PERSONAL MEMOIRS.
CHAPTER I.
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Early in the spring of 1810, I accompanied Mr. Alexander Bryan Johnson, of Utica, a gentleman of wealth, intelligence, and enterprise, to the area of the Genesee country, for the purpose of superintending a manufactory for a company incorporated by the State Legislature. After visiting Sodus Bay, on Lake Ontario, it was finally resolved to locate this company's works near Geneva, on the banks of Seneca Lake.
During my residence here, the War of 1812 broke out; the events of which fell with severity on this frontier, particularly on the lines included between the Niagara and Lake Champlain, where contending armies and navies operated. While these scenes of alarm and turmoil were enacting, and our trade with Great Britain was cut off, an intense interest arose for manufactures of first necessity, needed by the country, particularly for that indispensable article of new settlements, window glass. In directing the foreign artisans employed in the making of this product of skill, my father, Col. Lawrence Schoolcraft, had, from an early period after the American Revolution, acquired celebrity, by the general superintendency of the noted works of this kind near Albany, and afterwards in Oneida County.
Under his auspices, I directed the erection of similar works in Western New York and in the States of Vermont and New Hampshire.
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CHAPTER VI.
The New York Columbian says:--
"The author has before given the public a valuable work upon the Lead Mines of Missouri, and, if we mistake not, a book of instructions upon the manufacture of glass. He is advantageously known as a man of science and literary research, and well qualified to turn to beneficial account the mass of information he must have collected in his tour through that interesting part of the country, which has attracted universal attention, though our knowledge of it has hitherto been extremely limited.
CHAPTER XXIV.
In the year 1808, my father removed from Albany to Oneida County. I remained at the old homestead in Guilderland, in charge of his affairs, until the following year, when I also came to the west. The next spring I was offered handsome inducements to go to the Genesee country, by a manufacturing company, who contemplated the saving of a heavy land transportation from Albany on the article of window-glass, if the rude materials employed in it could be found in that area of country. I visited it with that view; found its native resources ample, and was still more delighted with the flourishing appearance of this part of the Western country than I had been with Utica and its environs. Auburn, Geneva, Canandaigua, and other incipient towns, seemed to me the germs of a land "flowing with milk and honey."
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