USA > New York > Essex County > Westport > Bessboro: A history of Westport, Essex Co., N.Y. > Part 1
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39
Gc 974.702 W532r 1758049
M. L
REYNOLDS L'ISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
GC
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01178 2791
1958049
BESSBORO :
A HISTORY 1
OF
WESTPORT, ESSEX CO., N. Y.
FORT WAYNE & ALLEN C
OF
INE PUBLIC LIBRARY
BY
CAROLINE HALSTEAD ROYCE.
TROTSLE A
HOYOS CASTRJAH IMILOSTAD
MAR 23 '73
Royce, Mrs. Caroline Halstead. F 51952 .76 Bessboro: a history of Westport, Essex Co. , N. Y. ... [ New York, c1002)
CHELF CARD
NL 51-1433
1758049
PVB 77-13
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MAP OF
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Boundaries of Bessboro
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Scale 3 Miles - 1 inch.
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1
Errata on Map.
The engraver has omitted to indicate "the Narrows" in the lake, between Basin Harbor and the opposite shore.
The light-houses at Crown Point aud Split Rock are omitted, and also the "Hoisington cemetery," ou the road from Westport to Meigsville, where the road crosses the brook.
The camp at Nichols Pond is on the island in the pond. and not at the southern end of the pond.
The little island just south of Arnold's Landing is called . on the latest Government survey "Rock Island, " but the more common name is Clara's Island.
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٠٥.
Copyright, 1902. J CAROLINE HALSTEAD ROYCE.
Will no one tell me what she sings ? Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow For old, unhappy, far-off things, And battles long ago. Or is it some more humble lay, Familiar matter of to-day ? Some natural sorrow, loss or pain. That has been, and may be again ? - Wordsworth's "Reaper."
To MY MOTHER.
No one will ever care for my book as she would have cared for it.
Hod she lived, she would have helped me to make it 1 tter then it is.
As she linger all the pleasure of cultivated flowers, but s'il vous pleased with nothing so much as with a handful the wild honeysuckle which gros on our rocky ledges, so, though she kiner the best that was in literature, bet de- light in a book of mine would have been beyond measure. Through ber om I most closely connected with the soil of which Largite, and to no one else can I give my book.
1
" Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses, whatever makes the past, the distant or the fat ne predomi- note over the present, advances us in the dignity of think- ing beings."
-Cometel .Johnson
CONTENTS.
General Description. . - -
Chronological Account.
I-Discovery and Indian Occupation. II-French and Indian War.
III-Gilliland and Bessboro.
IV-Raymond and the Revolution. V -- Original Patents.
VI-Early Settlement. 1785 to 1815. VII -War of 1812.
VIII-1815 to Civil War. IX -- Civil War to 1875. X-1875 to 1902.
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PREFACE.
At the Centennial Celebration of the formation of the county of Essex, N. Y., held in June of 1899 at the Court House in Elizabethtown, preparation was made for the presentation of the history of each town in the county. The choice of the authors of these histories was left with the supervisors of the several towns. In the case of Westport the writer was requested to per- form this task, which was accordingly attempted, with very little knowledge of its requirements, and no more than a general interest in the subject. There were two months in which to write the history. As for mater- ial, there was the History of Essex County, by Winslow C. Watson, admirable in every way, but with little bear- ing directly upon the story of Westport, and the later history, published in 1885 by Smith, with several pages of rather incoherent information upon the subject. Then there was the fine Atlas of Essex County, pub- lished in 1876, and a friend lent me the New York Gazetteer of 1860. . I went to look at Miss Alice Lee's first map of the village, made in 1800, and copied the letter which she had carefully framed, written by Judge Charles Hatch in 1842 in regard to the early settlement of the town. Mrs. Francis L. Lee leut me Palmer's History of Lake Champlain, and one day 1 went into the Town Clerk's office and took a hasty look at the old book of the town records, copying the first entry. With this equipment I went to work, and what I put together was read at the Centennial.
