In 1965 Greg and I sat in Miss Betts 7th grade history class and spent an entire year learning about our state, New York, and our town, Westfield. It was Miss Betts last year of teaching. She must have been at least 65 and was retiring at the end of the school year. She had taught many of the fathers and mothers of the students in our class, the parents of our friends. She had been teaching in the Westfield school system since at least 1930. I remember her vividly to this day. She was "old school," no pun intended. Miss Betts was strict and she had total control of the class. She commanded respect, worked hard at teaching, and she knew her subject matter. If she is still alive today, and it wouldn't surprise me if she was, she would be 108 years old. She was a treasure trove of historic information about New York state, but perhaps even even more importantly, she was probably the leading authority of information about our town, our community, Westfield. She was her own institution, a proud citizen of Westfield, N.Y., and this is what she taught us about the town that we grew up in, as best as I can remember:
In the late 1600's and early 1700's, French explorers were travelling up the St. Lawrence River from Montreal. "Up" in this case would have been south, or southwest. They would have travelled to the beginning of the river at Lake Ontario, and from there southwest to the far end of the lake to the mouth of the Niagara River. At the mouth of the river they built a fort, Fort Niagara, in what today is the Village of Youngstown, N.Y., about six or seven miles below Niagara Falls. (The fort is still there and is well worth a visit.) These explorers pressed on from Fort Niagara on orders from the King of France to continue claiming and mapping this part of New France for its European motherland.
They would have travelled a few miles up the Niagara River to what today is Lewiston, N.Y. in their hollowed out canoes, carried their boats and supplies up the Niagara escarpment and past the Falls to the northern point of Grand Island, where they would have put back into the Niagara River and paddled upstream past the current site of Buffalo, N.Y. and out onto Lake Erie. From there they went southwest along the southern shore of Lake Erie until they disembarked at a point at or near what today is Barcelona, N.Y. From there they followed an old "portage" through the woods and up another escarpment to Mayville, N.Y., and the northern end of Lake Chatauqua. After leaving Lake Erie and just before the escarpment rising towards Mayville, this "portage" took them right through the main intersection of what today is the Village of Westfield. The portage in Westfield is Portage St., north and south, and also New York state Route 17. The explorers eventually found their way to the current site of Pittsburgh and beyond by way of Lake Chatauqua, and the Chadakoin and Alleghany Rivers. In Pittsburgh they established Fort Duquesne and New France was expanding rapidly into the interior of North America as the English had established themselves only along a thin strip of the east coast between New England and Georgia. These French explorers in the beginning of the 18th century were the first Europeans to set foot and eye on the land that would eventually become Westfeld, N. Y. It would be over 100 years before the first English speaking Europeans settled and established Westfield as a town at the very beginning of the 19th century, approximately 1802 if I can recollect Miss Betts speaking to me from the past, when a James McMahon and perhaps a brother of his established the town in almost the most western point of New York state along the shores of Lake Erie. (This information is off the top of my head. It is basically correct but in all likelihood not very exact. Where is Miss Betts when I need her? Caroline Betts, are you still with us? Now there was a teacher who was truly deserving of a "Teacher of the Year" award.)
(Well Greg, I just had to do a quick historical/geographic background of Westfield. Got to have some sort of perspective to work from. But, I like the blog, and I hope and assume I am using it correctly. And, since we haven't established any specific direction in which our story of Westfield will take us ... well, this is a beginning footnote of sorts. More later ... its late Sunday night, 1/6/08.)
3 comments:
Neat!
I never knew there was more to Westfield than Grace Bedell and Welch's. (Well, of course there had to be something more, I just never thought it would be so significant.)
Did you ever have Mrs. Blackburn as a teacher there in Westfield? That's my wife's grandmother. I guess she taught English.
david ... I can't believe someone saw this blog and responded to it! How inspiring! I vaguely remember Mrs. Blackburn, in fact, I can picture her face but I can't remember what she taught. I think she may have been a high school teacher who either retired before I made it to her grade level, or who taught a class that I never took. In any event, I do remember more vividly her husband who taught what we called back in the 60's, in Westfield, the "special class." And we would have called the kids in his class "retarded" or even the "retards." We used that language because that was, well, the language that was used. But I do remember the Blackburns, though I don't think I would have recalled them on my own if you hadn't recollected them for me. That's interesting that you mentioned Grace Bedell and of course Welch's. Perhaps those are Westfield's 2 greatest claims to fame. But there are lots of other bits of information about Westfield that are fascinating. My closest friend from my childhood while growing up in Westfield, Greg, and I are attempting to write a story, or history, or documentary, (we're not exactly sure what just yet) about Westfield. We grew up there in the 50's, 60's and early 70's, and then left, but we have such strong memories of the "rich" life we had, and the wonderful people and families that we shared, that we wanted to put something down in wriiting about it. Hence, this blog. Thanks for your comment and stay tuned for more as we continue to put our thoughts together about what is still to us a very special place. Go Westfield!!!
Look for Westfield's new website to be online sometime this week at www.westfieldny.com, complete with articles about various and sundry aspects of life here. If you would like to submit an article about the recollections of your youth, please send an e-mail to me at oceangod8@yahoo.com and I'll respond by less anonymous means with more details. Good luck with the weblog and book.
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