USA > New York > Franklin County > Historical sketches of Franklin county and its several towns > Part 20
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83 | Part 84 | Part 85
179
BELLMONT
" day's work." This part of the town has since been made into a separate election district, and polls from a hundred to a hundred and forty votes.
Standish lies on the Clinton county border, and mostly in Clinton county. There are a furnace and coal kilns there, some parts of which are in Bellmont. To the west of Standish are the Middle Kilns, and still farther west, near Wolf Pond (about seven miles south of Mountain View), are other kilns. Twenty-odd years ago there were at these three points a fluctuating scattered population of perhaps two or three hun- dred, but, with the decrease of industrial activity there, it has diminished considerably.
A sawmill was built a number of years ago a mile and a half south of Mountain View by Edwin R. Bryant, of Syracuse. Its principal product seems to have been lawsuits and judgments. The mill was burned, and rebuilt by Felix Cardinal. It was continued in operation under different ownerships until 1915, when it was dismantled and removed farther south.
The largest sawmills ever operated in Bellmont were those of Gilman Goodwin, John P. Hart, Gilbert L. Havens and Scott G. Boyce, none of which is now running or in existence.
Pope, Williams & Company began operations at the hamlet of Chateaugay Lake in 1874, to erect the largest and best catalan forge in the world. Its supply of ore was to be obtained from the Lyon Moun- tain mine in Clinton county, about eleven miles distant, and its char- coal from the adjacent forests. Gardiner Pope was the resident manager for the first few years, and was succeeded by John H. Moffitt, now of Plattsburgh, who while in Congress gave place to Lansing Donaldson, now of Malone. Senator N. Monroe Marshall was also connected with the enterprise, in the store, until he was elected county clerk. In 1877 the works and property were transferred to the Chateaugay Ore and Iron Company, in which LeGrand B. Cannon, of New York, and Hon. Andrew Williams and Hon. Smith M. Weed, of Plattsburgh, were heavily interested. The Bellmont department of the company had a sawmill at the forge, the old Roswell Weed property rebuilt, in which the lumber for its forge buildings, shops, houses for its operatives, etc., and for planking six miles of highway to the railroad at Chateaugay, was sawed. The company maintained a steamboat on the lake for towing its barges laden with ore, charcoal and wood to the forge and kilns ; its store did a business of a hundred thousand dollars or more
180
HISTORY OF FRANKLIN COUNTY
per year; it built scores of dwellings for its employees ; thirty thousand solid cords of four-foot wood were burned annually in the kilns at the forge and at Standish; a million bushels of charcoal were used in a year; and it had on its payrolls continuously two or three hundred men in this county, besides the choppers and teamsters who worked under contract. In times of greatest activity it turned out annually five thousand tons of blooms and billets, than which there was none of higher grade in the world. Except in periods of business depression, and until other methods were discovered and utilized by which iron suitable for conversion into steel could be produced at a lower cost, the orders for its output outran the capacity of the forge. At one time this iron commanded ninety dollars per ton, while now I think that not a pound is produced anywhere by the catalan process, and the iron that answers as a substitute for it has sold as low as about thirteen dollars a ton. The cost of production varied of course as wages were high or low and as improvements were instituted from time to time, but could never be brought under thirty-eight dollars per ton. The cost of operating was over a hundred thousand dollars a year. Two tons of ore made one ton of iron, and the former cost six dollars a ton. The business was abandoned in 1893.
At first thought it seems strange that this vast industry apparently added little to Bellmont's population, but it is to be remembered that as it developed the mills of Goodwin, Hart and Havens were about closing, and thus what was gained in one direction was in part offset by losses in others.
The Adirondack and St. Lawrence Railway enters Bellmont from Malone at Chasm Falls, near the northwest corner of the town, and, bearing southeasterly for about twelve miles, passes into Franklin near Plumadore Pond. The Chateangay Railway enters at Standish, on the eastern border, and runs southwestwardly seven or eight miles to Wolf Pond, where the two lines are almost in contact. The former has stations in Bellmont at Owls Head and Mountain View, and the latter at Middle Kilns and Wolf Pond. The Chateaugay Railway was built through Bellmont in 1886, and the Adirondack and St. Lawrence in 1892.
