USA > New York > Essex County > Westport > Bessboro: A history of Westport, Essex Co., N.Y. > Part 17
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And so the war began. And as the message flew by a
*Soon afterward the General's quill pen wrote his first report to the Commander in Chief.
ELIZABETHTOWN, July 11, IS12.
SIR :- I received your Excellency's order of the 27th of June on the 5th inst., directing me to direct the militia detached from the Essex regiments to march to Plattsburgh. I suffered no delay. I immediately informed Major Noble that he was to march with the troops to Plattsburgh. He cheerfully received the order and proceeded on his way with his men on the third day after I received your Ex- cellency's order.
I likewise informed Brigade Quarter Master Edson that he was to repair with the troops, which order he obeyed. Your Excellency may rest assured that all and every order within my power will be strictly and punctually attended to.
Suffer me to inform your Excellency that I have been flattering myself that there would some opportunity present to view that I could serve my country in some post of office that I could be of service to my country and receive some emolu - ments to myself, as I am not a man of fortune. I was three years in the late American Revolution, and have held seven different military commissions in the militia and have been doing duty for twenty-eight years past, to the present mo- ment.
Should your Excellency think proper to remember me, I should gratefully ac- knowledge your Excellency's favor.
I am, sir, with the highest respect, your Ob't Serv't,
DANIEL WRIGHT, B. G. To His Excellency, Daniel D. Tompkins.
Vol. VII, page 406, Tompkins, MSS., State Library.
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wireless telegraphy from door to door throughout the township, "War is declared ! the governor has or- dered out the militia!" the answering thought in every heart was "Indians!" From this terror the froutiers- man was never freed until after this war, in which the savages were employed by the British in many engage- ments. In the dispatches which Gov. Tompkins sent out, ordering the militia of northern New York to the front, he said, "I trust that when you reflect upon the indispensable nature of the service upon which the de- tachmeut is destined, the protection of our frontier brethren, their wives and children, from massacre by savages, you and every other officer and good citizen will join heart and hand in forwarding the execution of this requisition."
Writing to Gen. Dearborn, he says : "The recruits at Plattsburgh are within fifty miles of two tribes of Ca- nadian Indians. In case of an attack upon the fron- tiers, that portion of the United States Army would be as inefficient and as unable to defend the inhabitants or themselves even as so many women." William Ray, writing one of his innumerable letters to the Governor, says: "Many people here are much alarmed at the un- armed situation of our militia on account of the hostility of the Indians."
The frontier post was not now at Crown Point, as in the Revolution, but at Plattsburgh, and to that place cavalry, infantry and artillery were instantly ordered. Cannon, ammunition, muskets, tents, pails, camp ket- tles, knapsacks, all the munitions of war came down the
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lake, or along the eastern shore. Later in the war the main thoroughfare was by the state road through Schroon. June 26 the Governor wrote from Albany to Maj. John Mills, Washington county : "You will pro- ceed with the military stores and articles direct to Whitehall on Lake Champlain, from whence you will transport them, together with the cannon ball belong- ing to the State, lying at Whitehall, to Plattsburgh and Essex arsenals. If an immediate conveyance by water cannot be obtained, you will proceed by land with the articles for Plattsburgh through Vermont to Burling- ton, and from thence send for Gun Boats and other ves- sels from Plattsburgh, or employ, them at Burlington, to transport the articles to Plattsburgh, and from the proper point ou Vermont shore send across those for Elizabethtown, Essex county." The "proper point on Vermont shore" must have been Basin Harbor, and every boat with an oar or sail in Northwest Bay must have been requisitioned for the transportation of this warlike freight. It is believed that our first wharf was built during this war, and it is probable that its neces- sity was first felt for unloading supplies for the Ar- senal at Pleasant Valley. Once on shore, the stores were put into carts and dragged over the rough mount- ain road to Pleasant Valley, crossing the Black at Mor- gan's Forge, now Meigsville, as the present turnpike route then lay through undrained swamps.
Gen. Wright's brigade, the 40th, was then composed of four regiments, drawn from a large extent of thinly settled country. There was the G6th, Lt .- Col. Alric
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Mann, the 36th, Lt .- Col. Thos. Miller, the 9th, Lt .- Col. Elijah Barnes, and the 37th, Ransom Noble Major Commandant. In the 37th were most, if not all, of the men of our town.
