USA > New York > Franklin County > Historical sketches of Franklin county and its several towns > Part 38
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FORT COVINGTON
riam, afterward a prominent banker at Ogdensburg, was one of the corporators. In those days a bank's capital was not required to be fully paid in, and such institutions were not infrequently of decidedly a speculative character, were often started by men who were not residents of the places where operations were to be conducted, and failures were in startling numbers. In the course of an excellent paper prepared a few years ago by Matt C. Ransom, reciting the history of banking in our county, it is very plansibly suggested that the organizers, though non-residents, were attracted to Fort Covington by reason of the fact that there was then no bank in the county and that the prosperity and natural advantages of the place seemed to carry the promise that it must continue to hold primacy in the county as regards financial affairs and general importance.
A movement was instituted about 1888 or 1889 to organize a State bank, but did not proceed further.
The Fort Covington Banking Company was formed as a partnership in 1906 by George W. Higgins, James N. MacArtney, William A. Mac- Artney, Elbert O. Forbes, William G. Cushman, James A. Smart and Frederic J. Dimond. Messrs. Higgins, Cushman, Dimond and Forbes are no longer connected with it. Requests for information addressed to the management have been ignored, and I am able to state only the general outside understanding or impressions relative to the bank's affairs. The nominal or perhaps the actual capital is supposed to be ten thousand dollars. The institution has unquestionably proved to be a convenience and benefit to the people of the place, and its owners are men of substance and general trustworthiness. It is believed also to be prudently and safely managed. Nevertheless the plan of organiza- tion is not the best for a bank, for under its operation it discloses noth- ing whatever relative to its condition, though appealing to the public for confidence and support; nor is it under any official supervision or subject to official examination, or required to carry any reserve. Bank- ing on such lines in cities is absolutely prohibited by law except in instances where individual deposits are each in a large amount, and therefore presumably made by men who are competent to safeguard their own interests without State intervention. Yet again, the incor- porated bank has to pay taxes on every dollar of its capital and sur- plus, while the private banker is apt to escape all assessment except upon his real estate. That is the case with the Fort Covington Banking Company, which, for some unexplained reason, is not assessed at all on its personalty.
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Though advantageously located in many respects, with fine highways leading to many attractive points within reasonable distances, and with waterways that invite delightful trips by sail or motor boat to beautiful islands in the St. Lawrence and to interesting shore places in Canada, Fort Covington is unfortunate in that the configuration and conditions of the adjacent country permit no possibility of a gravity system of water-works based upon a supply from springs. Cisterns and wells have always had to be depended upon for water for domestic uses, and so, of course, few of the residences have bath-rooms or toilet facilities, nor is there any general sewerage system. Were there water-works, even with no better water than flows in the river, and sewers, there should be no reason why the village might not have a finely appointed summer hotel well filled with guests through the season, and become also a center of fine vacation homes of wealthy people from Montreal and cities of our own country. It would be an admirable point as well, with its historic associations and varied natural attractions, for summer schools. It is regrettable that enterprise and capital are not enlisted to provide what the village needs in the regards indicated. Lacking these, there seems to be no promise of large growth or of especial prosperity for the place.
CHAPTER XVI FRANKLIN
The town of Franklin was erected from Bellmont May 20, 1836, and comprises about half of township number nine and all of township number ten of the Old Military Tract. In area it is the third largest town in the county, containing more than one hundred and five thou- sand acres. Many lakes or ponds dot its surface, and the two branches of the Saranac river run through it, affording a number of excellent water powers. As illustrative of the size of the town, the story is told that one of the early supervisors, journeying to Malone to attend his first session of the board, after having driven all day, arrived at a primitive hotel, inquired what town he was in, and was amazed to learn that he had not yet wholly traversed his own. The anecdote is illuminative of Franklin's broad reaches, and not less of the horrible highways that used to characterize it. The town is of rugged surface, its once mag- nificent forests now largely gone into lumber, pulp-wood and charcoal, or ravaged by fire. The character of its soil and its altitude make it impossible that it should ever become important agriculturally, and the waste of its timber in the past precludes extensive lumbering operations, so that such growth as may yet come to it must be through the estab- lishment of summer hotels and sanatoria. It had a population of less than two hundred when formed, which had increased to eleven hundred in 1860 and to fifteen hundred in 1900. It is now 1,378. Among early settlers were a not inconsiderable number of escaped or eman- cipated slaves, who were provided with homesteads by Gerrit Smith, the form of whose grants to these and to poor white men whom he recruited from the cities is interesting. It names in each as the con- sideration "one dollar " and the grantor's desire "to have all share in the means of subsistence and happiness which a bountiful God has pro- vided for all."
