USA > New York > Franklin County > The north country; a history, embracing Jefferson, St. Lawrence, Oswego, Lewis and Franklin counties, New York, Volume 1 > Part 10
USA > New York > Jefferson County > The north country; a history, embracing Jefferson, St. Lawrence, Oswego, Lewis and Franklin counties, New York, Volume 1 > Part 10
USA > New York > Lewis County > The north country; a history, embracing Jefferson, St. Lawrence, Oswego, Lewis and Franklin counties, New York, Volume 1 > Part 10
USA > New York > Oswego County > The north country; a history, embracing Jefferson, St. Lawrence, Oswego, Lewis and Franklin counties, New York, Volume 1 > Part 10
USA > New York > St Lawrence County > The north country; a history, embracing Jefferson, St. Lawrence, Oswego, Lewis and Franklin counties, New York, Volume 1 > Part 10
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Ford proved himself to be exactly the type of an agent needed in a new country. The first thing he did was to summon the St. Regis chiefs to his quarters for a conference. "I treated them with the utmost civility and sent them all away drunk," he wrote Ogden. Claims of Canadians to lands in Oswegatchie failed to worry Ford. "Those fellows only want to be treated with promptness to bring them to terms," he informs Ogden in the same letter. Two years later when one Watson persisted in his claim Ford had him arrested and sent him to Rome for trial. Watson went to jail for a year and was only released after he had signed a quit claim deed. So Ford with characteristic energy removed flaws from the title, drew about him a nucleus of a settlement, brought up the sheriff of Herkimer county to chase squatters from his forest empire and by 1797 was able to write Ogden with optimism: "I am well convinced in my own mind that the country will settle and by our own countrymen, one of whom is worth six of his majesty's beef eaters." By 1798 he had sold eight or ten farms, had a grist mill in operation and settlers were beginning to find their way to the "Garrison" from Lake Cham- plain through the Chateaugay woods. By 1800 when Gouverneur Morris with his French chef and traveling "in the style of an East- ern prince," to use Ford's characterization, arrived at the village, he found Oswegatchie a respectable settlement viewed from a pioneer standpoint.
As little settlements sprang up close to the banks of the St. Law- rence in the North, others appeared along the Black river further South. From Boone's Settlement, not far from Baron Steuben's log cabin, hardy settlers pushed forward to establish the hamlet which soon became known as Talcottsville where Lemuel Storr's frame house, the first within the present limits of Lewis county, stood. By 1799 there were 57 senatorial votes within the limits of the town of Leyden, which comprised this section, at a time when one must be a property owner to be able to vote. A rude road from Fort Stanwix led to Shaler's settlement on the site of the present Constableville and there in a little clearing in the woods lived Jonathan Collins, veteran of Washington's army, and a few hardy companions. A young Connecticut lawyer, Silas Stow, representing the owner, Nicholas Low, had just founded the settlement that was soon to be known as Lowville. From High Falls, now Lyons Falls, where a
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few of the French of Castorland days still lived, the river was the natural highway to Long Falls, now Carthage. There Jean Baptiste Boussant, a slovenly Frenchman who had come over with the Castor- land colonists, maintained a log tavern of sorts and kept the ferry across the river. Not far away in the fertile lands of Champion Noadiah Hubbard and a few others had built a cluster of cabins which soon were to attract men like Moss Kent, brother of the chancellor, and Egbert Ten Eyck, the lawyer. Towards the mouth of the Black river was located Jacob Brown, surveyor, school teacher and former military secretary to Alexander Hamilton, whose log cabin was soon to be replaced by the sturdy, stone mansion which stands to this day. Further south on the rich loam of the Sandy Creek country, the Ellises had settled, raising the first crops within the limits of the present Jefferson county. And just as the new century dawned, Henry Coffeen appeared from the Mohawk and built his cabin in the geometric center of the present City of Watertown.
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CHAPTER IV.
THE COMING OF THE PIONEERS
THE FIRST NORTH COUNTRY TOWNS-WASHINGTON IRVING'S TOUR OF NORTHERN NEW YORK-HOW THE PIONEERS LIVED-THE CIRCUIT RIDERS AND THEIR PARISH-THE FIRST CHURCHES IN THE NORTH.
