USA > New York > Warren County > History of Warren County [N.Y.] with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers > Part 66
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563
TOWN OF HAGUE.
hundred and six volunteers, and but one man was drafted. The town records do not contain any account of the public action taken, but the people must have been nearly unanimous in order to furnish so proud a contingent. The men enlisted chiefly in the 118th Regiment, the 5th N. Y. Cavalry, and the 23d Independent Battery.
In 1860 the lumber business was " booming," no fewer than 10,000 logs being floated on the lake to "Ty," and there sawn. Among the residents of Hague most largely interested were Samuel Ackerman and Stephen Hoyt. Nearly all the farmers were engaged during the winter in chopping logs. Such unremitting industry, while it added to the wealth of the laborers then, could not fail in speedily clearing the surface of the country of all the valuable tim- ber. In the last few years scarcely any lumbering has been done, excepting the cutting and hauling of poplar to Ticonderoga and Mechanicsville, for the pulp-mills.
There has probably been no potash made here since 1820, though as late as 1860 the remains of an old ashery could be seen in the south part of the town, about three miles from Hague village. There has never been any tan- nery in town that pretended to the dignity of the name.
There was a Union church here in 1860, which had probably been erected about 1835, or soon after. In 1860 the pastor was a Wesleyan clergyman named Leard. The building remained the only church in the village until 1879, when a division took place, and the Wesleyan Methodists erected a sep- arate building. The pastor of the new church is the Rev. John Quay. The old church is without a pastor, the last one being a Free Will Baptist, named Lister.
The earliest record found of a post-office at Hague is in 1855, when Alvah Bevins was postmaster. In the following year John B. Jenkins was appointed. Henry H. Harrison succeeded him in 1858. In 1860 the office had been dis- continued, but within a few months was re-established with Lewis Burgess in almost supreme control. At that time forty per cent. of the stipend allowed to the office went to the mail carrier and the residue to the postmaster.
In order to accommodate the people of the town by affording the mail car- rier reward enough to induce his bringing the mail twice a week instead of once, Mr. Burgess yielded to him the sixty per cent. which was the postmaster's due, and worked for nothing himself. He has been postmaster ever since his first appointment. He has run a store in connection with the office since 1865, when he bought out the business of Henry Newton. About ten years before Lewis Burgess began to sell goods, Henry Newton purchased the stock and good-will of Alvah Bevins, who had kept a store here for years. Calvin Bar- nard was Bevins's predecessor, and one of the first store keepers (if not the first) in town.
There is but one regular hotel in town besides the one kept by Samuel
564
HISTORY OF WARREN COUNTY.
Westurn, at Sabbath Day Point, namely, the Phoenix Hotel, under the man- agement of Mr. Gilligan. The site has been covered by a hotel for many years, and, indeed, it is said that some sort of inn has stood there ever since Hague has had a local habitation and a name. Nathaniel Garfield kept an inn there in the thirties, and probably earlier. He built a more pretentious tavern about 1840, and remained there for years, acquiring in the mean time an enviable reputation as "mine host. " In a magazine article published in 1853, T. Addi- son Richards spoke of him in the following language: "Three miles onward [from Sabbath Day Point] we make the little village of Hague, if village it can be styled. The visitor will remember the locality as Garfield's - one of the oldest and most esteemed summer camps. Judge Garfield would seem to have an intimate acquaintance with every deer on the hill-side, and with every trout in the waters, so habitually are these gentry found at his luxurious table. An excellent landing facilitates the approach to Garfield's, and the steamboat touches daily up and down." His son, Hiland Garfield, was associated with him during the latter part of his reign. In the spring of 1861 they sold out to
William A. G. Arthur. While he was the owner, in 1863, it was destroyed by fire. William Miller then secured title to the property and at once erected the present house. He kept the house for a time, and then leased it to various persons, notably Edwin Norton and Alonzo Russell. He died in October, 1873. The hotel was then in the hands of Joel W. Rising, now proprietor of Rising's Hotel at Chestertown, who remained until 1883. Mrs. Marilla Miller, widow of the deceased proprietor of former days, and present owner of the house, then leased it to Alvah E. Grimes. The new landlord remained about eighteen months and then left, and Mr. Gilligan, in the fall of 1884, took an assignment of the lease, and now conducts the business. He has had considerable hotel experience at Fort Ticonderoga, and knows how to keep, what in fact he does keep, an excellent hotel. The rooms are neatly furnished and ventilated, and the table cannot be surpassed. The house has a capacity for fifty guests.
