USA > New York > Franklin County > The north country; a history, embracing Jefferson, St. Lawrence, Oswego, Lewis and Franklin counties, New York, Volume 1 > Part 23
USA > New York > Jefferson County > The north country; a history, embracing Jefferson, St. Lawrence, Oswego, Lewis and Franklin counties, New York, Volume 1 > Part 23
USA > New York > Lewis County > The north country; a history, embracing Jefferson, St. Lawrence, Oswego, Lewis and Franklin counties, New York, Volume 1 > Part 23
USA > New York > Oswego County > The north country; a history, embracing Jefferson, St. Lawrence, Oswego, Lewis and Franklin counties, New York, Volume 1 > Part 23
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 23
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Inside the Constable library is still kept intact probably the most famous collection in private hands now existing in Northern New York. Here one finds the 1640 edition of "The Workes of Benjamin
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Jonson," a beautifully tooled Bible of 1610, a Chaucer of 1721, Barbie de Bocagio's "Maps, Plans, Views and Coins Illustrative of the Travels of Anarcbarsis, the Younger, in Greece," and a Thomas Moore's "Irish Melodies" with the autograph of William Bird upon an inner cover. No easy task it was to bring these books up through the woods when the Constable house was built. And there are many other priceless treasures. On a stout peg hangs the leathern and wampum coat presented by the chiefs of the Six Nations to the first William Constable. On the walls hang sporting prints of the Dublin and London of over a century ago and the old house flag with its six- teen stars, recalling the United States of the days of Thomas Jeffer- son. Here too one is shown the gay coat of arms that once decorated the family coach of the Constables as it made its way up the Broad- way of old New York and pieces of furniture which would delight the heart of an antiquarian.
THE HARISON FAMILY
Richard Harison, a leader in the Tory-Federalist party and an aristocrat of aristocrats, owned great estates in St. Lawrence and Franklin counties. Malone was first called Harison after the land- owner who had large possessions in that town. Harrisburgh and Harrisville and Harison street, Canton, still remain to recall days when the Harisons ruled thousands of acres of land throughout the North. Born in New York in 1747, Richard Harison was a classmate of John Jay in Kings College, now Columbia, and became one of the most eminent lawyers of his day. For a time he was a law partner of Alexander Hamilton. He succeeded James Kent as recorder. He was a polished scholar, the master of many languages and it is said of him that he learned Hebrew after he was 72 years of age. One of the first appointments of President Washington was to make Mr. Harison United States attorney for the district of New York, a posi- tion which he held from 1789 to 1801. He was secretary of the Board of Regents, a member of the Assembly and a member of the convention which adopted the Federal Constitution.
The younger Harisons came north to live the life of English country gentlemen. The son and namesake of old Richard Harison established himself in the midst of the family estates in the town
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of Canton, and at Morley, looking down upon the long rapids of the Gras river he built his manor house with high walls and cobbled court. Load after load of household furnishings were carted up through the woods to Morley including the family library, many volumes of which had been brought from Berkshire years before. Another Harison, George, came to Malone and built another manor house, a broad drive lined with stately trees leading from the street to its door. Here were fine, well-kept gardens, a greenhouse with a caretaker's lodge, and in fact all the appointments of an English country home. At Canton, St. Lawrence county, other Harison man- sions were built and two of them, remodeled it is true, stand there to this day. Not until the 1880s did the Harisons dispose of their residences in Canton.
THE RED VILLA OF THE PARISHES
But most splendid of all the houses in St. Lawrence county was the great, brick mansion of the Parishes in Ogdensburg, occupying an entire city block and shut off from the world by a great wall overgrown with roses. Built before the War of 1812 by Joseph Rosseel, the agent of David Parish, it still stands as the Remington Museum of Art. Here was luxury such as was seldom found in the North Country of that day, formal gardens after the English style, a paved court, a race track, for the Parishes like true English gentle- men dearly loved their horses, and a gardener's house and stables. Three stories high and painted a deep red, it became known far and wide as the Red Villa. Rosseel built it with its back primly turned to the people of Ogdensburg and here lived succeeding generations of the Parishes in the seclusion which they dearly loved. Throughout the section other Parish houses were built, all looking out upon extended parks and formal gardens. "All had an old baronial air," says Curtis in his History of St. Lawrence County, "and one could easily imagine the entire place brought bodily from some foreign country and set down in the midst of this quiet town." When David Parish sent a billiard table north to grace his mansion in 1815 the faithful Rosseel had to send 120 miles to Montreal for a man to set it up.