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It goes without saying that even this quantity of ma- terial could not have been well digested in two month's time by a writer entirely new to the work, and I found myself haunted by continual discoveries of the incom- pleteness, and, in some particulars, the actual untruth of my so-called "history." This was enough to com- plete the fascination of the subject, and since then it has formed my chief mental occupation to find out what was really true about my native town. I grew to respect jay subject more and more, and the mere at- traction of my own interest seemed to throw in my way material hitherto uudreamed of. Cousins in Chicago sent ine the priceless Map of Skene's Patent. Miss Alice Lee's taet and energy succeeded iu recovering from deserts of hopeless unappreciation the map of the northern part of the village, made by Diadorus Holcomb for "old Squire Hatch," a map of the Iron Ore Tract, and Burr's map of the county for 1829. Mr. Heury Harmon Noble, of Essex, chief clerk in the State His- torians' office, becoming interested in my work, dis- covered for me in the office of the State Engineer and Surveyor the map afid field notes of Bessboro, of which he seenred certified copies,as well as an affidavit in regard to Bessboro which forms our principal evidence in regard to the settlement upon it. Another map by Platt Rogers of the northern patents of the township I had the good fortune to find in the State Engineer's office, and received a copy of it by the kindness of Mr. Wm. Pierson Judson, Deputy State Engineer. Cous- ins at Basin Harbor leut me family papers out of an
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old trunk in the attic. I myself copied almost the whole of the old town book, from 1815 to 1875. Mrs. J. L. Roberts lent me an invaluable scrap-book containing a miscellany of information about the Champlain valley, and also, a prize which was greeted with delight, two copies of the Westport newspaper published in 1842 and 1843. Hon. Richard L. Hand afterward presented Miss Lee with two more copies, of 1841 and 1844. Mr. Henry Richards lent me four volumes of the Documentary History of New York. When I began to study the period of Burgoyne, Mr. Henry Harmon Noble sent me from the State Library the following books: Bur- goyne's Orderly Book ; Stone's Campaign of Burgoyne: Memoirs of Gen. Riedesel; Journal of Madame Riedesel: Pausch's Journal ; and Watson's Pioneers of the Chan- plain Valley. From his own library he sent me Digby's Journal ; Hadden's Journal ; Journals of Major Rob- ert Rogers; Journal of Charles Carroll, and after- wards Reminiscences of Bishop Wadhams, by the Rev. Clarence A. Walworth. For the War of 1812 I con- sulted Thos. Wentworth Higginson's History of the United States ; New York, by Ellis H. Roberts; His- tory of the United States, by E. Benjamin Andrews. and Military Papers of Daniel D. Tompkins, published by the State. Mr. Noble also copied for me some Mili- tary orders and records still in manuscript in the State archives, and from the papers of his grandfather Gen. Ransom Noble. I also received information from the War Department at Washington.
In addition to these books, and perhaps others which
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I have forgotten, I have had numberless interviews with numberless people. Some have been waylaid upon the street with abrupt and apparently irrele- vant inquiries, and some have given me hours of delightful reminiscence. For a long time it seemed to me that whatever question I asked of any one, I was told to go and ask Henry Holcomb, which I finally did, and was rewarded by receiving a vast deal of informa- tion. . Mrs. William Richards has been of great help to me ; so has Mrs. Harriet Sheldon and Mr. James Allen. If I should recount the names of all the people who have answered questions for me with patience and in- telligence I should give something like a list of my acquaintances in Westport. I have also received valu- able letters from former residents, of which the most detailed and helpful is one from Mrs. Victor Spencer, Saginaw, Mich. Miss Lee gave me a package of notes and printed slips from Mr. David Turner, of Washing- ton, who published the Westport newspaper in the forties.
Books from which many items of information have been obtained are the life of Catherine Schuyler, by Mary Gay Humphreys ; Carrington's Campaigns of the Revolution ; Burgoyne's Invasion, by Samuel Adams Drake ; History of the Empire State by Lossing. Al- together indispensable has been the article in Scribner's Magazine for February, 1898, by Alfred T. Mahan, upon the Battle of Lake Champlain, and I shall often refer to Parkman's volumes upon the history of this region.
Of more value to me than many books have been the
exquisite maps of the United States Geological Survey. The bulletins of the New York State Museum have been also helpful. .
It is common in town histories to give long tables of genealogy, which are always of interest. This I have been entirely unable to do for this book. In a few in- stances people have very kindly supplied me with in- formation in regard to their lines of descent, always in response to my-inquiries, and these I have been glad to print, but to make an exhaustive showing of the subject would require years of work. No one can really obtain a perfect understanding of the history of any town without some idea of the race and descent of the people who live in it, and especially of those families which have remained in it from generation to genera- tion. Therefore I will give here a short account of my own descent, as one, I think, entirely representative of the town. I might have chosen the genealogy of fami- lies more distinguished, in remote and recent times, but none more typical, and. naturally, none upon which! I could speak with so much confidence.
