USA > New York > Essex County > Westport > Bessboro: A history of Westport, Essex Co., N.Y. > Part 8
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Israel Putnam was also at Crown Point that summer, a captain in the colonial troops, and while the army still lay there Rogers went down the lake again for the last time, destroying the Indian village on the St. Francis river in Canada. He came back to Crown Point by way of the Connecticut river, but one of his lieutenants, MeMullin, with eight men, returned through the wilderness to Crown Point with a message to Am-
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herst. In only nine days they made the journey, and thus for the last time was our soil traversed by a band of Rogers' Rangers.
Would that we might believe that brave Lieutenant Mc Mullen, (or McMullin, as Watson uses both spell- ings,) gave his name to our Mullein brook as did Israel Putnam to "Put's creek" in Crown Point. Methinks I have seen an amateur genealogist hail with joy the discovery of a new ancestor on the strength of evidence as slender as that which we can bring forward in sup- port of this theory. "What more likely," etc., etc. At any rate, we might do a little toward making history more logical, (a service which it often sadly needs,) especially in the matter of the names of places, by call- ing the brook after him now .*
Let Watson describe for us the last scene of this war. "On the 16th of August, 1760, the last brilliant mar- tial procession of the war departed from Crown Point. Bearing about three thousand regulars and provincials, under the command of Colonel Haviland, it moved down the lake in a long line of bateaux, under the con- voy of four armed vessels with an equal number of radeaux, each of which bore a heavy armament. Richard Montgomery, who had already attracted the attention, and won the applause of Wolfe, at Louis- bourg, accompanied this expedition, as adjutant of the Seventeenth regiment of foot."t
*In one of Gilliland's lists of the names of soldiers who received from the crown grants of land on the western side of Lake Champlain, we find the name of Patrick McMullen, though it is impossible to decide the locality of his grant.
¡The Treaty of Paris, in 1765, gave England formal possession of this our soil
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III.
Gilliland and Bessboro.
On June 7th, 1765, our shores were passed by Gilli- land's first party of colonists. Many an army had made its way across these waters, but never before such an army of occupation. Homely and buudrum it must have looked in comparison to the gorgeous "armies with banners" who had flanuted such martial pageantry in the shadow of our cliffs. There were four large bateaux, heavily loaded with twenty or more people. and with "eighty barrels of stores." There was also a raft of boards, sawed at the saw-mill at. Ticonderoga, and there was a drove of cattle which had been forced to swim the lake at Crown Point, making its way along the opposite shore. This proves that at this time there was no road across Westport fit for driving cattle through. There were four white women with the col- onists, -- the wife of the millwright, the wife of the weaver, Gilliland's housekeeper, and an indentured servant girl. Gilliland's negro man, Ireland, had been left for a few days at Ticonderoga. His was the first black face which looked upon Westport, but there were afterward others at Milltown. Slaves played a larger
England held it just twenty years, disputed, of course, from the day of the taking of Ticonderoga by Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold. After that it may be said to have belonged to "the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress" until the final settlement of the Vermont land troubles in 1789. From that time until now it has belonged to the State of New York.
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part in the labor of clearing our lands for settlement than is often realized, since the founders of Plattsburgh, as well as Gilliland, brought numbers of slaves with them when they first came.
But who was Gilliland, and why is his name invoked with such confidence ? William Gilliland, dear stranger, was none other than the Pioneer of the Champlain Val- ley, the first settler and colonizer in all this wilderness between Crown Point and Canada. After the settle- ment around the military posts of Ticonderoga and Crown Point, and the colony at Skenesboro at the ex- treme southern end of the lake, his settlement at the mouth of the Boquet river ( which he called Milltown, mruning the township Willshoro) was the first home of white men in all the length and breadth of the Valley. Thus the day just named may well begin a new chap- ter, and the rude little fleet engage our attention as it labors soberly along. We may know all the details of the expedition from reading Gilliland's diary, preserved by his descendants and printed a hundred years after- ward by Winslow C .. Watson, in a book called The Pi- oheer History of the Champlain Valley, From this book we learn that William Gilliland was, like Sir William Johnson, Sir Guy Carleton and Richard Montgomery, an Irishman. He was born near Ar- magh, in the province of Ulster, about the year 1734. There is a romantic story of an interrupted love affair with a young and beautiful Lady Betsy Eckles, frowned upon by her family, and resulting in the emi- gration of the presumptuous lover to America, Here
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he served four years as a private in the British army, fighting in the French and Indian War. His regiment. the Thirty-fifth, formed a part of the garrison of Fort William Henry at the time of its surrender to Monteahn, iu 1757. If he was with his regiment at the time, he must have been a witness of the Indian massacro which followed the surrender of the fort. He was discharged from the army in 1758, and the next year married Elizabeth Phagan, daughter of a rich merchant of Jamaica. Gilliland received with his wife a consid- erable dowry, and became his father-in-law's partner in a large mercantile business in the city of New York.
