USA > New York > Franklin County > Historical sketches of Franklin county and its several towns > Part 17
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A Roman Catholic church or mission was formed at Derrick about 1900, and was served for six or seven years regularly by Zeno De Carey, Joseph Hervieux and J. E. Berard; but with the suspension of the Turner lumbering operations the population became so scant that dis- continuance of regular services followed, and there has since been no resident rector. Father Berard, now at Lake Clear, continues to visit the place once in a month or two, however.
Altamont Lodge No. 609, I. O. O. F., was organized September 9, 1891, and has thirty-seven members.
St. John Baptist Society, formed in 1893, is a strong and flourishing organization, owns its own lodge room, and has about one hundred and fifty members.
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Mt. Arab Lodge No. 847, F. and A. M., was organized June 1, 1904, and has one hundred and six members. It owns its lodge room.
On Sunday evening, February 24, 1889, four men were playing cards at the house of William MeLaughlin in Tupper Lake, when one of them, Ziba Westcott, son of one of the earliest settlers and stepson of MeLaughlin, accused one of the others - John Smith, son-in-law of MeLaughlin -of having cheated. Westcott was slight, sightless in one eye, and Smith a physical giant with muscles like tempered steel, the most powerful man in the locality, and said to have been of vicious disposition. There had been previous bad blood between the two, and Smith was said to have threatened to "get" Westcott. Instantly fol- lowing the accusation, Smith struck Westcott a smashing blow over the eye, cutting a gash from which the blood flowed into the good eye, blinding him completely. Westcott drew a knife, and in the striking and parrying which followed Smith's throat was cut to the windpipe, and he expired within a few minutes. Westcott was indicted for man- slaughter in the first degree. His defense was that, having been blinded by blood, he used the knife only to stand Smith off, and did not even know that he had eut him until after the affair was over, and he was told of its fatal issue. The jury returned a verdict of not guilty. Westcott became insane about fifteen years later, and is now an inmate of the State hospital at Point Airy.
Erastus L. Sabin, familiarly known as "Rat"-a former resident of St. Regis Falls, but at the time a liveryman at Tupper Lake - was found dead back of the Hurd sawmill in the morning of September 28, 1898, shot through the head and through the breast, and with the head badly battered and crushed. Before the district attorney and the sheriff could reach Tupper Lake, the case had been bungled by local inquiry, and notwithstanding expert detective service was employed no sufficient grounds could be established to justify an arrest. The story as told at the time was that a stranger had called at the livery during the evening of September 27th and arranged for the delivery of a rig to him at a later hour at the place where Sabin's body was found; but that representation was not credited by the district attorney or by the sheriff, who were convinced in their own minds of quite other con- ditions and circumstances. General belief was that there was a woman in the case, and that it was her paramour who, finding Sabin with the woman, committed the murder. But whoever the murderer may have been, he escaped detection, and the mystery of the crime was never solved.
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March 21, 1913, Joseph McWade, a New York Central special officer or detective and also a special deputy sheriff, saw two men riding " blind " under the baggage car as a train was pulling out of Faust. Upon his indicating that he had seen them the men jumped from the car and started to run in opposite directions. McWade shot one of them (Arthur Lerrin) fatally, and wounded the other. He was indicted for manslaughter in the first degree - the charge being that without design to kill he had nevertheless unjustifiably and inexcusably caused death. The jury returned a verdict of guilty of manslaughter in the second degree, with recommendation to the court for clemency. McWade was fined five hundred dollars.
At Faust on January 2, 1915, John Morrison shot Ezra Alpert in the breast, inflicting a wound which resulted in death the same day. Alpert was an employee in the hotel where Morrison, a meat cutter, was boarding, and had refused to sell liquor to the latter, who was already under the influence of drink. In the frenzy of intoxication Morrison went to his room for his gun, and committed the crime. The men had been ordinarily on quite friendly terms. Morrison was found guilty of murder in the second degree, and was sentenced to twenty years' imprisonment at Dannemora.
Other tragedies in Altamont include the burning of the boarding house of Julius King on Christmas morning, 1902, when one of the boarders and Mrs. McGovern (King's daughter) and her four children perished in the flames, and also the burning of Antoine Caron's house in 1906. Two children were burned to death in the latter fire.
