Fremont New York History page 15

Delaware County. After the wood alcohol business closed down Holcomb made some effort to turn his holdings into desirable summer resort and hunting lodges by building dams on it stocked with trout.
Albert Holcomb told me many interesting anecdotes. Two of these come to mind. One related to a big bear trap hanging on the side of the store building. This he told me he found one day while measuring wood. It was his belief that some trapper had caught a bear in it and the bear dragged it away never to be found by the hunter - not the trap or the bear.
Another store related to a wood chopped he employed. He found that this man would carry a pile of four foot wood on a strip he had measured to another strip that had not yet been measured. In Mr. Holcomb’s judgment it would have been less work to cut a new pile than to carry the entire pile from one location to another. It was Mr. Holcomb’s idea that this chopper felt a delight in what he thought was outwitting him. Holcomb, however, suspected what was happening and secretly market several of the pieces in a pile he had measured to find them later in a pile quite some distance from the first. When confronted with the marked pieces, the chopper admitted the fraud he had been practicing.

Rifle That Killed Sheriff Steele

One day wile having lunch with Albert Holcomb (and which he would always insist when I visited Acidalia) my eyes rested on an old rifle hanging on the wall. I asked something about it. He ventured the information that it was claimed that that rifle had killed Sheriff Steele of Delaware County in the Anti-Rent war in 1845. I don’t know if he believed this or not but since then I have seen several rifles concerning which the same claim has been made. Once I was shown a knife that was claimed had been used to kill him.
Acidalia had prosperous farms and any one who may return to it today after an absence of fifty years would find it desolate, indeed.
About 1900 Acidalia had a baseball team called McAdams’ team, because it was composed largely of players by that name - a family that was numerous in that section at the time. The McAdams team did not hesitate to match bats with any team around and always made a good showing. The strategy was supplied by one of the older clan who was a master at the game and played until his age prevented him from continuing. No history of Fremont would be complete without a mention of the McAdam baseball team.

O’Mearas First Irish Family

An Irish family named O’Meara moved into Acidalia from the town of Bethel. This O’Meara family must have been among the very first Irish families. While it still lived in Bethel it buried its dead in the Catholic cemetery at Obernburg as the markers indicate. There were three girls and two boys who never married. The girls lived long after the boys had died but the O’Meara sisters were always called the O’Meara girls - long, long after the word girls hardly applied.
Buck Brook, a section of the town of Fremont lying remote from the