I can trace three lines of descent from "first emi- grants."-the first who came to this continent from the old world.
I will begin with my father's family. the Bartons. The first whom we know was Samuel Barton, who was a witness at one of the witchcraft trials in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1691. His testimony was in favor of the woman accused as a witch which we hope was not the result of a spirit of contra-
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riness, but of an unshakable sense of justice. His wife was Haunah Bridges, and he had a large family, his youngest son becoming the ancestor of Miss Clara Bar- ton of the Red Cross. Another son, Joshua, was des- tined to have no such distinguished descendants. He lived in the towns of Leicester and Spencer, in Massa- chusetts, and his wife's name was Anna. They were blessed with seven children, the fourth of whom was Timothy, boru in 1732, (and therefore of the same age as George Washington,) at Leicester. He fought in the Revolution, taking up arms at the "alarm of Ben- nington," when the approach of Burgoyne threatened every home in New England. In 1753 he married Hepsibah Stow, and they had also seven children, the third of whom was named Timothy Stow, and who en- listed at Charlton, Mass., in 1775. He married Phebe Stone, and they had no less than nine children. After the Revolution they were stirred by that pioneer spirit which moved so many at that time to emigrate west- ward to newer lands, and they moved to Bolton, on Lake George, where the rest of their lives was spent, and where they now lie buried. Their oldest son was Simon, and he it was who first came into Essex county, settling on a farm in Moriah in 1812, and living there the rest of his life. He was a deacon in the Baptist church. His wife was Olive Cary, and it is through her that black eyes and hair came into the family. The origi- nal Bartons were blue-eyed. Simon Barton had a large family, well-known in this section. Perhaps the best known of the sous who remained in Essex county was
Dr. Lyman Barton, of Willsboro. The oldest son was William, who settled in Crown Point. His son, John Nelson, came to Westport as a young man, and has spent the greater part of his life here as a carriage ma- ker. Our line- of Bartons seem to have been mainly artisans, always fond of working with their hands. When one of them has become a physician, we often remark that he is likely to make a specialty of surgery, showing this iuborn tendency. A love of music also runs through the family but we fancy that it is shown more in the delight of making it upou an instrument than in that of simply hearing it.
The Sawyers show characteristics quite different from these. A real Sawyer,- we say, can neither make a boot-jack nor play the fiddle. H any one of the name has these talents, it comes in through some other ances- tor. The first Sawyer of whom we know anything pos- itively is Thomas, born in Lincolnshire, Eng., in 1615. He came to Massachusetis in 1639 and settled in Lau- caster, where he died and was buried, as his tombstone still stands to attest. In the attack upon Lancaster dur- ing King Philip's War, his son Ephraim was killed by Indians, and from that day until the Indian was driven west of the Mississippi, there was always a Sawyer fighting Indians. John, eighth in a family of nine children, moved to Lyme, Connecticut. His son Ed- ward, born at Lancaster in 1687, following the pioneer instinets which seem to mark the family, was one of ten men who first settled the town of Hebron, Cont., in 1704. His son, born at Hebron in 1721, we always
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speak of as "Isaac, the Indian fighter." He was twice married, and our line comes from the second wife, an Irishwoman and a McFarland. (Whenever red hair, eloquence or a sense of humor develops in any of our race, it is at once ascribed to this Irish ancestress.) He emigrated with his family into the wilds beyond the Hudson river, and settled in the wilderness, high up on the West Branch of the Delaware river. He was there at the time of the Indian massacres of Wyoming and Cherry Valley, but soon removed his family to the fort at Schoharie. He and another man were captured by four Indians, but killed three of the Indians and wounded the fourth, and so escaped. Stories are also told of his wife's courage in driving Indians away from the house. His son Isaac was left an orphan at an ear- ly age, and it was his lot to be a bound boy to a man who went into the howling wilderness of northern Ver- mont and settled at Moukton. This Isaac grew up in roughness and ignorance, but was destined to be re- deemed by the wife he married. She was Mary Wil- loughby, daughter of Joseph Willoughby, a soldier of the Revolution and deacor of a little Baptist church which had sprung up in the wilderness. Isaac became con- verted, and then, throwing himself into his new experi- ence with all the fire of his fighting ancestors, began to preach. He knew his Bible almost by heart, and in those days no congregation asked for any better equip- ment. Wonderful stories are told of the power of his preaching, and perhaps there is some proof of this iu the fact that he had five sous who also became Baptist
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ministers, all with more education than he. He had. I think, four grandsons who were also preachers, but most of them took to the medical profession or to teach- ing. He journeyed over all northern New York and Vermont founding churches and preaching. In 1828 he came to the Baptist church in Westport, and remained as pastor six years. It was while he was here that his son, Miles MeFarland, married my grandmother, Caro- line Halstead.