It is of course understood that although every able- bodied male citizen between the ages of eighteen and forty-five (with certain exceptions, like judges, mail car- riers, postmasters, etc.,) was at all times subject to mil- itary duty, still each brigade had its quota, that of the 40th being 300, and as naturally only the more willing ones were first enrolled, it was practically a volunteer service. There were no more than 150 men on our side of the Black river subject to militia duty, and of these not more than fifty, so far as I have been able to learn, were actually under military orders during the war. These, with the exception of a few among the older men who had seen service in the Revolution, were raw backwoodsmen, totally inexperienced in war, but nev- ertheless well able to handle the muskets which hung over every fireplace. The forest was far from Do man's door, and wolf or panther might be seen any day; therefore a boy could hardly grow up without learning to shoot, even though the New England training days and musters may have been little observed in the settle- ment of the new town. Our military organization seems to fall into two companies commanded by Capt. Levi Frisbie and Capt. Jesse Braman, and a cavalry company commanded by Capt John Lobdell. There were four different calls to service in the field during the two years of the war (the first for six months, the
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others for a few days each) to which some of our militia men responded.
Sept. 12, 1812, Lieut. Thomas Macdonough was given command of the lake, and shortly afterward arrived at his post, as he tells in these words : "Aftor remaining a few months in Portland I was ordered by Mr. Madi- son to take command of the vessels in Lake Champlain. Proceeded thither across the country through the Notch of the White Mountains, partly on horseback, carrying my bundle with my valise on behind, and a country lad only in company to return with my horses. Arrived fatigued at Burlington on the lake, in about four days, and took command of the vessels." Macdonough was then twenty-nine years old, and had been in the navy since he was seventeen, leading a life full of ex- citement and adventure in the West Indies and upon the Mediterranean. He remained upon the lake until winter closed in, and then went to Middletown, Conu., where he was married the first of December, and where he stayed until the opening of navigation in the spring. His task was the same as that of Arnold in 1775, -- if he had a navy he must build it himself. Carefully he had chosen the place for his navy yard. Opposite the steep cliff's of the Split rock range, a little north of the Nar- rows, Otter Creek flows into the lake on the eastern side, a deep, smooth flowing stream, passing through level farm lands with many a wind and turn. About four miles from its mouth, at a place called the "But- tonwoods," Macdonough built his ships. The place was easily accessible for stores brought from the south
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by land or water, and safe from attack to a degree which no harbor on the lake shore could afford. The place was but ten miles from Northwest Bay by water, somewhat less if one landed at Basin Harbor and went the rest of the way overland, and the scene there was one well worth the journey. Says Robinson, in his "Vermont," "a throng of ship carpenters were busy on the narrow flat. by the waterside ; the woods were noisy with the thud of axes, the crash of falling trees, and the bawling of teamsters ; and the two furnaces were in full blast casting cannon shot for the fleet." The high framework of gin and derrick replaced the trunks of ancient trees, with dangling ropes and blocks for foliage, and the picturesque uniforms of the naval officers gave it all a character unlike anything seen before or since upon our shores. Perhaps William Ray, if he had not already drifted away from Pleasant Valley on the cur- rent of his wandering life, came out and crossed the lake, and looked upon the busy scenes with keen and understanding vision. He had last seen Lieut. Mac- donough nine years before, as a midshipman on the deck of the Philadelphia in the Mediterranean sea, and many things had come to pass in the life of men and nations since then. A party of young people from the Bay visited the navy yard under the escort of Lieut. Platt Rogers Halstead, who had just received in April his commission as 3rd Lieutenant in the 29th U. S. In- fantry. Lieut. Halstead was just nineteen, still con- scious of the unwonted glory of his new uniform, and perhaps also of the fact that he was the only man in
-
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his town who had entered the regular service, and who consequently did not look to the militia officers for or- ders, but to his Colonel, Melanchton Smith, brother of Lieut. Sidney Smith of the navy. The only names of others in the party which we know are Maria Halstead, sister of the young lieutenant, and Mary Jenks, a girl of fifteen who afterward married Ira Henderson ; it is through the latter's relating the incident to her daughter that its memory has been preserved.
