USA > New York > Essex County > Westport > Bessboro: A history of Westport, Essex Co., N.Y. > Part 11
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Map of Skene's Patent,
Madeby Platt Rogers Surveyor 1785 Facsimile by Clarence Underwood 1900
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HISTORY OF WESTPORT
V.
Original Patents.
The territory of Westport contains twelve patents and two tracts. The township is divided by an east- and-west line into two nearly equal parts. This line runs west from a point on the lake shore just north of the mouth of the Hoisington brook to the western boundary of the town. South of this line lie the Iron Ore Tract, and the patents of Skene, Woolsey and Gilliland. North of it lie two patents of Jonas Morgan, two of Platt Rogers, the patents of Daniel McCormick, of John Livingston, (alias Kelly and De Lancey, alias Taylor and Kimball,) and of Rob Lewis, and the Split Rock Tract. These tracts and patents are shown in the Atlas of Essex County, 1876, where their outlines have been verified by consulting many an old map of the first surveyors.
BESSBORO. Two thousand three hundred acres. First survey, June, 1761; first grant, February, 1765, from the crown to William Gilliland. Second survey, September, 1786; granted by the State of New York to William Gilliland. This patent was not only the one first surveyed and granted, but the one first settled, both temporarily and permanently. It lies on the south- eastern border of the town, between the lake and the mountains.
SKENE'S PATENT. Two thousand four hundred acres, granted to Major Philip Skene "pursuant to a Warrant from His Excellency the Right Honorable-
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John, Earl of Dunmore, etc., bearing date the 19th: day of June, 1771." It had been surveyed by Simon Metcalfe, Deputy of Alexander Colden, and lay directly north of Bessboro, extending northward along the shore to the head of the bay. The field notes describe it as lying "about three miles to the south of the Narrows." There are two ancient maps showing this patent. One is in the office of the Secretary of State in Albany, out- lining the shores of Lake Champlain from Crown Point to Northwest bay, and showing by red lines two pat- ents granted to Philip Skene, a larger and a smaller, the larger being the one already described. The smaller patent is called "Skene's Ore Bed Patent," and covers the ore beds on the lake shore now in the town of Mo- riah, but belonging to Westport until 1849. It contains six hundred acres, and its survey line began "at a Tree marked with the letters W. G., standing on the West Bank of the said Lake on the South side of the Mouth of a small Brook where it vents itself into Lake Cham- plain, commonly called Beaver Brook." This seems to mean our Mullein brook, and the tree was doubtless marked by Gilliland with his initials when Bessboro was surveyed in 1764. A copy of this map is owned by the Westport Circulating Library.
The second map of Skene's larger patent has been preserved by the descendants of the surveyor who drew it, and a copy of it is here given. It shows the first division of the patent into lots, and we call it the "Platt Rogers map" because we believe that it was drawn by him. The work upon the original is very fine, and
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could not be adequately reproduced upon the accom- panying plate. The patents are ontlined with red and yellow shading, and the little pictures are done in sepia and water color, with the names written with a fine quill pen. The fish, the ship, the deer, the Indian and the bear are recognizable at a glance, but it is open to doubt whether the animal near the ponds is a beaver, and that on the lake shore a wolf or a lynx. The lots are numbered from one to sixteen, and marked with the names of the owners : Melancton Smith, Zephaniah Platt, Nathaniel Platt, George Freligh, Platt Rogers, William Thorn, Stephen Aikins and Simon R. Reeve. (Lots No. 4 and 15 are marked as having been sold to John Halstead.) These eight names of the original owners give us the key to the history of the map, since we know that five out of the eight were among the "twelve patriarchs" of Plattsburgh. Melancton Smith, Zephaniah Platt, Nathaniel Pratt, Platt Rogers and Si- mon R. Reeve met with seven other men of property and influence at the house of Zephaniah Platt in Poughkeep- sie, December 30, 1784, and there planned the future city at the mouth of the Saranac. Zephaniah Platt and Me- laneton Smith were both members of the Provincial Congress of New York in 1775, were distinguished by their patriotic activity throughout the Revolution, and were chosen members of the Constitutional Convention of 1778. After the war was over these men, with oth- ers, formed a large land company for the purchase of military grants on Lake Champlain, and obtained pos- session of both the larger and the smaller patents of
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Philip Skene, confiscated by the state under the attain- der of Andrew and Philip Skene. These patents seem eventually to have passed into the hands of Platt Rogers.