George Parish was the last of his family to occupy the Red Villa. A bachelor and a lover of fast horses, he shocked the people of Og-
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densburg by taking unto himself a mistress, no other than Ameriga Vespucci, descendant of that Amerigo Vespucci who gave his name to the hemisphere. How Mme. Vespucci got to Ogdensburg is a little vague but there she remained for many years and there are people living in Ogdensburg today who have a memory of a slender, sweet- faced woman moving wistfully among the flowers in the Parish gardens. There is a tradition that George Parish won his mistress at a famous poker game in Hoover's Hotel at Evans Mills one stormy night. Mr. Walter Guest Kellogg in his novel, "Parish's Fancy," has left a vivid picture of the scene, George Parish and "Prince John" Van Buren, son of the president, playing far into the night when the storm raged outside, until finally Van Buren, his money gone, wag- ered his mistress and lost.
Rosseel, Parish's agent, built himself an old-fashioned, wide- spreading house with white, rough-cast walls, not far from the man- sion of his employer. There were deeply recessed piazzas, front and rear, with high Grecian columns and connected by a wide hallway. A fountain played in the front yard among syringas and honey- suckles. Locusts and horse chestnuts shaded the lawns. In back the piazza looked out on the St. Lawrence with a view of seven miles of Canadian shore spread out before it. Here Rosseel lived for many years, loyally looking after the affairs of various generations of Parishes.
THE HOGANS AND HOGANSBURG
The Hogans were closely identified with the early life of Franklin county. Michael Hogan was born in Ireland in 1765. He was a ship captain who on his voyages to strange ports had acquired a remark- able knowledge of languages. In Bombay he married a princess of India, bringing her back to New York in 1804 and also her dowry, 400,000 English sovereigns, or $2,000,000, an almost unheard of fortune for that day. Mr. Hogan established a store on a site later occupied by the old Astor House and filled it with such costly mer- chandise as to delight the eyes of the Wall street matrons of that day. He owned many ships and was an importer of note. Also he was famous for his dinners and wrote for many of the standard periodicals of that day. At his death a monument was erected for him in the old Trinity churchyard. This was the Michael Hogan
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who bought over 10,000 acres in Franklin county in 1807, which in- cluded the town of Bombay, which he named after the former home of his wife. His son, William, came north to reside, living at Fort Covington and Hogansburg. From the old house at Hogansburg, which still stands, he went out to campaign for congress in what the Franklin Telegraph of that day calls an "offensively aristocratic manner," but there was magic enough in the Hogan name to over- come all this and he was elected. William brought the family coach north, an elegant equipage, richly upholstered, fitted with lamps and so heavy that it required four horses to draw it. For many years after William's death it was the custom to bring out the old coach, a shabby shadow of its former elegance, and parade it around on Fourth of July for the edification of the villagers.
OTHER EARLY LANDOWNERS
The descendants of John McVickar still live in Malone. He, too, was born in Ireland and came to New York as a youth where he became a protege of that Daniel McCormick who was a large land- owner in Northern New York. He became one of the most promi- nent merchants of his day, dealing particularly in the importation of Irish linen, and he shared, too, in the recently opened-up trade with China. He was one of the founders of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, a vestryman of Trinity Church and a director in a number of banks and insurance companies. A son married Euretta Con- stable, daughter of William, senior, and a daughter married William Constable, Jr., establishing a line of descent still to be found in Northern New York.
Hezekiah Beers Pierrepont owned large possessions in both Jef- ferson and St. Lawrence counties. He was a son-in-law of William Constable and one of the executors of his estate. Also he was one of the twenty-six freeholders who owned the village of Brooklyn. Early engaging in business he realized a fortune by speculating in the na- tional debt, a favorite pastime among wealthy men of his day. His fine vessels were seized by French privateers and when he was in France seeking to adjust his claims he saw Robespierre beheaded. He was a close friend of Robert Fulton, inventor of the steamboat, after whom he named a son. His country seat was on Brooklyn
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Heights and there he established a distillery which added materially to his fortune. A daughter married John Constable of Constableville and a son, William Constable Pierrepont, resided for many years at the Pierrepont manor house in Jefferson county, known to this day as Pierrepont Manor, and there looked after the great estates which he inherited from his father.
