USA > New York > Franklin County > The north country; a history, embracing Jefferson, St. Lawrence, Oswego, Lewis and Franklin counties, New York, Volume 1 > Part 12
USA > New York > Jefferson County > The north country; a history, embracing Jefferson, St. Lawrence, Oswego, Lewis and Franklin counties, New York, Volume 1 > Part 12
USA > New York > Lewis County > The north country; a history, embracing Jefferson, St. Lawrence, Oswego, Lewis and Franklin counties, New York, Volume 1 > Part 12
USA > New York > Oswego County > The north country; a history, embracing Jefferson, St. Lawrence, Oswego, Lewis and Franklin counties, New York, Volume 1 > Part 12
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 12
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others piled on the lid, pork and beans and many other small things were baked. Salt pork was a standard article of course and in the very early days bread was made mostly from corn meal. Maple sugar was used, and there were pumpkins and potatoes with plenty of milk and cream. The wild leeks which the cows ate tainted the milk and butter and so the taste would not be noticed it was cus- tomary to place a fresh leek at each plate which each person was supposed to eat first of all. Pearlash was used in place of soda and when this could not be obtained the ashes of corn cobs sufficed.
Land was cheap, ranging anywhere from $2 to $15 an acre accord- ing to the "improvements." Thus a 100-acre farm might sell for anywhere from $200 to $1,500. But the settlers had little money and found it extremely difficult to meet even the small payments ex- pected of them, and after the counties were erected there were taxes. In St. Lawrence county money was so scarce in the early days that Nathan Ford proposed the settlers be permitted to meet their taxes in wheat, the proprietors to dispose of the wheat. Early Northern New York clergymen had a portion of their salaries paid in wheat. There was no market for surplus corn and, even if there was, no means of getting it to market. But corn distilled into whisky had a money value, usually about 20 cents a gallon. It was before the time of the temperance movements and whisky was quite generally used as a beverage all through the newly opened countries where wines were seldom seen. Governor DeWitt Clinton in his private journel tells of seeing a young girl in Three Rivers drink three glasses of whisky, one after another. A surplus of corn being avail- able it was natural that distilleries should be erected all through Northern New York. A Congregational clergyman conducted one at Burrville and Nathan Ford in his letters tells of the difficulties of bringing a copper still through the wilderness to Ogdensburg from Albany. In certain towns, such as Rutland, whisky became legal tender, and many of the subscriptions to the Congregationalist church at Champion, the first to be erected in Jefferson county, were made in whisky.
The early settlers, however, soon found another means of obtain- ing money through the very thing they considered their greatest curse. The great forests that fringed the small clearings must be lowered if the farm was to increase in value. Consequently we find
STATE STREET, LOWVILLE, N. Y.
LEWIS COUNTY COURT HOUSE, LOWVILLE, N. Y.
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the first settlers, as James Constable found them, burning huge piles of newly cut trees. The ashes, it soon developed, had a money value. Thirty cords of wood were required for a ton of ashes which in turn yielded but a sixth of a ton of potash. Elm and ash trees gave the greatest yield of ashes and an early settler in Bangor, Franklin county, whose farm was heavily wooded with elm, said he found a five dollar bill at the root of every tree. The first settlers did the full manufacturing, hauling the potash to market at one of the stores in the settlements where it could be changed to merchandise. Later asheries grew up, buying the wood ashes from the different farmers. Such ashes sold for about twelve cents a bushel. Many a farm in early Northern New York was paid for in whole or part through the sale of potash, which as late as 1812 was the principal industry all through the section.
Log inns sprang up along the roads and at the fords. They were inns only in name being in a number of cases only one-room cabins where the guests were forced to sleep on the floor. Mary Ann Duane, writing of early days in Franklin county, recalled the first taverns as "wholesome, rustic little things made of logs, with a kitchen and parlor and bar-room; a bed-room for the mistress of the house off the kitchen; a best bed-room off the parlor, not intended to be used; a garret-room upstairs, slightly partitioned-one end for the woman, one for the men." But Dr. Timothy Dwight, president of Yale Col- lege, who traveled through Central New York in the early part of the 19th century has different testimony. "I call them inns," he writes, "because this name is given them by the laws of the state and because each of them hangs out a sign challenging the title. But the law has nicknamed them and the signs are liars."
