USA > New York > Franklin County > Historical sketches of Franklin county and its several towns > Part 10
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HISTORY OF FRANKLIN COUNTY
all households as virtually members of the family, as in 1825 it had been customary to treat them. Moreover, the material condition of the people had changed notably in these twenty years, and, though severe economy still had to be practiced generally, there was not, on the whole, the former necessity to seize upon opportunity, however unpleasant, for adding to one's earnings. Then, too, the poor house system had operated to invite the dumping of paupers by one locality upon another. Thus the Northern Spectator (Malone's second news- paper) reported in 1834 that there were sixty-three paupers in the poor house, most of whom were foreigners who had been thrust upon us from Canada or from neighboring counties. Eight paupers of this class were found one morning in the year stated to have been left in the horse-sheds attached to one of the taverns in Malone, having been brought the night before from another county and abandoned here.
THE JAIL CONDEMNED
Prior to 1847 a grand jury had condemned the jail in a presentment to the court as unfit and unsanitary, and in that year the supervisors appointed a committee to investigate as to the advisability of building a new one, separate from the court house; and in 1849 the same body considered the proposition to locate court house, clerk's office and jail all on Arsenal Green, and took steps to ascertain the probable amount that could be obtained for these buildings and the grounds then and now occupied by them. The reports on these questions do not appear in the records, but the idea was of course impracticable, for the Arsenal Green was then of State ownership for military purposes only, and, in any case, were better preserved for a park than encroached upon for buildings. Nevertheless it is unfortunate that before so much money was invested the location was not changed, because the proximity of the court house to the railroad and to other noisy centers at times makes transaction of business therein almost impossible. In 1850 the supervisors voted to expend $500 in building a new clerk's office, and also to borrow $5,000 from the State, payable in ten years, to cover the cost of lowering the court house and of erecting a new jail. This jail was of stone on the site of the present clerk's office, and contained living apartments for the sheriff. It was built in 1852, and was demolished in 1892, when the present jail was erected. In 1851 the sum of $600 was raised to pay for the new county clerk's office, which was a one- story stone building on the site of the present jail, and served the
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county's needs until 1892. The loan from the State was not paid until it was long past due, nor was even the interest on it kept up - the county having had to raise money in 1867 to pay seven years' interest.
FEES AND SALARIES INCREASED
Other than these matters, little or nothing of particular interest or significance appears in the records of the supervisors' proceedings down to 1860 or later. It is observable, however, that charges and com- pensation of county officials increased continuously for a number of years, but most of them only moderately. Whereas $35.50 had sufficed to cover the sheriff's bill against the county in 1810, that official's charges had become $291.53 in 1834, nearly doubled in the next fifteen years, and in 1854 were $1,686.99. Included in the last total was an item of $150 for the hanging of Bickford. Twenty-odd years later the price for a similar gruesome service (in the case of Joe Woods) was a hundred dollars more. After 1854 the bills of the sheriff's increased almost steadily for a quarter of a century, until four dollars per week each was allowed for the board of prisoners as against a dollar and a half in 1810, and fourteen shillings in 1847, and the sheriff's charges against the county became about four thousand dollars annually. In 1847 thirty dollars was deemed ample for the purchase of fuel for the court house and jail, then in one building ; but in 1885 the correspond- ing item was $400. In that year, too, the sheriff's bill bounded to $5,513.44, and from 1899 to 1903 his charges as allowed ranged from $6,577.27 to $7,452.88. So great an increase naturally suggested measures for keeping the figures down, and accordingly an act was pro- cured to be passed by the Legislature putting the office on a salaried basis, with the county to pay the cost of food, fuel, etc. The salary fixed for the sheriff was $1,200 and living expenses for himself and family, and for jailor, matron, cook, etc., $1,016 in the aggregate. For a time the office had been earning for the county from three to four thousand dollars a year for housing and boarding detained China- men until the courts should determine whether they were entitled to admission to this country, or must be deported. While this business continued the net jail cost decreased appreciably, but when it ceased, after a few years, the relief that had been expected from the change in system was far from realized. The sheriffs' reports give the cost of jail maintenance, including salaries, for each year after the Chinese business died out, at from about $6,000 to over $10,000 in 1917, of
