USA > New York > Franklin County > Historical sketches of Franklin county and its several towns > Part 44
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PEN PICTURES OF EARLY MALONE
Forty-odd years ago Samuel C. Wead and a dozen years later Anslem Lincoln gave in the Palladium their recollections of Malone as it was when they first saw it, in 1815. They varied only two or three houses in their remembrance of the buildings then in existence, and analyzing the two articles carefully it is possible to construct a picture of the village or " Center " as it then was. Main street at the east end of the bridge was ten or fifteen feet lower than it is now, and on the west side was much higher. The stone bridge had not been built, and the chasm was spanned by stringers on which poles instead of plank were laid for a driveway. The court house stood on ground probably twenty feet above its present foundation, the original structure having been lowered four- teen feet at one time, and the present building set lower still. The road in front towered higher, as on the north it ran along a dugway. A half dozen small merchants had practically a monopoly of the mer- cantile business, viz .: John L. Fuller, between the bridge and Mill
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street ; Jonathan Stearns, at the corner of Main and Academy streets, on the site of the Smith House; Noah Moody and John Mazuzan, on the site of the present Baptist church; Warren Powers, just east of this church ; Joel Amsden, opposite from Powers's; Abel Willson, at a loca- tion not stated, but probably on Webster street; and Oliver Booge, just opposite the Wead Library on Elm street. On the east side of the river Fuller's store was the only building on the south side of the street between the bridge and Mill street, and a shop the only one east of Fuller's within the village limits, while on the north side of Main street there were a small house near the bridge, one where Dr. Philips and Fred F. Fisk afterward lived, another adjacent to Arsenal Park, the arsenal, and one or two on the Flat. On Elm street there were the Hosford Hotel at what is now the railroad crossing, the Horton home on the site of the present passenger station, a store and six dwelling houses. In a field near the Colonel Seaver homestead (Pearl Street was not opened until twenty years later) there was a single house, and in the millyard a barn, a mechanics' shop, a tannery, a carding mill, a grist mill, a saw mill and two tenements - one of them the mill house. On the west side of the river, on the north side of Main street, besides the court house and the Amsden store and tavern, there were four resi- dences, and on the south side of the street, besides the stores, only five houses, a tannery, a triphammer works, and the hotel which Mr. Amsden had just started to build near the Knapp or Commercial Block. Webster street had the old academy and fifteen dwelling houses, and Franklin two or three. There were also three asheries, making a total of between sixty and seventy buildings of all kinds. Dr. Bates could count from memory only seventy in 1821, of which he located twenty-four or twenty-five on the east side. Elm and Main had all of these except two, and Main and Webster all but two or three of those on the west side. Fort Covington, Duane, Park and all of the other present streets had not been opened, or were without a single building. Of the residents in 1815 three were physicians, three lawyers. two tanners and shoe- makers, two harness makers, two hotel keepers, and a handful of carpen- ters, cabinet makers, blacksmiths and wheelwrights.
A pen picture of the village of yet earlier date than Mr. Lincoln's and Mr. Wead's was drawn by Ashbel Parmelee, D.D., upon his arrival in 1810 to enter upon the pastorate of the Congregational church. All was dense forest on both sides of Main street, and when the trees were in leaf the academy could not be seen from the Main street bridge. The village then consisted of about a dozen frame houses and five or six log cabins.
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And Constable had called Malone " nearly full " ten years before !
Oliver Booge was instantly killed in 1815, and from his books as turned over to the administrators of his estate I was permitted forty or fifty years ago to copy some of his charges to customers in 1814: Wheat, $2 per bushel; corn and rye, $1 each per bushel ; hay, $8 per ton ; eggs, 20c. per dozen; raisins, 38c .; ham, 20c. and tea $2 per pound ; segars, 12c. per dozen; whiskey, $1.50 per gallon; butter, 17@18c. and sugar, 17@20c. per pound; pork, $25@$30 per barrel; cotton cloth, 60@72c., cambric, 88c.@$1.50, and calico, 62@75c. per yard; and steel, 40e. per pound.
SOME EARLY INDUSTRIES
While in the preparation of these sketches I have been mindful that " a famine in China will always seem less than a dog fight in one's own alley," the " dog fights" in Malone have been so numerous that it is impracticable, and would be cumbersome and tedious, to undertake to recite them all. Some of the affairs of the mongrels at least must be but barely touched, or omitted altogether.