By 1800 the tide of immigration towards Northern New York had definitely set in. The lure of cheap lands in a new country brought settlers by the hundreds from the New England states and the still new settlements in the vicinity of Utica. Marvelous tales were told there of the fertility of the lands in the Black River Coun- try, of corn planted in the ground without plowing growing to over eleven feet in height and of wheat yielding from twenty-five to thirty- five bushels to the acre. A traveling missionary commenting on the universal contention of the pioneers in their new homes along the Black river said that he had not "seen an unhappy person for 90 miles on that river."
These tales and others brought sturdy, young men and their families from Vermont and Plattsburgh over the woodland trail into Chateaugay and finally to the infant settlements springing up along the St. Lawrence, the Grass and the St. Regis rivers. They brought others, their household goods laden on crude wood sleds, drawn by oxen, up through the trackless woods of the Black River Country, past the lonely grave of Baron von Steuben, through Boone's two settlements and Turin Four Corners, and, then, guided by blazed trees, into the little, log settlements of Lowville, Champion, Water- town and Brownville. Still others came in Durham boats, following the water route from the Mohawk into Wood creek, Oneida Lake and the Oswego river, to settle on the broad domains of George Scriba.
It should be recalled that the Revolution had been over scarcely twenty years and Jay's Treaty had been signed but four. There were
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only five million people in the whole United States and but two cities, New York and Philadelphia, with a population over 50,000. But two others, Boston and Baltimore, were over twenty thousand. Three states had been added to the original thirteen-Vermont, Kentucky and Tennessee. Thomas Jefferson had just taken office in the unfin- ished capitol at the Federal City, soon to be known as Washington. The new county of Oneida had been formed and included all the northwestern part of the state with the exception of the land west of the Oswego river which was now a part of the new county, Onondaga.
Originally all of the Northern New York of the present day, with the exception of Franklin county and about half of St. Lawrence county, was included in the town of Whitestown, erected in 1788 as a township of Montgomery county. In 1792 Whitestown was divided into three towns, one of which kept the name, Whitestown, the other two being Mexico and Peru. Mexico at that time included all the present counties of Onondaga and Cortland, as well as western Oswego county. It was reorganized in 1796, probably because the creation of Onondaga county in 1794 had taken away most of its population. Under the act of 1796, the town of Mexico included a tremendous tract of territory, a veritable empire in itself, bounded by Oneida Lake, the Oneida and Oswego rivers, Lake Ontario and Black river from its mouth to the present Lyons Falls, and then by a line drawn between the present towns of Leyden and West Turin in Lewis county to Fish creek and down that stream to Oneida Lake again. It included all of the present Oswego county east of the Oswego river, about half of the present Jefferson county, a good por- tion of the present Lewis county and a fragment of the present county of Oneida.
Under the same act which created Mexico for the second time, the township of Leyden was erected from Steuben, embracing all territory east and north of Black river in the present Jefferson county and a large part of Lewis county. At the time Mexico and Leyden were erected, all of the present Franklin county and a part of St. Lawrence county, not included in the Ten Towns, was embraced in Clinton county which had been erected from Washington county in 1788. The town of Chateaugay was erected in 1799 and eventually included all of the present Franklin county with a portion of Essex, a territory of upwards of 1,700 square miles. The following year,
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1800, the great town of Mexico was divided and the following new towns were created : Redfield, Watertown, Turin, Lowville and Cham- pion. All of the present Oswego county west of the Oswego river was a part of the town of Lysander in Onondaga county. Thus it will be seen that with the exception of the territory lying west of the Oswego, which was in Onondaga county, and the present county of Franklin, which was in Clinton county, all of Northern New York in 1800 was a part of the great county of Oneida.
Mexico and Leyden were the most populous towns, each of them having more than 600 inhabitants. Chateaugay had 443 residents, Turin 440, Lowville 300, Champion 143 and Watertown 119. Proba- bly there were not more than 100 people living within the present bounds of Oswego county west of the Oswego river and certainly there was not more than that number in the Ten Towns along the St. Lawrence, so it is safe to say that the entire population of what we now know as Northern New York was not greater than 2,600 at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Most of these settlers, excepting those who had come into Cha- teaugay and the Ten Towns over the Champlin road, had entered the North Country from Rome, where as late as 1805 James Constable notes in his journal that he and his friends preferred to sleep in a hay-loft rather than chance the tavern beds. From Rome there were several routes leading into various sections of the North. Take the case of the pioneer who had made the long, 120-mile trip from Albany to Rome by way of the Mohawk river, and desired to take up lands within the limits of the present Oswego county. At Rome there would be plenty of people to tell him of George Scriba's settlement at Rotterdam, on the shores of Oneida Lake, and for Rome he would set his course, probably stopping along the route at Mrs. Jackson's tavern situated on Wood creek near the lake.
