Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 12).djvu/150

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146
PIONEER ROADS

"In 1791 Sluman Wattles charged his cousin, Nathaniel Wattles, £4, 6s. for 'carting three barrells from your house to Catskill,' £1 for 'five days work on the road,' and 15 shillings for 'inspecting road.' Besides Nathaniel Wattles, Menad Hunt was interested in the work, and in 1792 the two men appealed to the state to be reimbursed for money paid out above the contract price.[1] During this year the father of the late Dr. Samuel H. Case, of Oneonta, emigrated to the upper Ouleout from Colchester, Conn., with his seven brothers. They drove cattle and sheep ahead of them, and consumed eight days in making the journey from the Hudson River. Solomon Martin went over the road in the same year, using Sluman Wattles's oxen, for which he was charged £1, 17s. He went to Catskill, and was gone fifteen days. This road was only twenty-five feet wide. In 1792 a regular weekly mail-route was established over it.

"These are among the many roads which were opened in the neighborhood before the century closed—before the Catskill

  1. Sluman Wattles's Account Book.—Halsey.