Introduction 

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In reading these chapters,  if any one should complain that the events follow no chronological order, we reply it was not our intention to follow such order, but to take up various trades and pursuits and professions of the early settlers as they come up in our mind and write of them, and of the persons connected with them, at the same time. On occasion an old memory, some anecdote, some  tansaction of those early days has welled up in the mind, and we have transcribed them fearing that if we did not pen down the item then and there, it might not occur to us again.

   We have not attempted a bare dry diary of events as they occurred day after day, but to give pictures of the past as photographed in our own memory.

The early history, Town of Ellicott
Personal recollections of
Dr. Gilbert W. HAZELTINE, 1887

The first sawmill built by James PRENDERGAST at the Rapids was the third in Southern Chautauqua Co.  Nathan CASS in 1815 made a clearing and built a sawmill at what was then known as Slippery Rock.  In the fall of 1816 or early the following spring, CASS sold his interest at Slippery Rock to John and Darius DEXTER of Mayville and Dewittville.

   The DEXTERS were among the earliest settlers of the county.  John , Darius and William DEXTER came to Mayville in 1808 and bought lands in that vicinity.  Darius Dexter cut the first road from the lake through Mayville towards the Cross Roads.  Where the courthouse now stands was cleared by him.  He went back to Herkimer Co. in the fall and returned in the spring of 1809 with his wife.

    He was at Black Rock in the War of 1812, as an officer with one of the Chautauqua companies.  At the close of the war he became a Colonel and was the first commanding officer of the 162 Regiment of the NY State Militia. He was one of Ellicott's most prominent and valuable citizens, long remembered for his charities and also for his one swear word for which he became noted. He was known everywhere as "DOM" Dexter.

   The brothers for several years had a store and ashery at Dewittville
and Darius resided there, He removed to Slippery Rock, in 1818, and the locality soon thereafter assumed the name of  DEXTER'S MILLS, afterward, DEXTERVILLE, now (1885) as East Jamestown.

    Mrs. Dexter a lady of great worth, died there  in 1829. His son,
Harrison DEXTER now a wealthy lumberman, resides in Cincinatti,  His wife, was the second daughter of William and Laura KNIGHT of
Jamestown.  After selling the property at Dexterville to FALCONER, JONES and ALLEN,  Darius Dexter removed to Perry IL, and died there.

For nearly 70 years, Dexter and Dexterville have been household words with the people of Jamestown, as were also TIFFANY, and Tiffanyville, WORK, and Worksburg,  PLUMB and Plumbville. Now all the locations have changed their names, and the busy residents who crowd the streets and highways of those once peaceful, pleasant hamlets, not one in a hundred, ever heard the names of their founders spoken.