USA > New York > Franklin County > The north country; a history, embracing Jefferson, St. Lawrence, Oswego, Lewis and Franklin counties, New York, Volume 1 > Part 8
USA > New York > Jefferson County > The north country; a history, embracing Jefferson, St. Lawrence, Oswego, Lewis and Franklin counties, New York, Volume 1 > Part 8
USA > New York > Lewis County > The north country; a history, embracing Jefferson, St. Lawrence, Oswego, Lewis and Franklin counties, New York, Volume 1 > Part 8
USA > New York > Oswego County > The north country; a history, embracing Jefferson, St. Lawrence, Oswego, Lewis and Franklin counties, New York, Volume 1 > Part 8
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 8
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Snow fell and it was hard going for Ross and his men. To make things worse, a number of his Indians deserted and provisions were short. So hot was the pursuit that Walter Butler was killed at the ford at West Canada creek which ever since has been called Butler's ford. Butler, who commanded the rear guard, was shot by an Oneida Indian in the service of the Americans. He fell wounded on the banks of the creek, deserted by his men, and the Indian immediately
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swam the creek and dispatched the hated Tory chieftain with his tomahawk, crying "Remember Cherry Valley," when Butler begged for quarter. Willett tells the story of the retreat with the touch of an artist. "Their flight was performed in Indian file upon a con- stant trot," he writes, "and one man being knocked on the head or falling off into the woods never stopped the progress of his neigh- bors, nor even the fall of their favorite Butler, could attract their attention so much as to induce them to take even the money or any- thing else out of his pocket, although he was not dead when found by one of our Indians, who finished his business for him and got a considerable booty."
It was well into November before Ross and his men got back be- hind the log walls of Fort Haldimand at Carleton Island and losses had been heavy in the hard march through the woods. It was the last Tory gesture of the war. The British losses had been severe and particularly did they feel the loss of the younger Butler. "I read with much concern the fate of Capt'n Butler," Gen. Haldimand wrote piously to Major Ross. "He was a very active, promising offi- cer, and one of those whose loss, at all times, but particularly in the present is much to be lamented." But a contemporary American ac- count gives a different estimate. "Walter N. Butler was one of the most inhuman wretches that ever disgraced humanity," declares this writer. "Ferocious, blood-thirsty and cruel, he seemed to revel in perfect delight at the spectacle of human suffering. He surpassed the savages in barbarity."
Now Carleton Island belongs to the General Electric Company and will be transformed into a summer playground for its officials and employes. Golf courses are being fitted out and there will be recreational halls and bathing houses and all that goes to make a vacation resort. Fortunately, the crumbling, old chimneys-all that remain of Fort Haldimand-are to be preserved. It is hard to real- ize, as one stands today where once the log barracks and the gen- eral hospital stood, that here 150 years ago was a fortress which the British engineers considered almost impregnable. Now the placid St. Lawrence flows by uniting rather than dividing two peaceful na- tions with not a fortification along their thousands of miles of fron- tier. It is a far cry back to the days of the Revolution when war blazed along the Mohawk and the names of Joseph Brant, Walter
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Butler and Daniel Claus inspired terror up and down "the Valley." Then Carleton Island-or Buck Island, as the Continentals knew it- was often mentioned in the official documents. To the sturdy Ger- man militiamen who guarded their homes along the Mohawk, it was a nest of Tories which they dreamed some day of cleaning out.
Read the musty papers in the Canadian archives and the Carle- ton Island of Revolutionary days lives again. One hears the regular tread of the sentries, marching their posts, their eyes fastened on the mainland where, perchance, Oneida scouts were hidden. One sees again the log barracks, Highlanders in bright, plaid kilts, Brit- ish Grenadiers in scarlet coats, dusky braves, constantly coming and going, and Tory rangers, decked and painted like Indians and hardly more civilized. Men whose names live in history appear before our eyes. Here is Sir John Johnson, small-calibred son of a great father, Col. Daniel Claus, His Majesty's superintendent of Indian affairs, Walter Butler, whose blood is soon to dye red the waters of West Canada creek, and Joseph Brant, powerful chieftain of the Mohawks, intelligent, educated in the white man's schools, a favorite of old Sir William Johnson, and, some biographers hint, possibly one of his many sons.
