USA > New York > Franklin County > The north country; a history, embracing Jefferson, St. Lawrence, Oswego, Lewis and Franklin counties, New York, Volume 1 > Part 18
USA > New York > Jefferson County > The north country; a history, embracing Jefferson, St. Lawrence, Oswego, Lewis and Franklin counties, New York, Volume 1 > Part 18
USA > New York > Lewis County > The north country; a history, embracing Jefferson, St. Lawrence, Oswego, Lewis and Franklin counties, New York, Volume 1 > Part 18
USA > New York > Oswego County > The north country; a history, embracing Jefferson, St. Lawrence, Oswego, Lewis and Franklin counties, New York, Volume 1 > Part 18
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 18
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The following day Monroe reached Ogdensburg to be greeted on the outskirts of the village by a large number of citizens and a brass band. He was then brought to the big brick house of David Parish where he was waited upon by the village trustees. That same night he rode forth along the St. Lawrence to Morristown where he was the guest of Major David Ford, brother of the judge.
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HISTORY OF THE NORTH COUNTRY
The route was now to Watertown and Sackets Harbor but many stops must be made enroute. At each little hamlet along the road the grave man in the buff and blue of Washington's army must needs shake hands with the villagers and on occasion receive an "address." But at Antwerp he found waiting for him a more im- portant figure, no other than James D. LeRay de Chaumont, that charming gentleman of old France, now these ten years a resident of the United States and one of the greatest landowners in the state. LeRay, the friend of Franklin, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, knew how to entertain the great and it was a distinguished looking cavalcade which moved on to LeRay's big manor house at LeRaysville to spend the night. Here were slaves and luxurious ap- pointments which must have been welcome to the weary man who had travelled so far.
The next morning, bright and early, the Watertown delegation was at LeRaysville to wait on the president. In addition to the com- mittee there were two troops of militia cavalrymen and a large number of citizens. The president was escorted to the two-story wooden tavern of Isaac Lee, standing on the site of the present Woolworth building in Watertown, and there listened to another "address" from a committee of which Egbert Ten Eyck was chair- man. Here the president was told that "history, ancient or modern, affords no example of a nation or people where the ruler and the ruled meet and greet each other with that respectful freedom and attention which characterizes the people of these United States."
From Watertown the president went to Brownville to spend the night in the majestic stone house of Gen. Jacob Brown which still stands in that village. The following morning he went on to Sackets Harbor where, in keeping with the importance of the place, the most elaborate ceremonies had been prepared to welcome the chief executive of the nation. On the bridge nineteen arches had been erected, the first arch surmounted by a living American eagle. As the president and his party, consisting of army and naval officers, three troops of dragoons and the most important citizens of the county, crossed the bridge into the village the big guns of the forts thundered the presidential salute.
At the village end of the bridge were drawn up a committee of citizens and a group of Revolutionary veterans who presented him
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HISTORY OF THE NORTH COUNTRY
with another "address." According to a contemporary account the president recognized among the veterans several whom he had known in the army. The procession then moved towards the Man- sion House where a civic arch had been erected. Children strew the path with flowers. Over the Mansion House's "stoop" an Amer- ican flag was draped to form an awning and on this a live American eagle was perched. Here another "address" was presented by the citizens' committee and the president received the officers of the army and navy. The afternoon was spent in inspecting the military works and the half-completed New Orleans, the 110-gun frigate which still stood on the stocks where it had been left when news of the declaration of peace was received. On Aug. 6th the president and his suite embarked on the brig, Jones, and with the Lady of the Lake as escort, proceeded to Detroit.
The result of the president's tour so far as Northern New York was concerned was soon evidenced in two respects. Orders were is- sued for the commander of the troops at Plattsburgh to repair the "military road," the condition of which the president knew only too well from personal experience. The soldiers who engaged in this work were to be allowed a gill of whisky a day and 15 cents addi- tional pay. Also orders were at once given for the completion of the permanent barracks at Sackets Harbor with the idea of making that village a military post of the first magnitude. Something like $150,000 was the original cost of the buildings erected, no small sum in that day. Col. Hugh Brady was in command of the post for ten years after the war, and his regiment, the 2nd United States Infantry, the first permanent garrison of Madison Barracks.