Alger's tavern in Lorraine was one of the best known of the early inns of the North Country. Constable tells of stopping there in 1805. He found "the landlord had gone to the mill and the landlady lay sick with a fever. She requested to see one of us and I went to her bed- side, where she expressed her regret at not being able to attend upon us, as she had always been attentive to travelers; that the best the house could afford should be prepared ; that there was no wheat mea) in the house but her husband had gone for some, and the neighbors, attending her, would see to our accommodation if we would stay. I remained and after the husband returned they got me a
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supper of tea, pork and bread of Indian meal, and I went to bed in the same room as the landlady, who was indeed very sick and attended all night, but I slept without waking."
THE CIRCUIT RIDERS
The early settlers of Northern New York were largely Congrega- tionalists, with the Puritanism of their fathers deeply instilled. When the first Congregationalist missionaries came riding up through the forest trails to the North Country settlements they found here a people ready to receive them and as prepared to submit to the stern discipline of the church as the church was to exercise it. The influ- ence of the first settled pastors such as Rev. Nathaniel Dutton of Champion, the Rev. Ishbel Parmelee of Malone, the Rev. David Spear of Rodman and the Rev. James Murdock of Martinsburg, was tre- mendous. The Sabbath was kept from sundown on Saturday until sundown on Sunday. The iron rule of the Rev. Ishbel Parmelee of Malone was typical. Of him the late Vice President Wheeler wrote, "He belonged to the days of Cromwell. Born under the dark shadow of Calvinism, his life and teachings were pervaded by its peculiar tenets." No amusements were tolerated but prayer meetings and singing schools. An inn keeper was forced to stand up in church meeting, ask forgiveness and submit himself to discipline for permit- ting a ball to be held in his tavern. Members were complained against for breaking the Sabbath, for failure to observe family prayer and for non-attendance at the stated meetings of the church, for un- truthfulness, for fighting and for intemperance. A man who par- tially concluded a bargain for renting a house on the Sabbath was severely disciplined. A couple in Moira, Franklin county, was ex- communicated because they had walked to a neighbor's house on a Sunday afternoon to view the remains of a panther. The edict of the church was feared and respected. One was warned once and then excommunicated. And seldom did the accused fail to accept the church's findings, express contrition and entreat forgiveness. The church even collected debts after hearing the evidence. Law suits among members were forbidden.
The great landowners were usually Episcopalians but even their great influence was unable to overcome the traditional Congrega-
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tionalist tendencies of their tenants save in two or three instances. When Col. Ogden wanted to send an Episcopalian clergyman to in- fant Ogdensburg Nathan Ford sounded out the settlers but "finding them determined to get one of the Presbyterian order and their mind being fully bent upon that object" he concluded that it was not proper for him to oppose them and the Rev. John Younglove, a graduate of Union College, was called.
Congregationalist missionaries, among them Rev. Amos Pettin- gill, Rev. Royal Phelps, Rev. John W. Church and Rev. William Taylor, were "preaching lectures" throughout the North Country prior to 1805, usually among a congenital people but there was a fly in their ointment. Writing of Turin in 1802 the Rev. William Taylor complained that "there are in this town many Methodists and Bap- tists who are dividing ye people." A little later in his journal we find him referring to Ellisburg as "a mixture of all the physical and moral evils that can well be conceived of." The Rev. William Taylor was a stern and narrow man. The fact that the Methodists had a strong group in Turin and the Baptists were well organized in Ellis- burg condemned both of these towns in his eyes. He was shocked to find the women Methodists prayed in the family instead of the men and "with such strength of lungs as to be distinctly heard by their neighbors."
As a matter of fact Methodist circuit riders were finding their converts along the trails from settlement to settlement in the North Country almost as soon as the Congregationalists, making converts and forming "classes." These early circuit riders were usually illiterate, hard-fisted, leather-lunged men, very much in earnest and devoted to their calling. The Baptists, too, got an early start, and within a few years after settlement had started there were settled ministers in several Northern New York communities, notably among them Rev. Peleg Card of Denmark and Rev. Stephen Parsons at Turin. By 1808 there were nine Baptist churches in the Black River Country and a few along the St. Lawrence.
