Marshall Historical Society

Dicksville
By Janet Dangler, January 2019

One of the first of the Brothertown settlements was known as Dicksville or Dickville, on Route 315 about a mile southeast from Deansboro to Waterville. It was named after Asa Dick, a Narragansett Indian and substantial land owner, described as a man of enterprise. The Naragansetts formed part of the Brothertown Tribe.

Dicksville boasted two sawmills, a shoe shop, a school, a grist mill on the east bank of the Oriskany Creek, a blacksmith shop, a tavern and a carpentry shop; and a census in 1799 showed 60 families. A plank road exended from Waterville through Forge Hollow and Dickville to Deansville. However, by the early 1900s, although some buildings remain (the small schoolhouse/meeting house on the corner of Route 315 and Burnham Road, and the large white house, built by the stalwart Asa Dick, which is owned by Ed Gallagher, formerly Wratten's), Dicksville was just a memory; a curve in the road. Most of the Brothertown Indians left, not really by choice, in 1831 for Green Bay, Wisconsin; they were joined by the remaining few by 1848. Dicksville lost its characteristics as village when the Chenango Canal was built in 1837 and during the subsequent growth of Deansboro (which was known as Deansville) when some families and businesses moved there.

There is a state historical marker in front of the school house, erected in 1934, proclaiming the area as the Home of the Brothertown Indians. Near a lilac tree on what was Asa Dick's property and what used to be a pasture connected with the Milton Wratten farm (now behind a newer ranch house on property owned by Ed Gallagher) is Asa Dick's gravesite. There is also another Native American cemetery on the Brothertown Road, and in the past, descendents of the Brothertowns have come from the mid-west, where they were relocated, to visit it.

The curve on Route 315 in about the center of the Brothertown tract is known as Daniels' Nose, as the area was once owned by people named Daniels, who operated what was called the lower forge. The maps and newspapers tell us that Dicksville overlapped Forge Hollow, and that Dickville (or Dicksville) is about a mile southeast of Deansville. By the mid-1900s, though, the question of where Dicksville actually was located is moot, as the community as it had been known no longer existed.

Dicksville Cemetery

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