USA > New York > Franklin County > Historical sketches of Franklin county and its several towns > Part 46
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In an issue of the Franklin Telegraph in 1824 a story is told of Wesley Johnson having been jolted from a load of flax, after a pitch- fork had first fallen from the load with the stale entering the ground, so that the tines stood upright. Mr. Johnson fell upon these, and they pierced his body from the breast and protruded from the back. Sixty years later Mr. Johnson was still living on Webster street, and, as told by the Telegraph, one of the measures taken in 1824 to accomplish his recovery was to medicate the tines of the fork, which, wrapped in flannel, were put away to aid in healing the wound !
Another item published the same year was to the effect that mercury placed in an open cup on a window sill by Dr. Roswell Bates in Fort Covington had congealed, and that a resident of the same town, finding that a bottle of whiskey in his pocket had frozen, bursting the bottle, removed the glass, and ate the whiskey.
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An advertisement in 1833 in the Northern Spectator, which was the successor of the Telegraph, offered pay of three shillings per cord for choppers, the men to board themselves - which was not poor pay if all could equal the efficiency of a boy who was reported in the Pal- ladium (successor of the Spectator) in 1835 to have chopped and piled six cords in a single day. The present price. for chopping is two dol- lars and a half a cord. Wages generally in 1835 were five shillings a day without board, and a day meant from dawn to dark -not merely eight hours. Few domestic servants were employed, and the best were expected not to ask more than five shillings per week.
Tastes and customs change notably, as witness an advertisement by Amos H. Greeno in 1833, in which he announced that he would slaughter a beef creature every Tuesday evening, and be ready to deliver euts from it Wednesday morning. In the present day stewards of high-class hotels and restaurants will not buy beef that has not hung in a cooler for six weeks.
In 1834 William Barlow advertised that his two minor sons, aged respectively fourteen and sixteen years, had run away, and forbade any one to trust or harbor them on his account. He offered a reward of one cent for their return to him at Malone.
In 1834 wool was quoted at seventy cents and butter at eighteen cents a pound.
In 1836 the Palladium reported the organization of the Malone Female Reform Society, which was founded upon the belief that pro- longing of visits with any gentleman after the usual hour for retire- ment was one of the first steps toward licentiousness.
The date of the erection of the first Horton grist mill, which was of wood, is not known, but was earlier than 1806. It was razed in 1853, and the present stone structure erected on the same site. W. W. & H. E. King were part owners of it at one time, and sold their interest in 1868 to Eugene H. Ladd. William E. Smallman bought the Horton interest later, and the mill was run for a long time, until Mr. Ladd's death, under the name and title of Ladd & Smallman. Henry Y. Spencer then acquiring an interest in it, the concern took the title of the Smallman & Spencer Company, which sold in 1917 to the Malone Milling Company, of which George D. Northridge is the head. I am told that, whereas in old times there was a flouring mill in almost every hamlet, this is now the only establishment between Rouses Point and Ogdensburg that grinds wheat. Its flour business consists altogether in custom grinding, which keeps it busy from carly fall to early summer
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every year. Grain comes to it to be ground from almost every station on the railroad between the St. Lawrence and Lake Champlain.
As late as 1835 the only stores on the east side of the river were those of King & House, Meigs & Wead, Samuel Greeno and Alva Orcutt, and on the west side those of Benjamin Clark & Sons, Lauris- ton Amsden, Noah Moody, David Brewster and Jonathan Stearns.
The Academy Green seventy-five years ago was four feet lower than its present level, and was all rock strewn.
Daniel Gaines was landlord of the Miller House in the fifties. His son was blind, a vocalist and pianist, and of nature as gentle as a girl's. He became a minister in the central part of the State, was known as "the blind evangelist," and was a brilliant and impressive speaker.
An attempt was made in 1847 to have the board of supervisors set off township number nine from Malone, and annex it to Duane. The Malone town meeting in that year entered a protest against the par- tition, and nothing came of it. Some ten years afterward the proposi- tion was revived, and again defeated. Twenty-five or thirty years ago the people in the southern part of Malone and in eastern Bellmont agitated seriously the project to form a new town from Bellmont and Malone, but the latter never got any further than talk.
