Excerpt from “The Wixon Family”:
“Solomon Wixson as the youngest of nine children in the family of his parents, and was about a year old when the family moved to Dutchess Co. from Massachusetts. There he grew to manhood and from that County served as a soldier in the Revolutionary War as a Private in the 7th Regiment of Minute Men, Militia of Dutchess Co., commanded by Col. Jacobus Swarthout, as shown in "New York in the Revolution, Vol. 1, pp. 156 and 252.
Little is known of Solomon Wixson and his family during the time they lived in Dutchess County, where seven sons were born. In the spring of 1790, Solomon made a journey to the western part of the state to find a location for a future home. He found a place to his liking in what is now called the Finger Lakes District, near the present town of Wayne, in what was then Steuben, near Schuyler, County. There he built a log cabin on the west side of the outlet of Waneta Lake and cleared some land for cultivation. In the fall of the year he returned to Dutchess Co. for his wife and children, and the following spring moved family and effects to the new home in the wilderness.
In making the westward journey the family traveled by flatboat up the Susquehanna and Chumung Rivers to what is now Elmira, then called Newtown. There the boat was left and the remainder of the journey was made by ox team transit. Here the writer pauses to wonder if Solomon Wixson knew at that time that his brother, Barnabas Wixom, twelve years his senior, who had preceded him to the wilderness, was then living near Newtown.
The new home was in a wild country. Only two or three white families lived in that vicinity. There were many Indians there, with Indian villages nearby, but no account of Indian troubles are mentioned by present day descendants.”