Such was the Carleton Island of Revolutionary days, a rendez- vous of Indians and Tories, a forest outpost of King George III, a base for raids against the Mohawk settlements. From here St. Leger started for Oriskany, from here Walter Butler went forth to die, and from here Ross led the last British raid of the war. Who will read the story of Carleton Island and say that Northern New York has no Revolutionary War history?
CHAPTER III.
THE GREAT LAND PATENTS
THE TEN TOWNS-MACOMB'S PURCHASE-SCRIBA'S PATENT-"GRAND RAP- IDES' PROMISED LAND" -- THE ERA OF SETTLEMENT.
With the war over and the Federal government daily becoming more stable, the state decided to make an effort to dispose of the great tracts of unsurveyed and, to a large extent, unexplored lands in Northern New York. There was a reason behind this. The thin line of settlements along the Mohawk still bore the scars of the ter- rible Indian raids of the Revolution. There was no certainty of con- tinued peace with England. Feeling still remained intense. The hor- ror of border warfare was too recent and the knowledge that but a few years before English gold had been paid for American scalps at Carleton Island did not help. Furthermore the Union Jack still waved over the military posts at Oswego, Carleton Island and Oswe- gatchie. Theoretically the river and the lake was the boundary but the British still hung on stubbornly upon one pretense or the other to their old posts. Along the Northern bank of the St. Lawrence Sir John Johnson and his Tories were building new homes for them- selves in the wilderness and waiting their chance for revenge. There, too, lived two sons and a sister of Benedict Arnold. It required but a small spark to set the whole border aflame once more.
It was probably with this in mind that the state of New York decided to establish the first line of defense along the trails leading from Canada in the form of sturdy settlers who might be depended upon to fight at the drop of a hat when their homes were threatened. Consequently in 1787 the Board of Land Commissioners of the state directed the Surveyor General to lay out ten townships in two ranges of five each, extending from the head of Long Sault Island to the pres-
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ent Oak Point. Each township was to contain 100 square miles and to be as nearly square as possible. By the same act under which the ten townships were sold, the legislature provided for laying out a military tract in the present Franklin and Clinton counties, to satisfy the claims of Revolutionary soldiers. But no part of this tract was ever patented to military claimants and it was sold like other land by the Commissioners.
In 1789 the legislature set aside a great tract of land westward of the Oswego river to be distributed to the soldiers of the Revolution and the Surveyor General was directed to divide it into towns, town No. 1 to be the one immediately west of Oswego Falls. Thus all the present Oswego county west of the Oswego river was included in the military tract, although but two of the towns into which the tract was divided were in any part within the limits of the present Oswego county, these being Hannibal and Lysander. The military town of Lysander embraced the greater part of the present town of Granby in Oswego county, the remainder of the town being in the present Onondaga county. The military town of Hannibal comprised the present towns of Hannibal, Oswego and a small part of Granby in Oswego county, and the present town of Sterling in Cayuga county.
The Ten Towns, so called, in the present St. Lawrence county were named Louisville, Stockholm, Potsdam, Madrid, Lisbon, Can- ton, DeKalb, Oswegatchie, Hague and Cambray and in 1787 the land included in them was practically all sold to Alexander Macomb, a resident of New York, who had made a fortune in the fur trade with John Jacob Astor. It was in his big house on Broadway, a little be- low Trinity Church, that President Washington resided when New York was the capital of the United States. Soon after the great treaty had been made between the State of New York and the Iro- quois at Fort Stanwix in 1788 by which the Indians ceeded a large portion of their lands in Northern New York to the state, this same Alexander Macomb, probably associated with two other New York men, William Constable and Daniel McCormick, purchased a large tract of nearly 4,000,000 acres comprising the major part of North- ern New York at a price of eight pence an acre. The purchase was divided into six great tracts, Tract No. 1 being in general the pres- ent Franklin county, Tracts II and III being in St. Lawrence county, and Tract IV portions of Herkimer, Lewis and Jefferson counties.
