USA > New York > Franklin County > The north country; a history, embracing Jefferson, St. Lawrence, Oswego, Lewis and Franklin counties, New York, Volume 1 > Part 39
USA > New York > Jefferson County > The north country; a history, embracing Jefferson, St. Lawrence, Oswego, Lewis and Franklin counties, New York, Volume 1 > Part 39
USA > New York > Lewis County > The north country; a history, embracing Jefferson, St. Lawrence, Oswego, Lewis and Franklin counties, New York, Volume 1 > Part 39
USA > New York > Oswego County > The north country; a history, embracing Jefferson, St. Lawrence, Oswego, Lewis and Franklin counties, New York, Volume 1 > Part 39
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 39
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a woodland, but still Watertown was taking on much of the physical aspect of the present.
There were many beautiful houses, mostly of limestone, erected slowly by master craftsmen in the Georgian style, and standing stately and majestically in the midst of park-like grounds, even as most of them stand to this day. Micah Sterling, that grand, old lawyer and statesman of earlier days, was long since dead, but his son, John Calhoun Sterling, named after the great southern statesman, Micah Sterling's classmate in Yale, still lived in Sterling Hall, set in the center of a large estate and with a long, curving drive leading to its doors. This mansion, which today is owned by Holy Family Church and used as a school, was once pronounced the most perfect example of colonial architecture in America. To the doors of the Sterling Man- sion in the old days often drove James D. LeRay de Chaumont in his coach and four with liveried outriders. Here President Martin Van Buren was entertained and many other prominent figures of the pre- Civil war period.
On Court street was the Crawe house, even as it is today, and there lived Dr. John Mortimer Crawe, prominent in the social life of early Watertown and one of its best known physicians. The Hunger- ford home on Washington street was one of the best known residences of Watertown in the fifties and today it remains one of the beautiful homes of the city although now well over a hundred years old. Here today one may see the most glorious old English garden to be found in all the North Country, laid out in front of the house as Orville Hungerford planned it back in 1825. Here too is the identical, black, Italian marble mantle hauled to Watertown from Albany by ox team.
Even then Watertown had developed a social set, made up of a few, old families, kindred spirits who largely intermarried and had com- mon pleasures. There were Fred Sherman and John Knowlton, George W. Knowlton and Levi Johnson, George Massey and Clarence Sher- man, Fred Lansing and George R. Hanford, the Storeys, the Angells, the Merrills, the Paddocks, the Woodruffs, the Woods, the Mullens, the Hubbards, the Huntingtons and the Bagleys, the Clarks, the Fair- banks and the Adkins. These families lived along Washington street, Stone and Clinton, Sterling, Benedict and Arsenal. A few homes in the village stood out as social centers. There was the Lucius Sher- man house at the corner of Clay and Sterling streets, where St. Paul's
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Church now stands. Then there was the Ambrose Clark residence at Stone and Massey, the Huntington home at Benedict and Stone, the Edward Massey place where the home of Mrs. Emma Flower Taylor now stands, the Hart Massey residence, now the Bureau of Charities, the Adkins home in Sterling street, and the residence of picturesque Jason Fairbanks in Arsenal street. There was also the Wooster Sher- man house in Clinton street where the young folks gathered on many a wintry night. Iron deer and maidens adorned many a front yard in Washington street during the fifties and sixties, but bathtubs were few and far between and often used during the week to hold potted plants.
Such was the Watertown of pre-Civil War days, a smug, little town which boasted of its progressiveness, inordinately proud perhaps of its great hotel and its new business blocks, not quite so bustling and cosmopolitan as Oswego, but beginning to appreciate the wealth in the turbulent river where already manufacturing plants some day des- tined to make the name of Watertown known far and wide were com- ing into being.
OGDENSBURG IN THE FIFTIES
Ogdensburg was a waterfront town. As the first life of the village had centered about George Parish's big stone warehouse at the river's edge so now in the fifties Ogdensburg still looked to the river, where now thousands of feet of wharfage had been built and elaborate ware- houses and other terminal structures had been built by the propri- etors of the Northern Railroad. Daily the great boats of the St. Law- rence Steamboat Company, with their thirty-foot paddle wheels, steamed slowly up to the new wharves. Before the Northern Railroad had been built, the Oswego boat always awaited the arrival of the Syracuse train at Oswego before leaving that port and there were always passengers to alight when the Northerner or the Ontario or the Bay State or the British Empire, or some other boat, docked at Ogdensburg.
