USA > New York > Franklin County > Historical sketches of Franklin county and its several towns > Part 47
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The board of supervisors caused notice to be published in 1824 that unless assurances were given that the court house would be cleaned after its use by the various religious societies or private organizations it would be closed against everybody except for distinctively public and official business. The next year the sheriff published a notice apportioning the use of the building for purposes of worship - one-half of the time to the Congregationalists because they were the most numerous, and one- fourth each to the Baptists and Methodists. The notice discloses that there had been bickering between the denominations concerning the degree of use of the court house that they should respectively enjoy, and also as to the responsibility of each for its cleaning. In the hope of ending such strife the sheriff made the apportionment as stated. and announced that he would not enforce the resolution of the supervisors, but would have the building cleaned at his own expense.
The population of the village in 1835, more than thirty years after the arrival of the first settlers, was only 104, which had increased in 1840 to 670, and in 1853, when the village was incorporated, to 2,039. In 1855 it was 1,993, and in 1860 exactly 3,000. While every census since then has shown some growth, there has never been anything like a "boom " as the word is understood in the West. The population in 1915 was 7,404, of whom 283 were aliens. Soon after incorporation the village bought a new fire engine, of the hand-brake type, which cost, with hose, $1,427. The machine had its own suction pipe, and would do good work while men endured to pump it. There was no system of water works then, and cisterns for fire nses were built at a cost of $311.25 at the Congregational church, near Memorial Park, at the Meth- odist church (then at the corner of Main and Fort Covington streets), and near the academy. The organization of old Malone Engine Co. No. 1 in its early life was a distinguished one, and included practically every man of affairs and prominence in the village. Its meetings were
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animated and rollicking with innocent fun, and its annual suppers were notable social affairs. It disbanded in 1881, and the engine was sold to Ellenburgh in 1901 for $250.
A notice published by the village trustees in 1855 required the build- ing of sidewalks on a number of specified streets, but not on Elm or Main - from which it is concluded that these had already been so equipped. East Main street was formerly Church street, West Main was Court street, and Pearl originally Horton and then King street.
Dr. Bates wrote of early Malone that it was a rare thing to see people out riding on Sunday, and that "after the churches closed the streets were empty, and a peaceful silence reigned. When the sun went down the Sabbath was ended. The womenfolk resumed their usual occupations of knitting, mending and spinning." Rev. James Erwin, who conducted protracted revival services here in 1836, wrote: "The people of that town were great church goers. I have had a wide observation of the church going habits of people in many sections of the country, but never found any other town that excelled Malone in that respect.
* The good people of Malone came from far and near ' to worship in His holy temple.' Every church was usually crowded. * * Those from a distance brought the largest loads, and usually were the first to arrive at the church. I have often held up the custom of that town as an example for other communities to follow." How gratified would be the pastors of our churches to-day, and what an inspiration it would be to them in their pulpits, if this condition now obtained. But apparently a change began to appear within the dozen years succeeding the period of which Mr. Erwin spoke, for in 1858 a correspondent of the Palladium complained of Sabbath desecration by ball playing, neglect of church attendance, etc., as having "sprang up within ten years." Moreover, the tendency noted in 1858 has continued progressively ever since.
Malone had telegraphic service first in 1851, or about a year after the railroad was finished.