Two murders have been committed in Bellmont. In November, 1852, Ira Sherwin, of Malone, shot and killed Justin Bell, a well-to-do farmer of Brasher, in the latter's hunting or trapping camp near Owls Head. Sherwin himself reported the death of Bell, admitting that he
181
BELLMONT
shot him, but claiming that it was an accident. He was known to have been under the influence of liquor the night of the murder, and incon- sistencies in his story and contradiction of it in some particulars by established facts cast suspicion upon him. The evidence on the trial was almost wholly circumstantial, but so convincing that a verdict of guilty was found. One bit of testimony was especially interesting, and told strongly for the prosecution. A bank in Montreal formerly indi- cated the denominations of its bills by Roman numerals, and it was sought to show that a two-dollar note found in Sherwin's possession had been Bell's. An illiterate witness who had seen Bell's money testified that one note that he had seen Bell have was " an eleven dollar bill." No cross-questioning could shake him on that point, and when the two (II) dollar bill taken from Sherwin was produced he unhesitatingly identified it as at least exactly like the one that Bell had had. Sherwin was sentenced to be hung, but the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.
The other murder occurred in August, 1877, in the extreme north- western part of the town, and was perpetrated by an Italian tramp who called himself Joe Woods, but whose real name is believed to have been Joseph Sullivan, and his criminal record bad. The victim was Steven Barber, a respectable farmer of small means, who lived alone with his wife. Woods had stopped at the house for dinner the day before, and had sold articles of clothing to Mr. Barber, who in counting out the money in payment showed about thirty dollars still remaining in his possession. Woods gained entrance to the house in the night, shot and killed Mr. Barber in bed, and also twice shot Mrs. Barber. He was apprehended a day or two later in Clinton county, and brought to Malone, where, upon his arrival, a crowd quickly gathered, and chased him to the jail, with cries of " Lynch him," though no real attempt was made to take him from the officers. Woods was tried and convicted in December of the same year, and was executed in the jail yard at Malone in February, 1878. Mrs. Barber's wounds were severe, one bullet hav- ing penetrated an eye, and yet she positively identified Woods as the murderer, claiming to have recognized him in the moonlight. Con- sidering the character of her wounds, the identification was remarkable. Her evidence was certainly a marvel of clearness and certitude.
In 1855 the Legislature appropriated five thousand dollars for clear- ing and improving the rafting channel of Salmon river and its tribu- taries and for the construction of piers, booms and dams, and in 1857
182
HISTORY OF FRANKLIN COUNTY
voted a further equal amount for completing the work. Wm. King, Buel H. Man and Aaron Beman were named in the act to expend the first appropriation, and Ebenezer Man, Hiram Horton and B. S. W. Clark to expend the second. A part of the money was applied to the building of the dam at Mountain View, and in consequence the locality was long known as "State Dam." When I first visited it, in 1863, the place was desolate enough. The sole building was a tumble-down barn, and the stream above the dam showed mainly only standing trunks of trees, half-sunken logs and a waste of roots and limbs. The act appro- priating the money carried permission to overflow State lands, and such flooding had killed the timber on the banks of the originally narrow channel. In 1893 a further appropriation of two thousand dollars was obtained for the removal of this refuse, and the locality is greatly improved in appearance. The first act of appropriation provided that the State lands adjacent to Salmon river should be sold only in parcels of six hundred and forty acres at public auction, and for not less than thirty cents an acre! Try to buy a building or camp site there now, and note the advance in values.
The hamlet of Chateaugay Lake, once a hive of activity and of abounding prosperity, is now almost deserted. The great forge build- ings and the sawmill have rotted down, many of the cottages built for the operatives have been demolished or removed, while others stand in a dilapidated condition, unoccupied, and the store that once was thronged with customers is at present the place of worship of the local organization of the Holiness Movement. There is no industrial estab- lishment in operation, nor any business at all except one small grocery store. The early teachers of Chateaugay Lake's school included Mrs. Paul Merrill, D. D. D. Dewey, Samuel and Theodore Beman, Misses Martha Williamson, Harriet Hoit and Jane and Olive Miles, Darius Merrill and Myron T. Whitney.
The history of church organizations in Bellmont may be briefly told. Religious services were held at Chateaugay Lake as early as 1824 by Rev. Ashbel Parmelee of Malone and Elder Ephraim Smith. Mr. Chase told in a paper contributed to the Historical Society a few years ago that the former once officiated in Mr. Drew's house to a congrega- tion of only eight, but that these included every (adult ?) inhabitant of the town.