Jean Jacques Ampere, accomplished man of letters who visited Ogdensburg in 1851, wrote a graphic description of the town of that day as it appeared to him. "We have here," he writes, "the transi- tion from a village to a great city-the skin of the chrysalis still cover- ing the butterfly which just begins to open its wings In this ex-
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panding city everything is new and unfinished. In German they would say it is going to be. It is like a house, where they begin to furnish a room before the roof is finished. Imagine broad, straight, and well laid-out streets; in their midst a black mud-on the borders, plank walks; here and there ravines with groups of trees that belonged to primeval forests; fields scarcely enclosed, with an abandoned look, as if not yet taken up, or yet to be cultivated, and on every hand beautiful gardens and elegant cottages, with every appliance of the most refined civilization-on a place cleared but yesterday, and close beside an unimproved waste. Some cows were straying along the street, near a store of novelties, where the fashion plates of the Jour- nal du Modes were displayed in the windows, by the side of portraits of members of the local government; and bales of merchandize lay in the streets among the trunks of overturned trees. It was a strange mingling of departing savagery and of industries yet to come. In these carefully alligned and half-filled streets, we see at once the rudeness of primeval life, and the rising splendors of the orient; for they have got the idea that this city which they are building, will be a great one."
Ogdensburg at this time had about 4,000 inhabitants. It was no insignificant place, with nearly 500 dwelling houses and some eighty stores and shops displaying goods from Montreal and often linens and woolens from abroad. A steam ferry was running between Og- densburg and the quaint, little Canadian village of Prescott, and many Canadians came across the river to shop in Ogdensburg even as they do today. Most of the travelers stopped at the St. Lawrence Hotel at the corner of State and Ford streets to which a four-story addition had just been built. Here there were eighty-six sleeping rooms and on the roof an "observatory" from which there was a splendid view of the Canadian shore for many a mile.
There were five churches, all substantial structures, the latest be- ing the large, stone Roman Catholic church, which had been dedicated in 1855. This was the present St. Mary's Cathedral and when com- pleted it was considered the handsomest Catholic Church in all North- ern New York. Then there was St. John's Episcopal Church with its high, square tower and its organ, the Gothic edifice of the Presbyter- ians with the clock in its steeple, the new brick church of the Metho-
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dists on Franklin street and the stone church of the Baptists in State street.
The Oswegatchie Bank had just been organized, not only the old- est bank in Ogdensburg but also the oldest in St. Lawrence county, with Augustus Chapman the first president and James G. Averell the first vice president. On the board of directors was Henry Van Rens- selaer, the land owner and son of the Patroon, who was then one of Ogdensburg's most influential residents.
Ogdensburg had its prominent men. There was Preston King, prominent in the affairs of the nation, now hard at it organizing the new Republican party, he who had been a life-long Democrat. Then there was Judge John Fine, as well known a jurist as there was in the New York State of his day, eighteen years on the bench, a former member of the state senate, long treasurer of St. Lawrence county and the man who stood up in the Baltimore convention of 1844 and declined the nomination of president of the United States for Silas Wright. David Judson was another prominent citizen of his day, for eleven years one of the judges of the county court and for many years more collector of the district of Ogdensburg.
Of course there was no house in all Ogdensburg to be compared with the Parish mansion, the Red Villa, as the townsfolk called it. Three stories high, it was, and painted a dull red. Around it ran a stone wall eight feet high and inside that wall, which enclosed a whole city block, were all those things which go with an English gentleman's estate, cobbled courts and brick stables, coach-houses and a tan-bark track, trellised gardens, and gardener's lodge and gravelled walks.
