USA > New York > Essex County > Westport > Bessboro: A history of Westport, Essex Co., N.Y. > Part 13
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ing his imprisonment, have been preserved, and set forth with passionate eloquence his wrongs and his suf- fering. One "proposal" to his creditors, given in Wat- son's "Pioneers of the Champlain Valley," is addressed to two interesting names as opposing counsel-Brock- holst Livingston and Aaron Burr.
In 1785 his daughter Elizabeth, after whom he had named Bessboro, married Daniel Ross. If she was born, as we have supposed, the same year that Bess- boro was first surveyed, she was twenty-one at the time of her marriage. Daniel Ross had come from Dutchess county to settle in Essex, and in Essex the remainder of their lives was spent. Thus the descendants of our Elizabeth were the Rosses of Essex, a family remark- able in many ways.
Released from the debtors' prison in 1791, Gilliland returned to Lake Champlain to spend his last days with his daughter Elizabeth. And now the fact was recog- nized that his mind, once so strong and commanding. was hopelessly affected. Imprisonment, losses and suffering, injustice and hope deferred, had wrought their work upon him. He wandered about the fields and woods of Essex and Willsboro, fancying himself back in the early days of its settlement, and recalling his subsequent misfortunes only at unclouded intervals. Still, he never lost his power of judgment in certain practical matters, and he was often consulted in regard to first locations, and early surveys and boundaries. In this way he was often of the greatest service to the land company formed for the purchase and sale of
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lands in Northern New York, whose administrative head in this region was Platt Rogers. Mr. Rogers thought highly of Mr. Gilliland, knowing the history of his labor and his misfortunes, and often asked his ad- vice. One day, about the first of February, 1796, Mr. Gilliland visited Mr. Rogers, going on foot across the frozen lake, as was his habit. There was doubtless a well-beaten track from Essex to Basin Harbor, as all travel invariably took to the level floor of the lake as soon as it was frozen sufficiently to bear the weight of a man, and this was the safest and most direct route that could be taken. The distance is perhaps ten miles. Mr. Gil- liland made his visit to Mr. Rogers and set out on his return, but was never again seen alive after he passed out of sight of the windows of the house at Ba in Har- bor. He must have lost his way upon the ice and turned off upon the shore too soon, wandering about in the mountains south of Esses until he sank and per- ished from cold and exhaustion. When his body was discovered, several days later, it was mournfully evi- dent what a brave struggle he had made for life. After his strength had failed him so that he was unable to walk, he had dragged himself along until the flesh was worn from his hands and knees. And it was upon Westport soil that he breathed his last, somewhere near the northern base of Coon mountain.
So died William Gilliland, the first colouizer of Willsboro, Essex and Westport. Platt Rogers died two years afterward, at Plattsburgh, and was buried at Basin Harbor, in the burial plot still owned by his .
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descendants of the fourth generation. With the death of these two men, and the end of the century, the first period of settlement, that of taking up land, may be said to have ended.
1800-1815.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century the town- ship was dotted with clearings. Settlement had begun at three points on the lake shore, determined by the mill site at the mouth of Raymond's brook, and the de- mand for ferriage at Barber's Point and Rock Harbor. Next the high sandy land in the northwest was bought for farming, and rapidly cleared and cultivated. Then settlement began at the head of the bay, at what exact date we cannot tell, but there is no sign of any house there before the opening of the century. Economic force overcame the instinctive preference of the pioneer for the highest land he could cultivate, and led to the clustering of houses where the principal village now stands. At this place was water power for a saw mill and a grist mill, and there was eager demand for the products of both. A steady current of emigration was setting in from the east into Essex county, and for a large share of it this was the most convenient point of entrance. Many early settlers at Pleasant Valley, Keene and Jay, coming from New England, wished that the ferry should set them ashore in the bay, and soon the sait from Basin Harbor came oftenex
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here than to Rock Harbor. This created a demand for an inn, for the shelter of tired travelersand their beasts. In the very first years of the century the rude little forges on the Boquet and the Black sought a port for the shipping of their bar iron, and this port was evi- dently at Northwest Bay. These conditions led the owners of the land to lay out the plan of a village, with streets along which lots were soon sold.
