for themselves and their posterity, with a noble and praiseworthy
resolution. Beneath the sturdy strokes of the axe, the wilderness
slowly but gradually disappeared around their rude homes, and in the
place of the gloomy forest, fields of waving grain appeared on every
side to cheer and encourage the industrious woodsman. The forests
abounded in the most ravenous animals, such as bears, panthers and
wolves, while along the river and creek bottoms the ground was at
places almost literally covered with poisonous reptiles. The climate
was severe, and the country remote from the frontier, yet
notwithstanding the obstacles and discouragements that beset them,
these were not sufficient to cause the settlers to relax their efforts
to rear comfortable homes for their descendants.

The following story I have taken from Priest's Collection, for the
reason that the scene of the exploit is said to have been near our
town boundaries:

"Ben Wheaton was one of the first settlers on the waters of the
Susquehanna, immediately after the war, a rough, uncultivated and
primitive man. As many others of the same stamp and character, he
subsisted chiefly by hunting, cultivating the land but sparingly, and
in this way raised a numerous family amid the woods, in a half starved
condition, and comparative nakedness. But as the Susquehanna country
rapidly increased in population, the hunting grounds of Wheaton were
encroached upon; so that a chance with his smooth-bore, among the deer
and bears was greatly lessened. On this account Wheaton removed from
the Susquehanna country, in Otsego county, to the more unsettled wilds
of the Delaware, near a place yet known by the appellation of Wait's
Settlement,[A] where game was more plenty. The distance from where he
made his home in the woods, through to the Susquehanna, was about