USA > New York > Essex County > Westport > Bessboro: A history of Westport, Essex Co., N.Y. > Part 16
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mons which he carried in his own saddle-bags, as it is told that he preached to the Baptist congregations as often as he came, and was loved and looked up to, and called "Father Comstock" by them as much as by the Congregational churches which he founded in other places. There is a tradition, and we have little doubt that it is a true one, that he founded a church at the Falls in 1813, but as no records are left, it is impossi- ble to know the true history of it. It is certain that he often preached there and that the church established in 1827 owed its existence to his influence, and to the teaching which the people had heard for years from his lips. He made himself universally respected and loved, and had great reward in that his name is never mentioned but with pride and affection through all the region in which he lived and worked. When his gravestone was blown down in a great gale, nearly fifty years after his death, there was at once a movementto raise a subscription for a new one, since he had left no children nor relatives to perform that duty. He it was who invented the "buckboard," long called the "Com- stock wagon," and our older people delight to recall him as he jogged over the country in this conveyance.
In the fall of 1809 came a remarkable man to settle in Pleasant Valley, choosing the stir and importance of the County seat as a place where a man of talent might expect to prosper. He had had a most unusual and exciting career. Born in Salisbury, Conn., his father had moved into Dutchess county, New York, and there William Ray began life as a school teacher, but
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soon left this occupation to try his hand "in busi- ness." Failing utterly, and driven hard by his credi- tors, he enlisted in the navy as a common seaman on board the Philadelphia, Captain Bainbridge, then bound for the Mediterranean. A midshipman on the same ship was Thomas Macdonough, then twenty years of age. He too was destined afterward to see Lake Champlain. . Arrived in the Mediterranean a Moorish prize was captured, and Midshipman Macdonough was put in charge of the prize and sent home with it, thus escaping the fate of those left on board the Philadelphia, which ran aground in the harbor of Tripoli, October 31, 1803, and was captured with all on board. William Ray was thus a captive in Tripoli for nineteen months, and upon his release and return to the United States he published a book relating the story of his captivity. To-day the record of such an experience, told as well as William Ray told it, would sell in repeated editions, but "The Horrors of Slavery," published in Troy in 180S, made Ray neither famous or wealthy, and the next year we find him making a hazard of new fortunes in this northern region. He lived at Pleasant Valley for about three years, how, we cannot tell, but evidently not in prosperous circum- stances, as appears from the letters he was contin- ually writing to the Governor, begging for some ap- pointment. At that time the County Clerks were not elected, as they are now, but appointed, and William Ray urged his claims to that office with a persistency, a clearness and vigor of statement, and a variety of ex-
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pression which would have made his fortune as a twen- tieth century newspaper reporter. He is immensely like Dickens' Micawber, with his perennial poverty and his tremendous gifts for letter writing, but without Micawber's charming and irresponsible hopefulness. "Sir," he writes to Governor Tompkins in 1811, "Every letter I write to your Excellency I make a sacrifice of my pride to the strong impulse I feel to communicate my sentiments. I am not unconscious, Sir, that too much familiarity between characters so widely discrim- inated would be incompatible with the dignity of your superior station-of your exalted merits-I trust there- fore your Excellency will not attribute my correspond- ence to vain or ostentatious conceits ; but will indulge me with the innocent gratification of unburthening a mind oppressed with the weight of its own comparative unworthiness." Do office-seekers write to the Gover- nor like that nowadays ? He makes many allusions to the men active in Essex county politics at that time, which makes his letters (discovered in the mass of Tompkins' Papers purchased by the state in 1885) very interesting reading. He mentions Judge Joseph Jenks, who had not at that time moved to Northwest Bay, as one of his warmest friends and supporters. In April of 1812 he made his deepest mark upon our history. Writing to the Governor he says : "Sir : I enclose you the first paper ever printed in this County. The pro- prietors have placed me at the head of its editorial de- partment, associated with Ezra C. Gross, Esquire, a young gentleman of sound principles and excellent tal-
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ents." The name of the paper was the Rereille, a happy choice, especially in view of the impending war. Ray cannot have edited the paper very long, since he re- ceived an appointment in August as Brigade Quarter Master of the 3rd Brigade, and went to Plattsburgh, where he remained six months. Then he left the coun- ty, and is known to have been at a number of different places in the next few years, being at last completely lost sight of. He published a volume of poems at Au- burn in 1821.