The owners of the land at this time were Ananias and Platt Rogers, sous of Platt Rogers, who had died in 1798, and his son-in-law, John Halstead. All the land owned by Platt Rogers, Senior, in Westport, seems to have fallen into the hands of these three men, but the only one who settled here for life was John Halstead, with his wife, Phebe Rogers Halstead. Lot No. 16, (Me- lancton Smith's on the map of Skene's Patent,) seems to have belonged to Ananias and Platt Rogers, Jr., and No. 15, (Zephaniah Platt's ou the map,) to John Hal- stend, while Edward Cole bought upon No. 11, (Na- thaniel Platt's).
The village was laid out and a map of it drawn by Ananias Rogers,# dated May 23, 1800. There were thirty-four lots and three streets, Washington, Liberty
* This remarkable name is enough in itself to prove Puritan lineage, with its ac - companying lack of a sense of humor. It is to be feared that the present genera- tion, with its jokes about the "Ananias corner." and other flippancies, will need to be reminded that there are in the New Testament two men of this same name. The Iving Ananias lived in Jerusalem, but there was another in Damascus who is thus described : "And one Ananias, a devout man accerding to the law, having a good report of all the jews which dwelt there." Acts 22: 12. The man who first sur - Hoved our village streets was named after his grandfather, and his grandfather ras named after Ananias of Damasers.
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.
and Water, the first being evidently intended for the principal street. It ran westward up the hill from the lake, and at the foot of it was the regular landing for the ferry, as the line steamer stops at the foot of it now every summer day. Liberty Street lay parallel to Washington and south of it, ruuning also to the lake. This street was not actually opened until 1837, and to this day runs only so far cast as to Main Street. The third street was Water Street, running north and south along the lake shore, and intersecting Washington and Liberty. The only part of it now in use as a street is the road leading from the wharf to the "old stone mill." The cluster of old buildings removed when the land was bought by the Westport Inn was supposed to stand upon the ancient Water Street.
The description accompanying the map speaks of "Washington street, seventy-five links wide, and Lib- erty street, each sixty-two and a half liuks wide, all which lots and streets lie in range with and parallel to the sides aud ends of the dwelling house that is now building on the northwest corner of Lot No. 1."
This house, the angles of which oriented the streets of the village, stood upon the same lot now occupied by the Westport Iun, close upon the northwest corner. It was built by John Halstead and occupied by him until his death in 1844, and after that by two genera- tions of his descendants. It has been described to me as "a low red house," with the front door divided hori- zontally in the middle, after the old Dutch custom, familiar to foku Halstead and his wife in their rest-
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dence among the Dutch settlers along the Hudson. This half-door opened upon an "entry," north of which was a large room used as a bar-room as long as the house was used as a tavern. This was for some years the largest room in the village, and was the common place of public assembly. The itinerant preachers who visited the- village were wont to gather their audi- ences in this room, and in the long winter evenings the frequent and informal meetings of the mens' club (a term never yet heard iu that day) were held here. Henry Holcomb went in and out of the house as a boy, and has told me how it looked to him, and how a row of horse sheds stood across the road, with a watering trough for the use of travellers. He has told me, too, how he robbed John Halstead's cherry trees o' nights, in the orchard back of the house, and I hereby render to him full title to all the fruit he took, wishing that all muy ancestral cherries could bring me in as rich returns as the fun of hearing him tell about it.
This was the first frame house in the village, though there were two or three log houses there before it. The descendants of its builder moved it a little way to the south, to the present site of the Westport Inn, and re- modeled it almost entirely. For several years a part of its original walls formed the middle division of the Inn, but in 189S the last one of the solid old timbers was removed, and now "the old Halstead house" is gone from the face of the earth. Strange, strange to handle this old map and think how it- frailty has defied de-
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' struction so much more securely than the house, or the hands that made it.
. Shortly after the first map of the village was drawn, ten more lots were added, along the imaginary Water Street, but seem never to have been sold, as all the land upon the water front, with the exception of that close about the wharf, remained in the family until it was sold to the Lake Champlain Ore & Iron company in 1868. This property now forms the grounds of the Westport Inn.
In two years' time settlement had increased so rap- idly that another street was necessary, and Main Street was laid out, and the number of lots raised to sixty-two, on July 31, 1802. The part of the village thus mapped out extended from the north line of the present Library lawn to a point somewhere near the Arsenal, and west- ward to the short street which connects Washington and Liberty."