Of the minor industries my list includes eighteen saw mills in the town (not all of them early), of which nine were on the Salmon river, four on the Branch stream, two on Trout river, and one each on Roar- ing brook, the Duane stream and Winslow brook. The earliest were the Wood or Horton mill in the millyard in the village; the Luther Winslow and Lemuel Holmes mill at the George M. Sabin place, below the paper mill, long before Mr. Sabin came; and one at "whiskey hollow." James Duane built one at what is called " the little falls," afterward known as the Man or middle mill; James H. Titus one at Titusville (originally called Glen Hope, and now Chasm Falls), and another at the outlet of Lake Titus ; Burnham one near the Chasm Falls church; William Lyman one just above Whippleville: Harvey Whipple and Scott G. Boyce one each at Whippleville; William King one in the village, where the Jay O. Ballard & Co. factory is; James Tracey and Nahum Whipple each one on Trout river; Elijah Keeler, Timothy Bemis and Lucius A. Simons each one on the Branch stream ; Lyman Glazier one on Roaring brook; Josiah Nason one on the Winslow brook; and Scott G. Boyce one on the Duane stream. Many of these changed ownership later, or were replaced by new mills on or near the same sites. The only ones of them all now in existence are those on Mill street and at Whippleville.
The first tanneries, which probably were only vat yards, bark mills and perhaps sheds, were built, one by Reeve and Samuel Peck in 1807
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on the east side of the river in the village, near the Horton grist mill, and the other by Stephen Bailey and Elihu Thomas in 1809, directly across the river. Another and even smaller and more primitive tannery existed for a short time two miles west of the village, built and operated by Roswell Wilcox. The Peck tannery appears on the assessment roll twenty years after its erection with a gradually diminishing valuation, as though it were outliving its usefulness, and disappears entirely in 1837, when it was bought by William King, and merged with a more pretentious establishment which Mr. King had built in 1831 on an adjacent lot. Enoch Miller, William Robb, Hiram H. Thompson and Webster Brothers were in turn owners after Mr. King. This tannery was burned no less than six times between 1831 and 1893, after which it was not rebuilt. It grew in time to be a great establishment, with nearly or quite one hundred operatives, and for a generation was deemed a menace to neighboring property, as almost every time that it burned it carried destruction to other buildings, including stores on Main street and once the Lincoln tannery on the opposite side of the stream. One of these fires, that of 1879, was the most disastrous as respects property values that Malone has ever known with the exception of that which destroyed the old Ferguson House. While Malone prized the industry because of the employment it afforded to so large a number of men, a sense of positive relief was nevertheless experienced when, after the fire of 1893, it became known that it had disappeared forever.
Anslem Lincoln came in 1815, and with Curtis Burton bought the Bailey-Thomas tannery in 1817. Unable to pay for it, it was sold to Charles Blake of Chateaugay in 1820. A couple of years later Mr. Lin- coln and Enoch Miller acquired it, running it for ten years, when Mr. Lincoln bought out Mr. Miller, and built it over. He then operated it for forty years or more, finally selling to his son, John, and Henry A. Miller. After a time the latter became sole owner, enlarged it, and gave its product a reputation for excellence that was nowhere surpassed. It worked only about half as many men as the other tannery, and yet had quite as large an output. It is now operated by Thomas Garnar & Co. of New York, with William W. Morgan as superintendent. Garnar & Co. are the largest bookbinding house in America, and practically all of the product of this tannery, and also that of others owned by them elsewhere, is used in their own business.
The first carding mill was built by the elder Horton on a lot north of the grist mill, but was converted into a hat factory, which was worked by Dean Hutchins and John Cargin. Both stiff and soft hats were
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made, and later Gregory was the proprietor. Mr. Horton erected a larger carding and fulling mill south of the saw mill, of which Orlando Furness was for a time the operator, with Philip B. Miller as foreman. This building is now occupied by Henry Baker for a wheelwright shop.