On the whole Ogdensburg was a cozy, hospitable place in the fifties and attractive, too, laid out as it was along the banks of the broad St. Lawrence. There was Ford street with its roofed sidewalks where the farmers' horses lazily munched their oats. Old stone warehouses which still bore the scars of British shot stood near the river front. The population was largely of old New England stock but with a sprinkling of Irish and French attracted there by the commerce. It was a frontier village of course and perhaps a little raw, viewed from modern standards, but although it had lost the county buildings to Canton still it was by far the largest place in the North Country north of Watertown. And how it progressed in the fifties, with the
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coming of the railroad and the telegraph and the gas lights. So Og- densburg became a city, not as early as Oswego and Watertown, it is true, but, in 1868 after the boys in blue had marched home and the Fenian raids were a thing of the past the City of Ogdensburg was incorporated and William C. Brown was elected the first mayor. De- los McCurdy was the first recorder and the following aldermen were elected : First ward, Charles I. Baldwin, Walter B. Allen, Henry Ro- dee ; second ward, Benjamin R. Jones, Galem W. Pearsons, Patrick Hackett; third ward, Carlisle B. Herriman, Urias Pearson, Chester Waterman. Nathaniel H. Lytle was elected city clerk.
MALONE BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR
Nor were Oswego, Watertown and Ogdensburg the only places of importance in the north. The railroad brought prosperity to Malone and in 1853 when it was incorporated as a village its population was a little over 2,000. By 1860, it was 3,000. True in the early fifties there were sidewalks only on Elm and Main streets but the villagers grew tired of wading through the mud on wet days and in 1855 the village board ordered other sidewalks constructed. By 1851 Malone had a bank, the Bank of Malone, located in a one-story stone structure, standing where the Wead Library now stands. Samuel C. Wead was president and William A. Wheeler, later to become vice- president of the United States, was the first cashier. Furthermore the telegraph came in 1851, and although kerosene was selling at $1.50 a gallon, there were big smoky, kerosene lamps in the stores instead of the candles of a few decades before.
There was hardly a house in all the territory south of Water street between the two streams and the section known as Brooklyn Heights was a pasture. High fences enclosed the yards and Main street was lined from end to end of the business section with hitching posts and rails. The villagers were rigid Sabbath observers. An early pastor wrote that "after the churches closed the streets were empty and a peaceful silence prevailed." The large, new Presbyterian church, built of brick and with an organ, was the pride of the village. It replaced the old, stone church with the square pews and wooden clock in its steeple which had been Malone's first church edifice. The Baptists had a stone church on Webster street which had just been remodeled and redecorated. The Methodists still worshipped in little
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Hedding Chapel, named from the great bishop, and not until 1867 was the present brick church constructed. St. Mark's Episcopal had been erected probably in 1846, largely through the influence of the Duanes and the Harisons. It was not until 1884 that the old building was razed and the present structure erected. The Catholics worship- ped in the old frame church with the roofless veranda in front which sufficed until 1882. Father Bernard E. McCabe, the first settled pas- tor, met a tragic fate in 1857 being burned to death when fire de- stroyed a portion of the rectory.
FULTON IN THE FIFTIES
Fulton, on the old portage path on the Oswego river, was already assuming an important place as a manufacturing center. It was really the fire of 1851 which made Fulton although at the time it seemed an almost unsurmountable blow. At that time almost the en- tire business section of the village burned, leaving only two or three stores in the entire town. The loss was well over $100,000. The fire started in a stable in the rear of the Fulton House and soon spread all along the west side of First street. A special locomotive brought the Oswego fire department, but the visitors arrived too late to be of much assistance.
A period of building followed the great fire. Not only were the destroyed buildings rebuilt but several fine brick blocks as well. By 1853 Fulton had nearly fifty stores, three large flour mills, two foundries and machine shops, a sash factory, two cabinet and chair factories, a large woolen factory and several lumber mills and barrel and carriage factories. A paper mill, on the site of the Victoria mills, was erected in 1852. Fulton's first bank was also established in 1852, the Citizen's Bank with George Grosvenor as cashier and manager. The first board of directors were: Charles G. Case, Sam- uel Hart, Willard Johnson, R. C. Kenyon, S. N. Kenyon, H. H. Coats, George Grosvenor, George Salmon, T. W. Chesbro, J. J. Wolcott, J. W. Pratt, J. H. Reynolds and Edwin Rockwell. The Oswego River Bank was organized in 1855 with John J. Wolcott, president, George Salmon, vice-president and Dewitt Gardner, cashier. It was reorgan- ized in 1865 and became the First National Bank.
In the fifties Fulton already had two Methodist churches. There was the parent society worshipping in the old brick church built in
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1830 and believed to be the first Methodist church constructed in Oswego county, and a second body of Methodists which had just built a little chapel on Fourth street. Other churches in Fulton at this time were the Baptist, built in 1841, the Presbyterian, erected in 1845 and replacing a frame structure built in 1833, and the Univer- salists who had a little church on Second street and Zion Episcopal Church, which had just been renovated and improved. Also during the fifties, the first Roman Catholic church came into being in Fulton, the old Fulton Female Seminary building serving as a church until the nineties. This is the church which eventually became the Church of the Immaculate Conception.
