USA > New York > Franklin County > Historical sketches of Franklin county and its several towns > Part 21
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The first religious movement in the vicinity of the Corners was Congregational, a minister having been engaged at a salary of four hundred dollars a year, but he remained only a twelvemonth, after
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which the organization went to pieces, and has never been revived. Rev. Nathaniel Colver, then stationed at Fort Covington, seized upon the opportunity presented by abandonment of the field by the Congre- gationalists, and was quickly successful in developing an interest in the Baptist faith and in winning converts. He was a man of aggressive energy and force, but in 1827, though formerly himself a Mason, became an open assailant of the order, lecturing and inveighing bitterly against it, and thus antagonized and alienated a number of his leading parishioners. That breach and scandalous conduct on the part of two or three prominent members of the Church discredited the society and led to its disruption. Mr. Colver had no successor of his denomination in Bombay, and so died the effort to found and maintain a Baptist Church there. But Methodism was becoming a power in the world, and its zealous and tireless circuit riders were already disputing even this little field with Mr. Colver before the latter's ministrations failed, and were holding services alternately with him on Sundays in the school house. This denomination is the only one that succeeded in maintain- ing itself in the eastern part of the town from early times to the present. Its first pastor or preacher was Luther Lee, in 1828, who was then stationed at Malone, and of whom the story runs that at the age of eighteen he was without education, but that, marrying a woman of superior mind and acquirements, was taught by her to read, and influenced to study. Mr. Lee served in Bombay once a month for a year. He afterward became an eloquent divine and a fiery anti-slavery crusader. Who were his immediate successors the records fail to show, but in 1832 "The Bombay Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church " was incorporated, and was associated with churches at South Bombay, Helena and Brasher, a single pastor serving all of these points. From 1877 to 1901 it was joined with Fort Covington. The first church edi- fice was erected in 1836 or 1837, and was rebuilt and enlarged in 1867. A fine parsonage was built recently.
There is also a Methodist Church at South Bombay, which has been an out appointment of Bombay since 1904. The church edifice here was erected in 1891, though services by clergy of this denomination had been held more or less regularly in the school house from a very early time.
Notwithstanding the number of Roman Catholics in the eastern part of the town had not been inconsiderable from early times, their privi- lege of worship according to the rites of their faith until recent years,
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except as mass was said irregularly and infrequently in the hotel or at a private residence, was enjoyed only by journeying to Fort Covington or Hogansburgh. About 1905, however, services began to be held at Bombay with some approach to regularity by priests from Fort Coving- ton, and were so continued until 1912, when the Church ceased to be a mission, and was given a resident rector, the Rev. James E. Duffy, who continued in charge until 1918, when he became a chaplain in the army. A church building was erected in 1905, and is clear of debt. A rectory was built in 1913. The parish is small.
The Roman Catholic Church at Hogansburgh was founded in 1827, soon after a visit to the place by Bishop Dubois of New York, of which diocese it was then a part. The bishop's counsel to the people of his faith there was given at a meeting held in a barn, and proceedings for building a church edifice and for incorporation of a church society followed in due course. Incorporation was had by residents of Bombay, Brasher and Fort Covington, November 7, 1834, as the " Roman Cath- olic Church of St. Patrick at Hogansburgh," and the first trustees, besides the bishop of the diocese and two men from Brasher, were David O'Neil and James Murphy of Bombay and Patrick Feely and Lantry Adams of Hogansburgh. The meeting for incorporating was held at Mr. Feeley's house, and the certificate recites that, a chapel being then in course of construction, steps were taken at the meeting to assure its early completion. Between 1827 and 1833 or 1834 services were held only irregularly, and were conducted by priests from neighboring local- ities, but mainly by Rev. Father Marcoux, the rector of the Roman Catholic Church for the Indians at St. Regis. In 1829 or 1830 Bishop Dubois again visited the parishes in his see in Franklin county, journey- ing by sledge drawn by dogs, and still again in 1835, when he was accom- panied by Rev. Father Hughes, who afterward became archbishop. Upon his return to New York from one or the other of these later visits, prob- ably the first of them, he assigned Rev. John McNulty to the Hogans- burgh charge. Some authorities place the beginning of this rectorship in 1833, and others in 1836. Hogansburgh was the mother church of the Romish faith in Franklin county, and it included as parts of its parish Massena, Fort Covington, Brasher, Brushton, Trout River, Con- stable, Malone, Chateaugay and Cherubusco. Father McNulty was a man of fine presence and broad attainments, and an indefatigable worker. The church edifice at Hogansburgh, which he found unfinished, was completed during his rectorship, and the work of organizing