The Methodist Episcopal Church of Chateaugay Lake was incorpo- rated June 5, 1889, at a meeting held " at the accustomed place of wor-
183
BELLMONT
ship," with Nathan Thurber, J. W. Merrill and Henry N. Cootey as trustees. For fourteen years previously, however, Methodist services had been held regularly in the school house hall by the pastor of the church at Brainardsville, and occasional services from a more remote time. Chateaugay Lake never had a church building until 1916, when one was erected by the Methodist Episcopal denomination. The site, on the lake road about half way between the hamlet and the Banner House, was given by Dr. E. E. Thurber. What the purpose was I do not know, but notwithstanding the incorporation in 1889, a further incorporation under the same title was had October 17, 1914.
St. Agnes Church of Chateaugay Lake (Roman Catholic) was incor- porated in 1875, and for several years thereafter services were held more or less regularly in the school house hall by the priest in charge at Chateaugay. Before such incorporation mass had been said infre- quently in private houses here, while latterly Catholic services have been at Brainardsville once a month, the priest at Chateaugay officiating. The society has no church building.
The first Congregational Society of Bellmont, at Bellmont Center, was incorporated in 1849 with John Richey, Joseph Williamson and Thomas MeKenny as trustees, but no history of the life and activities of the organization is now traceable. Doubtless it was only a mission- ary charge, served probably by clergymen from Malone and Burke, and possibly sometimes from Chateaugay, and after a time was suffered to die. In 1868 the Presbyterian-Congregational Society of Bellmont was incorporated, and enrolled with the presbytery of Champlain in 1871. It had completed a church edifice in 1870. Rev. Andrew M. Millar served as pastor from 1867 to 1896. In later years services between pastorates were conducted by the Malone clergymen and by students from Magill College, Montreal. Prior to the erection of the church building services had been held first in the school house and then at the town house.
The history of Methodism in Bellmont before 1853 is meagre. We have authentic information that the town was in the Chateaugay circuit, but nothing fixing the neighborhood or neighborhoods where the early meetings were held. Rev. James Erwin, stationed at Chateaugay, was certainly in Bellmont in 1835, and it is only a reasonable presumption that his predecessor in the circuit had been there before him, and that his successors visited the town every year afterward until the conference appointed a resident clergyman to the charge in 1854. This appointee
184
HISTORY OF FRANKLIN COUNTY
apparently preached both at Brainardsville and at Bellmont Center, and perhaps occasionally at Chateaugay Lake also. At Brainardsville serv- ices were held in the school house until the erection of the church edifice in 1866, and for sixteen years prior to 1870 there were pastors resident either here or at Bellmont Center. But in 1870 Brainardsville was a part of the Chateaugay charge, and so remained until 1885. Since this latter date it has been united with Chateaugay Lake and Bellmont Center, the three comprising one independent charge with a single pastor. Considerable improvements in the church building were made in 1915.
At Bellmont Center a class was formed in 1853 or earlier, and until 1888 or 1889, when a church building was provided, services were held at first in private houses or in the school house, and then in the town hall. During the period of fifteen years when Brainardsville was joined with Chateaugay, the Bellmont Center organization was served minis- terially by Benjamin F. Brown, a local preacher, who was commonly called " Priest" Brown, who died in 1868, and then by pastors located at Burke. Since 1885 it has been again united with Brainardsville. For several years no services were held in the winter season, because the church lacked provision for heating it, but this defect has now been corrected, and the church is open throughout the year. The church building was erected in 1888 on a site donated by Sherman J. Heading.
A Methodist Episcopal church was built at Owls Head in 1898. The organization is a part of the Chasm Falls charge, the clergyman of which officiates at Owls Head. Prior to the establishment of this church occasional Methodist services had been held in homes in the vicinity.
St. Elizabeth's at Mountain View was organized and a church build- ing erected in 1907 through the efforts of Rev. Father Valois of St. Helen's at Chasm Falls, of which charge it is a mission. It is attended usually by the rector of that church, though not infrequently supplied by priests who are guests at one of the hotels.
The first Union Protestant Church of Mountain View was incor- porated May 29, 1915, with C. C. Morgan, J. W. Pond and S. R. Payne as trustees. The church building is an attractive structure. The organi- zation does not contemplate employment of a regular pastor, the church being, as its title indicates, open to all Protestant denominations, and services will probably be held in it by clergymen from vicinity parishes and by such as may spend their vacations at Mountain View.
