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Buried secret - Mrs. Howard Gunlocke, left, and Mrs. Raymond Peglow peer at water well of mystery in Springwater hills, located in Livingston County.
Thar’s mystery in them thar hills.
There is scenic grandeur, too, in those legend-haunted heights east and south of Tabor Corners in the Town of Springwater NY. At one point the hills stretch 1,160 feet above the level of the sea, the highest elevation in Western New York, excluding the Southern Tier.
A section of those hills has been known for years as “the Fort,” because of a legendary fortification there.
On a high and lonely plateau east of the Peglow Road, among several springs and walled-up holes, is a finely constructed, stone-walled well, some 18 feet deep and covered by a large flat stone. That well is dry and perhaps always has been. At least one of the others has held water in recent years, some are choked with rocks and dirt.
Even the oldest residents can’t remember when any of them was used. None of them is close to any present habitation. Who dug them, when and why are questions which have given rise to all kinds of yarns and speculation.
The natives call them “the Indian wells,” although the Senecas never had occasion or inclination to dig wells in a land of many lakes and streams. Some connect the wells with the Sullivan Expedition of Revolutionary times, but the colonial army marched well to the north of “the Fort” and there is no record of any detachment ever being in the Springwater hills.
About a mile west of the “Indian wells” is another mystery - an ancient, abandoned cemetery in the middle of a field. Of the core of headstones there, only two are marked - and they go back to the 1820s and 30s. The rest are plain field stones, set upright in the ground.
I think there is a definite connection between the wells and the burying ground. Both point to a long-vanished settlement in those rugged hills.
It happens that the mystery wells are on land owned by Rochester’s public safety commissioner, Kenneth C. Townson. But the commander of the bureau that solves city mysteries is quick to admit that he has no answer to the one on his vast Livingston County farm.
For more than 70 years there have been Peglows living on the road that bears their family name. Oldest of the clan is 82-year-old Edward Peglow, whose son, Raymond, now operates the family farm. It adjoins the “Fort Farm,” which Commissioner Townson acquired several years ago from the late Senator James W. Wadsworth.
The discovery of the “Indian Wells” goes back to a day in 1929 when Ray Peglow, cutting hay on his land, noted a man with a blueprint, directing six other men wielding picks and shovels on “the Fort Farm.”
The man with the blueprint was the late Mark Wright of Springwater and he was uncovering the old wells in the belief that they were of great historical interest. He told the Peglows he hoped to develop the site and pledged them to secrecy about his discovery. Wright died shortly afterward. The Peglows kept the secret for several years.
Then came the flood of theories - tales of Indians, a great stone fort, of Sullivan’s solders and settlers using the wells for storage. A few practical folks believe that the wells belonged to a deserted settlement whose people are buried in the lonely graveyard in the field.
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