* The original first map of the village, drawn by Ananias Rogers, is owned by Miss Alice Lee. It was given her some time ago by the late Anthony J. B. Ross. an attorney in Essex, (and a descendant, by the way, of our Elizabeth Gilliland,> whose father was acquainted with the Halsteads, and probably had the map from them in the settlement of some dispute over land titles. A copy of it is still owned by a great-grand daughter of John Halstead, and upon this copy are marked the prices of the lots, They range from $7.00 to $50.00, and the four lots in the corner where John Halstead's house was built are marked $$50.00. this price no doubt in - cluding the house. A marginal note says. "Whole amount $3, 473 00," which fur . nishes the basis for an interesting calculation of the rise of real estate since ISco. There was a copy of the village map drawn on sheepskin, in i$49, by J. Collins Wicker, whoever that may have been. It was doubtless made by order of the town. board, and belonged to the town, to be kept with other archives of this common - wealth, but it cannot have been very carefully guarded, as it was found by a work - man, in a drawer. I think, in the store of Mr. Reuben Ingalis, after the store wa. . sold. There is now a blue- print copy of the map, made to Miss Lee's order by George Gregory in 19%).
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Since the flat-bottomed ferry-boat which brought the household goods of John Halstead across the lake may be called the Mayflower of our village history, an ac- count of his descendants may carry the mind along lines of heredity not without interest to many of my readers.
John Halstead and Phebe his wife had eight children, as follows :
1. Platt Rogers Halstead, born March 20, 1794, died February 19, 1849, of consumption. He never married.
2. John Halstead, died at the age of nineteen of consumption.
3. Maria Halstead, died at twenty-six of consump- tion.
4. Jacob Halstead, born March 5, 1800, drowned November 23, 1825, with four others, all on board the schooner Troy, which went down in a gale about mid- night, off Coll's Bay. These four older children were born at Basin Harbor, and all the family are buried in Westport.
5. Phebe Jane lived to be four years old. She must have been one of the first children born at Northwest Bay.
6. The next child, born 1806, lived to be six years old.
7. Caroline Eliza, born August 18, 1809, died in Bedford, N. Y., March 27, 1870, was the only one of all this family who married.
S. George, born August 21, 1812, was drowned with his brother Jacob in the schooner Troy, at the age of
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thirteen. The mother of this family died when the youngest child was four years old, and John Halstead married again, a Mrs. Lydia Pardee, who had a family of children of her own by a former marriage. She had no Halstead children.
Caroline Eliza Halstead married Miles McFarland Sawyer, January 5, 1832. They had seven children, all born in Westport :
1. Phebe Maria, 1832-1893. She married John Nelson Barton and had two children.
Helen married Henry J. Griffin of Yorktown Heights, Westchester Co., and has one child, Anna Caroline Griffin, born Dec. 6, 1891. Caroline Halstead married Frank Bar- ton Royce, and is the only descendant of John Halstead left in the Champlain valley.
2. Platt Rogers Halstead Sawyer, 1834-1885. He was a physician, and surgeon of the 96th N. Y. in the Civil War. He was twice married, first to Helen Ba- ker, second to Frances Waters. His children :
Frances Edua. married Hervey R. Dorr of Chicago, has one little girl, Frances.
Lea Halstead Sawyer, Chicago.
3. Joseph Willoughby, died at seventeen of con- sumption.
4. Washington Irving, 1839-1862. Killed at Gaines Mills, Va.
5. Conant, 1841-1898, married Jeannette Wright in 1864, after her death in 1893 married Mrs. Mary E. Fowler of Anburu. His children now live in Auburu. He was a physician in the State Prison there.
Katherine Keut Sawyer.
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Thomas Conant Sawyer, married Alice M. Grant, has three children, Jeannette, Thomas Conant, Jr., and Grant.
John Halstead Sawyer, a lawyer in Auburn, married Lulu E. Walker, bas ove child, Conant.
6. John Halstead, 1843-1882. Married Emma C. Knox of Bedford, N. Y. Died in Doniphan, Kansas, being Mayor of the city at the time of his death.