In the past few years other boarding-houses have been opened for summer guests, and are making Hague a well known and much liked resort. Just north of the Phoenix Hotel a few rods is the Hillside House, having a capacity for thirty-five guests, and owned and supervised by John McClanathan. Far- ther north stilll is the Trout House, kept by C. H. Wheeler, and providing for twenty-five. Next is the Island Harbor House, which will accommodate twenty-five guests. The proprietor is A. C. Clifton.
Below is printed the names of the supervisors from Hague, as far as they could be obtained from the [records: 1813-16, William Cook; 1817-19, Thomas Gaige; 1820-24, William Cook; 1825, Nathaniel Garfield; 1826, Thomas Gaige; 1827, Stephen Pratt; 1828, Warner Cook; 1829, Stephen Pratt ; 1830, Nathaniel Garfield ; 1 831-1833, William Cook ; 1834, '35, Calvin Barnard; 1836, Nathaniel Garfield ; 1837-39, William Cook ; 1840, '41, Alvah
-
565
TOWN OF CALDWELL.
Bevins ; 1842-44, William Ward; 1845, Luma Wing; 1846, Thomas C. Brown ; 1847, John J. Patten ; 1848, Alonzo Morris; 1849, Martin Ward; 1850, Alonzo Morris; 1851, John McClanathan ; 1852, '53, Alvah Bevins; 1854, Josiah C. House ; 1855, Ephraim Ward; 1856, '57, Samuel Westurn ; 1858, Curtis Allen ; 1859-61, H. H. Harrison ; 1862, Lewis Burgess; 1863, W. A. G. Arthur ; 1864, H. H. Harrison; 1865, William M. Marshall; 1866, Lewis Burgess ; 1867, John McClanathan, jr .; 1868, C. F. Bevins; 1869, John Mc- Clanathan, jr. ; 1870-72, H. H. Harrison ; 1873, John McClanathan ; 1874, W. P. Gannon ; 1875, John McClanathan ; 1876, Lewis Burgess ; 1877, '78, John McClanathan ; 1879, James A. Balcom; 1880, '81, John McClanathan ; 1882-84, James A. Balcom ; 1885, Rufus Rising.
At an annual town meeting held on the 7th of April, 1885, at Phoenix Hotel, the following were elected officers for the ensuing year :-
Supervisor, Rufus Rising; town clerk, William M. Marshall ;1 justice of the peace, Rufus Rising; justice of the peace to fill a contingent vacancy, A. C. Clifton ; assessor, E. T. Ackerman ; commissioner of highways, William Baldwin ; constable and collector, Nathan E. Yaw ; constables, Nathan E. Yaw, William Sexton, Wilson Ward, Eugene Doolittle, James Leach ; game constable, William H. Garfield; inspectors of election, H. G. Phillips, Joseph Leavitt, Albert C. Clifton (appointed); sealer of weights and measures, William C. Evins ; commissioners of excise, Nathan Holman, -- , Hollis Spaulding; overseer of the poor, Silas B. Ackman.
Population since 1850 has been as follows : 1850, 717; 1855, 615; 1860, 708 ;. 1865, 685 ; 1870, 637 ; 1875, 678; 1880, 807.
CHAPTER XXXII.
HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CALDWELL.
