USA > New York > Franklin County > Historical sketches of Franklin county and its several towns > Part 6
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HISTORY OF FRANKLIN COUNTY
Center which give academic instruction, though not in full course. The cause of education has never been neglected here, nor had to depend upon a stinted support. It will nevertheless not be questioned that there is abundant room for improvement in conditions and methods. The law of 1917, providing for the township instead of the old plan of district administration and support, while a well meant attempt to assure better facilities and to equalize tax burdens, was unpopular because burdensome in cost, and public sentiment compelled its repeal in 1918. But there will be no cessation of demand for adoption of some plan that will relieve the smaller and poorer districts from onerous expense, require dilapidated school houses to be abandoned or at least kept in decent repair, lead to the employment of better qualified teach- ers, and enable bright and ambitious pupils to pursue their studies more advantageously. A consolidation of all of the schools in a town into two or three or four, with provision for transportation at public expense of the children from all parts of the enlarged district to a cen- tral school, is probably not now feasible, but it is practically sure to be brought about eventually, and with the accomplishment educational opportunities will be greater, and the work of the public schools become more beneficent.
NEWSPAPERS
Publication of the first newspaper in the county, the Franklin Telegraph, was begun in Malone in 1820, and of the second, the Frank- lin Republican, in Fort Covington in 1827. The story of these and of other newspapers in the county is told in the several town sketches.
AN EARLY AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY
In 1820 an agricultural society was organized with Joseph Plumb of Bangor as president, Thomas Smith of Chateaugay and Asa Wheeler of Malone as vice-presidents, and John Wood of Malone as treasurer. While its premium list included but the smallest fraction of articles for which prizes are now provided, the enterprise as a whole had great merit, and might perhaps be profitably considered and in parts adopted by the management of our present popular and progressive society, especially with respect to the offering of prizes for best fields of crops and best farming generally. The amount distributed in premiums the first year was $106.50, wholly for animals, crops and a few manufac- tures. Of this total the State contributed $87, and in 1822 and again in 1823 the county gave $100. Committees were created to visit and
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FRANKLIN COUNTY
inspect the competing fields and farms. The premiums for stock were for the "likeliest bull," the " likeliest cow," etc., and for second of each. Some of the items were: Bull. $10; second, $1; yoke oxen, $8: steers, three years old, $5; two years old. $4; one year old, $3; milch cow, $4; pair swine, $4; breeding mare and colt, $4; acre of spring wheat, $8; of winter wheat, $8; of oats, 84; of peas, $5; of Indian corn, $8 ; half acre of flax and potatoes, $4 each. In subsequent years the amounts of some of these prizes were reduced, and the number of articles and the total offerings enlarged. A premium list was published in 1826, but the Franklin Telegraph gives no report of any fair held that year or afterward, so that it is presumable that the society then went out of existence. Of course there were no purses in any year for trials of speed, for probably there were no fast horses in all this section, and certainly there was no race track.
OTHER EARLY ENTERPRISES
Notwithstanding the collapse of the organization. probably in 1826, the movement was nevertheless typical of the spirit of enterprise and the striving for betterment that appears to have been all but unceasing on the part of the pioneers, who seemingly were animated by the con- viction that they must have the best of everything, and get it quickly. The Erie canal had been opened only four or five years when they sought construction of a waterway to unite the St. Lawrence and Lake Cham- plain, and the world's first steam railroad had been in operation for only a short time, and the first in New York barely opened, when they began organizing for one here - an amazingly presumptuous effort considering that the country was almost all a wilderness and very sparsely settled. Of course the canal was never obtained. though the State did make a survey for it, as told in the chapter on Transportation Develop- ment ; but the railroad came after twenty years of agitation - a much shorter period than that through which a later and richer generation strove to secure a competing line.
The first woolen factory in the county was built about 1828. the second about 1834. and the third in 1842 - all at Fort Covington - and a fourth at Malone in 1844. Fort Covington's woolen mills are all out of existence. while in Malone there are two. the entire product of both of which is manufactured at the mills into garments for men - affording employment to a couple of hundred hands, and together com- prising the town's most important industry. A cotton factory was
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HISTORY OF FRANKLIN COUNTY
erected and equipped at Malone in 1829, and operated until 1846, when it was burned. The first of the mills for making starch from potatoes was built in 1844 or 1845, and a quarter of a century later the industry had attained to large proportions, and was still growing. There were at one time forty such factories, and all prospered until the introduction of corn starch in immense quantities compelled them to close. The shipping demand for potatoes thirty or forty years ago was not what it has since become, and shippers would accept only limited quantities of carefully assorted stock. The starch factories were. therefore, the only market in distriets remote from a railroad for small potatoes and eulls, and for erops in excess of shippers' requirements. The industry was thus of great benefit to the farmers for a long time, but it dwindled after 1892, and was wholly abandoned after 1905.
