Excerpt from History of the Town of Elma: Erie County, N. Y.; 1620 to 1901 Histories of nations and states, and even of some counties and cities are at hand in most of our public and private libraries; but a history of a town is not often to be found. Why is this? Is it because such a history is not necessary; because of the small area of territory; of the small and scattered population; of the ignorance, poverty, want of enterprise among the people; of the small importance attached to the growth and development of the town, and the events to be mentioned; or is it because no person or persons have been able or willing to devote the necessary time to gather the facts and so arrange them as to make a history? This, last, is most likely the true reason. Many times within the last twelve or fifteen years I have been entreated by several of my neighbors to write a history of the town of Elma. My reply "that I was not a historian," was met with the statement, "that being one of the early settlers in the town (coming in the spring of 1851), and having surveyed every road and almost every lot in the town, having been the first Town Clerk, after the formation of the town, and continuing as such Clerk for three years, thus becoming acquainted with every man then residing in the town, and having in my possession and within my reach books and papers that no other person in the town had, or could have, that I ought to give this information to the people, in the form of a history of the town of Elma." After much thought and with many doubts and fears, at seventy-five years of age, being too old to be engaged at continuous hard labor, and thinking this might give employment for a few leisure hours I consented to write one chapter as an experiment; with the agreement that I should read that chapter at a meeting of the "Young People's Association of Elma Village." I thought when that chapter was read they would be satisfied that writing history was not in my line and that would close up the matter. According to agreement I wrote what is here given as Chapter One, and read it before the Association on the evening of March 18th, 1897; but instead of saying that was enough, I was urged to go on and write a complete history of the town. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.