THE FIRST COUNTY FAIR
The burning of potash had long ceased to be the principal occu- pation of the North Country farmers. Many farms were entirely cleared, there were comfortable residences and attention was being given to improved agricultural methods. A leader in this work was James D. LeRay de Chaumont, the landowner, who saw the ad- vantage to be gained by a yearly meeting of farmers at some central point with a display of farm products,-in others words, a fair. As a result a meeting was called at Isaac Lee's tavern in Watertown and the Jefferson County Agricultural Society organized Oct. 25th,
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HISTORY OF THE NORTH COUNTRY
1817. Its first fair, and one of the first county fairs in the state, was held in Watertown Sept. 28th and 29th, 1818. The "first cattle show and fair," as it was called, attracted wide attention. Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, wrote: "The objects of this institution (the fair) are worthy of its enlightened members; and many of them, I hope and trust, will live to see the happy fruits which cannot fail to recompense their zeal and patriot- ism." James Madison, the father of the constitution, wrote: "I can- not be insensible to the distinction with which I have been honored by an institution which is organized under such respectable auspices." The venerable John Adams wrote to LeRay de Chaumont: "Thirty- nine years ago I little thought I should live to see the heir-apparent to the princely palaces and garden of Passy my fellow citizen in the Republican wilderness of America, laying the foundation for more ample domains and perhaps more splendid palaces." So the fair was inaugurated with the applause of the humble and the good wishes of the great.
Watertown, where the first fair was held, was then a village of something over 1,000 residents. Nearly half this population had been attained within the past two years. Village ordinances just passed prohibited residents from allowing their hogs to wander at will in the streets but the village was little more than a collection of farms excepting in the immediate vicinity of the mall, now known as Pub- lic Square, and a line of zig zag rail fences lined Arsenal street mark- ing the boundary of Hart Massey's farm. Streets were often knee deep in mud and residents and merchants used the sidewalks in front of their homes for storage places for fuel and merchandise.
Yet for a frontier town Watertown was a respectable-sized place. It was almost as large as Buffalo, quite as large as Detroit and three times as large as Cleveland. And the inauguration of the second county agricultural fair in all New York state was an important event in those days when so much of the wealth of the state was in the great landed estates that stretched for miles through the North like miniature empires. Governor DeWitt Clinton, himself, was on hand for the fair, and there were many other distinguished men, in- cluding General Stephen Van Rensselaer, the Patroon, George Par- ish of Ogdensburg, William Constable of Constable Hall, Lewis county, and James D. LeRay of LeRaysville.
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The fair was strictly for the purpose of encouraging agricultural and home arts. There was no midway, no horse racing and none of the entertainment so common at county fairs of this day. On the first day the stock was inspected and judged by the distinguished visitors from a raised platform in the center of the pens at which time Roswell Woodruff exhibited a cart drawn by seventeen yokes of oxen and Judge Noadiah Hubbard of Champion one drawn by fifteen pair. On the following day a plowing match, long a feature of early county fairs, was the principal event. Prize winners were then selected among those who had exhibited the best stock, the best home-woven cloth and carpeting and the best home-made straw hats.
Following the plowing match a procession was formed, said by a newspaper of the time to be the largest ever seen in the village up to that time, and moved towards the court house, headed by the band of the 2nd United States infantry. As the procession passed the state armory a salute was fired. At the court house addresses were delivered by James D. LeRay, the president of the society, and by Governor Clinton, the latter, according to a contemporary ac- count "in a style peculiarly his own." Certain it was that Clinton, always with an eye single to his own interests, did not fail to take full advantage of this opportunity to advance his political fortunes.
"There was a period of danger, when the eyes of the people of this state were directed with peculiar anxiety to this region; when you passed with honor through the difficulties with which you were environed, and vindicated the character of America at the point of the sword," he said. "On this day the public eye is fixed on you with equal attention, to view the prosperity of your agriculture and the wide-spreading and far-extending progress of your useful im- provements; and I am happy there will be no disappointment."
Prizes were then awarded and with the band and the prize-win- ners leading the parade, the procession marched up Court street to Isaac Lee's tavern where "a grand fair dinner" was held. No less than nineteen set toasts were drunk, everybody being toasted from George Washington down to General Brown and it must have been a merry and somewhat befuddled company that was helped to their horses later that evening by genial Isaac Lee.