CHANGED DATRYING CONDITIONS
The next important industry to be established was co-operative dairy- ing, the first creamery dating from 1869. In 1882 creameries had increased to twenty or more, with seventeen of them reporting an annual aggregate production estimated to exceed half a million dollars in value. In 1894 there were forty-two creameries. The shipping of milk from this section to New York had not then been begun. and the county's ont- put of butter must have been four million pounds or more annually. In 1902 thirty-nine creameries in the county reported to the State depart- ment of agriculture that they had made in that year 3,618 .: 16 pounds. and approximately equal quantities were reported for 1903 and 1904. Bangor was the biggest producer with :11,395 pounds. Malone next with 343.294. Bombay third with 354,000, and Burke fourth with 321.000. Chateaugay and Dickinson stood fifth and sixth respectively, each with an output of over 250.000 pounds. But the competition by the condensaries and shippers in recent years has decreased deliveries of milk to the creameries, and compelled many of the latter to close. Two or three have been changed into cheese factories, and a few have become merely gathering or skimming stations for such ereameries as continue to operate, but the larger number have gone out of existence completely. Only a dozen or fifteen in all of the county are now run- ning. Time was when these creameries earned for their patrons only sixty to seventy cents per hundred pounds of milk, and when the return reached a dollar per hundred it seemed so good fortune as to be almost incredible. But during the later months of 191; they paid to farmers a price nearly or quite fifty per cent. higher even for poor grades of
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FRANKLIN COUNTY
milk, and as much as $2.35 per hundred for milk that was rich in butter fat. Shipping of milk and cream from this section to New York and New England cities. which only a few years before would have been thought utterly impracticable, began in November, 1908, with the traffic handled by regular traine until the following May, when a special daily milk train was scheduled, and has been operated regularly ever since. The shippers paid $3.50 per hundred pounds for the better grades of milk in December, 1917, and in January, 1916, a still higher price, and naturally they get large quantities. This price is said to be equiva- lent to ninety cents or dollar butter. Of course the farmer; who are patrons of the creameries get the benefit of the sour milk, which is not inconsiderable with pork selling at twenty-odd cente per pound and veal calves at fifteen dollars per head; but even at that they realize appre- ciably less than those who deal with the shipping stations. Some of these latter convert their milk into cheese when their receipts run large and the milk demand in the cities falls off. The station at Chateaugay is being changed into a condentary at a cost of a quarter of a million dollars or more, and expects its receipts to reach 90.000 pounds of milk per day in the flush of the season. It has a contract with the government for its entire product for three years. In Burke also large improvements are in the course of making, and this establish- ment is hereafter to convert most of its receipts into candy, of the kind that the children call "life preservers." Other shipping stations in the county are located at Malone, Constable, Brushton and Moira. and, besides, there is a condensary at North Bangor and one at Fort Covington.
One effect of the changed condition, thus noted is seen in the fact that, whereas the county formerly sent considerable quantities of butter to city markets, it does not now supply its own needs, and home dealers have been dependent in large measure for their supplies upon St. Law- rence county and even upon districts as remote as Oklahoma and Nebraska. Do we need to wonder that butter is scarce and costly?
Just here it is interesting to note that notwithstanding the farmers secured enactment a few years ago of a law prohibiting institutions supported by taxation from using oleomargarine, butterine or any sub- stitute for butter other than a dairy product (which is estimated to entail an additional cost of a million dollars a year for maintenance) the farmers themselves are generally buying and using such substitutes in their own homes.
