dings, which stood
on the site of the present Village Library, were also destroyed by fire.
At this conflagration, which seemed about to complete the destruction of
Main Street, a woman appeared, who equalled the courage of the firemen
in her defiance of the flames. She was Susan Hewes, a maiden lady who
kept a milliner's shop in the little one-story building that stands on
the north side of the Main Street, a short distance west of the corner
of Fair Street. Emulating the example of the men who saved the Cory
building, she appeared on the roof of her little shop, and presented a
dramatic spectacle as she stood forth in the glare of the flames, crying
out that she would save her property at the cost of her life.
Fortunately the flames were checked without any such sacrifice, and
Susan Hewes lived to become, more than half a century afterward, the
oldest native inhabitant of the village, famous for the old-fashioned
tangled garden on Pine Street, where she dwelt so long among her
favorite flowers. During the Civil War period she was a marked figure in
the village, for her outspoken independence in expressing sympathy for
the Southern cause led to a visit of remonstrance with which a committee
of leading citizens honored her in her little milliner's shop; while her
refusal to submit to the dictates of fashion when the huge hoop-skirts
came into vogue caused her to be gazed upon as a marvel of
incompleteness in dress.

For a time Cooperstown was much depressed by the ruin which fire had
wrought in the village, but, before long, a new business section began
slowly to rise from the ashes of the old. West of Pioneer Street, where
the Eagle Tavern had narrowed the width of the main thoroughfare to the
dimensions of a mere lane, the street was now made of uniform width, and
new business blocks were erected. By the close of the Civil War all
signs of destruction had disappeared, and the Main street of
Cooperstown, if far less picturesque than before, had assumed the
appearance of brand new prosperity.

This period, in fact, marks the beginning of a gradual change in the
character of Cooperstown, by which an elderly village, typical in its
inherited traditions, has taken on the airs of a summer resort, and has
become the residence, for a part of each year, of wealthy families whose
chief interests lie elsewhere, and to whom Otsego is a playground. While
much of the older character of the village remains, the contact with the
ou