At Sackets Harbor, whose streets had so lately been crowded with militiamen and soldiers, Elisha Camp, lawyer and land agent of Augustus Sacket, who originally owned the village, reared his splendid house of brick in 1816, each brick brought laboriously from England to Sackets Harbor by way of Montreal. Today the house still stands, as graceful and as majestic as of old, and on the walls of its drawing room is the same gayly-colored scenic wall paper placed there over a century ago. The grand piano which still graces that home was one of the first half dozen ever to be brought into the United States and up the broad center hall one might almost drive a coach and four.
To St. Lawrence county in the early days of the 19th century came the Clarksons, the Ogdens, the LeRoys and the Van Rensse- laers, names with which one meets often in reading the early history of the republic. The Clarksons were related to English royalty. In the reign of William and Mary, Matthew Clarkson was appointed secretary of the Province of New York. His great-grandson, Matthew, was a soldier in Washington's army and was present at the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown. He was a regent of the university and a vestryman of Trinity church, president of the Bank of New York and senior vice president of the American Bible Society. His daughter married a son of Chief Justice John Jay. The Clark- sons were friends and political allies of Rufus King, who succeeded Alexander Hamilton as leader of the Federalist party. (Life and Letters of Rufus King, vol. V, p. 265.) They owned great tracts of land in the town of Potsdam, came there to live and Clarkson College testifies to their generosity and philanthropy.
Herman LeRoy also came to Potsdam to live to be near his great Northern New York possessions. He was a merchant whose transac- tions reached to all sections of the country, a Federalist office holder under Washington and one of the fifteen citizens of New York who owned a carriage. His daughter married Daniel Webster.
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The possessions of the Ogden family stretched for miles along the St. Lawrence river. David A. Ogden was a law partner of Alex- ander Hamilton and gave the name of Hamilton to his village on the St. Lawrence which later became Waddington. Samuel Ogden, brother of David, was the first owner of Ogdensburg. The Ogden home in Morristown, New Jersey, had been occupied by Washington as a headquarters when the Continental army lay in winter quarters there. After Hamilton was killed in the duel with Burr, David A. Ogden continued his practice of law in New York for a time and then decided to come north to live on his estate. On an island, opposite his village of Hamilton, he built a fine, stone mansion with three-foot walls, surrounded by a grove of maple trees. To this stately struc- ture he brought his wife, Rebecca Cornell Ogden, who was a daugh- ter of Col. Isaac Edwards, a Tory officer, and who had brought to her husband as a part of her dowry, twenty-five slaves. Some of these slaves were brought north to Hamilton and employed as house servants and even as farm hands. They were needed because the country seat of the Ogdens was a great mansion of many rooms and almost always there were guests to be entertained. Today the old mansion stands almost the same as it did a century ago, with great center hall, morning room and below the kitchen where slaves in days gone by prepared savory meals for the Ogdens and their guests. Here it was that David A. Ogden entertained his Federalist friends and planned the campaigns which elected him twice as judge and once as a member of congress.
Gouverneur Morris, high priest of Federalism, statesman, diplo- mat and patron of the flesh pots, owned wide tracts of land in St. Lawrence county and on several occasions came north to visit his friends, one summer to spend several weeks on his possession in Cambray, later called Gouverneur after the proprietor. John Ogden Hoffman, perennial office holder and "high-minded" Federalist, was another St. Lawrence county landowner, as was Judge William Cooper of Cooperstown, father of the novelist and as unbending a follower of the doctrines of Alexander Hamilton as there was in all New York state. Henry Van Rensselaer, son of the Patroon and half-brother to the Federalist candidate for governor in 1812, also came north to live for many a year. At his beautiful home, Wood- ford, at Ogdensburg he entertained the country gentry and looked
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after the affairs of his great estate. Here there were tennis courts and bowling on the green, as befitted the establishment of a country gentleman, but Mr. Van Rensselaer had other interests as well and soon we find him representing his tenants in congress, even as his friend, David A. Ogden, had before him.
THE FEDERALIST PARTY
High in the councils of the Federalist party as were practically all of the great landowners of the north, it is not strange that with their influence and that of their land agents Northern New York should prove a fertile field for Federalist doctrine, particularly as most of the inhabitants came from New England where Federalism was firmly implanted. Party government had developed during the second administration of Washington. The Federalists had a dis- trust for the people, believed in a property qualification for suffrage, favored the centralization of power in the central government and were supported quite generally by the commercial and wealthy classes as well as by conservative citizens everywhere. The Republicans, as followers of Thomas Jefferson called themselves, or Jacobin Demo- crats, as their enemies designated them, believed in the rule of the people, opposed too great centralization of authority in the federal government, opposed the Federalist alien and sedition laws and were sympathetic with the aspirations of republican France. The influ- ence of the powerful Clinton and Livingston families had placed New York in the Republican column in 1800 but the Federalists were a constant threat.