T HIS township was organized March 2d, 1810, and was composed of parts of Queensbury, Bolton and Thurman. It was named from General James Caldwell, an Albany merchant, who, in 1787, became the patentee of 1,595 acres of land in this region, in four parcels, by grants dated September 18th-29th of that year. The southern extremity of Lake George pushes nearly into the center of the town from the northeast corner. Caldwell is bounded on the north by Bolton, on the east by Lake George and Queens- bury, on the south by Queensbury, and on the west by Luzerne and Warrens- burgh. The Schroon River barely touches the northwest corner on its way to
1 To whom we are grateful for valuable assistance.
566
HISTORY OF WARREN COUNTY.
the Hudson. From the lake westward the surface rises abruptly, rendering the central portion of the town broken and hilly, the elevation culminating in the steep and sightly Prospect Hill, which rises about two thousand feet above tide. South of it a low valley is spread southwest through Caldwell and Lu- zerne to the valley of the Hudson, near the mouth of the Sacandaga River, and is undoubtedly a continuation of the valley which forms the basin of Lake George. The soil among the elevations in the center is a sandy loam, and in the lowlands a dark, rich mixture of clay and sand with loam. Settlement had commenced here years before the War of the Revolution, but in common with the other pre- Revolutionary communities of Northern New York, it was totally exterminated during that fierce struggle between powers and principalities. Soon after the close of the war, however, the fertility of some portions of the territory, and the natural beauty of the whole, attracted immigration, and set- tlements were recommenced. General James Caldwell, from whom the town was named, the father of William Caldwell, who is well remembered by the settled residents of the town, used to pass a considerable portion of his time in the village of Caldwell.1 He built the stone structure now used as the post- office, and for a number of years used it as his office. He lived near the site of the Mansion House, which he built. His will was made in 1841, and he died a few years later. He owned nearly all the ground now covered by the village of Caldwell, and the title to the greater part still resides in his heirs. A small portion only has been sold. Among the early settlers was Daniel Shaw, who located about a mile and a half north of Lake George, on the place now owned by Henry H. Haden on the Bolton road. After his death one son, Nathaniel, lived on the farm for years. Another son was David Shaw. His lineal descendants are now all dead. Jehoicham Staats, another pioneer, lived at the beginning of this century on the place now called the Price Manor, two miles north of Lake George on the lake road. His grandson, John J. Staats, is one of the present highway commissioners of the town. A son of Jehoicham, named Boynton Staats, practices law in Albany. Eli Pettis, who came here as early as 1800, lived where the Crosby House now is. Two of his great- grandchildren are now living in the town. About the year 1810 a man named Carter lived near the village of Caldwell in the house at present occupied by Fred B. Hubbell. None of his descendants lives here now. Samuel Pike dwelt in a house on the site of Daniel Ferguson's new residence. He was a mason and helped build a number of the oldest houses in Caldwell, among them be- ing the old "stone store." His many children are all dead. Miles Beach was an early cabinet-maker here, and had a shop where Mr. Gleason now keeps a meat-market in the village of Caldwell. His children, too, are all gone. John Beebe was one of the first lawyers in the town, and lived in the house now
1 This village is by many called Lake George, and that is the name of the post-office, but we have preferred to abide by the old name in the texl.
567
TOWN OF CALDWELL.
