at Daniel Bannister's mill on East Park Road.
THE VILLAGE OF CASTILE IN 1821
Up to now the village was known as Wolf Creek. But in 1821 it
received a name, a post office, and a chief magistrate. Tradition
states that Sally Gilbert Hurd chose the name of Castile for the
village because she liked the story of the largest of the Spanish
kingdoms, Castile, and the brave, aggressive people who lived there.
The Spanish Queen, Isabella, famous for her sponsorship of Columbus
in the discovery of America, was married to Ferdinand, of Aargon, a
section bordering on Castile. Evidently Mrs. Hurd thought her husband
and the other hard-working people who were trying to wrest a home
from the wilderness were like the brave people of Castile, Spain.
So the village became Castile, with a long "i" instead of Casteel,
as it should have been pronounced in Spanish.
ZIBA HURD A FIRST CITIZEN
Ziba Hurd became Castile's first postmaster: August 17, 1821 to
September 12, 1829. This fact made a difference in many ways. The
Wyoming County History says Ziba Hurd was also the first supervisor
of the village, and Tilly Gilbert was the first town clerk.
Because of these added responsibilities, Ziba sold his potash plant.
There was a short-lived whiskey still near the same location, and
a second still in the village was run by Gard and Mallory. This, too,
didn't last.
Ziba had raised four hundred bushels of wheat, which he could
sell for twenty-five cents a bushel or six quarts of whiskey. There
was no demand for the wheat, but the village was full of lumbermen
who wanted whiskey. Even so, Ziba Hurd refused to make whiskey.
He campaigned vigorously for the building of the Erie Canal and his
interest was such that he named a street Clinton Street. It is hard to
understand the opposition to the canal project, but after the War of 1812
it was all but impossible to combat the inaction of the legislature and the
prejudice of the people. Objections were many: it was "a wild scheme; it
could never be done; it would bankrupt the State; the southern counties
would not help pay for what would not benefit them". The project needed
a man to put life into it, a man to give time and energy, to argue and to
labor, to persuade legislators and farmers, to risk popularity and
fortune. It needed a great man and one ready to give his greatness
to the success of a life's work. Such a man was DeWitt Clinton. The
canal was called Clinton's Big Ditch and Clinton's Folly. Clinton
succeeded because men like Ziba Hurd could look into the future and
lend him their support.
CASTILE GOES DRY
Another event which took place in the first quarter of the 1800's was
the starting of the temperance movement. And it wasn't the women who
started it. It was a few far-sighted men, including Ziba Hurd.
Whiskey was cheap. Men bought it by the barrel. Even ministers
took a glass before they started their sermon. They drank it straight.
There were three stills in the village and twelve others between
Castile and the mouth of Wolf Creek, as well as six taverns in the
village. If there had been a market for the grain the farmers grew,
they wouldn't have made it into whiskey. Wheat sold for 25 to 31 cents
a bushel and corn for about 12 cents. Markets were miles away over
rough roads that frequently were impassable.
In 1825 the Erie Canal was built. That changed everything. It
had been started in 1817 and took eight years to build. Ziba Hurd
was a strong Clinton man, for he could see the value of the canal.
Up to now one ton of freight from Buffalo to Albany had cost from
ninety to one-hundred twenty-five dollars. Now it would be only
$30, and later as little as $5. Castile men could take their wheat
to York, transfer it to the Genesee River, and put it on the Canal.
Now they could get their famous Genesee wheat to market.
So temperance began to take hold. The women helped a great
deal, for often they and the children were the ones who suffered
most from intemperance. Susan B. Anthony was five years old at this
time, and generally speaking, the women weren't generally speaking.
They were listening and working in their quiet but effective ways.
CASTILE BUILDS ITS FIRST CHURCH
The temperance movement went hand in hand with a strong
religious movement, and so in Castile Village, the first church
building was started in 1825 and finished in 1827.
There had been a strong Baptist movement, with the congregations
meeting in various places. Since 1819 there was an active group of
the Christian denomination, and another of Methodists. Ziba Hurd
and many of the first settlers were Congregational in their back-
ground. These groups were meeting in schoolhouses.