This is the earliest map indicating individual owner- ship of our soil, with the exception of the map of Bess- boro, which is a mere outline. It gives our shore line from the head of the bay, a little north of the village, southward to Coll's bay and the island, showing also the northern part of Bessboro, with three buildings at the mouth of the brook, exactly where Raymond's Mills stood before the Revolution. Two dwelling houses are drawn as if from actual observation, one with one chimney and the other with two, and the mill is marked "Osgood's Mill." No other trace than this have I been able to discover of any man named Osgood in our his- tory, although he ought probably to be recorded as our first settler after the Revolution. The trail from this . settlement to the place where the village now stands, in- dicated by a dotted line, is very interesting, as showing the first path worn by human foot within our borders. It must have followed blazed trees through a thick for- est, and ran between the present "lake road" and "mid- dle road" for most of the way. Perhaps the island was named from an abundance of wild cherry trees upon it, blooming like fairyland every spring.
The date of the map has been assumed to be 1785, although it may have been drawn the year before. That it cannot have been made later we infer from the fact that Hezekiah Barber erected permanent buildings
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at the end of Barber's point in the spring of 1786. If these buildings had been standing when the map was made, the map-maker would certainly have put them in, since the map was used principally to show to would-be settlers, whom the proprietors were trying to induce to buy lots, and the more thickly settled the country conkl be made to appear, the more attractive it would surely be."
WOOLSEY'S PATENT. Six hundred acres, lying west of Skene's patent, and now traversed by the high - way and the railroad. On the map it is shown as cov- ering two large ponds, but this is a mistake of the sur- veyors, who cannot have drawn it from actual survey. This patent belonged to Melanctou Lloyd Wool- sey, who served as an officer in the Revolution, and was aid to Gov. Clinton. His family came from Long Island, like the Platts, with whom they were connected,
*The history of this map is rather curious. It descended from Platt Rogers 5 his son, Ananas Rogers, and then to his grandson, Platt Rogers Halstead. After the death of the latter in iSq9, the mip was kept among the papers of his sister, Mrs. Mite, M'F. Sawyer. Its practical use was by this time superseded, but it was treasured by the family as a relic. Upon the death of Mrs. Sawyer, in IS;o, i. passed into the possession of her oldest son, Platt Rogers Halstead Sawyer, of Bedford, N. Y. He died in 18>5, and the family soon after moved to Chicago. In 1999, when engaged in the preparation of a genealogical record, the writer found that the map was still carefully kept in the family, and was afterward favored by the loan of it from Lea Halste ad Sawyer, the great-great-grandson of the maker.
An attempt was made to have the map photographed, but it was so creased inte f .Ids that the result was entirely unsatisfactory. Then the plan was adopted of having an exact copy mide by hand, and the copy photographed, We were forty- nate in finding a resident of Westport who was able to copy the map with the most exquisite fidelity, reproducing it exactly as it must have appeared when the sur- veyor lifted his hand from his last stroke upon it. This copy was bought by Miss Ale Lee and presented to the village library, and a photograph of it was used for the copy given in this nous. Allthe work was done by Mr. Clarence Underwood, photographer at Wadhams Mills.
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and he was prominent among the early citizens of Plattsburgh, living to fight manfully in the war of 1812 as a Veteran Exempt. His son, Lt. Melancton Taylor Woolsey, became distinguished in the same war. Que cannot help remarking upon the name Melanctou, oc- curring with such unusual frequency in the carly part of onr history. The gentle Philip Melanchthon, who tem- pered the fierceness of Martin Luther's reforming zeal. must have been a favorite historical character in the generation preceding the Revolution.
