Three Rivers
Hudson~Mohawk~Schoharie
History From America's Most Famous Valleys

The Frontiersmen of New York
by Jeptha R. Simms
Albany, NY 1883

Volume I, Page 390.

The Old Walrath Ferry, etc. -- I have alluded in the above bridge account to the ferry below it. This was at the old John Walrath place. Walrath was a blacksmith before and after the Revolution, and his old dwelling, a large framed building, is yet standing near the railroad, half a mile above the depot, where the river flats are so suddenly changed from the north to the south shore. Here was probably a ferry prior to the erection of a bridge, the preceding 50 years. The ferrying was done for a long time at this place by two slaves, "Tom," a stout Negro, who managed a scow, and "Gin," a wench, who rowed footmen over in a skiff. Gin often frightened children while ferrying by letting the craft drift down the stream several rods, to be sent up again by her strong arm long before the opposite shore was gained. Tom Walrath (slaves usually took their owner's name) was remembered as wearing his woolly locks in a queue, bound by an eelskin. At the raising of a barn on the Wormuth farm, the next above Wagners, and then owned by Peter Wormuth Fox, given by the former owner to the latter as his namesake, and now in possession of the Rueben Lipe family, Tom was there, and so was Hank Prime, the latter at a dance which followed the raising in the evening, while on a spree, cut off the wig of poor Tom with a jackknife, to his great mortification, as it required a long time for the hair to grow again, and he was daily subjected to a deal of commiseration on the ferry boat for his loss. The Wormuth house was a stone dwelling which, 25 years ago, was in ruins, and has now entirely disappeared. This place was the home of Lieut. Matthew Wormuth, who was killed near Cherry Valley by Indians under Brant. The Lieutenant was buried from this house.