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HISTORY OF THE NORTH COUNTRY
The division line between Tracts V and VI was never run. These tracts included portions of the present Oswego, Jefferson, Lewis and Herkimer counties.
The sale of such a great tract of land at such a low price caused a storm of criticism from enemies of the administration. The Land Commissioners were accused of dishonesty and also of complicity in a deep-laid plot to bring about the annexation of the territory to Canada. Even Governor Clinton was charged with conniving in a treasonable scheme. The fact that adjoining tracts had been sold a short time before for between two and three shillings an acre lent color to the charge. There was a legislative investigation which re- sulted in complete vindication of everyone accused, but it was appar- ent to all that the lands had been sold too cheaply and that someone had exercised a good deal of influence at Albany.
The lands were of course purchased for speculation at a time when gambling in "wild lands" had become a pastime of the wealthy and great portions of the tract soon passed to other hands. By far the larger portion, comprising Great Tracts IV, V and VI were soon taken over by William Constable for 50,000 pounds after Macomb had failed and had been lodged in prison for his debts. It is no in- tention of this writer to trace the intricate chain of land titles from the original owners and the constant subdivision of these tracts as the years went on. The student interested in these transfers is re- ferred to the excellent histories of St. Lawrence and Franklin, Lewis and Jefferson counties by the late Dr. Franklin B. Hough, written some seventy-five years ago, and also to Mr. Crisfield Johnson's His- tory of Oswego County.
Soon after the Macomb Purchase, in August, 1791, John and Nicholas J. Roosevelt, merchants of New York, purchased of the state some 500,000 acres of land south and west of the Macomb Pur- chase. This great tract included all the present Oswego county west of the Oswego river, excepting that included in the Macomb Pur- chase, and also comprised some of the present Oneida county. George Frederick William Augusta Scriba, a wealthy New York merchant of Dutch birth, was interested in this purchase and on Dec. 12, 1794, a patent to the entire tract was issued to him. Benjamin Wright, the well known surveyor, subdivided the tract for him into twenty- four townships and great lots. He sold off considerable portions, one
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great tract largely in the present town of Richland to Alexander Ham- ilton, but for many years retained large tracts himself. Long before the turn of the century he had embarked on the most ambitious scheme for settlement of his "wild lands" of any of the landed pro- prietors of the North.
THE GREAT LANDED PROPRIETORS
It is of interest to know something of the men who eventually gained ownership over great areas of land in the Northern part of the state. In such a list is marshalled much of the wealth of the in- fant republic. It is like reading a list of vestrymen of Trinity Church or a list of subscribers to Columbia College. Here were the elite of New York and Philadelphia, the friends of Washington and Jay and Hamilton. Many of them had homes on Wall street or on lower Broadway. They were the men who founded and supported the Federalist party and the Chamber of Commerce and who, for all their adherance to the Revolutionary cause in the late war, believed in the "rule of the rich, the well born and the able."
Chief among them was that patron saint of Federalism, Alex- ander Hamilton, who had just resigned as secretary of the treasury after a notable administration. It was natural that Sriba should have sold some of his lands to Hamilton, who was not above a little speculation in "wild lands," although it is not recorded that he took much interest in his possessions in the present town of Rich- land. His name, however, is still perpetuated in Oswego county in Hamilton Gore. Nicholas J. Roosevelt, who at various times owned large tracts of land in the present Oswego county, was a wealthy mer- chant, manufacturer and inventor. His father, Isaac, had been a member of the New York Provincial Congress and for many years was president of the Bank of New York. Later Nicholas became associated with Robert Fulton, generally credited with being the in- ventor of the steam boat, and, in fact, was an influential man in New York City until his death in 1854. His brother, James John Roose- velt, probably the John Roosevelt who owned lands in the North, was a law partner of John Jay.