This was of course before the day of universal suffrage. It was still thought that one must be possessed of property to be a good citizen. One must have a property of $250 to vote for governor or state senator and a property of at least $50 to vote for assemblyman. Practically all other offices, with the exception of member of con- gress were appointive, including all such county offices as sheriff, treasurer, justice of the peace, county clerk and even the mayors of certain cities. Thus the people, if they were possessed of sufficient property, voted for governor, lieutenant governor, state senator, assemblyman and congressman, but that was all. The legislature selected the presidential electors and elected the United States sena- tors. The powerful Council of Appointment appointed everything else.
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How this worked out may be best seen by comparing the popula- tion of some of the Northern New York towns with the votes cast in those towns. Champion had a population of 143 in 1800 but only 46 votes were cast there for governor in 1801. Turin had a popula- tion of 440 in 1880 but the following year was able to cast only 48 votes for governor. In Lewis county in 1807 there were 574 free- holders worth $250 or over and seventy-two freeholders worth from $50 to $250, while 450 men were paying rent. In St. Lawrence county in 1810 only about 900 men were able to vote for governor and of these two-thirds followed the advice of the landowners and voted for the Federalist candidate. Judge William Cooper, who owned great tracts of land in St. Lawrence county as well as elsewhere, was accused before the assembly of having forced 700 of his tenants to vote for John Jay, Federalist, for governor through threats.
As an example of what a comparatively small proportion of the population was able to vote, take the election of 1813 in the towns comprising the present Oswego county. A total of twenty-nine votes were cast for governor that year in Constantia, 116 in Mexico, fifty- nine in Redfield, 196 in Richland, twenty-nine in Scriba, thirty-one in Volney and eighty-six in Williamstown. And as late as 1816 the vote in these towns was not appreciably more. Constantia cast but sixteen votes that year; Mexico, forty ; New Haven, sixty-four ; Red- field, thirty-eight; Richland, 254 ; Scriba, twenty-four ; Volney, thirty- four, and Williamstown, eighty-seven.
So prominent was David A. Ogden in the affairs of the Federalist party that Alexander Hamilton induced him to call upon Aaron Burr when Burr and Jefferson were deadlocked for the presidency to see what the attitude of Burr would be towards the Federalists if he were elected. Nathan Ford, agent for the Ogdens in St. Lawrence county, was an influential man with Federal Councils of Appointments, and for eighteen years held the position of first judge of St. Lawrence county. He was active for years in keeping the county in the Fed- eralist column and was a delegate to the convention which nominated Rufus King, Federalist, for governor in 1816. Benjamin Raymond of Potsdam, agent for the Clarksons, was another who could be de- pended upon to do yeoman work for the Federalist cause. Roswell Hopkins of Hopkinton, who owned great tracts of land in that part of the county, after holding the office of secretary of state of Ver-
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mont for ten years, moved to St. Lawrence county where time and time again his tenants elected him to public office. Soon after the formation of the county he was appointed a judge of the court of common pleas, and for four years in succession, starting in 1810, he was Federalist member of the assembly from St. Lawrence.
The unpopularity of Federalism after the War of 1812 did not seem to affect St. Lawrence county, which sent David A. Ogden to congress as a Federalist, elected Gouverneur Ogden as Federalist member of assembly and sent a nephew of Mrs. Gouverneur Ogden, William H. Vining, to the assembly four years later. Many a victory for the Federal cause was celebrated in the great island mansion of the Ogdens opposite the village of Hamilton, but none more joyfully than that of young Vining. There were hundreds of candles in the windows of both the house of David A. Ogden and also in Ellerslie, Gouverneur Ogden's mansion, where Vining resided. Great bonfires burned in the streets of Hamilton, the flames leaping high from piles of tar barrels. At Ellerslie open house was held and there the vil- lagers who had done their duty at the polls flocked to be plied with expensive wines and rich foods. Some of them grew over-enthusiastic and fired six cannon off just beneath the windows of the house. Dishes were broken and windows shattered but no one minded be- cause the favorite of the house of Ogden had been elected to office even as had his kinsmen before him.
