USA > New York > Essex County > Westport > Bessboro: A history of Westport, Essex Co., N.Y. > Part 32
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a brick kilo, built for burning the pipes to snowy white- ness after they were moulded. The soft black clay, brought from New Jersey, was ground to the proper fineness in a vat outside, where a patient horse plodded round and round at the end of a long sweep. An Eng- lishman named James A. Smith, (always distinguished among us by the title of "Pipemaker Smith,") with his sous Gabriel and Peter, made the pipes, using many a mould of curious shape, brought from England, with the English rose and thistle printed on the side of the bowl. Whatever fantastic shapes were given the pipes, there was always the little knob at the bottom of the bowl, thoughtfully provided that the smoker might rest his pipe upon it for a moment while he took a drink of , beer, or joined in the jolly songs of an English inu. This business was carried on by the sons of James A. Smith for some years after the death of the latter, but some time in the eighties the factory-made pipes drove ont the more expensive handicraft, and it was given up
It was to this house that, twenty years later, in 1879, came a fearful visitation of malignant diphtheria; in which five or six of the family died within a few weeks time. The house was quarantined, and such was the fear of contagion that it was impossible to obtain a nurse to perform the necessary work. Then a young minister and his wife, not long married, and just settled in Westport, went to the afflicted house and stayed un- till the disease bad run its course, caring for the dying and the dead. Such precautions were taken that no other cases of diphtheria occurred, and the brave volou-
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teer nurses escaped without harm. It was this act that so stirred Colonel Lee's enthusiasm, always ready to re- spond to the note of courage and self-sacrifice. "That is what I call heroism," said he, as he grasped the young minister by the hand.
This year 1859, must have buried the last of our pi- oneers, Dr. Diadorus Holcomb, aged seventy-nine, who had seen so much, and done so much, in the life of the little town since he first cast in his fortunes with it. Dying in September, he never heard the news of the capture and execution, in Virginia, of John Brown, a man whom he must have often seen upon our streets, or at the county fair.
The connection of John Brown with Westport his- tory is but incidental, only that of a place through which he and his family often passed, in the strange variety of their strange lives, Nevertheless, the man was well known here, from the time that he came off' the ferry boat, one day in the summer of 1849, driving a herd of Devon cattle, of a breed finer than any thing seen in Essex county up to that time. It was known that he was taking them over thirty miles into the in- terior, where be had settled on some of Gerrit Smith's land in North Elba, surrounded by a little colony of freed negroes whom he was trying to teach the grim secret of wresting a livelihood from that granite soil. Almost universal sympathy with this attempt seems to have been felt at this time, together with shrewd Yan- kee head-shakings over the probable, (and actual,) fail- ure of the enterprise. The writer has failed to find
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.traces of anything corresponding to a "station on the underground railroad" in Westport, for forwarding es- caped slaves to Canada, and is inclined to believe that this is rather because secrecy was little needed. Any negro might be one of the North Elba freedmen, and his passage through the town might be safely winked at so long as there was no question of a United States marshal on the road with a warrant --- an extremity
which never occurred. This refers entirely to the first five years of John Brown's residence in Essex county, before his departure for Kansas, during which time most if not all of the freed negroes accepted land in North Elba. During these five years anti-slavery sen- timent ran high in Westport, as it did in all the North, and anti-slavery meetings, with the usual speeches and resolutions, were often held. After the Kansas troubles there was a change, the North beginning to hold her breath before the rising flame of sectional feeling so easily fanned into a mighty conflagration. Ir- responsible speech began to be restrained. Wise and good men, who would have given their lives to prevent the civil war which followed, who often gave them after- ward to help to bring it to a close, strove to modify popular passion by counselling moderation. Remem- bering this will help us to understand the significance of events, and to realize that although anti-slavery meetings were not so frequent in the four or five years directly preceding the war, it was from no lack of con- viction or courage on the part of our people.
But for the years from 1849 to 1855, there is no
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doubt that John Brown was a popular man in West- port, and one willingly listened to as often as he came. He never made public speeches, but when it was known that he was at the inn, to stay a single night ou his way in or out of the mountains the men would gather in the bar room and disonss polities and slavery with him. Men who have thus conversed with him say that he was noticeably quiet in his manner, never showing the least trace of excitement, and far more patient with
contradiction than the average participant in political discussion. He talked in a low, steady voice, and his expression was pleasing and winning. It is told that a frequent opponent of his was the landlord of the ion, whose views were not at all those of John Brown, but that he always gave in at last without anger to the quiet persistence of Brown's arguments.