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OTHER EARLY FAIRS
The Lewis County Agricultural Society was organized in 1820 with Judge Silas Stowe as president and Charles Dayan as secre- tary. The first fair was held October 3rd and 4th, 1821, in the old Lowville Academy. Members of the society convened in the inn of Jared House on the present site of the Bateman House, all with cockades of wheat heads fastened to their hats. The cattle on exhi- bition were driven to pens on the site of the Methodist Church and there inspected by the viewing committee. On the final day of the fair, members of the society, led by the grand marshal, Sylvester Miller, on horseback, with Major Ela Merriam as assistant marshal, marched to the academy where an address was read by the presi- dent, Judge Stowe, and the premiums awarded. Silas Stowe was awarded ten dollars for having the best improved farm in the county and there were many other awards.
The first agricultural fair in Oswego county was an informal af- fair organized by Nelson Pitkin, who invited his neighbors to show their stock in the West Park at Oswego. The exhibition was held in 1832. The Oswego County Agricultural Society was organized in 1840 at the Frontier House. Col. U. G. White was elected president, Alvin Rice, first vice-president, Joseph Sanford, second vice-presi- dent, Jacob I. Fort, treasurer, Dwight Herrick, secretary, Edwin W. Clarke, corresponding secretary, Joel Turrill, Orlo Steele and Wil- liam Ingalls, executive committee.
Fairs in St. Lawrence and Franklin counties were not held until later. Agricultural Societies were organized in St. Lawrence county in 1822 and again in 1834, the latter time with George Parish as president and Silas Wright as one of the vice presidents, but both societies were soon abandoned. In 1851 the society was reorganized with Henry Van Rensselaer as president, and the first fair was held in Canton in 1852. Seven years later the Gouverneur Agricultural Society was organized and the first fair held that year. The Franklin County Agricultural Society was organized in 1851 with Sidney Law- rence as president, Harry S. House as secretary and Hiram H. Thompson as treasurer. The first fair was held the next year about a half mile east of Malone and numerous premiums awarded includ- ing three for a plowing match.
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In 1856, only a few years after the holding of the first county fairs in St. Lawrence and Franklin counties, the state fair was held in Watertown. Rain ruined the first two days. An exhibition of the paintings of Jonah Woodruff, a well known Watertown artist of that day, was a feature of the fair. This divided attention with a re- cently invented washing machine and Fairbank's oscillating steam engine. Three long trains brought farmers from St. Lawrence county on the third day. Attendance was estimated at between twenty thousand and thirty thousand people. The last day attendance went over thirty thousand.
EARLY MANUFACTURING IN THE NORTH
In the journal which President Monroe kept of his tour, he refers to the pause "to view Mr. Parish's extensive and very valuable iron works at Rossie considered to be an establishment of great public importance and of usefulness to the surrounding country." The Par- ish iron works at Rossie was indeed an institution of the greatest importance to the young North Country. Mr. Parish had erected his first furnace on the Indian river at Rossie as early as 1813. Long before this, however, William Kelley, the Franklin county landowner and political leader, had been operating a furnace not far from Chateaugay. Parish soon followed his Rossie furnace with one in Antwerp and in 1819 James D. LeRay got one in operation at Carth- age. Within ten years there were a dozen or more of these furnaces in operation in Northern New York and certain villages, such as Carthage, date the beginning of their growth from the start of the iron industry in the North.
The bog iron in the vicinity furnished the materials and the for- ests furnished the charcoal in abundance. The product of several of these furnaces ran as high as three or four tons a day and supplied the community around with potash and sugar kettles as well as with kitchen ware. The iron was also cast into stoves and nails were pounded out from it by hand, selling as high as 30 cents a pound.
