Though the documents were lost long ago, the town has gone down in history after its 80-45 vote to secede from the United States along with the South in 1861. Perhaps intentionally, no names were attached to the votes themselves, so retracing the steps through family lineage remains all but impossible today.
According to New York: A Guide to the Empire State (Federal Writersâ?? Project, 1940), the dissenting minority referred to the town as a â??nest of Copperheads,â? threatening them with arrest under charges of sedition and even lynching. Nonetheless, according to oral history, at least five members of newly-Confederate Town Line headed south to join the Army of Northern Virginia, even as twenty residents stayed put and fought for the Union Army.
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