Historical sketches of Franklin county and its several towns, Part 56

Author: Seaver, Frederick Josel, 1850- [from old catalog]
Publication date: 1918
Publisher: Albany, J. B. Lyon company, printers
Number of Pages: 848

USA > New York > Franklin County > Historical sketches of Franklin county and its several towns > Part 56

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Sidney Lawrence Lodge, No. 660, I. O. O. F., was formed February 24, 1893, and has forty-three members.

Brushton has a Grand Army post, organized in April, 1883, and its present membership numbers twenty-eight. Its title is H. L. Aldrich post No. 363. In a number of years reunions or camp fires of the vet- erans of the civil war were held in the chalybeate spring grove.

Brushton Grange, No. 901, organized January 28, 1901, is in a flour- ishing condition, with three hundred and sixty members, and owner- ship of a substantial two-story building, the first floor of which is rented for commercial purposes. -

Moira Tent Knights of Maccabees, No. 425, was established at Moira in March, 1896.

CHAPTER XX SANTA CLARA

Santa Clara was erected from Brandon in 1888, the operations of John Hurd and business associates, of Patrick A. Ducey and partners, of the Santa Clara Lumber Company and of Macfarlane & Ross within the limits of the town having caused two small hamlets (Santa Clara and Brandon) to spring up, and also brought about the settlement at Everton, which, with the people in scattered localities and at Saranac Inn, made a population of close upon fifteen hundred, or twice that of all of the remaining portion of Brandon. Santa Clara originally included four townships, to which a half township, also from Brandon, was added in 1896, making an assessed acreage of 116,617. It is the second largest town in the county. The name was taken from the hamlet, which was a combination of the given name of Mrs. John Hurd and the Spanish word expressing Mr. Hurd's veneration for her character.

One of the first settlers in the town, or perhaps squatter would be more accurately descriptive, was probably a man named Jennings, in the eastern part, at a point still known as the Jennings clearing. Whence and when he came or whither he went there is no record to show. Indeed, the first now known occupant was Alvah Rice, who used to tell that the first night that he passed there a number of other persons (one of whom was a woman) occupied the cabin or shack with him. The shelter consisted of a single room, and all slept on the floor. During the night the woman gave birth to a child, probably the first born in the town. In 1837 Mr. Rice purchased from William H. Harison what came to be known as the Wait place (now Oneita), cut a road to it from the Jennings clearing, and kept a hotel there. He was the father of Mrs. Mordecai Ladd, at whose home in Duane he died. Mrs. Charles Selkirk, Mrs. Cassins Hoose and Robert and Clinton Ladd are grand- children. Jason Baker followed Mr. Rice as landlord for four or five years beginning about 1852, when he sold to Calvin Waite, and Daniel McNeil (Mr. Waite's son-in-law) ran the house until 1870, and was then succeeded by Mr. Waite himself. Landlords here since Mr. Waite have been James Cunningham, Fred IIazen, Henry Phelps, and now Albert Campbell. The Jennings place was occupied for a time, during

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the civil war, by Christopher Crandall, the one-legged hunter and guide who was afterward so well known in Duane, and who blew out his brains, discharging the gun by pulling the trigger with his toe. Chapman Olmstead from Duane also lived there for a few years, and was frozen to death on a trip to the Waite place for provisions. He is buried in the Jennings clearing, where there are a number of other graves which local opinion holds are those of soldiers who camped there during the war of 1812 while on their way from Plattsburgh to Sacket Harbor. In the immediate vicinity a Mr. Millbanks of New York city now has a private park. In 1850 a Michael Jennings, one of Gerrit Smith's proteges, from New York city, had a place a few miles south of the Jennings clearing, and lived there for a time, but his date is too late and his location too far south for the clearing to have taken its name from him.

In 1830 Jonah Sanford of Hopkinton and Mr. Harison entered into a contract by the terms of which the latter bound himself to deed the former one hundred acres of land at the falls of the St. Regis river nearest to the Hopkinton and Port Kent turnpike (which were the upper falls) upon condition that Mr. Sanford erect a saw mill and a tavern at the point indicated, which afterward came to be known as Everton, and operate both for a period of five years. In 1836 the stipu- lated conveyance was executed, with recital that Mr. Sanford had ful- filled the conditions of the contract. I do not suppose that Mr. San- ford himself operated the mill or kept the tavern, but have no idea who represented him. The reason for the erection of the tavern was doubt- less that the Hopkinton and Port Kent turnpike had just been built, and it was expected that there would be a good deal of travel over it. Whether the mill continued to be run uninterruptedly from the time of its erection in 1830 or 1831 there is nothing to show, but it is cer- tain that Mr. Sanford retained ownership of the land until 1850, when he sold a quarter interest each to David Conger of Dickinson and Isaac Skinner of Brasher. In 1859 Mr. Sanford, Mr. Skinner and Benjamin Holmes, all of St. Lawrence county, built a new mill on the old San- ford site and operated it for a few years. Most of their output was hauled to Moira, but some of it went to St. Regis Falls for building the Hammond mill, and was drawn by M. A. Dustin, Jr., and his son, George W. At this date there could have been no hotel at the mill, for the proprietors boarded with Mr. Dustin at his tavern. During the Sanford-Skinner-Holmes regime an iron mine just across the river from the saw mill was opened, and the ore drawn to the Skinner iron