At this time John Brown was a man something past fifty, tall, erect, with a smooth shaven face and a stern mouth, not at all like the wild eyed fanatic, with long gray beard and bushy hair, who is seen in so many of his pictures. No doubt these represent him at a later stage, after the scenes of bloodshed in Kansas; but the John Brown remembered in Westport, who talked so courteously and so freely with the village men, was like the portrait reproduced by Katharine Elizabeth Mcclellan in her excellent little book, "A Hero's Grave." After his return from Kansas in 1856 I cannot find trace of so many evenings of argument at the village inn. Perhaps be was tired of talking since he had come to believe more in the force of pikes and
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guns, perhaps the men were shy of him, or perhaps I have not yet struck the right vein of reminiscence. Most of the men who knew him here are dead, but Mr. James A. Allen owned and managed the steamboat wharf from 1854 until after the war, and thus saw, with keen, observant eyes, all the comings and goings of the travellers of that time. He remembers John Brown with unch personal admiration, as a pleasant man to meet, and one who knew a great deal about sheep and cattle. He remembers perfectly the time when the tombstone of John Brown's grandfather came to the wharf, and lay for a time in the freight room, before it was carried to North Elba. It came from Vergennes, by the steam ferry, a boat upon whose sides was painted the name "Nonpareil," but which commonly went by the name of "the Dodger."
The story of this tombstone is a strange one, and contains much revelation of the character of Jolm Brown. It is a thin marble slab, which stood at the head of his grandfather's grave in Torrington, Conn., the place where John Brown himself was born, and where all his people lay buried. When it first came into Westport it bore but one inscription,-"In Memory of Capt. John Brown Who Died At New York Sept. ye 3, 1776, in the 48 year of his Age." This grandfather, whose name and title were the same as John Brown's of North Elba, had died as a soldier of the Revolution, a prisoner in the hands of the British. His grandson had always felt the greatest admiration and reverence for him, feeling that he had died in the
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cause of liberty, and he had conceived the idea of hav- ing his tombstone stand at the head of his own grave, which he had decided should be made on his farm.
It must have been in the summer of 1857 that the stone was brought from Connecticut, and though I am not quite sure of this, I think that John Brown himself took it to Wadhams Mills and there had the name of his son Frederick, "murdered at Osawatamie for his ad- herence to the cause of freedom," as he dictated to the marble-cutter, cut on the reverse side, then carried it to North Elba. There he did not set it in the ground -- why should he, since no grave had yet been dug ?- but put it on the porch at the side of the door, leaning up against the house, and there it stood for two years, the family going in and out beside it all that time. Marked already with the name of a son and brother who had died a violent death, standing avowedly waiting for the name of the father to be cut upon it, -- there are people who would not like to brush past such a stone every time they went in and out of the door, twenty times a day, but the Brown family did not cultivate nerves. John Brown indicated the spot where his grave should be dug by cutting with his own hands, before he left the last time for the south, in the side of the great boulder near which he had built his house, the letters "J. B." Think of his wife and daughters looking out of the window at him as he knelt there on the ground, chipping away at the side of the flinty rock with his unskilled hands, marking the place where they should bury him when all was over !
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It was the 16th of October, 1859, when John Brown began his attempt at the forcible liberation of the slaves of the south by the seizure of the United States Arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Va. He was captured, taken to Charlestown, and there hung, December 2. In the mean time, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who bad seen Jolm Brown in Boston and become his earn- est friend, came up to North Elba and took Mrs. Brown to Virginia with him, that she might see her husband before he died. They went from North Elba to Keese- ville on a buckboard, taking the steamboat at Port Kent. After Brown's execution Governor Wise deliv- ered the body to Mrs. Brown, and she came with it to New York, up the Hudson, then on the Vermont rail- road to Vergennes. So late in the season as this no line boats ran on Lake Champlain. They obtained teams in Vergennes to carry them to the lake at Adams' ferry, and there they crossed over to Barber's Point, coming into the village late on Monday, December 5th. They went to Persou's Hotel, the central inn of the place, and stayed there over night. I have recently heard foolish tales to the effect that John Brown's body was not allowed a resting place in Westport for even one night, but men living at the time, who were in the hotel parlor and bar-room that evening, assure me that these are the facts in the case. The body was received with all the respect and reverence due to a man well- known among them, who had given his life for a cause the righteousness of which they had often heard up- held by his own voice.