CHAPTER VII
BOMBAY
The town of Bombay, comprising township Number One of Macomb's purchase and all of the St. Regis reservation on the American side of the boundary, was erected from Fort Covington by an act of the Legis- lature passed March 30, 1833, to be effective on the first of May fol- lowing. Its name was chosen by Michael Hogan in compliment to Mrs. Hogan, who was a native of Bombay, India. Mr. Hogan himself was a merchant in New York city, and so continued for a number of years after his first investment in lands in Bombay (then a part of Constable) in 1807, when he purchased 10,168 acres from Alexander Macomb for $15,250. In 1809 he bought 9,949 acres additional from John McVickar for $19,899.80, which gave him all of the township orig- inally called Macomb. A few years later he conveyed this entire tract to John Oliver, of Baltimore, Maryland, afterward repurchased it, mortgaged it to Oliver for $42,000, and the year following again con- veyed it to Oliver, for whose estate and heirs William Hogan (son of Michael) acted as agent in the sale of Bombay lands for many years. Asa Hascall and William A. Wheeler were subsequently agents for the Olivers. In all of the instruments recorded in Franklin county to which Michael Hogan was a party his residence is given as New York city, and in an act passed by the Legislature in 1824 as Waterford. So far as I am able to ascertain, he never resided at Bombay for any length of time, though it is altogether probable that he visited the place occa- sionally, and for a time kept in touch with matters there, as Hough refers to building operations which he caused to be undertaken in 1811 and 1818. The first of these was the erection of a mill (probably a saw mill) in the eastern part of the town, and the second a grist mill at Hogansburgh. In 1817 Mr. Hogan leased from the Indians one hun- dred and forty-four acres of land and water at the point where the ham- let of Hogansburgh now is, agreeing to establish and maintain a ferry there and to pay an annnal rental of three hundred and five dollars there- for. The term of the lease was for ten years, with the privilege of perpet- ual renewals. A couple of years later this lease was assigned to William Hogan for three thousand dollars, and the land itself was ceded in
[185]
186
HISTORY OF FRANKLIN COUNTY
1824 by the Indians to the State of New York for one dollar and an annuity in perpetuity of three hundred and five dollars. The younger Mr. Hogan then acquired the fee from the State.
The earliest recorded deed given to or by William Hogan is dated 1821, and his residence is stated therein to be Fort Covington. Until 1836 all subsequent deeds in which he appears as grantor or grantee state his residence as Fort Covington or Hogansburgh, and after that as New York city. Mr. Hogan was born in 1792, lived in South Africa in his youth, studied the Dutch language there, and upon his return to this country entered Columbia College, New York, was graduated from it, studied law and was admitted to the bar. He served both the towns of Fort Covington and Bombay as supervisor, was elected to the Assem- bly in 1822, became one of the judges of the court of common pleas for Franklin county in 1829, and was elected to Congress in 1830. As a candidate for re-election in 1832 he was defeated. In 1850 he was appointed a clerk in the department of State at Washington, and held the position until 1866 or later. He died in Washington in 1875. In his younger years he was an intense partisan of the Andrew Jackson school of Democrats. The Franklin Telegraph said of him during his Congressional canvass that his bearing was "offensively aristocratic," that he was a free-trader, and that in sentiment he was a Southerner. But in a letter of the week following to the Telegraph Mr. Hogan declared himself a protectionist, and in a letter to the Malone Palladium in 1861, written from Washington, avowed himself vigorously a Union man, and declared it to be the duty of all good citizens to stand strongly against secession.
Michael Hogan was born in Ireland in 1765. Hough's history says that he was for several years consul general of the United States at Valparaiso, Chile, and that he " was distinguished throughout various reverses of fortune by his enterprise, intelligence and probity, as well as by his hospitable and liberal disposition, and the urbanity of his manners." He died in Washington, D. C., in 1833. A further reference to him appears in the first chapter.