Because people of that period were not inclined to accept another's
religious background, it was hard for them to worship together.
Strangely, this first church built in the Village of Castile was neither
Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Christian, or Congregational.
The meeting was called by Ziba Hurd to see whether they should
fix a place in his factory to worship or build a church. They decided
on the church. (The story is in a book called "A History of the United
Community Church", which was published in Castile in 1963. It also
covers the story of the various religious movements such as the
Millerites and the Second Coming and how they affected places in
the Genesee Country like Castile.)
ZIBA HURD'S LATER YEARS
In January 1841, Sally Gilbert Hurd died, leaving her husband,
Ziba Hurd, and five children, two of whom were born in Castile.
She was fifty-five years old, and she should have had another twenty
years. She had lived in the first frame house built in Castile.
The very year she died, Ziba married again, this time
to Mary Center. Was it because he was so very lonely?
Sarah Snyder, who knew him well, wrote about his kind, benevolent
face. She said he was much respected and loved by the people. He
showed much interest in all the settlers. Sarah said, also, that
Laura, Ziba's daughter, was a friend of her mother and used to
come to stay with them when they had to stay alone. She said that
Ziba liked people and used to enjoy telling of his many adventures.
In 1841, the year his wife died and the year he married again,
he built the upright to his house. He spent a great deal of time and
money, and it was beautifully done. But then for eleven years he was
apparently in ill health -- until April 14, 1854, when he died.
The family was so hurt by the event that soon there
was a general exodus to the West, which in those days meant
Wisconsin, or Ohio, or Illinois. Ziba's son, Norman, left Castile the
year that his father married the second time and didn't return for
twenty years. It was Hannah Hurd that married Ansom Howard. In
1870, the youngest of the Hurd family, Jonathan, died. He was only 46.
SETTLERS COME TO CASTILE
On the nineteenth day of July, 1816, the Ziba Hurds came in an
ox cart from Vermont with their three children, Eliza, nine, Norman,
eight and Hannah, two. They stopped on the Allegany Road where
Raymond Bowles owns. It used to be called the Ira True farm. At
that time there was a vacant log cabin on the place, for Lemuel
Eldridge, who had owned it, had moved down into the Whaley Tavern.
Robert and his family were living at the Mill.
FIRST SCHOOL IN CASTILE
It was characteristic of these pioneers that they should start
building a schoolhouse almost before they built their own homes,
in spite of discouraging weather. They were here to stay and took
the weather in stride. They built the school halfway down the road
that ran west from the Tavern about forty rods from the corner.
Ann Bennett was selected as the first teacher.
Norman Kurd (Hurd?) went to the "raising" and told in detail how they
did it. All the men in the neighborhood helped to cut the logs and put
up the building and make the crude furniture.
The first religious meeting was held in this schoolhouse that
had just been built, and the gathering was neither Baptist, Methodist,
Presbyterian, or Christian in denomination. There was no minister
present. Mr. Hurd read from Watts sermons, which he had brought
from Vermont. Mr. Stanard led in prayer, and they all sang. Norman
said the singing was good. We wonder whether they sang "Faith of
Our Fathers."
ZIBA HURD PLANS TO REMAIN
These meetings were held until cold weather came and Ziba went
back to Vermont after much-needed supplies. In l953, Mr. Barnes and
I went to Tinmouth, Vermont, to see the place where Ziba Hurd came
from. There was nothing there except a little old church that looked
to be a hundred fifty years old. Not a person around for miles. As
we climbed up and up over the stony roads and into the mountains,
we didn't wonder that they came to New York. But before he went,
Mr. Hurd made the trip to Canandaigua and bought 400 acres of land
consisting of Lots 50, 51, and part of Lot 54. Mr. Hurd paid $1476 for this
land, and the deed was delivered on May 19, 1830, showing that it was all
paid for at that time.