occupied by the county clerk, David V. Brown. He was supervisor from 1823 to 1829 or '30 inclusive. He left three children. Joseph Whitley, another lawyer, went from here in early times to Black Brook, Clinton county, where he remained until his death. Daniel Nichols was about the first blacksmith. He moved into the western part of the State a long time ago. One of the most prominent men in this whole vicinity was Thomas Archibald, uncle to S. R. Archibald, who now resides at Caldwell. He held the office of county clerk for forty-two years, longer than any other person in the State has held that position. He died in Warrensburgh without a family. Samuel Payne came from Albany, where he had been proprietor of the Northern Hotel, and built and ran the Lake House at the head of Lake George. A small part of this old tavern was standing in 1810, and courts held sessions there before the erection of the court-house. Luther Stebbins, farmer and carpenter, immi- grated to the town before 1825, and located about two miles north of Caldwell village. Hon. William Hay was a very prominent lawyer here before 1820. Nathan Brown lived about a mile south of the village. A son, Alphonso Brown, now resides at Caldwell. Early physicians were Drs. Tubbs, Bugbee, Hicks and Cromwell. S. R. Archibald, of Caldwell village, to whom we are indebted for a considerable of the foregoing information, was born in Salem, Washington county, N. Y., in March, 1819. Upon the death of his mother, in 1821, he was taken to an uncle, James Archibald, who lived in Bolton and afterwards in the northern part of Caldwell on the Schroon River. The infant Archibald was next placed in the care of Asa Wilson, who lived three miles north of the village of Caldwell on the farm now occupied by Sylvanus Taylor. In 1823 he was brought to the village of Caldwell, his uncle, Thomas Archi- bald, being then county clerk, and was adopted by Hiram Hawley, a shoe- maker. Hawley was probably the first shoemaker in the place. Mr. Archibald remained with his guardian until he attained his majority, and then, having learned the shoemaking trade, he entered into business for himself. In 1841 he purchased the property which forms the site of his present home. The lot was then covered with several old buildings, among them a dilapidated old tannery which David Alden had built in the beginning of the century and run for years.I Mr. Archibald rebuilt this tannery (in 1842 and again in 1852), and conducted it until 1864, when he tore it down. He is now, and for thirty- four consecutive years has been, a justice of the peace. Among the other early settlers in the town were Benoni Burtch, - Tierce, Andrew Edmonds, Reed Wilbur, Obadiah Hunt, Thaddeus Bradley, Elias Prosser, Nathan Burdick, George Van Deusen, - Butler and Christopher Potter. General Caldwell erected the first iron and the first grist-mill.
The first town meeting was held on Tuesday, April 3d, 1810, and the rec- ords are introduced in the following language :--
1 Alden died about 1826. No descendants left. He was supervisor for nine years succeed- ing 1814.
568
HISTORY OF WARREN COUNTY.
"Agreeable to a law that was passed by the Legislature of the State of New York, for the purpose of establishing a new town in the County of Washing- ton, known by the name of Caldwell, the inhabitants of the town of Caldwell met on Tuesday, the third day of April for the purpose of holding their first annual town meeting at the house of Samuel Allen, when the following per- sons were chosen for office :" James Archibald was elected supervisor; John B. Prosser, clerk ; assessors, Daniel Nichols, Jesse Bishop and William Peffers ; commissioners of highways, Pardon Crandall, Asa Wilson, Michael Harris ; overseers of the poor, Halsey Rogers, John Simpson ; constable and collector, Pardon Crandall ; constable, Joseph Gibbs; poundkeepers, Daniel Shaw and Nathaniel Smith. Two weeks later a special meeting was held at the house of Samuel Allen, and the following persons were chosen overseers of highways for the eight districts then in the town :- Samuel Cole, Michael Harris, John Simpson, Gilbert Worden, Pardon Crandall, Ezra Fuller, Nathan Crandall, Aaron Gates. The early records are full of measures adopted by the board of supervisors and voted upon by the citizens relative to the laying out and open- ing of new roads, e. g., in 1817 a new road was constructed from the foot of the hill south of Fort William Henry to the State road. Other curious and interesting facts are hidden in the thumb-worn and dust covered volumes in the county clerk's office. In 1818 a bounty of twenty-five cents was offered for every crow killed in the county. In 1819 the town was divided into three school districts, and district No. 1, according to a report of the commissioners, had had six months and six days of school; the sum of $16.90 school money was received, and there was an attendance of fifty-three children. The entire school fund was $163.03. In 1820 a penalty of $1.00 was laid for every hog found on the common without a yoke. In 1821 the town was divided into four school districts, and had a school fund of $165.05. With the exception of one or two short roads, all the roads were laid out between 1825 and 1850.
