USA > New York > Warren County > Queensbury > History and biography of Washington county and the town of Queensbury, New York > Part 12
USA > New York > Washington County > History and biography of Washington county and the town of Queensbury, New York > Part 12
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BIOGRAPHY AND HISTORY
of fire, as the water works cannot furnish an adequate supply.
The early water supply was by the aqueduct of 1828, and a later source of supply was the three reservoirs receiving the waters of Smith's and Adam's ponds.
The Whitehall gas works were started in 1860. Hall's opera house was opened in 1875, and various public improvements have been made since then.
The pioneer church of Whitehall is the Whitehall Methodist Episcopal church, or- ganized in 1822. The church was organized under Rev. Philo Ferris, and a house of wor- ship was erected in 1832 on Church street. This church has since been remodelled and improved.
Trinity Episcopal church was organized about 1834, and a church edifice was erected in 1837, on Division street. A second church was built in 1843 on Church street, and their third church edifice, a fine structure, was erected in 1866, on the west side of Church street, at a cost of thirteen thousand dollars.
The First Baptist church of Whitehall was formally organized July 15, 1840, with ten members : W. W. Cooke, Hearty C. Cooke, Stephen N. Bush, Salome Bush, Henry J. Day, Lester Leach, Mindwell Leach, Mrs. Phebe Blinn, Laura Chalk, and Mrs. Jane Stephens. There were meetings held as early as 1838, and after the church was organized it bought the Episcopal church on Division street. That building was burned in 1874, and the second house of worship was erected in 1876 on the east side of the creek.
The Catholic church of Our Lady of Angels was organized at the house of Antoine Renois as Saint Anthony's church. A church build- ing was erected in 1841, in what is now Saunder's street, and when that highway was opened in 1867, the congregation, being large, divided into two parts, the English and the French. The English part erected their pres- ent handsome church in 1870, at a cost of thirty thousand dollars.
Notre Dame De La Victoire church was organized by the French catholics of Saint Anthony's church in 1868, and the same year they purchased the second Episcopal house of worship for a church, at a cost of nearly four thousand dollars.
The banking institutions of Whitehall have always been safe and reliable. The Bank of Whitehall was chartered in 1829, and became a national bank May 4, 1865, with H. G. Bur- leigh, president, and A. C. Sawyer, cashier. The First National bank of Whitehall was organized February 22, 1864, with A. H. Gris- wold, president, and William Keith, cashier. The Commercial bank of Whitehall went into operation August 15, 1841, and continued until State bank circulation was taxed by the United States. TheBank of Whitehall was char- tered in 1873, and on March 12, 1875, became the Merchants' National bank of Whitehall.
The manufacturing interests of the village have never been what they should be, as the falls of Wood creek furnish fine water power. Wait's ingrain carpet factory, that run from 1848 until destroyed by fire in 1864, was the earliest manufacturing of any importance run by this water power. The most important in- dustry succeeding Wait's has been the saw and planing mill plant of W. W. Cook & Son, which has been twice destroyed by fire and twice rebuilt.
Education in the village of Whitehall has been properly cared for by its public spirited citizens. The earliest recollected school was. in 1814, and the next year the village became one of the districts into which the town was divided. The public school system is well sustained at the present time. It was organ- ized in 1866, as Whitehall Union free school. In 1878 the buildings occupied were Central High school, on Pierce's knoll, costing twenty thousand dollars, and Wheeler avenue, Bell, and Adams houses. The want for academic education at home for nearly twenty years was met by the Whitehall academy, which ran from 1848 to 1865.
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The population of the village in 1870 was four thousand three hundred and twenty-two, composed of three thousand one hundred and thirty-six native and one thousand one hun- dred and eighty-six foreign inhabitants. There were four thousand two hundred and seventy- three white and forty-nine colored people. In 1880 the population was four thousand two hundred and seventy, a slight decrease in a decade, but the manufacturing power and transportation facilities of Whitehall village should give it wealth, population, size and importance in the years of the twentieth cen- tury to come. The population in 1890 was four thousand four hundred and thirty-four.
TOWN OF WHITEHALL.
The town of Whitehall is bounded on the north by the State of Vermont ; on the east by Hampton ; on the south by Granville and Fort Ann; and on the west by Fort Ann and Dresden.
The surface is rolling in the center and east, but in the west is hilly and becomes moun- tainous about the head of Lake Champlain. The drainage is by Wood creek and Pawlet, or Mettowee river into Whitehall harbor and the head of Lake Champlain.