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HISTORY OF FRANKLIN COUNTY
which latter total $797.75 was for livery and for work in connection with the federal draft. In 1914 the charge for automobile hire and livery alone was over eleven hundred dollars. When the sheriff's bills first touched four thousand dollars there was ugly talk by taxpayers that tramps and bums were in league with the officials to put themselves in the way of arrest, so that they themselves might be assured in winter of free lodging and board, the officers of fees payable by taxation, and the jail of a good business. The suspicion may have been uncharitable and unfounded, and the same may be true of the thought that comes all unbidden as the present itemized bills are scrutinized, viz., that the run of jail fare must now be better than in the period when the sheriff himself had to supply it, and also better than it would be if the old system obtained, though, of course, it is not to be forgotten that the scale of prices for everything is far higher than it used to be. Though often discussed and advocated, no intelligent action was taken until 1915 to provide for remunerative employment for jail convicts here. Then a county farm was purchased, and the sheriff reports that in 1916 it was worked by prisoners at a cost of $674 for fertilizer, seed, tools and extra labor, and in 1917 with an expenditure for like purposes amounting to $974.66. Its products in the former year were valued at $906.92, and in the latter at $2,642.38. But the sheriff does not rate the investment as so desirable because of the profit which it yields as because the employment of the convicts benefits their health and gen- eral condition. Now that the traffic in liquors has been prohibited it is thought to be uncertain if there will be enough prisoners to work the property advantageously.
In 1810 the county clerk drew $12 from the county for services, in 1834 only $79.76, and $473.27 in 1849. The clerk of the board of supervisors never had as much as $40 in any one year, including expenditures for stationery, until 1847, when his salary was fixed at $60 per annum. It has since been increased from time to time until it is now $550. making the position at least as highly paid, considering time given and service rendered, as any office in the county with possibly one exception. In 1847 the salary of the county judge was made $600, and was twice increased during the next fifteen years - first to $700 and then to $800. It was next made $1,000, was doubled in 1873, and recently was advanced to $3,200, with allowances of $1,000 for clerk and an equal amount for stenographer. The salary of the district attorney was $300 in 1853, then $400, and by a number of increases has become $1,800.
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The cost of the court house alterations and of the erection of the jail in 1852 and 1853 exceeded the estimates, and an additional sum of $1,032.74 was votes to cover the deficiency.
It appears that until 1825 use of the court house had been permitted to all organizations and to all individuals whenever it was wanted, for almost any purpose, without charge except for cleaning; but in that year the supervisors resolved that occupancy must be paid for at a fair price except in cases where the usage should be for public purposes or by the people of the town of Malone.
In 1847 foreign paupers admitted to the poor house introduced ship fever (a form of typhus), and Matthew A. Whipple, keeper, or some member of his family, contracted the disease. The supervisors voted him forty dollars as reimbursement for the amount paid by him for physician's services.
At this period and for some time later licenses were granted by commissioners of excise who represented the county as a whole, and apparently there were no no-license towns, as every town in the county except Bellmont, Brighton, Duane, Franklin and Harrietstown is listed in the commissioners' reports as having licensed places ; and in most of the excepted towns those who wished to engage in the traffic were accus- tomed to do so without bothering with the formality of taking out licenses. The fee charged for licenses in earliest times was from three to five dollars, but in this period usually ranged from thirty dollars to fifty dollars each.
The report of the superintendent of the poor for 1857 placed the cost of maintaining paupers in the poor house at thirty-seven and a half cents each per week, exclusive of such products of the farm as were consumed. A year or two later this cost was put at forty-two cents, and once it was stated at over a dollar.
A retaining wall in front of the county buildings, made necessary by the grading of the street, was built in 1857.