PULASKI AND LOWVILLE
Over in the eastern end of Oswego county, Pulaski was easily the metropolis, its court house giving it an importance, second only to Oswego. Here, too, was located St. James Episcopal Church, con- secrated in 1850, and said to be at the time of its erection one of the handsomest churches in the Diocese. William C. Pierrepont of Pierre- pont Manor, whose name has often been mentioned in these pages, was a large contributor when the church was being built. The Pres- byterians, the Methodists and the Baptists all had small churches. Pulaski in 1850 had a population of 1,232. That year the telegraph came through. It had a paper mill operated by William E. Wright, a wool mill operated by Dr. L. S. Landon, a carriage factory operated by Ingersoll & Osgood, one machine shop operated by Benjamin Dow and another, the Empire machine shop, conducted by David Bennett, Jr., and Albert Mattby, to name only a few of the industries of this thriving, little town. There was the old Salmon River House, with its high-columned porch, Robert Ingersoll's little bank, wedged in be- tween stores on Jefferson street, the imposing colonial court house, which might have been taken bodily from some Virginian village, and the three-story, brick academy building, standing in the midst of a beautiful grove of trees on the banks of the Salmon river. Jefferson street was a sea of mud in wet weather, but it was lined with busy shops and on Saturdays there were always dozens of farmers' horses hitched to the wooden standards in front of the post office and D. B. Meacham's store.
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Over in Lewis county was Lowville, a typical rural village in a rich, agricultural setting. In 1855 Lowville, the only incorporated vil- lage in the county, had a population of 908. Set down in the midst of a beautiful valley, shut in on every side but one by hills, Lowville was an attractive place in the fifties, even as it is today. Two miles away flowed the Black river, a wide and placid stream, in no way resem- bling the tumbling, foaming river at Watertown and Brownville, and with the building of the Black River canal had come commerce. Steam boats puffed their way up and down the river, sometimes tow- ing long lines of canal boats, loaded with Lewis county butter and potatoes for the Albany and New York markets.
Lowville had a town hall that was almost classic with its high, Corinthian columns. It had snug, little Trinity Episcopal Church, also with high-columned porch, and Lowville Academy, famous throughout the entire North Country. There was the stone church of the Congregationalists and the brick church of the Methodists and the little frame church of the Baptists. Furthermore it had a bank, the Bank of Lowville, established in 1838 and the second bank in Lewis county, the first having been the Lewis County Bank established at Martinsburg.
Although by no means a large place in the fifties, Lowville was a village of no small importance and had furnished many of the leaders of the North Country in its half-century of existence. Russell Parish, a distinguished lawyer, died in 1855. Charles Dayan was a promi- nent resident of the period, having been a candidate in the legislative caucus for comptroller of the state against Silas Wright. He had served in the state senate, had been acting lieutenant governor and finally district attorney. Andrew W. Doig, who died in 1854, had been for two terms a member of congress, had been county clerk, member of the assembly and surrogate. Joseph A. Willard was a prominent manufacturer and was later to be a member of the state senate. Wil- liam L. Easton was president of the Bank of Lowville up until 1855 when he was succeeded by James L. Leonard. William Root Adams was principal of Lowville Academy. Stephen Leonard, son-in-law of Gen. Walter Martin, was a well known merchant. Isaac Welton Bost- wick, first president of the Bank of Lowville, president of the board of trustees of Lowville Academy and long agent for the Low estate, died in Lowville in 1857.
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WEALTHY MEN OF THE NORTH
In 1857 the New York Reformer, published at Watertown, printed a series of four articles on the wealthy men of the Northern New York of that day. George Parish of Ogdensburg, according to the Reformer, was easily the richest man in the north and one of the wealthiest men in the country. His fortune was estimated at six million dollars, truly a remarkable fortune for that day. Henry Van Renssalaer of Ogdensburg, son of the patroon, and a large land owner, was estimated to be worth $800,000. The fortune of Loveland Pad- dock of Watertown was also placed at $800,000, although the writer acknowledged in a later article that the estimate was probably too high. The Paddock fortune, according to the Reformer writer, was "one of the largest out of our large cities, unaided by land or other speculations, that has ever been made in the state."