At Rotterdam, now Constantia, he would find quite a flourishing frontier settlement. True most of the few houses were of logs but there was Mr. Scriba's fine, large store, containing a $10,000 stock of goods and drawing trade from a radius of forty miles around. Here the new settler could buy brandy at four shillings a quart and flour at six pence a pound. If he desired to tarry for a time he could secure board at the tavern for "fourteen shillings per week without liquor," to quote the words of one who visited Rotterdam about this
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time. Of if he desired work, it is likely that Mr. Scriba or his agent, John Meyer, could give him employment at the prevailing rate of four shillings a day and board.
New settlers were no strange sight to the few residents of Rotter- dam. They were constantly passing through the village on their way to the wilder lands to the northward. If they wished to buy land anywhere from Oneida Lake to Lake Ontario they could buy it here of Mr. Meyer at three dollars an acre. Only eighteen months before it had sold for a dollar an acre. There was plenty to interest one here too in the little village on the edge of the woods, with blanketed Oneida Indians bartering away their furs at Mr. Scriba's store and the five-story grist mill, the highest in all the North Country, which Mr. Scriba had just erected. They might even see the landowner, himself, because now he was living at Rotterdam although much of his time was taken up traveling over his forest domain. Here was the last chance for mail from home, because here at Rotterdam was the only post office in the entire North Country. Of course John Meyer, the land agent, was postmaster, as he was supervisor of the town of Mexico and a justice of the peace of Oneida county. A landed proprietor invariably always saw to it that his agent got all the offices, town and otherwise.
A little further west on the lake was the substantial dwelling of another Hollander, John Bernhard, who has given his name to the village of Bernhard's Bay, but by this time the pioneers would be setting their course in a hired boat for Fort Brewerton where was Oliver Stevens' tavern. Stevens was another well known resident of this new country and had been named by the judges of Oneida county first clerk of the great town of Mexico. A number of years were to pass before the present town of Hastings was to be erected, to be named after Hastings Curtiss of Central Square, whose brick tavern was to become the political headquarters of this section of Oswego county.
From Stevens' tavern to Three Mile Point was but seven miles by land but nineteen by water. Here was Magie's tavern where DeWitt Clinton stopped ten years later and found infested with bed- bugs. From then on to Oswego Falls there was an almost unbroken stretch of woods. Not until the following year, 1801, was Abram Paddock, the bear hunter, to make the first settlement on the site of
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the present village of Phoenix. But at Oswego Falls the pioneer would find plenty of activity at both the Upper and Lower Landing. Here a stop must needs be made and the boat either dragged along the portage path between the Upper and Lower Landings, or else the cargo transferred to another boat. But if the incoming settler was willing to take the risk and would pay a dollar for the thrill, there were pilots at Oswego Falls who would guide lightly-loaded craft through the rapids. At any rate there woud be a stop at Major Lawrence Van Valkenburgh's tavern, a sort of half way place be- tween Salt Point and Oswego, with its frame center, where dances were held, and its two log wings. For many years the major and his son conducted this tavern, and the original license issued to the Van Valkenburghs by John Meyer, justice of the peace of Rotterdam, in 1797, is still in existence.
From Oswego Falls, the pioneer would not find a single settlement until he came to Oswego with the crumbling walls of old Fort Ontario on the plateau overlooking the lake. There were only half a dozen rude houses there at this period, some of them on the west side of the river in Onondaga county and some of them on the east side in Oneida county. The pioneer would probably stop at Archibald Fair- field's tavern and there he would find Daniel Burt, who had just arrived by canoe from Kingston, Ontario, and was destined to be- come a very important citizen of that little village.
