USA > New York > Franklin County > The north country; a history, embracing Jefferson, St. Lawrence, Oswego, Lewis and Franklin counties, New York, Volume 1 > Part 27
USA > New York > Jefferson County > The north country; a history, embracing Jefferson, St. Lawrence, Oswego, Lewis and Franklin counties, New York, Volume 1 > Part 27
USA > New York > Lewis County > The north country; a history, embracing Jefferson, St. Lawrence, Oswego, Lewis and Franklin counties, New York, Volume 1 > Part 27
USA > New York > Oswego County > The north country; a history, embracing Jefferson, St. Lawrence, Oswego, Lewis and Franklin counties, New York, Volume 1 > Part 27
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 27
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Repeated surveys were made, public meetings galore were held and finally in 1836, eleven years after the proposition was first made, the construction of the Black river canal was authorized, providing for a navigable feeder from Black river to Boonville and a canal from there to Rome and to the High Falls. Work was started in 1837 but suspended in 1842 when the so called "stop and tax" law was passed. In 1847 work was resumed and in the fall of 1848 the feeder was completed. The first boat passed up the feeder to the river in December, 1848. The first boat from Rome came up in 1850.
The Black River Canal became the principal feeder of the Mo- hawk section of the Erie canal. It opened up all the Black River Country as far as Watertown to trade. Side-wheeler tug boats puffed along from Carthage towards Lyons Falls towing four or five, blunt- nosed canal boats, each loaded with potatoes, lumber or butter and cheese, products of Jefferson and Lewis and St. Lawrence counties being shipped to the markets of the world via the Erie Canal. At Lyons Falls were drydocks for the repair of leaky boats and Boon- ville, with its quaint, old, limestone houses, was an important ship- ping point and center of trade. At Boonville the steermen bowed low as the big, clumsy boats passed under the Main street bridge. Next came the locks at Lansing Kill Gorge, which the old canal men
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used to call the "stairways to the Erie," there being seventy locks in a distance of five miles; then the little village of Northwestern with its drydocks and finally the horns could be heard blowing on the Erie canal and Rome with its long line of docks and warehouses, with boats continually coming in and hauling out, was reached.
Walter D. Edmonds in his recent novel, "Rome Haul," has given a colorful picture of canal life in the old days on the Black River feeder. Oftentimes three weeks were consumed on a round trip to New York and the season lasted only about six months, from May 15th until late in November. Canal boat owners quite frequently after they had discharged their cargoes in New York would buy a load of coal, paying about $3.25 a ton which, when delivered in Carth- age, would bring about $4.25 per long ton. The best grades of spruce and hemlock lumber were delivered on the docks at Albany at $8 per 1,000-feet. Thousands of bushels of potatoes were shipped an- nually out of Lewis county on these old canal boats, many of them being drawn to the river at Bush's Landing. Often long lines of teams stood waiting there for their turn for unloading. Glenfield was an important potatoe-loading point. From 3,000 to 5,000 bushels constituted a cargo.
Packet boats were never used to any extent on the Black River Canal. An attempt was made to put passenger steamers in opera- tion on Black river between Carthage and Lyons Falls. One boat, 90-feet long, was built at the cost of $6,000, with a carrying capacity of about seventy tons. This boat made its first trip in 1832, having on board a number of prominent citizens of Carthage, but the boat went aground on a sand bar near Lowville. It had a short career and soon went to pieces in a freshet. The small steamer, William P. Lawrence, had a disastrous end, her boiler blowing up near Inde- pendence creek, the captain being badly injured and a boy being blown from the engine room into the river.
"CAMP'S DITCH"
The Sackets Harbor Canal, commonly called "Camp's Ditch," had its inception in an act passed in 1828, incorporating the Jeffer- son County Canal Company. Elisha Camp later assumed much of the obligations of the company, a tax was imposed on real estate
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in the village of Sackets Harbor and on mill sites on Pleasant creek, and a canal, twenty feet wide at the top, twelve at the bottom and four feet deep, was dug from Huntingville near the village of Water- town to Sackets Harbor. The work, begun in 1830, was finished in 1832. The canal was operated for about ten years, so much diffi- culty being experienced in maintaining a part of the ditch because of its proximity to Black river that it was finally abandoned to the loss of all concerned.
AN ERA OF HARD DRINKING
What of the people of the thirties who rode on the rumbling coaches through North Country roads or sprawled out on the deck of canal packets on the Oswego canal. That they were a hard-drink- ing lot, none can deny. Watertown outdid itself to celebrate in a fitting manner the Fourth of July in 1832. The festivities closed with what a newspaper of the period called a "sumptuous repast" at Parson's Inn. Whereupon the cloth was removed and no less than thirteen set toasts and twenty-five "volunteers" were drunk with "spirit and animation," to quote the same contemporary print. Ev- erything and everybody was toasted from "The Memory of DeWitt Clinton" to "The Village of Watertown with its Enterprising In- habitants." Writes the editor with disarming frankness: "A num- ber of other volunteers were drunk but could not be heard distinct enough to be taken down." There will be general agreement that the editor did pretty well as it was.
Whisky then sold for two or three cents a glass and beer for less. It could be purchased anywhere, not only at the numerous taverns but also at the grocery stores. A present day writer charitably at- tributes the dram drinking of the period to the fact that salt pork formed a major part of the diet, but whatever the reason the North- ern New York man of the thirties, in common with his countrymen everywhere, drank too much and too often, despite all the newly or- ganized temperance societies could do.
Rum, whisky and beer were the common beverages in the North Country of that day. Only the opulent had wines. Beer was drunk quite generally and was sold in all the grocery stores. But the grocers were not content to sell only beer, which was entirely within the law, and a resident complains to the editor of a Northern New
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York paper of the thirties that proprietors of such stores were serv- ing their customers a beverage composed of equal parts of whisky and beer, although this was a violation of the law, and he had seen a tippler smack his lips after drinking a glass of this potent mix- ture. The temperance movement was beginning to spread through the North, the clergy and the physicians taking the lead, but only spirituous liquors came under the ban. Occasionally a voice was lifted in protest against beer, but it was exceptional. DeWitt Clinton tells of visiting a Methodist camp meeting near Lyons and found a num- ber of temporary stands erected on the outskirts of the camp grounds where beer was sold to the worshippers.
Says a writer describing a period in American history only a few years before: "Soldiers, sailors, laborers and working men gen- erally drank rum or whisky regularly every day. It was even served to the prisoners in the jails. There were many men who took a dram every morning before breakfast, who drank throughout the day, and took a "nightcap" just before going to bed. They were partially under the influence of alcohol all the time."
But the leaven was at work. The temperance idea grew. Here and there was a farmer brave enough to dispense with the use of liquor during haying and such instances were seized upon by the temperance societies and duly recorded in the village newspapers. The officers of militia regiments here and there met and passed reso- lutions to dispense with the use of liquor during drill and this, too, was hailed by the friends of temperance as a notable advance. Finally came the time when a correspondent of The Watertown Register could write jubilantly that "a few weeks ago the frame of the Bap- tist meeting house in this village was raised without the use of ardent spirits." To many it seemed as though the millenium had indeed been reached.
THE CHOLERA EPIDEMIC
The temperance societies stopped at nothing to spread the doc- trine of temperate living. The story was actually printed and given wide circulation throughout Northern New York of a confirmed tip- pler who blew up and burned with a blue fire. This and other tales had their effect, but the cholera did more. The people of the United
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States had heard of the ravages of the Asiatic cholera abroad but Europe was a long ways off. But in the latter part of June, 1832, the nation was startled by the news that the cholera had broken out in Quebec. Within four days it had jumped to Montreal and three days later it broke out in Ogdensburg. Stark terror reigned all through the North. The whole St. Lawrence valley was ravished by the disease. Almost immediately it appeared in the Great Lakes towns. Detroit was badly hit. It stole into Rochester in the night. The next day there were a dozen cases, two of which terminated fatally in a few hours. The disease raged fearfully in New York City and deaths ranged from 200 to 300 a day there. In all there were 2,935 deaths from the cholera in New York. Over 2,000 died in Quebec and 6,000 out of the 55,000 people of New Orleans fell victim to the dread disease. Ogdensburg had 160 cases and forty- nine deaths.
Panic reigned all along the St. Lawrence. A special session of the state legislature was hurriedly summoned and strict quarantine measures recommended, although many physicians still contended the disease was not contagious. All business and communication was checked on the St. Lawrence. Health boards all over Northern New York adopted stringent regulations prohibiting any person who had been in Canada within fifteen days from approaching within two miles of the village. The Watertown board of health sent Dr. A. S. Greene to Canada to study the disease. He visited Kingston, Prescott and Brockville and upon his return home published a re- port in which he said that "from the few observations I have been able to make, I am induced to believe the disease has its origin in atmospheric influence." Blood-letting, he thought, the best remedy.
In fact there was no clear understanding of the nature of the disease. Medicine was still in an experimental stage. One Northern New York doctor insisted that the cholera was caused by "invisible vapours from the earth." Another argued that it was but an aggra- vated form of scarlet fever. The people sprinkled their houses with vinegar and carried cloths saturated with vinegar to their lips when they went on the streets. The Burgundy pitch plaster was worn by many as a sure preventative, while in Albany tar was burned in the streets with the object of purifying the atmosphere. On one point, however, the doctors agreed. It was the intemperate who were the
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most likely to be stricken by the disease. The following from the Watertown Register & Advertiser of July 11, 1832 is typical: "In- temperance of any species but particularly intemperance in the use of distilled liquors has been a more productive cause of increased susceptibility to cholera than any other. Drunkards and tipplers have been searched out and transfixed with such unerring certainty as to show that the arrow of death have not been dealt out without indiscriminate aim." The man of intemperate habits stood in mortal terror. He felt that he was surely singled out for death. The doc- tors, the newspapers and the clergy all told him so. Men who a few short weeks before had ridiculed the arguments of the temperance societies promptly swore off in the hope that they might defeat the fate which awaited them. The cholera scourge did more to advance the cause of temperance in a few short weeks than the temperance societies had been able to do in years.
The newspapers of the period reflect the panic which prevailed everywhere. When two Canadian steamers approached too close to Oswego harbor, frantic citizens trained the old guns of the fort upon them and only the fact that one of the cannon missed fire prevented an "international incident." Two cases of cholera were reported at Sackets Harbor on August 15th. One hundred and forty-eight cases with forty-eight deaths were reported from Kingston, Ontario, while at Prescott, there were sixty-one cases with twenty deaths. The cholera crept into Utica on a Sunday and by the following Saturday there were ninety-five cases and twenty-seven deaths. We are in- formed that a "Mr. Tuttle, the wagon maker of Boonville, was in Utica a few hours on Tuesday and sickened and died in four hours after reaching home." A Mr. Gurnee was reported as suddenly pitch- over on his face when inspecting the Fishers' Landing road, al- though he had apparently been in the fullness of his health but a few moments before. Mr. Gurnee, we learn, survived the seizure, but only after a long illness.
The people of the thirties drank too much, it is true. They satur- ated themselves with vinegar when the cholera raged, they chewed large quantities of tobacco, they smoked Spanish "segars" and they bought lottery tickets when they could not afford them, but most of them went to church religiously every Sunday. On the whole, they were a peaceful, law-abiding people. Says the Lewis County Times
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of Dec. 14th, 1831: "The circuit court met yesterday and adjourned sine die, after a session of one hour. There were no charges bro't before the grand jury. There was not a civil cause upon the calendar to be tried-there is not a criminal in our jail, or a person confined in the limits for debt."
COL. MEACHAM'S "BIG CHEESE"
No incident during the entire period of the colorful thirties ex- cited the interest of the people of Northern New York as did Col. Meacham's Big Cheese. It was always capitalized in the newspapers of that day. Col. Thomas S. Meacham was a prosperous farmer of Sandy Creek, Oswego county. He liked to do things in a sensational way. President Andrew Jackson was his idol, and as "Old Hick- ory's" term drew to a close, the colonel decided to do something to show his high regard. So he had made a 1,400-pound cheese. No cheese of that size had ever been made before. It caught the fancy of the countryside. The cheese was placed on a flag-draped wagon, and drawn by forty-eight gray horses, started for Port Ontario. At Port Ontario, the Big Cheese was loaded onto a boat. The colonel of course went with it. A vast crowd cheered and cannon thundered as the Big Cheese started on its long water voyage via the Erie canal.
All along the route there were ovations. Finally the Big Cheese arrived at Washington and was duly presented to President Jackson, "Old Hickory" making the colonel a present of a half-dozen bottles of wine in return. It was Nov. 15th, 1835, when the Big Cheese left Port Ontario. But not until Washington's Birthday the following year was it served. "Old Hickory" held open house in the White House that day. The crowd was tremendous. One who was present wrote that it took an hour to get inside the White House and two hours to get out. Van Buren was there. So was Daniel Webster, Thomas Benton and everybody else. Everybody ate cheese. Says a contemporary account : "Cheese, cheese, cheese was on everybody's lips and in everybody's mouth. All you heard was cheese. All you saw was cheese. All you smelt was cheese." One Northern New York man who was present complained to the editor of a Watertown paper that there was nothing to wash it down with, but most people over- looked this-for the thirties-serious omission. The cheese party was a huge success, and Col. Meacham had his day of fame.
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Many a solid Northern New York fortune of the present day was founded upon the sale of lottery tickets in the twenties and thirties, when the practice was legal and few lifted their voices against it. A lottery office which sold a winning prize never failed to profit by the advertising which resulted and when a Watertown lottery office sold part of the capitol prize of $50,000 in the New York Consolidated Lottery to Peleg Burchard of that village, its reputation was made and thereafter it advertised itself as the "lucky lottery office."
Nor were notices of lottery drawings the only thing to attract attention in the advertisements in the village newspapers of that day. When it came to medicine, one had a wide choice, what with LaMott's cough drops, recommended as a cure for consumption, Marshall's Ambrosium and Dr. Smith's Family Elixir, but nothing excelled in its promise Doxtaler's Celebrated Indian Medicine, which cured everything from "cold, coughs, consumption and all diseases of the nerves, lungs and breast" to "catarrh, piles, fever and ague." With such competition as this, it is no wonder that the doctors turned to the advertising columns, themselves, and one went so far as to boldly state that he had treated upwards of 600 patients the past year and only two had died. Let the makers of Doxtaler's Cele- brated Indian Medicine beat this one if they could.
THE MORMONS
It was a gullible age. Otherwise the Mormon missionaries could never have perpetrated the hoax they are reputed to at Theresa dur- ing this very period when they amazed the simple country folk, most of whom were of solid Methodist or Congregationalist stock, by walk- ing on the muddy waters of Indian river. It shook. even the faith of the Methodist elders. Even when some inquisitive boys discovered that the Mormons had constructed a platform just under the surface of the water upon which the walking was done, it did not entirely destroy the impression which had been created and the Mormons made many converts in Theresa and adjoining towns, even as they did in the town of Dickinson, Franklin county, where relatives of Joseph Smith and Apostle Joseph Meacham lived.
Local tradition has it that Brigham Young, himself, came to The- resa and preached in the barn on the George E. Yost farm. Whether
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or not that is so, it is certain that Perley P. Pratt, the distinguished Hebrew scholar who was an outstanding leader in the early Mormon church, visited Theresa to inspire the faithful. Singly and in groups, many of the converts made by the Mormon missionaries in Theresa left for the West to join the main Mormon body. Warren Parish, prominent farmer, was the first to go. Later he became clerk of the general assembly of the church and helped to draw up the articles and covenants of the faith. It was David Patten, a Theresa farm boy, who became the famed "Captain Fearnot," Mormon war chief- tian, who was killed in a battle with the state troops in Missouri.
Prophet Strang, who, with his followers, split from the Mormon church, proper, and established his headquarters on Beaver Island on Lake Michigan, also visited Theresa in the hope of winning over the Theresa Mormons to his branch of the church. A three-day con- ference was held in the old brick school house at Theresa which was attended by the faithful from all over Jefferson and St. Lawrence counties, but whether or not Strang was successful in his efforts does not appear.
The Mormon excitement died down quickly. A new movement was sweeping the North Country like wild-fire, a movement which a few months later was to send North Country boys, musket in hands, pouring over the border into Canada in a foolhardy attempt to "lib- erate" a people who didn't want to be liberated.
CHAPTER XII.
THE "PATRIOT WAR"
THE UNREST IN CANADA AND ITS EFFECT ON THE PEOPLE OF NORTHERN NEW YORK-THE HUNTER LODGES-THE SACKING OF THE SIR ROB- ERT PEEL-"ADMIRAL BILL" JOHNSTON OF THE "PATRIOT" NAVY- THE BATTLE OF THE WIND MILL-THE FATE OF THE CAPTIVES.