7. Caroline Loraine, 1846-1847.
Also in 1800 came Enos Loveland, probably by way of the Schroon and the Boquet valleys to the settlement at Pleasant Valley, and then eastward across the Black river to the highlands of Morgan's Patent. He lived at the place now called "Hoisington's," on the head- waters of the Hoisington brook, near the cemetery. It lies not far outside the northern limit of the Iron Ore Tract, a lonely place, hemmed in by mountains. The soil is light, and the elevation between five and six hun- dred feet. Here he "sat down," as the phrase went then, with his family of a wife and five little children. They afterward had seven more children, making in all a good old-fashioned family.
Enos Loveland was born in Marlboro, formerly a part of Glastonbury, Connecticut, March 12, 1766. Four generations of Lovelands, had lived in that town or near it, there being four Thomas Lovelands in the direct line of succession. After the Revolution Enos Love- land, like so many of the young men of New England, left his home to try new fortunes farther west. He was married at Spencertown, N. Y., Jan. 15, 1789, to Anna Finney, who was born at Warren, Conn., Jan. 25,
-
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1769. They lived for a time at Sand Lake, Rensse- laer county, and came to what was then Elizabethtown, Essex county, in 1800. Enos Loveland soon became prominent in church and state, being a man of weight in the management of the Baptist church, and was elected Supervisor of the town for the years 1809, 1810 and 1814. When Elizabethtown was divided in 1815, and the eastern part made into a new town with the name of Westport, Enos Loveland was the first super- visor, and the town records show that he held many other offices. He died in 1844, and his wife in 1865 .*
In the town records of 1801, in the accounts of the roads laid out in different parts of the township, there is mention of a "lake road," which may have run along the shore from north to south, and of another which
* The children of Enos Loveland are as follows :
Sylvia, born 1789, married for her first husband Marcus Hoisington and had one child, named Marcus. She afterward became the second wife of Dr. Diadorus Holcomb, and had by him four children.
Asa, bora 1791, married Margaret Frasier. Went west.
Erastus, born 1703, married Lucy Bradley. He was the father of Ralph A. Loveland, who represented the county of Essex in the Assembly and in the State Senate, and became a wealthy lumber dealer in Albany, Chicago, and in Saginaw, Mich, where he died in 180).
Amanda, born 1795, marri. d Warren Harper.
Lucetta, born 1707, was one of the early school teachers. She was twice married, first to Leman Bradley, second to Eben Egerton.
Narcissa, born ISoo, after her parents came to this town, married Elijah Angier. Aretas, born 1803, married Emeline Manning.
Then came two babies, one horn in 1So5 and the other in 1Sc6, both of whom were named Datus. The hrst Datus, who closed his eyes on this weary world at the age of four months, lies now under a tombstone bearing the earliest date of any which I have found in the township. The second Datus died at the age of five. Harriet, burn 1Sos, married James Stringham.
Then there was an infant, born and died in ISto, and the youngest of the family Vas Enos, who died at the age of twenty.
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ran "through Ananias Rogers' clearing." This was probably a road connecting Pleasant Valley with North- west Bay, and it shows us how the settlement at the bay was commonly spoken of at that time, in popular disregard of the carefully surveyed streets of the Ana- nias map.
But nevertheless, men of energy and foresight saw possibilities in the situation of the little clearing. Early in 1802 came a man who was destined to do much in furthering the fortunes of the place, bringing in the spirit of commerce, with its expression in the country store, and building mills and wharves as time went on. This man was Charles Hatch. Forty years after his coming to Westport he wrote, at the request of Dr. Sewall S. Cutting, then editor of the New York Recorder, a letter descriptive of the place as he first saw it, which has fortunately been preserved. He begins :
"Dear sir :-- I now, agreeable to promise, commence a sketch of the early settlement of this country, but more particularly of the town of Westport. In the spring of 1790 I moved to the settlement of Brookfield, which commenced in the spring of 1789, which place was then in the town of Willsborough, but now in the town of Es- sex. At that timeall the country west of me for 100 miles was an entire wilderness. I remained in Brookfield until 1802. During that time a settlement commenced in Pleasant Valley, now Elizabethtown, also in the sev- eral towns of Chesterfield by Isaac Wright, in Jay by Nathaniel Malery, in Keene by Benjamin Payne, in Schroon by a Judge Pond. All commenced their im-
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provements and progressed rapidly. Our roads were all to make anew. I helped look out the first road that led from Brookfield to the lake, a distance of six miles. I drove the first loaded wagon from Brookfield to Pleasant Valley, a distance of eight miles.
