everybody gave a
respectful hearing to the Doctor's tales regarding the strange
characters he had known or heard of. At least two generations of boys
have grown up and gone out from the village who have listened to his
stories. Wherever those boys are now--scattered far and wide--they
recall no scenes or events of their springtime without a remembrance
of Dr. Evans and his tales, none of which were wanting in pith or
amusement.]

In 1840, a newspaper was established here which was thereafter
conducted by Wm. J. Knapp for about two years when, owing to poor
health, Mr. Knapp was compelled to discontinue its publication. It
was the "Oneonta Weekly Journal."

The growth of the village of Oneonta from 1840 to 1850 must have been
very slow. The building of a house in those days was an act of no
little importance. For ten years there were but few dwellings erected,
and those few were of a cheap and inferior class. The population
hardly kept pace with the building. The young went west, and the
number of families that moved out was about equal to the number that
moved in.

From 1850 to 1860 there was but little building and but a small
increase in population. There are no accessible figures showing the
population of the village at the different decades, but the census
returns for the town may be taken as safe guides in forming an
estimate of the village population at different periods. In 1830, when
the town was organized, it contained a population of eleven hundred
and forty-nine. In 1840 it had increased to nineteen hundred and
thirty-six. In 1850 it had slightly decreased, then being nineteen
hundred and two. In 1855 it was twenty-one hundred and sixty-seven.
These are the figures for the town. If the village population had
increased in the same ratio, it could not have been far from two
hundred and fifty when the town was formed in 1830. It is hardly fair
to infer that the village ratio of increase was quite equal to that
of the town. The western emigration was made up more largely from the
village than from the farms. The same cause--lack of profitable
employment--that has transferred the young men of New England from the
plow to the manufacturing centres, transferred our young men from a
place where no industry was encouraged, to remote but wider fields of
usefulness.

In 1851 the Albany & Susquehanna railroad company was organized and
chartered. Samuel S. Beach and Woodbury K. Cooke drew up the first
notice of th