This family is deserving of special mention were it only for the fact that it is identified with the discovery of the "Congress Spring." Mr. and Mrs. Jewel are still living on the "old Nelson Place" on Henry street, at an extraordinary age – the husband being now in his ninety-eighth and the wife in her ninety-seventh year. Mrs. Jewel, {As mentioned in the chapter on "Grave-yards," Mrs. Jewel was the daughter of Jonathan Holmes, who built the old Columbian Hotel in 1808.} who is a remarkably intelligent lady, was recently "interviewed" by Mr. Nelson Cook, the artist, who, at my request, kindly visited the aged couple. To Mr. Cook, Mrs. Jewel gave the following highly interesting, and, in many respects, wholly new pieces of information:

Mrs. Jewel further stated that in the spring of 1790, among the visitors at the "High Rock" were a Congressman (John Taylor Gilman) and an aged gentleman, his friend and fellow-traveller. One day as the former, accompanied by Mrs. Jewel’s young brother, was returning from a hunt along a winding foot-path leading to her father’s house – the aged gentleman meanwhile sitting on the door-step awaiting their coming – the boy, highly elated, ran forward exclaiming: "O mother! we’ve found a new spring!" To the question of Mrs. Holmes, "Who found it?" her son replied, "The Congress." {Henry Holmes, who was the little boy thus referred to, afterwards married and settled in Troy, N.Y., where he died in 1826, aged forty-four. He is buried in the Mount Ida Cemetery.} The aged gentleman then said, laughingly, to Mr. Gilman, who had now come up: "The spring shall always be called ‘The Congress.’ " Thereupon, the entire household "turned out" and went down to see the wonderful discovery. At this period it was necessary to climb over logs waist-high to gain access to the new spring – the water issuing from a fissure in the rock. For a long time afterward the water was conducted to the glass through a wooden spout fastened into the crevice.

Beroth Bullard was born at Stourbridge, Mass., in 1769, and was fully educated in that State for the medical profession. He first settled in Augusta, Maine, but thence emigrated to Greenfield, Saratoga County, N.Y., about the year 1800. {His brother, Alpheus Bullard, came to Greenfield about 1809, and settled in Schuylerville about 1810.} Soon after, he married Charlotte, eldest daughter of Capt. St. John, of the latter place, in the year 1813. The Doctor removed to Saratoga Springs, and in 1817 built the residence opposite the present Town Hall, in which Dr. Freeman afterward resided up to the time of his death. The Saratoga County Medical Society was organized in the year 1806, with only a few members, among whom was Dr. Elijah Porter, of Waterford, father of Ex-Judge John K. Porter. Dr. Bullard and Billy J. Clark became members of the Medical Society in 1807, and Dr. Steel a year later, in 1808. Dr. Bullard, in connection with the celebrated Billy J. Clark, of Moreau, was one of the earliest workers in the cause of temperance.

Judge Bockes, who was then a mere boy, well remembers riding on horseback to call Dr. Bullard to the bedside of his sick mother, and was present at his sudden death. The remains of Dr. Bullard were interred in the Fitch Cemetery, on the same farm where he died. He left one son and six daughters, several of the descendants of whom yet reside at Greenfield and Saratoga Springs. {Gardner Bullard, of Saratoga Springs, was a distant cousin of Dr. Bullard; Benjamin Bullard, of Medway, Mass., of the third generation, was the great-grandfather of each. The wife of Mr. Granger, of Saratoga, is a grand-daughter of Dr. Bullard, as is also the present wife of John N. Smith, of Greenfield. Nor should we omit to mention, as one of the early settlers, Mr. Thomas Seymour, who, born in Greenfield, is now residing with his daughter, Mrs. Truman Safford, at Saratoga Springs, hale and hearty, in his eighty-ninth year.}

