USA > New York > Franklin County > Historical sketches of Franklin county and its several towns > Part 53
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MALONE
$12,000, Clark J. Lawrence about $50,000, Marcha J. Ryan of Fort Covington $200 and Robert J. Taylor of Bellmont $500; and Mrs. Lois Lawrence and Mrs. Clara Kilburn have recently given $1,000 cach. The present directors are: Nelson W. Porter, John Kelley, Phelps Smith, Brayton R. Clark, John A. Grant, Ralph Hastings, Matt C. Ran- som, Edward Blanchard, John P. Kellas, Alexander Macdonald, Thomas Cantwell, Hugh H. Mullarney, Arthur E. McClary, William H. O'Brien, F. Roy Kirk, Percival F. Dalphin. Alfred G. Wilding, Jay O. Ballard, John A. Flanagan, G. Herbert Hale and George B. Humphrey. Mr. Ballard is president, Mr. Porter vice-president, Mr. Ransom treasurer, and Mr. McClary secretary.
MALONE IN WAR TIMES
Malone has been touched closely, and at times poignantly, by four wars. In that of 1812 with Great Britain it had two militia companies whose headquarters were in Malone, and whose personnel was mainly. if not wholly, recruited here, while other residents took the field as mem- bers of other local units; the inhabitants were continuously in appre- hension and dread of enemy incursions or of Indian massacres; the place was for months an army hospital base with inadequate shelter accommodations and a pitiful shortage of proper food, medicines, and even bedding and clothing for the sick; a British force occupied the town for a day upon one occasion in 1814- invading individual privacy and in some instances perpetrating depredations : and the spirit and practices of the time corrupted morals and brought lamentable demoral- ization generally. There were no battle casualties locally, nor was the spirit of patriotism universally prevalent.
As a whole Malone's part in the civil war was large and creditable (even glorious is hardly too strong a word), though blackened in a measure by the talk and conduct of a few men who were in open sym- pathy with the South. Some of these did not scruple when volunteers departed for the field of action to avow hope that they would return only "in a box," to flaunt pins made from the faces of the old-time copper cents as proclamation of their " copperheadism," and to heap upon the President, his advisers and the generals of the Union armies the bitterest vituperation. But these were so small a minority, and their sentiments so execrated by the ardent patriotism of the majority, that they were scorned, and forfeited standing to the degree that both in business and socially they were practically ostracised.
At once following the attack upon Fort Sumter in Charleston har-
502
HISTORY OF FRANKLIN COUNTY
bor war meetings were held, the first at the Congregational church April 25th, a company was soon raised, with a few of its members fur- nished by neighboring towns, and started for the front May 6, 1861; and throughout the four years that the struggle continued recruiting went on to fill depleted commands already in the service, or to add new contingents. Besides the first company sent out early, which became a part of the 16th regiment, a company was raised for the 60th, seven companies for the 98th, two for the 106th and three for the 142d, while there were also many individual and group enlistments in the 96th and 118th, whose headquarters for organization were elsewhere in Northern New York, as well as in particular commands of artillery and cavalry that appealed especially to some of the volunteers. Of course not all who composed the units referred to, or who were identified with scat- tered regiments, were Malone residents, but many were gathered from other towns in the county, and to a small number from the bordering towns in St. Lawrence and Clinton ; but this was the center of inspira- tion and activity. General Thorndike was active in recruiting, and William Lowe conducted a recruiting office independently for a long time, assigning such men as he enlisted to the various regiments which they wished to join, or turning them over to the men who were raising companies of which they were to be captains or lieutenants if they reported with some specified number of recruits. Commissions went in those days to men who were civilian leaders, and without examination as to military qualification. Five recruiting officers were active here at one time in 1862. There were no preliminary training camps for those who were to serve as officers, nor for the rank and file except during the period that they were in local barracks awaiting the filling of a command. Then the regiments or companies were rushed straight to the battle line - a practice which undoubtedly explains Bull Run and many other disasters. According to a list compiled by the late Major Daniel H. Stanton, the whole number of Malone men who were in the army during the four years from 1861 to 1865 was 564 - which, however, counts each man but once, and does not take into consideration the fact that a considerable number of these re-enlisted after having com- pleted one term of service, so that the actual number of men furnished · at one time and another by Malone would doubtless reach well above 600. Among these there were a few, perhaps 10 per cent., who were drafted, but by far the larger part were volunteers.
