The town of Phelps honored all its early pioneer settlers and John Decker Robinson, its first settler, who arrived on May 14, 1789. In gratitude for the civil and religious liberties bequeathed by their forefathers and preserved by their defenders, its people pledged unswerving loyalty to maintain those liberties and transmit them as a legacy to their children. Through stout blows and sturdy industry, the wilderness of a hundred years earlier had been transformed into blooming valleys and fertile fields, the homes of busy and happy people.