USA > New York > Essex County > Westport > Bessboro: A history of Westport, Essex Co., N.Y. > Part 12
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When Barber had been here ten years (1795) the number of voters in the whole great county of Clin- ton was only six hundred and twenty-four, When he had been here thirteen years, enough settlers had come in to justify the formation of the town of Elizabethtown, comprising the present townships of Elizabethtown and Westport. The first town meeting was held April 3, 1798, "at the dwelling house of David Callender," which probably stood somewhere west of the Black river. That Hezekiah Barber went to this town meeting we may safely infer from the fact that he was elected to three offices. The list of town officers is as follows :
Supervisor, Ebenezer Arnold ; clerk, Sylvanus Lob- dell ; assessors, Jacob Southwell, David Callender,
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Norman Newell ; overseers of the poor, Jonathan Breck- inridge, Hezekiah Barber; constable and collector, Nathan Lewis; constable, Thomas Hinckley ; school commissioners, E. Newell, William Kellogg, Hezekiah Barber ; overseers of highways, (numbered from one to ten,) John Santy, N. Hinckley, John Potter, S. Lob- dell, Joseph Durand, Simeon Durand, Jacob Seture, Joseph Pangburn, E. Newell, Stephen Eldridge. Fence Viewers, Hezekiah Barber, Elijah Bishop, Elijah Rich.
No doubt the town offices were distributed imparti- ally to all parts of the township, and this list probably includes every man fit to hold office in its whole area. We may imagine this first town meeting as bearing a general resemblance to the one first held in the immor- tal town of Danvis, as reported by Rowland E. Robiu- son, in the words of the veteran ranger, Gran'ther Hill.
"Not over twenty on us, all told ; an' we hel' it in a log barn 'at stood t'other side the river, on Moses Ben- ham's pitch, an' we sot raound on the log mangers, an' the clark writ on the head of a potash berril. We hedu't no sech fix-uppances as these 'ere," pounding the seat with his fist ; "an' as fur that 'ere," punching the stove with his cane, "we jest stomped raound to keep warm, an' didn't fool away much time no longer'n we was 'bleeged to."
For the next two years, 1799 and 1800, the super- visor was "E. Newell," (probably Ebenezer). In 1801 it was Elijah Bishop, in 1802 Charles Goodrich, and from 1803 to 1805 it was none other than our friend Heze- kiah. Thus we see that he attained the crowning am-
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Lition of every good American citizen-that of being ยท lected supervisor of his own town,-and that he held the office three years. In 1799 Essex county had been formed, with the county seat at Essex, and so when e sat in council with the other supervisors in the county, he went to Essex, and it is more than likely that he wended his way thither in a boat, perhaps in his own ferry boat, which furnished him a good income car- rying passengers and freight across the lake. He lived five years after his last term as supervisor, dying in 1810, and he was buried at the Point, only a few steps from the place where he landed twenty-five years be- fore. In that twenty-five years he had seen a great change come over the face of the country, from utter wildness and desolation to a fair degree of civilization. At the time of his death the centre of population for the shore of the town was at Barber's Point, the settlement at Coll's Mills being then larger than that at Northwest Bay. The first steamer on the lake, (and the second in the world,) had been built two years before he died, and made a regular landing at the Point, but none at the Bay .*
*Hezekiah Barber had six children, and as they all married and settled here, the family record in itself, if given in full, would make a chapter of town history. The oldest, Jerusha, married Alexander Young, who settled on the north shore of Young's bay, and built a house where Mr. Ben Worman's farm house now stands. ' This house was burned, and rebuilt by Andrew Frisbie, son of Levi Alexander Young had a ship-yard in the bay, and the ruins of his wharf may still be seen.
> Sally married Gideon Hammond, son of Nathan, and lived on the back road, where Rush Howard now lives.
1. Hezekiah married Maria, daughter of Tillinghast Cole, who lived on the. Like road, on the place now occupied by his great grandson, Henry Merrill. One of his children, named Major Hezekiah after his grandfather, sull lives on a part
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In following the life of our first settler, we now find ourselves years ahead of the story of all Westport, but our steps are easily retraced.
Another very early settler upon the lake shore was James Ring, at Rock Harbor. He is described as "an English master sailor," and so must have known the smell of salt water, but he was content to use his skill upon these tidoless waters in sailing the ferry boat which plied from shore to shore between Basin Har- bor and Rock Harbor.
