Historical sketches of Franklin county and its several towns, Part 70

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

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For the purposes of this sketch it is not essential to recite the particu- lars of the operations in the vicinity of Fort Erie (near Buffalo), nor those directed from Vermont against Pigeon Hill, and the narrative will be restricted to events and incidents in Northern New York, with proper references to Canada's course in the matter.

Anticipating an invasion, the Dominion authorities placed troops at frontier points as early as November, 1865, and kept them on duty throughout the winter. The editor of the Gleaner, published at Huntingdon, is authority for the statement that at that place, as well as at many other frontier points, a mounted patrol was assigned to the duty of watching at night the roads leading from the States. In March, 1866, a call was made for ten thousand Canadian volunteers, and four- teen thousand responded. Fenian operations, however, suffered delay, and, believing that danger of attack had passed for the time, the volunteers were allowed to return to their homes in April, and vigi- lance was relaxed for a period of about six weeks, during which all reports of a probable Fenian advance were received with incredulity. But on the morning of the second of June a messenger arrived at Huntingdon from Chateaugay, bearing the news that the evening trains of Friday had passed loaded with Fenians for Malone. Simultaneously officers had come from Montreal post haste with orders to get the volun- teers under arms at once. These responded with alacrity, but no rifles were to be had at the moment, so that had the Fenians advanced promptly they would have encountered practically no resistance. At Huntingdon, ordinary work was all suspended, and intense excitement ruled. Guards were placed at the bridges, the roads were continually patrolled, and a fortification was built to command the Trout River highway, with can- non placed to command the approach. Companies of soldiers came from Ormstown and other neighboring villages, and even from Montreal. The weather changed suddenly to heavy rains, and the roads became quagmires. This condition and the arrival of troops would in themselves have thwarted any successful invasion after the second or third of June. But the fact existed that an indescribable anxiety and · suspense pre- vailed all along the border. Several Fenians are said to have penetrated in disguise as far as Huntingdon, where some of them were apprehended and taken as prisoners to Montreal. On the other hand, many Cana- dian farmers moved their families into camps in the woods, and even brought them over the frontier to find refuge with American friends.

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The initial acts at Malone were the announcement in March that Edward J. Mannix of Malone, who had been a captain in the civil war, had been commissioned a Fenian colonel, and that he had enlisted forty or fifty men. A subscription was started in Malone to buy a flag for the command. Two thousand muskets packed in boxes, labeled " machinery " and addressed to Dennis F. Mannix, were seized by the federal authorities at Rouses Point, but are believed to have been restored to him subsequently, as, after the trouble was over, " Colonel " Mannix advertised twelve hundred and eighty Springfield rifles for sale, which were understood at the time to be the same that had been seized at Rouses Point.

During the first and second days of June Fenians to the number of two thousand to twenty-five hundred came pouring into Malone by train. They were under the command of General M. J. Heffernan, a physical giant, with Generals Murphy and O'Reilly, both civil war veterans, asso- ciated with him. (Mr. O'Reilly had been formerly a resident of Fort Covington, where he had elerked in the store of William Hogle.) Both Murphy and O'Reilly were assiduous in effort to weld the men into a fighting force. They camped as a body on the fair grounds, with many scattered individuals sleeping in barns as they could find the chance ; and, having no food or sufficient supplies, were dependent in the main upon the generosity of residents for maintenance. Little or no restraint was imposed upon the individual units, who, at their pleasure, frequented the business section of the village both by day and by night. Of course there was a good deal of nervous apprehension lest they engage in pilfer- ing or even set fire to property through carelessness. I recall that as a boy I and another slept for a number of nights in the building on the corner of Main and Catherine streets, as a precaution against the latter possible danger. But so large a body of men not subject to rigid discipline never carried themselves under anything like similar condi- tions more circumspectly nor with greater deeorum save for the following single exception : William C. Sylvester, N. J. McGillivray and a Dr. MaeIntosh of Cornwall or Lancaster visited Malone as a matter of curiosity. Their dress and general appearance actually shouted their nationality, and the Fenians not unnaturally spotted them as spies. A wilder scene than that which instantly followed in front of the old Miller House, which stood about on the site of the present Hotel Flanagan, I never saw in Malone. Hundreds of crazed Fenians surged here and there, all striving violently to reach and strike these Canadians. The Fenian officers had little control over the mob, but nevertheless

