Middlefield Sits Between Glimmerglass and Old Mill Work

Middlefield has a literary-sounding map because the water came before the village names. The town sits in the Leatherstocking Region and runs along the east side of Otsego Lake, the Glimmerglass of James Fenimore Cooper’s tales. Cherry Valley Creek and Red Creek wind through the hills toward the Susquehanna River, so the town is not just beside Cooperstown’s lake country; it is part of the same water-and-story landscape.

Its history gets busy early. Middlefield was divided into large land patents in the mid-1700s, including the Godfrey Miller Patent, John Bowers Patent, and the Long Patent along Cherry Valley Creek. The Revolution disrupted the region, especially after the 1779 Cherry Valley Massacre, but settlers returned after the war.

By the 1800s the town had mills and work as well as scenery. The Phoenix cotton mill began in 1815, a stone replacement went up in 1835, and it later became a woolen mill. Middlefield Center had a large shoe-last factory, and the county poor house was established along the Susquehanna in 1828. Farming shifted through wheat, dairying, cheese, and hops. The place still reads rural, but there is a lot under the quiet.