The first settlement in Franklin was made in 1827 by Isaac G. McLenathan and William Wells, from Jay, Essex county, at the place now known as Franklin Falls, but from 1827 to 1851 called McLena- than Falls. Here they erected a saw mill and an iron forge, and almost at the same time another forge was built by Uriah Sumner a few miles west, at or near Bloomingdale. This latter had only a very brief life,
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nor were the enterprises of McLenathan & Wells enduring or successful, largely because of their remoteness from markets. All lumber and iron output had to be hauled by team to Port Kent, a distance of thirty-four miles. In later years a plank road, with toll gates, was built between the points named, and was kept up until about 1875. In the course of a few years after the inception of operations by McLenathan & Wells their industries had become inactive, and the place was all but aban- doned. Operations under new management were resumed in 1846, how- ever, William V. K. McLean and John Fitzgerald, also Essex county men, having taken over the properties. The story of the forge subse- quent to McLenathan & Wells's operation of it is not now ascertainable with certainty, but from the best information that I can gather it seems probable that the building did not exist after 1847. In that year a deed of the lot on which the forge was located refers to the forge as if it were then standing, but no subsequent conveyance of the prem- ises makes any mention of the establishment, and certainly the reports of the great fire which wiped out everything in 1852 do not specify a forge as among the buildings burned. It is, therefore, to be presumed that about 1847 the forge disappeared to make room for a saw mill. Keese & Tomlinson became associated with McLean & Fitzgerald here about 1848 for a year or two, and at about the same time Peter Com- stock, from Port Kent, appears to have become the working head of the business, but whether as superintendent, lessee or proprietor I am unable to ascertain. James B. Dickinson and George Tremble, both men of character and good abilities, came to the place, the former in 1850 and the latter in 1852. Associated with Mr. Dickinson was James H. Pierce, who became our county's Assemblyman twenty years later, and afterward represented Essex county in the same body. For a good many years Mr. Pierce made up and led to Republican county conventions the delegates from all of the "south towns," viz., Brighton, Franklin and Harrietstown, and sometimes from Duane also. Often they came without caucuses having been held at all, and with credentials prepared en route. It is worth noting also that in 1871, when Tweed lacked one vote in the Assembly to pass his New York city charter, he finally obtained it by the payment of one hundred thousand dollars to Orange S. Winans, of Chautauqua county ; but the offer had first been made to Mr. Pierce, and turned down by him. Pierce & Dickinson operated at Franklin Falls as merchants, and they also had a forge in Essex county on the line between Jay and Keene. In addition, Mr. Dickinson was interested in the mill at Franklin Falls.
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Besides the mill McLenathan Falls had a rather pretentious hotel and a large store. These and every other structure except one small shanty were wiped out by a forest fire in May, 1852, which a high wind swept down upon the place from the hills. So rapidly and fiercely did the flames spread that fowls, dogs and cattle perished in the streets, and the inhabitants themselves barely escaped with their lives. House- hold goods, merchandise in the store, large quantities of lumber, and even the unsubmerged parts of wagons that had been hauled into the river were all destroyed. Twenty-three dwellings were burned, and the first estimate of loss was one hundred thousand dollars, which, however, revised figures somewhat reduced. The place was rebuilt under the leadership of Peter Comstock, though apparently Mckean still retained some interest in the works, for two years later he executed a general assignment for the benefit of his creditors, in which he conveyed all his right, title and interest in and to mills, store, etc., at Franklin Falls. In 1859 Mr. Tomlinson acquired the business and properties, and the next year the firm of Tomlinson & Tremble was formed to operate them. The mill was repaired and worked by this concern for five years, when they sold to Christopher F. Norton, of Plattsburgh, who for four- teen years made Franklin Falls the headquarters for his extensive lum- bering operations on both the north and south branches of the Saranac, and covering almost all of Franklin and Brighton and the north part of Harrietstown. While he cut some lumber at various mills in Franklin, the larger part of his logs were floated to Plattsburgh and sawed there. Later the power at Franklin Falls was bought by Dr. S. W. Dodge, who afterward removed to Massena, and the mill was rebuilt and run by him for a few years.