Peace between England and France was proclaimed in 1763, and it became possible for the British crown to give title to the unocenpied lands of the wilderness north and west of the Hudson river valley. Emigra- tion was encouraged by grauts of land to soldiers of the recent war, the size of the grants varying according to the military rank of the recipients. Thus a private re- ceived fifty aeres, and a non-commissioned officer two hundred acres. In almost every case these soldiers' grants were sold immediately to land speculators, men of capital who bought with the purpose of obtaining large tracts for sale or settlement. William Gilliland invested the greater part of the fortune he had accum- ulated in the purchase of twelve large tracts, all located on the western shore of Lake Champlain, between Crown Point and Cumberland Head. Two of these tracts, according to Mr. Watson, lay within the present territory of our township, and comprised four thousand
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five hundred acres. One tract, lying along the south- eastern shore, and containg two thousand three hundred acres, he named Bessboro, after his baby daughter Elizabeth. Of his ownership of a second tract in West- port we cannot now find the least trace, but it seems ex- ceedingly likely that he attempted to purchase the land adjoining Bessboro on the north, granted a few Years afterward by the king to Philip Skene. The num- her of acres in the Skeue patent does not exactly cor- respond, but the early surveyors never let a little matter of two or three hundred acres trouble them. Gilliland himself gives a list of fourteen non-commissioned ofli- cers and ten privates whose claims he had bought out to obtain possession of the patent of Bessboro, appar- ently oblivious of the discrepancy of a thousand acres between these aggregate claims and the actual survey.
The king granted ownership of these large patents with the reservation to himself of all gold and silver mines, and all pine trees fit for masts for ships of bis bavy. There were also conditions that three acres out of every fifty capable of cultivation should be tilled, with settlers in the proportion of ote family to every thousand acres.
Thus we come at last to the first individual owner- ship of any part of Westport land. Bessboro was first surveyed, as appears from Gilliland's own papers, in June of 1764, by Col. Thomas Palmer, Deputy Survey- or, acting by order of Alexander Collen, Esq., the theu Surveyor General. The work was done at the expense of Gilliland, and he appears to have accompanied the
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surveying party, he himself being a competent sur- veyor. The survey "passed council the 20th Feby., 1765, as per council minute book may appear."
Thus it is plain that the First Year of our town chito- nology is 1764, and our First Day is that one in June when Gilliland and Palmer, with their axemen, carrying chain and compass, followed the outline of Bessboro through the unbroken forest from our Bluff Point west- ward, then south, then west again to the foot of the mountains, and so down to our Mullein brook, which they called Beaver brook, and back to the lake shore again, coming out of the woods very nearly at the place reached by Rogers and his Rangers, in March of 1756. (only eight years before), when they were seeking French villages to burn, -- plans different indeed to those of Gilliland. He had encompassed a stretch of land as fair and fertile as any in the world, rolling from the lake shore to the foot of the mountains, well wa- tered, richly wooded, close under the protection of the fort at Crown Point, and if ever a beautiful prospect had power to touch an Irish heart, how must his have swelled with joy as he measured these acres for him- self. And though he gained no riches from its possession, losing it all before he died, yet it has borne his name, and the name he gave it, for one hun- dred and thirty-eight years, as we write now, and is like to perpetuate his memory as long as land is named by man. The whole extent of the patent is now highly cultivated, slotted with barns and farmhouses, and trav- "good from north to south by the railroad.