CHAPTER V BANGOR
Bangor was organized from Dickinson June 15, 1812. It originally included all of the old town of Brandon, but now consists of a single township, which is said to have been named by the Macomb purchasers from a town in Wales. It is regarded as one of the best farming towns in the county, though in parts the soil is too light to be very productive. The Duncher, Sand hill or Taylor brook traverses the town from its southeast corner to the western border, a small stream (the Little Salmon river) takes its course through the western part, and it is watered also by a number of brooks. The surface is generally level.
The census of 1820 gave the population as 370, which increased to 1,076 in 1830, and to 2,520 in 1860, from which date until 1910 it decreased slowly to 1,946. By the enumeration of 1915 it is 2,179. The proportion of citizens to aliens is larger than in any other town in the county, the latter numbering only six. A few years ago Bangor had about the liveliest and most thorough Republican political organiza- tion in the county, and to the zeal of its leaders in looking for voters is perhaps attributable the fact that nearly all aliens were naturalized. The people of the town generally have always been of a sturdy and intelligent type, with a considerable percentage of men alive to busi- ness opportunity and insistent upon public order and individual decency, though it is not meant thereby to say that good men were not at times inclined to a bit of wildness. In point of morality the community ranked from the first among the best.
The first settler within the bounds of Bangor as it now exists was Benjamin Seeley in 1806, who was followed the same year by Joseph Phimb. Both came from Moira, to which they had emigrated from Vermont two or three years previously. Mr. Seeley located about a mile cast of North Bangor Corners. Later in the same year James and Jehiel Barnum located, and were followed in 1807 by Chester Tullar, Robert Wilson, Joel Griffin and others. Probably in no other town in Franklin county has the original stock so taken root, multiplied and survived in its descendants. Run over the names of the pioneers and
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of the others who became their associates within the next quarter of a century, and note how familiar most of them are in the present genera- tion, and how numerous are those now resident in the town who bear them : Joseph Plumb, Joshua, Gardner, Luther and Henry Dickinson, Coddington and Levi Conger, Jonathan . Bowen, Barnabas, Jehiel and James Barnum, Ezra French, Levi and Sylvester Potter, Isaac and James Bigelow, William G. White, Caleb Bates, Reuben and Simeon Davis, James and George Adams, Richard, Lucius and Henry King, Jesse Smith, Russell Lee, Harvey and David Doty, Samuel Brigham, Hiram Frank, Gabriel and Alanson Cornish, John and Horace Knapp (the former the father of Wells of Malone), Elisha Keeler, Jennison Dyke, Warren Tower, Jonathan, Nehemiah and Benjamin N. Law- rence, Heman Harwood, Abel Wilcox, John W. Crooks, Danforth Pat- terson, Andrew Spaulding, George W., Daniel and Hiram Taylor, Samuel and Anderson Wilson, and Noah Moody, the last named having removed in a short time to Malone. In the fathers and their sons the list measures pretty accurately and fully the sinew, enterprise and char- acter that distinguished Bangor during the first half century of its existence, and, though many others of ability and usefulness of later arrival have earned the right to be included as considerable factors in the business and civic life of the community, descendants of most of those named are among the foremost men of the town to-day - respected and prominent. Nearly all of the early settlers came from Vermont.
On the tombstone of one of these pioneers at North Bangor is this inscription : " Gabriel Cornish died March 27th, 1841, in the 83d year of his age. He served during the entire war of the revolution, took part at the battles of Saratoga and Monmonth, was an eyewitness of the execution of Andre and of the surrender of Burgoyne and Cornwallis, and wintered with Washington at Valley Forge."
Though later comers, the Dustins have a lineage of remarkable inter- est. A considerable number reside in Bangor, Moira and Westville, the immediate descendants of Gilman, Jonathan and Charles, who set- tled in the last named town some sixty or seventy years ago. Among the descendants in Bangor are Mrs. O. S. Rhoades and Mrs. Fred Chapin. In 1697 an Indian attack was made upon Haverhill, Mass., and Hannah Dustin, sick in bed with a child only a week old, and her nurse were made captives. The child was brained as an encumbrance on the flight, and the women were taken into New Hampshire. Arrived at their lodges, the Indians apprehended no pursuit, nor any attempt
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by the women to escape, so that no guard was kept, nor were the cap- tives bound. One night Mrs. Dustin and the nurse, with a lad who had been previously captured, possessed themselves of their captors' tomahawks, and slew ten of the Indians as they slept, even taking the scalps of their victims for proof at home of their exploit. The Massa- chusetts House of Representatives voted to each of the three a money recognition, and monuments have been erected to Mrs. Dustin at Haver- hill and at the site of the Indian camp. The Bangor, Moira and West- ville Dustins are direct descendants of Hannah Dustin.