The drafts during the civil war were on very different lines from those which govern in the war of 1917. At the first of the drafts a
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MALONE
man who was drawn might accept service himself, procure release by the payment of $300 in money, or furnish a substitute. In the later drafts there was no provision for a money commutation, and those drawn had to serve or find substitutes. Toward the close of the war the cost for a substitute was usually $1,000, for which the man who paid was able to obtain reimbursement later from the combined bounty fund offered by the State, the county and the towns. In the early part of the war the only bounty was $50, which gradually increased until the usual figure was $1,000. The consequent burden falling upon the tax- payers was onerous, the total amount raised for bounties alone and for other expenses in filling quotas by Franklin county and its then sixteen towns having been $500,106.08. The "other expenses " referred to consisted, in part at least, of the cost of sending committees to Virginia, where they enlisted soldiers who were receiving their discharge upon the expiration of one term of service, and had such recruits credited to the respective towns which the committees represented, so as to help fill quotas as against a pending draft. In many cases the men who enlisted as substitutes, or upon their own initiative for the sake of the bounty, had to be watched and guarded closely. Else some of them were likely to desert after having received the money, and flee to Canada, or to some other locality to repeat the procedure. These were known as " bounty jumpers." The cost locally for every volunteer or conscript from Franklin county during the civil war was about $200, while in 1917 the county paid nothing, and the general government only about two dollars per capita.
While the seven companies which Franklin county furnished for the 98th regiment were being recruited the men were quartered as they enlisted in barracks built for them on the fair grounds, except that the officers' offices were in the old floral hall. An order issued by the adju- tant general made an allowance of 30 cents per day per man for sub- sistence. Sutlers sold food and other supplies on the grounds, which the men had to pay for themselves. The cantonment was denominated in orders " a branch military depot," and was named Camp Franklin. The original intention was that the 98th should be exclusively a Franklin county organization, but it was found practicable at the time to get together only enough men to constitute seven companies, which were consolidated with three from Wayne county to complete the outfit. A company was expected to muster a hundred strong, and each of those in the 98th regiment had close to that number ; but many others went out short of a full complement. The 98th was mustered into service Feb-
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HISTORY OF FRANKLIN COUNTY
ruary 4, 1862, and left Malone for the South February 21st. As the men marched from quarters to the railroad station, windows and walks along the route were thronged with people waving handkerchiefs and flags, and crying approval and godspeed. As the train pulled out there were rousing cheers, and it was noted that tears were coursing the cheeks of those who had relatives or other dear ones in the command.
In many cases, not only with respect to the 98th, but also in other commands, the townsmen or townswomen of an officer presented him with his sash and sword, and war work by those remaining at home was prosecuted earnestly and zealously. though doubtless not nearly as well systematized as like effort in the present. The women formed their local circles under the United States sanitary commission, and scraped lint from old linen for use in dressing wounds. They also made black- berry brandy for administering to those suffering with bowel troubles, and jellies and other delicacies for the sick. At holiday times men and women collected in neighborhoods large quantities of supplies to be sent both to local barracks and to troops that had taken the field. As a single illustration, 25 barrels of poultry and home cookery were for- warded to the South in 1864 at one shipment by a single Malone district in order to give the soldiers a Thanksgiving treat.
At one of the earliest of the war meetings a fund of $10,000 was pledged by individuals for the relief and care of the families of those who should volunteer, and the amount was afterward increased from time to time. There was no regulation then providing for the reser- vation of a part of a soldier's pay for the use and benefit of his depend- ents at home, and that pay was only $13 a month in depreciated currency. On the other hand, bounties were paid, which is not the case now. We are contributing as individuals in 1917 and 1918 large amounts for various war purposes - for a company fund for our first organization in the field, for the work of the Young Men's Christian Association and of the Knights of Columbus, for remembrances to the men in the service, for the Red Cross and for other causes - but similar offerings were made during the civil war also, though of course very much smaller because our people were fewer and poorer, while in contrast with the procedure of half a century ago we are now paying scarcely anything for the cause through distinctively local taxation. True, the difference in the methods of the two periods is that under the one everybody had to contribute proportionately to a tax whether willing or unwilling, and under the other of voluntary contributions the mean and sordid escape altogether. As to federal taxation, while the amount now
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levied is vastly greater, I doubt if the scheme of it touches as many articles of general use, or hits as large a proportion of people of ordi- nary means, as did the revenue measures of 1861 to 1865. In any case, the present will have to be a very long war if the money burdens that it lays upon our county shall come to total a half million dollars plus what our fathers contributed voluntarily as individuals.