By virtue of its situation at the head of Lake George, the village of Cald- well was formerly the emporium of the county, and indeed of the whole Lake George region. There was a large lumber business done. The water power in the vicinity was not considerable and consequently the manufacture of lum- ber was not so great as the shipment of logs to Ticonderoga. A few "thun- der shower " mills, as .Mr. Archibald calls them, were in the town. The in- habitants, he further states, lived largely " on fish and strangers," the locality being even in these early days, a favorite summer resort. Old men tell now about catching a barrel of trout in a single day. The business importance of the place, however, was practically destroyed by the construction of the Glens Falls Feeder, which was surveyed in about 1823, dug through in 1824, and en- larged and completed between 1828 and 1832, at which latter date it was made navigable for canal boats and became a thoroughfare of inland commerce. The lumber which had been shipped down the lake was thereafter drawn in
A.LITTLE
.
GEORGE BROWN.
569
TOWN OF CALDWELL.
wagons to Fort Edward and Glens Falls. These villages thus grew as Cald- well declined, and were fed by the nourishment that had formerly sustained the importance of the latter.
Owing to the destruction of the town records by fire we are unable to give the first officers of the town, other than the supervisor, who was James Archi- bald ; it is probable that he held the office until 1813. Since that date the supervisors have been as follows : Halsey Rogers, 1813 ; David Alden, 1814 to 1822 inclusive ; John Beebe, 1823 to 1830 inclusive ; Thomas Archibald, 1831 to 1836 inclusive; John F. Sherrill, 1837 to 1843 inclusive ; Seth C. Baldwin, 1844; Perry G. Hammond, 1845 ; (from 1845 to 1860 we have been unable to obtain the town records ;) W. W. Hicks, 1860-61 ; F. B. Hubbell, 1862 to 1864 inclusive ; W. H. Moshier, 1865-66 ; Fred B. Hubbell, 1867 to 1869 inclusive ; Hirain Wood, 1870 to 1872 inclusive ; E. S. Harris, 1873; F. B. Hubbell, 1874 to 1876 inclusive; Jerome N. Hubbell, 1877-78; Elias S. Harris, 1879; Leander Harris, 1880-81; George W. Bates, 1882-83 ; Elmer J. West, 1884.
The present officers of the town are as follows : - Supervisor, Elmer J. West ; town clerk, James H. Carpenter; assessors, Dwight Russell, Edwin White, O. F. Nichols ; justices of the peace, Charles E. Hawley, John Van Dusen, James T. Crandall, Samuel R. Archibald ; collector, Edward D. Smith ; constables, Ebenezer Wilde, George Stanton, C. J. Bates, K. Burlingame, Jesse M. Sexton ; game constable, C. J. Bates ; overseers of poor, Ebenezer Wilde, Hiram Vowers; auditors, Alonzo Brown, C. E. Weatherhead, R. D. Gleason ; inspectors of election, C. S. Wood, F. H. Worden, C. M. Smith; excise commis- sioners, John Caldwell, Dennis Lyons, Sidney Nichols.
Caldwell was a valuable and willing contributor to the cause of the Union during the Rebellion. The number of men furnished to the army between June Ist, 1861, and the president's call for 600,000 was twenty-three ; number under the call for 600,000 was twenty-four ; making a total of forty-seven. S. R. Archibald, of the village of Caldwell, is authority for the statement that the town furnished forty-seven volunteers. He remembers well the drilling and discipline to which they were subjected in the streets of his village during the dark days of the war.
But the place had, years before, been the theatre of bloody events, human blood had flowed in rivulets, and men had gone to their shallow graves like beds. Near the site of Caldwell, Colonel Ephraim Williams, the founder of Williams College, had fallen while defending the frontiers of his native State, and General Johnson and Baron Dieskau crossed swords " which smoked with bloody execution." The battle of Bloody Pond was fought on September 8th, 1755, and immediately afterward Johnson built Fort William Henry. Fort George was built four years later by General Amherst. The former fort is covered by the hotel which bears its name, and the latter is a heap of moulder- ing and scarcely distinguishable ruins.
