When the earliest settlers of Clay needed flour, they carried a bushel or a bushel-and-a-half on their backs through twelve or fourteen miles of unbroken forest to Jackson's mills near Jamesville, guided only by blazed trees, a journey that took two or three days 12. After roads were cut through, neighbors took turns hauling the grists of an entire settlement upon an ox sled. But what the pioneers carried back to Syracuse was worth more than what they brought home: salt barrels, the first and most important article of trade in the young town 123.
Syracuse's identity as the "Salt City" was rooted in the brine springs around Onondaga Lake, where Jesuit missionaries had noted salt production as early as 1654 4. By the early nineteenth century the salt works at Salina were producing hundreds of thousands of bushels annually, and every bushel needed a barrel. Clay's heavy timber -- oak, ash, and elm covering virtually the entire town -- furnished employment to scores of coopers. Bruce's 1896 centennial history records that "almost every male inhabitant at one time followed some branch of this business, and while the forests remained it constituted one of the chief occupations of the people" 3. Large quantities of staves and barrels were manufactured on the premises and hauled to the Syracuse salt trade or the Oswego flour market, and the profits were substantial enough that the barrel trade "in many instances proved a source of individual wealth" 123.
The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 and the Oswego Canal in 1828 inaugurated a new era. These two great waterways did not merely connect Clay to distant markets; they transformed the hamlet of Belgium into the busiest place in town 3. The Oswego Canal utilized the portion of Seneca River bordering Clay's western boundary and had, in Bruce's words, "a direct and wholesome influence upon all local industries" 3. The Oneida River Improvement afforded another improved route along the northern boundary. Together, the canals gave Clay access to the commerce of the entire state.
Belgium grew rapidly on both sides of the Seneca River. In 1827 there were only four dwelling houses at the site; by 1848 the hamlet contained twenty-eight dwellings, one hundred and sixty inhabitants, three dry goods stores, four grocery and provision stores, two hotels, three blacksmith shops, and the celebrated "Oriental Balm Pill" manufactory, which generally employed from thirty to fifty persons 123. The Sodus Bay and Westmoreland Turnpike Company had begun a bridge across the Seneca River at Belgium in 1824, but the turnpike was never completed. Colonel J. L. Voorhees obtained a charter in his own name, finished the bridge, and operated it as a toll crossing until 1843, when the State Legislature appropriated $850 and the towns of Lysander and Clay each contributed $1,000 to rebuild it as a free bridge 123.
In 1842 a canal extension incorporated the Oneida River, running through Clay's territory and providing the town with twenty-six miles of valuable waterfront for steamboat and barge shipping 56. But the canal's benefits came with consequences. The extension disrupted migration patterns on the river, particularly eliminating the seasonal eel runs from the Sargasso Sea that had sustained Haudenosaunee fishing traditions at Caughdenoy for centuries 6.
The canal era also brought new settlers and new industries. Martin Luther opened the first store at Belgium in 1828; Sylvanus Bigsbee and Company followed shortly afterward 37. The Wesleyan Methodist Society erected a meeting house in 1832 12. By the mid-1830s, about two-thirds of the town was settled, and the population had reached 2,538 3. The period between 1825 and 1830, Bruce concluded, "marked an important epoch in the history of Clay. It not only witnessed the formation of the town, the establishment of post-offices and churches, and the arrival of large numbers of settlers, but it saw the completion of two great water routes which inaugurated a new era of prosperity" 3.
When the forests were finally cleared, the land beneath proved fertile. Agricultural pursuits rapidly superseded lumbering and coopering, and Clay evolved into one of the richest farming sections of the county 2. Hay, grain, corn, and tobacco became the staple crops. In 1860 the town's improved land totaled 19,535 acres, supporting 638 dwellings, 1,177 horses, and producing over 150,000 bushels of spring wheat 3. The wilderness that Patrick McGee had first glimpsed in 1780 had become, within a single lifetime, a prosperous agricultural community knit together by water, salt, and the ambition of its settlers.