But if the Methodists and Baptists and even the Universalists, most hated of all, were making inroads, the Congregationalists were by far in the majority and certainly the most powerful. Their ministers were usually college graduates. The Rev. Nathaniel Dut- ton of Champion had a degree from Dartmouth while the Rev. James
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Murdock of Martinsburg had graduated from Yale the year before the Revolution started. They provided a cultural influence. In the absence of secondary schools they gathered about them students whom they instructed in Latin and literature. They were the bul- wark of the conservative and propertied classes and were suspected and probably with some cause of promoting the cause of Federalism in the north. Within the first decade after settlement had started there were Congregationalist societies at Harison (Malone), Water- town, Burrs Mills, Turin, Champion, Hamilton (Waddington), Red- field and in many other of the little settlements in the north. The Black River Association of Congregational Churches was formed in Lowville Sept. 1, 1807, by delegates from churches at Leyden, West Leyden, Turin, Lowville, Denmark and from six towns in Jefferson county. The Rev. James Murdock was moderator and at this time the clergy proclaimed the first Thanksgiving day to be held in the North.
But for a long time the people were too poor to build churches. For years the little church at Martinsburg, built by the proprietor, Col. Martin, in 1807, was the only building for distinctly religious purposes in the whole North Country and for years Col. Martin retained the deed of this in typical baronial fashion. Religious serv- ices were held in houses, school-houses and mills. The Rev. William Taylor, before referred to, preached in a mill in Adams in 1802 and complained that "it was a dreadful place to preach in." Gradually settled ministers took the place of the missionaries. The Rev. David Spear came from Vermont to Rodman soon after the Congregational society there was organized and remained the pastor for fifty years. The Rev. Nathaniel Dutton came into Champion early in the century and remained there until his death forty-six years later. The Rev. John Winchester took up his residence in Madrid at a yearly salary of $91 cash and $274 in wheat, and so it went. These clergymen, poorly paid and supported largely by "donations," rode mile after mile over almost impassible roads to preach their "lectures" in all sections of the new country. They seldom received over $3 in collec- tions and never over $1 for marrying. In sickness and health they rode the wilderness roads. "I bless God my life has been spared through such difficult riding," wrote the Rev. Nathaniel Dutton in his journal preserved by the Jefferson County Historical Society, and it
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was no idle prayer. Stern, severe and uncompromising were these early North Country ministers, but they were admirable men, never shirking a necessary hardship and never avoiding a duty.
In the rough notes which compose the journal of the Rev. Mr. Dutton we get a graphic picture of the North Country of his day and the trials which faced a man of the cloth in that primitive time. In May, 1806, we find him preaching in a large barn in Champion. The following day he rode seven miles to Rutland and found "a very cor- rupt people mostly Universalists and Baptists." Neverthe- less he preached to a small congregation, mostly women, distributed books, and the following day was in Simeon Hunt's tavern ten miles away preaching a "lecture" to thirty-nine people, all women but four. The following day he was in Adams, preaching to sixty people and distributing Watt's "Divine Songs." From there he went to Ellis- burg where he conversed with several of the inhabitants and "found them loose in principle, ignorant of God and duty." The following day he rode over an intolerable road into Redfield, where he arrived much fatigued, as we can well believe. On his knees he thanked God his life had been spared in this long ride through the forests.
But if the Congregationalists had their trials they were excelled by the gray-clad Methodist circuit riders, then considered exponents of a strange and heretic doctrine. In the settlements along the Northern banks of the St. Lawrence formed by the Mohawk valley Tories after the Revolution Methodism early became powerful. As early as 1792 the Rev. William Losee had ridden up through the woods of the Black River Country and crossed the St. Lawrence on the ice to minister to the Methodists in these settlements. At Au- gusta, just across the St. Lawrence from St. Lawrence county were living Paul and Barbara Heck, among the founders of Methodism in New York City prior to the Revolution, and John Lawrence who had married the widow of Philip, a revered name in the church of John Wesley. Long before the first settlements had been established on the American side of the river, Methodist preachers were riding from clearing to clearing on the Canadian side and building up an influential following. As settlements appeared on the south side of the river, these itinerant preachers crossed over on occasion and the first Congregational missionaries found evidences of their ministry all through the Oswegatchie and the St. Regis country.