PARTIES IN THE NORTHERN COUNTIES
St. Lawrence county never wavered in its allegiance to the party of Gouverneur Morris, David Ogden and the Clarksons as long as that party was in existence. Jefferson, Lewis, Franklin and Oswego counties might depart now and then from the Federalist column but St. Lawrence county, where as late as 1815 men were still designated as "gentlemen" and "yeomen," never. The county went for the Fed- eralist candidates as long as there was a Federalist party and then for De Witt Clinton, whom the old-time Federalists quite generally supported. In 1810 Jonah Platt, Federalist, received 576 votes in St. Lawrence county for governor, to 301 for Tompkins, Republican. In 1813 Van Rensselaer, half-brother of the St. Lawrence county landowner and Federalist candidate for governor, received 631 votes to 238 for Tompkins, and in 1816, Rufus King, Federalist, carried the
Ola St. Pauls Courel Waddington N Y
OLD ST. PAUL'S CHURCH AT WADDINGTON-THE FIRST CHURCH EDIFICE BUILT IN ST. LAWRENCE COUNTY AND IS STILL STANDING
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UNION ACADEMY. BELLEMALÉNY
UNION ACADEMY, BELLEVILLE, N. Y.
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county over Tompkins, 530 to 461. In 1820 the county gave Clinton 803 votes to 431 for Tompkins. It took a Silas Wright to put St. Lawrence county in the Democratic column for the first time.
In Jefferson county, landowners and land agents were similarly active in the cause of Federalism. Moss Kent, who had received his political training at the hands of that old-time, upstate boss of New York, Judge William Cooper, and who was brother of the Federalist chancellor of the state, was land agent for James D. LeRay de Chau- mont. In 1807 Kent was Federalist candidate for the assembly and was elected. In 1810 and 1811 he was in the assembly again. In 1808 he ran for congress as a Federalist and was defeated. In 1810 the Federalist Council of Appointment made him first judge of the county and in 1812 and 1814 he was elected to congress as a Fed- eralist. Augustus Sacket and his agent, Elisha Camp, kept the town of Hounsfield a Federalist center for years. In 1810 the vote for governor in this town was Platt, Federalist, 118; Tompkins, Repub- lican, five. Sacket was first judge of the county in 1807 and the preceding year had been Federalist candidate for state senator. Elisha Camp was appointed surrogate of Jefferson county by the Federalist Council of Appointment in 1813 and was very active in the party organization in the north. He was a member of the Federalist county committee in 1819. Jesse Hopkins, agent of William Hender- son, who owned large tracts in the town of Henderson, was an active committee worker for the Federalist cause and was made a judge of the county by the Federalist Council of Appointment. So deeply rooted was he in party prejudices that he refused to permit the American navy to make use of Henderson harbor for naval purposes during the War of 1812. Judge Ethel Bronson, the Rutland land- owner, was for three years a Federalist member of the assembly from Jefferson county. In Lewis county Silas Stow held office as long as he represented the great landowner, Nicholas Low, as agent. As a member of congress he voted against the War of 1812.
THE SCRIBA MANSION
Oswego county, or rather the towns which were later to compose Oswego county, was no exception of the rule. In the little village of Constantia on the shores of Oneida Lake still stands the manor house of the Scribas and in the graveyard, nearby, rests the remains of George Scriba, that merchant of old New York, who once owned all
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Oswego county east of the Oswego river. At the time George Scriba invested in Northern New York "wild lands" he was reputed to be worth a million and a half dollars, an enormous fortune for that day. All of this fortune he spent in an effort to develop the Scriba lands in the present Oswego county. Now the present Scriba retains only about forty acres of the ancestral holdings. Large tracts were sold by the original George Scriba to his friends, Alexander Hamilton, Philip Schuyler, Governor John Jay, John and Nicholas Roosevelt, and others.
Oswego county has never paid proper respect to George Scriba who spent a fortune in developing the county. He died a poor man, forsaken by those who had once paid him rents. The villagers even changed the name he gave his village, New Rotterdam, after the loved city in the homeland, to Constantia. Once there was a town in Oswego county called Frederickburg, after Frederick, the son of George Scriba. The name was changed a century ago. It is recorded that even the inhabitants of the town of Scriba at one time seriously considered changing the name of their town.
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