While the only early iron works of consequence were the forge at "whiskey hollow," there yet were others of a sort both earlier and later, the history of some of which, however, is fragmentary and to some extent obscure. In 1815 "Tough " Hastings, whose real name, I think, was Levi, had a large blacksmith shop and triphammer works at the west end of the Horton dam, just off Duane street. An angry helper one day struck him with an iron bar, breaking the frontal bone and destroying one eye. He was left for dead, but made a quick recovery, and soon afterward pitched headforemost into a well. His
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head was badly cut and bruised, and when, regaining consciousness, the surgeon inquired if he was suffering pain, he replied in the negative, adding that he was not subject to headache. Always thereafter he was known as " Tough." How long he operated the Duane street concern is not known, but twenty years later it or another building on or near the same site was a scythe and axe factory, of which William B. Earle was the proprietor. It was in the same building that Mr. Gorton had his paper mill for about ten years from 1820, and also, somewhat later, Abijah White a pail factory in which he turned out four hundred pails a week. The building long known as " Earle's museum " was erected by Mr. Earle for the help that he employed in the scythe and axe factory. Samuel Field had an establishment in 1829, at a location not now known, where he cast plows, and Oren Moses, Sr., and son, Myron, had a foundry in a building that occupied the site of the creamery (formerly a starch factory) on Water street. Besides making castings this shop manufactured rifles and also built a hand fire engine very like the old Malone No. 1. Samuel Hyde had a machine shop and Oren U. Beach (father of Manley L.) a foundry at or near the Hastings- Earle plant, which Mr. Beach operated from about 1840 to 1853, when the equipment was sold to Charles C. Whittelsey and Daniel N. Hunt- ington, and removed to a building erected for it at the foot of Foundry (now Shepherd) street, near the freight depot. Whether S. C. F. Thorndike and William H. Keeler were also partners in the 'business I am unable to ascertain, but at least they were joint purchasers with Mr. Whittelsey and Mr. Huntington of springs west of Webster street and south of the cemetery, which were piped to the foundry. The same year that this concern was started Charles B. Beardsley and Andrew S. Keeler built the foundry and machine shops which still stand on Catherine street. Mr. Huntington having sold to Mr. Whit- telsey, the latter bought the Catherine street works, abandoning his own shops, and operated them until 1883. The date of his deed to the latter property was 1859, but he may have had possession a little earlier. During his proprietorship he had at different times a number of partners - among them Carlos D. Meigs, and Hiram E. and Charles Perkins, and his son, Sidney S. In 1876 he leased to his son. Sidney S., and Chester H. Wead, and in 1881 sold to J. C. Saunders, Sidney S. Whittelsey, Malachi H. Barry, Charles Fury and Leslie C. and Chester H. Wead. The property has since had various owners and, first and last, has done a considerable business -making stoves, steam engines, Kniffen mowing machines, wood pulp grinders, and now
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bodies for motor trucks. Its present owners are the Thomas Hinds Company.
ADDITIONAL LOCAL INDUSTRIES
Industries other than those heretofore listed on the Duane street lot include a flax mill by Simeon J. Harwood in 1864 and 1865, when the price of cotton was soaring, and planing mills by John R. Jackson and J. L. Keeney, Ladd, Smallman & Wentworth, and P. J. Murtagh.
Jonathan Stearns, merchant for many years, began planning in 1826 to erect a cotton factory - a strange undertaking considering the dis- tance that the raw material had to be brought in a time when there were no railroads, nor water communication nearer than Plattsburgh. Nevertheless he had his building completed in the early autumn of 1829 - a solid masonry structure rising sixty feet from the river level at the Main street bridge, and with the upper room furnished with wooden benches, so that it might be available for religious uses and other public meetings. The building is now owned and occupied by the Malone Light and Power Company. In 1834 the mill made 177,777 yards of cloth, and the product, though coarse, is said to have been of good quality. But high freights (the rate from Plattsburgh to Malone used to be $2.75 per one hundred pounds) and other handicaps made operation unprofitable, and in 1841 Mr. Stearns was forced into bankruptcy. Three or four years later Hugh Magill and William Greene purchased the mill, and ran it until the interior and the machinery were destroyed by fire March 13, 1846, with a loss of $50,000, on which the insurance was only $16,000. The walls of the building remained intact, and for a year or two the village had hope that the industry might be revived. But Mr. Magill and Mr. Greene having been crippled by their loss, and no one appearing to engage in the enterprise, the building, or a part of it, was converted into a mill for grinding gypsum for land plaster, and was otherwise variously occupied until 1864, when Mr. Whittelsey and Charles Paddock made it into a woolen factory, which they called the Union Mills. As a cotton factory it had employed as many as a hundred hands in times of its greatest activity. Mr. Magill removed after the fire to Illinois, where he made full financial recovery : Mr. Greene remained in Malone, and for many years was engaged in the liquor traffic on Harison place, where Rush- ford now has a second-hand store. Upon the retirement of Mr. Paddock in 1868 Mr. Whittelsey continued the business alone under the name of the Malone Woolen Mills until 1887, when a stock company was formed
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to continue the business and also to engage in the manufacture of men's clothing, but the enterprise was not a financial success. In 1890 the factory was leased to Jay O. Ballard and William C. Skinner, who continued to operate it until their removal to their present location. An electric plant was installed in the building by S. S. Whittelsey in 1907, and operated by him for a time. It was sold in 1909 to the Malone Light and Power Co.
