North and South

"In the rugged hills of northcentral Potter County, lies a spot so southern it seems like some weird anachronism of the past. It is the old feudal estate of Henry Hatch Dent on which stands Brookland's All Saints Church... a perfect gem of the South, a church of England, pure in Gothic lines, with medieval buttresses, nave and arch, exquisite with its stained glass windows.

Henry Hatch Dent with his stubborn Southern pride had carried this charming conception from the Colonial South into the North in Civil War days and dispelled it to his children that they too might transplant some remembrance of the land of their youth." - from an article in The Potter Enterprise, 1949

All Saints Episcopal Church
July 2025

It was one of those hot, sunny days last summer and we were in search of a grave marker we thought we might find in the churchyard at All Saints Church in Brookland. We didn't find the grave we sought but did renew our acquaintance with Milton Jeffery and Strathmore Kilkenny, Episcopalian friends from another time. 

On these cold stay-inside kind of winter days, I have spent some time with Henry Hatch Dent and his history. First stop is a charming personal history of Coudersport "Early Families That I Remember and Old Homes of Coudersport" written in 1942 by Eva D. Thompson*, widow of W.W. Thompson, noted Potter County Historian and founder of The Potter Enterprise, the newspaper that passed into my family's ownership in the 1920s. She writes: "At the age of 89, I am making a list of the families that I remember in the late 1850s and 1860s. . . When I was a child, I knew every family in the town. Now, while I love good, old Coudersport, and am interested in everything connected to it, I do not know one family in ten."

Thompson writes of Henry Hatch Dent:

"Henry Hatch Dent came to Coudersport from Maryland in 1853 with his mother and four children: Kate, Adlumia (later Sterrett), Will, and Anna (later Hull), to look after lands owned by his deceased wife and himself, lands of William Bingham. Mr. Dent was a finely educated man and did much for the town and the Academy. He gave the town clock.

The Potter Enterprise, 1963

"During the Civil War when party feeling was high, his sympathies were naturally with the South and he suffered many indignities from the townspeople. His barn and fine horses were burned and he was practically driven from the town." 

Mrs. Thompson's memories are validated in The Potter Pioneer Newspaper account from 1858.

A fine barn and three horses belong to H.H. Dent, Esq. of this village, were burned at three o'clock this morning. Supposed to be the work of an incendiary. We are not informed of the probably amount of the loss – but it is mightly heavy, the horses being valuable.

And below the news items was the following:

Card Of Thanks – Friends, neighbors and through those whose exertions preserved some of my property from the torch of the incendiary, have my heartfelt thanks. - H.H. Dent.

I went next to the Victor Beebe History of Potter County with its red binding and checked the index for references to H.H. Dent. Beebe writes:

"Another man came to Coudersport in 1853 who became a prominent figure during the period of excitement preceding the Civil War. This was Henry Hatch Dent, who came from Charles County Maryland... He married a daughter of John Adlum, who was one of the heirs of the Bingham Estate. She died in 1849. A dispute arose among the Bingham heirs, involving the ownership of much land in Potter County, and Mr. Dent, owing to his interest in these lands as his wife's heir, came to Coudersport in 1853. ... Mr. Dent was a kind hearted man, possessing much public spirit, and scrupulously honest. But he was a Southern aristocrat, with the manner and bearing of titled nobility, and a strong pro-slavery man. 

These circumstances were very damaging to his reception by the people of Coudersport. This town then contained a station of the Underground Railroad, and was led by a group of some of the strongest Abolitionists to be found anywhere in the Northern states. Mr. Dent's good qualities were overlooked ...

Mr. Dent was nominated for Congress on the Pro Slavery ticket in our district in 1854 but was defeated.

By 1862, Mr. Dent and his family had relocated to Brookland according to this report from the Potter Journal and News Item.

This village owes quite all of its improvements to our townsman, H.H. Dent, who has expended a large sums of money in the physical development of that section – his smooth roads, fine fences, evenly cultivated fields and neat buildings attest the success of his efforts.    

Again from the 1949 article:

"The Dent home itself was a long rambling home southern in architectural design that stood where the John F. Stone home stands." (Now Oak Hall Bed and Breakfast).

"The Dents, living in their northern wilderness, could not live in harmony with Yankee ideals. It was enough to cope with a ruthless environment without the Abolitionist hatred. There was always political strife and their southern loyalty would not permit them to take sides with these hard-fisted Yankees of the North.

Back to the newspapers I found many references to Mr. Dent's efforts to bring rail service to unserved areas of Potter County. He writes this in 1869:

"I am very often surprised at the manifest want of information relative to the resources of this (Potter) county, and the counties adjoining, even among many to whom better knowledge in this aspect would be of great value. It would give me great pleasure to receive at Brookland any inquisitive gentlemen from Rochster or elsewhere, in search of facts to justify the construction of the Buffalo, Rochester, State Line and Jersey Shore Railway. ... No part of Western New York will in the end exceed this region in adaptability to grazing, dairying and wool growing and growing potatoes, oats, rye, etc., etc. I am not unacquainted with the productions of Western New, and can say with rigid truthfulness that I have never seen the staple vegetable of that region growing in higher perfection than in my own garden here; nor have I seen better grass fields than my own, around my dwelling here. But it is certain that up to the present time our people have been so addicted to lumbering, that they have not as farmers done justice to themselves or the soil they own."

Henry Hatch Dent died in November 1872 in Baltimore, Maryland where he had returned for health reasons. His son, Willam, remained in Brookland and ran the family business. He departed in 1902. The Enterprise reports "Potter County people regret the departure of the highly respected family."

"The church, its parish house and the ground enclosed by the gray stone are the only landmarks left of the old Dent estate. The Dent family has long since moved back to the south and visits to their once northern home have ceased." 

But the fine All Saints Church isn't the only memorial monument erected for Henry Hatch Dent.

Evening Star, 1893

"It was his intention to build and create conditions peculiar to his ideas of aristocratic seclusiveness; but being compelled, however, from financial considerations, to engage in business pursuits, his executive ability was not equal to
the stern northern conditions with which he was surrounded and
thus failed in a measure to achieve much that his mind had conceived."
 Brookville Republican, 1907

*Eva D. Thompson is the great-grandmother of Coudersport's Dennis Goodenough and Gretchen Goodenough Songster. She died in late 1942.