Carleton Watkins Aurora Borealis
Lumber was the source of considerable prosperity for the first and second generations of Oneontans like the Emmons and Watkins families. Carleton's grandfather supervised the felling of trees and cutting them into logs that were lashed together and rafted down the Susquehanna River to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and then on to the Chesapeake Bay, where the Susquehanna River ended and the logs were milled into lumber for construction purposes for the Baltimore and Washington, D.C. markets. In Carleton Watkins's birth year, 1829, there were reportedly two hundred twenty-nine sawmills in Otsego County.[36] Logging and agriculture were the chief occupations until the first toll roads were built in the early 1830s that opened numerous new mercantile possibilities for the Susquehanna River Valley and its surrounding communities. The number of cattle (counted at 2,906 by census takers) exceeded the number of people (2,842) in 1829, the year of Carleton's birth.[37]
Carleton's mother and father [Fig. 7b] were married about 1827 or 1828 and he remained an only-child for almost three years until the arrival of a baby sister, Harriet, in 1832. The two of them were joined by another girl, Caroline in 1834,[38] which was a benchmark year for John and Julia Watkins and their three toddlers. The catalytic event for the aspiring Watkins family was the death of Julia's father and her inheritance of the well-located and popular McDonald Tavern. Carleton's father now had much more freedom to guide and develop the family asset. To this end he made some notable changes in style and practice of the operation that resulted in the McDonald Tavern becoming a focus of community social activity during the 1830s and 1840s, when Carleton was growing up.
We learn from Willard Huntington's Old Time Notes how young Carleton's father had a deeply patriotic streak and took Independence Day quite seriously. In 1834 he organized a well-received celebration, which consisted of a parade led by Revolutionary War drummer, David Wakelee, and a reading of the Declaration of Independence. The parade and orations were followed by a public banquet at the McDonald Tavern where (despite the proprietor's aversion to alcohol) "Wine and whiskey flowed in abundance. . ."[39]. Following the banquet a volley of paper balloons were sent up from the McDonald Tavern accompanied by cannon fire.
[36] Eugene D. Milener, Oneonta: The Development of a Railroad Town, Plainview, New York: Privately Printed, 1997, p. 2.
[37] David H. Burr, An Atlas of New York State, New York: Davd H. Burr, 1829.
[38] The family grew to eight children by 1844, when the youngest, James was born. See Palmquist, 1987-88, p. 5.
[39] Old Time Notes, p. 2012.