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One of the earliest Methodist preachers to have a definite circuit in Northern New York was the Rev. Chandley Lambert, known throughout the length and breadth of the newly opened northern country as "Father" Lambert. He was a tall, well-proportioned man who could thunder at the devil, the Congregationalists, the Baptists and the Universalists all in one breath. "I laid down hot and heavy on them," he writes gleefully in his journal, referring to an encounter with some Universalists in Potsdam, "and the preacher was very uneasy indeed." The Rev. Mr. Lambert was a stern man who took the Methodist Disciple literally. When Bishop Asburg assigned him to St. Lawrence county early in the nineteenth century he found forty-three professed Methodists on the circuit but proceeded to expel eight or ten of them who seemed to him to be lacking in grace. Shortly after arriving in the county he rode to Madrid to form a society . "Here," he writes, "the devil is let loose to work powerfully through agents. The Congregationalists and Baptists wish to rid the land of Methodists." It was here that "one of the devil's own chil- dren got a bruised face from another man who had just enough religion to fight for the Methodists." A few days later he was in Rich's Settlement in DeKalb (Richland), which he designated as one of Satan's seats, and within a week was hard at it, berating the Uni- versalists in Potsdam.
Yet for all their denominational differences and bickerings the trials of these early North Country preachers were very similar. Here is "Father" Lambert's description of his ride from the St. Law- rence circuit to the Black River Country in 1808: "Set out for the Black River Country to attend camp meeting and to visit my friends. This day I was enabled to exercise perfect patience while riding through the heat and flies. A tedious journey, having a wilderness of twelve miles to go through, with a blind track and no inhabitants. Night coming on, I was not certain of being in the right path. I had ridden my horse almost fifty miles with nothing to eat, except to brouse which he got as he passed along. Finally I could not see the road and it seemed necessary that we must spend the night in the wilderness. I kneeled down and asked God to protect me from harm and direct me in the right way. It was difficult to find the way, so mounting the horse I gave him the reins. After we had traveled for some time I thought I would let my horse eat brouse and try to rest
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for the night. The darkest time is just before the day. We came out into a plain road, and soon came to inhabitants who gave us rest the remainder of the night."
Until 1816 there was not a church building in the entire North Country excepting the little meeting house at Martin's in Lewis county which had then been standing for nearly ten years. But that year work was started on three churches in various sections of the North Country. At Champion Noadiah Hubbard, the pioneer and leading settler, made arrangements to construct a Congregational meeting house on the hill. The Rev. Nathaniel Dutton had been settled there for some years then and had gathered about him a strong congregation from not only Champion but Rutland as well. At Shaler's in West Leyden about this time work was started on a sturdy little Episcopal church which two years later was to be com- pleted and to be known as St. Paul's. At the same time in Hamilton, now Waddington, in St. Lawrence county, the Ogdens were busy with preparations for building another St. Paul's in their village and by 1818 it was completed, its walls three feet thick, the first church edi- fice in St. Lawrence county.
The two Episcopal churches reflected of course the influence of the great landowners. The Ogdens at Hamilton, the Harisons at Morley, the Clarksons at Potsdam and the Constables at Shaler's, later Constableville, had established great country homes in their Northern possessions. Here like their English ancestors they could ride their broad acres, lord it over their tenants and hunt to their heart's content. Barons of the land as they were, it was not sufficient to have majestic country seats; they must have Episcopal churches as well, and one by one they were built, each with its glebe and the building of each made possible through the generosity of old Trinity Church in New York. Soon there were Episcopal churches in Low- ville and Sackets Harbor, Potsdam and Morley but of all these the churches at Constableville and Waddington were the first.