The mills at Franklin Falls are now only a memory, but they have been succeeded by a more important enterprise, for here is one of the power development plants of the Paul Smith Electric Light, Power and Railroad Company, which, with a companion plant at Union Falls (just on the border between Franklin and Black Brook in Clinton county), develops five thousand horse power for transmission over many miles of wire through the southern part of our county and into Essex and Clinton, to light villages, operate a railroad, and supply energy for manufacturing purposes. The money outlay for construction has been very great, and the business done is extensive.
The landlords who conducted the hotel at Franklin Falls after McLenathan have been : Peter Hewitt, Hugh Martin, Varnum Hewitt, H. Rice, Herrick Bromley, Lewis L. Smith, Alonzo Moody, Isaiah
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Vosburgh, S. W. Dodge, Norman I. Arnold and Patsy O'Neil. The latter's widow now conducts it, but the location is nothing like what it used to be for hotel business. Fifty years ago the Saranac and St. Regis lakes country had no railroads running to it, and were accessible to visiting sportsmen and pleasure seekers only by stage or private conveyance from Malone or from Lake Champlain ports. Most of the travel was via the latter, and it all passed through Franklin Falls and Blooming- dale, making Franklin Falls an exceptionally good hotel point. While L. L. Smith was landlord there he served dinners during the summer months to from seventy-five to one hundred and fifty guests daily.
There have been many saw mills in Franklin other than those at Franklin Falls, but none of them large - the vast timber cut of the region having been floated for the most part down the Saranac river to Plattsburgh, and sawed there. Lumbering here and in adjacent towns forty or fifty years ago (principally by Mr. Norton and the Turners) was on a larger scale than anything of the kind known in this county prior to the coming of Mr. Hurd and Mr. Ducey to Waverly and Santa Clara, and unquestionably Franklin would be to-day a much richer town (and the estates of the lumbermen larger as well) if such operations had never been had. Charcoal burning by Bowen & Signor at Slab Bridge, below Hunters' Home, and the shipping of pulp-wood have also contributed a good deal to the deforestation of the town.
Probably next in importance to the Franklin Falls operations were those of Thomas Goldsmith, who acquired over fourteen thousand acres from Gerrit Smith for $20,891, and who had mills at the Flood Dam (a mile above Thatcherville), at Goldsmith's, at Alder Brook, and also at a number of points in Clinton county, just over the Franklin line. He was forced to an assignment in 1846, but continued to run his mills for the assignee for a number of years afterward. In 1856 his lands, then comprising 13,890 acres, were sold by the assignee to Daniel Rob- inson and John A. Griswold of Troy, who twenty-odd years later dis- posed of them to Patrick Hanlon and Bowen & Signor. The mill at Goldsmith's did only custom work during the period of the Robinson- Griswold ownership, and was run by Amos Lamson, James Davis and others. H. L. Wait built a steam mill at this place eight or ten years ago, and operated it until his death in the early part of 1915 - hanling his product to the railroad at Loon Lake with a traction engine. The Wait mill still stands, but is idle.
A mill was built at Thatcherville, three miles above Hunters' Home, about 1840 by Avery Thatcher, and a dozen years later Allan Com-
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stock rebuilt on the same site for his father, Peter, of Franklin Falls. Litigation tied up the property, however, and the mill never did any work. The writer remembers visiting it in 1863, when it had become a wreck. About 1879 or 1880 Albert Turner rebuilt it, and ran it for two or three years - finally selling it to the Hartwells of Plattsburgh. The mill and the houses belonging with it have been swept away by fire, and the site is now owned by the International Paper Company.
A mill was built at Mud pond about 1840 by Leander Cadwell, of Black Brook, and Lawrence Myers, of Plattsburgh. Jackson & Goff afterward became interested in it, and then L. L. Smith, about 1870, ran it to get out lumber for rebuilding Hunters' Home.