LIVINGSTON PATENT. Upon a map in the of- fice of the State Engineer, "copied from a map of Platt Rogers," a large grant ruus northwest from the head of the bay, crossing the Boquet and stretching away into Lewis. Upon it is written : "Jobn Livingston & Asso- ciates. 7400 Acres Surveyed 1768, Granted 1787." It is upon this patent that the village of Wadhams Mills now stands. Its width extends, on the lake shore, from Headlands to the center of the village of Westport, its western boundary touching the north line of Skene's patent. John Livingston was doubtless one of the Livingstons of Livingston Manor, one of the most in- fiuential families of that day. The patent is more commonly called the Kelly and DeLancey patent, and these may be the names of previous owners, since in the chapter upon Land Titles in Smith's His- tory of Essex County it is said that "John Kelly and John DeLancey obtained a patent for 7000 acres ou the 18th of July, 1786. The description of the tract begins at the Bay de Roches Fendee and lies in a
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northwest course from the village of Westport." De- Lancey was at one time a name to conjure with in the history of New Amsterdam, being that of a powerful royalist family. It is more than likely that the patent was one of disputed ownership for a number of years. In the county atlas it is called the Taylor and Kimball patent, and these were doubtless its latest owners be- fore it was soll off to settlers.
MCCORMICK PATENT. Upon the same map a patent lying west of the Livingston patent, and running parallel with it. evidently surveyed at the same time, is marked "Daniel McCormick & Associates. 4000 Acres, surveyed 1768, granted 1787." Daniel McCor- mick was a laud speculator on a large scale, receiving immense grants of land in Franklin and St. Lawrence counties. The patent is bounded on the south by Skene and on the west by Jonas Morgan.
PLATT ROGERS PATENTS. These lie in the northeast part of the town, one of sixteen hundred acres on the north town line, taking in all the tillable land between Split Rock range and Coon mountain, and the other on the north shore of the bay, extending from Headlands to Rock Harbor. The latter was probably secured to gain control of the western landing of the ferry between Basin Harbor and Rock Harbor. Platt Rogers received extensive grants of land in return for his services to the state in laying out roads, and showed a fine discrimination in picking out the best laud for himself. He is said to have received 73,000 acres in this way. , This may well dazzle the vision of impecu-
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nious descendants, but we must remember that in many respects the land was absolutely valueless, and even liable to become an embarrassment to its owner. Per- haps its most enviable return was in the permanence given to his name, stamped as it is on some of the fair- est scenes of this region.
ROB LEWIS PATENT. A small square patent of this name is shown on the lake shore of the Split Rock range, near Rattlesnake Den and the ore bed, in the atlas of 1876.
JOHN WILLIAMS PATENTS. Two small square patents, one of two hundred acres and the other some- what larger, are cut out of the eastern portion of the Iron Ore Traet, and cover the country of the ancient Stacys and Nichols. John Williams was associated with Platt Rogers in certain land enterprises, and after the death of the latter his heirs carried on for many years litigation for the recovery of funds, but without success.
JONAS MORGAN PATENTS. Two patents in the northwest of the town, along the Black river, bear this name. The larger was of four thousand eight hundred acres, and covered all the farming land of the western part, stretching across the Black river into Elizabeth- town. It was granted him in 1799, and iu 1808 he re- ceived a smaller oue, of seven hundred acres, corner- ing on the first and running across the river into Lewis. These were the latest grauts made of any portion of our soil, and Jonas Morgan was the ouly owner of one of the original patents who settled upon the land he owned.
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He was our first manufacturer of iron, building a forge on his larger patent, on the western bank of the river, at the place to which Meigs came half a century after- ward. The smaller patent was granted on condition that a furnace for casting "pig iron, hollow ware and stoves" should be built upon it within three years, and we know that be built a forge, known for years as "Morgait's New Forge," at the place which we now cal! Brainard's Forge.
SPLIT ROCK TRACT. After the best land had been sold off in patents, the remainder formed two tracts, like bones left after the meat has been picked away. Surely the Split Rock Tract is bony enough, all rocks and mountain tops and forests, with a sprink- ling of iron ore and rattlesnakes. Not a single highway maintained by the town penetrates the Split Rock range. One good road there is, leading in to the Hun- ter place and Rock Harbor, but it is a private road. kept up the owners of the property, and crossed by two gates. Trails wind through the valleys and along the mountain sides to the quarry and to the iron mine, showing what the first roals of the early settlers must have been before the wildness of the forest was subdued.
IRON ORE TRACT. This immense tract covers a third of the township, stretching over the southwestern part of Westport, the southeastern part of Elizabeth- town and the northern part of Moriah. It is well named, for beneath its rugged surface lie millions of tons of iron. It is like the stories of wonderful fairy
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treasure hidden away in caves in the bowels of the earth, over which a spell has been cast so that no mortal shall ever reach it and carry it away. And the word which cast the spell was this, -Titaniferons.