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The party consisted of the widow, Mrs. Mary A. Brown, Mr. Wendell Phillips, the famous Boston ora- tor, Frank B. Sanborn, the historian and some others. The next day it rained, a steady, icy down- pour, and the party did not set out until late in the day, arriving in Elizabethtown at about six o'clock Tuesday evening. Westport conveyances carried the whole party all the way, I believe, to North Elba, one of the men who went with his horses being Albert P. Cole, and another, I am told, Mr. Asa Viall. From Wadhams, Mr. Daniel Braman, then one of the princi- pal merchants, and the young physician, Dr. George T. Stevens, went out through the storm to stand by the grave the next day. I have heard that the hearse which was owned by the town, (after an old New England custom, then almost obsolete,) was refused to Mrs. Brown for carrying her husband's body to North Elba, but it is extremely doubtful that Mrs. Brown ever made such a request, and if it was refused it was no evidence of disrespect, as the hearse was old and out of repair, seldom or never used, and not considered a fit convey- ance for any respectable funeral. It is true that the bells of the churches were not tolled as the funeral train passed through, but neither can I find that they were tolled in Elizabethtown, where a deputation of the principal citizens met Mr. Phillips at the Mansion House, while a guard of four young men watched be- side the body in the Court House that night.
The storm in which the cortege went from Westport to Elizabethtown delayed upon the lake the Rev. Joshua
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Young of Burlington, so that he did not reach the John Brown farm uutil December S, the morning of the burial. He was the only clergyman present, and conducted the service, while Wendell Phillips spoke to the assembled people. Upon Mr. Phillips' return to Westport, he was urged by some of the principal citizens to deliver an address here, but he answered that he had promised to speak in Vergennes, and felt that he could spend no more time. He spoke there the next night, and a large number from Westport went over to hear him, crossing at Barber's Point in a south-east gale, the wind blow- ing the boat far out of her course to the north, so that they were obliged to land somewhere in the fields. The names of Dr. William H. Richardson, Ralph A. Love- land, Albert and Harry Cole, James A. Allen, Asa Viall and F. H. Page have been given me as belonging to this party, but there were others whose names have been forgotten. They stayed over night in Vergennes, And the speech of Wendell Phillips, as well as the re- cent terrible events, had tremendous force in mould- ing public opinion in this region. On the day of John Brown's execution in Virginia, Victor Hugo was writ- ing in France, "Politically speaking, the execution of Brown will be an irrevocable mistake. It will deal the union a concealed wound which will finally sunder the States. Let America consider that there is one thing more shocking than Cain killing Abel -it is Washing- ton killing Spartacus." .
These things Westport people thoroughly believed, and excitement ran higher and higher. About a mouth.
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after , John Brown's body passed through the town, a large mass meeting was held at Wadhams Mills for the expression of abolition sentiment. Mrs. Brown came out from North Elba, having been invited to at- tend a supper given at the hotel for her benefit, and was entertained at the home of Mr. Cyrenus Payne. At this time she went to the marble cutter there, Mr. Ben- jamin Albert Barrett, and engaged him to go to North Elba and cut her husband's name on the old tombstone which had.stood there waiting for it for two years and more. Mr. Barrett went, and the stone was taken from the porch into the warm kitchen of the farm-house, where he ent the name of John Brown under that of his grandfather, and below that the name of his son Oliver, while the name of Watson Brown was cut under that of Frederick on the other side. Watson and Oliver had been killed at Harper's Ferry. Thus John Brown's own plans for his epitaph in stone were carried out. while his soul went marching on. The marble slab was set in the ground as soon as the frost was out in the spring, and there it stands yet, visited by thousands.
The inscription,-"John Brown, 1859," --- so deeply cut on the upper face of the immense granite boulder at the foot of which John Brown lies buried, was cut there after the war, in the summer of 1866. Col. Fran- cis L. Lee, who had served in the war as colonel of the 41th Massachusetts Volunteers, accompanied by his wife, his son, Francis W. Lee, his daughter Alice, the Hon. George S. Hale of Boston, and Mr. Andrew J. Daniels of Westport, went out and stayed a week at
HISTORY OF WESTPORT
"Scott's," (now the Mountain View House,) while Mr. Daniels cut the letters and figures deep into the rock "The work took many days," says Mr. Francis W. Lee, in a letter published in the Essex County Republi- can in March of 1876, "owing to the extreme hardness of the rock in which the letters were cut. This same harduess will protect the mighty boulder from the hand of the vandal relic seeker for all time." It was the frailty of the ancient tablet, the edges of which were worn away before it was brought to West- port, which suggested this idea to Col, Lee.
