William Sherman Buck attained his majority in 1785. The struggle between the Colonies and the Mother Country was now at an end, and the great West, began to loom up, before the youthful Yankee vision, as the land of promise. Young William was endowed with great physical strength, energy, perseverance and powers of endurance The monotonous routine of a quiet life among the staid Puritan farmers of the Housatonic Valley chafed his restless active disposition and made him a fit subject for the emigration fever, which had already become well nigh epidemic throughout New England. The ardent youth was soon seized with a desire to taste the adventures and dangers of frontier life. In 1768 several New Milford families led by Rev. Noah Windham, Pastor of the New Milford Church, had emigrated to the Wyoming Valley, (now Luzerne County) Pennsylvania, and effected a settlement. Among those who had risked their lives and fortunes in this hazardous undertaking was young William's uncle, William by name. As has been stated before, the latter after establishing himself at the Wyoming settlement, gave his services to the Colonial cause during the War, as Captain of Militia and was butchered at the bloody massacre at Wyoming in 1778. His family fled on foot all the way back to Connecticut, but as the war was now over, they determined to retrace their steps. This was young William's opportunity. Receiving from his father his share of the paternal estates, he bade his kindred a last affectionate adieu, turned his back upon his native New England and accompanied his uncle's family back to Wyoming. Of the particulars of that journey, there are no data at hand but considering the mode of traveling and the kind of roads extant in those days, it may be safely asserted that it was a long wearisome tramp. Beset with hardships and fraught with many disappointments Young William did not however, tarry long at Wyoming. A settlement had been begun at Wyalusing (then Susquehanna), now Bradford County, Pennsylvania, about this time. Thither, in company with others, over mountains and through forest swamps and rivers, tramped William S. Buck in 1787, where he met wooed and on the 27th of April, in the same year married Barentha (daughter of Amos York and Lucretia Miner.) The couple remained in Pennsylvania until, about 1794, during which time, their four eldest children, first saw the light of day. They then removed to what is now Trumansburgh, Tompkins County, New York, where William purchased a farm. It is said by his descendants that he lost his deed of this tract, before it had been recorded and thereby lost the land. However this may be, he soon purchased two other large tracts of wild land, one near Trumansburgh, and another in Hector Township (now Schuyler County) New York. On the first of the section the family resided for the next twenty years, during which time, the remaining nine children were born. During this twenty years also, a large area of wild land was cleared up and brought into a state of cultivation by the energy and perseverance of the father and his stalwart sons. In the meantime, the conflicting claims of New York, Virginia, Massachusetts and Connecticut to the territory of the United States northwest of the Ohio River, had been silenced by negotiation, and Ohio, in 1802, had been carved there out and admitted into the galaxy of States. The fertility of the soil of the infant State, particularly in those, portions contiguous to the Ohio River and Lake Erie, together with the throwing of tracts open to purchasers and settlers for nominal prices, and on easy terms of credit, at once drew the attention of the people, of the older States. In 1818 the full tide of emigration fever, had set in, and thousands of emigrant families from New England, New York and Pennsylvania trailed in motley procession towards the "buckeye" border. Among those who swelled this throng in the spring of 1818, were William S. Buck and his family. He had fully anticipated the vision of Bishop Berkeley that "Westward the course of empire takes its way," and perhaps had wisely concluded that furrowing the rich bottom lands of Ohio would be much easier than dodging the pine stumps and boulders of the "Empire State." After a fatiguing journey over bad roads, through dense forests, and inclement weather, he reached Cincinnati, then an infant Settlement, in the vicinity of which he located on, and for several years tilled lands belonging to General William H. Harrison, afterwards President Harrison.
∼William Sherman Buck was the son of James Buck and Elizabeth Sherman. Married to Barentha York 27 April 1787 in Wyalusing, Bradford County, PA