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HISTORY OF FRANKLIN COUNTY
THE HOP INDUSTRY
Ashbel B. Parmelee has told us that Rev. Stephen Paddock, Samuel Hyde and Isaac Parker were the first to raise hops in commercial quan- tities here, but without designating a date. It would be presumptuous to question the accuracy of any statement made by Mr. Parmelee applicable to Malone. but I am disposed to think that Alexander Walker of Westville was an earlier grower than any of the three named. Mr. Walker's first crop. raised in 1825, was 1.200 pounds, and he sold it in Montreal at fifty cents a pound. With these and possibly a few other exceptions. hop farming. at least on a large scale, began in the county about 1850. Silas A. Ferguson came here in that year from Otsego county, and was probably the first grower with considerable vards. and. as I recall statements by him. contracted his crops for ser- eral years at a shilling per pound, though his son, John J. Ferguson. thinks that the price was considerably less than that. Andrew W. Fer- guson. who had the largest yards in the county at one time. entered the field later. In 1864 mould and vermin destroyed the erop utterly, and in 1886 many yards were so struck by blight and mould that not a box was set in them. In still other years there have been similar visitations and damage. but not to so great an extent. No other erop is so widely and violently fluctuating in price. of which truth the best illustration is the record of 188 ?. when there were sales at as high as $1.20 per pound. while hardly more than a year later the same hops were a drug at five cents. The occasion for the wildest and highest market ever known was the destruction by blight of the larger part of the English crop, which created a strong demand for American hops for export. Franklin county's erop in that year was estimated at about 9,000 bales. and the market opened in September with offers of fifty cents per pound freely made: from that figure prices advanced by leaps and bounds until in December they reached $1.20. though my under- standing is that a dollar, or perhaps a few cents over, was the outside offer by any regular dealer. Growers sold in many instances all the way from perhaps sixty cents up to a dollar. but other growers and out- siders generally came to believe that the limit would be whatever a holder of the commodity might choose to ask. and a fever of specula- tion. always a curse in the business, seized upon growers, merchants. physicians and attorneys alike, who bought at or near the top for fur- ther advance. The market held strong through January. but fell off ten cents per pound or more in February. Growers and speculators
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FRANKLIN COUNTY
believed this break to have been brought about through a use of substi- tutes, while experienced dealers and the brewers, denying such prac- tices, declared that the excessive cost of hops had compelled brewing economies and adoption of new methods. It is certainly true that dollar hops led to the discovery that half the quantity per barrel of beer that had formerly been employed would serve all requirements ; and, besides this leverage for breaking the market, forced importations from Europe had effect in the same direction. In any case, prices continued to sag month by month in 1883 until June, when they tumbled to half a dollar, and thereafter continued to decline until in September they stood at only twenty cents for the new crop. By the end of the year the quotation for old hops of inferior quality was about five cents. The growers who had held their crops and the outside speculators suffered serious losses, and some of them were ruined. The business never recovered from the blow. In 1887 the county produced its record crop - estimated, with probable accuracy, at over 17,000 bales. Since that year there has been an almost continuous decrease both in the number and extent of the yards, and of course in the quantity of hops harvested. Formerly yards of twenty to thirty acres each were common in Bangor, Constable and Malone, and many were a good deal larger. Rob- ert Schroeder, a New York city hop merchant, set out yards in Duane of two or three hundred acres. and Jones & Lester, of Richmond Hill, Long Island, buying the Andrew Ferguson yards, and adding to them. became the largest producers in the county. It used to be reckoned that. including interest on investment, depreciation of poles and kilns. labor charges, sacking, etc., the cost of hops to the grower was about a shilling a pound. More often than not there was a time in every year when the offered price was high enough to pay a good profit, but it was by no means unusual for growers to refuse to sell until the price had fallen to below cost. In a number of years quotations were forty to fifty cents or more a pound, and in others as low as three or four cents. Thus growers were almost continually in a fever of optimistic expecta- tion or in the deeps of anxiety and gloom. Every now and then a farmer who might have placed himself on " easy street " by selling his crop when offered a good price would be wiped out for debt. while. on the other hand, a number would clean up enough on a single crop to pay the entire cost of their farms. The business was demoralizing at the best, for it induced extravagant purchases and habits of living. with expensive trading on credit: robbed parts of a farm to provide
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HISTORY OF FRANKLIN COUNTY
fertilizer for the acreage in hops; and caused neglect of other lines of agriculture, which, if less remunerative in some years, were yet surer bases for success and prosperity. The quantity of hops now grown in the county is probably about a thousand bales a year, and in 1917 sales were made at eighty cents per pound or better. Owing to the fact that there were so many small yards which the neglect or lack of means of the owners made almost barren, the Franklin county yield per acre has averaged only about two-thirds of that realized in Otsego and Madison counties ; and yet there have been a number of years in each of which the crop here put half a million dollars or more into the pockets of farmers.