In 1811 he seems to have had an idea that Governor Tompkins was likely to visit Elizabethtown, or perhaps he assumed the fact as a kind of poetic license. He thus informs "His Excellency:"
You'll cross the lake at Northwest Bay, Eight miles computed from this village; The land uneven, rough the way, The soil is good, but bad the tillage.
When the last eminence you rise, From log-built huts, and shabby people,
The object next that strikes your eyes
Will be, perhaps, the Court House steeple.
From east to west a plain extends, From north to south a valley stretches, And through the whole a streamlet bends, To feed with fish some bungry wretches.
No Heliconian streams distil To give our poets inspiration. But whisky plenty from the still Sets all their brains iu fermentation.
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No Delphie oracle is here, Confounding truth with many a libel.
But a plain clergyman sincere,
Our only oracle the Bible.
This must have been Elder Daniel Hascall, a gradu- ate of Middlebury college, who preached in the church at Pleasant Valley from 1808 to 1813. Ray laughs at the local diguitaries, "Judges and Generals, all great meu," and adds,
Here's lawyers most confounded wise, Physicians also very pleuty, One scarcely could believe his eyes To find a good one out of twenty.
The number is evidently chosen to save the rhyme. as there were in all probability no more than two doe- tors in the township at this time, at least as permanent residents.
One copy of Ray's newspaper is still preserved in Elizabethtown, showing it to have been a very credita- ble production for the place and the time. Surely it must have received a welcome, at a time when news was so eagerly looked for. And still no newspaper at that period ever forestalled the intelligence that came by means of private letters or by word of mouth. Iu those days if a friend left in one of the older states wrote to any one in the new settlement of Elizabeth- town, his letter was mainly occupied with public affairs. elections, the proceedings of Congress, news received from over-seas by sailing vessels, while information in regard to family matters would be left to be crowded in at the bottom of the last page. Indeed, these letters
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often found their way into the local newspaper and no one considered details of things which happened a month ago as at all out of place. No telegraph, no railroad, not even the stage-coach had yet penetrated our woods, and all communication with the outside world was kept up by the man on horseback. Letter postage was high, six cents for every thirty miles at one time, and ordinary people never expected more than one or two letters a year, which were as likely to come by the hand of some travelling friend as by the post- rider. Letters of the period are commonly endorsed at the bottom, "By the politeness of Mr. Blank," who carries the letter, maybe a long distance, as a friendly office, knowing that he may require the same accom- modation in his turn.
As a compensation for the slowness and difficulty of communication between distant parts, we must con- sider that in those days news by word of mouth was much more reliable than it is now, and depended upon much more extensively. Then, if a man heard a bit of news from a stranger whom he met at a ford in the forest, or at the door of an inn, he listened with the closest attention, learned it by heart, and then set off as a matter of course to repeat it to his next door neighbor, who received it and repeated it in his turn. In this way intelligence of wars and of Indian uprisings often travelled with incredible swiftuess and accuracy, and in this way, and for this reason, the American backwoodsman came to be considered the embodiment of inquisitiveness. Living a narrow and monotonous life,
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his natural intelligence being denied its proper and rightful nourishment, at the sight of a stranger from the ouside world be fell upon him as one famishel for information. This is one reason why the itinerant preacher was always welcome, and why he might choose his host out of his congregation. The family with whom the preacher sojourned were sure to hear many interesting things before he went away, and were en- vied accordingly. This is one reason, too, why so many of the early settlers are mentioned as having "kept an inn." Any one with a house large enough to contain a spare room, and a barn that would hold an extra horse, was glad to take a stranger in, not only for the money for his lodging, but for the pleasure that the dullest story-teller could give in relating incidents of his journey, with the hints which he had picked up of the doings of the great, far away world.
