INCLUDED IN THIS SITE:
     The Village, Employment, Local Institutions, Community Life, Farm and Household Life
    MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE EARLY HISTORY OF ERIEVILLE:
     Daisy Francis, Abandoned Cemeteries, Early Settlers (Rootsweb)

Jersey Bush

From the Madison County Historical Society, Oneida, NY. (Source?, 1965)

Looking back through local histories we find abandoned hamlets and localities where people once lived have received little or no mention from Madison County historians.

Among these is the abandoned community of "Jersey Bush" located southwest of Erieville.  John E. Smith's history (1890) refers briefly to it as follows:

Several families came in from New Jersey in 1811 and settled in that region, which is still called Jersey Bush, in the south part of the town of Nelson.  Among them were Thomas and William Harris, Joseph English, Phineas Hamblet, Elijah Carpenter, John S. Brown, and a Mr. Abraham.  Thomas Harris was a grandfather of Dr. George Harris, later of Georgetown.  For years past the Harris family has held a reunion at Jersey Bush, the attendance numbering 300 to 400.

The descendants of those pioneers are now widely scattered.  Some of the descendants of Joseph English live in this area; among them are Grover English and Lynn English of Nelson, Mrs. Elizabeth Spaulding and family of Erieville, and Leland English and family of Cazenovia.

Those early settlers came from Mansfield, Burlington County, New Jersey. Many theories have been advanced as to why they settled here.  The most likely is that Bishop Tucker, an early settler of Cazenovia who came from Mansfield in 1798, was a forerunner of the group.

Jersey Bush was a thickly wooded area and was the last section of the town to be settled.  It was located on both sides of the Erieville-Sheds Corners road, now known as the "Dugway."  It has an elevation of 1600 to 1800 feet and is only three or four air miles from where Louis Anathe Muller, the mysterious Frenchman, built his fabulous mansion about 1808.  He lived there a few years and left, taking the secret of his identity with him and to this day is referred to as "the Mystery of Muller Hill."  The old mansion was destroyed by fire about 1905.

Some of the farms in this area were not very productive and many of the younger generations became dissatisfied working on the hard won acres of their ancestors and left for other fields of endeavor.  Lumbering was the chief occupation until the forests were cut off.  Every spring when the frost was going out great difficulty was encountered on what was called "hogback hill" directly south of the present dugway.  Teams and conveyances were bogged down in quick sand, which made travel almost impossible.  In the winter of 1872 some Irish laborers who were employed summers constructing the Syracuse-Earlville railroad, stayed with Joe Pattello at the lower end of the dugway gorge and worked for their board.  With wheelbarrows and picks and shovels they managed to dig a narrow road up through the rocky gorge, thereby giving it the name "dugway".  This narrow rough town road remained unchanged until it was taken over by the Madison County Road System on April 5, 1938.  The road is 5.1 miles from Erieville to Sheds, 3.5 miles in the town of Nelson and 1.6 miles in the town of DeRuyter. 

Dugway Road today provides little evidence of its past as it meanders past the Town garage, homes and pastures.

Work of reconstruction and widening was started in 1949 and continued in 1950 and '51.  Great quantities of dynamite were used to blast the hard rock.  The road is now a scenic highway and is used extensively by tourists and trucks.

Up to 1934 nearly all of the farms in this area were occupied.  At that time the Federal Government bought up all the land for reforestation and have now made it into a wildlife preserve and public hunting ground.  Deer and other game are plentiful there making it a hunter's paradise.

In visiting this area on June 5, <1965> accompanied by my neighbor, Gerry Pugh, who was born there, we found many reminders of this once busy community.

There are the washed out mill dams that furnished waterpower for the old saw mills.  The site where the District School No. 15 stood, the back furrows and dead furrows left by the plowmen of long ago are still visible, carefully planted maple trees flank many of the old driveways, the old farm house cellars and dug wells and crumbled stone walls are still there, nearby were the rose and lilac bushes in full bloom swaying silently in the summer breeze and, as we left, the pleasant thought came to mind that they were waving to us a sad farewell from the deserted and forgotten community of Jersey Bush.

Can you tell us more about the Erieville pioneers listed above, or have pictures or a story you'd like to share?  Please email us: