USA > New York > Franklin County > The north country; a history, embracing Jefferson, St. Lawrence, Oswego, Lewis and Franklin counties, New York, Volume 1 > Part 9
USA > New York > Jefferson County > The north country; a history, embracing Jefferson, St. Lawrence, Oswego, Lewis and Franklin counties, New York, Volume 1 > Part 9
USA > New York > Lewis County > The north country; a history, embracing Jefferson, St. Lawrence, Oswego, Lewis and Franklin counties, New York, Volume 1 > Part 9
USA > New York > Oswego County > The north country; a history, embracing Jefferson, St. Lawrence, Oswego, Lewis and Franklin counties, New York, Volume 1 > Part 9
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 9
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When Dewitt Clinton, later to be governor of the state but then a member of the canal commission, passed through this section in 1810 he heard the story of Desvatines from the Stevens family, who still resided there. According to them Desvatines were very proud and reserved, always went bareheaded and bartered off some valuable books for two cows. Desatines' countrymen in Albany raised a sub- scription which permitted the family to return to their native land. According to Mrs. Stevens, the family was apparently happy together but in her opinion the French woman had no extraordinary preten- sions to beauty.
One Major Lawrence Van Valkenburgh had acquired an interest in lot 75 in the military tract and came to take up his land in 1792 with two laborers and a slave boy. The following year he returned with his family and a couple of other men to make a settlement near Oswego Falls. That same year Daniel Master, a blacksmith, became the first settler in the present town of Volney.
Although George Scriba's patent was not issued to him until 1794, the year before that he began the first settlement on his land, selecting as a site the mouth of the present Scriba creek. He named it New Rotterdam, after the city of that name in his native Holland. Immediately he set to work building houses and mills. When agents of the Castorland company, of which more will be said later, passed through New Rotterdam that same fall, they found the settlement consisted of three log houses. By 1795 when the Duc de la Roche- foucauld-Liancourt visited the settlement, there were only a dozen log houses there, but Mr. Scriba was building a fine, frame house for a store and had started construction of a road through the woods to Vera Cruz, his other settlement, on the site of the present village of
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Texas. But Rotterdam, as it soon became known, was not destined to be the thriving city which Scriba had dreamed. When DeWitt Clinton visited it in 1810 he found that it contained but "eight or ten houses and exhibited signs of premature growth." Today not even the name is retained because Rotterdam is the modern Constantia.
THE CASTORLAND COMPANY
William Constable immediately took steps to dispose of some of his great land holdings in Northern New York. In August, 1792, he was in Paris. The French capital was in the throes of the Revolu- tion, the king had been imprisoned and the Red Terror stalked through the streets. No man's life was safe. Many of the aristocrats and the nobles had fled to foreign climes. Those who remained awaited their opportunity. Under these circumstances it was not difficult for Constable to interest a group of French gentlemen in a scheme for a great French colony to be set up in the trackless wilder- ness of the Black River Country.
Negotiations were started between Constable and Citizen Peter Chassanis at the latter's house in the street of the Jussiene. Louis XVI was being tried, the streets ran with blood and Chassanis is reported to have locked the door of his home while negotiations were in progress with the statement that if the deal was not consummated then, there was no assurance that they would be able to meet again. Finally Constable sold to Citizen Chassanis and his associates, organ- ized under the name of La Compagnie de New York a vast tract of over 600,000 acres lying in the present Jefferson and Lewis counties.
Not a single member of the company had any exact information of the country in which they had made this great purchase. The lands had not been surveyed and even the course of Black river was not known. But a colorful circular was issued setting forth the fancied advantages of the new land. Castorland, it was to be called, from the beaver which the French understood overrun their wood- land empire. The promoters of the new company had visions of thousands of acres of vinelands and of the production of maple sugar becoming an industry of such extent as to supersede the production of cane sugar.
In the heart of the great woods, they proposed to build a little Paris, the home of happy mechanics and of French aristocrats,
HOTEL|
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11049
ARSENAL STREET, WATERTOWN, N. Y.