Thus the Reveille was sure of an appreciative public, though perhaps of uo great number of wealthy patrons. Its polities were strongly Republican, that is, Anti- Federalist, supporting the administration of Madison and declaring in favor of the war. The tone of the paper may be taken as an indication of the prevailing sentiment in regard to these things at the county seat. We find from the letters of William Ray to the Gov- ernor that Joseph Jeuks was an earnest Republican, while Colonel Ransom Noble of Essex is re- ferred to by him as "a bitter enemy of the present administration." However, after war had been actually declared, and the militia called out for the defence of
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the frontier, there was no difference observed upon the battle field between Federalist and Republican, and it seems to be true that the western shore stood as a unit, entirely divided from that New England sentiment which led to the proceedings of the Hartford Conven- tion.
When each number of the Reveille was printed, the copies were distributed to the subscribers by private carriers. Those for distant patrons, like General Wright, or Charles Hatch, Esq.,, were packed into sad- dle-bags and carried on horse-back.
The township in which William Ray published the . Reveille had a population of 1362, of which 741 were males. Property was assessed at $108,450. There were four grist mills, seven saw mills, four forges, a carding machine and a distillery. The distillery was situated at Pleasant Valley, but a good proportion of the mills and forges must have stood upon the present territory of Westport, as we know that there were Bra- man's Mills at the falls of the Boquet, Coll's Mills ou Raymond brook, one or two on Mill brook, and a num- ber of mills and forges on our side of the Black river. The settlement at Northwest Bay when William Ray first saw it numbered about twenty buildings, houses, thills and stores, the greater part of which lay on the south side of Mill brook. To this size the place had grown in ten years' time, and such was its importance during the war of 1812. Its real significance is better un- derstood by a knowledge of the commercial condition of the great valley in which the little hamlet lay. At the
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Custom House, the value of exports from the District of Champlain for the two months of May and June, 1811, (as given in the Plattsburgh Republican for March 31, 1900,) was $296,914. These exports consisted mainly of pork, eider, corn, butter, lard, candles, leather, potash and soan, all carried on sailing vessels, bateaux and rafts. There were also quantities of tea, tobacco, and some manufactured goods which were making the long journey from New York or Albany to Canada, and we must remember that this gives no ac- cont of smuggled goods. During these two months forty-three rafts were cleared, containing over a million cubic feet of pine timber, principally Norway, besides oak timber, spars, staves, ash oars and walnut hand- spikes. One of these rafts, valued at $2,600, was sent out by Diadorus Holcomb, and we know at this time Gen. Daniel Wright sent rafts to Canada every summer. Those were the days when nothing more wonderful or adventurous could happen to any boy than being al- lowed to go to Quebee on one of these rafts, carrying with him the skins of the wild animals which he and his brothers had trapped and shot the winter before.
And so we can see it all, the township covered with the dark forest, and here and there all over it, except upon steep sides of the mountains, log cabins stand- ing each one solitary in its own clearing, and the clearings connected by rough trails. On the lake shore two clusters of small low houses in the bays, with the clumsy ferry boat moored to its rude wharf at the point. Everywhere the ring of axes and the crash of falling
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trees, sail boats always coming and going, the only link with far away worlds, and then the winter drift white over all, even the frozen lake.
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VII. War of 1812.
And now upon this quiet scene falls a slowly deepen- ing shadow of war. Signs of the second struggle for independence were seen as early upon the Champlain frontier as in any part of the country. First came the Embargo of 1807, instantly defied by open and delib- erate smuggling across the Canada line, accompanied by many acts of lawlessness and violence. This is the most romantic period in all our history as a town, the period in which the most stirring incidents of the latest novel of adventure might easily have happened. Smug- glers, pirates, revenue officers, secret hiding places on lonely shores, costly merchandise loaded by night on pack horses which were led by dangerous paths over the mountains into the interior, foreign emissaries close at hand, tempting loyalty with foreign gold, duelling still practiced among honorable gentlemen, -this was the background against which our ancestors moved. Scott's "Guy Mannering" was not written then, but he might have laid the scene of the story on Lake Cham- plain with no loss of coloring. The boy who gives himself up to the spell of the Wizard of the North, and reads, enchanted,-
"Even at this dead hour of night there were lights moving upon the shore, probably occasioned by the unloading a smuggling lugger from the Isle of Man, which was lying in the bay. On the light from the sashed door of the house being observed, a bollo from the vessel of Ware hawk ! Douse the glim !' alarmed
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those who were on shore, and the lights instantly dis- appeared," etc.,-never thinks, perhaps, that it all might have been written about Northwest Bay, only changing the "lugger from the Isle of Man" into a sloop from Canada, and translating the warning words into Canadian patois or Yankee dialect. Scott's Dutch skipper is Dirck Hatteraick, but surely we could match that name-what do you think of Teunis Van Vliet ?- and his vessel is the Yungfrauw Hagenslaapen, but that is not half so shuddery and piratical as the Black Snake, which was the actual name of a smuggling craft ou Lake Champlain in 1808. True stories are told of plots to kidnap revenue officers, and of rafts of lumber which went into Canada carrying armed men, behind bul- warks of logs, who defied the officers to oppose their passage across the line. Smuggled liquor and salt were seen in every country tavern and store, and we have no reason to believe that our town was sig- nalized by any excess of virtue in the matter of cus- toms duties.