From Oswego the pioneer could go, if he choose, to Vera Cruz, Mr. Scriba's lake port at the mouth of Salmon creek, but the usual route to this village was from Rotterdam by the road which had just been cut through the woods. Many of the pioneers of that day, how- ever, were going directly to Captain Nathan Sage's settlement at Red- field, far up the Salmon river, and the shortest way to this settlement was by a forest road, little more than a trail, which had been cut through from Rome. Nathan Sage was an ideal man to take charge of a new settlement. Within two years he had organized the first church society in the present Oswego county with Rev. Amos Johnson in charge, the little congregation worshiping in the school house. That was the same year Captain Sage was made a judge of the court of common pleas of Oneida county and the same year, too, he was elected supervisor of the town of Redfield, a position which he held until 1810. Later he was to go to Oswego and become collector of the
* * COME MARWANE COMPANY
VIEW OF MODERN WATERTOWN, LOOKING DOWN COURT STREET FROM PUBLIC SQUARE
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VIEW OF OLD WATERTOWN, SHOWING PUBLIC SQUARE ABOUT THE TIME OF THE CIVIL WAR
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port and postmaster there, thereby receiving his reward for keeping the town of Redfield in the Democratic column year after year, where all the rest of the North was being carried by the Federalists.
If one wished to enter the Black River Country from Rome the common route was to follow the old road to Deacon Clark's tavern in the town of Western, six miles from Rome, thence to Jones Tavern, 15 miles from Rome, through the huddle of log houses which was Boone's upper settlement and thence to Shaler's, the present Con- stablesville. Constable, who made the trip on horseback in 1803, found the road vastly better when he got within the bounds of Shaler's possessions and made the twenty-six miles between Rome and Shaler's in eight hours which, as he remarks in his journal, was "pretty good speed." At Shaler's the traveler found, as did Con- stable, a house "grand for that part of the country," a mill, a dam, several good buildings and "plenty of good liquor from Mr. Shaler's stock." From Shaler's the road ran northward across the level stretches of Turin, past the little tavern of Capt. Ezra Clapp, upgrade to the infant settlement established by Col. Walter Martin and thence into Lowville where by 1800 Silas Stow had established an enterpris- ing little village.
Noadiah Hubbard, the pioneer settler of Champion and if not the first certainly the second permanent settler of what is now Jefferson county, has left a graphic account of his immigration into the North Country by this same route in 1798 with neither compass nor guide. On the old French road it was not difficult to get to Turin Four Cor- ners which then boasted of but a single log hut. The trip northward through the wilderness was made with Mr. Hubbard leading the company, an ox bell in hand, next a man driving the cattle and finally a third bringing up the rear and marking trees with an axe, so if they found they could not advance further they could at least retrace their steps. They crossed Deer river not far from the present vil- lage of Copenhagen and soon identified some blazed trees which led to Long Falls, the present village of Carthage, only four miles from their destination.
Yet so fast did Lewis county settle that four years later Constable, proceeding from Shaler's to Martin's over practically the same route found the road infinitely superior to that between Rome and Shaler's. He found the land along the road well settled and the buildings
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nearly all framed, including the barns. Seldom did he come across a log house. Capt. Clapp, the Turin inn-keeper, told Constable that when he settled there a couple of years before he did not have a neighbor northward of him as far as Lowville but then there were forty families within a distance of a few miles.
WASHINGTON IRVING'S TOUR
Usually in the early days, however, incoming settlers did not follow the wood trail, especially if they had baggage. Instead they followed the French road to High Falls, now Lyons Falls, there got a boat and floated down the Black river to Long Falls, now Carthage, where the river being no longer navigable, they again took to the woods. Washington Irving has left a vivid description of a trip over this route which he took in 1803 to Judge Nathan Ford's settle- ment at Ogdensburg. With him were Josiah Ogden Hoffman, attor- ney general of the state and the owner of wide tracts of land in the north, and members of Mr. Hoffman's family.
Irving, a young man who liked his comfort and was unaccustomed to the privations and hardships of pioneer travel, saw nothing ro- mantic in the trip along roads which "were bad and lay either through thick woods, or by fields disfigured with burnt stumps and the fallen bodies of trees." Frequently the roads became so bad that the travelers had to get out of their wagon and walk. It was with relief that they embarked in a scow on Black river at High Falls but their relief was short lived as almost immediately the rain began to fall in torrents. They proceeded some twenty-five miles down the river that day, however, and found beds on the floor of a log house that night. The next evening they arrived at Jean Baptiste Boussont's tavern at Long Falls which Irving promptly dubbed the "Temple of Dirt." Before leaving he wrote over the fireplace the following memorial:
"Here Sovereign Dirt erects her sable throne,
The house, the host, the hostess, all her own."