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After the Revolution, when all land titles derived from the British crown were thrown into more or less confus- ion and uncertainty, Gilliland had great difficulty in ob- taining recognition of his rights as owner of Bessboro. But at last a new survey was ordered, and he received his title from the state in 1786. In the capitol at Albany lie the field notes of this second survey. A certified copy of them, as well as a copy of a map of Bessboro, also certified, (showing the shape of the patent as out- lined upon the map opposite our title-page,) was sent me by the kindness of the Hou. William Pierson Jud- son, Deputy State Engineer. As the field notes con- stitute a description of the boundaries of the patent, and have never been printed, they are given in a note." The point of departure of the survey was "a hemlock tree standing on the bank of the lake," and the only maines given are those of "Bay de Roche Fendu" and "a place known by the name of Rattlesnake Den." This must have been near the limestone gaarry, and not far from the spot where the Y. M. C. A. boys camped for
*In consequence of a Warrant of Survey from the Surveyor General of the State of New York, to be directed, bearing date the -- day of November, 1756, I have performed the following Survey for William Gilliland, of a certain Tract, piece or parcel of Land, Situate, lying and being in the County of Washing. ton, and on the West side of Lake Champlain, known by the name of Beth- Bor- rough.
Began September 24th, 1786, at a heap of Stones lying between a Black Oak Tree, marked Z. P. 1786-W. G. 1780, eight links east from a Hemlock Tree marked Z. P. 1786-W. G. 1786, Standing on the Bank of said Lake, between a place known by the name of Rattle Snake Den, and the Bay de Roche Fendu, on the south side of the entrance of said Bay, which is the most easterly corner of a Tract of 2400 Acres of Land, granted to Major Philip Skeen.
Running thence on a South line of said Skeen's Patent, S. So deg. 01', W. +1 chains to a Stake thirteen links West froma Beech Tree cornered and marked Z. P.
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so many years on the Worman property. I cannot find that any rattlesnake has been seen there for at least the space of one generation, but the name brings out vividly the wild loneliness of the shore when the surveyors first stepped upon it. An epoch is marked in the his- tory of the reclamation of a piece of land from the wil- derness when the names given to points within it are no longer those of natural objects. This epoch came to Westport when Gilliland named his patent after his daughter.
Happy is that land whose first settlers have a genins for nomenclature ! And if this be so, happy is the land whose second century shall honor the name-giving of the first. William Gilliland was blessed with a good name himself, a fact of some importance when history comes to be written, and the names which he gave to places were always graceful and pertinent. Before the coming of Elizabeth his wife he had named the present site of Essex village after her, and two of his northern patents were named Janesboro and Charlottesboro. 1756-W. G., thence S. oo deg. 56' E. 94 chains to a stake eighteen links southeast from a Beech Tree cornered and marked Z. P. 1736-W. G., being the Southeast corner of said Skean's Patent, thence S. Sg deg. of' W. 156 chains 60 links to e Beech Tree marked W. G. 1755, thence South 191 chains to a Birch Tree marked W. G. 1756, standing on the north bounds of a small Tract of two hundred Acres of Land surveyed for Zephanich Platt, Esq., thence East along the North Bound's of said Tract of two hundred Acres, 80 chains 60 links to a Hemlock Tree marke.i % .. P. 1;9,-W. G., standing on the Bank of the Lake, thence Northerly along the West Bank of said Lake as it winds and turns to the place of Beginning, contain- ing 2600 Acres of, Land, and the usual allowance for Highways.
That the within Survey has been performed with accuracy to the best of my knowledge I aver and attest.
(Signed) JONAS S. ADDOMS, D. G. Surveyor.
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ifter two daughters. A branch of the Ausable which he discovered he named "Cullen Water." Many of the settlers at Milltown gave names to their farms, one be- iug Euniskelling and another Killeen, showing delight- fully the Irish origin of the tenants. The name of Milltown itself was doubtless taken from that of a vil- lage not far from Armagh, in Ireland, where Gilliland was born, and there is a Willsboro on Lough Foyle, in Londonderry, which he must have known familiarly. Bessboro is also an Irish name, since there is an estate in the south of Ireland, "a demesne in the Barony of Iverk, parish of Fiddtown, County Kilkenny," near the river Soir, which was granted to Sir John Ponsonby, a Major in the army of Cromwell, and named by him Bessborough for his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Heury Lord Foliot. The highest title of the Ponsonby family is taken from this Irish estate, John George Brabazon Ponsonby being made first Earl of Bessborough fin 1739. Much pleasant but profitless labor has been spent in the effort to trace some connection between
Sworn before me this
21 Day of December, 1786. (Signed) ABRAHAM KEIGHT, Jus. Peace.
Accompanying the copy of these field notes is the following document: STATE OF NEW YORK,
OFFICE OF THE STATE ENGINEER AND SURVEYOR.