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churches throughout the district was prosecuted with great energy. A scandalous charge was brought against him by one of his parishioners in Malone (claimed by him and his friends to have been a conspiracy between disaffected Catholics and Protestants) ; the case went to the courts, with a verdict against the priest, who was incarcerated in the jail at Malone. He escaped and fled to Canada, where he continued to reside until his death. While in service at Hogansburgh Father McNulty conducted a spirited discussion with Rev. Ashbel Parmelee of Malone concerning Romanism, the letters being published in the Malone Palladium. Great ability and learning were displayed by both of the controversialists. After the departure of Father McNulty the church at Hogansburgh was without a settled rector until 1843, the people having been attended in the interval by the priest at St. Regis and by Father Moore of Huntingdon, Que. Since then it has had rec- tors of its own continuously. The original church edifice was of stone, and served the needs of the parish until 1876, when a new structure was erected, which was burned in 1905. A year later it was replaced by a handsome brick edifice, finely finished within, and costing about fifty thousand dollars. The original church building was given over in 1878 to the uses of a convent school until 1880. From 1880 to August, 1915, when its roof and interior were burned, it was used as a parochial hall. Rev. Father Michael J. Brown, a Malone boy, who was a student at Franklin Academy fifty years ago, became the rector of St. Patrick's in 1879, and so continued until his death in 1917. In his interesting book, " History of the Diocese of Ogdensburg," Rev. John Talbot Smith says of the people of this parish that they are " unaffected by the indiffer- ence and scepticism of the Champlain and Black river portions of the diocese, simple in their customs and style of living, and comfortably situated. Their children are growing up like their fathers, and the future of the parish spiritually and financially is well assured." The parish contains about two hundred families. In 1849 all of its then several charges except Massena, Brasher, Fort Covington and Constable were set off from it, becoming independent parishes, or included in the then newly created district of Malone. The exceptions noted are now independent also.
A Methodist Episcopal Church was established as an Indian mission in 1847, two Indians having visited the church at Brasher and entreated such action. Sectarian rancor was more prevalent then than now, as well as more virulent, and there was apprehension that the attempt to introduce Protestantism among the Indians might involve personal
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danger to the participants. Therefore, three or four wagon loads of the parishioners of the Brasher pastor, Rev. Ebenezer Arnold, accompanied him as a sort of protective guard to his first meeting, which was held in the home of one of the Indians. However, though the movement was antagonized by the priest at St. Regis, and caution voiced to the Indians against attending the services, there was no violence offered, nor were the services even disturbed to any serious degree. The first meeting was attended by a couple of dozen Indians, and such interest was awakened that a few months later a band of them attended a camp meeting at Canton, where they professed conversion. In the autumn of 1848 a house was leased as a place for worship, and the next year solicitation for funds for building a church and buying land for a cemetery was prosecuted throughout Northern New York. Bishop Janes also collected a few hundred dollars elsewhere. Land could not be had on the reservation itself, and therefore a site was bought next adjoining. A church building was erected and dedicated in 1849, the bell for which was provided through Bishop Janes, who also caused a parsonage to be erected and furnished. Only devotion and a willing- ness to endure privation and isolation could induce clergymen to accept assignment to this charge, and continue their labors in it under difficul- ties and with results which, on the surface at least, carry no great degree of encouragement. The church counts as adherents about three hundred Indians, of whom something like sixty are members. For twenty years, from 1866 to 1886, Thomas LaFort, an Indian, was pastor of the church, the records of which note that his ministry was disorgan- izing and his influence hurtful to the cause.
As early as 1834 William Hogan provided for occasional services of the Episcopal Church at Hogansburgh, and erected a house there for worship. The structure was large enough for a much more populous community, and was never finished. It is now owned by Mr. Fulton, and used as a barn. In 1850 Eleazer Williams, either a son of an Indian or of the King of France, returned to St. Regis from his mission work in Wisconsin and from lobbying at Washington, and established an Episcopal mission at Hogansburgh. He had been there as a teacher and missionary in 1831, 1834 and 1836 also. Such services as he held were conducted usually in the homes of the few adherents of this faith, and rarely in the structure that Mr. Hogan had erected. From 1858, when Mr. Williams died, there was no Episcopal Church organiza- tion in the place until twelve or fifteen years later, when it was revived
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by Rev. J. C. Stewart, rector of St. Mark's, Malone. A neat church building was erected, largely through the liberality of the late Alfred Fulton, and services have since been held there more or less regularly - usually by divinity students from Montreal.