PUBLIC SQUARE AT WATERTOWN, ABOUT 1880, SHOWING MOORE & SMITH'S, WHERE THE FIVE AND TEN CENT STORE IDEA WAS BORN
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snatched from the blade of the guillotin, while on the lake shore a second city was to be erected which in time would become a great port from which the products of Castorland would be shipped to the world via Montreal. An elaborate organization was perfected, com- missioners named, a lengthy constitution drawn up and adopted, a seal devised and a silver coin minted to compensate commissioners for attending meetings. With only the most imperfect maps avail- able, a system of proposed roads was chartered and complete plans for the two cities drawn. No more visionary scheme was ever attempted. It was doomed to failure from the start.
First, it was decided, a trip of exploration must be made. So on July 7, 1793, the two commissioners for America, Simon Dejardines and Peter Pharoux, left the old wharves at Havre and in exactly two months arrived in the thriving port of New York, now a city nearing the 50,000 mark. Pharoux was an eminent architect of Paris and Dejardines an enterprising if somewhat visionary adventurer. At Albany the two commissioners met Marx Isambert Brunel, a country- man of theirs, just 24 years of age and a political exile. No more happy meeting could have taken place. Brunel was an engineer and surveyor, a natural leader and a born pathfinder. He readily threw in his lot with his two compatriots.
How valuable he was to them is apparent from the journal of the exploration which was painstakingly kept, later printed in Paris and many years ago translated by the late Dr. Hough, the historian, who planned to publish it but never did. The three hired four Americans supposed to have some familiarity with the lands to the northward and started for Black river bay by the old Indian route of Wood creek and the Oswego river. They found Oswego still in possession of British troops who looked with suspicion on the expedi- tion and would permit the little party to proceed only when they left Brunel behind as a hostage. Even then the British refused to allow Brunel in the fort but forced him to camp by the river bank, justification enough in his mind to break the agreement and he escaped from the British and joined his companions.
It was a good thing for them that he did. Neither Pharoux nor Dejardines were the type of men to lead an expedition into unknown lands. Brunel took charge. The party coasted along the lake shore in a small sailing craft. At the mouth of Little Sandy they found
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an Indian and his wife in a bark canoe, the first humans they had seen since leaving Oswego. Then they ran into heavy weather as they approached Stony Point, called on the old maps Traverse Point. Even the pilot lost his nerve and "took so heavy a draught of rum that he knew not what he did and steered direct for the breakers."
But Brunel was equal to the emergency. Sweeping the pilot to the bottom of the craft he took the helm, while his two companions each took a corner of the sail. Brunel steered for the open lake and one of the frightened Americans took out his knife to cut the hal- liards of the sail. It is recorded that Brunel, without letting go of the helm, reached over and dealt the panic-stricken boatsman such a blow on the head with a hatchet that he forthwith lost all interest in his fate. Finally the trio sighted the stream "called by the English Stony Creek and on the French maps, La Rivere de l'Assumption," and Brunel steered his speeding craft midway between Traverse Point and Galloo (sic) Island. A few minutes later they were safe in Henderson Bay.
The next day they set out in search of the mouth of Black river. It was a tedious job but finally they were successful and camped near the mouth of the river. Their fire attracted an Indian, his wife and two children who visited them but departed after receiving presents. The next day they started up the river, noting carefully the appear- ance of the country. They thought that Baron Steuben's settlement near Utica could not be more than 30 miles distant and Pharoux with one of the boatmen, a man named Britton, took three days' provisions, a gun, a hatchet, a flint and steel and blankets, and set out to see if they could reach the home of the old Revolutionary general. They succeeded in ascending the river only a little above the present city of Watertown.
Thus Pharoux describes in his journal the site of the city, the first description of which we have any record: "At noon we saw a great cascade in the distance, broken rock forming an island, through which the water flows. The smaller channel on the right, a rocky cliff on the left, and narrowing of the river above where it turns to the northeast. Low ground on the right and high on the left. Two ravines with banks, then another ravine, obscured with masses of trees. At 12:50 the great cascade, of which the torrent is on the left side, with a branch on the right, and a large, rocky island covered
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with pines. Land low on the right but steep at the bottom of the falls and high on the left. The cascade forms a cloud of mist. At one we gained the head of the falls where the swift water announces the upper falls. At 1:15 the river turns and the land is steep on our side, course east, turning southeast, the land forming a very high hill and the vegetation fine. At 1:15 the stream is parted by an island with two falls at the head." The next day Pharoux found the river still about as wide as "the Seine at Point Royal." Indians had been there before them. They found three large trees cut by an axe with indications of a fire lately made.