For my grandmother's family I must go back to Hen- drick Martensen Wiltse, who came to New Netherlands from Copenhagen iu 1655. There he married Margaret Meijers, and came far up the Hudson to settle at Esopus. There he was captured by Indians at the Massacre of Wiltwyck. but escaped; and spent the rest of his life within the bounds of civilization, on Long Island. His son Martin married Maria Van Wyck, and had a son Marten who removed to Duchess county as one of the earliest settlers, and became one of the substantial Dutch farmers along the Hudson. His wife's name was Jannetje Suydam, and his youngest daughter, Eyda. jafterward Anglicized to Ida.) was born after her father's death, in 1746. In 1764 she married Platt Rogers, and in 1789 moved with him to Basin Harbor, on Lake Champlain. From this line of Wiltses comes a strain of the art-loving, contemplative, money-making Duteli blood, in strong contrast to the hardy contempt of luxury found in the Puritan Sawyers.
The father of Platt Rogers was named Ananias, and he lived at Huntington, Long Island. We fondly hope.
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to prove some day that he descended from Thomas Rogers of the Mayflower, whose son William moved to Long Island and there had a numerous family-far too numerous for the comfort of the toiling genealogist. The Rogerses were closely connected with the Platts, and when the latter moved from Long Island into Duch- ess county, before the Revolution, Platt Rogers went also, and so met and married Evda Wiltse. He served in the Continental army during the Revolution, and was afterward one of the "twelve patriarchs" of Plattsburgh, who founded that town in 1785. In 1789 he moved to Basin Harbor, on the Vermont shore of Lake Cham- plain, opposite Westport. He had eight children, and of his four sons not one ever married, so that there is to-day no descendant of Iris bearing the name of Rogers. His daughter Phebe married John Halstead, who sold a farm in Duchess county to follow the fortunes of the family in this region. (His daughter Ida married James Winans, and her descendants still live at Basin Harbor.
Platt Rogers and his associates in a large land com- pany owned Skene's patent, on Northwest Bay, upon which the village of Westport now stands. After the death of Platt Rogers, in 1798, a portion of this land fell to his daughter Phebe, and so John Halstead moved over the lake into the new settlement, and his was the first frame house built in the village, in 1800. it was his danghter, Caroline Eliza, who married Miles M.Far- land Sawyer. Their daughter, Phebe Maria, married John Nelson Barton, and now we have brought all these ancestral lines to their meeting point in Westport.
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My sister and I can claim to have been born here for three generations, with ancestors in the Champlain valley since 1785.
Such a description of each of the old families in the township would show, I have concluded from my own knowledge of them, a marked similarity. A great pre- ponderance of pure English blood, coming here after generations of residence in New England, is a charac- teristic common to all. The dash of Irish blood is not uncommon, but the Dutch strain is less often met with.
As for the Royces, theirs is a New England family too. The first record is at Lyme, Connecticut, on Loug Island Sound, front which place they moved up the Connecticut river, settling at Walpole, N. H. From that place came William Royce, early in the last celi- tury, across the state of Vermont to Lake Champlain. and took the ferry from Basin Harbor to Rock Harbor. At that time there was a well-traveled road running to the north across the Split Rock ridge, from the land- ing at Rock Harbor to Essex. By this route came many of the early settlers from New England into Essex, and some of the New Hampshire Royces owned tracts of land in Essex. William Royce settled upon this road, on the western slope of the Split Rock mount- ains. He was familiarly called "Bildad" among his neighbors, and the old road, long since disused, is still spoken of as the "old Bildad road." William Royer had sons and daughters, and his descendants now form a large and clanuish family connection in the town of Essex and Westport, intermarried with the Mather-
and Staffords and Saffords and Walkers, and other oll names.