Something like forty years ago, after an exasperating and financially disastrous attempt to establish and maintain an educational institution at Malone, the Sisters of Mercy founded a day and boarding school at Hogansburgh, occupying initially the old St. Patrick's Church building. Then, in 1880, the work having prospered, the Sisters purchased a tract of fifteen acres near the St. Regis river, and erected a three-story building, with basement, of their own. It is substantial, capacions, and attractive in appearance, and located in very pleasant grounds. Sister Frances McGarr was then the Mother Superior of the local chapter, and it speaks eloquently for her zeal and devotion that with her own hands she dipped in a preservative solution every brick that went into the structure. For years the institution was maintained as a parochial school, with a large attendance of white children and a few Indians. Something like fifteen years ago Sister Stanislaus MeGarr persuaded Miss Katherine Drexel to visit Hogansburgh, and succeeded in interest- ing her in the school and its field for work among the St. Regis Indians. The institution was thereupon converted into the " Indian Girls' Indus- trial School," and cares for and educates fifty Indian girls. It is paid five thousand dollars per year therefor out of the income from the Drexel fund. Miss Drexel is the daughter of a Philadelphia banker, and inher- ited a fortune of millions of dollars. Reared in luxury, accomplished, a favorite in society, she nevertheless in 1889 renounced worldly pleasures and fortune, became a novitiate of the Sisters of Mercy, and devoted her inheritance to Christian and philanthropic work - a large part of it to the education of negroes and Indians. She is now the Mother Superior of the Order of the Blessed Sacrament. The school at Hogansburgh is supervised and conducted by six or seven Sisters, four of whom apply themselves to teaching. The girls in attendance are trained in household duties and domestic economy, so that when they return to their homes, and eventually become housewives themselves, they are equipped to do their work far better than could possibly be the case but for Sister Drexel's benefaction and the conscientious efforts of the Sisters who administer it.
Most of the pioneers - merchants, millers, farmers and teachers - were men of energy, enterprise and rugged character, and nearly every
ry
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one named had a noteworthy part in the town's development and in administering its affairs. At least six of them served as supervisor, and two (Charles Russell and John S. Eldredge) as Member of Assembly also. A son of Charles Russell (Horace A.) became an eminent lawyer and acquired wealth in New York city, was assistant district attorney there for a number of years, and afterward a judge of the superior court and judge advocate on Governor Cornell's staff. Charles Russell and George Russell, the latter of whom removed to Malone, became mer- chants at the Corners, conducting what was known as the "union store," which was in its time the principal mercantile establishment there.
Another son of Bombay who has made a success in life is Daniel B. Murphy ; born in the Cold Spring neighborhood in 1848, and educated- in the district school, Fort Covington Academy (where he was a class- mate of Hon. F. D. Kilburn and Charles A. Burke), and the Potsdam Normal. After teaching for three years in St. Lawrence county, he became principal of the Dunkirk high school in 1870, and in 1873 of the Brothers' Academy in Rochester. Two years later he associated himself with the wholesale and retail department store of Burke, FitzSimons & Hone in Rochester, acquired a financial interest in the business in 1886, and was admitted four years later to full membership in the concern, which is one of the largest in Western New York. Mr. Murphy has never sought political preferment, but, on the contrary, has declined nomination for one of the highest city offices and for member of Con- gress at a time when election would have been certain. He has been for nineteen years one of the board of managers of the Craig Colony for Epileptics ; a delegate annually for ten years past to the Mohonk Peace Conference ; a prominent member of important business associations of national scope, the volume of business of one of them running into hun- dreds of millions of dollars; and standing so well at home as to be intrusted with consequential fiduciary assignments. In 1907 he was State president of the conference of charities and corrections, which includes all correctional institutions and all public and private hospitals.
Another Bombay man who has emphatically "made good " is John Daly, a grandson of one of the Irisli pioneers of 1826. Mr. Daly was appointed on the New York city police force in 1886 as a patrolman - a not particularly agreeable rank - but, possessing ambition and the impulses and manners of a gentleman, Mr. Daly determined early to win promotion. In five years he had become a sergeant; in another five a lieutenant, and in 1903 a captain, with assignment to a gambling dis-
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trict. The usual course at that time in such a precinct was to levy black- mail on such resorts, and undoubtedly Captain Daly had opportunity to become rich through graft; but he had already won designation as " honest John," and showed here that the characterization was deserved. In six months he effectually suppressed the dens. The reputation thus made gave him still more important assignments, and in 1909 he was promoted to an inspectorship. In 1918 he became chief inspector.