William King built a potato starch mill in the village in 1844 or 1845, which I am confident was the first in the county. It was located on Catherine street, on a part of the lot now occupied by The Lawrence- Webster Co. woolen mill and garment factory; and after operation for seven or eight years in the manufacture of starch was idle until con- verted into a machine shop. Other starch mills that the town has had at one time or another have been : One on Roaring brook, one near the church at Chasm Falls, and one just above Whippleville, all built and owned by George W. Hale, though William Lyman and Sherman Stancliff had had one earlier at the last indicated point; one south of Shepherd bridge and one in the Berry district in the northwest part of the town, by W. W. & H. E. King; one on the Branch stream, two miles south of the village, by George N. Keeler; one in the village, opposite The Lawrence-Webster Co. mills, by George N. Keeler and Stephen D. Paddock ; and one on Trout river, in the northeast quarter of the town, which was owned in its final days by Hubbard & Mallon. The business ceased to be profitable about 1896 by reason of competition of starch made from corn, and I think that none of the Malone mills was run after 1898, though a few like mills in other towns were operated irregularly and occasionally until 1905.
The quarrying of sandstone was at one time a considerable industry. The most important of the quarries was west of Duane street, in the outskirts of the village, and was developed earlier than 1850. It was worked extensively following the building of the railroad, with Denni- son S. Willard as superintendent - the owner at that time having been T. P. Chandler, the president of the old Northern Railroad Company. It employed thirty to forty men, and the stone was shipped in large quantities to Boston and other New England cities, and also even as far west as Chicago- Mr. Chandler finding the markets for it. It was used largely at home also, the old jail and county clerk's office, the railroad machine shops and freight depot, the Knapp or Commercial block, the King block and many other buildings having been con- structed with it. Another quarry which promised at one time to be valuable is on the Branch stream on the Keeler (now Shields) farm.
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The stone here is of a handsome pink shade and takes a fine polish, but some of it crumbles and shales upon exposure to air. It was while working this latter quarry that Albert Broughton invented a machine for polishing stone which produced a surface as smooth as glass, whereas the process theretofore employed gave the stone a scratched finish, resembling the surface of sawed lumber. The machine was patented, ·and was found adaptable to polishing glass also, which work had had to be done theretofore by hand. Captain Alexander Lindsay acquired an interest in the patent, and sold rights under it in England and elsewhere.
The Duane paint bed, which is on the west side of Salmon river, a short distance above Shepherd bridge, was discovered in 1850, and was worked for a number of years by Henry B. Duane. The works con- sisted only of a mill for grinding the metal and a kiln for drying it. This paint was used largely all through this section, more particularly on barns and outbuildings, and was very durable. It was a reddish brown in color. The mill was burned in 1870, at which time it was owned by R. S. Brown and Marshall D. Abbott, but had been in disuse for several years.
TITUSVILLE, GLEN HOPE OR CHASM FALLS
Titusville dates as a settlement from 1831, when Mr. Titus of New York city began acquiring wilderness lands in Franklin county, and continued his purchases until, thirty-odd years later, he owned some- thing like forty thousand acres, which subsequently became the prop- erty of A. B. Parmelee & Son. He gave the name Glen Hope to the locality, which changed into Titusville, and is now Chasm Falls, and built a store, a saw mill and a grist mill at the head of the falls on the east side of the river, and a scythe factory on the west side. Newell M. Cunningham (father of Russell J.) came in 1832 from Massachusetts to have charge of the scythe factory, and was joined in 1833 by his cousin, William B. Earle, who worked with him until he removed to Malone village, and there started a like factory of his own. The Glen Hope factory was sold to Meigs & Wead, and later to Mr. Cunningham, who moved it down the stream, and operated it on his own account for several years, and until scythes came to be made by machinery, which drove out the hand-made product. The equipment of the grist mill was sold to Harvey Whipple, who removed it to Whippleville, and installed it in a mill that he had built at that hamlet. The saw mill was owned in turn by William King, Meigs & Wead, S. C. Wead and