This state of things, together with the fact that in the event of war the northern frontier was the natural avenue of invasion for a British army, made imperative the action of government in sending Lieut. Melancthon Taylor Woolsey,* U. S. N., (about 1809, according to
* The author has had to deal with no less than seven Melan thons-four of them Woolseys and three of them Smiths. There was a Melancthon Taylor Woolsey who was an officer in the old French war. His son, Gen. Melancthon Lloyd Woolsey, owned one of our original patents. The son of the latter, named after his grandfather, was Lieut. M. T. Woolsey, U. S. N., and a fourth of the same familv, Melancthon Brooks Woolsey, was in the navy during the Civil War. Then as for the Smiths, the first was Judge Melancthon Smith of the Revolutionary
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Palmer,) to build two gunboats for the defence of the lake. Lieut. Woolsey was the son of that Melancthon Lloyd Woolsey whose name appears upon our old map as owner of one of our original patents, and who was called Gen. Woolsey from his service in this war. The gunboats were built at Basin Harbor, where was a well-fitted ship-yard, perfectly sheltered in the little circular bay, with its narrow entrance between high rocks. We know that part of the machinery in this ship-yard belonged to government from the report of the Commissary of Military Stores of 1804, which men- tions "one pair iron gin blocks, brass sheaves, found at Basin Harbour in Vermont in possession of Mr. Rog- ers." Then the next year's report mentions "two Irou Jack screws in possession of the assignees of Platt Rog- ers on Lake Champlain." The gunboats were large, heavy, open seows, of probably no more than 40 tons, mounting each one gun. Lieut. Woolsey's service throughout the war was upon Lake Ontario, and in March of 1810 Lieut. Smith was placed in command of Lake Champlain. Lieut. Smith was also the son of a proprietor of land in Skene's Patent, his father being Judge Melancton Smith. He was a naval officer of experience, having been 5th lieutenant on board the
times, one of the ablest supporters of Gov. Clinton in his opposition to Hamilton and the Feder il Constitution. In "The Conqueror," by Gertrude Atherton, he is presented as the speaker most directly pitted against Hamilton himself at the rati- fication convention at Poughkeepsie; "a clever and eloquent orator-generous and manly enough to admit himself beaten." One of his sons was Col. Melancthon Smith of the 20th regiment, U. S. A., who had a son of the same name who came to be a Rear Admiral, U. S. N. Whether the melancholy sequence could be fol- lowed farther, I cannot tell.
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unfortunate Chesapeake at the time of her surrender to the British frigate Leopard, and signing, with the other officers, the letter which preferred charges against Com- modore Barron. He also made headquarters at Basin Harbor, and there built two sloops, the Growler and the Eagle, each carrying eleven guns, and four more gun- boats. This squadron when completed held absolute control of the lake.