The town of Whitehall was patented to Maj. Philip Skene, by royal grant, on March 13, 1765, as the township of Skenesborough. No trace however can be found of any town organization until 1778, and eight years later, in 1786, the town was reorganized under its present name of Whitehall. The western part of Whitehall is historic ground, where the earth almost constantly felt the tread of march- ing and warring hosts for nearly two centuries. The hideously painted savage bands, the white and blue uniformed regiments of France, the red coated battalions of Great Brittain, and the yellow and blue half clothed Continentals, alternately advanced and retreated over its hills and through its valleys, while the whir of arrows, the rattle of musketry and the boon of cannon mingled with the charging cheer and the terrific war-whoop often made strange
and fearful music on its waters, and through the lone depths of its great forests. The his- tory of these past scenes of bloodshed and marching armies have been related in the general history, and our attention now will be entirely confined to the settlement and growth of the town.
The twenty-four patentees associated with Skene were: John Maunsel, Thomas Moncrief, John and Nathaniel Marston, Hugh and Alex- ander Wallace, Lawrence Read, Thomes White, John Gill, Robert Alexander, Robert Stevens, John Moore, Joseph Allicock, Gerard and Evert Bancker, Richard Curson, John Lamb, James Deas, Boyle Roche, Atcheson Thompson, Peter Kettletas, John R, Meyer, Levinus Clarkson, and Abraham Brazier. The interests of these twenty-four patentees were only nominal, and Skene was the real owner. On July 6, 1771, Skene obtained his " Little Patent " of nine thousand acres to the north- east of the original grant, and it extended into Hampton. These two patents covered all of the present town of Whitehall except the Mc- Intosh patent of four thousand acres on the east side.
The settlement and history of the town was during its early years centered in the history of the village already given, and all that we can obtain of the early settlers are the names of the following persons, many of whom most likely came after 1781: Zebulon Fuller, Daniel Brundage, Elisha Martin, Levi Stock- well, Zeb. Tubbs, Josiah Farr, John Conner, James and Jeremiah Burroughs, Joseph, Dan- iel and Nathaniel Earl, Silas Childs, William Graham, John Gault, Gideon Taft, Cornelius Jones, William Higley, Levi Falkenbury, Joel Adams, Thomas Lyon, George Douglass, Sam - uel Hatch, Rufus Whitford, Simon Hotchiss, John Coggswell, Pangborn, Stephen Knowles, Joseph Bishop, Thomas McFarren, Eph. Thomas, Andrew Law, Enoch Wright, Lemuel Bartholomew, Stephen Parks, Silas Baker, Israel Warner, and Robert, Samuel, and Thomas Wilson.
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The town has slowly filled up with an agri- cultural population outside of the village of Whitehall, and while cereal crops are raised in paying quantities, yet the land is better suited to grazing. Many farmers have turned their attention in that line, and prior to 1877 the Rogers and Hollister cheese factories and the Rathbun creamery were in successful op- eration. Some tobacco has been raised, and a few vineyards planted in the limestone sec- tion of the town.
Slate formations exist in the eastern part, and the Eureka and Spink were among the first quarries opened.
It is asserted that Major Skene had a fur- nace on the west side of Wood creek for melt- ing crude iron ores.
The First Congregational church of East Whitehall was organized in 1805, with twelve members and Rev. James Davis as pastor. Their first church was burned, and its suc- cessor was built in 1836, at a cost of two thou- sand dollars.
The First Presbyterian, which, through the efforts of General Williams, was to have its home two miles south of the village, but after his death it built a house on Williams street, in Whitehall village, where it only existed two years.
The oldest church in the town is the East Whitehall Methodist Episcopal church, organ- ized in 1796 with ten members, by the cele- brated Lorenzo Dow. They erected a brick structure in 1826.
The public school system of the town went into operation in 1815, and has been judiciously sustained ever since.
The population of Whitehall was five thou- sand five hundred and sixty-four in 1870 ; and five thousand three hundred and forty-seven in 1880.
In 1875 there were eight hundred and fifty frame, one hundred and twenty-five brick, and six stone houses in the town, valued at one million eight hundred and twenty thousand dollars. In the same year the acres of im-
proved land was given at twenty thousand four hundred and eight, and the unimproved as seven thousand eight hundred and sixty. The milch cows were one thousand two hun- dred and fifty in number, and the sheep shorn were four thousand one hundred and seventy- nine, with a clippage of twenty-four thousand seven hundred and ninety-four pounds of wool.