Such an excursion at that time was not without its spice of danger, as there were British gunboats astir upon the lake as soon as navigation opened. On the third of June Macdonough sent his two best ships, the Grow- ler and the Eagle, under the command of Lient. Sidney Smith,“ to invite an engagement. They sailed away out of the mouth of the Creek and away to the north, but they never came back again. Chasing the British gunboats too eagerly, they went in pursuit of them into the Richelieu river, and were then surrounded, and both sloops and men captured, after a sharp fight. The sloops were at once repaired and sent out against . the Americans, under the names of the Finch and the
*President Roosevelt remarks, in "The Naval War of 18ta," that this name "is a curious commentary on the close inter-relationship of the two contesting peo- ples." Lieut. Smith cannot have been named after the Rev. Sydney Smith of the Edinburgh Review, as the latter was but a boy of ten, and consequently not yet famous, when the former was born, and the identity of names seems to have been a pure coincidence. Probably the distinguished Englishman never heard of his American namesake, but the insolent patronage with which he speaks of Decatur (in the famous review in which he asks, "in the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book ?") suggests that he would have had nothing but a sneer for our brave lieutenant in his misfortune.
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('hub, and all that summer and the next they were seen upon the lake, flaunting the British flag, while poor Lieut. Smith cursed the rashness which had so early put him outside the fight. The affair was especially lamentable in view of the comparatively defenceless condition of the lake until the time when Macdonough should have his squadron in readiness. He was terri- bly hampered by delays in getting men and stores from the seaboard, difficulties more trying to a commander than the fiercest engagement, and while he was still straining every nerve in preparation the British invaded the state.
It was upon Saturday, July 31, 1813, that men ou galloping horses went through the town, warning every militia man to rendezvous at the Valley the next after- noon, "there to wait further orders, as a party of Brit- ish troops have invaded the state and are making for Plattsburgh." Then from Barber's Point to the Black river, from Mullein brook to the Falls of the Boquet, everywhere the men sprang for their guns and powder horns, while the women packed cold Johnny-cake* and salt pork into their knapsacks, and filled their canteens with rum. If there were no bullets moulded there was no time to melt the lead now, and sometimes an hour after the news was received the father of the family had
*"Johnny-cake" was corn bread mixed hastily and baked on a smooth board which was tilted up before a bed of coals in the fire-place. The name is a corrup- tion of "journey-cake," since it was the only kind of bread which could be baked in camp, while one was on a journey through the woods. Bread raised with yeast could not be baked in haste, since it needed a certain time to rise, and it was 2 day's work to prepare the brick oven for a baking.
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kissed them all around and was off, on foot or horse back, to the rendezvous. From the mountains of Keene, from the valleys of Jay, from the highlands of Lewis, from the terrified lake towns whose position was that of most imminent danger in case of a naval attack, the men and thoir officers came flocking in, missing ac- couterments were supplied from the stores in the arse- nal, the ranks crystalized into order at sharp words of command, and away they went along the state road to the north. On Tuesday, Aug. 3, Gen. Mooers wrote from Plattsburgh to the governor, "Gen. Wright's brigade arrived here yesterday with about four hundred troups." If our men left the Valley Sunday afternoon and reached Plattsburgh, forty miles away, on Monday, they must have marched all night.
Arrived at Plattsburgh, they found the place in the hands of Col. John Murray of the British regulars, who had landed on Sunday unopposed, with a force of 1400 men, and was burning and plundering at his own will. That this should have been so is one of the mysteries and one of the disgraces of the war but it hardly belongs to us to discuss it here. When the British set sail again the Growler and Eagle, under their new names, and much ashamed, it would seem, of the new colors they were forced to fly, went ou up the lake. threatened Burlington, and sailed away to the north numolested. Meanwhile our men went into camp outside Plattsburgh aud ate what their wives and mothers had put into their knapsacks, and at the end of the five days for which they had been warned out most of them went
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home again, without having fired a shot at the enemy. This was in no wise the fault of the soldiers, nor of Gen. Wright, who had shown such alacrity in getting to the front. A company of Essex county mili- tia remained at "Camp Platte" under the command of Captain Luman Wadhams of Lewis until Nov. 18, when they too went home, and military operations were closed for the winter.