This book would never have been written or printed except for the enthusiastic encouragement of Mrs. Francis L. Lee, whose recent death has been such a loss to the community. Herself the author of the only other book ever published by a Westport woman, her interest in this history never failed, and my pleasure in seeing it in print is dimmed by the thought that it can now bring no pleasure to her.
One word more. I have written this history for my own townspeople first of all --- those who will care most for it, and who will be most charitable in their judg- ments. If I have made any mistake in it -- and I do not know of anything so easy to do as making mistakes (unless possibly it may be seeing the mistakes of other people - I hope that it will be considered a duty, and a kindness to me, to call my attention to it. If I have put any one's grandfather in the wrong place, or omit- ted anything whatever that some person would like to see printed in a history of the town, I hope I shall be told of it. Be sure that I shall not be surprised at any such correction, for the point of view of one person, and that person by no means accustomed to be in the center of public events, cannot be expected to take in everything. It may be -- if children ery for it, as Gail Hamilton said --- that there will be another edition some day, with additions and corrections.
And for the rest -- let my little book be read, as in- dood it has been written. in the spirit of this quotation.
from a Master of Arts oration at a Harvard Commence- ment, by Robert Bartlett, --
"We are looking abroad and back after a literature. Let us come and live, and know in living a high philoso- phy and faith; so shall we find now, here, the elements, and in our own good souls the fire. Of every storied bay and cliff we will make something infinitely nobler than Salamis or Marathon. This pale Massachusetts sky, this saudy soil and raw wind, all shall nurture us. I'dlike all the world before us, our own age and land shull be classic to ourselves.
CAROLINE HALSTEAD ROYCE. Westport-on-Lake-Champlain, January, 1902.
God giveth us Remembrance as a shield To carry into warfare, or a cloak To keep us warm when we walk forth alone Tis never good vor blessed to forget.
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HISTORY OF WESTPORT
GENERAL DESCRIPTION.
Westport is a large, thinly settled township in the Adirondack region of northern New York. It is one of the eighteen towns of the most mountainous county in the state,-that of Essex. Essex county has seven towns which border on Lake Champlain, and of these Westport is the central one. Its southern boundary is very nearly coincident with the parallel of 44 deg. north latitude. This parallel crosses Lakes Huron and Mich- igan, and the state of Oregon, touches the city of Avig- non, in the south of France, and crosses the Gulf of Genoa. The meridian of Westport lies between 3 3 and 433 east of Washington.
HISTORY OF WESTPORT
NAME.
The name of Westport was given to the town in 1815. after it had known at least thirty years of recorded history. Nothing is more unlikely than that it was named after the English Westport, in Devonshire, near Plymouth, - the Westport from which Sir Francis Drake set sail for the Spanish main. Neither was it named from the town on beautiful Clew Bay, in the west of Ireland, in Connaught, where was the family seat of that Lord Westport who had Thomas de Quincey for his tutor. It is true that William Gilliland was an IrisInnan, and that if any man had a right to name this town, that right was his, but he never called it West- port. His name for the place was BESSBORO, after his daughter Elizabeth.
This name we have taken the liberty to restore upon our title-page and cover. Of all the twelve original pat- ents into which the soil of our township was divided, as they were granted by British king or American Congress, one ouly was named and settled by the man who first owned it, and that was Gilliland's Bessboro. Upon it stood the first settlement, and the ouly one before the Revolution, which broke into the monotony of the primeval forest. Had the princely plans of Gilliland been fulfilled, the quaint and pretty name would never have been changed. Had George the Third of Eng- land been a sensible man, had Benedict Arnold been an honest one, --- in a word, if the pioneer work of William Gilliland had not been swept clean out of the Cham-
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HISTORY OF WESTPORT
plain valley by the ebb and flow of the tides of the -Revolution, the place would still be known by the household name of the little daughter. It pleases us to recall it, with its suggestion of family affection and of baronial rights, and we offer it to the memory of one of the most romantic and picturesque figures in the history of this region.
"Elizabethtown" is ouly a paraphrase of "Bessboro," more stately and less musical. It was chosen for the title of the new township erected in 1798, comprising the present townships of Elizabethtown and Westport. It was then thirty-four years since Gilliland's first en- trance into the Champlain valley as a colonizer, and he himself had been dead two years, but his claim to con- sideration was still recognized in the choice of a name. It is thought that those who named the township at that time meant to honor the wife of Gilliland, rather than his daughter, who bore the same name.
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