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mingled vigorously in it, and sought strenuously to quiet it and to rescue the men who were the objects of its wrath and fury. Dr. MacIntosh escaped practically unhurt, and I am told hid for hours under a lounge in the law office of the late William P. Cantwell. Mr. Sylvester's injuries were not severe. Mr. McGillivray was at length hustled out of the crowd, led up the stairway on the outside of the hotel on the east, and taken into the passenger station, then in course of construction. He was secreted in the attic of the south tower, and remained there until midnight, when he was guided to the residence of Colonel Joel J. Seaver on Pearl street, where his wounds were dressed, and he and Mr. Syl- vester put to bed. A worse battered man than Mr. McGillivray I never saw. Visualization of him remains with me after the lapse of half a century. Not only was his face horribly discolored, but it appeared to be literally raw from chin to forehead. His team was sent in the morn- ing down the Constable road a mile or two, and he and Mr. Sylvester were taken in a two-seated carriage by Colonel Seaver to the point where their own rig had been dispatched. The Canadians occupied the rear seat, and Colonel and Mrs. Seaver the seat in front. With curtains up, the Canadians were fairly well screened against street scrutiny, and were not recognized.

There was no advance from Malone upon Canada in 1866. The Fenians came without arms or equipment, which they expected to find awaiting them. But all along the border the United States authorities had intercepted and seized muskets, ammunition, etc., in immense quan- tities, and even the fiery but deluded men were not so foolhardy as to undertake war with naked and empty hands. General Meade had ordered the United States marshal at Watertown to seize and hold two carloads of arms that were on their way to Malone. The first part of the order was executed, but the Fenians overcame the marshal's force, and, manning the train themselves, continued it on its way. It was stopped at DeKalb, however, and the arms again taken into custody, and this time held. Meanwhile the officers at Malone fretted and stormed, and, upon the arrival of General Meade with a thousand United States regulars on Sunday morning, June 3d, became utterly discouraged. On June 9th General Meade issued an order commanding the Fenian forces to desist from their enterprise and disband. The order in question char- acterized the movement as "now hopeless," and declared that if not complied with promptly a sufficient body of regulars would be employed to enforce obedience. A number of the leaders were required to give bonds for observance of our neutrality laws, and many desertions by the

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rank and file occurred. Transportation to their homes was furnished by General Mcade to all who applied for it, and at once Malone became as quiet and as empty of strangers as it had been a month before.

Over twenty prisoners were made at one or another point in Canada, and were sentenced to be hung. The sentences were, however, com- muted to life imprisonment, though a few executions did occur in England or Ireland.

During the ensuing four years rumors of another contemplated invasion circulated at frequent intervals, but it was not until the early spring of 1870 that the second movement was definitely determined upon and arranged. This time the army was not to depend upon the arrival of equipment simultaneously with itself, and guns, ammunition, axes, picks, intrenching tools and stores had been forwarded weeks or even months in advance, though the commissariat was again inadequate, and consisted only of a few barrels of pork and hard-tack. The supplies had been received in Malone and at other places in the county by local lead- ers, who caused them to be secreted in barns or outbuildings of friendly farmers in the vicinity until they should be wanted. Ardent young Irish lads were enlisted to haul the stuff from railway points to the selected hiding places, and many a man now living here who has reached the age of sixty-eight or seventy years could tell to-day where and how he did the work. Chateaugay, Fort Covington and Hogansburgh, next to Malone, were the principal assembling points for arms, which, when the time arrived, were hauled to Trout River.