The next year surveying of the great tract was started. It was then for the first time that the real course of Black river was dis- covered to the dismay of the French, who had thought that the river flowed due west from High Falls (now Lyons Falls) to the lake. This meant that their tract was not half as large as had been antici- pated. They complained to Constable who cheerfully agreed to do everything that was fair but regretted that he could not alter the course of the river or compel the British at Oswego not to interfere with the surveyors. Pharoux was drowned in 1795 not far from the present city of Watertown with seven of his companions, white sur- veyors and Indians. Capt. Charles Brodhead, a Revolutionary vet- eran, was in charge of the party. They were being ferried across Black river on a raft of logs but discovered to their horror when in midstream that they had mistaken the place and were rapidly being drawn towards the great falls which Pharoux had noted in his journal two years before. Discovering that Pharoux could not swim Brod- head stayed on the raft with him instead of swimming for shore. The two passed over the falls. Pharoux was drowned but Brodhead was pulled senseless from the river by an Indian. Sometime later the body of the young Frenchman was found on an island at the mouth of Black river, since called Independence Island. James D. LeRay de Chaumont, the landowner, caused a tablet to be erected on the island bearing this inscription: "To the memory of Peter Pharoux this island is consecrated."
In the meantime the first French families had arrived, pitifully unprepared to cope with the wilderness. First, there was the long tedious trip in a sailing vessel from Havre to New York. Then there was another on the barque to Albany and finally the difficult
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journey up the Mohawk and the trek through the wilderness with a brief stop at Baron Steuben's cabin before the start of the wearisome journey. They carried with them grass seed to sow the spacious lawns they dreamed would some day lead from their homes to the river. They gathered young plum trees in the woods for their orchards. On the flats along Black river, near the present Lyons Falls, they built their log homes. At Long Falls, now Carthage, they built a saw mill in 1795. Carpenters and artisans were hired to do the work and occasionally an Indian assisted. They fashioned fantastic names on the rivers and streams in their forest domain, Deer creek, Siren creek, Swan creek, Pelican creek, French river, Linnet creek, Independence creek, Beaver river and Murmur creek.
Many of the settlers were men of wealth, breeding and education, accustomed to Parisian society, who dreamed of vast estates carved from the hemlock forests of the Black River Country where they might hunt and fish to their heart's content. Such a man was J. T. Devouassoux, a retired officer of the old regime, who bought himself a lot on the river shore and proceeded to have a log hut erected on a beautiful spot which he hoped some day to convert into a beautiful expanse of lawn. One morning as the old officer in his dressing gown sat before his house admiring the view that stretched out before him James D. LeRay came along. M. LeRay noticed at once that the river in the spring would overflow the piece of ground upon which M. Devouassoux had erected his cabin. He called this to the attention of the old officer who was much surprised. Further inquiry brought out that the old soldier had never explored his lands but finding this beauty spot near the river and being passionately fond of fishing he had established himself on the bank of the river without further investigation.
Along the river, too, on a tract of some 1,200 acres, settled Louis Francois de Saint Michel, reputed to have been an officer of Louis XVI. Managing his log cabin was his daughter, a beautiful girl tenderly reared in the schools of Paris, who nevertheless grace- fully adapted herself to the rigors of pioneer life. Not far away the Balmat family settled and the oldest boy, James, later became secre- tary to Joseph Bonaparte, brother of the emperor.
With no information at all on the topography of the land, engi- neers in Paris laid out a road. The map was sent to Castorland
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where the workers followed their instructions religiously and built a road which went up hill and down dale. Finally it came to a precipice but orders were orders so the workmen simply passed over to the other side and resumed their construction. This was known as the Old French road, the first to be built in the Black River Country, and was the highway followed by the first permanent set- tlers into the present Lewis and Jefferson counties.
