Southern Schoharie County

Before 1848, Blenheim and Broome were two large towns. This posed problems for the citizens and politicians, therefore people petitioned the Seventy-first Legislature to divide the towns and form a new one. A bill, passed on March 16, 1848, created the town of Gilboa. The 20^th of the next month, the citizens of Gilboa held their first meeting, and elected their first officials.

During the “anti-rent” troubles of the 1840s, Gilboa was involved, yet there was no violence, except an incident where men dressed as “Injuns” threatened to tar-and-feather a deputy in he would not destroy rent papers. He did so. Nearly all people in Gilboa were Antis, actually, but they did not want to harm anyone, just scare landlords.

It is supposed that the first settlers of Gilboa was the Dise family. John Dise built a

grist-mill around the 1790s. The town’s prosperity attracted people to it. A man by the name of Archibald Croswell settled in Gilboa, having moved there from Connecticut. Mr. Croswell purchased the Dise mill property, and rebuilt a stone grist-mill. The wall cracked and fell after several years, and another mill was built. After a few years, business in Gilboa expanded, and in little time, Gilboa had a tannery, fulling mill, a hemlock-bark extraction factory, a sawmill, and a pottery factory. It even had a cotton factory, called the “Gilboa Cotton Mill Co.”, but it was subsequently destroyed in the flood of 1869.

In 1797, Gilboa built it’s first tavern. It also had three churches, the Reformed Church of Gilboa, the Methodist Episcopal Church of Gilboa, and the Flat Creek Baptist Church. Job Tibbetts founded the Broome Centre, notice the British influence in spelling. Interestingly, since Tibbetts founded the Centre, the hamlet was called “Tibbetts” by people, and, in fact, was the only name known, by some, of the Hamlet.

David Elerson was a soldier alongside with Timothy Murphy, settled in Schoharie after the battle of Monmouth. He was considered a hero, and is known mostly because of a pamphlet, written by an unknown person.

Also included in the chapter is the transcript by which Gilboa was created, and a picture of Thomas Colby’s home and farm.

The times and dates of these events, big and small, make you feel, pardon me for being generic, but you feel so insignificant. Yes, these events are not worldly important, but their age alone makes you think.