I have compared the preceding copy of Field Notes of survey of Lot number -- in the - Tract, with the description of survey found in book number 10, p. 129, on file in this office, and I do hereby certify the same to be a correct transcript there- from and of the whole of the field notes of survey of said lot.
WITNESS my hand and seal of office of the State Engineer and Surveyor, at the City of Albany, the eight day of April, one thousand nine hundred and one .:
(Signed) WM. PIERSON JUDSON,
Deputy State Engineer and Surveyor.
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Gilliland and the Irish Bessborough, but it seems prob- able that the name only lay in his memory with those of all other places in the Emerald Isle, to be brought forth when his own fortunes reached a point where he too might give a name to a baronage or a principality.
Now let us return to the narrative of events closely affecting our history. The next year, in June of 1766. Gilliland brought his family to Milltown. They started from New York on the 28th of April, in two heavily loaded bateaux, and had a difficult and perilous pas- sage. At Stillwater one of the bateaux was upset, and two children were drowned, one of them Gilliland's oldest child, Jane, aged six years. "My lovely daugh- ter!" exclaims Gilliland as he records the disaster in his diary, and he mourus his loss in a touching eulogy upon the child's perfections.
They came by way of Lake George, t detained at
Then follows the great blood red seal of the State of New York, of an aspect awesome indeed, and sufficient, one would think, to command belief in statements much more doubtful than these.
It will be noticed that the name of the patent is variously written. Gilliland hin- self wrote it Bessborough, and in the field notes the surveyor writes it, certainly with a great effort. "Beth - Borrough." In our town records it is "Bettsborough." On Bart's map of the county, 1939. it is "Bossborough," and in an act of the Leg . . islature of 1549 it is "Bassburgh," but these two forms are evidently misprints.
Hon. Richard 1., Hand, of Elizabethtown, President of the Essex County His- torical Society, has called my attention to a "Besborough" in north -eastern Ver- mont, lying on both sides of the Passamsick river, which is shown on Sauthier's map of 1779. It would be interesting to know the history of the name in that place.
1In that charming little book, "Lake George in History." by Elizabeth Eggle- ston Seelye, allusion is made to the passage of Baroness Riedesel and Lady Har- riet Ackland through lake George in 1777, with the statement: "They were the first white women'to see this lake, except the few wives of common soldiers and camp followers." Probably the author had never heard of Mistress Gilliland, who went through eleven years before.
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nearly every stopping place by the severe illness of Mr. Gilliland. Quoting his diary :
"2d June, arrived at fort George on that day, in the evening. My illness continuing, detained us all at fort George for nine days, from the 2d, to Wednesday, 11th June, then put all my stores and embarked myself and family on board of Ww. Stoughton's schooner, and hav- ing a fair wind arrived this evening at Ticonderoga land- ing, where being necessarily detained the 12th, embarked the next day on board the sloop Musquenunge, and in a passage of oue and three-fourths hours arrived at Crown Point on the evening of Friday the 13th June. Here my disorders returning, I was confined by wy room, often to bed, to Saturday the 21st June. Then left Crown Point, and the wind being favorable, arrived the evening of this day, pretty late at George Belton's, where we staid all night, and the next day being Sun- day, 224 June, proceeded on our Journey, and arrived in Milltown, in Willsboro. Mrs. Elizabeth Gilliland, my spouse, being the first lady of our family that landed in Willsborough."
So it was the twenty-first of June, and on a Saturday that the women of the family first saw Bessboro, from the deck of the sloop Musquenunge. The whole party consisted, as Gilliland takes pains formally to set down, of "my wife Mrs. Elizabeth Gilliland, my mother Mrs. Jane Gilliland, my sister Miss Charity Gilliland, my brother Mr. James Gilliland, my daughter Miss Eliza- beth Gilliland, my niece Miss Elizabeth Hamilton, my
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servant girl Rachel McFarden, and my negro man Ireland."