Malone was again chosen as one of the principal places from which the invasion should procced - the plan having been to rush a force into Canada, where it was to intrench, and await reinforcements. Thus the danger of interference by United States authorities was to be escaped. Accordingly as the squads which were to be marshaled into an army reached Malone they made no camp here, as they did in 1866, but at once upon arrival hurried on to Trout River, eleven miles distant on the horder ; and where their equipment had been hauled by night, and was awaiting them. At Trout River they made temporary camp on the 'arm of George Lahey, a half mile south from the hamlet, but on May 25th advanced, three hundred strong, each man furnished with fifty rounds of ammunition, into Canada. Of course spies and secret agents had informed the Dominion authorities of what was afoot, and five thousand Canadian militiamen had been called out for defense of the country. None reached Huntingdon, however, until May 26th, so that the place was undefended except by about a hundred and fifty men,

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almost untrained and not well armed. A vigorous advance on May 25th, it was felt at Huntingdon, must certainly have succeeded in capturing the village, but a day later more than a thousand regulars had arrived from Montreal, supported by artillery, of which the Fenians had none.

The invading force of the 25th of May is reported to have penetrated the enemy country to a distance of about three miles. Choosing a strong natural position, on the Donnelly farm, a mile north of Holbrook's, a drainage ditch was utilized for a rifle pit, and the entire day was spent in constructing breastworks of rails and logs. While in Canada some of the Fenians stopped at Holbrook's and evinced a disposition to loot the store, but finally compromised with the proprietor upon his giving them forty pounds of tobacco. They levied also upon the farmers of the vicinity for food, one farmer having been compelled to serve break- fast for a party of eighteen, and fowls having been confiscated wherever found.

On May 26th, probably by reason of reinforcements having failed to join them and also because of discouragement due to the repulse of a similar movement near St. Albans, the invaders retired to the south of the international boundary, and again went into camp on the Lahey farm. Further arrivals to the number of about five hundred came on May 27th, whereupon Canada was once more entered, and the grounds prepared the day before reoccupied and strengthened. A contemporaneous account represents that the ditch which was to serve as a trench or riffe pit was in front of a hop field defended by a breastwork of rails and logs, with a stout barricade across the highway, and that the Fenian line rested on the river on one side and on a dense wood on the other -- a position so skillfully chosen that five hundred resolute men properly trained and adequately officered ought to have been able to hold it against thousands. General Starr and General Gleason were in command. The Canadians, numbering upward of a thousand, attacked with dash and bravery, and after the shortest of engagements the Fenians abandoned their works and fled in great disorder. They fired only a single full volley when the Canadian advance began, though scattering shots continued for a few minutes, all of which were aimed so high that the bullets passed over the heads of the attacking force, and even cut the tops of the hop poles in the field through which the Canadians were charging. The Canadian firing was a little better sustained, but must have been almost as poorly aimed, as the casualties were insignificant. The pursuit continued energetically to the border, where the junior colonel (McEachern) in command of the Canadians was quite insistent upon following the fleeing enemy south

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of the line, but the senior commanded the bugles to sound " cease firing." and peremptorily forbade any of his men to set foot on United States territory. Thus the battalion came to a halt, with a parting salutation of three rousing British cheers.

The routed and panic-stricken Fenians poured along the main street of Tront River and through yards and fields to their former camp, whence they continued their flight even to Malone- many of them throwing away their arms and accontrements and even clothing ; many others stopping here and there at farm houses to barter their guns for food; and a few still in possession of their arms upon reaching Malone.

On May 28th. while the returned Fenians were in camp on the fair grounds, two of their officers addressed them in advocacy of another advance, but, discouraged and hungry, the men were not eager for adop- tion of the suggestion, and, besides, United States regulars to the num- ber of a thousand arrived the next morning, and would have suppressed any such undertaking. Meantime the Canadians had gone into camp in the vicinity of the place of engagement, but a part of them were with- drawn that very day, and on the 31st the last of them were released from service.

There were no Canadian casualties in the Trout River battle. Three or four Fenians were wounded, and one was made prisoner.

Current comment in Malone by men of military experience was at the time that the rank and file of the Fenians were excellent material for soldiers, and that except for the incompetency of the officers and a total lack of discipline a far better showing might have been made.

The whole number of Fenians in Malone in 1870 was probably not more than a thousand, and their conduct in town was orderly. The United States regulars here were accompanied by General Meade, General McDowell, General Hunt, General Ingalls and other officers of high rank.

Several of the Fenian officers, including Captain Mannix of Malone, were arrested for violation of the neutrality law, were afterward indicted, tried and convicted at Canandaigua, and were sentenced to imprison- ment. A few months later all were pardoned by the President. The United States did not upon this occasion furnish transportation to the Fenians to their homes - many having paid their own fare at a reduced rate, and others having been transported at the expense of the State of New York.

