Legends of the Shawangunk2 JR.pdf - Friends of the Sabbath ...

A Border Alarm. 129
required to await his turn for his grist, which sometimes consumed a day or two more.
Samp and coarse meal were made at home in various ways. Some had a heavy
wooden pestle fastened to a spring pole, with which a half bushel of corn could be
pounded at once. This was thought to be a great institution. Later on, small mill-stones,
made from the “grit” of Shawangunk mountain, and operated by hard labor, were
introduced into the settlements, by which laborious and tedious operation a semblance of
flour could be obtained.
Even the water-mills of the most approved pattern of those times were cumbersome
and unsatisfactory affairs. One of these was put up in Sullivan county by a man named
Thompson, and was facetiously dubbed Thompson’s samp-mortar by the early settlers.
The whole building would shake and quake to such an extent when the stones were
revolving that even venturesome boys would flee from it.
A BORDER ALARM.
THERE is nothing that will excite the sympathies of a border settlement more than the
alarm of a child missing or lost in the woods. The uncertainty as to its fate, compassion
for its agonized parents, and a realizing sense of the feelings of the little one, exposed to
Indian capture, or to be torn in pieces and devoured by wild beasts, or to the slower
process of perishing by cold and hunger,—all call forth the deepest human sympathy.
In 1810 the entire population of Bethel* town turned out, and for eight days searched
the roads for little Johnny Glass, and did not relinquish their efforts until all hope of
finding him alive was abandoned.
The lad was living with his parents near White lake. His mother sent him to carry
dinner to his father, who, with some men was chopping wood about a mile away. He
reached them safely and started for home, but for some reason got bewildered and lost his
way. When the lad did not return in the afternoon, his mother felt no anxiety, as she
surmised Johnny had got permission from his father to remain in the woods with the next
until they returned at nightfall. But when the father arrived in the evening and reported
that the lad had immediately started on his return trip, the dreadful truth flashed upon the
minds of the household.
Every parent can imagine the scene that ensued—the distress of the mother, the wild
energy of the father. Hastily summoning his nearest neighbors, the father spent the night
in a fruitless search in the woods, while the mother remained at home rendered frantic by
the intensity of her grief.
By the next morning the tidings had spread far and wide, and a thorough
* Quinlan.