Neither occupation nor dependency served to exempt a drafted man during the civil war. Except as to the draft of 1863, he had to serve when drawn if within the limits of twenty to forty-five years of age, and if physically fit, or procure a substitute. The existing scheme of selective conscription is theoretically perfect, in that it reaches with discrimination the idler and the industrious, and without discriminating between the rich and the poor, and exempts under proper proof those who can be more useful in the home fields or shops than in the trenches or along the battle front. Moreover, the men who were drafted during the civil war and accepted service because of it did not have quite the standing with their neighbors and with the public generally as the volunteers, while now the status of the one is practically on an equality with that of the other. The reproach which attached to the conscript in the civil war is altogether absent under the existing plan.
There were, too, during the civil war the prototypes of to-day's pacifists and pro-Germans in the "copperhead," and of the " slackers " in the men who sneaked into Canada to escape the drafts, and who were called " skedaddlers."
WAR PRICES
Prices soared during the civil war, particularly for cottons, sugar and coffee, but it is doubted if articles of food or household supplies generally averaged as high then as now, and emphatically so if it be remembered in the reckoning to consider that in the former time we bought with depreciated dollars, worth at times less than half as much as gold. Almost anything passed commonly as currency - postage stamps, metal tokens issued by mercantile or manufacturing concerns for cents, paper promises to pay that were put out similarly, and federal treasury notes in fractional parts of a dollar ; five, ten, twenty- five and fifty cents in nominal value, which were called "shinplasters." The tokens and most of the commercial promises to pay were never redeemed, and even of the government issues millions of dollars were lost or destroyed, or are still outstanding as curios. But however prices may compare in figures for the two periods, those of the civil war time were, I think, the more grievous and crushing, because the
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HISTORY OF FRANKLIN COUNTY
people were poorer and had long been accustomed to very low values. A family expense book for the year ending April 1, 1861, is before me as I write, and shows the whole cost of living for husband, wife and one child for the twelve months to have been $286.2 ?. The expendi- tures included clothing, attendance occasionally at an entertainment, taxes and apparently every item of the cost of living with the exception of house rent. Some of the outgo was for coffee at 10c. per pound, rice at 6c., butter at 13c., cheese at three pounds for a quarter, beef in lots of 10 to 30 pounds at from 4c. to 8c., sugar at 9c., a hog at 6c. per pound, and berries at 5c. per quart. To bound from such a basis to the war prices that followed was naturally vexing, and, with tastes less luxurious and means smaller than have since become the rule, strict economy, not to say pinching and scrimping, was practiced. People simply denied themselves utterly many things the purchase of which they deemed an extravagance, or used substitutes. I remember in par- ticular that in many families peas, beans and corn were roasted and used for coffee, either alone or in admixture with the genuine article ; and maple sugar, then salable at only about half the price of the cane product, served not uncommonly for tea or coffee sweetening, as well as in general cookery. It is also of interest to note that the coffee habit has grown greatly in half a century, for page after page in the ledger of a firm of Malone merchants covering the civil war period fails to show a single charge to farmers for coffee, and even the accounts of the wealthiest village customers include items for it but rarely. Other economies practiced were that every household that was at all fore- handed always had its own barrel of corned beef and salt pork, and its kit or keg of salmon and mackerel; bought beef by the quarter, side or " critter,". and a half or whole pig in early winter for fresh meat instead of running to a market daily ; and many men, instead of buying their clothes ready-made or having them made to order, would pur- chase cloth, get it cut at a tailor's, and have it made by the womenfolk at home or by a seamstress whose charge would be not more than a third or a half of a tailor's.
From an old-time local merchant's ledger, together with a table of prices quoted in a newspaper, I am able to fix values that were current for a few articles during the war of 1812; those which ruled in 1863, 1864 and 1865 I have sifted from the ledger of a leading mercantile house in Malone during the period; and the figures in effect in the closing weeks of 1917 are those given me by a merchant now in trade as those that the stores generally asked at retail, and some of which are considerably higher in 1918. In the 1863-5 column of the table
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that follows of course the range covers both various qualities and price fluctuations during three years. The quotations given for fresh beef, pork, veal, ham, turkey, hay, wood, corn, cornmeal and potatoes in the civil war time are the prices that one of the proprietors paid to cus- tomers and charged to himself - the concern not having dealt gen- erally in those commodities. The table follows :
1814
Civil War
1917
Calico, yard.