The Britannica says that in 1866 Great Britain complained that no real effort was made, or even disposition manifested, on the part of the

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United States government to enforce the neutrality law; and the same work is authority for the statement that the Fenian inspector-general in 1870 was in reality a secret agent of the British government. This officer claimed to have distributed fifteen thousand stand of arms and almost three million rounds of ammunition among trusted men of the organization between Ogdensburg and St. Albans.

The references that have been made to informers and seeret agents mingling among the Fenians undoubtedly rest upon a solid basis of faet. An eminent Canadian has told the writer recently that he has absolute personal knowledge that a member of the Canadian parliament served his government in such capacity, journeying into this country, and frequenting saloons and other places where there was thought to be opportunity to gather information. These facts revive memory con- eerning the murder of George Seabury of Chateaugay in Malone in 1867. Mr. Seabury was a graduate of Franklin Academy, and was at the time home from Amherst College. He was found at daylight dead in the street in front of the present salesrooms of Eldredge & Mason, the base- ment of the structure then standing on the premises having been then occupied by Edward Dobbins as a saloon. Letters and a purse on his person were undisturbed, but pennies and other articles in his trousers pockets were almost falling out, as though he had been carried up-stairs feet first. There were contusions on his face and forehead, and a bullet had pierced his heart. No evidence could be discovered to justify arrests, though one dissolute character did elaim when intoxicated to have wit- nessed the shooting, but as soon as sober repudiated his story. It was the general impression at the time that Mr. Seabury had been shot in the saloon, and his body carried under cover of darkness to the street - such impression having been based upon the assumption that he had been found by the Fenians to be a spy in the pay of the British govern- ment. Whether that view was or was not correct no one here knew or yet knows with certainty.

The Fenian organization practically disappeared within twenty-five years of its founding, and no agitation for an Irish invasion and eon- quest of Canada has occurred in the past forty years or more.

CHAPTER XXX ELEAZER WILLIAMS

Was There " a Bourbon Among Us?"

The eldest son of the king of France came first to bear the title of Prince of Dauphine or the Dauphin in 1349 by reason of the fact that the last independent lord of Dauphine bequeathed the principality in that year to the grandson of the then king of France upon condition that the crown prince should always bear the title and govern the prov- ince. The condition as to governing was not long observed, that func- tion having been taken over by the sovereign. The title, however, continued until 1832, when it was abolished.

The second son of Louis XVI. and of Marie Antoinette, an elder brother having died in infancy, was seized and confined in the prison of the Temple August 10, 1792, and given into the keeping of a brutal cobbler named Simon, between whom and the Committee of Safety this conversation is said to have occurred : " What is to be done to this young wolf? Carry him away ?" "No." "Kill him ?" "No." "Poison him ?" " No." "What then ?" "Get rid of him !" This last answer was interpreted by Simon to be a direction to so treat the prince that his constitution would be broken and his mind destroyed, with the con- sequence that death must ensue, and yet seem to be due to natural causes, or at least making it possible so to represent. Such would prob- ably have been the certain outcome had not Simon obtained a more remunerative assignment before his work had been finished. Possibly it was in fact the issue. It is undisputed that the Dauphin continued to remain a prisoner in the Temple at least until June 1, 1795, deprived of decent surroundings, existing in uncleanliness, filth and foul air, and suffering beatings and the harshest possible treatment generally. Whether he died in the Temple June 8, 1795, or a diseased and dying boy of about his age, taken from a hospital, was substituted for him, while he was secretly removed to another room in the Temple and kept concealed until opportunity could be found to spirit him out of the building and out of France, is and probably will continue always to be a matter of dispute. The court and government authorities maintain the former contention, but from the first so much of a mystery was made of various phases of the affair, and so many points left unexplained and