Gilliland was at this time not much over thirty. Lit- tle Elizabeth was two years old, and the only child left them since the drowning of her sister. How she must have been guarded by mother, grandmother and aunt, and what a sad company it must have been. Perhaps the father took little Bess in his arms, and pointed out to her the shores which he had called by her name, traced the boundaries of the pateut and exulted over its beauty and extent.
All that summer the lake was busy with the traffic of the colonists. Philip Skene was also at work build- ing up his colony at the southern end of the lake, and his boats came often to the ore bed on the shore below Crown Point for ore for his forges. It seetus probable that the personal acquaintance of Skene and Gilliland dates from this period.
In September came a very distinguished party from the south, and one which Gilliland seems to have felt it his duty to welcome. A commission had been ap- pointed by the crown to verify the boundary live be- tween the provinces of Quebec and New York, and was composed of Sir Henry Moore, Governor of New York, Sir Guy Carleton, Governor of Quebec, Philip Schuy- ler, afterward our General Schuyler of the Revolution, and an astronomer named Robert Harper. These gen- tlemen were accompanied by a nephew of Sir Guy Carleton, sprobably Christopher, afterwards Major Carleton, an attorney named John Mckesson, . and
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Capt. Charles Fredenburgh, and they came up the Hudson from New York, arriving at Fort George the second of September. There Gilliland met them, and writes in his diary :
"Governor Moore immediately gave me an invitation to become one at his table, which I accepted. He and Governor Carleton accepted my invitation to take their passage in my Bateaux across the lakes, and we all ar- rived safe at Crown Point on Saturday, 6th Sep., 1766." The next day observations were taken to determine the exact latitude of the fort. "After dinner embarked for home in my Bateau, the Governors and other gentle- men embarking before dinner, in the sloop. Overtook them at Button Mould Bay and went aboard the sloop, where dinner being just served up, I dined with them; there being little or no wind, tarried with them 4 or 5 hours, and then pushed off in my boat for home, where I arrived about one in the morning, found all well."
So it was almost in Westport waters that the Boun- dary Commission was becalmed for a half day or more, a party of eight at dinner, talking, perchance, of the prosperity of the provinces since the peace with France had been declared, and of the future of this beautiful valley and waterway which had been gained so recently by England. Perhaps Gilliland pointed out to them the shore of Bessboro, and told of his plans for its set- tlemement. Ten years afterward Governor Carleton came again to the Same spot, but that time he sailed from the north, struggling against a contrary wind in the pursuit of the'escaping colonial fleet, grounded and
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burned before his eyes not two miles from Button Bay. But neither he nor Philip Schuyler thought how they should fight each other in the future, as they drank their wine together, and when the wind sprang up again they went on their way to Canada. A week af- terward Governor Moore and his party came back, and on the 20th of September Gilliland wrote in his diary : "This day Sir Henry Moore, Col. Reid, Philip Schuy- ler, Robert Harper and Adolphus Benzel,* Esq's, called and drank tea, etc., with us, on their return from As- tronomer's Island, having completed their observation to satisfaction, and fixed the line about 5 miles to the northward of Windmill Point."
Aud so Mistress Gilliland had company in the best room of the house at Milltown, of which we only know that it was built the year before "with logs, 44 feet by 22," and had "a double chimney." The furniture had all been brought from New York, -twenty-two wagon loads,"-and it is to be hoped that enough china tea- cups for the use of the Governor's party had arrived unbroken. What wouldl we give now for the tea-pot which hold the tea ? We can imagine the group sitting around the great open fire-place in the evening. It is said that Sir Henry Moore was "a gay, affable, good - natured and well-bred gentleman." Little Bess was the only child to be noticed, and Philip Schuyler had babies of his own at home. Did he take her on his
*Adolphus Benzel was the first to fill the office of "Inspector of His Majesty's woods and forests aud unappropriated lands on Lake Champlain and in Canada." He was the engineer who planned the extensive works a: Crown Point.
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knee and win her heart as he won the hearts of the children of Baroness Riedesel, and the heart of the Baroness herself, when he took them under his protec- tion after the battle of Saratoga ?
The Commissioners passed on their way, Schuyler perhaps the only one of them destined ever to see that hearthstone again, and the next day another little daughter was. boro, and named Jane Willsborough Gil- liland, the first name in memory of the little girl drowned at Stillwater in May.
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