In 1785, the Fitch family, influenced by settlers in Ballston, came from Wilton and Norwalk, Connecticut, and selected four farms in what was then Ballston (but is now Greenfield), at a place since called St. John’s Corners, about four miles north-west of Saratoga Springs. From the Kayaderosseras they journeyed some five miles into the wilderness, marking the trees on either side the better to find their way back. They returned to Connecticut, and the year following, Ebenezer Fitch, Giles Fitch, Captain John St. John, who married Hannah Fitch, their sister, and a Mr. Smith, with their four families, removed from Connecticut to this county, and tarried a few days with their friends in Ballston, and on the 15 ^th day of May, 1786, the party started from the residence of Mr. Betts to erect their log-cabin in the wilderness. Ebenezer Fitch selected the north-west corner of two hundred acres; {Ebenezer Fitch afterward (in 1798) conveyed his portion to Ephraim Bullock, the grandfather of Hon. Judge Bockes.} Giles Fitch the south-west corner, Captain St. John the north-east corner, and Mr. Smith the south-west corner. Shortly after this, Major Jabez Fitch also moved up from Fairfield, Connecticut, {Hence the name of "Fairfield" was given originally to a part of the present town of Wilton.} and purchasing about five hundred acres from Dirck Lefferts, {Dirck Leffert’s first deed to Gideon Putnam of lands in Saratoga was three years later, and is dated June 2, 1791; and his first deed of lands where the old Ballston Springs were located was given to Benijah Douglas, grandfather of the late Hon. Stephen A. Douglas, November 28, 1791. In 1789, towns had been organized within what is now Saratoga County; but the territory was divided into three districts, viz.: Halfmoon, Saratoga, and Ballston. The eastern portion of Greenfield was then in the Saratoga district. Greenfield was not organized as a town until 1793.} built on the spot now known as Locust Grove, two miles north-west of the village. Soon after, the latter built a grist and saw-mill on the Creek, near the present residence of Mr. Daniels. This was the first mill built in this section of the country, but it has long gone to ruin. These three Fitches were all brothers, and were the only sons of Ebenezer Fitch, who was the third son of Governor Thomas Fitch, of Connecticut. {Thomas Fitch settled at Norwalk, Connecticut., in 1638, and died after 1665. His son, Thomas (the second), had seven children, and died in 1690, at Norwalk. Thomas (the third), a son of the latter, died at Norwalk, May 10, 1731, aged sixty. A daughter of his was grandmother of Chancellor Kent. Thomas (the fourth), was Chief-Justice of the Colony of Connecticut, and from 1754 to 1756 was Governor of that Colony; died July 18, 1774, aged seventy-five. He had ten children. His third son, Ebenezer, was born at Norwalk, February 25, 1729; married Lydia, daughter of Samuel Mills, Jr., of Greenwich, Connecticut. He died at Wilton, Connecticut, in 1762, and left three sons, as above stated, who are the sixth generation in this country. The second Ebenezer Fitch married Sarah Hobby, daughter of Colonel David Hobby, of North Castle, Westchester County, New York, a prominent actor in that vicinity during the Revolutionary War. Mrs. A.A. Patterson, of Saratoga Springs, is a great-granddaughter of Colonel Hobby.}

When they first settled in this county the entire country was infested with bears and wolves; and the only means of protecting their swine and other domestic animals was to build solid "pens" and cover them with huge logs. "It was a common custom in the night-time," writes a member of the Fitch family to the author, "to hear bears upon the top of the logs, growling and attempting to make their way into the ‘pens.’ Sometimes those animals would be shot to furnish fresh meat. Thus it was profitable to keep a few swine as a lure with which to entice Bruin to his destruction. {The vicinity of Saratoga, from all accounts, must have been prolific in bears. "Dick" McLease, one of the early settlers and hunters in Saratoga, was wont to relate the following story: He was once out hunting by the saw-mill, near the locality where is now "Put’s Pond," northwest of the village. Hearing a noise like the breaking of limbs in the direction of a large chestnut-tree a few rods off, he worked his way under cover of the mill, and discovered a bear in the tree pulling off the limbs, and picking the chestnuts from the open burrs. After gaining a more favorable position and examining the priming of his gun, a well-directed shot brought the bear to the ground. McLease was a famous hunter, and my friend, Horace Kelly, who knew him well, states that it used to be said of McLease, that if pigeons ever came in sight of his "bough-house" they were sure to give him a call. So plenty were those birds at that time, that the common price of them was a sixpence a dozen.}

Major Jabez Fitch, Captain St. John, and Giles Fitch served in the Revolutionary war, the former two as officers, and the latter as a private. Hannah Fitch, the daughter of Ebenezer, was born upon her father’s farm, September 9 ^th , 1787, and was the third female white child born in this section of the country, or north of the Kayaderosseras, the first one having been Mary Stafford, born on the 7 ^th of March, 1786, {She was a very genial lady, and retained until her death a vivid recollection of the "early times." Once, during her girlhood, her father, Amos Stafford, brought home a "cub" – having killed the mother – and chained it near the house; she in childish glee ventured too near, whereupon Bruin, with his paw, knocked her down and appropriated to his own use the bread and butter she had in her hand. Miss Stafford was twice married, her second husband being John Wicks, of Fayette, Seneca County, New York. She died in 1870, and is buried in the Prospect Hill Cemetery, at Schuylerville, New York.} and the second Sarah Waterbury, born in Greenfield, April 19 ^th , 1787. Hannah Fitch married Alpheus Bullard, of Schuylerville, and yet survives, being eight days older than the Constitution of the United States, which was signed by Washington September 17 ^th of that year. Several of her sons are also living, including General E.F. Bullard, formerly of Waterford, but now living in Saratoga Springs, and David A. Bullard, of Schuylerville.

Ebenezer Fitch erected the first frame dwelling in the town of Greenfield. In this house Judge Bockes was born in the year 1817. In 1798 Ebenezer Fitch removed to the east bank of Fish Creek, and bought the farm near Stafford’s Bridge, where his son, Major Edward Fitch, resided until his death, on the 29 ^th of May, 1875 – a model of the old-school country gentleman. {Major Edward Fitch, who was a great-grandson of Thomas Fitch, a Colonial Governor of Connecticut, and an uncle of General E.F. Bullard, was born near St. John’s Corners, in the town of Greenfield, New York, in 1794, and consequently was eighty-two at his decease. He was ever a lover of agriculture, and always remained in that peaceful pursuit. For more than fifty years his beautiful residence on the east shore of Lake Saratoga has been remarkable for its hospitality. No person ever visited the farm without bearing away a high respect for the man.}