March 1990

Harpending's Corners

by

Edwin N. Harris

Chapter Index

Sam Harpending

To read the first 150 years of Dundee history is to read frequently about the Harpendings. Early Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam (New York after 1664) the first Harpending landed in 1663 coming from Newenhuys, The Netherlands. From the family history we find in 1742 a John Harpendick and a Henry Harpentine. In 1774 there was Hendrick Harpending, and Peter (1744-1840).

In Cleveland's History of Yates County we find that Samuel, the son of Peter Harpending and Anna Compton his wife, was born at Perth Amboy, New Jersey, in 1778. Peter, the father, spent the last years of his life with his son in Dundee and died there in 1840 at age ninety-six. He was a soldier of the Revolution, and had a son Peter who lived and died in Tyrone. The mother of Samuel and Peter died when they were young, and the father had two subsequent wives.

Sam at age thirteen was apprenticed to a hatter, Godfrey Bartles, a son of Frederic Bartles, who was the original settler, and builder of the mill at the outlet of Mud Lake. Sam eventually arrived at Genoa, Cayuga County, where he worked at the hatter's trade for several years. In 1811 he with his wife, the former Hannah Cosad, came to what is now Dundee, and moved into a very poor log house on the banks of Big Stream.

Hannah Cosad was born in 1782 in Somerset, New Jersey. In May of 1811, with three children, accompanied by her husband, Samuel, she came from Cayuga County to Dundee. She rode on top of a load of furniture which was piled into a hay rigging and drawn by a yoke of oxen. "Uncle Sam" was driving the team.

Soon, near what is now Union and Seneca Streets, he opened a tavern and hat shop that he ran for thirty-five years. Beaver and other fur hats were popular at the time and he shot beaver and otter on Big Stream.

Sam is described as a mirthful and jolly man who loved horses, hunting, and like most good Dutchmen a good time. And he was enterprising. His first speculation was one acre of land, then twenty-five acres, then who knows how many, and soon he became the man to go to for purchasing land. Certainly he must have been a lender to many new arrivals to this semi-wilderness whose possessions were little more than an axe and a gun. Soon he built a home on what would become the site of the Harpending House hotel. His descendants became prominent in banking, medicine, law, and agriculture.

Lewis Cash Aldrich left us his impressions of Sam the First:

Large and burly of figure, the ideal of a country landlord, clear headed and shrewd in business affairs, kind and generous of heart withal, though tempestuous of temper. When once aroused it was no gentle shower that distilled, but a thunder storm, a hurricane, a tornado. His vocabulary of abusive language was wonderful, and woe to the unlucky wight who chanced to fall under his displeasure. He made things lively while the storm raged, but it would subside as quickly as it had been raised, and he would be just as ready in half an hour to do his victim a favor as he was to pour out his wrath. The old man always had a retinue of deadheads about him and I believe that custom has been continued by his successors. No one was refused food and shelter at the Harpending House for want of money. He gave liberally to the churches—to the first three built, each a building lot and a subscription equal to that of any of the members.

I attended High School with some of Sam's descendants. In more recent times visitors entering the Main Hall of the Dundee Area Historical Museum may see large portraits in oil of Sam, Hannah, and other Harpendings—gazing down at the scene below that includes us visitors gazing upward at them.

© 1990, Edwin N. Harris

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