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Buel H. Man, Mr. Titus again, and A. B. Parmelee & Son. Twenty- odd years ago the saw mill and a considerable tract of adjacent land were bought for ten thousand dollars by Syracuse parties, who planned a large development of some kind, with suggestion that it would employ enough help so that a village would spring up. They made something of a mystery of their intentions, and either because of their own financial reverses or inability to enlist other capital the expected enterprise was not undertaken, though a survey was made for a rail- road spur to connect with the Adirondack and St. Lawrence at Stan- cliff's siding, and the lands around the head of the falls were plotted into village lots. The property stood idle thereafter until sold at a handsome advance in price in 1913 to a corporation which was sub- sequently merged into the Malone Light and Power Company, when the largest and finest power development in the county, with the possible exception of the Paul Smith work at Franklin Falls, was instituted. A concrete dam was built, and from it a steel penstock six feet in diameter led down the stream for two-thirds of a mile -giving a head of 270 feet at the power house, which, the river having been turned into a new channel, is built in the old bed. The work is fine and thorough throughout, and its potentialities are a generation of 3,500 horse power. The expenditure on the undertaking, inclusive of cost of lands and water privilege and of the transmission line for a distance of nine miles to the village of Malone, was about $425,000. In June, 1914, an over- flow at the old dam, which an hour's work applied in time might have rendered harmless, wrecked a part of the penstock, and destroyed entirely the county highway for a considerable distance - necessitating building the latter anew over a different route. The company's damage was about $10,000, and that to the road nearly $6,000. Great as the work here is, only a very small force of men is required to care for it and operate it, and consequently it has not added appreciably to the population. Except that there is an increased number of farmers in the vicinity, the place is no larger than it was eighty years ago. Apart from the farms and the electric plant, there are in the locality only a creamery, a store, a Methodist Episcopal church, a Roman Catholic church, and a so-called hotel, which of course had no custom except at its bar, and now that the town has become " dry " is likely to disappear.
WHIPPLEVILLE
Whippleville, three miles south of the village, is the only hamlet in the town. Though the locality had perhaps half a dozen settlers at an
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earlier date, the place had its real birth in 1837 or 1838 with the pur- chase of most of the surrounding lands by Harvey Whipple, who chose to make his home there because of the water power and because the country thereabout was a forest. Mr. Whipple built a saw mill early, which is still in operation, with a planing mill added, and afterward a grist mill, equipping the latter from the mill at Titusville. Zenas Heath was lessor and operator of the grist mill in 1842, and in 1849 Mr. Whipple sold a third interest in it to Samuel A. Culver. It has had many owners since that time, was rebuilt in 1868 by John A. Hogle and Henry M. Tobey, and is now run by Fred H. Lyman. The saw mill also has passed through many ownerships, and is at present the property of Fred. H. Lyman. Another saw mill, run by steam, was built by Scott G. Boyce and William W. Wheeler, and was burned. A tannery was erected in 1860 by Mr. Whipple for Enoch Miller, who operated it for several years. It was burned in 1882, at which time it was owned by P. D. Moore & Co. of Boston, and was about to be abandoned. In 1872 John A. Hogle was induced to build a two-story- and-a-half-hotel for Merrill Hungerford, his son-in-law, and Egbert Platt, who ran it for a time, but without profit. It was kept afterward by S. Boutwell, and then by Mrs. Hogle, but never did much business. It burned about fifteen or twenty years ago. The hamlet had two hotels in 1917 which were opened more for the sale of liquor than for a general accommodation of guests ; but the town having become " dry " one of them closed at once, and the other soon afterward. There are two stores in the settlement, and always from about 1860 there has been one or more, kept by almost as many proprietors as the period numbers years. The hamlet contains forty dwelling houses, and has an estimated population of about one hundred and fifty. The school district is slightly larger than the hamlet proper, and the school has twenty-nine enrolled pupils.
OTHER INDUSTRIES
Industries other than those already mentioned that Malone has had at one time or another, but which are not now in existence, include :
Brick-making by Jacob Wead, and then by Meigs & Wead, at " whis- key hollow," some ninety years ago; in the eastern part of the town by Henry M. Tobey, Andrew Dumas, Joseph Dumas, J. Dennison Fisk, 0. U. Beach, Richards, Prescott and Philip Patnode, Ches- ter Nash, and Alfred A. Rounds, the latter of whom had an output in 1868 and 1869 of fifty to sixty thousand brick per day; by Bell & 15
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Colton just off West Main street at about the same time with Rounds; and by Joseph Dumas later on Constable street. Mr. Rounds has many monuments in the town as a builder, including the Rutland passenger station, the poorhouse, the courthouse and the Centenary Methodist Episcopal church.