Monroe Hall, of Plattsburgh, put up and operated a mill on the outlet of Loon Lake about 1840; Matt. Fox had a mill at Alder Brook, and Russell French one at " French's " about 1863 or 1864. Harry B. Hatch, who was Franklin's first supervisor, and who kept a hotel on the Hopkinton and Port Kent turnpike, north of Loon Lake and twenty- five miles south of Malone, built a saw mill and ran it for several years. The place was subsequently owned and occupied by Richard L. Ross, who was an expert chemist and a gentleman of fine education, formerly of Albany. The property was dissipated, a splendid library hawked about Malone book by book, and the place went to ruin. But about 1900 Warren B. Walker built a steam mill there, and for seven years eut two and a half million feet of lumber annually - removing the mill to Kempton in Duane when the supply of timber had been exhausted.
Something like twenty years ago the Kinsley Lumber Company was organized by Arthur Leonard and Frank Smith (who were con- nected with the New York Central Railroad) and John O'Rourke, and built a mill two miles west of Onehiota. It burned. The same interests also built a railroad from a point north of Inman (Loon Lake Station ) four miles west to the DeBar Mountain tract for hauling timber and pulp-wood, which was operated for several years. The lumber interests of the Kinsley Company passed to Baker Brothers of Plattsburgh, and the lumber railroad to the Delaware and Hudson. When the latter com- pany was expecting to gain control of the New York and Ottawa it was intended to utilize this link by extending it to Santa Clara or St. Regis Falls as a connection between the two systems. But control of the New York and Ottawa went to the New York Central, and thus this lumber railroad is now an abandoned property and hardly more than a memory.
After the burning of the Kinsley mill Warren B. Walker went to Onehiota and built a steam mill there about 1910, cutting three million
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HISTORY OF FRANKLIN COUNTY
feet the first year, and later sold to Baker Brothers. They have since sold to the Plattsburgh Dock and Coal Company, which now operates the mill.
A mill for cutting hard wood was erected by the International Paper Company between Loon Lake and Kushaqua in 1915, and is now in operation. This and the Dock and Coal Company's are the only mills now running in the town.
A Mr. Fay built a saw mill at Vermontville in 1848, which was afterward owned in turn by Isaac Lyon, B. F. Lamson, Chauncey Williamson, Norman and Charles Arnold, C. C. Whittelsey of Malone, and Dr. S. W. Dodge. Mr. Whittelsey ran it for two years with H. J. Hathaway in charge. Another mill in the same vicinity was built in 1850 by Curtis Avery ; it was subsequently owned by C. N. Parks, and then by L. S. Bryant. Neither of these properties is now in existence. Vermontville had a foundry also from 1861 to about 1889. It was built by Eli and Norman I. Arnold, Chauncey Williamson and Albert Keith. Except during the period of his absence in the army it was operated for the greater part of the time until 1870 by Norman I. Arnold. H. J. Hathaway then bought it, and ran it for eight or nine years, until the advent of the Chateaugay Railway brought competition which he could not meet. The product of the establishment was chiefly plows, cultivators, scrapers, etc., and for years is supplied about all of these that were used in Franklin, Harrietstown and Brighton, besides a good many in Essex and Clinton counties.
Captain James H. Pierce of Franklin, and P. H. Shields of Malone, in 1873 built and for three or four years operated a starch mill at Vermontville.
Innkeepers in Franklin at an early day, additional to those named as having been located at Franklin Falls, were: Samuel and Russell French at French's, now Forestdale; John Littlejohn at Alder Brook ; Prentis Lovering (" Print ") at Loon Lake ; William Squires at a point a mile or two north ; Harry B. Hatch at Hatch's; Paul Smith and Lewis L. Smith at Hunters' Home, since burned; and John R. Merrill at Merrillsville. The hotel at the latter place was later conducted by Mr. Merrill's son, William, and by his son-in-law, William J. Ayers and Charles B. Lyman, and then by James W. Littlejohn. There is no hotel at this point at present. These inns, or, in the vernacular of the day, "taverns," were mostly on the Hopkinton and Port Kent turnpike, over which there was a good deal of teaming three-quarters of a century ago, and their guests were generally teamsters who stopped only for a meal or for a night, and the rates were next to nothing.