No one locality in the town seems to have been especially preferred for settlement by the first comers, and the central and southern parts, at the points which are now known as Bangor, North Bangor and West Bangor, grew in almost equal pace, though the last named was at one time more populous than either of the others, and is now third in such respect. There are also small settlements known as Cooks Corners and Baconville.
The town has no really good water powers, and manufacturing enter- prises other than starch making have never been important. The census of 1825 listed the town as having one iron works, but the establishment would not now be so described, as in reality it was little more than a blacksmith shop, which was owned and operated by Joshua Dickinson. Its principal product was axes hammered out by hand, though Mr. Dickinson is quoted as having stated that for a year or two, nearly a century ago, when hunting wolves for the bounties was so prevalent, he did little except to make wolf traps. Nearly all of the output of axes found sale in the towns of Bangor and Brandon and in the edge of Malone, the pioneers in these localities having depended almost wholly upon Mr. Dickinson for these implements, which, with the forests to be cleared before agriculture could be possible, were a first and indispens- able necessity.
Joshua Dickinson built also and for many years operated a grist mill, a linseed oil mill, a starch mill, kept a store, and ran the hotel which had been kept earlier by William G. White. The grist mill and the oil mill (the former originally a stone structure) he sold in 1844 one- third to Thomas F. Mulholland and two-thirds to Hiram Taylor - the latter subsequently acquiring the Mulholland interest. The oil mill was simple and crude. It consisted of two great stones cut in circular form, with a diameter of perhaps seven or eight feet and a thickness of per- haps two feet, hung upon a shaft and revolving upon a stone bed. The
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mill was operated by horse power. The flax seed was placed on the bed, and the stones, edge on, ground it to a flour or meal, which was then heated in a revolving cylinder, and afterward subjected to great pressure in an iron press in order to force out the oil. The cakes of oil meal were sold to farmers for feed for stock. The mill was run even after production of flax in quantities had ceased in the locality, and seed had to be hauled from Montreal. Mulholland & Adams operated it in 1863. When the stone grist mill was burned it was rebuilt of wood, and Mr. Taylor ran it until he died in 1861. It was then bought and worked for years by Edmund F. Sargent, and since him by James H. Sargent, Charles J. Adams, H. K. Rider and Newton Lawrence, Fred Dickinson, A. S. Knapp, Fred Lawrence, and now by Colton & Ward.
A carding or cloth dressing mill, built by Caleb Bates and Reuben Davis prior to 1826, was acquired by Mr. Taylor in 1832, and carried on by him for a long time. Apparently he prospered in all of his under- takings, and mention must not be omitted that he bequeathed three thousand dollars to the trustees of Franklin Academy as a perpetual fund, the income to be awarded by them annually to three worthy, indi- gent students of the institution - two boys and one girl. The fund remains intact, and has served for more than half a century to aid students who otherwise must have foregone a higher education. The benefaction is one of the finest, with admirable results, that any resident of our county ever created, and it would be fortunate if Mr. Taylor's example in this regard were followed by others.
A tannery, built of stone by Abel Wilcox, who started out as a shoe- maker, still stands, having been converted into a tenement house. As a tannery it outlived its usefulness a good many years ago. There was also at one time a distillery, which I think was located at a point on the brook above the Keeler wheelwright shop. It is said to have made whiskey from potatoes. It was built by Danforth or L. B. Patterson, probably by the latter, but did business for only a few years. Of course there were asheries, too.
The Dickinson hotel was a large double house on the north side of the turnpike, just west of its intersection with the cross road from North Bangor. It still stands, and is a private residence. Before Mr. Dickinson's occupancy it was owned by Henry Vail, and kept by William G. White. Besides the Dickinson house, which was less a general hotel than an inn to accommodate stage travel, Colonel Luther Taylor had
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a tavern on the north side of the turnpike, near the brook. A part of the building is still there.