The list of Malone's town clerks includes William A. Wheeler, John Hutton, Ashbel B. Parmelee, Joel J. Seaver and Frederick D. Kilburn. The office did not use to pay a quarter as much as it does now, and it seemed to be the policy of the town to bestow it upon poor young men who were trying to get a start in life.
As long ago as 1848 Malone formally complained through resolution adopted at a town meeting that it was unjustly treated by the super- visors in the equalization of assessments, and made thereby to pay an inequitable and excessive share of the county expenses. The com- plaint has continued intermittently ever since, and probably is justified by the facts.
In 1834 the town meeting requested the commissioners of excise not to grant any license for a fee of less than $20. In view of the fact that if liquor licenses were now issuable here, the fee for a saloon or a hotel would be $800 or for a store $600, the request of 1834 seems modest.
The first passenger train from Rouses Point reached Malone Septem- ber 19, 1850, and its arrival was greeted by the firing of cannon and a general jubilee. The road was opened through to Ogdensburg Septem- ber 26, 1850, building having proceeded simultaneously from both termini.
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In 1855 the State appropriated $5,000, to be expended by Wm. King, Buel H. Man and Aaron Beman at a compensation of $2 a day cach for time actually employed for clearing and improving the rafting channel of Salmon river and its tributaries and for constructing piers, booms and dams; and appropriated $5,000 additional in 1857 for completing the work. Ebenezer Man, Hiram Horton and B. S. W. Clark were the commissioners to expend the second appropriation. It was with a part of these grants that the dam at Mountain View was built. The act appropriating the money provided that State lands adjacent to the improvements should not be sold at private sale, but only at public auction in blocks of 640 acres each at not less than thirty cents per acre !
Kerosene was introduced in Malone in 1859, and then sold at a dollar and a half per gallon. Three years later the price was thirty- four cents, advancing afterward to a dollar or more, and at one time since then it sold as low as seven cents. A gas company was organized in 1870, and gas came into use in 1871 at $4.50 per 1,000 feet. The gas house was destroyed by an explosion in 1884, and when rebuilt the price of gas was fixed at $3 if bills were paid promptly. The village was first lighted by electricity November 27, 1886, the generator having been located in an annex to the Whittelsey woolen mill. The works north of the village were built in 1899, and those at Chasm Falls in 1913.
Memorial Park at the junction of Main and Elm streets was laid out in 1870, and the soldiers' monument in it was given in 1893 by John W. Pangborn, who had begun his business life in Malone, but removed to New York in 1853. The monument cost $3,000.
In 1867 and for a few years immediately following ice skating was as much a craze as roller skating became forty years later. An ice rink was built on Catherine street in 1867 by Jerome and Russell Wentworth, Benj. Webster and L. R. Townsend, and did a great business.
Malone had its first telephone service in 1882, and in 1899 a second and competing service was installed. The two combined in 1913, and the Malone exchange has about 1,400 subscribers.
The first silos in the county were built in 1889 by B. F. Jewett of Bangor and Nelson W. Porter of Malone.
Church fairs were more common thirty or forty years ago than now, and invariably excited more interest and produced more money. Almost always some lottery scheme was a feature of them, prizes being awarded by lot, with voting at a price per vote for a cane, a ring, a
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HISTORY OF FRANKLIN COUNTY
watch or some other article to be given to the winning candidate. At one of the St. Joseph's fairs in 1870 the receipts were $1,800, and those of Notre Dame the same year $800. In 1880 St. Joseph's church netted $1,200 from a fair, and Notre Dame $805. In 1899 a fair for the benefit of Ursuline Academy netted $2,200.
The appended census figures for Malone ought to be of interest, and certain of them should inspire thinking and action :
1825
1835
1845
1865
1875
1900 10,000
1915
Population
1,673
2,589
3,634
6,330
7,365
10,880
Aliens .
58
200
369
914
760
375
No. of neat cattle ..