In 1859 the Essex County Medical Society was re- organized. This society is known to have been estab- lished before 1814, since in that year Dr. Alexander Morse of Elizabethtown was sent as a delegate to the State Medical Society. In 1821 Dr. Diadorns Holcomb of Westport represented the county society. Westport physicians who have been presidents since 1859 are Abiathar Pollard, 1868 ; Conant Sawyer, 1876; Dr. Pol- lard again in 1882; and Pliny W. Barber in 1884. Other members from Westport have been Dr. Samuel F. Dickenson, 1881 ; Dr. Warren E. Pattison, 1881 ; Dr. Frauk E. Sweatt, 1882 ; and doubtless the subsequent doctors who have sojourned among us --. Dr. F. T. De- Lano, Dr. Jesse Braman, Dr. J. W. M. Shattuck, Dr. Reuben Irish and Dr. Hennessey, -though we have not had access to the records of the society to substantiate this very probable statement.
HISTORY OF WESTPORT
1860
Town Meeting at H. J. Person's.
Samuel Root, Supervisor.
Hiram H. Downey. Clerk.
William F. Chatterton, Justice.
£
Noul Merrill. Assessor.
Joseph E. Smith. Highway Conanissioner.
Albert P. Cole and Pulletus D. Merriam. Poor Masters.
Dan S. Cutting, Herbert L. Cady. Elwin R. Pierson, In- spectors of Election.
James A. Allen, Collector.
James A. Allen. Cyrenus R. Payne. Jeremiah Flinn, Al- bert P. Cole, George C. Smith, Constables.
Pathmasters .- Alfred Carpenter, Moses Coll. Israel Pat- tison, Peter Percis, Augustus Halt, Jeremiah Flinn. Asa Viall, William P. Merriam. William Harris. Luther Angier, George W. Sturtevant. Daniel W. Bramin. Jason Dauster, Sylvester Young, Artemas Hartwell. Abram G. Steel. Har- vey Smith. Barbey Boyle. Curtis Prouty. Harvey Howard, John G. Greeley. F. B. Howard, Solomon Stockwell. Lu- man Hubbard. Morrill Giobs, John E. Smith. Franklin Bennett, William Pierce, Samuel Pierce, Horace Royce.
It was in the fall of 1860 that two little boys, abont nine and ten years old, took a sled and went coasting down "the lake hill" above the steamboat wharf. This is very steep, and the danger of sliding off into the wa- ter has always made it a forbidden place to the children of careful parents. There was enough snow for good coasting, but the lake had not yet frozen over. The two children could not steer their sled, and at the foot of the hill it carried them off into the water, where both were drowned. One boy was named Fran- kie Cole, and the other belonged to a family named Turner. They were not missed for some time, but at Jast search revealed the treacherous sled floating ou top of the water, and men dragged the water that night
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until the little bodies were recovered. This incident has given the lake hill an ominous terror to all West- port children since then as a sliding place.