Malone has had five distilleries, nearly every one of the owners and operators of which were men who, if now living, would abhor the busi- ness and deem it a reproach to be engaged in it, so changed is sentiment in regard to the manufacture and use of liquor. But a hundred years ago alcohol in some form was deemed indispensable in every household, and the distilleries were thought to be rendering a public service in making it. Some of the distilleries used grain, and others potatoes. The first of them, built at an unknown date and abandoned prior to 1821, was the property of Warren Powers, and stood on Webster street on the lot just south of the Harison (afterward the Robert A. Delong, and now the Ernest E. Müller) place. It appears on the assessment roll of 1814 as the "still lot." In 1821 Dr. Horatio Powell, William Cleveland, Rev. Stephen Paddock and Deacon Leonard Conant bought the boiler and other equipment in the Powers establishment, and built a distillery a mile farther south, near the Paddock spring. It burned the same year, and its destruction was thought to be a public calamity. Jeremiah Conant rebuilt it in 1827, and sold soon afterward to Samuel Greeno. It burned again about 1830, when Mr. Greeno abandoned the site, and rebuilt east of Duane street, at the foot of the Water street hill. How long he operated there I do not know, but either it or the " whiskey hollow " distillery (probably the latter) was running at least at late as 1845. The Greeno establishment was converted into a tene- ment house, and was burned in 1859. Still another distillery was built by Benjamin F. Whipple in the ravine near the J. D. Hardy farm, south of the Paddock spring. Yet another, built earlier than 1820, gave the name "whiskey hollow " to the locality where the lower electric light plant is. It was owned by Jacob Wead, John Wood and Apollos Lathrop, and had a considerable product - the output of one distillery here in 1835 having been valued at $7,000, equivalent to perhaps thirty- five or forty thousand gallons.
The story of other industries will be told in subsequent pages.
COMMUNITY ACHIEVEMENTS
The individual undertakings, necessarily along narrow lines, and the home life of the pioneers it is not feasible nor essential to the scheme
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of this sketch, to follow in detail. We know through tradition that are yet familiar stories in many of our families, and also by the written testimony of a few who were in and of the early days, that the mode of living was simple in the extreme, even ·rude, and was unattended by luxury and only rarely lightened by amusements, though each of the hotels had a bowling alley, and baseball was played Saturday after- noons where Memorial Park is; that rigid economy had to be practiced by everybody; that there was a closer approach to entire equality than has since been known, with no class distinctions based upon birth or wealth; and that neighborly sympathy, kindness and fellowship abounded.
But the main things that count in enduring influence are that these pioneers, even those who made no profession of religion, stood for enter- prise, clean living, character and morality. Capable of large endeavor, but restricted by lack of means in its exercise, they nevertheless aimed true, cherished high standards, and wrought wisely and enduringly. Of community achievement, which is really the measure of a locality's life in its broader aspect, one undertaking stands out significant of the spirit of enterprise which we like to think is a characteristic of Malone, and others loom large in the beneficent influence which they have exerted through all the years.
Though we have no record at all concerning its beginning, or as to who were its promoters and supporters, it is known that there'was deter- mination early that there should be educational facilities superior to those that the old district school could supply, and that for a quarter of a century from 1806 there was repeated effort to establish an academy. The two-story frame building of wood formerly on Academy Green, but there no longer, was known for years as the Harison Academy. It was built from timber cut and hewed on the spot. But accurate, definite information regarding it had been lost even a generation ago, for in a public address in 1882, Hon. Ashbel B. Parmelee, himself identified with the town from an early day, lamented that we were without more cer- tain knowledge relative to its beginning and early history. It was never chartered as an academy, but Mr. Parmelce stated that tradition ran that the higher branches were taught there, though by whom, or how the institution was supported, was not known. In 1810 there was a special town meeting, called for the express purpose of requesting Richard Harison to deed four acres of land for school uses, and a com- mittee was appointed to press the request. Mr. Harison complied, con- veying the premises to the judges of the court of common pleas, in trust,
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and when Franklin Academy secured its charter in 1831 these deeded the plot to the trustees of that institution. A writer told in the Palladium sixty years ago that two early teachers were discharged for intemperance (fortunately their names are lost), each having had a bottle of brandy in his pocket in the school room during school hours. Happily the char- acter of our teachers since then has been of the highest, and their examples proper for the young to follow.