1,753
3,033
3,558
4,025
4,504
No. of horses
341
568
789
1,081
1,029
No. of sleep
2,781
4,655
9,445
8,935
2,586
Data for years later than 1875 are not available as to some of the items, as the State has taken no census in the past forty years except as to population, and the published reports of the federal census contain no agricultural statistics for divisions smaller than counties. We know, however, that since 1875 the number of milch cows in the entire county has increased by about fifty per cent., of which Malone has doubtless had its share; and the agricultural census taken by school children in 1917 shows only 812 sheep owned in the town - a loss of more than two-thirds in forty years, and of almost 90 per cent. since 1865. In 1876 a single buyer from Connecticut bought in the, county and shipped to Hartford 5,000 sheep and lambs, while in 1884 the number bought here and shipped to New England markets was over 11,000. At one time a little later the price paid for lambs was about two dollars per head, and now it is twelve dollars or more. It is incom- prehensible that farmers do not give more attention to sheep husbandry, though it is undeniable that they have experienced no little discourage- ment through dog depredations. For illustration. carefully collected statistics showed that 234 sheep were killed in the county by dogs dur- ing the year 1902, and in 1904 one farmer in Malone lost 25 head of blooded animals in a similar way in a single night. But protective laws are now better, and the dog nuisance ought not to be as serious as formerly. Under the new conditions it is hoped that the flocks may increase. According to the school census taken in 1917, there are five school districts in Malone in which not a single sheep is kept, and in each of seven other districts the number is less than ten.
The school lot on Main street was a cemetery until 1874, when most of the bodies were transferred from it to Morningside Cemetery. The grounds have been graded down quite a bit, and formerly were inclosed
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on the front by a stone wall. The village school district bought the lot from the cemetery association, which bought from the Congrega- tional society, and erected the school house in 1878.
In 1881 only three churches in the town had any debt, and in the same year the village, the town nor the county owed a dollar.
In 1851, when the Congregational society voted to erect its second house of worship, effort was made to locate it on Arsenal Green, but of course the conditions of the grant of the property to the State were a bar to such occupancy.
About 1840 a man named Griffin made wooden clocks in a shop that stood where the Empsall store now is (formerly the Greeno & Austin stand), where the building known as the "Ark " used to be; and he provided Malone with its first town clock. It was placed in the steeple of the Congregational church, but, the works having been of wood, weather warped them, and the clock lasted only a short time.
How the habits and customs of a people change is not more strikingly shown by any one condition in Malone than by the matter of cookery. . Until nearly two generations after the first settlement every housewife had to be her own baker. Then a Mr. Buck started a bakery on Duane street, and if his own girth were a test must have made good stuff, which the boys of his day aver was the case. A part of his house was used for a school, and Mr. Buck was generous in treating the pupils to crackers. cookies and cakes. A few years later John Taylor started another bakery on the flat, to which his son, Robert C., succeeded. And then there was a third by Jacob Davis on Catherine street. All were closed years ago, but five others have succeeded them, and are in opera- tion. In addition, there are a number of women who make considerable quantities of bread regularly, and also cakes and pies for sale, and great chests of bread are brought here daily from St. Johnsbury, Vt., Platts- burgh, Ogdensburg, Syracuse, Albany and other places, and are on sale at most of the stores.
In very early times all but one or two of the stores were outside of what is now the business center - on Elm, West Main and Webster streets. Then came a period, continuing for a long time, when all of the merchants except a very few small tradesmen on Catherine, Mill and Brewster streets were on Main street, and mostly on the east side of the river. But recently stores have sprung up in considerable num- bers in almost every outskirt. From Pearl street east to the Congre- gational church practically every lot on the south side of Main street, and for more than half the distance on the north side. has come to be
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HISTORY OF FRANKLIN COUNTY
a business place within thirty or forty years, and stores are scattered along the flat, in the Junction section, in the paper mill district, well out on West Main street, and in other quarters.