Some time later Judge William Cooper, father of James Fenimore Cooper, the novelist, while stopping at the same tavern chanced to see the couplet and from his larger experience of frontier travel wrote under it this doggerel inculcation :
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"Learn hence, young man, and teach it to your sons, The wisest way's to take it as it comes."
The travelers, including the disgusted Irving, set forth from the "Temple of Dirt" the following day for the Oswegatchie country in two wagons, a third, drawn by oxen, carrying their luggage. They found the road filled with stumps and the roots of trees and traveled at a snail's pace, putting up that night in a small hut of one room which their hostess by the simple expedient of stretching a blanket across it converted into two. One wagon stuck hopelessly in the mud the next day and the other mired a few hours later. All took to their feet and Irving complained that several times he was up to his waist in mud and water. They spent the night in a downpour of rain in a hunter's shack, one-half of which fell down as they were getting into it. The other half leaked like a seive and the wind blew a perfect hurricane. The ladies became terrified and the whole party finally dragged themselves through the rain to a hut, eighteen by sixteen feet, where they found other stranded travelers and the whole com- pany of fiften spent the night there. The roof here leakd too and the unfortunate Irving was compelled to spend much of the night hold- ing an umbrella over the ladies as they slept. All through the night he heard the sound of falling trees and two or three times the long, dreary call of a wolf which did not add to his composure.
The following day the weary travelers resumed their journey, the ladies mounted on the ox cart, the men walking through deep mud holes and over stumps and stones until they finally came to the cabin of Mrs. Vrooman near the site of the present Oxbow. There they borrowed some bread and a teakettle and went on through the mud until they came to a hunter's shack where they spent the night after "stretching sheets over the side to keep out the cold air." A couple of days later they met a party of men with horses sent on by Judge Ford to meet them and who had rafts ready to take them across the Oswegatchie.
"At last to our great joy," writes Irving, "we came in sight of Oswegatchie. The prospect which opened upon us was delightful. After riding through thick woods for several days the sight of a beautiful and extensive tract of country is inconceivable enlivening. Close beside the bank on which we rode the Oswegatchie wound along
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about 20 feet below us. After running for some distance it entered the St. Lawrence, forming a long point of land on which stood a few houses called the Garrison. They were now tumbling in ruins excepting two or three which were kept in tolerable order by Judge Ford who resided in one of them and used the others as stores and out-houses."
THE OSWEGATCHIE ROAD
Judge Nathan Ford of Ogdensburg, the most clear-sighted of all the land agents in the north, saw from the first that there must be a road connecting the Mohawk country with the St. Lawrence if immi- gration was to be stimulated. All men were not contented to follow Indian trails through dense forests. The makeshift road from the Champlain country through Chateaugay accommodated a few from the northern part of Vermont but some sort of road from the High Falls to Ogdensburg was greatly needed. Ford interested the land owners to the extent that in 1801 he had contracted for a road to be built from the St. Lawrence to Long Falls (Carthage), connecting with the so called Black river road from High Falls to Brownville, for $16 a mile. So fast did the work progress that that fall Ford was able to write to the proprietor, Col. Samuel Ogden, that "if I live and have my health next summer, I will have a road which shall be drove with loaded wagons for I have no idea of putting up with such a thing as they have made through Chateaugay." And a year later he was able to proudly announce that "a waggon (sic) from the Mohawk river came through Ogdensburg with me." At the same time Ford was cautious enough to say, "I do not mean to tell you it is at this minute a good waggon road," a statement which Washington Irving was willing to fervently affirm a few months later.
However unsatisfactory the Oswegatchie road, as it was called, ox carts were able to travel it after a fashion and it was immeas- urably superior as a highway to the Oswegatchie country than a trail of blazed trees through the woods. Noadiah Hubbard was able to go from Ogdensburg to Champion in three days with his yoke of oxen on this road soon after its construction. This sufficed until 1804 when through the influence of Nathan Ford and his friends the state legislature appropriated $12,000, to be raised through a lottery, for
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a road six rods wide "from or near the head of Long Falls on Black river, in the county of Oneida, to the mills of Nathan Ford at Oswegatchie."
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