The ferries were an important factor in the develop- ment of this region. They were to early Westport what a railroad is to a new western town. The ferry at Barber's Point, this one at Rock Harbor and one es- tablished by McNeil, running from Charlotte to Esses, were all opened at nearly the same time, and accom- modated a rapid stream of travel flowing from New England into Essex county. Before the ferries ran, em- igrants were obliged to trust to the chances of hiring boats when they reached the lake shore, unless they came with their own bateaux, like Gilliland, which was too expensive for the ordinary traveller.
of the original Barber property. Another, Mrs. Harriet Sheldon, has been of great assistance in preparing the sketch of Barber's Point.
4. Alanson married Harnet Haskell, and his daughter Maria married Rue! Arnold. They lived in the brick house on the middle road now owned by the Westport Farms.
5. Rhoda married John Chandler.
6. Harriet married twice. Her first husband was Amos Holcomb, and her daughter Huldch taught school in what was perhaps the first school house in town, on the south side of the road to the ferry. Her second husband was Asahel Ha- vens, the ferryman, who lived near the steamboat wharf at Northwest Bay.
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Watson says, in his history of the county, "In 1790, Platt Rogers established a ferry from Basin Harbor, and constructed a road from the landing to a point near Split Rock, where it connected with the road made in an early period of the settlement. He erected, in the same season, a bridge over the Boquet, at Willsboro falls, and constructed a road from that place to Peru, in Clinton county. These services were remunerated by the state, through an appropriation to Rogers and his associates, of a large tract from the public lands." Rogers also built the first bridge over the Ausable river, at the Chasm.
James Ring remained at Rock Harbor only a few years. His wife's maiden name was Sarah Black. In 1791 their second daughter was born at Rock Harbor and named Sarah after her mother. Two years after this the family moved to Brookfield, in Essex, and there Ring died. The daughter born in Westport grew up to marry one of the Essex Staffords, and not quite a hundred years after she was born at Rock Har- bor her grandson came to Westport to settle in the place as a physician,-Dr. Frank T. DeLano. He has told me that his grandmother was accustomed to relate the fact that of her having been born at Rock Harbor, and he has an impression that James Ring came to the place several years before that event, so that we have proof of his having been one of the earliest settlers, though probably not earlier than Hezekiah Barber.
Sometime between 1791 and 1798 came Daniel Wright, from Gilsum, N. H., with his family and his worldly
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goods. After crossing the Connecticut river he must have followed the road across Vermont which was first opened by Sir Jeffery Amherst, the summer of 1759 from Chimney Point to the Connecticut. Wright prob- ably came along the lake shore to Basin Harbor and there took the ferry to Rock Harbor and then toiled over the "Bildad road" across the Split Rock range."
At last he came to the farm he had chosen, as stony and rough as the uplands of New Hampshire which he had left, on the western slope of the mountains, over- looking the fertile valley of the Boquet, with the level clearings of Essex and Willsboro in the distance, and the Green mountains beyond the glimpse of the lake. Here he settled and cleared the land, which remained in the family to the time of his grandchildren. It is now occupied by Mrs. Elbridge Lawrence.
Daniel Wright is a fine example of the early settlers of Essex county. He and his wife came first from Connecticut, like the Holcombs, the Frisbies, the Bar- bers and the Lovelands. He was born in Lebanon, Conn., in 1757, and his wife, Patience Bill, was born in Hebron in the same year. They moved to Gilsum, N. H., and there he served three years in the Continental Line. He fought at the battle of Bunker Hill, served eight months in 1775 in the regiment of the famous Col. John Stark, ( who had seen our shores as one of Rogers'
* This was the nearest way, but it would seem that it might have been easier to come by way of Essex. Itis always interesting to trace the route followed by the pioneers when they first penetrated into this trackless region. In the winter of 1794 Sti phen Keese came from Columbia county to Peru, (north of Bessboro) on the ire, and took advantage of the level highway of the frozen lake.
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Rangers in the "old French war,") all the year 1776 ander Col. Samuel Reed, and in June of 1777 his name appears in a New Hampshire regiment which was sent "to reinforce the Continental Army at Ticonderoga." This was when Burgoyne's army was advancing up Lake Champlain, sending out the proclamation which so aroused the country. On the 5th of July St. Clair evacuated Ticonderoga, and fled to the south, pursued by Burgoyne. Thus Daniel Wright was in this fleeing army, and also, it is probable, saw another turn in the fortunes of war in the surrender of Burgoyne at Sara- toga.