Though not a native of Bombay, nor even having been connected with it in any way except as a teacher of the Cold Spring district school during one winter, and afterward as an occasional visitor, Patrick Gavin Duffy is so associated in the local public mind with the town that reference to him seems to belong here. He was born in Ireland in 1835, and came to New York at the age of twelve years. There he found employment in a livery stable for a year or two, when he went into the country to make his home with an uncle who was a priest, in order that he might receive the rudiments of an education while earning his keep as a chore boy. The priest, Rev. Father Thomas Callan, was soon transferred to missionary work in Northern New York, and was located for a time at Malone. The lad Duffy accompanied him, became a student at Franklin Academy, and taught school in Bombay. He returned to New York, and became a teacher in the schools there - afterward studying law and winning admission to the bar in 1874. Even while teaching he manifested an interest and displayed such activity in politics that by the time he had become an attorney he had attracted the attention and gained the friendship of a number of Tammany lead- ers, and in 1875 he received appointment as a police justice - continu- ing in the office for nearly twenty years. Upon his retirement it was estimated that no less than a hundred and seventy thousand prisoners had been arraigned before him. He was known always as " the Little Judge," and his quaint humor and individualistie methods made him known the world over. Often he would disregard the particular accusa- tion preferred against a prisoner, and pronounce sentence for "imper- tinence " or for some other incident arising during the hearing or trial - as, for instance, when he sent a man to the penitentiary for having falsely given his name as John Kelly, who was particularly revered by Judge Duffy. As one of his obituary notices put it, he " coupled sentences with sound advice delivered in a Solomonesque way," and " dispensed justice as no one before or since has done." It was also said of him that there was "never a hint that he was venal, politically or personally biased, or other than decorous in private life."
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In the field of politics he was almost a genius. He perfected a mar- velously efficient organization in the ward of which he was the leader, and his ambition and aim were to carry it for the Democracy year after year by an almost unanimous vote. It is told that at some elections the whole number of votes cast against his candidates in the entire ward did not number more than three or four. Mr. Duffy was a fluent and eloquent speaker, and his wit, geniality and kindness of heart made him a multitude of friends. He died in 1895.
There have been four separate surveys of the township- by Church, Gill, Dawson and McDonald - and not improbably each numbered the lots differently, so that it is impossible to determine locations by decd descriptions with certainty ; nor are there elderly residents who are familiar with the story of early industries. Thus the facts as to these must be in a measure somewhat conjectural. Daniel W. Church, sur- veyor, erected the first mill for Mr. Hogan in 1811 on the Little Salmon river near the center of the town, and it seems not improbable that it was the same, or at least on the same site, of the one subsequently owned and at various dates operated by Mortimer Russell, Jacob G. Reynolds, Charles and Orange Phelps, Thomas Donaldson, Daniel McCarthy, Ernest G. Reynolds, and Thomas A. Sears and W. B. Bab- cock. In 1849 it was known as Sylvester's mills, and a newspaper item of that date chronicled that Reed Niles, the elder, was killed there by the falling of a timber for a bridge that he was helping to build. There was also a comparatively early saw mill at Dog Hollow, owned by Amasa Townsend, which was built over into a flax mill by Alvin Russell, and converted later into a creamery. William McRoberts had a tannery more than ninety years ago on Little Salmon river about a half mile south of Bombay Corners, which was owned subsequently by Jacob G. Reynolds, and then by James Blood, and again by Mr. Reynolds. It was torn down about 1888 by Dr. H. S. Rockwood, and the material in it used to build a barn. There are a grist mill and a saw mill at South Bombay, the latter very old. The original grist mill was carried off by a flood, and its successor has been rebuilt or remodeled a number of times. Both of these mills were built originally, I think, by William W. Townsend, or possibly by George F. Burgess, and are now owned and operated by George Russell, as they had been by his father before him. Something like half a mile north from the Russell properties Jonathan Wiggins had a saw mill fifty-odd years ago, which a freshet destroyed, and which was not rebuilt. Mr. Wiggins and James Dougherty at one time burned lime in the southern part of Bombay, and their output
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supplied all of the county south of their kilns and west of Malone. While no one recalls having even heard that there was ever an iron forge in the town, the deed of the Russell saw mill lot by Townsend to Burgess carries the privilege of maintaining a dam across the river at or near the site of the old forge, and, again, a deed from the Olivers to Elisha Barney of Swanton, Vt., in 1827, is for two acres of land and water at this same point, known as the " forge lot." The record in the county clerk's office shows that the Olivers wiped Barney out by fore- closure in 1830. Though no discoverable record or local tradition tells more, the present owner of the premises, Mr. Russell, has found ore there which was plainly mined elsewhere. Only a mile to the west there is a deposit of bog ore, now owned by Ernest G. Reynolds, which is known to have been a source of supply for the Skinner works at Brasher, and the existence of which may easily be taken as the reason for the Barney venture at South Bombay, which must have been of brief duration. A starch mill was built on the Little Salmon a mile southeast of Bombay Corners by James Parr, and also one on Little Deer river, east of South Bombay, by Wilcox & Adams of Bangor. The former passed to the ownership of Oren Jenkins, and Hazen K. Cross had an interest in it at one time. The other was sold to Newton Law- rence, and by him to James H. Sargent. It was torn down when the manufacture of potato starch became unprofitable. In this same vicinity there was still another saw mill, built by John Moore, and operated by him, and then by his son, Thomas, until it was carried off by a freshet.