Before he went back to Vermont, Ziba Hurd was to clear a piece
of land in what was to be the Village of Castile. No Indians or other
settlers had ever touched an axe to it. It was a deep, dense forest
primeval. He hired two men, James Whitman and Simon Young, to
clear ten acres between Main and Buffalo Streets. This area was
chosen because a branch of Wolf Creek ran through it, and there was
also a good spring. These two men lived in a shack made of elm bark
while they were doing the job. It was sowed to winter wheat that fall.
In addition to the ten acres which Whitman cleared, Ziba had cleared
the land included in that site that has been known for years as the
VanArsdale place. On this land, Ziba proposed to build a home.
He erected a lean-to log shanty on the other side of the street to live
in while he built his home.
Having done this, he went back to Vermont, leaving his wife and
three children in the new raw Genesee Country. When he returned in
the spring, he brought with him two yoke of oxen, two cows, two
potash kettles, one double wagon, and several hundred yards of
cleansed cloth. (Fullers earth was a kind of marl or clay used in the
cleansing, and a fulling mill was the one where hammers beat the
cloth until it was cleansed.) Of course, Ziba could hardly come alone
with all that cavalcade, so his brother-in-law, Jonathan Gilbert, and
his mother, Lucinda Hurd, came back with him. Ziba and Sally were
thirty years old, having been born in 1786, while the mother was fifty.
THE EARLIEST MILLS OF CASTILE
Almost the first thing Mr. Hurd did in the spring of 1817, besides
starting to build a home, was to build an ashery so he could manufac-
ture potash. This was the only article for which he could get cash.
The potash was packed into tight casks, and sent to eastern markets,
where it went into chemicals and fertilizers. Local coopers often
produced these hard wood casks. Sometimes the farmer sold to the
local ashery or to a trader the ashes at eight or ten cents a bushel.
Black salts sold from $3 to $4 a hundredweight. Probably Ziba Hurd
took his black salts to Moscow (now Leicester) and sold them for $70 a ton.
ZIBA HURD'S OTHER ENTERPRISES
Early in the spring of 1817, Ziba Hurd started making maple sugar,
using the two potash kettles to boil the syrup. He put in flax and spring
wheat, and vegetables on the land he had cleared. From the quarry
he drew stones for the basement of his new house. He had the lumber
sawed at Daniel Bannister's mill on East Park Road.
THE VILLAGE OF CASTILE IN 1821
Up to now the village was known as Wolf Creek. But in 1821 it
received a name, a post office, and a chief magistrate. Tradition
states that Sally Gilbert Hurd chose the name of Castile for the
village because she liked the story of the largest of the Spanish
kingdoms, Castile, and the brave, aggressive people who lived there.
The Spanish Queen, Isabella, famous for her sponsorship of Columbus
in the discovery of America, was married to Ferdinand, of Aargon, a
section bordering on Castile. Evidently Mrs. Hurd thought her husband
and the other hard-working people who were trying to wrest a home
from the wilderness were like the brave people of Castile, Spain.
So the village became Castile, with a long "i" instead of Casteel,
as it should have been pronounced in Spanish.
ZIBA HURD A FIRST CITIZEN
Ziba Hurd became Castile's first postmaster: August 17, 1821 to
September 12, 1829. This fact made a difference in many ways. The
Wyoming County History says Ziba Hurd was also the first supervisor
of the village, and Tilly Gilbert was the first town clerk.
Because of these added responsibilities, Ziba sold his potash plant.
There was a short-lived whiskey still near the same location, and
a second still in the village was run by Gard and Mallory. This, too,
didn't last.
Ziba had raised four hundred bushels of wheat, which he could
sell for twenty-five cents a bushel or six quarts of whiskey. There
was no demand for the wheat, but the village was full of lumbermen
who wanted whiskey. Even so, Ziba Hurd refused to make whiskey.