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works at Brasher. After they closed down the mill it was run by Daniel McNeil, and then Peter Young used it for making shingles.

In 1844 Louis Humphrey from Stockholm built a saw mill at what is now Santa Clara, but which was known for forty years as Humphrey's Landing, and operated it for more than twenty years. Lorenzo Cheney, afterward at St. Regis Falls, lived near Humphrey's, and "Old Bill " Edwards, a noted hunter and trapper, lived a mile west. It is a curious fact, considering the name that the place now bears, that when Mr. Humphrey went west, about 1868, he located at Santa Clara, Wisconsin.

UPPER SARANAC

At Saranac Inn, or Upper Saranac as it is sometimes called, there is no business except that of the State fish hatchery and that of the hotel, which was erected about 1859 or 1860 by James S. Hough, who sold in 1870 to Christopher F. Norton of Plattsburgh, during whose ownership it was managed by a Mr. Cox, a Mr. Van Norman and John Strong. Ed. Derby bought from Norton, and ran the house for a time, when it was sold to the Saranac Association in 1885, in whose control it remained for thirty years .* It is one of the most attractively located resorts in the wilderness, on high land at the head of Upper Saranac lake, and overlooking that water. There are sixteen fine cottages con- nected with the hotel, owned by the association, and a number more in the vicinity, on the shores of the lake, that are individually owned and occupied as summer camps. The hotel will accommodate about two hundred and fifty guests. It was preferred as a resort by Grover Cleveland to any other in the Adirondacks during his term as Governor and while he was President. It was also a favorite with Governor Hughes, though he was far from having been popular there.+ Perhaps a hundred people comprise the hotel force or reside near the place. Fifty years ago, when the voters here numbered hardly more than half a dozen, their polling place was at Brandon Center, distant by highway something like sev- enty miles. It is unnecessary to add that they were not accustomed to exercise the elective franchise except in a Presidential year, and not all of them always even then. About thirty-five years ago the locality was made a separate polling place.

* The property changed ownership in 1916, and was enlarged and improved. Two stories were added, the dining room enlarged, and elevators installed. The capacity of the house was thus about doubled.

¡ At the election in 1916 a number of Republicans there who had known Governor Hughes when he visited the place a few years previously utterly refused to vote for him for President because they disliked his austerity and what they called his picayune demeanor.

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BRANDON

Twenty-odd years ago Brandon was a thriving little village, with a Cath- olic and a Protestant church, a pretentious hotel, a store or two, a large saw mill, and a considerable number of inexpensive dwelling houses, occu- pied for the most part by lumbermen and mill workers. Mr. Ducey, the head of the lumbering business, recognized from the first that the life of the place must end when he should finish cutting the merchant- able timber from his traet of thirty thousand acres of forest, which was going into lumber at the rate of a hundred and twenty-five thousand feet per day. Therefore, though he sold village lots at from twenty- five dollars to one hundred dollars apiece to such as insisted upon buying, his advice always to poor men who sought to purchase was against such investment, because their holdings must become practically valueless after a few years. The immediate locality was a pine barrens which had been ravaged by fire, and the land was impossible for profit- able agriculture; nor was there scenery or water to make it attractive as a pleasure resort. Mr. Ducey arrived here about 1881 from Mus- kegon, Mich., where he had made a fortune as a lumberman, and after leaving Brandon became interested in large enterprises in Mexico and on the Pacific coast. He was a hustling and capable business man, generous and whole-hearted, straightforward and honest, and a loyal friend. His operations at Brandon paid out handsomely, and when his supply of soft timber was exhausted he sold his lands to Paul Smith and William Rockefeller of Standard Oil fame. Mr. Ducey died in Michigan.