The possibilities of the water power along Black river had early been appreciated but the poverty of the settlers prevented its use for anything but the operation of grist and saw mills until about the time of the War of 1812. Power rights on Beebe Island, Watertown,
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are now worth millions of dollars, but Jonathan Cowan, the first owner, offered to sell a half interest in the island for $10 and the best offer he could get was $5. Even as late as the 1830s the island was assessed for only $1,500. Gurdon Caswell had established a tiny paper mill in Watertown, on the site of the present Knowlton's Brothers paper mill, as early as 1807, the first paper mill in Jeffer- son county and possibly in Northern New York, but it was not until 1813 that the first attempt was made at manufacturing in Watertown on a large scale. That year the Black River Cotton and Woolen Manufacturing Company was organized with a capital of $100,000. The stone factory building and dam cut out of the solid rock cost $72,000. The factory was located in the region of the present Fac- tory Square and the right of way which the company purchased to their mill from the village green for $250 became the present Fac- tory street. Prejudice against machinery hindered the company from the start and in 1817 work was discontinued and the $72,000 factory sold for $7,000. The Brownville Manufacturing company had a sim- ilar experience and operated but a few months. There was no secure financial basis and transportation facilities were hopelessly inade- quate. It was fully twenty years later before manufacturing became a profitable operation in Northern New York and by that time the cotton and woolen industry in the section had been largely abandoned.
EARLY BANKS
The interest in manufacturing, however, proved the necessity of a bank. Up until 1816 there wasn't a financial institution of any kind in all Northern New York. But the merchants had made money from the war, the landowners needed a nearby depository for their funds and a class of farmers had developed, who, if not wealthy, were at least in comfortable circumstances for that time. So appli- cation was made for a charter and April 17, 1816, an act incorpo- rating the Jefferson County Bank was passed by the legislature. John Paddock, who had made a fortune in the sale of potash and lottery tickets, was a prime mover in the enterprise and is credited with locating the bank at Adams. There the remodelled building which housed the first bank still stands. The institution failed in 1819 but in 1824 was moved to Watertown and from then on prospered.
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The bank was regarded with anything but favor by the vast majority of the people of early Jefferson county. Banks were con- sidered institutions of the wealthy and the bitter political battle which for years hinged about the granting of a charter to the United States bank made many view all banks with suspicion. During the bitter congressional campaign in 1820 in Northern New York, when Micah Sterling opposed Perley Keyes, an issue made against Mr. Sterling was that he was connected with the bank. A piece of dog- gerel, written by a Watertown wag, which had great vogue in that day, ran :
Friend in the grogram coat, with staff and spear, What is your business-what your duty here? "To watch the bank." The bank. Why, tell me pray, Think you the bank is like to run away.
"No, no,-but rogues and thieves, those cursed chaps Might break the locks and doors and steal perhaps, And I am paid for standing here all night To catch or frighten them and keep them right."
Well, since you are paid for't, watchman, stand thy post, And see no stiver of the cash is lost: At the same time, permit me, friend, to doubt, Such mighty dangers from the rogues without; I'd think the money better far applied, If you were paid for catching rogues inside.
The influence of this little bank upon the growth of all Northern New York can hardly be overestimated. For many years it was the only bank in the entire section and its notes were widely circulated throughout Northern New York, replacing to a great extent the Canadian currency which had previously been used so generally. These notes were at first easily counterfeited. The editor of the Jefferson and Lewis Gazette, published at Watertown, warns his readers in his issue of Aug. 18, 1817, that he had seen a $3 note on the bank raised to $50, while the Sackets Harbor Gazette that same year says that counterfeit notes of seventy-five cents on the Jeffer- son County Bank were in circulation in that village.
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HISTORY OF THE NORTH COUNTRY
The first bank in Oswego county was the Commercial Bank of Oswego established by Luther Wright in 1835. It failed two years later and was succeeded in 1846 by Luther Wright's bank. Fulton's first bank was the Citizen's Bank, established in 1852. In St. Law- rence county, the first bank was the Ogdensburg Bank, incorporated in 1829. Potsdam's first bank was the Frontier Bank, estab- lished by Henry Keep of Watertown in 1851. Franklin county's first bank was the Bank of Malone established in 1851.
AN EARLY POLITICAL CAMPAIGN
Just at the close of this era the North Country experienced its most bitter, local political campaign in its history thus far, the congressional campaign between Judge Perley Keyes and Micah Sterling, both of Watertown. Keyes was the Jefferson county leader of the "Bucktail" faction of the Democratic party which gave its allegiance to such state leaders as Martin Van Buren and Silas Wright. Micah Sterling was a candidate of the Clinton wing of the party which generally supported during his lifetime De Witt Clin- ton. At that time Jefferson, Lewis and St. Lawrence counties con- stituted one congressional district. William D. Ford of Watertown was then representing the district in congress but had incurred the enmity of the "Bucktails" by being one of the promoters of the cele- brated Missouri Compromise. The "Bucktail" platform charged him with "lending his aid for the extension of slavery and thereby un- dermining the pillars of our constitution," the first indication of slavery becoming a political issue in Northern New York.