The "raising" of the old Champion church was an event that attracted men, women and children for miles around. For three days the contractor dined all the men who were assisting in raising the building and no fewer than 200 availed themselves of the opportunity. The steeple was high and constructed of immense timbers. . It was necessary to bring ship tackle from Sackets Harbor to raise these
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timbers but finally the tall steeple was in place without a mishap. The meeting house was built on the old Connecticut model, with pews large and square, with seats on three sides, a door on the fourth lead- ing into the aisle. A portion of the occupants of each pew sat with their back to the preacher. There was a center and two side aisles with wide galleries all around the three sides. The pulpit was high and reached by a long flight of stairs. Over the speaker's head, sus- pended by an amazing hand on the end of a long, iron rod, was a sounding board. No provision was made for warming the house and standing on a hill as it did with the wind howling about it, it must have been anything but a comfortable place on a January day. But it was common practice for each matron to come furnished with her foot stove, a tin receptable containing live coals covered with ashes. Gen. Henry Champion, after whom the town was named, sent a bell which weighed about 800 pounds. Upon its arrival it was at once suspended upon an extemporized yoke and so loudly was it rung that its peals were audible through the woods to Wilna. For many years it was rung every morning and evening at nine o'clock, the only church bell within a radius of over fifty miles.
Ordinarily pioneers of the early North Country followed strictly the narrow teachings of their church and carefully refrained from worldly amusements. But there were some settlements to which the church had not extended its sway. James Constable writes of arriving at one house in Franklin county at six o'clock in the morning just as a dance was breaking up. Van Valkenburgh's tavern on the Oswego river was the scene of many an early dance and when no other music was available Peter Sharp's female slave was borrowed to supply the deficiency with her melodious voice. A dance was a real event and always attracted settlers for miles away. There is a curious incident connected with the early history of the town of Volney, Oswego county. The young men of Mexico wanted to hold a "log cabin dance" in the home of Calvin Tiffany. There were plenty of men available but few girls. Three young men, Sherman Hosmer, Nathaniel P. Easton and a boy by the name of Hatch put their heads together and decided to go to Oswego Falls and get some girls. Armed with an axe and a pocket compass, they set out through the woods, coming in the course of time to the little hamlet of Volney Center. Here they found three girls and they were promptly invited
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to walk fifteen miles to the dance. In the morning the three couples set out through the woods. When they came to a brook or a marsh, the girls took off their shoes and stockings. They stopped at the home of David Easton in Mexico over night and the next day went on to Tiffany's and danced all that night. The following forenoon they were back at Easton's and the next day started back to their homes. The young men who accompanied them spent the night at Volney Center, returning to their homes in Mexico the following day. The whole trip was made on foot and consumed six days in all.
This, then, was the North Country of the time of the Louisiana Purchase, a thin line of settlements along the rivers and a few iso- lated cabins along the almost impassable roads. Away from the rivers was an almost unbroken wilderness in which panthers and wolves and bears roved. Scarcely a settlement in all that great expanse of country was as yet more than a hamlet. Log cabins still predominated in the villages but ugly, new houses were beginning to appear of green, unpainted lumber.
There was little beauty in such a settlement with its charred stumps and unlovely dwellings. But the forests rang daily with the sound of the great broad-axes of the pioneers hewing out homes for themselves in the wilderness. They were ideal residents of a new country, men accustomed to make their living by the sweat of their brows. If the majority of them were unlettered and unlearned, yet they were resourceful and accustomed to hardships. Generally the people, though poor, were contented with their lots. They saw their lands constantly increasing in value as settlers flocked in and roads were opened. By 1805 lands which ten years before had been worth only a few cents an acre were selling at $3.50 an acre in Henderson, $5 an acre in Hounsfield, from $6 to $10 an acre in Champion and as high as $17 an acre in certain favored sections of Turin. A yoke of oxen might sell for $70, a cow for $15, all necessary farming tools for $20, and an ox cart for $30. Farm hands received from $8 to $11 a month and mechanics from $12 to $16 a month. Constable found some farms producing as high as 80 bushels of corn to the acre but said that 50 bushels was the usual run.
From Turin to Chaumont and from New Rotterdam to Chateau- gay was a congenital people of good New England stock, thrifty, industrious and happy. "One thing is peculiar in this wilderness,"
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writes an early missionary to Northern New York. "Every counte- nance indicates pleasure and satisfaction. The equality of circum- stances cuts off a great proportion of the evils which render men unhappy in improved societies, and the influence of hope is very apparent."
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