Gen. Wright's staff at the beginning of the war con- sisted of Major Joseph Skinner, Brigade Major and In- spector, and Capt. Jobu Warford, Brigade Quarter Master, both Clinton county men, with Captain John Gould of Essex as Aid-de-Camp. The 2nd of March, 1814, the two Clinton county men were replaced by David B. McNeil of Essex as Brigade Major, and Wil- liam D. Ross (also of Essex) as Quarter Master, while Capt. Gould was retained as Aid. At the same time Capt. Luman Wadhams of Lewis was commissioned 2nd Major of the 37th regiment, and Diadorus Holcomb Surgeon's Mate, he having been Paymaster of the regi- ment since Mar. 22, 1809 .*
With the opening of spring Macdonough was eagerly
*Wadhams and McNeil were afterward residents of Westport. David Break- enrilge McNeil had two grandfathers in the Old French War; one was Capt. Archibald McNeil of Litchfield, Conn., and the other Lieut. James Breakenridge. who accompanied Major Philip Skene to England upon the diplomatic mission which made the latter Governor of Crown Point and Ticonderoga. John McNeil, son of Archibald, married Mary, daughter of Lieut. Breakenridge and was the father of David. His daughter Anne married Ransom Noble, Colonel of the 37th. A son of Gea. Wright's aid de-camp. John S. Gould, afterward attended school in Westport, at the old Academy, and his daughter Cornelia married Henry R. Noble of Elizabethtown, and was the mother of Charles H. Noble and of Mrs. Richard 1 .. Hand of the same place, and of Dr. John Gould Noble of New York.
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at work again upon the building and fitting of his fleet. Says Robinson : "The sap had scarcely begun to swell the forest buds when Vergennes, eight miles up stream, where the first fall bars navigation, was astir with the building of other craft for the Champlain navy. Forty days after the great oak which formed the keel of the Saratoga had fallen from its stump, the vessel was afloat and ready for its guns.# Several gun- boats were also built there, and early in May, their sappy timbers yet reeking with woodsy odors, the new craft dropped down the river to join the fleet at the Buttonwoods. The right bank of Otter Creek at its mouth is a rock-ribbed promontory, connected with the mainland except at high water by a narrow neck of low, alluvial soil. On the lake side of the point earth- works were thrown up, and mounted with several pieces of artillery for the defense of the entrance against au expected attempt of the enemy to destroy the American fleet."
The attempt was made, May 14, 1814, and early ou a Saturday morning. We will be precise about the day and the hour, since this was the one time in all this war when actual fighting reached our waters. In the afternoon of the day before, (the 13th) there appeared
*Macdonough's fleet at the battle of Plattsburgh consisted of his flag-ship, the Saratoga, 26 guns; the brig Eagrle, Capt. Healy, 2) guns; the schooner Ticonde- rogy, 17 guns, Lieut. Budd. The Ticonderoga was originally a small steamer, but her machinery was continually getting out of order, and so she was schooner . rigged. Then there were six galleys, the Alles, Barrow's, Borer, Nettle, Vifer and Centipede, each with two guns, and four galleys, the Ludlow, Wilmer, Altyn and Ballard, with one gun each. Some of the vessels were built at L'ssex, and taken into the Creck to be fitted with their armaments.
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off the village of Essex, as Gen. Wright says in his offi- cial report, a "British Flotilla consisting of One Brig of twenty guns, six Sloops and Schooners and ten Row- gallies." The brig was the Linnet, Capt. Daniel Pring. Somewhere along the Willsboro shore a small boat had been seen-perhaps some peaceful fisherman who had not been warned that a British fleet was coming, per- haps some foolhardy boy with a youthful desire to see how war-ships look near by-and one of the row-gal- leys was sent in pursuit of it. The small boat very prudently made all speed into the mouth of the Boquet, and succeeded in escaping up the river. The soldiers landed at a farm house on the north side of the river, pear the mouth, and plundered it, then rowed away to join the fleet, which, moving slowly against a southerly wind, came to anchor for the night, about sunset, off Split Rock.
