The history of Vandemark Township was the history of the state.
CHAPTER XV.
I SAVE A TREASURE, AND START A FEUD
In the month of May, 1857, I went to a party. This was a new thing for
me; for parties had been something of which I had heard as of many
things outside of the experience of a common fellow like me, but always
had thought about as a thing only to be read of, like _porte cocheres_
and riding to hounds, and butlers and books of poems. Stuff for
story-books, and not for Vandemark Township; though when I saw the
thing, it was not so very different from the dances and "sings" we used
to have on the boats of the Grand Canal, as the Erie Ditch was then
called when you wanted to put on a little style.
The party was at the "great Gothic house" of Governor Wade, just
finished, over in Benton Township. The Governor was not even a citizen
of Vandemark Township, but he had some land in it. Buck Gowdy's great
estate lapped over on one corner of the township, Governor Wade's on the
other, and Hell Slew, nicknamed Vandemark's Folly Marsh cut it through
the middle, and made it hard for us to get out a full vote on anything
after we got the township organized.
The control shifted from the north side of the slew to the south side
according to the weather; for you couldn't cross Vandemark's Folly in
wet weather. Once what was called the Cow Vandemark crowd got control
and kept it for years by calling the township meetings always on our own
side of the slew; and then Foster Blake sneaked in a full attendance on
us when we weren't looking by piling a couple of my haystacks in the
trail to drive on, and it was five years before we got it back.
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