Before closing this account of the town of Whitehall we give the reported tory raid of 1779 into Whitehall, as stated by Dr. A. B. Holden in his "History of Queensbury": " Before the ice had cleared out from Lake Champlain, and while it still remained pass- able, it was made available by a band of one hundred and thirty Indians, led by the infa- mous Joe Bettys and two Canadian French- men, who made an attack upon the little set- .tlement at Skenesborough, then garrisoned by a body of militia sixty in number, drafted from the towns of New Perth, now Salem, and Cambridge on the eastern border of Char- lotte county. The assailants approached the settlement from East bay, crossing the moun- tain east of Whitehall village. A man and his wife, who lived a short distance from the stone house built by Skene, were tomahawked and scalped ; a part of the garrison, perceiv- ing their approach, attempted to escape by swimming across the icy waters of Wood creek, but their fleet-footed pursuers were too quick for them. When midway of the stream they were sternly ordered to return or they would be shot. They accordingly went back and surrendered themselves. The attack was made about two o'clock on the afternoon of the 21st of March (1779), and before sundown the party, loaded with plunder and accom- panied by their prisoners, had started on its retreat. In this raid three persons (the two already named and one soldier) were killed, and every building in the settlement was fired, so that of the once flourishing hamlet of Skenesborough not a roof was left, and -Fort Anne for a brief period became the frontier post at the north. The Indians comprising
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this marauding party were the Caughnawaga or Saint Regis tribes, and the prisoners, after reaching Saint Johns, were conducted through the wilderness to the Indian settlements at Chateaugay and French Mills, whence, after a short detention, being robbed of all their valuables, even to clothing, they were con- veyed to Montreal, where they were ransomed by the British officers for eight dollars apiece, and imprisoned until they were exchanged, some of them in the meantime making their escape and some remaining prisoners for two years or more."
Dr. Holden says : " For this narrative, not hitherto published in any of our local or gen- eral histories, the author is indebted to Dr. Asa Fitch, of Salem, by whom a full account was published in the Salem Press of Novem- ber 5 and 12, 1867."
CHAPTER IV.
VILLAGES OF FORT EDWARD AND FORT MILLER AND TOWN OF FORT EDWARD.
VILLAGE OF FORT EDWARD.
The village of Fort Edward was incorpor- ated by an order of court on August 28, 1849, which also provided for its ratification or re- jection by a vote of the electors. On Septem- ber 28th the vote was taken at the house of Gideon Carswell, and the act of incorporation was ratified by a vote of eighty-one to sixty- seven. The incorporated territory included one thousand acres, beside the greater part of Freeman's island in the river. The first offi- cers were : Edward Washburn, H. W. Ben- nett, and George H. Taylor, assessors ; Edwin Crane, collector ; E. B. Nash, treasurer, and William Wright, clerk. The trustees were : F. D. Hodgeman, Charles Harris, J. R. Gan- dall, D. S. Carswell, and John Williams. The charter was soon allowed to die, and had to be revived by a special legislative act passed Feb-
ruary 26, 1857. On March 30, 1859, an act was passed to enlarge the village and confer additional powers on the trustees so they could facilitate the construction of a bridge across the Hudson to the town of Moreau, in Sara- toga county. An amendatory act was passed April 14, 1866, and on February 25, 1873, the electors voted to adopt the act of April 20, 1870, for the incorporation of villages.
Fort Edward, Fort Lyman, Fort Lydius, Fort Nicholson, and the "Great Carrying Place," are names that carry the history of the village and its site back through a long and stormy war period from the closing of the Rev- olution to the days of the first inter-colonial war.
Wahcoloosencoochaleva, the Indian name of Fort Edward, carries the historic record of the site of the village back into tradition, the border land of oblivion. Unnumbered warrior bands advanced and retreated over its site dur- ing the centuries of Indian occupation.
General Winthrop marched over the site of Fort Edward in 1790, and the expeditions of the two Schuylers and Nicholson's two expeditions passed over its site, and during Nicholson's first campaign, Fort Nicholson was both built and destroyed. The Del- lius and Bayard patents of 1696 and 1743 in- cluded the village site, and not later than 1744, Col. John Henry Lydius settled under the an- nulled Dellius patent, and erected an Indian trading post on the ruins of Fort Nicholson. His trading post was called Fort Lydius, and was destroyed by the French in 1745. Fort Edward then lay desolate and waste for ten years. At the end of that time, in 1755, Gen. Phineas Lyman erected Fort Lyman, on the ruins of Forts Nicholson and Lydius, in the northern angle formed by the creek and the river at their confluence. Fort Lyman was an earth and timber structure, with ramparts six- teen feet high and twenty-two fcet thick, pro- tected by a deep moat on the front extending from stream to stream. Quadrangular in form, it had three bastions, the fourth angle being
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covered by the river and mounted six guns. Within its inclosure were barracks, hospital, store house and magazine, while barracks and store houses were also erected on the island in the river. At the rear angle, a postern gate opened on the river and a bridge was thrown across the creek near its mouth. Johnson changed the name of the fortification from Fort Lyman to Fort Edward, in honor of Ed- ward, Duke of York.
