Rattlesnake Run; Name Origin

A few years after Elmwood mansion house was built the stone house was erected on Cold Spring Farm– where the new barn is now being built! This was also most substantially constructed, designed to stand for ages. One of the curiosities of this place is the porch, built entirely of stone so that it would never decay or rot down as a wooden porch was sure to do. There is a splendid spring of never-failing water here, forming most of the body of Rattlesnake run. This run, by the way, heads further west, on the farm now owned by Daniel P. Demory, known to older people as the Koontz farm. The stream was well called Rattlesnake run, and this was the way it got its name: The meadow land along its course was rich and fertile, but it was marshy. The Lucases decided to have it drained, and a party of Irish laborers were engaged to dig ditches from the headwaters down as far as what is now the Cook farm. In digging the ditches, the outlines of which may yet be traced, the Irishmen killed scores and scores of rattlers, and so they named the stream Rattlesnake run. It is a fact that they would occasionally be bitten, but they didn’t particularly mind that, for handy to cold spring was a still-house where snakebite antidote could be had for the asking. Summer-red apples distilled into apple jack that would counteract any sort of snake-bite, and brandies from other fruits were great comforters.