Settlers

When a party of four women, five men, and a ten-year-old boy leave their comfortable homes in eastern New York and faced westward on a cold February morning in the year 1807, they knew they would need a full measure of endurance and courage, but they were far from knowing the challenges and adventures that lay ahead in the newly opened Iroquois lands around the Finger Lakes. In this carefully researched historical novel, E. R. Eastman tells the story of the pioneers who settled "Genesee Country" of frontier New York in the early nineteenth century.The Settlers brings to life men and women of pioneer times and shows their reactions, their work, their play, their hopes and their ideals, their joys and sorrows, their loves and their antipathies as they emigrated over the westward trail, carved homes—and a living out—of the wilderness, and defended those homes against aggression and invasion. In addition to its being an exciting and moving tale of human adventure, The Settlers gives a vivid account of pioneer travel, describing in colorful detail how the woods were cleared, crops raised, cabins built and furnished.

"A farm family living in Columbia County, New York, prior to the War of 1812, is portrayed in migrating over the Catskill Trail to Ithaca, Geneva, and the Genesee Valley. The ideals, hopes and difficulties of the pioneers are presented in a manner to secure and hold the interest of all readers. The activities of this rural family are described from the standpoint of life within the home, life on the trail, and the final settlement in the fertile valley of the Genesee River. The story is based on historically accurate records which should make the novel valuable reading for students of the development and growth of America."—Arthur K. Getman, formerly Chief of Agricultural Education at the New York State Department of Education, "In his latest novel, The Settlers, E. R. Eastman deals with the 'Genesee movement,' that strange urge that led so many families and whole communities, following the Revolution and Sullivan's Expedition, to pick up their belongings and plod westward to possess the new land that had lately been the hunting country of the Iroquois. The forest runners and the riflemen found the Genesee country; the settlers had tamed it with their plows and axes. But oh, the price they had to pay in fortitude, in tears and weariness! The characters that live again in Eastman's novel make the reader revise the contribution of the settlers to the making of the Northeast as no historian could hope to do."—Romeyn Berry, author of Dirt Roads to Stoneposts and Behind the Ivy

E. R. Eastman (1885–1970) worked as a teacher and school principal in Interlaken, Richford, and Newark Valley, New York and was employed as agricultural agent in Delaware County. Eastman was one of the founders of the Dairyman’s League Cooperative and was editor of its newsletter from 1917 to 1922. In 1922 he became editor of the American Agriculturist, a position he held until 1947. He authored thirteen historical novels. Eastman served on the New York State Board of Regents and he was a trustee of both Ithaca College and Cornell University. Carol Kammen is the Tompkins County (New York) Historian and author of On Doing Local History.