There is an interesting map of the Iron Ore Tract, made probably in 1810, which now hangs in the village library. It shows a careful and accurate survey of this mountainous region, a wilderness of rocks, bills. brooks, ponds and marshes, whose scenic value was small in the eyes of the first settlers in comparison with the iron mines so fondly believed in. The Traet is di- vided into 234 lots, and in many cases the names of the purchasers of the lots are marked upon the paper now so worn and yellow. Some of them are Westport names, like Stacy and Doaglass and Hatch, but the most famous name upon the map is that of Bach. This means the Theophylact Bache who was a member of tho Provincial Congress, the proceedings of which may be read in the ponderous volumes of the American Archives. He was on the Committee of Correspond- ence with the Platts of Duchess county. Isaac Low, Isaac Roosevelt and other well-known names. He, it seems, dabbled in speculation in northern lands, and his name is well worth mentioning, if only for the sake of adding its sonorous syllables to our list. Surely it will be hard for Fame to pass entirely by a township which can show in its earliest record such names as Anauias, Zephaniah, Diadoras, Hezekiah, Tillinghast, Melancthon and Theophylact!
:
Second Part.
1785-1903.
"Teach me to see the local color without being blind to the inner light." :
- Dr. Van Dyke's Prayer.
HISTORY OF WESTPORT
The Folks I Used to Know.
I know lots of folks in the city, As pleasant as folks can be. And you can't claim to be lonesome With thousands for company. But it's true that I get homesick, Once in a while, to go Where I can meet in the village street The folks I used to know.
Some things happen over and over, In the grind of God's great mills, Like Christmas, and Sunday, and taxes, And disappointments, and bills. We've many a chance to be happy, And many to be forlorn, But you'll have but one, one mother, And just one place to be born.
When spring comes stealing northward, And taps at my office door, I think of melting ice-cakes, Piled up on a rocky shore. And when there's a hint of winter In one or two frosty days, I wish I could see old Camel's Hump Through an Indian Summer baze.
For I was born in a little town On the shore of Lake Champlain; The prettiest spot on God's green earth That knows His sun and rain. Oh to see North Shore again, And Bluff Point's cedars green, And the sea of glass, 'neath sunset fires, Shining and still, between!
HISTORY OF WESTPORT
To feel in the early morning A wind of dawn pass by, And push out a boat in the ripples. . And float away silently. Then when the sun shines over The hill-tops of Vermont, To feel that you've had your vision. And it's breakfast that you want.
Last time that I went fishing, On the reef in Pattison's bay. You ought to have seen the six-pound pike That put himself in my way! Hand over hand I pulled him in, And his size begun to show; "Hello!" says I, "come in out of the wet! You're a fish I used to know!"
Parting graveyard grasses To read a familiar name, I said. " 'Tis a lovely spot to sleep. When past earth's praise or blame." And thinking on the quiet dead, Where friends and kindred lie, I prayed. "O Lord, not mine the lot In the stranger's land to die!"
Even the hope of heaven Preachers might paint more fair, If they would only promise 'Twould seem like old times there. And I'm sure 'twill be a comfort, When my time has come to go. To think I shall meet, in the golden street. The folks I used to know.
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VI.
Early Settlement.
1785-1815.
We now come to the second part of our history, and that part which most nearly concerns us as a people, the story from the first settlement to the conditions of our own day. We shall deal no longer with the famous people whose names are to be found iu histories and encyclopedias, but with the familiar, every day folks who came here and cut away the forests and cleared the farms and settled down to make the town what it is to-day, and whose descendants we daily meet upon our streets. This is what we really care for in a town history, and it is the only thing which makes it worth while to write such a book.
We can never truly understand our own history with- out making a careful study of the story of the first set- tlements. Who were the men who first came to these shores for homes, with what ruling ideas, what cher- lished beliefs, did they enter upon their new life here, and what was the old life which they had left behind ? To quote from an article in a recent magazine, "Begin- nings of American Literature," by George Edward Woodberry,
"Everything begins in the middle -- to adapt a wis- saying-like an epic poem. That is the central truth of human perspective. Open history where you will,
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. and there are always men streaming over the mountains or over the sea from some horizon, bringing with them arms and cattle, battle-songs and prayers, and an im- aginary world ; their best treasure is ever the seed of some last year's harvest."
