Town of Fremont - History page 9

veterans. The Bell Post employed the Egypt fife and drum corps from Liberty township with Wakeman F. Benton, leader, to head its parade for several years. Finally it was decided to have a fife and drum corps of its own and to attain that end, the post induced Frank S. Bury, then just a boy, to go to the home of Wakeman Benton and live there to learn to play the fife. This Frank did and after that the Fremont boys provided their own marching music.

Biggest Orchard in Sullivan

Martin A. Smith established himself just below the village where he developed a big farm on which he planted the biggest orchard of apple trees in Sullivan County. He had a small village of his own which included a creamery and a cider mill. Martin Smith is credited with having introduced the first Holstein dairy cattle into the county. The bull calves produced by his herd found ready sale for breeding purposes and the black and white cows appeared quickly on farms all over the county. Martin Smith was a political power in the county and served Sullivan County as Assemblyman. He joined in an enterprise at Binghamton to promote a beet sugar factory and planted his flats to sugar beets. These were shipped in freight cars loaded at Hankins and transported to Binghamton. The venture did not succeed and it stands as the one attempt to grow sugar beets for sugar making in Sullivan County.
Fremont Center had its grist mill built and owned by Anthony Siebert. Daniel Fath, who later lived at Windfall, worked for him as miller. This gristmill joined the tannery property almost west of the rural schoolhouse - some distance from the present highway. A dam across the stream where U.S. Minkler lived furnished power to operate a cider mill - possibly there was an early saw mill here, too.

Nortons Prominent Family

A Norton family was prominent around Fremont Center. The house where Peter Hubert lived is a Norton home and shows evidence of the elegance built into the house when it was erected. The Minckler family was one of the most prominent in this section in its earliest days, where it had a barrel and stave factory and a carding mill. The Minckler homestead is located just north of the village and now owned by Joseph Nargang. The pool of spring water in the Minckler yard remains but does not serve the same purpose it did for the Mincklers.
Tiffany, now known as a diamond and jewelry dealer on Fifth Avenue, New York City, had its origin in Fremont Center where Edwin Tiffany was a mechanic.
John L. Hoffmann, a shoemaker by trade, who many will remember working at his shoemaker’s bench, became known as a cheese maker. A son, George, went to Cornell University where he received training in cheese making. Using George’s know-how, John L. Hoffmann began to buy milk from his neighbors and turned it into cheese. A building on the home farm became a cheese factory and a basement under the kitchen became a