He came into Westport a man about forty years of age, with an honorable record of military service and the rank of Lieutenant. On March 25, 1802, he was com- missioned 2nd Major "of a regiment of militia of the county of Esses, whereof Joseph Sheldon, Esq., is Lieutenant-Colonel Commandant," by Gov. George Clinton. In 1806 he was made Ist Major of his regi- ment, and in 1807 Lt .- Col. Commandant. In 1811 he was raised to the high rank of Brigadier General of Militia in the Counties of Essex, Clinton and Franklin, and held this responsible position throughont the war of 1812, where we shall meet him again .*
*General Wright was accompanied to Wetport by but one child, his daughter Jerusha, who was born July 17, 1788, and married Dec. 22, 1795, to Elias Sturtevant, boorn at Plymouth, Mass , June 4, 1769, son of Cornelius and Sarah (Bosworth) Sturtevant. They had seven children, all born, I think, in Westport.
1. Daniel Wright Sturtevant, born 1708, was a physician, and practiced some years in Westport and in Essex ; afterward went west, and died in Galesburg, Ill. 2 Harriet, late to life, became the third wife of Dr. Diadorus Holcomb, No hidres.
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At the same time with the settlements along the lake shore, pioneers were coming in to the valleys of the Bo- quet and the Black. The strip of land called Pleasant Valley, along the former river, was granted Platt Rogers from the state on condition of its being immediately settled, and every effort was made to induce reliable inen to come in, fathers of families if possible, sober, in- dustrious, likely to remain and to pay for their farms. On this account the sale or grant of large portions of public lands to one man, or to a land company whose prosperity depended upon the revenue derived from the payment of settlers for their farms, was a real advau- tage to a new country. Nothing could bring about so bad a condition of things as land free to any squatter, who felt no obligation to improve his farm, and who might be dispossessed at any moment by a second comer who had a stronger arm or was a better shot than he. I find no traces of a squatter-and-lynch-law period in the first settlement of Elizabethtown and Westport. Men came in from the older colonies,
3. George W., always known as "Deacon Sturtevant," from his long tenure of that office in the Congregational church at Wadhams. He married Clorinda Phelps, and had three children, Edmund, (lived in Vineland, N. J.,) Carrie Maria ' and Harriet, who married Dr. Pease, a missionary to Micronesia.
4. Sophsonia, unmarried.
5. John Sturtevant also bore the title of Deacon for many years, filling that office in a Congregational church in Gisport, N. Y. He married Mary Royce, daughter of Wilham and Anna (Henry) Royce, and had seven children, Daniel Wrigh:, Henry Rue, (Mrs. Granville Clark), Mary, William Royce, George W. and Alice Linda ( Mrs Webster Royce). The only descendants of General Wright now living in Essex County are William R. Sturtevant and Mrs. Webster Royce.
6. Elmira married Mr. Marshall.
7. Maria married Edmund Day, and had three children, Charles, Helen and. Alva.
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bought land, built homes, and set themselves to abide by laws which they took pride in making. Town officers were elected at the earliest possible oppor- tunity, and among them were three men whose duty it was to attend to schools for the children. This shows in itself the character of the new township, and it is plain that it would naturally attract to itself only law-abiding citizens.
The common route for settlers from the south was by the valleys of the Schroon and the Boquet. In this way came many from Dutchess county, like Joseph Jenks, who settled first at Pleasant Valley, and afterward moved to Northwest Bay. The water power of the swift flowing Black river was a great attraction, and a rude little saw mill, where the logs from the clearings could be cut up, was a very desirable neighbor. Partly on this account the highlands of the back part of the town came to be settled very early. Another reason was the character of the soil. It is well-known that the first settlers, as a rule, sought the high, sandy lands in preference to the clay of the low lands on the lake shore. The light loam was much more easily worked, and for a number of years would be more productive than the heavier soil. The water supply was sure to be good, among the mountain springs, and it was always a wise precaution to avoid the malaria of low-lying marshes. In those days there was far more moisture in the soil everywhere than there is now, since the country has been stripped of its forests. Another thing that might well be considered in the years close following the Rev-
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olution was the fact that the settler's cabin was safer from enemies, red or white, if it were hidden deep in the forest, that it could be if built upon the lake shore, in sight of passing war parties or scouts. This idea was suggested by the historian Francis Parkman, in a conversation with Mrs. F. L. Lee upon this subject a number of years ago. The substance of the conversa- tion was given to the writer by Mrs. Lee, and the clear- ness of Mr. Parkman's insight will be fully perceived when it is remembered how the defeat of St. Clair in Ohio in 1791 sent a shudder of fear through the heart of every frontiersman, lest the western Indians should combine with the Six Nations, and the scenes on the older frontiers be repeated in the Champlain valley.