It was doubtless due to the nativity of the Hogans, father and son, that Irish settlers began to swarm into Bombay about the year 1825, generally coming by steamship to Montreal directly from Ireland, and thence overland or up the St. Lawrence. Mr. Hogan the younger is said to have received these with great kindliness, and to have located them upon what was then regarded as the very best lands in the town,
187
BOMBAY
which location came to be known as the "Irish ridge." These lands to-day are very far from the best in Bombay, but in early times the bottoms and intervals were too wet to be worked, and thus the uplands alone were available for farming. These settlers, as Mr. Reed says in his story of "Life on the Border," were apparently delighted to have an "illigant Irishman " for their boss, notwithstanding they found him invariably an exacting creditor and master, though not unjust.
A few months ago an application was made to the court somewhere by a man named Hogan to have his name changed, and the incident brought out the statement that all Hogans are the descendants of Irish kings, and that in ancient times they had a fortified residence at Ardcromy and another at Ballylusky. Assuming this to be true, the statement of the Telegraph regarding Mr. Hogan's aristocratic bearing may readily be believed to have been correctly descriptive. No descend- ant of the Bombay Hogans is known to be living, and the only evidences of the family remaining in Bombay are the buildings which they erected and a skeleton of a coach which was in its day an elegant equipage, richly upholstered, fitted with lamps, and painted and gilded to be fit for royalty itself. It was imported from England, used for a time in New York, and finally sent to Hogansburgh for storage. It was of great weight, and required four horses to haul it even on fairly good roads. On such roads as the county then possessed it could hardly be used at all. Though moth-eaten, dismantled and a wreck, it is still preserved at Hogansburgh, and a few years ago it was not uncommon to bring it out on a Fourth of July. and drive it up and down the street. The dwelling house built by William Hogan in Hogansburgh still stands, and is in a remarkably good state of preservation.
There remains in Bombay scarcely one even of the group of men who were of the generation next after the earliest settlers, and records of their time or data concerning them seem not to have been kept. The first white settler in the town, one Hadley, a hunter, is said to have located in 1803, and to have been followed by Samuel Sanborn and family in 1805: but immigration did not begin in any volume until about 1822, and was at first largely from Vermont and New Hampshire. Ten or twelve years later nearly all of the original settlers had removed to Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, selling out to other arrivals, mostly from Vermont, and at about this time a good many Irishmen also came.
Among the first merchants in the eastern section of the town, at
188
HISTORY OF FRANKLIN COUNTY
Bombay Corners, were James Luther and Jesse A. Clark, the former having established a store there in 1824, and the latter having followed in 1826. Early hotel keepers were John Diggins and William P. Moseley, and later Mortimer Russell. Benjamin Reynolds came from Vermont in 1824, and his son Jacob G. followed in 1831. The latter, after engaging in farming for several years, became the principal mer- chant and business man at the Corners, and one of the moneyed men of the town. William McRoberts settled in 1821, taught school for one term, and with his brother, James, built a tannery south of the Cor- ners in 1823. He afterwards engaged in farming. Joseph Elliott, Jr., located in 1819, Amasa and Rufus Townsend, farmers, about 1825, Moses B. Elliott in 1826, John McCabe in 1831, Pearson Rolfe in 1832, Jonathan Wiggins and George H. Russell in 1833, Charles Russell in 1835 or earlier, Elvin K. Smith, a physician, in 1835, Alanson Donald- son in 1837, Preserved Ware in 1839, and Mortimer Russell in 1844. Benjamin Rolfe was a resident as early as 1825, and was the third or possibly the fourth school teacher in the town - having been preceded by Jacob Travis, who taught in a log barn a mile west of the Corners, in which at least a cord of wood was burned daily to keep the pupils from freezing ; also by Wilson Randall, and probably by William McRob- erts. Either Randall or Rolfe was the first to preside in a real school house, which was finished in 1824 or 1825, near the Corners. A con- siderable number of the boys and girls in attendance were men and women grown. Sylvester Parr was pedagogue a couple of years after Rolfe, and later became a Baptist minister. Then, in 1828, came Amos Emerson, a superior type, and also an ardent believer in the virtue and efficacy of the blue beech.
There is little to be told of life in the town in its early days, the story differing in no essential particulars from that of any other frontier set- tlement of the period. Forests were converted into fruitful fields by dint of hard labor, privation prevailed and was endured as a matter of course and without especial realization of hardship, schools were provided as soon as might be, religious services supplied a little later, with the hotels and their bars keeping up a regular devil's side show or chapel (rather worse here than in most similar communities), and men and women lived and loved and died as is the law of the universe.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.