Remembering Newark Valley; 200 Years Ago; March 24

By Douglas W. Cornwell —

March 2024 is a key date in the Newark Valley Bicentennial. Originally, Newark Valley was named Westville. Westville split from the town of Berkshire on April 12, 1823.  

The town of Westville board first met on March 2, 1824. Rev. Marcus Ford of the Congregational Church, a transplanted Newark, New Jersey resident, had suggested that the town of Westville change its name to Newark, New York. It was accomplished on March 24, 1824.  

In this article, we shall examine the years which led up to the start of Westville / Newark. Articles that will follow will examine the landscape of 1858 in a painting by George Byron Sutton, a taxidermist. Finally we examine when and why Newark was renamed Newark Valley in 1862.

Let us back up about two decades before the 1824 events and follow the history leading to the year in which gives us cause to celebrate a Bicentennial in Newark Valley.

According to the Tioga County Legislature’s 1990 history of Tioga County (p. 16), Seasons of Change, on April 1, 1791, the area that became known as Brown’s Settlement was established by pioneers “Isaac and Abram Brown, Daniel Ball, Elisha Wilson, and John Carpenter.” They were settlers who came to this area from the Berkshire Mountains in Massachusetts and began clearing the land, which came to be Brown’s Settlement. 

The approximate location today is the area near the Newark Valley-Berkshire town line and the road named as Brown Road. Former Newark Valley Village Historian, Lena T. Bushnell, and others, have referred to the area as North Newark.  

[The settlers] had come from Stockbridge, Mass. Wilson and Abram Brown had been among the surveyors who had been employed several years earlier during the land dispute between New York and Massachusetts.

Being this time period was just after our first U.S. President, George Washington, had been elected in 1790, things seemed to begin moving ahead. On Feb. 16, 1791, Tioga County was officially formed as the 20th county in the state. There is more to that and how it evolved over the years. Right now, we are concentrating on the Newark Valley Bicentennial.  

The official date the current village of Newark Valley was settled seems to be in dispute. The legislature’s history of 1990 states, “The first settler of what is the present Village of Newark Valley arrived during the summer of [1792]. It was Ezbon Slosson from Stockbridge, Massachusetts.”

The signs at the entry to the village all state 1792 as the date of founding, as does the entry in Wikipedia.  

From the 1937 Gilbert E. Purple book, As we Remember, there is disagreement about the date. 

According to Purple, “In February 1793, Enoch Slosson, with his wife [Sarah St. John Slosson] and some of their children, together with their older son, Ezbon, his wife [Electa Williams Slosson] and little child [Caroline Slosson] left their home, at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and came to ‘Brown’s Settlement.’ Ezbon was then 24 years of age. They arrived here early in March [1793] and, for a time, they all lived together in a shanty which they built [in the area where, today, Fortunatos and the Family Dollar are situated]. This was the first building erected in the village.”

Continuing from Purple book, “Ezbon Slosson, soon after 1795, when high water from the creek had come into his home and part of the roof had slid off, put up a log house on the ground where the [Congregational UCC Church / Community Center] chapel … now stands. [Ezbon resided in a home built in 1795 until 1798], when he built the hotel on the present site of the municipal building, where he commenced keeping a tavern. This structure, one and one-half stories high, was the first frame building erected in the valley.”

If settlement of the village area of Newark Valley was summer of 1792 or February / March 1793, there is just a few months difference so perhaps it is splitting hairs to be in contention over exact dates.

Other history surrounding what has become Newark Valley.

March 28, 1806 saw the creation of Broome County, which included the eastern part of Tioga County and the present-day towns of Owego, Newark Valley, Berkshire, and Richford. It became the area that became the town of Union. That did not last long as the town of Berkshire, north of Owego to the present Cortland County line was organized on Feb. 12, 1808. There are still census records from 1810 that identify Berkshire as being a part of the town of Union.  

Otis P. Lincoln moved to the area known as the Village of Newark Valley. He moved from Warren, Massachusetts (Worcester County). In those years the Newark Valley Village area was known as Brown’s Settlement. But it also began to be called Westville (I remember learning this in the third grade class of Marian Shoultes at Nathan T. Hall Elementary School as she taught us about local history).  

It is mere speculation to wonder whether the name of Westville came with the Lincoln family, as Warren, Massachusetts was once named “Western, Massachusetts.” If anyone discovers the facts about something which now is a mere hypothesis, I would love to hear from them. 

Lincoln married Ezbon Slosson’s daughter, Sarah. Eventually, the venue begun by Ezbon Slosson became the Lincoln Hotel.  

In those years Westville was part of the town of Berkshire, which then extended from the present-day Richford to the present-day Owego town line on the south. On April 12, 1823, Westville broke from Berkshire and created its own town, electing board members who convened the first meeting of the board in the Otis P. Lincoln home on March 2, 1824 (see Warner book about the Centennial history of Tioga County, edited by Peter Gordon, Owego Town Historian).  

There were 18 members of that board meeting: Solomon Williams, Beriah Wells [grandfather of Royal W. Clinton, the man who funded the building of the high school which eventually became the municipal building and post office], Francis Armstrong, Ebenezer Pierce, Benjamin Walter, Anson Higbe, Abram Brown, Reuben Chittenden, William Slosson [son of Ezbon and brother of Sarah Slosson Lincoln], Lyman Legg, Henry Williams, William Richardson, Otis Lincoln, William B. Bement, Geo. Williams, Peter Wilson, Ebenezer Robbins, and Joseph Benjamin.

Thus, March 24 is a milestone in the timeline for the Bicentennial of Newark Valley.  

Parts 2 and 3 will continue as the Bicentennial continues in Newark Valley, New York.