The next hotel at Bangor after these was that of Hial Bentley in the building which Edmund F. Sargent purchased in 1867, and made over into a home. The building was erected in 1851. After Mr. Bentley, Parrit B. ("Put") Wolf was landlord until he entered the army as a captain in the 98th regiment in 1861, when Joshua Pillings took the management, and was followed by Abe Staves until Mr. Sargent bought the property. Then Henry Bentley and Dana C. Adams converted into a hotel the stone building on the corner which had been Danforth Pat- terson's store and residence. They added an annex for a dance hall, and ran the establishment until about 1878, when Jarvis Austin suc- ceeded them. Next Steve Fosburg had it for a time, and was followed by James Fish. Then William H. Pearson (since a suicide) and A. H. McKimm came in for a few years, and afterward Mr. Fosburg was there again until the building burned in July, 1917. It is not expected to be rebuilt.
Among the early merchants at Bangor were William G. White, Gard- ner Green, Barnes & Brown, Danforth Patterson, Joshua Dickinson, L. B. Patterson, G. L. Sargent (afterward a farmer and political war horse in Brandon), James C. Drake and William M. Leonard. Dwight Dickinson and Clark A. Patterson, Clark J. Dickinson and Thomas F. Mulholland, Allen Hinman, Hial Bentley, Nelson C. Lawrence and Roswell H. Farr, were also in trade here for a time. While some of these did not long remain, and even their names have been forgotten, others continued in business for considerable periods and left an endur- ing impress. Danforth Patterson was the father of Clark A., who in his younger years was a live wire in the town, and later a stirring figure in Chateaugay, where bad associations got him into trouble. Mr. Drake became sheriff of the county, and lived thereafter in Malone. Joshua Dickinson's sons, William G. and Wells S., entered into partner- ship with him in 1846, and later Wells was associated with him in other enterprises also. William moved to Malone, was for several years a leading merchant there, and became county treasurer. A few years after the civil war he moved to Topeka, Kansas, and thence to National City, Cal. Wells was for a generation the most popular and influential man in Bangor, of unbounded energy and marvelous politi- cal and business activity. He served in the Assembly before the civil war, and in the State Senate from 1871 to 1875. He was a delegate to
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Republican national conventions a number of times, and in his later years was in general charge of the Northern Pacific Railroad Com- pany's land, transportation and legislative interests. At one time he was one of the proprietors of a bank at Red Wing, Minn., was almost always deep in big speculative undertakings, was a manufacturer of starch on an extensive scale, and, next to William A. Wheeler, was the Republican leader or "boss" in Franklin county. Dwight and Clark, younger sons of Joshua, removed to Malone, and became whole- sale produce dealers. The former was supervisor of Malone a number of terms. Mr. Leonard sold his store in 1850, and removed to Rouses Point -returning in 1864 (having in the meantime engaged in farm- ing and in trade in Malone), and, again entering upon the mercantile business, admitted his son, Marcellus A., to a partnership in 1867. This arrangement continued until 1878, when Marcellus bought the store of Dickinson & Lawrence, and in 1884 his son, William C., and Willard B. Royce became partners with him. Mr. Leonard retired in 1897, and now resides in Malone. He has given me a few items from his father's and his own books during the years prior to and just subse- quent to the civil war. Crackers were sold at one time by count instead of by weight, butter was fourteen cents per pound, and, brown sugar ten cents. After the war kerosene sold at eighty cents a gallon, flour at sixteen dollars a barrel, tea at a dollar and thirty-five cents per pound, and coffee sugar at eighteen cents. Considerably later kerosene sold as low as six and a half cents a gallon.
Other merchants at Bangor have included Fayette W. Lawrence, Charles Whitney, and Edwin E. Dickinson, now of New York city.
A fire at the hamlet June 22, 1899, destroyed the Leonard block (occupied by D. W. Grannis as a hardware store), N. W. Lawrence's store, Hinman & Marvin's drug store, A. S. Knapp's meat market, and several dwelling houses, with losses aggregating $20,000.
July 2, 1917, a fire originating in an outbuilding extended quickly to the Fosburgh hotel and also to A. W. Ford's farm implement store and warehouse, both of which were destroyed. Willard B. Royce's gen- eral store and Mrs. Royce's millinery store, with their dwelling apart- ments overhead, and Fred Wilson's blacksmith shop were also burned. The total loss was estimated at nearly $30,000. Business conditions are such that there is no expectation that the Royce store or the hotel, a large stone building, will be replaced.