John Jay owned a large tract in the present town of Hastings, Oswego county. It was owned by his estate for many years. No
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man was more highly respected by the Federalists of the "high- minded" type than John Jay. Born in 1745, he had graduated from Kings College, now Columbia, in 1766. He was a member of the Continental Congress. He drafted the first state constitution. He was the first chief justice of the state. He was minister to Spain un- der the Revolution, one of the commissioners to negotiate peace af- ter the Revolution, secretary for foreign affairs under the Articles of Confederation, instrumental in getting New York to accept the Fed- eral constitution and appointed by Washington first chief justice of the United States. It was Jay who negotiated the treaty with Great Britain by which the British reliquished hold on the northern posts. At the time he made large purchases of northern lands Jay was governor of New York. After his death, his possessions passed to the hands of his son, Peter Augustus Jay, but the tract in Oswego county was always known as the Governor Jay tract.
George Scriba, who at one time owned nearly the whole of the Oswego county was a New York merchant possessed of a fortune estimated at a million and a half dollars. He had a house on Wall street and a store on Nassau street. He sank practically his entire fortune into his lands and in the attempt to build up his two pro- posed cities of New Rotterdam and Vera Cruz. About 1810 he moved to New Rotterdam, the present Constantia, and built himself a house there overlooking Oneida Lake. There he lived until his death in the 1830s and a Scriba still lives in the old mansion to this day.
Of all that company of great land barons, none was of greater note than William Constable, head of a family whose name is per- petuated in Constableville in Lewis county and Constable in Frank- lin county. More than any other, the Constables were responsible for the settlement and development of Northern New York. The contract under which they sold off their great holdings was written by Alexander Hamilton and remains a model of its kind to this day. James Constable rode hundreds of miles of forest trail in Northern New York on horseback, from clearing to clearing and from settle- ment to settlement, and the diary which he has left behind is per- haps the best source material we have of the Black River Country in the days of its first settlement.
In the present St. Lawrence county, the McVickars, a noted New York family of that day, bought largely, especially in Louisville. So
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did John Jay, who also, as we have seen, had lands in Oswego county. William Laight, a vestryman of Trinity church, and Capt. John Lamb, one of the Committee of One Hundred. Nicholas Low bought lands not only in Stockholm, St. Lawrence county, but also great tracts in the present Jefferson and Lewis counties. He has left his name at Lowville. Others who bought land in the present limits of St. Lawrence county were John Delafield, who helped endow Co- lumbia College, Hezekiah B. Pierrepont, relative by marriage of the Constables, and the Gouverneurs, a prominent New York family of that day. The Pierreponts have left their name at Pierrepont Manor in Jefferson county and in the town of Pierpont, St. Lawrence county.
At Potsdam the Clarkson family bought many broad acres and today Clarkson College there testifies to their generosity. So did Major Nicholas Fish, president of the New York Society of the Cin- cinnati. Here, too, Herman LeRoy, a Federal appointee under Wash- ington and the father-in-law of Daniel Webster, bought large hold- ings. The Ogdens, the Waddingtons and the Van Rensselaers also invested in St. Lawrence county lands. They have left their names at Ogdensburg, Waddington and Rennsselaer Falls. Judge William Cooper of Cooperstown, father of James Fenimore Cooper, the nov- elist, bought a large tract, as did General Henry Knox, secretary of war under Washington and founder of the Order of Cincinnati, Robert Morris, the financier of the Revolution, Gouverneur Morris, diplomat and statesman, whose name is perpetuated at Morristown and Gouverneur, and John Ogden Hoffman, attorney general of the state and grand sachem of Tammany Hall.
In Franklin county, Richard Harison, one time law partner of Alexander Hamilton and classmate in Kings College of John Jay, owned great landed estates. The Harisons also owned large holdings in St. Lawrence county with manor houses at Malone, Canton and Morley. In Franklin county, too, Michael Hogan, the wealthy mer- chant, bought an entire township and named it Bombay after the residence of his wife, a princess of India. Daniel McCormick, friend of George Washington and president of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, bought large possessions here, as did Judge William Kelley, the Federalist office-holder, and the McVickars, whose descendants still live in Malone.
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In Jefferson county, beside Nichaolas Low, William Henderson, Richard Harison and John O. Hoffman had great holdings, and later Gen. Henry Champion, the Ellises and Jacob Brown. In Lewis county, the Constables and the Pierreponts retained for years vast tracts, but Walter Martin, who has left his name at Martinsburgh, and Nathaniel Shaler, soon acquired substantial territories, as did Hopper Brantingham of Philadelphia, whose name is preserved in Branting- ham Lake, former Governor Brown of Providence and James Watson, the merchant.