JOHN HURD AND HIS ENTERPRISES

John Hurd was a very different type. Possessed of large properties at Bridgeport, Conn., a flouring mill at Indianapolis, Ind., and other business interests elsewhere, he became associated in 1881 or 1882 with a Mr. Hotchkiss, also of Connecticut, and Peter Macfarlane, a thorough lumberman from Michigan, in investment in timber lands to an aggre- gate of nearly sixty square miles in the western part of Franklin county, and subsequently in mills and a railroad. After a few years his partners were bought out by him. But mills a dozen to twenty miles from a railroad could not be profitable, and so Mr. Hurd, always optimistic and too often venturesome, proceeded, first, to build a railroad in 1883 from Moira to St. Regis Falls, a distance of twelve miles, and then to extend it to Santa Clara and Brandon, and afterward to Tupper Lake- a total length of nearly seventy miles. The road was finished to Bran-

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don in 1886, and to Tupper Lake in 1889. Tupper Lake was then almost uninhabited, and no other railway touched it or was near it. Nor did Mr. Hurd want connection there with any other line, as he figured that without it he would have a monopoly of the haul of the lumber product of the entire region. On the other hand, it was his intention to extend his own road eventually from Moira to the St. Law- rence, and he expected also that it would do a large and profitable passenger business because affording an easy route into and out of the Adirondacks. For a long time the burden was carried by Mr. Hurd individually, though at a terrible cost in worry, interest charges and sacrifice of properties which he had to pledge as security for debts and loans. At length, as relief seemed to be assured through a bond issue, which would have discharged all of his obligations and left him with a fortune of several hundred thousand dollars in cash, there was a fail- ure by the merest margin to float the bonds, and personal judgments and mortgages having piled up in a very large aggregate, a receiver was appointed for the railroad, and Mr. Hurd was bankrupt. He died a few years later in Connecticut, his immense mills having fallen into other hands, and the railroad having been acquired by New York Cen- tral interests. It has been extended from Moira to the Dominion capital, with the St. Lawrence bridged near Cornwall, and is now operated as the New York and Ottawa.

But before disaster came Mr. Hurd had established large mills at St. Regis Falls, Santa Clara and Tupper Lake, and was also turning out great quantities of hemlock bark, cord wood for shipment to Mon- treal for fuel, and charcoal. He owned seventy-five thousand acres, almost all virgin forest, and it is readily seen that his scheme of work- ing it must have stripped it practically bare if continued for a few years, which would have been incalculably unfortunate for the country, however it might have worked out for Mr. Hurd himself.

SANTA CLARA

At Santa Clara there were the railroad machine shops and two mills, one with a capacity of only about twelve thousand feet per day, but the other turning out over a hundred thousand; and there was also a chair factory.

Besides his other multitudinous activities, Mr. Hurd became associated about 1890 with former Governor Alonzo B. Cornell in experimenting for the lighting of railway passenger cars by electricity generated by revolution of the car wheels. Governor Cornell had been a telegraph

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operator in his youth, and later study had made him a practical elec- trician. The experiments were prosecuted at Santa Clara with some degree of success.

EVERTON

Upon his withdrawal from the Hurd enterprises Mr. Macfarlane, with others, acquired sixteen thousand acres of timber lands in Santa Clara, Waverly and Duane, and built in 1886 a lumber railroad six miles in length from St. Regis Falls to a point that they called Ever- ton - the same where Mr. Sanford had a mill in 1831, and San- ford, Skinner & Holmes one two or three years before the civil war, and a mile up the river from where Robert Douglass, from Nor- folk, built a large circular, clapboard and shingle mill and store in 1883. Mr. Douglass ran his mill only one season, and sold to Macfarlane, Ross & Stearns. This firm built a combined water and steam mill on the Sanford site, operated both it and the Douglass mill for two or three years, and then sold to Henry and David Patton of Albany, who at once incorporated as the Everton Lumber Company, which failed a few years later. The tract had then been pretty well stripped of merchantable timber, and no further business was done at Everton. The mills and houses have utterly disappeared, and even the streets are so grown up to briars and bushes as scarcely to be distin- guishable. The property is now owned by the Brooklyn Cooperage Company, and the railroad has been extended eight miles farther east, over the lands of Reynolds Bros. in Brandon, from which the cooperage company has obtained large lots of hard-wood timber for its mills at St. Regis Falls. But the hard wood there has now been mostly cut, and probably within a year or two the railroad will become useless except for old iron.

Before, during and after the Douglass operations at Everton "Jerry " Sampson of Dickinson occupied the old Sanford mill house as a travel- ers' house and bar.