Bangor was one of the first towns in the county to engage in the
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manufacture of potato starch, the first mill having been erected about 1846 or 1847. There have been eight such mills in the town - four at Bangor, three at West Bangor, and one at North Bangor, near the railroad station. Not one is now running. The four at Bangor were all on the Sand Hill or Taylor Brook, and were built respectively by Joshua Dickinson and Isaac Wilson, Charles Adams, George Adams and Abel Wilcox. Changes in ownership during the activity of the mills were many - Wells S. Dickinson, Danforth Patterson, E. F. Sargent, Dexter P. Marvin, Fred F. Brown, D. W. Lawrence, Hannibal Wilcox and possibly others having been at one time or another either part or sole proprietors of some one or more of them. One of the mills at West Bangor was owned by J. V. Bowles, another by William L. and Horace A. Taylor, and the third by Davidson & Guernsey, which was burned. That at North Bangor was built and run by Wells S. Dickinson and " Jack" Doty. While these factories often paid as high as twenty-five or thirty cents per bushel for potatoes, and forty cents one year, the usual price was less. Often in the early years they contracted with farmers in the spring at twelve and a half cents per bushel, and some of the sellers used to claim that even at that low figure their potato crops had paid for their farms. The Taylor factory at West Bangor has been converted into a saw mill, while a part of the Bowles mill at the same place has become a barn, and another part is used as a place of worship by members of the Holiness Movement.
Charles J. Adams and Harry Stancliff erected a mill at Bangor about 1870 or 1871 for making extract from hemlock bark for tanning purposes. The extract was barreled and shipped to tanners in localities where the supply of bark had been exhausted. A. saw mill was con- nected with it. The building was burned in 1874, and was not replaced, though in 1886 Mr. Adams erected and equipped a planing mill, which was later torn down.
James Jones had at one time a saw mill on the Sand Hill Brook, below the hamlet. It was run afterward by Hosea Burr, and was torn down about twenty years ago. A half mile or so farther west Charles Spaulding had a saw mill, which was run after him by Eli, James and John Spaulding, but has not been in existence for fifty years or more.
The hamlet of Bangor is lighted electrically by the Malone Light and Power Company, and has a gravity system of water works, pro- vided by private enterprise. Besides its little group of residences, it now contains a Congregational and a Methodist Episcopal church, the
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grist mill, a creamery, L. W. Keeler & Sons' wheelwright shop, Fred Wilson's blacksmith shop, H. H. Bowles's paint shop, A. W. Ford's harness and agricultural implements salesrooms, Alonzo Avery's meat market, and stores by William M. Hinman and Bradford Brothers.
At West Bangor (known once as Pottersville) the first saw mill is said to have been built at a very early day by Joseph Ross, Sr., and Samuel Silsbee also built one, about forty rods above the grist mill. No trace of the Silsbee mill remains. The Ross mill passed to the ownership of William Ross, who added a coffin and cabinet factory, and then to J. V. R. (" Rans ") Bowles, who engaged also in making starch barrels extensively. This mill, now razed, was subsequently owned by Peter Boardway, who has removed the machinery to the old Taylor starch factory, farther down the stream. Niah Wood built a log grist mill at West Bangor, which he sold in 1819 to Levi Potter, who rebuilt it as a frame structure. It was run for many years by Mr. Potter, and since him by Charles H. Bartlett, Davidson & Guern- sey, Lyman Oliver, James Squires, Albert Larue, George Ayres, Myron Barber, and now by Scott G. Crooks. It has been owned for some years by John P. Kellas, of Malone, who has built a concrete dam and improved the property generally.
Statement concerning the West Bangor starch factories appears on a preceding page.
Levi Potter kept a hotel here, near the grist mill, and Daniel P. Moore had a primitive tavern on a side road in the vicinity.
Nash Dyke operated a triphammer works near by, for which he obtained the iron in Duane, and in 1864, when cotton was so high in price, William L. Taylor bought the works and converted it into a flax mill. Besides buying flax from such farmers as could be persuaded to engage in its cultivation, he leased considerable tracts of land at fifteen dollars per acre, and raised large quantities on his own account. The flax was treated only to the point that prepared it for spinning, when it was shipped elsewhere to undergo that process and be woven into linen. The enterprise was continued for about three years.
William L. and Horace A. Taylor, Orson L. Reynolds, Charles J. Adams and Harry Stancliff (the latter from Massachusetts) joined in 1868 in building at West Bangor a mill to make tanning extract from hemlock bark. The business was at first largely experimental, and did not prove remunerative. A cord of bark would make twenty gallons of extract, which commanded a price of twenty cents a gallon.
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