He campaigned vigorously for the building of the Erie Canal and his
interest was such that he named a street Clinton Street. It is hard to
understand the opposition to the canal project, but after the War of 1812
it was all but impossible to combat the inaction of the legislature and the
prejudice of the people. Objections were many: it was "a wild scheme; it
could never be done; it would bankrupt the State; the southern counties
would not help pay for what would not benefit them". The project needed
a man to put life into it, a man to give time and energy, to argue and to
labor, to persuade legislators and farmers, to risk popularity and
fortune. It needed a great man and one ready to give his greatness
to the success of a life's work. Such a man was DeWitt Clinton. The
canal was called Clinton's Big Ditch and Clinton's Folly. Clinton
succeeded because men like Ziba Hurd could look into the future and
lend him their support.
CASTILE GOES DRY
Another event which took place in the first quarter of the 1800's was
the starting of the temperance movement. And it wasn't the women who
started it. It was a few far-sighted men, including Ziba Hurd.
Whiskey was cheap. Men bought it by the barrel. Even ministers
took a glass before they started their sermon. They drank it straight.
There were three stills in the village and twelve others between
Castile and the mouth of Wolf Creek, as well as six taverns in the
village. If there had been a market for the grain the farmers grew,
they wouldn't have made it into whiskey. Wheat sold for 25 to 31 cents
a bushel and corn for about 12 cents. Markets were miles away over
rough roads that frequently were impassable.
In 1825 the Erie Canal was built. That changed everything. It
had been started in 1817 and took eight years to build. Ziba Hurd
was a strong Clinton man, for he could see the value of the canal.
Up to now one ton of freight from Buffalo to Albany had cost from
ninety to one-hundred twenty-five dollars. Now it would be only
$30, and later as little as $5. Castile men could take their wheat
to York, transfer it to the Genesee River, and put it on the Canal.
Now they could get their famous Genesee wheat to market.
So temperance began to take hold. The women helped a great
deal, for often they and the children were the ones who suffered
most from intemperance. Susan B. Anthony was five years old at this
time, and generally speaking, the women weren't generally speaking.
They were listening and working in their quiet but effective ways.
CASTILE BUILDS ITS FIRST CHURCH
The temperance movement went hand in hand with a strong
religious movement, and so in Castile Village, the first church
building was started in 1825 and finished in 1827.
There had been a strong Baptist movement, with the congregations
meeting in various places. Since 1819 there was an active group of
the Christian denomination, and another of Methodists. Ziba Hurd
and many of the first settlers were Congregational in their back-
ground. These groups were meeting in schoolhouses.
Because people of that period were not inclined to accept another's
religious background, it was hard for them to worship together.
Strangely, this first church built in the Village of Castile was neither
Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Christian, or Congregational.
The meeting was called by Ziba Hurd to see whether they should
fix a place in his factory to worship or build a church. They decided
on the church. (The story is in a book called "A History of the United
Community Church", which was published in Castile in 1963. It also
covers the story of the various religious movements such as the
Millerites and the Second Coming and how they affected places in
the Genesee Country like Castile.)
ZIBA HURD'S LATER YEARS
In January 1841, Sally Gilbert Hurd died, leaving her husband,
Ziba Hurd, and five children, two of whom were born in Castile.
She was fifty-five years old, and she should have had another twenty
years. She had lived in the first frame house built in Castile.
The very year she died, Ziba married again, this time
to Mary Center. Was it because he was so very lonely?
Sarah Snyder, who knew him well, wrote about his kind, benevolent
face. She said he was much respected and loved by the people. He
showed much interest in all the settlers. Sarah said, also, that
Laura, Ziba's daughter, was a friend of her mother and used to
come to stay with them when they had to stay alone. She said that
Ziba liked people and used to enjoy telling of his many adventures.
In 1841, the year his wife died and the year he married again,
he built the upright to his house. He spent a great deal of time and
money, and it was beautifully done. But then for eleven years he was
apparently in ill health -- until April 14, 1854, when he died.
The family was so hurt by the event that soon there
was a general exodus to the West, which in those days meant
Wisconsin, or Ohio, or Illinois. Ziba's son, Norman, left Castile the
year that his father married the second time and didn't return for
twenty years. It was Hannah Hurd that married Ansom Howard. In
1870, the youngest of the Hurd family, Jonathan, died. He was only 46.