Planing mills and general woodworking establishments by Martin Kearney, and later by Charles A. Burke and John Kelley, on Catherine street ; by Orville Moore on Milwaukie street and afterward on Pearl street ; and successively by John R. Jackson and J. L. Keeney, Ladd, Smallman & Wentworth, A. M. Erwin & Co., and P. J. Murtagh on Duane street.
A small broom factory, established soon after the civil war by Frank Benoit, and worked by him individually for something like thirty years, until 1908, when a corporation organized therefor took it over, and Samuel Benoit, son of the founder, was made manager. Difficulty in obtaining supplies of broom-corn interfered with full success, and the factory was closed in 1916.
A match factory, which was a good deal of a joke, by T. B. Cushman, employing no one except himself and daughter, and turning out a product more adapted to kindling profanity than for starting a fire.
A slaughter house and pork packing establishment north of the vil- lage in 1880 by N. P. Gravell & Co., which was to have a capacity of three hundred hogs a day, and was to compete in this section with the big Chicago packers. It was not a success.
A stone flouring mill, five stories in height, near the Gravell plant, which was begun by George F. Dickey in 1868 and finished in 1870, with the expectation that it would have an output comparable with that of the large mills at Oswego and Rochester. It was too big a proposition for Mr. Dickey's means, however, and the property soon went into the hands of Henry A. Paddock. About 1882 it was bought and run by A. Munger for a number of years. For a time it did an ordinary country mill business, and after Mr. Munger's death was converted into an excelsior mill. It burned in 1911.
A flax mill on Duane street by S. J. Harwood in 1864 and 1865.
A soap factory near the Rutland Railroad freight depot by Baker S. Horrigan and George D. Lytle.
A plant for making trousers and other garments for men, established on Amsden street in 1898 by a corporation styled The Malone Manu- facturing Company. The business was not profitable, and was discontinued after a few years.
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INDUSTRIES NOW IN OPERATION
In addition to the industries heretofore listed and described (viz., the Garner & Co. tannery, the Horton grist mill and the foundry) works now in operation comprise :
Malone's first woolen mill was built by John Horton of Madrid and Hiram Horton of Malone, but whether they ever operated it themselves is now unknown. They sold it under contract in 1844 to John Starks, who had previously had a similar mill at Fort Covington, and he sold a half interest in it the next year to George A. Cheney, who apparently had active connection with its operation for only a short time, as Cyrenus Gorton soon became Mr. Starks's partner. Starks & Gorton evidently failed to prosper, for in 1849 they made an assignment, with debts, exclusive of mortgages and judgments, amounting to over six thousand dollars. The property was sold in 1850 by the assignee to D. Stiles McMillan and Theodore Rogers of Fort Covington for $3,810 plus outstanding obligations of $2,274, which they assumed. Mr. McMillan bought out Mr. Rogers after a short time, and then continued the business alone successfully until 1863, when he sold and removed to Wisconsin to engage still more prosperously in lumbering. Not only was " Mac " a very prince of good fellows and a man of hustling busi- ness proclivities, but he proved to be a manufacturer whose goods gained a reputation throughout this section for durability that was unsurpassed. Though rough and of plain patterns, his cloths wore like iron. The establishment has grown into a big factory, owned and oper- ated by a corporation styled The Lawrence-Webster Company, valued at tens of thousands of dollars, and all of its cloths since 1885 have been made into garments on the ground, with sales extending all over the world, and with a pay-roll bearing a hundred names or more.
Jay O. Ballard & Co. have a woolen mill and men's garments factory on the site of the old Parmelee saw mill, with surrounding grounds handsomely laid out and kept - making, with the well lighted and sanitary buildings, one of the most attractive industrial establishments to be found anywhere. This concern began operations in 1891 in the old Whittelsey mill at the bridge on Main street, and continued there until 1901, when it bought at its new location, erected suitable buildings, and installed all new and modern equipment. It has had a remarkable success, employs a hundred and fifteen to one hundred and twenty hands, and would work a still larger force if procurable.
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