Micah Sterling was one of the leading lawyers of Northern New York at this period. He had graduated from Yale in the same class with John Calhoun, was one of the prime movers in the organization of the Jefferson County Bank, and like a great many of the Clinton- ians had been a Federalist until that party passed out of existence. Judge Keyes was the leader of the so called "Watertown Regency," which, according to the opposition journals, dictated all state and national appointments in Jefferson county. He was an astute and able politician. Later when he was in the state senate Martin Van Buren referred to him as "a senator on our side, and, tho' a plain farmer, a man of rare sagacity."
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HISTORY OF THE NORTH COUNTRY
The campaign at once developed into an extremely bitter one. One marvels today reading over the yellowed newspaper files of the period at the intemperate expression and the viciousness which char- acterized that fight. There was no effort to avoid personalities. Sterling, according to the opposition newspaper, was "a lawyer blest with an easy effusion of words and fond of spinning out long speeches, though it is sometimes intimated that his tongue, like that of Thersites, often outruns his understanding." Moreover during the war of 1812, according to the Keyes supporters, Sterling had "mourned over our victories and rejoiced at our defeats." As a representative from Jefferson county, according to the opposition, he had attended a meeting of Federalists in Albany during that war, and urged the sending of delegates to the Hartford Convention.
Judge Keyes, on the other hand, was represented as a farmer who had "labored indefatigably for his own and the general good." His was a "fidelity that never betrayed, a vigilance that never slept and a firmness that never faltered." Hardly had this tribute been published than the Clintonians produced an affidavit to the effect that when Keyes heard that Gen. Brown had been wounded in battle, he said he "wished the ball had gone through his dam'd heart." The Keyes men retaliated that Sterling was a slave-holder, had beaten one slave to death and another had only escaped that fate by flying to Montreal. The Clintonian convention which nominated Sterling was designated by the opposition paper as a meeting of "bank direc- tors, slave holders, broken merchants and pettifoggers." The broad- est charges were made unblushingly as witness this notice in the Watertown Independent Republican of that period: "Wants employ- ment-A fine, fat Negro wench, staunch built, who has lost a good situation for the only reason that she was a little too familiar with a certain young lawyer in this village in the year 1813."
When the "Bucktail" convention nominated Keyes the Sackets Harbor Gazette announces the event and then piously adds, "God save the republic." The newspaper said that Keyes had already re- ceived in salaries something like $30,000 in the people's money and expressed the opinion that it was high time he was separated from the public payroll. He was. Sterling was elected by a majority of a little over 500. He carried Jefferson county by a majority of ex- actly thirty-six and the result in Lewis county was almost a tie, but
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the St. Lawrence county Federalists swung to a man behind Sterling and gave him a majority of five hundred in that county.
To show how closely contested the election was in Jefferson county, the vote by towns in the 1820 congressional election is given :
Sterling
Keyes
Adams
151
151
Antwerp
125
97
Brownville
174
121
Champion
155
110
Ellisburg
242
159
Henderson
120
104
Hounsfield
307
93
LeRay
35
254
Lorraine
97
54
Lyme
94
46
Pamelia
21
143
Rodman
36
130
Rutland
76
177
Watertown
161
201
Wilna
41
43
1933
1897
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EARLY AMUSEMENTS AND COSTUMES
But life in Northern New York in the twenties had a lighter side. Occasionally a circus, or a "caravan," to use the expression of the time, would rumble into town, pitch its tent and show for one to two days. One such early circus was described as possessing a "grand carnival of living animals," which included a lion, a tiger, a leopard, a jaguar and "the celebrated camel." Very rarely there came a play, as for example the five-act drama, "The Stranger, or Misanthropy and Repentance," to which is appended the much ad- mired comic farce in two acts, called the 'Spoiled Child,'" which showed in Watertown in 1819.
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