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In splendid contrast to these rude and primitive places, some of them merely small log cabins, both as regards the character of structure and of guests, is the Loon Lake House, which represents an investment of probably close to half a million dollars, and offers to sportsmen and pleasure seekers a class of entertainment nowhere surpassed in the Adirondacks. Mr. Ferd W. Chase came from Vermont in 1848, and erected a hotel which contained thirty-one sleeping rooms. It was opened to accommodate a few fishing parties in May, 1879, though the formal opening did not occur until the sixth of July. Its high num- ber of guests in that year, on August first, was sixty-one. From that date to the present it has grown almost every season both in capacity and popularity, though in the first years taxing Mr. Chase's resources and credit to the uttermost. The property includes a tract of over four thousand acres of land, a main hotel building of imposing appear- ance and large capacity, two annexes, a number of cottages, boat houses, etc. In addition there are a number of privately owned cottages adja- cent, which are in effect a part of the establishment. One of these is reputed to have cost its owner no less than three hundred thousand dol- lars. How enterprising and unsparing of expense the management has been in seeking to make the hotel perfect in all its details is shown by the improvements that it has provided. There is a private acetylene gas plant for lighting the place ; a system of water supply having a head of one hundred and twenty-six feet, with two mains leading from a pure spring to the hotel and other buildings, in which there are stand-pipes and fire-hose always ready for use in case of emergency. Even greater care has been had to provide safe and scientific sewerage. The sewage is carried to the hotel farm, located the other side of a hill three-fifths of a mile away, through two lines of twelve-inch tile that are laid through a tunnel which at one point is ninety-two feet deep. This tunnel alone cost five dollars a lineal foot for driving through earth and ten dollars through rock. There are golf grounds, a tennis court, pool and billiard parlors, a bowling alley, a livery containing horses and carriages and automobiles, and almost every other accessory for enter- tainment of visitors. The grounds are beautifully kept, and the same purpose to give guests the very best that can be provided is manifest within the house, as without. The table leaves nothing to be desired, and the service is up to the highest standard. The hotel, annexes and cottages will accommodate five hundred guests or more, and so admir- ably is it managed that the problem never is how to fill it, but how to care for all who apply for rooms. Mrs. Chase's personality, energy and
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executive genius are in no small measure responsible for the success and popularity that the house enjoys. The hotel and hotel farm employ about three hundred persons.
The time when cases of tuberculosis, even in the incipiency of the disease, were deemed incurable and hopeless is not far in the past ; but, praise be to Dr. Loomis, Dr. Edward L. Trudeau and others who gave their lives to a study of the scourge and to devising measures for its prevention and treatment, that view no longer holds, or at least not as to tuberculosis in its early stages. And the wilderness of Northern New York has had no insignificant part in establishing the new gospel that dry mountain air, the balsamic fragrance of the forests, with nutritious food, due care, rest, proper sanitation and observance of well established rules for bodily care and prevention of infection, may even stamp out the disease utterly. Actuated by the proof afforded in a mul- titude of individual instances and by the cumulative results realized at the Adirondack Cottage Sanatorium at Trudeau, near Saranac Lake, that life in the region, with proper care and treatment, held the promise of arresting the affliction even in advanced cases, and of effecting a positive cure if taken in time, a considerable number of philanthropic men and women - most of them residents of the city of New York, many of them wealthy, and all prominent socially - determined some fifteen years ago to found an institution for the treatment of incipient tuberculosis in working women and children, which should be non-sectarian, and which, while receiving patients who are able to pay, should be open also, and without charge, to those who have no means. The names of these deserve a place in this sketch. They are: Robert Collyer, Henry B. Barnes, Jas. E. Newcomb, Geo. F. Shrady, Chas. M. Cauldwell, Chas. H. Knight, R. Maclay Bull, Frederic B. Jennings, Edgar L. Marston, Jacob H. Schiff, Robert W. de Forest, Robert Stuart Mac- Arthur, Felix Adler, Lelia Howard Webb, Robert P. Cornell, Emile R. Rogers, Elizabeth W. Newcomb, Hester E. Shrady, Gertrude Shipman Burr, Edith M. Phelps Stokes, Alice Brevoort Bull, Pauline Scholle Bier, Elizabeth M. Cauldwell, Mary Potter Geer, Rose McAllis- ter Coleman, Caroline Starin Carroll, Luck Mackenzie Knight, Caroline S. Spencer and Louise Pierpont Satterlec.
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