While researching the locations of early physicians and businesses connected to the upcoming Doctor’s of Sandy Creek/Lacona I share this interesting article on “days of the old forty-niners”.

When the gold craze of 1849 swept the country, many citizens of Sandy Creek were stricken with the gold fever and wended their way to the land of fabulous wealth, 3,000 miles away, some never to return while others were more or less successful in their great undertaking. For such indeed it was in those days of limited facilities for travel, there being few railroads, only part way water travel of any kind, so it was mostly the overland stages or “Shank’s Horses.”

They left singly and in pairs, some to be separated while others hung together through all the various vicissitudes. Among the successful ones were Jas. Hagan, William Hinman, Major M. A. Pruyn, Wm. Cottrell and others. Wm. (Bill) Cottrell, a shoemaker got $12,000 worth of precious metal and after inquiring about express rates concluded they were rather high, so purchased a knapsack which he carried over his shoulder all the way home, with his $12,000 in gold in the sack, together with a quantity of crackers and cheese from which he ate along the way.

He built the house where Pitt Barker (South Main Street) and set out large quantities of rhubarb, intending to make rhubarb wine. For years the place was known as the Cottrell Farm, then the Sterns farm. It was mostly thick timber land; only a few acres along the road being tillable. The woods extended up nearly to the old Syracuse Northern Railroad bed and it was the wonderful hunting, trapping and fishing grounds of many of the Sandy Creek boys. There were originally only 35 acres in the farm, though the woods joined the Root farm which took in several acres more, also covered with thick timber of beech, birch, maple, hemlock, spruce and some soft pine which was gradually cut for both lumber and firewood, leaving only the maples.

Major Pruyn was one of the more successful ones and getting back with some $40,000 he formed a partnership with Edmund H. Sargent in the general mercantile business, know as Sargent & Pruyn which was located in the California Block, today the site of Ainsworth Library. The California and Union Block was the location of many businesses, including a drug store, a doctor and dentist offices.