Gen. Phineas Lyman, whose name the fort should have borne, was a lawyer and graduate of Yale college. He was born at Durham, Connecticut, about 1716, really fought the battle of Lake George, for which Johnson got the honors, and served under Abercrombie and Amherst. He commanded the provincial troops in the expedition against Havana in 1762, and the next year went to England, where in 1774 he obtained a grant of land on the Mississippi river. He died in West Florida in 1775.
From Fort Edward, now the outpost on the northern frontier, a road was cut to Lake George, and over it marched the armies of Johnson, Abercrombie and Amherst. Within its intrenchments lay the cowardly Webb when the butchery of Fort William Henry occurred, and beneath its sheltering walls were brought the hundreds who were wounded in Aber- crombie's rash attack on Ticonderoga. It was the scene of two of Putnam's daring exploits. In 1757 he saved Captain Little's party from massacre, when the gates of the fort had been closed against them through fear of a pursu- ing army being at their heels; and in 1758 he prevented the fire of the burning barracks from reaching the powder magazine, only twelve feet away, when everyone else was ready to quit the struggle and let the ammu- nition be blown up and the fort wrecked.
Fort Edward had become dilapidated in 1775, and then it was repaired and a cordon of block-houses erected around it.
From the walls of Fort Edward was wit- nessed the murder of Jane McCrea, and a few
days later its ramparts were manned by the soldiers of Burgoyne, whose occupation was of short duration. With the days of the Revolution the tread of the sentinel passed away, and the gates stood wide open until the ravages of time had leveled alike bastion and wall. Its fast disappearing ruins will soon be gone, and but the memory of the great fortress will remain.
After the destruction of the Lydius settle- ment, there is no record of any settler until 1765, when Patrick Smyth, either by purchase or lease, became a resident at Fort Edward, and built a large and substantial house, which afterward served successively as the head- quarters of Schuyler and of Burgoyne, as a court room, a store and a hotel.
From 1765 down to 1800 but little can be learned of who settled or what was done at Fort Edward. John Eddy was an early land owner, having seven hundred acres in the northern part of the village, and William Finn had a large tract in the southern part and about the old fort. The McNiel house, at No. III Broadway street, from which Jane McCrea went forth to her death, is said to have been built by Major Peter B. Tearse. The McCrea spring, where the unfortunate and beautiful maiden met her untimely fate, is on the George Bradley land in the northern part of the village.
The first store was probably kept in the Smyth house, or by Colonel John Kane ; and James Rogers, Peter Hilton, and Dr. John Lawrence, a surgeon in Burgoyne's army, were among the early merchants of the place. Livy Stoughton had a store in 1811, and in 1820 Daniel WV. Wing became a merchant of Fort Edward. The early, practicing physicians were Drs. Willoughby and Morton. The first tavern was kept by Russell Rossiter in the old Smyth or Yellow house, and among the early hostelries were the Baldwin, Eddy and Man- sion houses.
The opening of the Champlain canal in 1822 gave the village a start, and the comple-
.
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tion of the Saratoga and Washington railroad in 1848 gave transportation and an outlet to the manufacturing interests that had their origin in 1845, and that have since been in- strumental in bringing growth and prosperity to the village. These manufacturing enter- prises are the results of a company of public- spirited and far-sighted citizens, who, in 1845, purchased the old feeder and feeder-dam from the State, and bought ten acres of land from Timothy Eddy, below the dam, for the sites of the numerous mills that have since been erected there. These citizens were E. B. Nash, H. W. Bennett, D. W. Wing, James Chees- man, Morril Grace, Lansing G. Taylor, E. Washburn, A. I. Fort, and John Doty, who associated themselves with J. S. Beach, G. Kennedy, Harvey Chapman, Roscius Ken- nedy, and Frederick D. Hodgeman, as the Fort Edward Manufacturing Company. This company furnished sites to all who desired to engage in manufacturing, and reduced the dam from twenty-eight to sixteen feet.