South Bombay formerly had a hotel, which was the old homestead of Rufus Berry, built over by his son, Homer T., about 1869, and conducted by him for a time. It was leased later to Reed Niles, the younger, and was then kept by O. W. Berry. It has now been changed into a private residence again.
In 1877 the town was visited by a plague of grasshoppers. The pas- tures were stripped almost as bare as a floor ; orchards were stripped of their leaves : corn was almost altogether destroyed, and the harvest of oats and barley was not more than a quarter of what the fields had earlier promised. The damage was estimated at not less than fifty thousand dollars.
In the western part of the town, comprising the Hogansburgh dis- trict (formerly known as St. Regis Mills, and still earlier as Gray's Mills) Rev. Father Anthony Gordon, who came from Caughnawaga to St. Regis with a band of Indians about 1760, is supposed to have erected a saw mill as early as 1762, and to have shipped rafts of lumber and
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timber thence to Montreal. This mill is said to have burned in 1807, and replaced five or six years later by two Frenchmen. The place was Gray's Mills when Michael Hogan leased lands there from Gray, who, made a captive in youth in Washington county, had grown up with the tribe, and became one of its most intelligent and influential leaders. The grist mill was built by Michael Hogan in 1818, and still stands. It and the saw mill are now owned and operated in a small way by Maurice W. Lantry. Early merchants in Hogansburgh were John Clendenning in 1819, John S. Eldredge and Elisha Belding in 1825, Isaac Seymour and Sylvester Gilbert in 1826 or 1827, Gurdon S. Mills in 1824 (whose son bore the same name) and Alfred Fulton about 1830. Mr. Eldredge was a Member of Assembly in 1840 and 1841, removed to California in 1849, and died there in 1854. Mr. Mills and Mr. Fulton each accumulated a handsome property, lived useful lives, and died respected and lamented. They were as good citizens as any town ever had, though perhaps not as pushing and enterprising as a busier environ- ment might have made them. A later comer, in 1854, who belonged in the same class with these, was Samuel Barlow, who died in California a few years ago. Other carly settlers at Hogansburgh were Benjamin O. Harrington, in 1828, who built a tannery there; Lemuel K. Warren, landlord in 1831, and John Connolly the same year; Alpha Burget in 1832 ; and Amherst K. Williams, a man of parts and prominent, in 1833. Philip Walsh had a saw mill at one time on the west side of the river. A son of Alfred Fulton is still in trade at Hogansburgh, and another son (Lonis) is a successful lawyer in New York city. Bombay is no more populous to-day than it was three-quarters of a century ago, not- withstanding a considerable part of its area is as fine farming land as there is in the county. (In 1835 it had 1,357 inhabitants, and now has but 1,377). At the former date it was the fourth town in the county, only Chateaugay, Fort Covington and Malone being larger. In its western part the St. Regis reservation stands a bar to extension of farming or other enterprises, the original splendid forests of pine and other timber have disappeared before the axe or fire, and the town has never enjoyed satisfactory transportation facilities. At one time small steamboats ascended the St. Regis river from the St. Lawrence to Hogansburgh, but the channel now lacks sufficient depth for even such navigation. Nor is there hardly a rowboat owned in the place. True, there is a branch of the Grand Trunk Railway through the town, but it affords access to American markets only by way of the west, the line
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