Lost in the Great Tonewanta Swamp, 1796! Part One©

 

 

 

Author’s note -- I hope that you enjoy learning from this resource!  To help me to continue to provide valuable free content, please consider showing your appreciation by leaving a donation HERE.  Thank you and Happy Trails!

 

Like a film noir detective story, our tale starts in a crowded hotel, on the edge of a dark, trackless forest, when two strangers are forced to share a room for the night together.  One is old, one is young, one is new to the area, the other has been here before, long ago, and has a story to tell.  

 

Most likely, the site of the hotel where this tale was told was in what was then known as Hartford, New York, and today is known as Avon. 

 

 

Lost in the Great Tonewanta Swamp!

 

 

Hartford is on the east bank of the Genesee River, at the end of the “Genesse Country Road”, across the river across was the Seneca town called “Kanwaggers Village”, also spelled as “Canawaugus”, west beyond this point in 1796, was “unbroken wilderness”, inhabited only Native Americans.  The “Great Tonewanta Swamp”, later spelled as the “Great Tonawanda Swamp”, began just past the twin villages of Hartford and Canawagus, and was 25 miles (40 km) east to west and from two to seven miles (3 to 11 km), north to south, it originally covered over 25,000 acres (over 10,000 hectares). 

 

The swamp is the mostly dried up remains of Lake Tonawanda, an ice-age lake that was formed from glacial melt-waters trapped between two nearly parallel glacial moraines. 

 

It was bounded by two roughly parallel ridges, which run east to west, both of which had trails or roads on their summits.  The “Old Niagara Road” ran along the southern most ridge west towards Buffalo New York.  However, near modern day Batavia New York, a trail split off to the northwest, crossing the western edge of the swamp, towards Niagara Falls and Lewiston.  Along the summit of the northern ridge the “Ridge Road” ran from present day Rochester to Niagara Falls. 

 

The swamp was covered in the higher parts, those that were a little elevated above the swamp’s surface, by swamp timber and the lower parts with open marsh and swamp grass.

 

In 1796, both trails were simply native trails marked only with blazes.

 

So, now that our traveler and his companion, “the little, stout Dutchman” have realized that they had circled back on their own trail and that it was close to sundown, how did they survive the night, lost in the “unbroken wilderness” of the “Great Tonewanta Swamp”?  To find out come back next week, to read Part Two!

 

 

I hope that you enjoy learning from this resource!  To help me to continue to provide valuable free content, please consider showing your appreciation by leaving a donation HERE.  Thank you and Happy Trails!

 

I hope that you continue to enjoy The Woodsman’s Journal Online and look for me on YouTube at BandanaMan Productions for other related videos, HERE.  Don’t forget to follow me on both The Woodsman’s Journal Online, HERE, and subscribe to BandanaMan Productions on YouTube.  If you have questions, as always, feel free to leave a comment on either site.  I announce new articles on Facebook at Eric Reynolds, on Instagram at bandanamanaproductions, and on VK at Eric Reynolds, so watch for me.

 

That is all for now, and as always, until next time, Happy Trails!

 

 

Sources

 

Doty, Lockwood Lyon; A History of Livingston County, New York: From Its Earliest Traditions, [Edward E. Doty, Geneseo, 1876], Pages 485 to 487, https://books.google.com/books?id=zKkWAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Pioneer+History+of+Livingston+County+ny+1871&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi4n_LGl4WJAxX0hIkEHcNQG2kQ6AF6BAgGEAI#v=onepage&q&f=false, accessed October 12, 2024

 

Mather, Joseph H., and Brockett, Linus Pierpont; A Geographical History of the State of New York: Embracing Its History, [John W. Fuller & Co., Utica, 1853], page 400, https://books.google.com/books?id=ux6dTIOOxvkC&pg=PA400&dq=%22great+tonawanda+swamp%22&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwijofadwoSJAxW1EFkFHa88BiE4ChDoAXoECAwQAg#v=onepage&q=%22great%20tonawanda%20swamp%22&f=false, accessed October 12, 2024

 

New York Secretary of State; Map and profile of the Erie Canal -- Originally published in: Laws of the State of New York, in relation to the Erie and Champlain canals [E. and E. Hosford, printers, Albany, 1825], https://www.eriecanal.org/maps.html, accessed October 12, 2024

 

Reid, John; The State of New York, [New York, Published by J. Reid, 1796] https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3800.ct005429/?r=-0.309,0.249,1.036,0.407,0, accessed October 12, 2024

 

Thomas, Arad; Pioneer History of Orleans County, New York, [H.A. Bruner, Orleans Steam Press, Albion, NY, 1871], pages 22 to 34 and pages 73 to 74, https://books.google.com/books?id=ZuYpAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22Pioneer+History+of+Orleans+County%22+1871&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj78OC0koWJAxXXlYkEHS0IKgkQ6AF6BAgGEAI#v=onepage&q=%22Pioneer%20History%20of%20Orleans%20County%22%201871&f=false, accessed October 12, 2024