Where and how Malone has otherwise grown is not realized until the localities are recalled which within the recollection of men not very old were farm fields. Fifty years ago all of the section known as Brooklyn Heights was a pasture, without a single building on it, and all of the territory south of Water street between the Branch stream and the Salmon had but one or two houses, with the locality accessible only by way of Duane street or by a single narrow footbridge which spanned the river at a point almost due east from Monroe street. Forty years ago First street had but three or four houses, and Second, Third and Fourth streets had not been laid out at all. Still more recently the streets that diverge from Park to the west, and others that now parallel the latter, have been opened. As late as thirty years ago the Whittelsey and Short farms had but a couple of dwelling houses. Academy street was extended south from Francis hardly more than forty years since, and where streets now run from Webster to Duane there were still more recently only gardens, pastures and sugar orchards. The con- ditions west of Rockland and south of Franklin and west of Webster were very similar within my recollection. Now these localities are all thickly populated, and in some of them there are particularly attractive residential properties.
A memoir of Dr. Theodore Gay, written by his son, William W., in 1906, contains many matters of interest additional to the tribute by an admiring son to one of the exceptionally strong men of his generation. After listing most of the residents on Elm street in the long ago, with description of their premises, Mr. Gay writes: "Every yard was jealously inclosed by high and usually disfiguring fences, many of them allowed to fall into a disgraceful state of decay, eyesores to the neat and orderly. It was not until about 1880 that Malone realized that it had been wasting money in expensive, useless and unpicturesque palings. The first to banish his fence was the late Luther Whitney. The second was Dr. Gay, whose example was speedily followed by others, the result being the pleasing, carefully kept, uninclosed and hospitable lawns which cheer the eye everywhere in the village." And referring to the fees which the doctor used to charge it is told that payments, if made at all, were mostly in produce. Among the credits on an account book in 1843 these are cited: Butter from several debtors at ten cents a pound; 30 pounds of veal at 21/2 cents per pound ; a pair of stockings
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valued at $1; two bushels of buckwheat, $1; two bushels of apples at four shillings ; 330 pounds of beef, $4.65; three bushels of oats at 25 cents ; 14 pounds of pork, $1.40; a sheep, $1.50; a quarter of veal, 73 cents ; and a pair of chickens at a shilling apiece. And such was the remuneration that a skillful physician received for village calls at 50 cents each or for country visits at $1 to $1.50 each according to the distance traveled, and with the supplying of medicines included !
School houses in the village were few until shortly before the civil war, and there was almost always a private or "select " school (some- times more than one) which found accommodations in a single room of some private house, and which were supported by tuition fees paid by the parents of the pupils who attended.
Main street was lined formerly from end to end of the business sec- tion with hitching posts and rails. Besides being unsightly and unsani- tary, the arrangement made for cruelty to animals through leaving horses exposed for considerable lengths of time in all sorts of weather, narrowed the traffic width of the street, and increased danger in case of a runaway. After long and somewhat acrimonious agitation, the last of the posts and rails were removed about 1901. Many farmers scolded bitterly at the procedure, and some went so far as to transfer their trading to neighboring hamlets. Who would restore the posts now if they could ?
Referring to this condition brings remembrance that in early times church sheds were thought to be as indispensable as a church itself. A considerable proportion of every congregation except St. Mark's resided in the country districts, and accommodations had to be provided for teams while the owners were at service. Sometimes a couple of neigh- bors would join in building a section of shed, which they kept under lock and key, but in general the sheds were wholly church property, and free for use by any one. St. Joseph's and the Methodist churches still maintain sheds.
From about 1870 to 1890 Malone had a notably fine volunteer fire department. Though Malone Engine Co. No. 1 had ceased to maintain its aforetime interest and enthusiasm, the organization was still in existence until about 1880, and there were hose companies and a hook and ladder company zealous for service, and eager in their pride of organization and efficiency. Hope Hose Company was composed of young business men of high standing and social prominence, and Active Hose Company of yet younger men and boys of a like class. There was intense rivalry between these two organizations with respect to report-
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HISTORY OF FRANKLIN COUNTY
ing first at a fire, and also in racing at firemen's tournaments. Each was accustomed to give occasional balls, which were always the society events of the season, and were as fine and enjoyable as good taste and generous expenditure could make them. But earlier than 1890 a good deal of the enthusiasm and interest had disappeared, and in that year an electric fire-alarm system was installed, and the department was reorganized into a paid service, with men and teams always at the engine house, with the consequence that little general interest is mani- fested. There was more fun under the old plan, but the new doubtless gives better results in respect to the saving of property.