As early as 1810 the Malone Aqueduct Association was incorporated by act of the Legislature to supply the village of Malone with whole- some water by means of aqueducts. Appleton Foote, George F. Harison and Warren Powers were named in the act to receive subscriptions for stock, which might be issued in ten dollar shares to the aggregate amount of fifteen thousand dollars. The right to condemn lands and water was conferred, and it was provided that dividends of not to exceed fourteen per cent. might be paid on the stock, while all earnings in excess of that percentage were to be paid to the treasurer of the village, for application to the cost of employing a night watch. Inasmuch as there was then no village, nor any treasurer, the latter provision seems absurd, though indicative of a prevalent desire to have public order conserved ; and delve though you should deeper than the ditches were excavated, you will find no record of what the association did, nor how it throve or languished. It is a fact, however, that something like a third of a century ago, during the progress of work on our present water system, pipe logs were found on Water and Catherine streets, no memory of the laying or use of which even the oldest inhabitant recalled, and it was understood that similar pipes were laid on Webster and Main streets. There was, too, in the long ago a pipe line from the Hosford Spring, east of the fair grounds, across the Flat, but whether it belonged to the 1810 system is not known. The source of supply for the Foote- Harison-Powers system was a spring in the then Parmelee sugar bush, which was east by south from the Webster street cemetery. Such an enterprise in such a time is certainly remarkable.
The Congregational church was organized in 1807 with twenty-seven members ; and the Baptist church December 12, of the same year, with a dozen members. The date of the organization of the Methodist church is not definitely known; but Dr. Hough says that a minister of that denomination was here in 1811, and a correspondent of the Palladium in 1858 stated merely that the organization was effected between 1810 and 1818. The parish appears for the first time in the minutes of the Genesee conference in 1818, when the church was credited with sixty
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members. Prior to 1818 it was probably under the jurisdiction of the Canada conference, from which I have been unable to obtain data bear- ing upon the matter. But as there were sixty members in 1818 undoubt- edly there must have been organization some years earlier.
Thus we have evidence of three separate religious movements and of two important civic enterprises almost with the beginning of the town's life, and when there was but a handful of people, all of them poor, to push things. The spirit which they reflect was prophetic of the development that followed.
FRANKLIN ACADEMY
As already shown, provision was made almost at once upon the erec- tion of the town for educational facilities of a higher order than the common schools afforded, though the institution then established had more of a private than a public character. It was, therefore, not alto- gether satisfying. The requirements for an academic charter in 1811 had been merely that an institution have an assured annual income of a hundred dollars, but the people were too poor to provide even that paltry sum, and the effort to gain the Regents' sanction had to be given over temporarily. In 1823, however, agitation began in earnest to secure an academy which should be in fact a public institution, and all that the name implies. Again unsuccessful for a time because of inability to satisfy the Board of Regents that adequate pledges were in hand for a building and for maintenance - the requirements in this regard having been increased to two hundred and fifty dollars a year - a later movement (begun in 1827 and prosecuted more or less vigorously for several years) resulted in 1831 in securing the necessary funds, and a charter was granted April 28th of that year - not for the Harison insti- tution, however, but for a new establishment to be known as Franklin Academy. The scheme employed for procuring funds is noteworthy. Seventy-three men executed mortgages on their homes and farms condi- tioned for the payment of interest at seven per cent. on the amount of the respective obligations so given. The largest principal sum pledged was only $225, and the smallest $15. Some were for odd amounts, one having been for $21.49, which meant that the mortgagor should pay $1.50 per year. All of the mortgages had a life of twenty years, at the end of which period contributions under them were to cease, and the instruments be discharged. Scarcely any money was in circulation at the time, and few men in the community had assured cash incomes even for taxes and other imperative requirements, so that the men who