62¢ @ 75¢.
19¢ @ 45€.
15€
Muslin, yard.
372¢ @ 75€.
10¢ @ 50¢
Cotton, yard.
60g @ 72c.
25¢ @ 631¢. 20¢
Gingham, yard
50€ .
28¢ @ 372¢. 18¢
20¢
Cambric, yard
88¢ @ $1.50
562¢ .
23¢ @ 25¢
Wood, cord of 128 feet .
$2 @ $4.
$10 @ $12
Ham (whole), pound
20¢
14¢ @ 22¢.
30¢ @ 35¢
Fresh pork (whole pig), pound.
10¢ . .
23€ @ 24¢
Veal by the quarter, pound .
10¢ @ 122¢
28¢
Native beef by the quarter, pound Turkey, pound
9¢
10¢ @ 12¢ ·
Salt pork, barrel.
$25 @ $30
Butter, pound.
17¢ @ 22¢.
20g @ 47¢.
45¢ @ 50¢
Sugar, pound.
17¢ @ 20¢. .
15¢ @ 35€.
10¢
Tea, pound .
$1.23 @ $2.85 ..
$1.50 @ $2
40¢
Coffee, pound .
40¢ @ 75¢.
18c @ 40¢
Starch, pound.
12}¢ @ 19¢
10¢
Flour, barrel
$7 @ $14.
$13
Potatoes, bushel
40¢ @ 63¢
$1.20 @ $1.50
Eggs, dozen.
20¢
122¢ @ 20¢
60¢ @ 65¢
Corn meal, 100 pounds
$2.
$4.35
Corn, bushel
$1.42
872¢ @ $1.13
$2.43
Oats, bushel
58€
45¢ @ 75¢.
90¢
Hay, ton
$8
$8 @ $13
$22
Brooms, each
25¢ @ 50c.
80g @ 85g
Axes, each .
$1.50 @ $1.75 ..
$1.25
Nails, pound
6¢ @ 9¢ .. .
52¢ @ 6¢
Kerosene, gallon
75€ @ $1.25.
13¢
In the Malone merchants' book from which the civil war quotations are gleaned I find no charge for salt pork during the war, but am authentically informed that in 1864 or 1865 the price reached $45 per barrel in Chicago, which was the record price until a few weeks ago sales were made in that same market at wholesale at over $50 per barrel. Butter sold at retail in Malone in the closing months of the war, or shortly afterward, at 50c. per pound, and in 1867 and 1868 starch brought 25c. per pound, and corn meal $2.50 per hundred pounds. The high price for flour was soon after the close of the war, $18 per barrel, but it did not stay at that figure long. So, too, some values have been greater since the present war began than they were in December, 1917 - particularly for potatoes, which sold a few months earlier at $3 per bushel, and even in November, 1917, at wholesale for
12}¢
40¢ @ 45¢
$52 @ $53
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HISTORY OF FRANKLIN COUNTY
a day or two at $1.50 per bushel. Dressed hogs, whole, commanded 25c. per pound at one time, and flour $18 per barrel.
Some of the present high prices have a legitimate cause, particularly in the case of cotton, for which war demands are prodigious. Every discharge of a twelve-inch gun consumes half a bale of cotton, and a machine gun in action uses a bale every three minutes. Absorbent cotton for staunching and binding wounds call for 20,000 bales a year ; one change of apparel for the present United States army alone requires more than a million bales ; another million bales go annually into explosives ; and 100,000 bales will be needed to equip the aeroplane fleet if, as seems probable, linen shall come to be unobtainable.
During the civil war the national debt ran up to more than three billions of dollars, but, so far as I know, no one was importuned per- sonally, or otherwise except by circularizing or newspaper advertising, to buy bonds. By express terms all of these bonds were redeemable in gold, but were marketed in exchange for depreciated paper currency. Some of them bore interest at as high a rate as seven and three-tenths per cent.