Timothy Eddy had run a clothing mill prior to 1827. As soon as the mill sites were avail- able several saw mills were erected, and Mil- liman's first planing mill was built in 1861. In 1877 nearly five million feet of lumber, timber and staves were cleared at Fort Edward. Im- mediately after the saw mills came grist mills, machine shops and foundries, and in 1853 the Beach & Co. paper mill started in a building erected three years before for a cotton factory. The paper mill passed into other hands, was twice burned and rebuilt, the second time un- der the firm of Hodgeman & Palser. The Fort Edward blast furnace was started in 1854 by George Harvey & Co., and afterward became the property of the Albany & Rensselear Iron and Steel company, who commenced the use of Crown Point and Fort Ann iron ores at the village. Stoneware manufactories, bridge works, brick kilns, malt houses, and breweries came later, and added to the volume of business, which was affected some by the panic of 1873.
The fire department of Fort Edward was or- 7
ganized in 1857, when the Relief fire engine was purchased and a fire and a hook and lad- der company formed. This engine answered until June, 1874, when the steam fire engine, John F. Harris, was bought at a cost of four thousand dollars. Four years later the fire de- partment consisted of John F. Harris Steam Company, No. 1 ; Satterlee Hose Company, No. 2; and John R. Durkee Hose Company, No. 3. The first destructive fire of the village was on November 19, 1877, when the Col- legiate institute was destroyed.
The early water supply of Fort Edward was obtained by an acqueduct from springs north of the village. The acqueduct was superseded in 1855 by the construction of the water works of the Fort Edward Water Works company, whose supply of water came from the Case & McIntyre reservoirs, fed by perennial springs.
Fort Edward enjoys good postal and bank- ing facilities. The Fort Edward postoffice was established in 1800, and James Rogers appointed as the first postmaster. The Bank of Fort Edward was chartered in 1851, and in 1865 became The National bank of Fort Ed- ward. The Farmers' bank of Washington county was organized in 1856, and in 1865 was reorganized as the Farmers' National bank of Washington county. The third bank was The State bank of Fort Edward, that was chartered April 1, 1871. None of these banks were chartered with a capital of less than one hundred thousand dollars.
Methodist Episcopal services were held as early as 1788 at Fort Edward, where a church organization was effected in 1828 by Rev. Julius Field. The present church edifice was erected in 1853.
The present Presbyterian church, on Eddy street, was organized January 17, 1854, with seventeen members, under charge of Dr. E. E. Seelye. Their present church was com- pleted in 1870. This congregation is the suc- cessor of an early Presbyterian church formed at Fort Edward between 1820 and 1830, but which went down in a short time.
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The Baptist church was organized March 17, 1842, with the following fourteen members : James Cheesman, Nelson Combs, George Mills, Lucinda Van Dusen, Melissa Hall, Electa Shaw, Isabel Sanders, Clarissa Hen- derson, Polly Sprague, Lucinda Bovee, and Thomas, Abigail, Sally and Emma Pike. Rev. Solomon Gale was the first pastor, and the church edifice was erected in 1851 and 1852.
Saint James Episcopal church was organ- ized in 1844, the members prior to this hav- ing formed a congregation in connection with the Episcopalians of Sandy Hill. The first rector was Rev. J. A. Spooner, and their brick church edifice on Broadway street was erected between 1844 and 1848.
Saint Joseph's Catholic church was organ- ized in 1869 for the accommodation of about three hundred families of Fort Edward that were then worshiping at Sandy Hill. They purchased the East Street Methodist church and repaired and refitted it at a total cost of nearly ten thousand dollars. The first pastor was Rev. James McGee.
Subscription schools were succeeded by the free schools about 1814 or 1815, and in 1848 Fort Edward became one of the first villages in the State to organize a union free school. A brick union school building was erected in 1849, at a cost of thirteen thousand dollars, and the Seminary Street school house was built in 1868, at a cost of four thousand dol- lars. Academic education commenced with the Hudson River academy that closed in 1864, and the second high school was Fort Edward Collegiate institute, which was erected in 1854, with buildings equal to many a col- lege. Its principal was Rev. Joseph E. King, D.D., who had entire charge of the school from its opening until the building burned, November 19, 1877.
The garrison Burgoyne left at Fort Edward when he moved across the Hudson was cap- tured by Gen. John Stark and one thousand troops from Vermont and New Hampshire. A few days later Stark's force was increased
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