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in contradiction, that opinion has been in doubt, and perhaps inclined as a whole to the latter view. The report of the autopsy is itself unsatis- factory, since it affords no proof of a conclusive character that the body examined was identified by competent and trustworthy witnesses as that of the prince. Thus his own sister, though confined in the Temple at the time, was not called to view the corpse. Others who had been connected in various relations with the prince from time to time died suddenly, and in circumstances which led to the charge that they had been put out of the way by official direction because they might make inconvenient and disturbing disclosures. Four distinct places have been named as his sepulture, and the exact spot has certainly never been marked. Yet further, it is charged that a government order was issued at the time, and sent to all parts of the kingdom, to arrest any travelers bearing with them a child of apparently about eight years of age, as there. had been an escape of royalists from the Temple; and it is of record that the convention in 1794 passed a decree that "the committee of government should devise some means of sending the son of Louis out of the territories of the republic." It is also said that when, in the reign of Louis XVIII., and by his direction, masses were said for the repose of the souls of those members of the Bourbon family who perished during the revolution, the name of the Dauphin was omitted while the names of all the others were included - from which it is argued that Louis XVIII. must have known that the Dauphin was yet alive.

It appears to be fairly certain that there was a death of a boy in the Temple on June 8, 1795, who was the Dauphin or one who was made to personate him, and who was sought by the authorities to be made to appear to have been he. Out of these conflicting representations has grown a mass of contention, speculation and claims filling many vol- umes, developing litigation, and resulting in more than forty different persons having asserted and attempted to demonstrate their identity with the Dauphin. The one of these who is generally regarded as having established the strongest case was one Naundorf, but the particular claim- ant most interesting to Americans, and with whom alone this paper is con- cerned, was the man known as Eleazer Williams, who died at St. Regis or Hogansburgh August 28, 1858, after having passed his whole life, at least from early youth, with the Indians as an Indian.

But before proceeding to unfold the amazing story of outrageous deprivation of his rights or of an imposture not less astonishing, let the facts that are indisputably known concerning Eleazer Williams be stated. Nothing actually authentic as to his life prior to about 1800, unless his

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own statements be accepted as such, is ascertainable. If an Indian, there is not even a record of his birth, and it is certain only that he passed in youth as the son of Thomas Williams of Caughnawaga, and was one of a family of twelve children. Thomas Williams was the grandson of Eunice Williams, and the son of an English surgeon named Williams. Eunice Williams was the daughter of a Presbyterian clergyman of Deer- field, Mass., who was captured by the Indians in 1204, taken to Caugh- nawaga, grew to womanhood there, and married an Indian. Another maternal ancestor of Thomas is reputed to have had French blood in her veins. Eleven of Thomas Williams's children were unmistakably Indian in appearance, while Eleazer is claimed by many to have resem- bled strikingly the Caucasian type, of which fact much has been made in the attempt to prove him the son of a king of France, and not the natural child of Williams, but only an adoption.

About the year 1800 Eleazer Williams was sent to a school at Long Meadow, Mass., where, and at West Hampton in the same State, and at other places in New England, he remained in the pursuit of his studies until 1812, when he was engaged by the United States to mingle with the St. Regis Indians, and seek to hold them loyal to this country in its war with Great Britain. Later he was appointed superintendent general of the northern Indian department, and was at the head of a corps of scouts and rangers. He participated in several engagements, and was severely wounded at the battle of Plattsburg in 1814. In 1816 he was made a lay reader in the Episcopal Church, and located at Oneida, this State, as a missionary to the Indians. He remained at Oneida until 1822, when the Oneida tribe was persuaded to sell its lands in New York, and remove to a reservation in the vicinity of Green Bay, Wis., where he accompanied them and continued his ministry. Mr. Williams had at first opposed the Oneida sale, but finally acquiesced in it. After- ward it was insinuated, though apparently without adducing any proof, that at the instance of land grabbers, and for a price, he had influenced the Indians to make the sale. In 1826 he was admitted to deacon's orders in the Episcopal Church; Rev. Amos C. Treadway, who was at one time rector of the Episcopal church in Malone, was one of the officiat- ing clergymen at this ordination. Mr. Williams continued his rela- tions as a missionary with the Oneidas at Green Bay until 1850, though for a large part of the time his services were hardly more than nominal, and frequently he was absent for considerable periods. His missionary stipend was withheld because of inattention and neglect, and his minis- terial irregularities caused him to be called to account both by the bishop

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Historical sketches of Franklin county and its several towns, Part 70

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