And we find that the battle-songs and the prayers, the weapons actual and ideal, brought in by our first settlers were those of New England directly after the Revolution-the New England not only of the Pilgrim Fathers but of Bunker Hill, with old England forgotten as a mother country, and with the Puritan church and the Puritan town meeting already familiar as a back- ground of civic life. This mainly, but with a modify- ing element, slender but strong, clearly discernible to one who knows our history by heart, of the ruling ideas of the dwellers along the Hudson, which were never those of New England in the last analysis, but were much more feudal in regard to social structure and much more liberal in religious dogma.
The annals of one hundred and twenty-seven years which follow must be given too minutely to bring out the effects of these subtly differing influences, but to the writer every commonplace name and incident has had a certain significance connected with its known or imagined source, lending it an inner illumination which no stranger could ever be made to understand. This by way of apology for the fact, quite evident to the writer, that she will not be able to make the story of modern Westport as interesting to other people as it
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has unfailingly been to herself. And so now to our story.
1785-1800.
The first permanent settlement upon the soil of West- port was made on the lake shore, at Barber's Point, not far from the present site of the light-house. The lake at this place is less than two miles wide, and the first settler came from Vermont shore, landing on the south side of the point. He had travelled all the way from Harrington, Litchfield county, Connecticut, a distance of over two hundred miles. He must have bought his laud of Gilliland, as he settled upon Bessboro. Why he came we cannot tell. Immediately after the Revo- tion there was a wonderful impulse of pioneering ant emigration which was felt all over New England, lead- ing men to forsake their old homes and plunge into the wilderness as their fathers had done before them. This first settler cannot have carried an elaborate outfit, but he had at least a gun and an axe, to protect him from wild beasts and to make a clearing on the edge of the forest. And to-day you may find his great-great-grand- children on a part of the laud that he cleared.
This man was Major Hezekiah Barber. He was a major of militia in Connecticut, and always retained his title. He came first in the spring or summer of 1785, and worked at clearing the land until winter came on, when he went back to Connecticut. The next year he returned with his wife's brother, Levi Frisbie, an l
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they worked together, cutting wood all winter, living in a bark shanty and building a log cabin near the shore, of "basswood logs split in the middle, and laid with the flat sides up." Another cabin was also built as a shel- ter for cattle. In the spring of 1787 the young wife of Major Hezekiah, whose maiden name had been Huldal Frisbie, came all that long journey from Connecticut on horseback, carrying her first baby in her arms, and took possession of the log.house. The household goods also came, in one load, drawn by oxen. The first crops, raised were put in with a "grub hoe" in the spaces be- tweer the blackened stumps of the clearing. Grain was carried to Middlebury, in Vermont, to be ground, and as only one horseback load could be carried at a time, the family often ground their own corn in a large "Indian mortar" which was found somewhere near, with an iron pestle. Their nearest neighbors, who must have come soon after the Barbers, were a family named Ferris, living in a log house at Coll's bay, near Ray- mond's old settlement. There was also the Ferris fam- ily directly across the lake, at Arnold's bay, who had settled there before the Revolution.
When Hezekiah Barber first came, this bit of earth which we now call Westport was merely an unnamed fraction of the immense county called Washington which covered both sides of Lake Champlain. After he had been here three years, (that is, iu 178S,) the county of Clinton was formed, comprising the present territory of Essex and Clinton counties and a part of Franklin. The county seat of this large county was
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Plattsburgh, and it was divided into four towns. The town in which Barber lived was Crown Point, measur- ing about nine hundred square miles, and covering all the southern part of the present Essex county. The first town meeting was held in December of 1788, at Ticonderoga, and if Barber, and the two or thres other men who may have been at the Point and at Raymond's Mills at that time, voted at all, they went in a boat to Ti to do it. The election was held in the "old King's store," a quaint, low-roofed stone building on the shore of the lake, which had been erected by the French in 1755, when they built Fort Carillon: At the time of the town meeting this building was occupied by Judge Charles Hay, a brother of that Col. Uduey Hay whose affidavit we have seen in regard to the Raymond settle- ment.
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