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engaged to pay even a small amount secured by mortgage dreaded lest. he be compelled to default, with consequent loss of his property. It may thus be realized that in signing. all except those who were the most pros- perous did so hesitatingly and with trepidation. Nevertheless public spirit and self-sacrifice triumphed, and the proposed institution was guaranteed an annual income of a trifle under three hundred dollars. Franklin Academy thus came into existence, and for more than three- quarters of a century has been doing beneficent work of value beyond all calculation. The names of the mortgagors deserve a place in these pages. They were : Benjamin Clark, Samuel Smith Clark, Jacob Wead, Jonathan Stearns, Hiram Horton, Asa Hascall, Horatio Powell, Charles Blake, William B. Foot. Richard G. Foote, Samuel Peck, Thomas Rus- sell Powell. Obadiah T. Hosford, Elias Dewey, Jr .. Frederic Barnard, Samuel Field. Alva Orcutt, Daniel Brown, Wm. R. Vilas, Ebenezer Berry, Oliver Westcott, David Sperry, Nahum Whipple, Orlando Fur- ness, Harry Horton, Clark Williamson, Roswell Wilcox, Noah Moody, William Mason, John Mazuzan, Lemuel Parlin, Ebenezer R. Daggett, Bliss Burnap, Noah Smith, Silvester Langdon, Nathan White, Elijah Keeler, Ashbel Parmelee, Aaron Beman, Myron Hickok, John Wheeler, Jehiel Berry, Asaph Watkins, Myron Berry, Samuel Greeno, Truman Bell, Nathan Strong, Joseph Spencer, Porter Moody. Anslem Lincoln, Josiah Learned. Hiram L. Lewis, Elias Watkins, Arunah H. Wood, Jonas Stone, Martin L. Parlin, Charles Carlisle, Lemuel K. Parlin and Cephas Watkins, all of Malone; Joseph Plumb, Samuel Wilson, Tal- madge Barnum. Barnabas Barnum, James Barnum, Elijah Barnum, Joshua Dickinson, Anderson Wilson and George Adams, of Bangor ; Timothy Beman, of Chateaugay : George W. Darling and Ashley Wyman, of Constable ; and Luther Bradish, of Moira. Hugh Magill and William Green of Malone became contributors in like manner for six years dating from 1846.
In addition, the town of Malone voted to the enterprise the moneys in the hands of its overseers of the poor, amounting to $270.11, which were loaned out on mortgage, thus adding $18.91 to the academy's assured annual revenue, independent of tuition fees and the institution's share of the State literature fund.
An academic building was erected, and in December, 1831, the doors of the institution were opened. During its first year of existence eighty pupils were in attendance, and the total income, exclusive of interest paid on account of mortgages, was $927.
In 1835 the building was almost destroyed by fire, and was replaced
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in 1836 by the three-story stone structure which served the school's needs until 1868. The State loaned the town of Malone two thousand dollars for the new building of 1836, and the town donated the amount to the academy. The first floor was divided into two rooms for study and recitation uses; the second had one class room and a number of smaller rooms which were rented to students who in early years lodged therein and boarded themselves ; and the third floor was divided wholly into rooms that were similarly used. Afterward these rooms were per- mitted to be occupied solely by those who were thought to be altogether trustworthy students, and for study purposes only, though notwith- standing the restriction rogues did occasionally gain the privilege of occupying them, and unseemly pranks occurred in them both by day and by night.
In 1868 the stone structure was torn down, and a more commodious one, of brick, three stories in height, was erected, containing an assem- bly room that would seat five or six hundred persons, but without any of the private study rooms. In 1867 the village graded schools and Franklin Academy had been consolidated, and the new building housed both the academic department and some of the higher grades. It was wholly destroyed by fire in December, 1880, and was promptly replaced by a building of practically the same size, similarly arranged, to which an annex of about equal size was added in 1911 at a cost of fifty-five thousand dollars.
The academy opened in 1831 with but a single teacher, Simeon Bicknell, whose successors have been: Nathan S. Boynton, Lorenzo Coburn, Worden Reynolds, John Hutton, Elos L. Winslow, Rev. H. S. Atwater. George H. Wood, Daniel D. Gorham, D. D. Cruttenden, John I. Gilbert, Gilbert B. Manley, William S. Aumock. Martin E. McClary, John S. McKay, Edward D. Merriman, Olin H. Burritt, Lamont F. Hodge, Fred Englehardt and Robert N. Northup. Every man in the list was of a character beyond reproach, and most were .excep- tionally efficient as instructors, with a fine influence upon the students under them. Among the earlier principals a number continued to make Malone their home after concluding their service with the academy, and attained eminence in political and business walks. Of the later ones, nearly all severed their relations with the institution because the high grade of their work attracted the attention of larger places, and so brought them offers of better salaries than Malone could afford to pay, and also larger opportunities.
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