Thus we have at the end of the eighteenth century a distinct advance from the stretch of primeval forest threaded by Robert Rogers and his men in the "old French war." Now there are mills and clearings, the wood-chopper's axe scarcely ever sounding beyond the reach of human ear, log cabins among the stumps, crops of corn and potatoes harvested every year, and a few domestic animals, shielded with great ingenuity and patience from the wild animals who still roam the woods. Homes and children, and a promise of schools -all this with new settlers coming in from the south or the east in a steady stream. It seems to me a good time to have lived in Westport, in spite of the log- houses and the wolves. Any one who has ever felt the charm of camping out, or who has experienced the un- shakable bliss of setting up housekeeping for the first
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time, can appreciate the keen flavor that there must have been in these early days.
Besides the signs of human life and occupation which were beginning to change the face of the land, a new era could be plainly read in the life upon the water. The Indian bark canoe, the whale boats of the Rangers, the bateaux of Montcalm and Amherst, then Arnold's sturdy fighting craft, with the gallant Inflexible and her sister ships riding triumphant, ruling all the lake, fol- lowed by the martial splendor of the fleet of Burgoyne, led by the twenty-four-gun Royal George, all these, and many a keel unmentioned in any record, had floated in the waters of our bay. Now nothing but the humble ferry-boat, making its way from shore to shore with freight of household goods, or the heavy scow of some fisherman catching his dinner of fish, was seen. This is not nearly so interesting to read about as the stories of more stormy times, but it was a vast deal more comfortable for the people who lived here. Bar- ber at the Point and Ring at Rock Harbor saw each other's sails swing and fill in the same wind, or flap idly against the mast in a maddening calm. Further down the lake another sail, that of McNeil, ferrying from Charlotte to Essex, might be discerned, and the pirogue of the proprietors of the colony upon the Saranac made its trips to the ore bed and back again, carrying ore to supply the forge which was the pride of the Saranac, and then carrying to the south the iron which brought the owners a hundred dollars a ton. The ore bed was the one which we now call "the Goff bed." Philip
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Skene first owned it, and at the time of which we now write it was called, on that account, "Skene's ore bed," though it had belonged to the state since the confisca- tion of Skene's property .* It was also often called the "Crown Point bed," and it lies upon territory which belonged to the town of Westport until 18-19.
The "pirogue" of the Plattsburgh proprietors was the same kind of vessel called in Cooper's novel, the "Water Witch," a "periagua," and thus described :
"The periagua, as the craft was called, partook of a European and an American character. It possessed the length, narrowness, and clean bow of the canoe, from which its name was derived, with the flat bottom and lee-boards of a boat constructed for the shallow waters of the Low Countries. Twenty years ago (Cooper was writing in 1830) vessels of this description abounded in our rivers, and even now their two long and unsupported masts, and high, narrow headed sail, are daily seen bending like reeds to the breeze, and dancing lightly over the billows of the bay.
*Philip Skene had a forge at his colony of Skenesborough, at the head of Lake Champlain, and I do not know where he got the iron ore with which to supply it unless he brought it from his own ore bed near Crown Point. The ore was easily obtained from outcropping ledges, near the water's edge, and its transportation in boats was no great problem. If this conjecture has any foundation in truth, the Plattsburgh company were not the first miners here.
