# Cattaraugus County, New York Cattaraugus County was still raw country when Ezra Brewster Strong Sr. arrived in 1832. A native of Vermont, he came by way of Monroe County to Farmersville, settling on land in the county's northern hill towns. There he married Eleanor, daughter of Matthias Lane, and there the couple raised eleven children while making, as one account put it, "a manly struggle with poverty." That struggle set the shape of the family's life in Cattaraugus County for the next several generations: farming the uplands, clearing roads, worshiping in the Baptist church, and marrying into the other families who had come to break the same ground. ## Farmersville and the First Generation Farmersville was the family's anchor. Ezra Sr. was living there in 1832 and remained through the 1850, 1855, 1860, and 1865 enumerations. His children were born and raised in the town. Ezra Brewster Strong Jr., born there 15 May 1829, spent nearly his whole life in Farmersville, working as a carpenter and farmer along Road 5 until his death before 1880. Reuben, Joseph Gardner Haskins Strong—later a captain in the 28th Iowa Infantry—William Nelson, Walter Van Cleat, Lucy Eleanore, and Eleanor Josephine (born 1 April 1841) all appear in Farmersville during these middle decades. Eleanor Jane Lane, the family's matriarch, died in Freedom on 2 July 1855 and was buried there. Jacob Lane Strong, born in Monroe County on 20 March 1826 and brought to Cattaraugus County as a small child in 1832, became a fixture of the community. A farmer, he married Phebe Louise Phelps, daughter of James Phelps, and settled his family in Freedom. He served as a deacon of the Baptist church for more than thirty years, and it was said that he and his six sons all voted in the same election district. He died in Cattaraugus in April 1899 and was buried at Elton; Phebe followed in 1906, buried beside him. ## Freedom and Sandusky Just north of Farmersville, the town of Freedom drew a cluster of connected families. Its first road had been laid out in 1813 along the valley of Clear Creek, and the town's growth over the following decades was measured partly in the bridges that crossed it. Daniel D. Newman, a Freedom resident across nearly every enumeration from 1850 through 1875, served as Commissioner of Highways and in 1877 erected the first iron bridge in the town, spanning Clear Creek at Sandusky. He later moved to Sandusky, then to Eagle, where he died on 21 January 1891; he was buried in Freedom. The Newman family filled the town. Franklin H. Newman lived in Freedom through the 1850s and 1860s before his death in May 1872. Lucy Newman appears there from 1850 into the new century. Chester C. Newman—born in Cattaraugus in June 1841 and remembered in the county gazetteer as a Sandusky grocer—made Freedom his lifelong home. Census after census, from 1860 through 1930, found him in the town, and he died there on 4 February 1931, buried alongside his kin. His wife, Sarah Jane Cornwell, shared that long Freedom residence and was buried there as well. The Crandall family was rooted in Freedom too. Henry Sprague Crandall was living in the county by 1840 and died in Freedom on 3 March 1845. His descendants—Henry S. Crandall, Benjamin Guile Crandall, Jacob A. Crandall, William H. Crandall, Achsah Charlotte Crandall, and Anna Eliza Crandall—appear across the town's records through the mid-century decades. Priscilla B. Crandall, who married into the Strong line, moved between Freedom and Farmersville from 1840 into the 1880s. Benjamin died at Delevan on 30 March 1887. ## The Next Generation and the Journey West The two families joined when Walter Ezra Strong, born in Farmersville on 6 February 1855, married Jeanette "Jennie" Lydia Newman on 3 July 1875. Jennie had been born in Freedom on 12 December 1859, and both had grown up within a few miles of one another in the county's northern towns. Their first children were born in Farmersville—Franklin Dewitt Strong on 21 April 1876, Grace Ruby Strong on 6 October 1880, and Mattie Pearl Strong on 26 June 1882. In 1884 Walter and Jennie left Cattaraugus County for good. They moved the whole family west by train to Wild Rose Prairie, near Spokane, taking Walter's widowed mother Priscilla (Crandall) Strong with them. The children who followed, including William "Will" Henry Strong in 1887, were born and raised on that western prairie rather than in the New York hills. Their departure marked the closing of the family's Cattaraugus chapter, though relatives remained: Walter Van Cleat Strong farmed in Machias into the 1910s, Hannah Elizabeth Easton lived in Little Valley through 1920, and Chester Newman held to Freedom until his death in 1931. ## The County Towns The family's life touched a scattering of Cattaraugus communities—Farmersville and Freedom above all, but also Sandusky, Machias, Yorkshire, Eagle, Delevan, Little Valley, Ellicottville, Olean, and Portville. These were farming towns of hill and valley, joined by roads and bridges the family themselves helped build, and bound together by church, ballot, and marriage. For nearly a century, from Ezra Strong's arrival in 1832 to Chester Newman's death in 1931, this corner of western New York was home.