For some years the school facilities of the village had been seen to be quite inadequate to the rightful de- mands of the rising generation. The old Academy had long fallen short of the renown of its early days, and most of the primary work was done in the district schools of the village, district No. 3 lying on the south side of the bridge and district No. 2 on the north side. In 1860' these two districts were united, and a union school meeting was held December 7th, in the base- ment of the M. E. church, with John H. Low as mode- rator and Aaron B. Mack, Clerk. Three trustees were elected, William Frisbie. for one year, Lorenzo Gibbs for two years and D. L. Allen for three years, and Jerry. Flinn as clerk. The two school houses were sold, and both have been used as dwelling houses ever since. The stoves and benches were reserved, and the benches at least must have had some value by this time as registers of the autographs of the various boys who had tried the edge of their jack knives upon them. The school houses were expected to bring $500, and the Barnabas Myrick house on North street, which had been in the hands of Marks & Hand of Elizabethtown since the settlement of the Myrick estate, was bought for a new school house, for the sum of $1,200. A board of education was elected, consisting of Harry N. Cole, Aaron B. Mack, James Walker Eddy, Victor C. Spen- cer, the two clergymen, the Rev. Isaac C. Fenton of the
HISTORY OF WESTPORT SOPAF 491
M. E. church and the Rev. F. P. Lang of the Baptist, and the two doctors, Dr. Landon and Dr. William H. Richardson. The Myrick house was remodeled, fitted up for four departments, and used until the building of the new school house in 1889. The first principal of the new union school was Luther Boardman Newell." He was born in Jay, N. Y., in 1834, attended school in Keeseville and graduated from the University of Vermont in 1860. Coming to Westport the same year, he spent the remainder of his life in the place, with the exception of a few years' teaching in Crown Point. He was principal of the school about ten years. From
*This Newell family is not the same as that of Ebenezer Neweil, although there is no doubt a distant relationship. Captain Daniel Newell was born in Farming- cowo, Conn., in 1755. He moved to Tinmouth, Vt., where he became a captain of artillery, and then to Burke, V't., in ISco. In Burke he was one of the most prom - inent men, selectman and justice of the peace. The description of Capt. Daniel Newell in the town history of Burke reads as though it might have been written for his great grandson, L. B. Newell, as it represents him as tail and erect in his carriage, sociable and benevolent in his disposition, and an ardent Baptist, adding :'int no man was more respected and beloved in his owe town. His wite was a Curtis, of the same family as that of \ eorge William Curtis, and this must account for the fact that L. B. Newell bore a likeness to the pictures of George William Curtis, strong enough to have sometimes been remarked by strangers. Capt. Dan- we! Newell died in 1824 in Burke He had ten children, one of whom, Rufus. whose wife was a Beckwith, came into the town of Jay with his son Daniel anout 1810. There Daniel the second married Mary Blish, and they had seven children.
Martha married Capt. John Stratton Boynton. Children: Electa, John, Lincoln, Mary, Newell and Beulah.
Luther Boardman married Sarah Purmort.
Beulah married Benjamin S. Bal !.
Isaac married Hattie Buttrick.
Electa died at the age of three.
Rosalia married Henry Chase and lives in Minneapolis.
Arthur Daniel married Lottie Van Ornam, and has made his home in Westport, having been a teacher for some vears His children are Isaac Harrison, Mary. Grace and Daniel, The two sons are the only descer dants of Rufus Newell who "war the same surname.
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1876 to 1882 he was School Commissioner for this dis- trict, and was afterward Institute Instructor. He was for several years agent of the Ticonderoga Pulp and Paper Company, buying large quantities of pulp wood all through northern New York and Canada. He was supervisor of the town at the time of his death, which occurred Jan. 23d, 1896. Westport has never had a more public-spirited citizen, and his natural benevo- lence is shown by the fact that, having no children of his own, he adopted three orphan girls, giving them all liberal educations.
In this old "Myrick house" school one whole gene- ration received its education. Before Mr. Newell re- turned from Crown Point, one very successful teacher was Mr. Hyde, of Maine. In 1874 came Curtis Carlos Gove, just graduated from Middlebury College, and conducted an excellent school until 1879, when he went to Beeman Academy, New Haven, Vt., whither a num- ber of his older pupils followed him. He afterward took orders in the Protestant Episcopal Church, being ordained in 1891, and is now Rector of St. Michael's Church and Head Master of Cary Collegiate Institute, Oakfield, N. Y.
Then came Edward Hooker Baxter, of Middlebury College, class of 1876, and taught one year. He is now a physician in Hyde Park, Mass. He was followed by Thomas A. Wasson of Mineville, now a physician in Elizabethtown. Then Edmund Conde Lane, Univers- ity of Vermont, class of 1882, one year. He afterward practiced law in South Omaha, Neb., aud died there
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in 1898. Then Charles F. Chisholm of Plattsburgh, a graduate of Cornell, and Julius Valorious Sturtevant, Middlebury, 1885, whose year was finished by Miss Mary Farnsworth. Then Mr. John Lyon, who is now practicing law near Rockville Centre, I. L., and in 1886 Mr. Fred Varney Lester, a graduate of Colgate Uni- versity. The new school house was built while he was principal, and the school raised to a high standard of efficiency. In 1895 he was elected School Commis- sioner, receiving a second election three years after- ward. In 1899 he resigned his commissionership to accept the position of Principal of the Ticonderoga schools, and removed from Westport after a residence of thirteen years. Succeeding principals have been Mr. Kennedy, two years, Mr. George W. Campbell, of Toronto, one year, and Mr. Edgar Willey Ames, of Wil- liams College, the present Principal.
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