CROPS TO WHICH THE COUNTY IS ESPECIALLY ADAPTED
Other principal farm products in the county are potatoes, hay, vege- tables and oats, with of course some rye, wheat, corn and berries. But soil and climate are specially adapted only to the four first named, and men qualified to judge who have made a study of the problem are con- vinced that cultivation of these, together with dairying, should engage chiefly the attention of our farmers. Potatoes and oats in particular are adaptable to the locality, the county ranking twenty-third in the State in potato acreage and tenth in total production, while in yield per acre it stands at the head, with 197 bushels. Gratifying as this third condition is, the results of prize contests suggest that with wise selection and treatment of seed, proper fertilizing and improved meth- ods of care and cultivation it is altogether practicable to better it. Each of four competitors secured a production in excess of 300 bushels per acre, and one of 373 bushels, or nearly twice the average, and equal at the high price in 1916-17 to $1,100 per acre. Surely, special effort that gives such results is amply compensatory, and the figures ought to stimulate every grower to increase his acreage yield. So far as can be judged, the prize winners had no particular advantage in regard to soil over the generality of farmers, and their successes would seem, therefore, to have been attained through more intelligent and more thorough methods and more intensive cultivation. Again, it has been demonstrated that Franklin county stock is very desirable for seed in southern sections, since it produces earlier, when prices are high, and is also more productive. Thus opportunity waits only for develop- ment to afford our farmers a vet better potato return than can be realized from sales of the product for food.
As for oats, Franklin ranks about fifteenth among the State's coun- ties in aggregate production, and eighth in yield per acre, which aver-
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FRANKLIN COUNTY
ages better than 30 bushels - the State's average being 26 bushels. Here also contests for prizes reveal strikingly larger possibilities, as one competitor in the county harvested 5? bushels and another 72 bushels per acre.
Vegetables generally thrive under due and intelligent attention, and with the Adirondack hotels affording a convenient market the growing of them ought to be profitable.
Though the county is supposed commonly not to comprehend advan- tages for corn production, nevertheless census data show that the average yield per aere in 1909 was 33 bushels, or only two bushels under the State average, and actually in excess of the Ohio average. In contests here for prizes production ran from 54 to 85 bushels per aere, and in similar competitions in Ohio, in which 2,000 boys and girls were the partici- pants, an average of 80 bushels was reached, with a record of 153 bush- els by one of them as against the State's average of 30 bushels. It is not presumed to advise more general attention by Franklin county farmers to corn, but it certainly is permissible to emphasize that not only in respect to this crop, but also all others, there ought to be earnest effort to increase the production per acre. The growth of corn for ensilage has increased largely within a few years, and I understand with great benefit to the dairy interests.
Though it may be questioned if census data are quite accurate except in items of mere enumeration, still they probably approximate actual conditions and values, and it seems worth while to give here extracts from the census of 1910 as they relate to Franklin county :
Number of farms
3.675
Value of farms
$8,088,515
Value of all farm property.
17.751.227
Value of domestic animals, poultry and bees
2.748, 589
Value of horses
1,137,482
Value of swine
112.525
Value of poultry
60.443
Value of all crops in 1909
2. 964. 160
Value of all cereal crops in 1909.
544.121
Value of hay and forage crops in 1909
1.320.419
Value of vegetable crops in 1909 ..
591,627
Value of fruit and nut crops in 1909
40.515
Value of all other crops in 1909.
467,478
Value of poultry and eggs in 1909
199.882
Value of oat crop in 1909 (756,302 bushels )
373, 152
Value of dairy products in 1909. including milk sold.
1,174,737
Realized from sale of animals in 1909
448,823
Realized from animals slaughtered in 1909
176. 565
Production of potatoes in 1909, bushels
1,433.761
Production of corn in 1909, bushels
144.646
Production of hops in 1909, pounds.
474.515
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HISTORY OF FRANKLIN COUNTY
Production of strawberries in 1909, quarts.
66,283
Production of raspberries and longberries in 1909, quarts. 22,260
Number or horses in 1910 9,262
Number of sheep in 1910
5,223
Number of neat cattle in 1910.
