A correspondent of the author's, who became a resident of Allegany, in 1820, thus describes its then condition: "The county was then just recovering from the effects of the war; the cold seasons, the financial revulsion of 1818-'19; had just began to emerge from long untoward years. For a considerable period in each spring and fall, in anticipation of high water, and navigation upon the Allegany river, the main roads of the county would be thronged with emigrants, making tavern keeping lucrative, and affording a market for any surplus provisions the county had to spare. But it was a pretty hard backwoods region; its hunters, trappers, and anglers, out numbered its agriculturists; the deer were yet plenty in its forests; venison, peltry, furs, maple sugar, were almost lawful tender in all matters of traffic; a framed house was aristocratic, about most of the log ones there were but stinted improvements, often enclosed with log or brush fences. The whole region had a most forbidding aspect; it was as primitive, rough, and inhospitable, to appearance, as any that I ever beheld; and yet a majority of its inhabitants were of the "right sort;" a good specimen of the backwoodsmen of our whole country.

"Angelica, though then called an old village, was but a small cluster of buildings. It had a court-house, two taverns, two stores, and a few mechanic shops. In that year, the pioneer printer in so many different localities—Franklin Cowdery—had moved a rude press, and a few fonts of battered type, from Olean, where he had published the Hamilton Recorder, and had started the first paper in Allegany county, the Angelica Republican. . . ."