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Excerpt from History of Cherry Valley
No village in the United States has had so remark able a history as Cherry Valley; nor has any played so important a part in all the various epochs of the country's history. Indeed it may be said that a care ful student might trace through it the life of the country. With all its varied changes: the hardships and struggles of the colonial times; the sufferings and agonies of the revolutionary period; the trials and toils of an impoverished people commencing life over again in the infant republic; the beginning of the emigration from New England and its gradual increase until it became almost a universal exodus from the older states of the east to the new territories of the west; the building up of the villages on the great routes of this travel until they rivalled in their wealth and in¿uence the old commercial towns of New England and eastern New York; their gradual decline through the building of the canals and rail roads, which diverted from them their great sources of revenue; and following this the final destruction of their prosperity and in¿uence by the loss of their young men, who have, in recent years, so generally sought the growing country to the west, or the large cities in the east, as offering greater opportunities for advancement. It is not, however, the fact that Cherry Valley played a part in all of these variousepochs that makes its history remarkable, but that it played so important a part, and presents in so marked a manner the importance of the country vil lage in the early life of the country and its great decadence in later times. For, passing by its colon ial history, when as the home of the first English church and the first classical school west of the Hud son, and by reason of the prominent part it per formed in the revolution, it was recognized as the leading settlement west of Schenectady, we find it for forty years after the close of that war the leading commercial center and for half a century the wealth iest and most in¿uential village in the state west of the Hudson. But more remarkable still, although its population during this time never exceeded one thousand people, it was the home of a greater num ber of men of prominence and ability and of more skilled mechanics than any other place in the state, excepting only New York.
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