The grand attempt at colonization was of course a failure. The proud cities of Castor and Basle were never built. Great sums of money were spent but all in vain. The log cabins which were to have given way to majestic mansions crumbled away in decay. Many of the colonists left in disgust. Others remained and their blood is still found in well known Northern New York families. But if the Castor- land colonists were unsuccessful at least they had charted and mapped a substantial section of the Black River Country and the surveys which they made and even the fantastic road which they built were of infinite value to the first English-speaking pioneers when they penetrated the wilderness a few years later to build the first perma- nent settlements. Caleb Lyon of Lyonsdale in his poem, "Castor- land," pictures the dream of the French refugees:
"On an hundred thousand acres never trod by foot of men,
He had mapped out farms and vinyards, roads o'er precipice and glen,
And like scenes of an enchanter, rose a city wondrous fair,
With its colleges, its churches, and its castles in the air."
And then came the bitter disappointment of the awakening : "After toils and many troubles, self-exile for many years,
Long delays and sad misfortunes, man's regrets and woman's tears,
Unfulfilled the brilliant outset, broken as a chain of sand,
Were the golden expectations by Grand Rapides' prom- ised land."
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THE FIRST SETTLEMENTS.
The era of settlement was now at hand. The movement west- ward from the New England states had set in with a vengeance. In three days in the month of February, 1795, a resident of Albany counted 1,200 sleighs on their way westward. On Feb. 28th, that same year, 300 sleighs passed through Albany, headed westward, between sunrise and sunset. The landowners of the North Country were not slow to take advantage of this restless movement from the old villages of New England. They realized that there was but one way to enhance the value of their lands and make their investment a profitable one and that was to interest actual settlers in their holdings. Surveyors were sent far and wide through the expanse of the North Country. In the present St. Lawrence county Medad Mitchell and a man named Tupper worked as early as 1791, running the lines of Great Tracts Numbers I, II and III of the Macomb Pur- chase. They finished their work within the limits of the present Franklin county and setting their course by the compass started through the woods, hoping to reach Rome. Instead they emerged at the High Falls on Black river-now Lyons Falls-and were forced to cross the river and proceed to the present Oswego county before they could locate themselves. Tupper Lake bears the name of one of these early surveyors.
Benjamin Wright did much of the surveying for William Con- stable. From 1795 to 1798 he had worked throughout the northern forests laying out townships for the various proprietors. So when in 1799 he left Rome with a party of some twenty or more assistants to survey lands for Mr. Constable in the present St. Lawrence county, he was probably as familiar with Northern New York as any man then living. The party took the Oswego trail to the lake and went from there down the St. Lawrence to St. Regis. Wright established his headquarters at the mouth of the Racquette river. Camps were located at various sites. One camp was located near the present Norfolk, another in the neighborhood of Hannawa Falls, a third on the site of Pyrites and a fourth at Cooper's Falls on the Oswegatchie.
At the mouth of the Oswegatchie, the Oswegatchie Indians drove the surveyors away for a time but the trouble was adjusted. Tory squatters, settled at this same point and claiming titles from the
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Indians, were also ugly but the surveyors were resourceful men, accustomed to life in the woods and in many cases veterans of the Revolution, and they persisted in spite of all difficulties. The worst situation, however, prevailed at Oswego which the red-coated British still held, arrogantly collecting customs and refusing American boats permission to pass into the lake. The British commander at Oswego would not permit the American surveyors to operate near the post which resulted in a great deal of inconvenience. But gradually the entire area was mapped. Town lines were run, towns known only by numbers, filled with giant trees and populated only by bears, wolves and panthers. For the first time accurate charts were avail- able. It was evident that the Black river provided a great highway into the heart of the new country and that over the divide the Oswe- gatchie led to the St. Lawrence and Canada.
At first men did not venture far into the interior. A few clearings appeared along the Oswego trail, principally at Oneida Lake, but in 1796 Neil McMullen, a merchant of Kingston, N. Y., boldly appeared at Oswego, which had just been abandoned by the British, and set up a frame house which he transported in Durham boats, ready-cut, as we would say today, down the Oswego river. This house he erected on the west side of the river in the middle of the present Seneca street, and soon opened up a brisk trade with the Indians. That same season, Captain Edward O'Connor, a Revolutionary vet- eran, appeared and erected a log house, but he elected to spend the winter at Salt Point, now Syracuse. The following year the state legislature, foreseeing a great future for Oswego, laid out a city with wide streets, giving many of them names which they retain to this day, but they were streets then marked only with blazed trees. Soon Peter Sharpe had appeared and built a little log tavern on the east side of the river, and he and William Vaughan became owners of a little schooner. Before 1800 the embryo city of Oswego was assum- ing some little commercial importance.