Malone was variantly Whig and Democratic before the civil war, with the margin usually close, but has since been Republican without variableness or shadow of turning. Of course the majorities have had a wide range, having approached a thousand once or twice, and now and then having dropped to a hundred or two, with the usual figure nearer the minimum than the maximum. The largest registration of voters ever entered for the town was in 1904, when it exceeded 3,000, and the vote the same year was nearly 2,400.
Malone has usually been a " wet" town, but was nominally " dry" by determination of its own voters in 1846 and 1847, by the State statute of 1855 until the act was declared unconstitutional a year later, again in 1887 and 1888 by its own action, and now once more by a decisive vote in the spring of 1917. Quite probably prohibition pre- vailed in other years also of which I am not informed, but in general the " wets " have controlled - often without a contest, and easily even when a fight was made. In my boyhood and young manhood men of sterling character. with the widest opportunities for observation, used to tell me that conditions were worse under no-license than under license, and of my own knowledge that was the fact in 1887 and 1888. In the earlier experiences men who were accustomed to indulge in occasional drinking, or even in periodic "sprees," when liquor was easily procurable at home, bought the stuff in quantities in license localities, or at "blind tigers," and would keep " pickled " as long as the supply lasted. In 1888 the places where illicit traffic was prosecuted or individuals operated as " bootleggers " ran into the scores, and "bums " had no difficulty at all in supplying their wants, while decent people could not procure alcohol or brandy at all for legitimate uses, or in order to get it had to employ the offices of those who knew and could pull the ropes. There was no determined, dominating sentiment to compel regard for the law, and prohibition was nearer meaning free rum
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MALONE
than suppression or even restriction, so that the "dry " majority of 10 in 1887 and of 242 in 1888 became a "wet" majority of 500 in 1889. Present conditions under the no-license regime which began with the first of October, 1917, are altogether different, and the change is prob- ably due principally to the better public sentiment that now obtains. So far as is known or even conjectured, there are no " blind tigers " or " bootleggers " at work; tradesmen report larger purchases and better payments by those whose earnings formerly went largely for drink ; our streets are more orderly ; the jail is all but empty ; and the report of the village police justice for the month of November did not include a single case of intoxication nor any other offense directly attributable to liquor.
In 1906 a Captain Wenwright, a stranger, came to Malone, and announced his intention to build a trolley line from Malone Junction, via Westville and Fort Covington, to Hopkins Point on the St. Law- rence river. The village and the towns granted him a franchise, and considerable grading was done and ties and other material bought. A water power four or five miles north of Malone village was to be devel- oped for generating electric current for operation, and a spur was to be built from West Constable to Trout River. Difficulty was met in obtaining the approval of the State railroad commission, and after repeated delays and disappointments Captain Wenwright became dis- couraged and abandoned the undertaking. Several thousand dollars had been expended, however, on work and in the purchase of material, though very little of it came out of Captain Wenwright's pockets, but represented borrowings and credits. It transpired that he had prac- tically no means of his own, and that his expectation had been to finance the enterprise by issuing bonds.
The Telegraph told in 1824 that there was jubilation in Malone because of the promise that thereafter the town should have a regular semi-weekly mail service, with receipt of Albany papers within five days of the date of their publication ; but a year later no mail at all had been received for five days, and it was many years before there was a really good service. Complaint was common in 1837 that mail arrived from Albany only in six to eleven days, and that many times the bags were found to be empty; and as late as 1857 it took three weeks to get a letter to and a reply from Duane, and newspapers from Malone were two weeks in reaching subscribers at Saranac Lake. It was not until 1835 that the people even thought of asking for a daily mail, and in examining the lists of letters advertised as uncalled for at that period
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HISTORY OF FRANKLIN COUNTY
and earlier one wonders if it really mattered much whether there were mails once a day, one a month or once a year, for included in such lists appeared always the names of some of the most prominent men in the town - merchants, farmers living within a mile of the office who were so well known that they were leaders in their respective circles, and even clergymen and physicians. Postage was payable either in advance at the mailing point or at the destination by the addressee, and in view of the well known scarcity of money then prevalent it is probable that most letters came collect, and that these long lists were due to the disinclination or the inability of the addressees to pay the postage due.
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