Now all this building andl fitting out of war vessels cannot have gone on without appreciable effect upon the opposite shore. No lad of spirit can have failed to row across the lake and look upon the work of the ship- wrights and sailors from the seaboard, while it was a commercial godsend to all the coast. Nothing is more likely than that timbers felled upon our soil went into the construction of this fleet,* as well as into Macdon- ongh's, and the naval officers came often to the inn at Northwest Bay. One man of undoubted military im- portauce in our town at this time was Brigadier-Gen- eral Dauiel Wright, commander of all the militia forces of the three northern counties, receiving his appoint-
* Arnold's fleet of 1775 also carried timbers cut upon our shore. In Arnold's reg- imental memorandum book, written at Ti and Crown Point from May 10 to June 24, (printed in the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. S, ISS4,) he mentions sending boats to Raymond's Mills five different times, three times for "boards for repairing Barracks," once for "Ash for Oars and Troughs for Guns," and once he writes, "Sent to Raymond's Mills for Timber and provisons for Skine's Negroes " One day he writes: "Sent a Boat with Skens Negroes to dig ore," presumably from Skene's ore bed just below Crown Point, where the negroes were accustomed to dig it out and load it on boats to be sent to the forge at Skenesboro. In one of Arnold's letters to Congress that summer he says that he can get iron from Skenesboro. The writer regrets not having seen this regi- memtal memorandum bock in time for fuller use in this history.
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ment for tried military excellence. He was three years in the Revolution, fighting at Bunker Hill and at Sara- toga; and had come into Essex county with the rank of Lieutenant in a New Hampshire regiment .* Soon after his arrival, he was commissioned 2nd Major of. a regiment "whereof Joseph Sheldon is Lt. Col Commandant," then made Ist Major, then given the command of the regiment, and Feb. 11, 1811 was made Brigadier-General of the Militia of Essex, Clinton and Franklin counties. He was often seen riding down from his mountain farm to Northwest Bay, a tall, erect, gray-haired man of fifty-six, said to have made a most imposing figure on horseback when in his uniform. He watched the naval preparations of Lieut. Smith with the deepest interest, and when the two men came together, as they sometimes must, at the inn of John Halstead, sitting of an evening in the bar-room perhaps, with the village worthies listening to their conversation, the talk of a man who had served under John Stark, and had seen the army of Burgoyne advance unopposed the whole length of the lake, with that of another who had seen the height of British aggression in the matter of impressment of American seamen in his service upon the Chesapeake and the Wasp, may well have been eu- tertaining.
War was declared at Washington June 18, 1812, and Gen. Wright got the news the 29th, receiving his orders
*This rank was conferred upon him by a commission dated 1791, and signed by Josiah Bartlett, then President of New Hampshire, and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. A previous commission, as 2d Lieutenant, in 1756, was signed by Gov. John Sullivan
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from Major General Movers on that day. A few days later came orders direct from Gov. Tompkins, which we find in the Tompkins Papers, page 360, as follows :
ALBANY, June 27, 1812.
SIR :- The detachment of militia from your brigade is hereby ordered into service. The detachment from the Essex regiments will rendezvous at such times and places as you may appoint. Such of them as can con - veniently assemble at Elizabethtown, and may not be armed, will arm and equip themselves from the Arsenal at that place. They must supply themselves invaria- bly with blankets and with knapsacks if they have them. Such equipments as they may possess will be taken with them, and if defective, they will be exchanged at the public arsenals. The contingent expenses of trans- porting the detachment from Essex to Plattsburgh will be defrayed by the bearer, Capt. Campbell, with whom you will please to make the necessary arrangements for that purpose. Major Noble will take the command of the detachment, and Dean Edson, who is assigned as brigade quarter master, will also accompany the de- tachment to Plattsburgh. Major Noble will report him- self on his arrival to Major General Mooers and receive his orders, Brigade Quarter Master Edson will wait at Plattsburgh the arrival of instructions of Brigadier Gen. Micajah Pettit, of Washington county. The de- tachment from Clinton will rendezvous at Plattsburgh, and that from Franklin will rendezvous and remain at Malone, in said county, until orders shall be received from Major Gen. Mooers. The flattering accounts
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which I have received of your military talents and of your active and zealous patriotism makes me rely with confidence upon the earliest possible fulfillment of this order. I am, Sir, respectfully your ob't servant,
DANIEL D. TOMPKINS. Brigadier General, Daniel Wright .*
The "arsenal at Elizabethtown" had been built within the year, at Pleasant Valley, upon the line of the new state road which there followed the valley of the Bo- quet. The final rendezvous of the troops was at Wills- boro, as we learn from brigade orders sent to Major Ransom Noble July 4.
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