570
HISTORY OF WARREN COUNTY.
MUNICIPAL HISTORY.
The condition of the town of Caldwell at this time may be inferred to some extent from the reminiscences of George Brown, proprietor of the Cen- tral Hotel. He was born in the town of Queensbury, September 3d, 1815, and remembers distinctly the Lake George region as far back as 1830. The village of Caldwell was then as now the county seat. An old tavern where the Central Hotel now stands was kept by Lyman Jenks ; and another on the site of the Carpenter House was kept by a Mr. Russell, and known as the Caldwell House. The Lake House, then about half its present size, was kept by John F. Sherrill. There were two stores in the village then ; the store which Halsey Rogers built in 1819, was kept by Charles Robarts. He had succeeded Halsey Rogers about 1828. The other store stood on the site of Zebee's drug store, and was in the hands of Hiram Wood. Charles Robarts also ran a saw- mill on the first stream north of the village, and a grist-mill was kept running near it. Pelatiah Richards owned a distillery several miles northwest of the settlement, near Warrensburgh. The district school stood on the site of the present building ; and a church edifice, probably Union, used now as a resi- dence by Jesse Saxton, attested then the religious energies of its builder, Wil- liam Caldwell. On the site of Fort George stood [Nathan Brown's lime kiln. That potash was made in greater or less quantities is probable, but is not re- membered by those now remaining to tell about it. Sugar-making was carried on in a general way. The principal business, however, was, as has been stated, lumbering. The land had not been extensively cleared and was teeming with most valuuble timber. The only road of much importance was the old State road from Albany to Montreal, occupying the same bed now filled by the plank road. The head of Lake George was then a great fishing tract. Many suckers would run up the books every spring, and the place seemed to have a greater local celebrity, and less fame abroad, than it has to-day. There was one boat running on the lake, viz. : a steamboat called The Mountaineer, commanded by Captain Laribee, and built about 1824,1 and run until 1836. It was the second boat on the lake, the first being the James Caldwell, com- manded by Captain Winans. It was built sometime between 1816 and 1820, and was disabled by lightning and afterwards entirely destroyed by fire before she had long plied the waters of Lake George. In 1838 the William Caldwell was put on the lake and ran until 1850. In that year the John Jay, com- manded by Captain J. Gale, superseded her and ran until 1856, when she took fire in her engine room off Friends' Point, and in an effort to reach shore, struck a rock on Waltonian Isle, and sunk. Six lives were lost. The Minnehaha was built at the northern end of the lake in 1857 and ran for twenty years. The Horicon displaced her in 1877. There are now running, besides the Hor-
1 The matter concerning early boats is taken from S. R. STODDARD'S Lake George.
EUGENE L SEELYE.
ALITTLE.
571
TOWN OF CALDWELL.
icon, the Ticonderoga, the Ganouskie, and Lillie M. Price. The principal smaller steamers are the River Queen, the Julia, the Ed. D. Lewis, and the Meteor.
Postmasters .- The first postmaster at Caldwell of which there is any recol- lection was William Williams, who remained in office until after 1825. He was succeeded, probably, by Charles Robarts, who held the appointment until about 1840, when Hiram Wood came in. Wood did not go out until about 1861, when S. R. Archibald succeeded him. The present postmaster, E. S. Harris, followed Archibald in 1875. The post-office is Lake George.
Present Business. - The Central Hotel is kept by George Brown, formerly proprietor of the Half-way House at French Mountain. He has been proprie- tor of the Central Hotel since February, 1884. Before that his son, Clark J. Brown, conducted the business four years. His elder son, Benjamin O. Brown, built the hotel in the winter of 1875-76 and kept it until succeeded by Clark J. Brown. It will accommodate one hundred guests, and is open the year round.
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