46, 10S
Number of dairy cows in 1910.
28.964
HORSES AND OTHER STOCK
If Franklin county has fewer high-class thoroughbred cattle, rela- tively or actually, than some others, there has been at least a remark- able improvement in dairy herds here during the past fifty or sixty years. Grades average incomparably better than formerly, and there is considerable thoroughbred stock of pronounced excellence. Cow testing associations have been formed within recent years, and are giving valuable service in weeding out animals that do not earn their keep. It ought to be superfluous to add that only along these lines can dairy- ing be brought to pay what ought to be expected and realized. All of the creameries and milk-shipping stations regulate their prices by butter-fat tests, and it is waste of labor and feed to keep animals that do not bring fair returns. The range in this regard is startlingly wide, one series of tests in 1917 having shown a difference of $113.44 in profit over feed between the ten best and the ten poorest cows in all the herds tested. Here and there a farmer assumes to scoff at the value of such tests, and insists upon proceeding in the old blind way, but in so doing he unquestionably loses money.
The locality used to be famous for fine single and matched driving horses, of which the Morgans were for a long time the most numerous and the best, and then the Phil. Sheridan and the Hambletonian strains (the latter through Wilkemont) came to predominate. Buyers from New England and New York city were accustomed thirty and forty years ago to visit the county every summer, and sales of matched driv- ers, and now and then of a single fast roadster or one that gave indica- tion of probable track speed, were common at from $500 to $1,500 per pair, with single horses fetching proportionate and occasionally even larger amounts. Items were not infrequent in the local newspapers of the period in question to the effect that this or that dealer had shipped horses during the week from Malone or Chateaugay for which he had paid local owners five, six or seven thousand dollars. But now matched drivers are to be found here hardly at all, nor is there demand for them - breeding having run during the last few years to heavy draft horses, but with every kind decreasing in numbers - doubtless because
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FRANKLIN COUNTY
automobiles have become so numerous. Reminiscences bearing upon some of the better known horses of old times, when a three-minute gait seemed almost as fast as 2.10 does now, are interesting. At one of the first fairs of the Franklin County Agricultural Society in the fifties a horse owned by Sidney W. Gillett trotted in 3.06, and a few years later a Black Hawk stallion, called Flying Cloud, which was owned by Gardner A. Child, and one called Farmer Boy, owned by William Lowe, raced in about 2.50 at a fair, which was thought at the time to be wonderfully fast. Flying Cloud won. He was classed as an exceptionally fine animal, and left a good deal of superior stock, some of which developed speed. In 1864 and 1865 Lady Franklin, owned by Hiram Russell of Fort Covington, proved herself a great campaigner. Her best record was 2.31. Three or four years later A. R. Flanagan's Dutch Girl came to the front with a record of 2.28 or 2.30, and because she was so good a performer and so attractive in other respects Governor Sprague of Rhode Island paid $10,000 for her. Other horses owned locally, in the eighties, which could trot in 2.30 to 2.35, and were highly regarded, included James Law's Draco Chief, Samuel B. Skinner's White Cloud, Frank T. Ferguson's Frank, and Thomas W. Creed's Phil. Sheridan, Jr.
Quiz was bred by H. D. & R. C. Thompson about 1892, and took a record of 2.32 as a two-year-old on a half-mile track, which was then con- sidered very fast for a colt of that age. She afterward gained a record of 2.1934, and was sold to Colonel Kip of New York for $3,000, with $500 to be added on certain conditions. She was one of the hand- somest horses ever bred in Northern New York, won a blue ribbon in the roadster class at the New York Horse Show, and was sold by Colonel Kip to James Gordon Bennett, who took her to France, and I think raced her in Europe. Other well known horses in this period and later include R. C. Thompson's Paul Smith (2.181/1) and Jack Harding (2.1114) ; L. L. Sayles's L. L., who won several races in the grand circuit in good time; Fred O'Neil's Joe (2.191/4), who never failed to win but one race in his class; Aubreon, bred by H. D. Thompson, and owned by Julian D. Earle and Eugene E. Lowe; Fred Betters's Brescia (2.0614) ; H. D. Thompson's Brione (2.083/4) ; and Howe Constantine (2.071/4), owned by Walter J. Mallon. The last named is of fine conformation, and always a dependable performer.
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