In connection with this subject Mr. Winslow C. Watson made a slight mistake something very unusual in his careful and conscientious work. On page 439 of his History of Essex County he quotes from a letter "of the late Levi Higby, of Willsboro," as follows: "A bed at Basin Harbor, owned by Platt Rogers, was the only deposit of iron ore which at that period (ISor) had been developed in the whole region." A little reflection upon the geological formation of the Vermont lit- toral will show that it is no place to look for deposits of iron ore, and a visit to
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"There is a variety of the class of a size and preten- sion altogether superior to that just mentioned, which deserves a place among the most picturesque and strik- ing boats that float. He who has had occasion to nav- igate the southern shore of the Sound must have often seen the vessel to which we allude. It is distin- guished by its great length, and masts which naked of cordage, rise from the hull like two tall and faultless trees. When the eyes runs over the daring height of the canvas, the noble confidence of the rig, and sees the comparatively vast machine handled with ease and grace by the dexterity of two fearless and ex- pert mariners, it excites some such admiration as that which springs from the view of a severe temple of an- tiquity. The nakedness and simplicity of the con- struction, coupled with the boldness and rapidity of its movements, impart to the craft an air of grandeur that its ordinary uses would not give reason to expect "
Later we find that the "periagua" of Cooper's descrip- tion had a half-deck, and so no doubt did the vessel be- longing to the "twelve patriarchs." It was this boat which carried most of the passengers to and from Platts- burgh, and upon her deck might have been met, at dif-
Basin Harbor will soon convince any one that there is not and never could have been an iron mine in that vicinity. But the mistake came about in a very natural way. Platt Rogers lived at Basin Harbor, and owned and worked the ore bed on Skene's grant, across the lake and a few miles further south. Mr. Higbv, who was engaged in the first iron manufacturing enterprise of Essex county, knew per- fectly whence came the ore from which he made anchors in Willsboro, but his let - ter was written after a long lapse of years, and he must have been momentarily confused between the dwelling place of Platt Rogers and the location of his ore bed.
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ferent times, many very interesting people." There were the Platts, Colonel Zephaniah, the most distin- guished of them all, and Captain Nathaniel, and Judge Charles, who was the first comer, and who named the town of Plattsburgh, and from whose letters to his brother Zephaniah so many bits descriptive of the lake country may be gathered. He notes that the lake froze over January 16 in 1786, and that the snow was thirty- two inches deep. Writing afterward about himself he says, "At the close of the war I had purchased a few class rights of the soldiers, and having collected a little something, set out for the woods, and after viewing several places, I sat down on the west side of Lake Champlain, an entirely new country and wilderness, and called the town Plattsburgh." It was this man's son, Charles C. Platt, who was afterward to marry the daughter of our Elizabeth, Eliza Ross. But that is looking years ahead, when the periagua was a worn- out hulk. When she was still in her prime, she must have carried often the man who came closer than any other to our history in the years before the Revolution. His face was sadder than when he looked from the
*Often black faces looked out from under the sail of the periagua, and it is prob- able that the laborers at the ore bed were often slaves. In the census of iSoo the population of Essex and Clinton counties was 8,572, including 5S slaves. A ma- jority of the slaves were probably at Plattsburgh, upon the Platt estate, as the fam - ily are said to have brought forty slaves to Richlands. It is not believed that a slave was ever owned upon the soul of Westport. Platt Rogers brought his slaves with him from Dutchess county to Basin Harbor, but they were set free by the Act of Congress which adnuitted Vermont as a free state in 1791. Two of these slaves, Primus Storm and Milly his wife, spent the remainder of their lives at Basin Habor, faithful and beloved friends of the family, and descendants of theirs Were there for many years.
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deck of the Musquinonge upon these fair and wooded shores, with wife and child beside him, and it was but a wandering and melancholy gaze which he now di- rected toward Bessboro. The man who had perhaps sailed into Northwest Bay in the schooner of Major- Philip Skene, and there stood by his side listening to. the unfolding of plans which should make this coast part of a noble principality, dependent only upon His. Majesty King George, now sat in weary despondency, hardly realizing the truth, that the Champlain valley now looked to new masters for the shaping of its des- tiny.
Willian Gilliland had left Willsboro in the wake of the army retreating from Canada, in the summer of 1776. He had been imprisoned in Albany upon a charge of treason, which seems to have been entirely unfounded, and was kept for years in the debtors' prison of New York. The buildings of the settlement at Milltown were destroyed during the course of the Revolution, chiefly, it is said, by refugees fleeing from the battle of Saratoga, and were never rebuilt by Gilliland. From the moment that he was driven from Willsboro with his helpless family, "unmerciful disaster followed fast and followed faster" upon his footsteps. The titles to his large pos- sessions in land had been received from the king, and in many cases the colonial government refused to recog- nize them. Thus deprived of his land, his chief source of revenue, he was unable to pay his debts, and found himself in evil case. Many of his letters, written dur-
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