William G. Pierrepont of Pierrepont Manor, is credited with a fortune of half a million. V. V. Rosa of Watertown was represented as being worth about $400,000, the same amount as that credited to James Sterling of Sterlingville, the iron master, who operated mines in northern Jefferson and Southern St. Lawrence counties. The for- tune of Norris M. Woodruff, builder of the Woodruff House at Water- town, was estimated to amount to $300,000. James Averill of Og- densburg was credited with being worth $400,000, made largely in land speculation, and Judge George C. Sherman of Watertown with a fortune of approximately a quarter of a million. E. G. Merrick, who at one time operated forty-nine boats in the lake trade, was said to be worth approximately a half a million. The fortune of Alexan- der Copely, the lumber man, was fixed at between $200,000 and $300,000, and that of Gen. William H. Angel of Watertown at from $100,000 to $150,000, acquired largely in dealing in cattle. David C. Judson of Ogdensburg was said to be worth $200,000 and George N. Seymour, Ogdensburg merchant, about the same amount. John Clark of Watertown was said to have amassed a fortune of $100,000 through the practice of the law. Augustus Chapman of Morristown was credited with having made $300,000 in land dealings. Solomon Pratt was said to have accumulated $100,000 as a merchant in Somer- ville, St. Lawrence county. Charles G. Harger, Wooster Sherman and O. V. Brainard, all of Watertown, were estimated each to be worth
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$100,000. Henry Barnard of Morristown was said to be worth about a half a million.
It is not contended that all of these figures are accurate, even though they seemed to have excited no denials at the time they were published, but they are probably approximately correct and give a good idea of the financial condition of the North Country just before the Civil War. It was a prosperous country. Great fortunes were not many, it is true, but the great estates of a quarter of a century before, had been subdivided, hundreds of farmers held their land free of all debt and there was an increasing number of prosperous tradesmen, small manufacturers and professional men in the villages. The country was rapidly filling up. Plank roads run through the most thickly settled areas. The railroad took passengers from Watertown to Rome and from Ogdensburg to Malone in a few hours where form- erly it had been an all day trip in a stage coach. Telegraph lines con- nected the principal towns. Gas lighted the streets and stores of a few of the largest villages. Water systems brought better fire protec- tion and all the larger villages purchased fire engines. With better fire protection came larger and more costly buildings and with better transportation facilities came large-scale manufacturing.
This was the North Country of 1861, when Abraham Lincoln was elected president of the United States.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE CIVIL WAR AND THE FENIAN RAIDS
WAR EXCITEMENT IN THE NORTH COUNTRY-THE FIRST NORTHERN NEW YORK UNITS TO RESPOND TO THE CALL-SOME WELL KNOWN NORTH- ERN NEW YORK REGIMENTS-BOUNTY JUMPERS AND "SKEDADDLERS" -THE LEGEND OF MAPLE ISLAND-THE SOLDIERS COME MARCHING HOME-THE FENIAN RAIDS-THE CONCENTRATION AT MALONE.
The new telegraph brought the news of the fall of Fort Sumter to the North Country. It created tremendous excitement. There was a feeling that war was near. The young men were enthusiastic and boasted that it would be a short affair at best. The older ones, who recalled the hectic days of the War of 1812, were more grave. On the whole, Northern New York was for the war, especially during the first two years. Lincoln had carried every Northern county dur- ing the election of 1860. Many a fugitive slave had passed over the Underground Railroad through Northern New York to Canada and freedom. Here and there, there was a dissenting voice. A leading member of the State Street Church of Watertown got up in his pew and walked out when the minister grew particularly bitter in his condemnation of slavery. In Malone certain "copper heads" wore cop- per cents in their lapels so that all the world might know they were southern sympathizers. But men of such sentiments were in the mi- nority. The vast majority of the people were for the war and wanted everyone to know it.
Thus the Black River Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, then in session in Pulaski, composed of 200 ministers repre- senting some 23,000 members, resolved that "we fully justify the chief executive of the nation in employing all the military and naval forces at his command to put down treason and rebellion, at what-
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ever cost of blood and treasure." The Methodists of the North now had no pro-slavery bishops to rule such resolutions out of order.
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