"In the fall of 1801 I concluded to move to Westport, eight miles from my then residence, yet there was no road. I then harnessed my horses to a wagon, with four men with me, and in two days' time, with perse- verance, we reached Westport, my present residence. situated ten miles west of the City of Vergennes, in Vermont, and being on the west side of Lake Cham- plain."
He does not mention his reason for leaving Brook- field, but to any one who knows his history it is plain that he foresaw no future for himself and his aptitude for business in a place like Brookfield, which has re- mained unto this day simply a stretch of farming coun- try, without even a post-office of its own.
"Westport at that time was mostly a dense forest, with a few solitary settlements, without a road near the lake to Essex, the adjoining town north, and none to Crown Point, the then adjoining town south. We, of course, had no means of communicating with our neighboring towns but by water, and that (manuscript indistinct) ferry com- menced by Platt Rogers and John Halstead, another one two and one-half miles south, at Barber's Point, by Hezekiah Barber, which place bears his name. Still there was also a small improvement four miles south
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of the present Westport village, commenced by a man by the name of Raiment, which was the only improve- ment commenced before the Revolution in the present Westport. At the last mentioned place Raiment erect- ed a small mill, but it was all demolished when I moved into this place, except a shattered old house which was occupied by Benjamin Andrews.
"The village of Westport is situated about nine miles north of Crown Point, on a pleasant Bay, and . had . three log houses, a saw mill, and a few scatering log houses in the backwoods."
Watson, who probably received his information from the old Squire himself, says that he found here one frame house, three log houses, a saw mill and one barn, The frame house, and probably the baru, were John Halstead's, and the saw mill was built by Ananias Rog- ers.
"The little partial improvement on the village ground was covered with dry Hemlock Trees, but the first set- tlers was a set of Hardy, Industrious men, and the wilderness soon became fruitful fields, and the improve- ments have progressed gradually. The great Iron Ore Bed, formerly called the Crown Point Ore Bed, is sit- uated in the south part of Westport, and is one of the most extensive mines of Iron in this Northern Iron re- gion. It was discovered soon after the Revolution, and fell into the hands of Platt Rogers, who made some im- provements in raising. He employed a number of miners. Among the miners was a respectable English- man by the name of Walton, and some of his descend-
HISTORY OF WESTPORT
ants still remain in the samo neighborhood, and some occupying the same ground, and enjoy a respectable place in society."
He is mistaken in saying that the ore bed was "dis- covered soon after the Revolution," as its existence was well-known to Philip Skene, and we have good reason to believe that this is why he desired the grant of the land from the king. It is an interesting fact that the Walton family of whom Judge Hatch speaks still oc- cupy the same place, on the road between Westport and Port Henry.
"In consequence of the Iron mine above named, and many others in the neighboring towns, there are many forges erected in almost every town in the county, and many of them bring their Iron into Westport for mark- et. The early settlers suffered many privations, it be- ing a time when all kinds of merchandise was very Dear, and no manufacturing near but what every Fam- ily did for themselves; no mills near. None knows the privations but those that tryed it, but the scene is much changed. We now find ourselves situated in a pleasant Village of about one thousand inhabitants, plentifully supplied with the necessaries of life, and many luxuries, having now a variety of factorys, among others a furnace which makes from six to nine tons of Iron per day, and another furnace at Port Henry. Of the several Iron mines in Essex Co. the following is a part; Ist, in Westport. 2nd, in Moriah. 3rd, in Crown Point. 4th, in Elizabethtown, besides many more, almost without number."
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The old Judge always writes the word "iron" with a capital, and well he might, for it had a great part in the building up of his fortunes. In old mortgages of the time we often find it provided that the interest shall be paid "in good, merchantable, bar iron," to be deliv- ered at the store of Charles Hatch on such a day. Of course barter was the rule of trade in those days, as money was far too scarce to supply the demand for a medium of exchange, and no doubt a store-keeper with a good eye for the value of different kinds of produce, and a shrewd knowledge of his market, gathered wealth all the sooner for that .*
In the same season that the possessions of Charles Hatch were conveyed with so much labor through the woods from Brookfield to Northwest Bay, another party made its way in the opposite direction to the falls on the Boquet. They crossed the lake, landed in the bay, and cut a road "four miles through the pine woods." They had come a long journey, from a town in the eas- teru part of Massachusetts. This was the party of
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