Meanwhile we may imagine the excitement in Essex, where resided, as it happened, all the members of Gen. Wright's staff, as well as the Colonel of the 37th, the mi- litia regiment of the vicinity. Gen. Wright was 6 or 7 miles away, putting in his crops, I suppose, upon the hillside farm, but his officers acted at once. "I resid- ing some distance from this village," he writes, "and not being promptly informed of the appearance of the enemy, Lt .- Col. Nobles anticipated my wishes by or- dering out the Militia from a number of adjacent towns." So once more the alarm went through Wills- boro, Lewis and Elizabethtown, and once more the men responded to the call. Another invasion, and this time.
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not forty miles away, but at their very doors. All that night the militia came streaming in to Essex, Gen. Wright galloping down the rocky road on one of the farm horses, perhaps, with some of the men from the Bay clattering at his heels. All the Vermont shore was up in arms as well as ours by this time, and Robinson tells how the militia officer came to- gether this same night, when the British fleet lay off Split Rock, and were busy running bullets at Vergennes.# At Essex groups of anxious men stood upon the shore and looked off to the south where the lights of the hostile ships twinkled in the darkness. No lighthouse then stood above "the Split," but if the night was clear some shadowy outline of the ships was visible. As day began to dawn there was a stir of awakening upon the water, capstans creaked in re- sponse to words of command, the anchors of the fleet were raised, and it moved away to the south, confirm- ing what had long since been conjectured, that the ob- ject of the invasion was an attempt upon Macdonough's fleet then fitting in Otter Creek.
*The present Mrs. James A. Allen has told me of an incident often related by he: grandfather, Captain John Winans of the steamer Vermont, which occurred some time during this war. Fearful of an attack, he determined that his vessel should never fall into the hands of the British, and so laid a train to powder casks in the hold, and gave directions that at the word of command the train should be hred, and the Vermont, crew, British and all, if such should be the condition of affairs, blown out of the water together. One night a boat was seen approaching in the darkness, and the word went round for all hands to be ready, but just in the nick of time the newcomers were discovered to be of their own party, and the pow - der was not fired. So desperate a resource was not likely to be thought of except in a time of imminent danger, like this night when the British fleet lay off Split Rock, and all the coast was awake and alive with terror and resolution.
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The works at the mouth of the Otter were defended by Capt. Thornton of the artillery and Lieut. Cassin of the navy. The British sailed to within two miles of the works, and then eight of the row-galleys "and a bomb ketch" moved up and made an attack with can- non, bomb and musketry, which was repelled with much spirit, the Americans having one gun dismounted and two men slightly wounded, while the galleys suffered considerable damage, and soon drew off. All this was in full sight of Northwest Bay, and only six miles away across the water, so that if any one there had slept that night, they were awakened by the roar of cannon ech- ved back from the steep mountain cliff opposite the little fort, (which we now call Fort Cassin,) while all the rocky sides of the Split Rock range roared in an- swer. I suppose the people at the Bay listened and looked, and ran about hiding their treasures, and tried to plan what they would do if the British came into the bay and fired upon the village. There is a tradition about the family silver at Basin Harbor being buried nuder a rosebush in the garden -- with the rosebush, or its lineal descendant, shown in confirmation, -- which I have always heard referred to the time of the battle of Plattsburgh, but it is really much more likely to have happened at this time, when the noise of battle was only four miles away instead of forty,
The British turned again to the north, and the watch- ers upon every headland of the lake sent the swift news inland that there would be no great battle between the fleets that day, At noon the king's ships came to off
1
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the village of Essex, and "the Commodore," says Gen. Wright, "dispatched an officer with a flag demanding the surrender of a small sloop belonging to Mr. Win. D. Ross which had been launched two days previous, but which had fortunately been conveyed to the south- ward of the Fort at Otter Creek.". We wonder how Capt. Pring can have known anything about this sloop, but it seems that the mast and spars had been left ly- ing upon the beach, and naturally suggested a hull to which they might belong." The sloop must have been hidden in Barn Rock bay, Rock Harbor or Partridge Harbor, the latter being by far the best hiding-place. The owner of the sloop, by the way, was the son of our Elizabeth, after whom Bessboro was named.
Meanwhile the militia were drawn up about a mile back from the village in a position to command every movement of the enemy. "About three o'clock" says Gen. Wright's report, "three of the Enemy's Row gal- lies passsed up the river Boguett and landed at the falls, where after demanding the public property (which had been timely conveyed to a distance) and learning that the Militia were in force a few miles distant and
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