CIVIL WAR EXPENSES
In 1863 the burden of the war obligations began to be heavy, nearly every town in the county having issued bonds to provide funds for bounties to those who would enlist, and so avert resort to a draft for filling the quota that each town was required to furnish. A part of these bonds became due in that year, and included in the town taxes were items ranging from nine hundred dollars to two thousand dollars
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per town on account of such obligations. A special session of the supervisors was held in August, 1864, to provide for county bounties, and it was voted that the county pay three hundred dollars to every man who should enlist or furnish a substitute under the President's call for half a million more men. The usual price asked at this time by those offering themselves as substitutes (many of whom came from Canada expressly to so enlist) was a thousand dollars, which was paid by not a few who were anxious to escape the draft, or were actually drafted. Afterward these were reimbursed by town, county and State to the aggregate of the bounties that the three had offered, so that the net costs to individuals who had procured substitutes was reduced to one or two hundred dollars each. In November, 1864, the county treasurer reported to the supervisors that to that date he had issued bounty bonds to the number of 299, each of the denomination of $300, with 23 yet to be issued, or a total of $96,600; and that it would be necessary to include in the tax levy an item of $35,581 for principal alone that would become due in 1865. At the same session sums to pay town bounty bonds were raised in varying amounts for the several towns - Duane's being the lowest ($749) and Chateaugay's the highest ($10,439). In addition, the county had to contribute $9,788 toward the bounties paid by the State. Principally because of these items, the county budget, which had been $30,662 in 1863, bounded to $170,248.67, and, besides, the town taxes were enormous - the bounties paid by these calling for an aggregate of $85,105 - and the lowest tax rate for any town was $18 on each $1,000 of assessment (in Malone), while in most towns it ran from thirty-odd dollars up to fifty or sixty dollars, and for Franklin was ninety-three dollars, or over nine per cent .!
Another special session was held in February, 1865, to vote further bounties for enlistments under the President's call of December, 1864 for 300,000 men, and there was authorized an issue of bonds to pro- vide for payment of a bounty of $600 to every man who should enlist or furnish a substitute, but with provision that no town should on its own account pay a bounty in excess of $25. At the annual session in the same year there had to be included in the town taxes varying items for town bounties theretofore paid - the lowest of which was $990 in Constable, and the largest $10,760 in Malone. The county budget totaled $71,018, with Malone again having the lowest rate (twenty dol- lars and a half), and Franklin the highest (ninety-seven dollars and a half) ! In this year the town taxes alone were $108,153, of which
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$94,120 were on account of bounties. In 1866 and 1867 the bounty pay- ments became smaller generally, though in the former year Chateaugay had to raise $12,140 for that purpose, and Malone $15,552 in the latter year.
VOTED TO BUILD A NEW POOR HOUSE
At the annual session in 1869 it was voted to build a new poor house, and a committee was appointed to procure plans and estimates of cost, which were to be reported at a special session in January, 1870. At such session bonds to the amount of $25,000 were authorized to be issued for the work, and Samuel C. Wead and Baker Stevens of Malone and James Jordan of Burke were constituted a committee to supervise the work, with power to engage a competent man to have immediate supervision. Hiram Hoyt of Malone acted in the latter capacity, and Albert A. Rounds of Malone was awarded the contraet for con- structing the building. A structure of brick and stone was erected on the county farm, two miles west of the village of Malone, at a cost of $38,628.75.
In 1870 the county system of granting licenses was displaced by putting the matter into the hands of town and village commissioners, and at once the number of towns in which licenses had been granted became fewer. The no-license towns in 1870 were: Bellmont, Bran- don, Brighton, Burke, Constable, Dickinson, Duane, Fort Covington and Harrietstown.
SUPERVISORS' SESSIONS MORE PROTRACTED
Nothing that need be particularized appears in the record of the supervisors' proceedings from 1870 to 1878 except that the annual sessions, which until 1874 had never been prolonged beyond a week, had come to continue for nine, ten or eleven days, with the practice of allowing each supervisor pay for two or three extra days because of work done evenings, and the supervisors from Brighton, Duane, Franklin and Harrietstown pay for five extra days because each of them had to be two days longer on the road than those from the other towns; that the last bounty for killing a wolf was paid in 1875; that the county's share of the State tax had been persistently growing greater, having reached its maximum ($54,024.23) in 1872; and that the cost of maintaining the poor had grown to more than $14,000 per year.