As we have seen, there were early settlers in the present town of Volney and soon Major Lawrence Van Valkenburgh was operating a well known tavern which became a common stopping place for boat- men and others traveling between Salt Point and Oswego. John Van Buren and Ebenezer Wright were early comers, while Daniel Masters had located at the so called Upper Landing as early as 1793.
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The name, Oswego Falls, was given to the collection of clearings between the Upper and Lower Landings. It was not until 1826 that the name, Fulton, was applied to the village which gradually grew up between the two landings on the old portage path.
George Scriba's "city" of Vera Cruz was the first place settled in the present town of Mexico, Oswego county. It was located on Mexico Point and the entire region from the mouth of Salmon creek to the present hamlet of Texas was laid out into city lots with even a plot for a city park. Scriba had great dreams for Vera Cruz, even though it had but a half dozen log houses. A tavern, mills and a shipyard were built and the little settlement showed every sign of fulfilling the expectation of its owner until a number of the men of the village lost their lives in the lake while trying to get to Kingston, Canada, for food, and from that time on the fortunes of the little place steadily declined. Today, like the grand cities planned by the Castorland colonists, it exists only in memory.
On the upper Salmon river one of the most promising settlements in the entire north had been established in 1795 by Captain Nathan Sage of Connecticut, who had commanded the warship Middletown with sixteen guns and 100 men in the Revolutionary war. From the first the settlement was named Redfield after the proprietor, Dr. Frederick Redfield, whom Sage represented as land agent. A number of strong men followed Sage into the new settlement, coming by way of a crude, forest road that led from Rome through the present town of Florence, Oneida county. Among them were Deacon Amos Kent and Eli Strong. The Oneida county assessment rolls for 1798 show thirty-two residents assessed in Redfield, while there were only twenty-six in all the rest of the present Oswego county, east of the Oswego river.
Before 1800, little log settlements had sprung up in a dozen, stumpy clearings within the limits of the present Oswego county- in the present City of Oswego, Oswego town, Granby, Volney, Scriba, Shroeppel, Mexico, New Haven, Hastings, Constantia and Redfield. Aside from Scriba's great road from Rotterdam (Constantia) to Vera Cruz (Mexico Point) and the wood trail that led from Rome to Red- field, there wasn't a road in the entire region, but the British aban- donment of Oswego had opened up the water highways and boatmen
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on the Oswego river were soon doing a lively business. As an indi- cation of the stimulus given to settlement by the British abandoning Fort Ontario at Oswego, in 1796 the population of the entire town of Mexico, which then included all of Oswego county east of the Oswego river and much territory in the present Oneida county, was only 246. The following year it had increased to 622.
SETTLEMENTS ALONG THE ST. LAWRENCE
Far to the north a thin line of settlements had sprang up along the St. Lawrence within striking distance of Plattsburgh, on the one hand, and the Tory settlements along the northern bank of the river, on the other. Near the present village of Chateaugay in Franklin county, Benjamin Roberts had established himself the last year of President Washington's administration, leading his family on a long trek through the woods from Plattsburgh, driving his cattle before him and carrying a teakettle full of rum in his hand. Within a year quite a settlement of Vermont men had been formed and crops of potatoes and turnips raised.
Near the present village of Massena in St. Lawrence county, settlers were located as early as 1792, leasing their lands from the St. Regis Indians. They came from the neighborhood of Montreal and built a sawmill on Grass river a mile below the present village. In the town of Madrid in the present St. Lawrence county river lots were being sold at $2.50 an acre and rear lots at $2 an acre long before the dawn of the 19th century. The signing of Jay's treaty in 1796 under which the British were compelled to evacuate their posts within the limits of the United States removed the last impediment to settlement along the border. That year Nathan Ford, as agent for Col. Samuel Ogden, the owner, left New York to undertake the settlement of Oswegatchie. With his slave, Dick, and several boat- men and workmen whom he hired, he bought a boat, loaded on a quantity of merchandise and proceeded along the Mohawk, following the old Indian trail to the Oswego river and the lake. He was forced to pay his boatmen, whom he called an abandoned set of rascals, excessive wages, his boat sank and spoiled his casks of tea and dry- goods, but finally he reached Oswegatchie and established himself in the sergeant's quarters in the old fort.
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