FIRES AT SANTA CLARA

At Santa Clara during the Hurd activities a considerable population gathered, but the number is now greatly diminished. The Hurd mills at this place were taken over and operated by the Brooklyn Cooperage Company until November, 1903, when a fire destroyed a storage shed containing large quantities of staves and a number of houses, involving a loss estimated at fifty thousand dollars. The mills were thereupon dismantled, the machinery of one of them removed to Tupper Lake by

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the Santa Clara Lumber Company, and the other to St. Regis Falls. In 1915 another fire swept away the railway machine shops, and these will not be rebuilt. Still another fire in 1915 burned two hotels. There thus remain practically no industries for the employment of men, and the place is not likely to have any future importance or growth. There are still a couple of stores, two churches or chapels and one hotel at Santa Clara. The population of the entire town, which exceeded two thousand in 1890, had decreased to 675 in 1915.

NEW LUMBERING METHODS

Until Mr. Ducey, Mr. Macfarlane and the others came from Michi- gan, lumbering operations throughout this section had been on only a modest. scale. Old methods had been employed, and a mill with a capacity of three or four million feet of lumber annually was deemed large. When it was reported that these men were to build a railroad principally for hauling their lumber product, old lumbermen in this section treated the matter with scornful incredulity, believing that the business would not justify the expenditure. But the new comers brought western methods with them, built mills of a size and perfection of equipment that amazed resident operators, introduced the practice of sawing instead of chopping the standing timber, and drove business with an energy and scope that had never been dreamed of locally.

ALMOST DESERTED HAMLETS

At Brandon as well as at Everton business enterprises and resi- dential occupation are wholly of the past, and the former village has only a single small family as inhabitants. The mill, the hotel, the stores, the dwelling houses, and even the church edifices that comprised the now deserted hamlet have all been torn down or burned with the exception of a single residence. Most of the demolition was at Mr. Rockefeller's expense, though the Catholic church building went to Santa Clara for the lumber that it contained, while the Protestant church was moved to Faust and is now the Presbyterian church at that place.

THE ROCKEFELLER PRIVATE PARK

William Rockefeller began buying lands extensively in the town of Santa Clara in 1896, made a private park of them, and built a summer home at Bay Pond, three miles south of Brandon. He soon sold to his son, William G. Mr. Rockefeller's first investment there was in the

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holdings of Patrick A. Ducey, amounting to about twenty-seven thou- sand acres, for which he paid fifty thousand dollars, and he has since made additional purchases until now he owns about seventy-two square miles, which include many streams and ponds, with game so well pro- tected that deer may be seen at almost any time on any part of the tract, and trout fishing at many points continues excellent. Improve- ments have been made from time to time at Bay Pond, where Mr. Rockefeller has his residence, though spending comparatively little time there himself. Members of his family, however, occupy the house through most of each summer season. The building (not as costly nor as large as many others of a similar character in the Adirondacks) is of wood, contains sixteen rooms, and the interior finish is in the nat- ural woods of the locality. In addition, there are a house for the family attendants, another of fifty rooms for the male employees, the railway station, and a number of barns, garages and other outbuildings, all of which are electrically lighted. The amount of Mr. Rockefeller's outlay here is not known, but, reckoning the price paid for lands, the cost of buildings and the expenditure in constructing and improving roads, beautifying the grounds, etc., must aggregate several hundred thousand dollars.

Fifteen to eighteen years ago a contention that arose between Mr. Rockefeller and Oliver Lamora attracted not merely local, but almost country-wide interest. Because Mr. Rockefeller was a millionaire and Mr. Lamora poor, there was a widespread disposition to regard the case as one of oppression and persecution. Naturally, Mr. Rockefeller, having the purpose of game protection and of preservation of the forest from fires, did not want settlers on lands that were bounded on all sides by his private park, nor trespassing hunters and anglers within the park itself. Thus he proceeded to buy the holdings of every one who could be induced to sell, offering fair prices as measured either by cost to the settlers or by any other test of value to them. To Mr. Lamora he offered twelve hundred dollars for property that had probably cost not to exceed five hundred dollars. Mr. Lamora not only refused to sell, but persisted in trespassing upon Mr. Rockefeller's lands and poaching in his preserve. Suits were instituted and prosecuted, and an intensely bitter feeling developed on the part of Mr. Lamora, and also upon the part of most men in this section who had grown up in the understand- ing that the forests were free to whomsoever might desire to hunt or camp in them, and the streams open also for fishing. But I could never comprehend that Mr. Rockefeller's intention and efforts to enforce his

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indisputable legal rights in his own property merited censure; and it seems impossible that a dispassionate consideration of the case could pronounce him at fault. After Oliver Lamora's death his son sold to Mr. Rockefeller for a thousand dollars the property for which the father had refused twelve hundred dollars.