A company of the national guard having been organized in Malone, its commandant in 1878 filed a demand with the board of supervisors
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HISTORY OF FRANKLIN COUNTY
that an armory be provided for its use. Accordingly the old Baptist church building on Webster street was bought at the price of $1,200. Afterward $1,212.75 was spent upon needed alterations, and the fol- lowing year $200 additional. The building was made to answer the company's needs until an armory was built by the State, and in 1893 it was sold for $1,050. It was used also for holding courts while the new court house was being built, and the use of it was voted to the village school district of Malone when the central school building was burned in 1882.
Until 1879 the sessions of the board of supervisors were always held at one of the hotels in the village of Malone - apparently at first with- out any payment for the accommodation. Later it was customary for several years to pay ten or twelve dollars for the rooms, and eventually the price became one hundred dollars. The sessions were then held for two or three years at the court house, but in 1882 the practice of sitting at a hotel was restored, and continued for a few years.
The loan of $5,000 in 1851 for altering the court house and erecting a new jail, which debt was to run for only ten years, was paid in 1879 and 1880.
The reports of the commissioners of excise in 1880 showed only Bombay, Constable, Franklin, Malone and Moira as license towns.
A number of attempts to divide the town of Dickinson had been made and failed prior to 1880, but then succeeded. The part set off was to be known as the town of Waverly.
It is noteworthy that in at least one year at about this time the supervisors assumed to draw pay for acting as a board of county can- vassers and also as supervisors. Thus if their service covered, say, ten days in both capacities, they allowed themselves pay for eleven days.
A NEW COURT HOUSE
The matter of building a new court house had been proposed a number of times during the ten years preceding 1882, but never commanded much support until that year, when the proposition was carried almost unanimously. A special session of the board was held in January, 1883, to complete arrangements for the work, for which it was agreed to expend $30,000 and also $1,800 for the purchase of a strip of land thirty feet wide on the east of the county's lands, the latter of which had more than five times as much frontage in the same vicinity, and had been acquired for $100 .. When details came to be determined, it
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was seriously proposed that as a matter of economy the jail and clerk's office both be provided for in the new building, but wiser counsels pre- vailed, and it was determined to locate only the surrogate's and county treasurer's offices in it. Leslie C. Wead of Malone, Benjamin F. Harris of Moira, and James Y. Cameron of Fort Covington were appointed a building committee, and the contract for materials and work was awarded to James Houston of Malone at $29,500 - which did not include heating apparatus, lighting or furnishing. Mr. Houston claimed before the supervisors the next year that he had lost $10,000 on the work, and the board allowed him something like $2,000 in addition to extra allowances that the building committee had granted. Including these extra allowances, and architect's fees, heating, lighting, furniture and compensation of the building committee, the entire cost to the county was not far from $35,000. Mr. Wead was succeeded on the building committee by Daniel H. Stanton, and the sums paid to the members were: To Mr. Wead and Mr. Harris $300 each, to Mr. Cameron $150, and to Mr. Stanton $100.
A proposition to build a new jail and a new clerk's office the same year was defeated.
For ten years or such a matter the towns Brighton and Harrietstown had been coveting territory included in Brandon, and had appealed to the supervisors several times to set off large tracts therefrom and join the same to the applicants. Brighton never realized on the effort, but in 1883 Harrietstown's appeal was granted in part, a township and a half having been then taken from Brandon.
The office of surrogate's clerk was created at the session of 1883, and the salary fixed at $400 per year.
In 1885 it was voted to pay the county clerk $654 a year for his services to the county in lieu of fees therefor - the salary having been fixed at the seemingly odd figures because it represented the average of the clerk's charges and allowances for the few years immediately preceding.
In 1885 the sheriff's bill as allowed was $5,513.44, and the cost of supporting the poor was $15,447.20. In the same year fuel for the jail and court house cost $400, as against $30 allowed the sheriff forty years before for the same purpose.
