Orrin Stone, 1789-1876: Oswego County Pioneer

Orrin Stone was an Oswego County pioneer. A son of Jehiel and Ruth Norton Stone of Guilford, Connecticut, he accompanied his parents and nine brothers and sisters to a site near Ovid, Seneca County, New York, then a part of the Military Tract. After a brief residence there the Stones in company with their neighbors, the William Burts, resettled in Scriba. Tradition relates that they reached Oswego via the Seneca-Oswego waterway, driving their livestock along the streams. They proceeded to Scriba Corners along a crude trace. The Stones occupied the land just east of the Corners, the Burts, a tract to the west. At the time of their arrival in 1803, Orrin was 14.

There was sufficient land for the numerous sons and daughters, and Orrin was preparing to move from the family cabin to one of his own when he made the initial entry in his diary. The date was January 1, 1814, he was aged 25. He was planning to take a wife; and there were almost endless details requiring his attention.

A perusal of the terse observations through a period of several years leaves many questions unanswered; yet a partial pattern of frontier life evolves. Hard labor was a routine.

In the winter months he was busy “chopping” to level the forest in preparation for fields and crops. In the course of a year he spent between 65-75 days chopping, logging and splitting, and additional days at woodworking, fence building, and hauling. In March and April chopping yielded to “sugaring”. Preparing troughs, tapping trees, sap gathering and boiling syrup absorbed most of his working hours for about three weeks. And before April yielded to May he turned to plowing, and later to planting and hoeing. The diary indicates some 30 to 40 days’ labor in plowing for wheat, corn, oats, potatoes, and garden vegetables. Uncounted hours were also consumed in the orchard in planting, grafting and tending. The harvesting of hay, wheat, potatoes, oats, and corn became the principal occupation from July through October.

In between times he “laid my chamber floor”, calked or “mudded” his cabin, mended fences, drove his hog or cow to be bred (sometimes over considerable distances), marketed his potatoes or ashes in Oswego, and borrowed his father’s oxen to carry his grain to the mill.

There was a respite from heavy toil on Sundays when there were occasional “meetings” in the school house at the Corners or in Hiel Stone’s barn. A local lay-preacher conducted the Baptist service. Recreation was found in “raisings” and “bees” and singing school. Stone occasionally went hunting and fishing, but took special delight in searching for bee trees in the woods.

He also belonged to local militia, and sometimes accepted the duty of conveying the “warning” to the members. In an emergency in 1814 attending the War of 1812 he accompanied the militia to Henderson Harbor. The only detailed incident in the record (a brief paragraph) relates the invasion of Oswego in May of 1814.

In later life Stone was a postmaster, storekeeper and farmer. He died in 1876, aged 88. Orrin’s father, Hiel Stone, was a major in the war of 1812. Orrin and his brother both served in the war of 1812.