Mr. Rockefeller employs as fire guards, game protectors and as help about his residence an average of something like seventy-five men throughout the year. His policy tends to increase the supply of game and also to lessen the likelihood of forest fires. John Redwood, super- visor of the town, is Mr. Rockefeller's superintendent, and does his work efficiently and satisfactorily to his employer, as well as with a courtesy and considerateness which make him popular with the local public.

CHURCHES

The Roman Catholic church at Brandon was incorporated in 1887, mainly through the activities of Rev. F. J. Ouellette of St. Regis Falls, and was known as the "Church of St. John the Evangelist, Buck Mountain." Because the parish had been divided, and the church building gone into disuse during the rectorship of Father J. E. Berard, the site was sold to Mr. Rockefeller in 1910 for forty dollars and obli- gation to fence the cemetery. The building was torn down for the lumber in it. The Protestant church at the same place was doubtless one of the Adirondack missions, as it does not appear ever to have been incorporated. . The date of the removal of the building to Faust was 1901.

The Church of Santa Clara, incorporated in July, 1905, with the bishop and vicar general of the diocese, Rev. Father Ferdinand Quellette, pastor, and John Dresye and Paul Lemieux as lay trustees, is still maintained as a mission of St. Ann's of St. Regis Falls, with Rev. Father Brault usually officiating, though services are held very irregularly, if at all, during the winter.

There is also an Episcopal mission at Santa Clara, attended of late by Rev. E. E. Hutchinson, of Brushton, but formerly by Rev. H. A. Barrett, of Malone. The building was erected during Mr. Hurd's activities, and largely through his instrumentality.

While there is no other regular church organization in the town, the Adirondack Presbyterian mission provides for holding services at Santa Clara during the summer season and fosters the maintenance at the same place of a Christian Endeavor Society. The services of these are

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held in the school house. John H. Gardner, a divinity student, was in charge during 1915.

VACATION HOME FOR WORKING GIRLS

As fine a benevolence as Stony Wold in Franklin, and organized upon much the same lines, is the Vacation Home for Working Girls at Santa Clara, established and maintained by the Working Girls' Vacation Society, the principal office of which is in New York city, and which has similar rest resorts at seven other places. The society is the outgrowth of the practical sympathy and generous contributions in time and money of women of high social standing and of wealth, and is wholly supported by voluntary contributions. It was incorporated in 1885, is unsectarian in its work, and, as donations have permitted, has extended its field of operations year by year. The home at Santa Clara was opened in 1895, and was made possible by the gift of two buildings there by the late George E. Dodge, of New York, and Mrs. Dodge has since bequeathed ten thousand dollars to the endowment fund of this branch of the society's work. The donations to the Santa Clara institution in 1915 amounted to over five thousand dollars, and girls who enjoyed the benefits of the home during that season contributed $480.50, or about one-twentieth of the cost of running the place. Such contributions, while not exacted, are not discouraged, as it is felt by the management that if the girls wish to pay and can afford to do so, they appreciate more the privilege enjoyed, besides helping to extend the benefits to others. " Hillcrest " was open for twenty weeks in 1915, and " Uplands " for thirteen weeks- fifty-eight girls having been cared for at the former, and sixty-five at the latter, for periods varying from four to twelve weeks each, " with great gain in weight and health." Almost all of theni were from New York city, and none was admitted until after a medical examination had been had. Tuberculous patients are taken, but only those having the disease in its incipient stage. Of the whole number cared for, one hundred and one had been inmates in previous years, and twenty-two were there for the first time. The two houses have a capacity of fifty-eight inmates, and the number present at any one time averages about forty. The entire cost of maintaining the home here during the season of 1915 was about nine thousand dollars, of which $1,086.90 was for railroad tickets, and $4,163.18 for fuel, ice, medical supplies and provisions. The explanation of the item of railroad fares is that even the transportation cost of such of the patients as are unable to pay themselves is met by the society up to the amount of ten dollars

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Historical sketches of Franklin county and its several towns, Part 56

Author: Seaver, Frederick Josel, 1850- [from old catalog] Publication date: 1918 Publisher: Albany, J. B. Lyon company, printers Number of Pages: 848

Author: Seaver, Frederick Josel, 1850- [from old catalog]
Publication date: 1918
Publisher: Albany, J. B. Lyon company, printers
Number of Pages: 848