ooper's novel, _The
Pioneers_.]

[Footnote 62: The original of Richard Jones, in _The Pioneers_.]

[Footnote 63: Plough-Jogger was the pseudonym of Jedediah Peck.]

[Footnote 64: _Address at Cooperstown Centennial_, Walter H. Bunn.]

[Footnote 65: _Reminiscences_, Levi Beardsley, p. 89.]

[Footnote 66: Beardsley's _Reminiscences_.]

[Footnote 67: _Chronicles of Cooperstown_.]

[Footnote 68: _James Fenimore Cooper_, Mary E. Phillips, p. 26. The
organ is now at Fynmere.]

CHAPTER VI

OLD-TIME LOVE AND RELIGION

Enough has been recorded to show the general character of Cooperstown as
it existed at the close of the eighteenth century. A more intimate view
of its life at this period is suggested by a package of faded letters,
some of which are here printed, not as supplying historical data, for in
this they are quite lacking, but because whoever reads them with
imagination begins to breathe the atmosphere of the time of their
writing, and in the charm of their feminine confidences discovers a side
of frontier life that is not otherwise revealed.

The letters were written to Chloe Fuller, who visited in Cooperstown for
some years at the home of Dr. Thomas Fuller. The doctor's wife before
her marriage, although not related to him, had the same family name, and
Chloe Fuller was her younger sister. Chloe Fuller became celebrated as a
village belle, and it was said that she had more beaus in constant
attendance than any other girl in Otsego. Dr. Fuller was a favorite with
two generations of young men in the village, for he had also two young
daughters, who, a few years later, became noted for their qualities of
mind and daintiness of apparel. Eliza and Emma Fuller were
blue-stockings who knew the value of pretty bonnets and gowns. In the
early days of the Presbyterian church, the sabbath splendor of their
entrance at divine service, always a little late, and with the necessity
of being ushered to the very front pew, divided the devotion of the
worshippers. Eliza Fuller became the wife of Judge Morehouse, and
established the traditional hospitality of Woodside Hall.

[Illustration: _Forrest D. Coleman_

THE WORTHINGTON HOMESTEAD]

Chloe Fuller married Trumbull Dorrance, a descendant of Governor
Jonathan Trumbull of Connecticut, and her daughter, becoming the wife
of John R. Worthington, was long identified with Cooperstown as mistress
of the White House, the Worthington homestead built in 1802 on Main
str