The "Patriot War"-what a comic opera affair it all was, if one could forget the grim scaffold at Kingston and the bullet-torn bodies of North Country boys lying in the snow in the shadow of the great, stone wind mill near Prescott. It was a "war" of but one battle, today hardly mentioned in the histories, but it nearly led to a third conflict with Great Britain and was certainly a factor in the great Whig vic- tory of 1840. Today as we search out the story of those hectic days in the yellowed pages of old newspapers and in the stilted phraseology of government reports, we catch something of the excitement of that madcap attempt to make Canada free. Then the exploits of "Ad- miral Bill" Johnston, commander of the fleet of rowboats which was the Patriot Navy, and his daughter, Kate, the "Queen of the Thousand Isles," were the talk of the borderland. We catch, too, something of the tenseness the people of Ogdensburg must have felt on that November day in 1838 when they crowded to the waterfront and watched with straining eyes the battle that raged about the tall, stone wind mill across the river, from whose tower floated the two- starred flag of the "Republic of Canada."
To understand the Rebellion of 1837-8, it is necessary to review briefly the political situation in Canada at the time. The country at that period was divided into Upper and Lower Canada. Lower Canada roughly corresponded to the present Province of Quebec and Upper Canada to the present Province of Ontario. The people of Lower Canada were of course almost entirely of French extraction
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and totally out of sympathy with England. In each province was a governor appointed by the king, an executive council chosen by the governor and an assembly elected by the people on a restricted fran- chise. Naturally in both provinces intense rivalry sprang up be- tween the assembly, elected by the people, and the executive councils, chosen by the governors. By 1836 the controversy had become so bitter that the assembly in Lower Canada asserted its right to set aside the Constitution of 1791 under which the two provinces had been created. Certain popular leaders soon came to the fore in both provinces. In Lower Canada was Louis Joseph Papineau and in Upper Canada William Lyon Mackenzie. The French patriots in Montreal formed themselves into Sons of Liberty. Mass meetings were held, rioting occurred and finally in 1837 the arming and drill- ing of the rebellious subjects started. Riots occurred at St. Denis and St. Charles in which a number of the rebels were killed and Papineau fled to the United States.
In the meantime Mackenzie had been active in Upper Canada. Sir Francis Bond Head, a man of no executive capacity, was governor there, and conditions rapidly went from bad to worse. Finally Mack- enzie set up a revolutionary government and temporary headquarters were established a short distance from Toronto. Militia scattered the insurgents and Mackenzie, upon whose head was a reward of a thousand pounds, fled to the United States, crossing at the Niagara frontier. He and his followers seized Navy Island in the Niagara river and the small steamer, Caroline, was employed by the insur- gents for the purpose of carrying supplies to them. In the night British troops crossed to the American side and after routing the crew, cut the Caroline loose and set her afire. Great Britain not only approved the deed but conferred the order of knighthood upon the British officer who had led the raid.
But in the United States feeling flamed high. Governor Marcy sent a special message to the legislature, President Van Buren sent a special message to congress, the militia was called out all along the border and Gen. Winfield Scott, who had won ever-lasting fame in another Niagara campaign, hurried to the border to take command. Mass meetings were held all over the North denouncing the burning of the Caroline and at a meeting in Watertown a resolution was
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passed declaring it the sense of the meeting that the Canadians should attain their complete independence.
Soon after the burning of the Caroline, the "patriots" trans- ferred their activities to Northern New York. Mackenzie came to Watertown and remained in hiding there for several weeks. The old stone Mansion House in Watertown became a "Patriot" headquarters and was filled with Canadian insurgents and American sympathizers who held commissions in the "Patriot" army. When Sir Francis Bond Head was recalled as governor of Upper Canada he left Kings- ton in disguise and crossed to Sackets Harbor, from which village he came by stage to Watertown. For some reason his driver brought him directly to the Mansion House, then filled with "Patriot" sym- pathizers and Canadian refugees, all of whom hated the governor cordially. Not trusting to his disguise, Sir Francis hid himself in the stables in the rear of the tavern, where he was recognized by Hugh Scanlon, an Irish-Canadian. To his great surprise he was received with courtesy, had breakfast with his enemies and departed for Utica soon after with their best wishes.
THE HUNTER LODGES
All over Northern New York preparations were now going for- ward for the invasion of Canada which at first, it was thought, would be an attack upon Kingston. Early in 1838 a strange organization sprang up all along the border, known as the Hunter Lodges. Appar- ently the organization took its name from its founder, a Vermonter by the name of Hunter. It was secret in character, had various de- grees, secret work, pass words, raps and ciphers for correspondence, but everyone knew its purpose, which was the freeing of Canada from British domination. Every initiate was compelled to take an oath which he pledged "never to rest until all tyrants of Great Brit- ain cease to have any dominion or footing whatever in North America."
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