It need not excite our wonder
that in those days people were anxious for better and speedier means of
communication, a better means of getting from and to the new settlements.
The construction of roads was of the utmost importance.
As a turnpike road of that
day was regarded as furnishing the best possible facilities for postal
and commercial intercourse. Turnpike companies were early formed
to afford the desired relief . The turnpike fever was as virulent
in its day as was the plank road fever at a later day.
In 1809 there were 67 turnpikes
in this state with stock amounting to $5,141,750, also 21 chartered bridge
companies with stock amounting to $415,000, being 88 companies with a total
stock of $5,556,750, total miles of road 3,071.
The above is taken from
a communication of Dr. DeWitt to the society for the promotion of useful
arts.
When a turnpike had a line
of stage coaches run upon it, it seemed that improvement in that direction
had found its utmost limit.
But some thought the world
was being turned upside down and that all the wealth of the country would
be in the grasp of aristocratic stage proprietors and the bloated turnpike
stockholders, insomuch that the liberties our fathers "fout" for would
be seriously endangered.
Some considered the turnpike
a nuisance, as letting an undesirable class of people into the country,
besides opening it to the importation of all the foreign knickknacks and
they had no doubt "there had been as much as a cart load of crockery brought
into town." The outlook was appalling.
Equally discouraging were
the aspects of the times to a man who was known in his day as Vinegas Sloan.
He had a farm in the same county in which Cazenovia was situated at the
time and a turnpike road was laid across it, much to his dissatisfaction.
He wouldn't have a farm with a turnpike through it, and sold it and went
to Orleans county and as he said, "He had
just got things comfortable around him, when the state built a d---d
canal through his farm." He wouldn't live on a farm with a canal
through it and sold it and moved away off into Chautauqua county on a side
hill where he thought he was safe from such intrusions for the future,
and had just got things comfortable about him again when they "run a g---l
d--d railroad right through his house." He gave it up. The
march of improvement was going at a pace he could not dodge or escape.