Delaware County NY Genealogy and History Site

• Century Farm by George D. Taylor - Article with photos in The Farm Quarterly, 1950 - (will take time to load 7 large files)
• Century Farm by George D. Taylor - (3MB pdf file for broadband users)

The Taylor Farm was cited by Governor Dewey as a Century Farm. No outside money has gone into this rocky hill-farm which has grown from one hundred to five hundred fertile acres and supported six generation of the family in comfort.

As Governor Dewey read the ciation that listed the Taylor Farm among the Century Farms of New York, there was the implication of individual accomplishment. But I know that Century Farms are not made in any one lifetime.

I remembered the story of my great grandfather plodding along beside his oxcart two hundred miles into the wilderness; and, baffled by that very wilderness, selecting this meagre land site.

I recalled that eighty years later I had seen my grandfather start out in the morning with his black mare and buggy to make a round of neighborly calls, reminding me as he went to do my chores. And I remembered his stalwart sons, my father and my uncles, carrying his csket to the grave on the day of his burial.

I remembered the tremendous vitality and determination of my father; and his practical philosophy and his sacrificial generosity.

There came a picture of 1895 - the grasshopper year. I was seven years old. The meadows and pastures were as bare and brown as the road. The only green things the grasshopper hadn't eaten were the leaves on the trees; so we cut down the trees where ...continued