FRENCHMAN'S ISLAND
In general there were three routes leading from the settled por- tions of the state into the great wilderness country of Northern New York. The best known was of course the Mohawk river, Wood creek, Oneida Lake and Oswego river route which had been well traveled for a century at least. A second was eastward from Plattsburgh and the Lake Champlain country into the present Franklin county, while the third was across the divide from the Mohawk Valley to the Black river, following that river towards its mouth into the heart of the present Lewis and Jefferson counties. As the old Oswego trail was the best known route of all, it is not surprising that within the limits of the present Oswego counties were made the first permanent settlements in all Northern New York. As early as 1789 one Oliver Stevens was located at old Fort Brewerton, even then falling into decay, and was maintaining a tavern of sorts for the convenience of the boatmen on the Oswego river. Two years later another pioneer appeared in the neighborhood, a Frenchman, named Desvatines, con- cerning whom a great many fanciful tales have been written.
Desvatines was apparently a man of good birth. He has been variously represented as an aristocrat who fled from the Reign of Terror in Paris and as a Frenchman of noble birth, who woed and won a nun and was forced to flee from his native land. Probably neither of these stories is correct. Desvatines, himself, claimed to have been a seigneur from near Lisle, France, who, having lost much of his money, came to this country to recuperate his fortunes, bring- ing with him his young bride. He seems to have wasted much of the little money he had left before he decided to forsake civilization and find a home in the wilderness. About 1791 he appeared at Oneida
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Lake with his wife and two children and took up his residence on an island in the lake ever since known as Frenchman's Island. He had a happy faculty of making friends with the Indians and spent most of his time in hunting, living a carefree existence and occasionally parting with some of the family silver or part of the library which he had brought into the wilderness with him when he required money. A distinguished citizen of Holland, Francis Adrian Vanderkempt, visited the Desvatines family in 1792, describing their habitation in the following words :
"Our path gradually increasing in breadth did lead us to the cir- cumference of a cleared circle surrounded with limetrees; at both sides of the path was planted Indian corn already grown from four to five feet, while a few plants towards the middle of this path were six feet long, and this in the middle of June. A small cottage of a few feet square stood nearly in the center of this spot. It had a bark covering and, to the left of it, a similar one, three-fourths uncovered, and appropriated for a kitchen. Here was the residence of Mr. and Madame des Wattines (Vanderkempt's rendering of the name), with their three children. They lived there without servants, without neighbors, without a cow; they lived, as it were, separated from the world. Des Wattines sallied forth and gave us a cordial welcome in his demesnes. The well-educated man was easily recognized through his sloven dress. Ragged as he appeared, without a coat or hat, his manners were those of a gentleman; his address that of one who had seen the higher circles of civilized life. A female, from whose remaining beauties might be conjectured how many had been tarnished by adversity, was sitting in the entrance of this cot. She was dressed in white, in a short gown and petticoat, garnished with the same stuff; her chestnut brown hair flung back in ringlets over her shoulders, her eyes fixed on her darling Camille, a native of this isle, at her breast, while two children, standing on each side of her,
played in her lap. . . Des Wattines introduced us to his spouse. She received us with that easy politeness which well-educated people seldom lose entirely, and urged, with so much grace, to sit down, that we could not refuse it without incivility.
"Des Wattines has laid out behind the cottage a pretty garden, divided by a walk in the middle. The two foremost beds, and rabats, against the house were covered with a variety of flowers; sweet
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williams, lady slippers, with a few decaying hyacinths. At the right hand were bush beans, large kidney beans at poles, cabbage, turnips, peas, salade, with that strong-scented herbage which you purchase so dear at your arrival in New York, although its culinary use in cakes and soup was then yet unknown there; at the left watermelons, cantelopes, cucumbers, persil, string peas, with a few of the winter provisions, all in great forwardness, with few or no weeds among them; behind the garden a small nursery of apple trees, which was closed with a patch of luxuriant potatoes, and these again were joined both sides by wheat describing a semicircle around it."
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