NEW JAIL AND CLERK'S OFFICE
Again in this year the proposition to build a new jail and clerk's office was considered, and a committee was appointed to look into the
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matter and report in 1886, but the question was allowed to drag with- out much attention until 1891, when, the county not owing a dollar, it was decided to build. At a special session of the supervisors in 1892 a committee previously appointed reported that a new jail would cost $18,200 and a new clerk's office from $12,000 to $14,000. E. A. Buell of Constable, E. R. Tower of Bangor, Dwight Dickinson of Malone and A. R. Fuller of Duane were named a building committee, and the sum of $32,000 was appropriated for the work. Orville Moore served as superintendent of construction. The committee's final report placed the cost for both buildings at $36,966.09, less $598 received for dirt sold, but plus $1,600 for furnishings for the clerk's office and $609.60 allowance to the committee for services.
The State having appropriated $25,000 for the construction of an armory at Malone, a site was purchased by the county in 1892 at a cost of $3,800.
OFFICIALS REFUND FEES
The compensation of the county clerk for county services was increased in 1889 to $800, which five years later that official deemed inadequate and refused to accept; and, therefore, there was a return to the fee system, under which bills for county work ranged for the ensuing eighteen years from $1,274 to $2,184 per year; but an examination by a representative of the State comptroller in 1911 disclosed that some part of the charges had been made for services which a strict construc- tion of the statutes required to be rendered gratuitously. Bills for six years preceding were accordingly re-audited, and claims presented by the supervisors for a refund of all unwarranted charges of date within the statute of limitations. As a result, one former clerk repaid $3,257 to the county, and the then incumbent $656. There was no suggestion or suspicion on the part of anybody that the unlawful bills reflected any intentional wrong, but only a mistaken assumption of a right to charge and to be recompensed for all actual services. In 1909 the office had netted the clerk $4,484. In 1911 the supervisors established a salary of $4,000 a year for the office in lieu of fees, for all of which the clerk was to account to the county, and out of his salary pay his help. But an opinion by the attorney-general held that the super- visors' action did not require the clerk to pay to the county allowances made to him by the State for work in connection with collection of the mortgage tax, nor the percentage that he received in connection with the issuing and reporting of hunting licenses, which two items aggre-
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gate perhaps $500 or $600 annually, and so make the gross compen- sation, say, $4,500 a year, and the net probably about $3,000. The reports of the clerk since he was placed on a salary basis show earnings of the office paid over to the county treasurer varying in amounts from $3,317 to $4,274 a year; but these statements make no account of the charges which would have had to be paid under the old system for services by the clerk for the county, amounting perhaps to $800 or $1,000 per annum.
The town of Brandon, from which a township and a half were set off in 1883 to be added to Harrietstown, was further partitioned in 1888 to form Santa Clara, and still again in 1896 to add another half town- ship to the latter. Waverly was partitioned in 1890 to erect Altamont.
THE INFLUX OF CHINAMEN
In 1897 additional land adjacent to the county buildings was bought for $350, and a barn erected thereon for the sheriff, which was remodeled at a cost of $3,410 in 1902 into a detention house for Chinese prisoners. Chinamen had begun about 1890 to drift across the Canadian border into the county in violation of the exclusion act - sometimes singly or in couples, and occasionally in larger, though still in small, numbers, and were picked up by United States officials and lodged in jail. After a time such arrivals became numerous, overcrowding the jail, and it became necessary to make other provisions for their care. The jail barn, made available for the purpose, was leased by the federal government, and became a detention house. At times there were more than 200 Chinamen in the jail, and 300 or 400 in the detention house. The jail inmates were mainly those who straggled across the international bound- ary by themselves and also those who, after confinement in the detention house, had been ordered deported. Those in the detention house were arrivals over the Canadian Pacific Railroad, who had been received at the border by federal officials, to be held in custody until their right to be admitted should be adjudicated - the railroad company having contracted with our government to be at the expense of caring for them in the meantime, and if they should be denied admittance to return them to China. For the board of those in jail the United States paid the county three dollars per week each. All had money, and were accus- tomed to spend it freely in satisfying their wants - those in the jail buying meats and other food when the regular jail fare was not to their liking, and doing their own cooking. Often they received articles of
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