CONFEDERATE RAIDS APPREHENDED AT MALONE
In the afternoon of October 19, 1864, each of the three banks in St. Albans, Vt., was entered by two or three strangers, who, presenting revolvers at the heads of clerks and officers, proceeded to loot the institutions, securing about $150,000 in money. They were con- federates who had come into the place from Canada, and who stated afterward that they had been sent North by General Early to engage in such exploits. They forced the bank officials to take an oath of allegiance to the confederate government, and to swear that they would divulge nothing of what was transpiring until two hours should have elapsed. The affair caused a tremendous sensation all along the northern border, and, apprehensive that a similar raid might be under- taken upon Malone, two companies of home guards were quickly recruited here - one of infantry and one of cavalry. The leading men of the community enrolled in the organizations, and rendered active, serious service. The cavalry had Charles Durkee for captain, and Chas. C. Whittelsey for first and William H. Barney for second lieu- tenant. The infantry had over a hundred members, with Joel J. Seaver as captain, Charles W. Breed as first and Martin Callaghan as second lieutenant. Both organizations were armed by the government notwithstanding none of the members was regularly enlisted. The old fire-engine house, then on a lot near the Wead Library, was fitted up
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MALONE
with bunks, and served as military headquarters. \ detail of the infantry was on duty every night for about two months -a part of the force patrolling the streets and picketing the village outskirts until midnight or later, with relief at an agreed hour by the contingent who had been sleeping in the engine house, which the relieved men then occupied until morning.
In January, 1865, Newton H. Davis, who had seen service in the 98th regiment, recruited a company of cavalry here under government sanction for frontier defense, and the Durkee and Seaver commands were thereupon disbanded, and their arms surrendered. The company of Captain Davis was supplied with horses by a Massachusetts com- pany that was stationed at Champlain. It was quartered in Malone, a part of the time in King's Hall and a part on the fair grounds, for about three months, and the remainder of its time in service at Camp Wheeler near Ogdensburg. When President Lincoln was shot this company scouted along the border from Malone to Rouses Point, not always careful to keep south of the Canadian boundary, in search of the conspirators. The company was mustered out in June, 1865.
In addition to these three local organizations, a company from Ver- mont and another from Massachusetts, both composed of veterans whom wounds or sickness had incapacitated for service at the front, were on duty in Malone for a few months in 1865. One of these companies had quarters in the barracks on the fair grounds, and the other in the large Parker or Rounds house on the flat in which the deaf-mute school found accommodations at one time, and which is now a tenement.
No confederate movement upon Malone was ever made, and the several organizations had only routine services to render. Their existence and presence contributed to relieve the apprehension of the civilian population, and created a sense of security locally.
The war with Spain in 1898 affected Malone hardly at all, and the town had no appreciable part in it save to send a score or more of its young men to the army. These got no nearer Cuba than South Caro- lina. and thus were never in battle danger. Their failure to enter more actively into the war, however, was due in no degree to themselves, and it was as patriotic a service that they gave as though greater hard- ship and greater hazard had been experienced.
MALONE'S PART IN THE PRESENT WAR
The declaration by Congress in April, 1917, of a state of war with Germany had a response in public sentiment strikingly unlike that
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HISTORY OF FRANKLIN COUNTY
attending any other war in which the United States ever engaged. There has been no flash of popular wrath or passion - which is not at all to imply that our people are not in earnest and full approval of it, nor that a cold, resolute determination to "see it through " is lacking. The only real impatience rests upon the wish that matters might be made to move more swiftly, and that our sluggard indifference to military preparation years ago caused for a time discomfort and a menace to the health of the men who are in training.
Malone's part in the struggle has not been inconsiderable, nor in any respect wanting in honorable and useful endeavor; but the record of the town is so interwoven with that of other towns, and carries so many independent and individual operations, that the story of it can not to be told separately, connectedly and completely. Our military organization, known as Company K of the first regiment of the national guard, was promptly recruited to a strength of 150 men (not all of them from Malone), which was nearly twice its normal peace average; and weeks before the government was ready to receive it had waited in impatience for the call to service duty. It left Malone August 15, 1917, and, except for a short stay in the vicinity of New York city, went into training at Spartanburg, South Carolina. Unfortunately the best interests of the service were thought to require the dismember- ment of the company in order that by transfer of most of its men another command (the famous old Seventh of New York,' now the 107th U. S. Inf.) might be brought up to the regimental strength that is deemed standard; and only Captain Marshall and a handful of his men were left to preserve the identity of the unit, which has since been recruited to its former numbers from the conscription camps. The men are waiting and learning .* with their friends and townsmen con- fident that upon arrival " somewhere in France " they will acquit them- selves with honor, and make a record of valorous and efficient service.
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