USA > Vermont > The Lake Champlain and Lake George valleys, Vol II > Part 14
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When Carleton raided Queensbury, he carried the elder Moses Harris and his son William as prisoners to Quebec. One of the Tories had a grudge against Moses, and got his revenge by forcing the old man to walk barefoot over the rough rocky trails carrying a heavy pack. The elder Harris eventually won his freedom through an exchange of prisoners, but William escaped with some others through the forests. Against his wishes the party made a smudge one night as a protection against mosquitoes. They were aroused about
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midnight by a surprise attack. William engaged in a hand-to-hand encounter with an Indian and finally managed to throw him upon the fire, pinning the savage's head in the flames. Finally a former Tory neighbor felled him with a terrific blow and he was left for dead. He recovered, however, and rejoined the patriot army.
William had a bitter antipathy for Indians that his children inher- ited. One day they insulted a harmless old Indian doctor passing their house until he lost all patience and threatened to tomahawk them. He merely meant to frighten them, but when they told the story to their father, he followed the Indian and killed him in cold blood. The dead man's friends suspected that William was responsible for his disap- pearance, and selected a powerful warrior to get revenge. This brave lurked in the vicinity of the Harris place for several days. He had never seen William personally, and perceiving a man hoeing corn all alone, he decided to ask him where his intended victim lived. The farmer happened to be William himself, and he understood at once the errand of the savage. He coolly agreed to show the Indian where he lived. They made their way through the woods until a favorable opportunity presented itself when Harris felled the unsuspecting sav- age with a blow from his hoe. On another occasion, eight Indians were sent to do away with him. They lurked around the neighbor- hood to find a way to capture him. One day they were fishing in Harris Bay, a fact which William soon found out. He then collected eight muskets and hid them behind a log near the shore. Next he showed himself to the Indians and insulted them. In a rage the sav- ages rushed at their tormenter, and as they came he took deliberate aim and killed each one of them.
Next we come to Van Wormer's Bay (sometimes called War- ner's ), which was named after Jacob Van Wormer. After the Revo- lution he became "religious," and confessed that he had killed at least three men without justification. At the battle of Bunker Hill he had a tomahawk. He confessed, according to Holden that, "I sdruck to der right, und I sdruck to der left, und I killed my dwendies, und dat vas all right; put von poor fellow drew down his arms, und gried vor gwarter; but I vas so mat mit der viten dat I kills him, und dat vos murder. Und after dat I kills a man down der Hutson river, und dat vos murder; und ven Burgoyne mit his army crossed der river at Fort Miller, I shoots a Britisher dat vos in shwimmin in der
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river ; und dat vos murder; und dat vos all I murdered; der rest vos killed in fair fight."
This by no means exhausts the legends and traditions of Queens- bury. Along the old military highway stretching northward from Glens Falls in the direction of Lake George, countless bloody skir- mishes and ambushes took place. There was a rude fortification on Halfway Brook, where scouting parties and wagon trains often spent the night under the protection of a small garrison. Several times enemy Indians waited in the brush to the north for these isolated groups to set out for the lake in order to slaughter them from ambush. A short distance to the north was Blind Rock, reputedly a favorite torture place among the savages. North of the Halfway House as we enter Caldwell Township the ground was often crimson with blood. Interesting as these episodes are, however, we have already devoted unusual attention to this township. As we leave Queensbury let us take in our minds that unforgettable view of Lake George as seen from the Top O' The World farm.
Stony Creek Township is located in the southwestern corner of the county. It is bounded on the north by Thurman, on the west by Ham- ilton County, on the south by Saratoga County, while on the east it is separated from Warrensburg by the Hudson River. Originally it belonged to Thurman, but when this parent township was completely legislated out of existence in 1813, Stony Creek and the present town- ship of Thurman were organized as Athol Township. Stony Creek did not form a separate unit until 1852. It is claimed that the first permanent settlement was made in 1795. Lumbering and farming were early occupations. There is also a village of Stony Creek. The settlement, originally known as Creek Center, did not develop until the first tannery was erected here in 1852. Although other industries were attempted on a small scale, this was of greatest importance. In 1855 the town had 913 inhabitants, nearly double the population reported in 1930; while in 1875 there were 1,253. In recent times decline has been pronounced, the population decreasing from 858 in 1910 to 651 in 1920, and 464 in 1930. Today it has the least number of inhabitants of any Warren County town.
Thurman is bordered on the north by Johnsburg, on the west by Hamilton County, on the south by Stony Creek, and upon the east by Chester and Warrensburg, the Hudson River forming this eastern
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boundary line. Originally, as created in 1792, it included all of the present county of Warren except Queensbury, Luzerne and a part of Caldwell. Rapidly it was hacked to pieces by the creation of new towns until, in 1813, it ceased to exist. From then until 1852 the present township of Thurman, together with Stony Creek, formed a town named Athol. Since that date, Thurman has remained intact. We are glad that this town, as well as Johnsburg, was named for the original patentee, John Thurman. Settlement was slow in this area. As late as 1820 there was but one road in town and this was only suitable for travel on foot and horseback. The early residents took their grain to mill by canoe. In 1830 the whole town of Athol polled less than two hundred votes in three days of election, while as late as 1840 there was only one house in town that was painted white. Lum- bering was the chief occupation. Many of the early settlers were Scotch-Irish, several of whom were born in Athol, Scotland. When they came to this country they brought that name with them. Although Athol Township disappeared in 1852, one of Thurman's hamlets is today called Athol. In recent years, population has declined from 805 in 1910 to 680 in 1920, and to 521 in 1930, as compared with a total of 1, 259 in 1855. With the exception of Stony Creek it is the least populous township in the county.
Warrensburg, the eleventh town of our eleventh county, is also our last. It is centrally located and is bounded to some extent by all the other townships except Johnsburg, Hague and Queensbury. I uzerne adjoins it on the south, Stony Creek and Thurman lie across the Hudson in the west, Chester borders it on the north, Horicon forms a slight contact with it in the northeastern corner, while Bolton and Caldwell face it on the east. The entire boundary line between Warrensburg and Bolton and part of that between Warrensburg and Caldwell is determined by the Schroon River, which joins the Hudson southwest of Warrensburg village. The only township in this county that exceeds it in population is Queensbury, and no town has rivalled it in political influence. In 1813 it was created out of territory belong- ing to Thurman.
The first settler came to Warrensburg in 1786, and others soon followed in his footsteps to take advantage of the proximity of tim- ber to the mill sites on the rivers, and to settle on the farm lands. Between 1810 and 1820, lumbering became quite an important industry.
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1810 also marked the beginning of tanning. The center of the town's industrial acitvity was Warrensburg village. By 1836 this settlement consisted of two churches, two taverns, five stores, a large tannery, a gristmill, two sawmills, carding and cloth-dressing works, and about fifty dwellings, mostly new. As time went on the early industries expanded and new ones were born. Sawmills were erected wherever water power was available. One of these was a gang mill containing seventy saws and four gates. The tannery at one time was one of the best in the State and had a capacity of 30,000 hides annually. A shirt company was begun in 1879 and within but a few years was pro- ducing 25,000 dozen annually. The manufacture of woolen cloth, gloves, and pegs also became important, along with the production of wood pulp and paper. Transportation improvements that gave impetus to Warrensburg's development were the building of a plank road to Lake George in 1849; its extension to Chestertown in 1850; and finally, the coming of the railroad in the 1860's. The population reached a total of 1,946 in 1855, declined to 1,579 in 1870, and then started again on the upgrade. Although between 1910 and 1920 there was a decline, the next decade saw a rise from 2,025 to 2,263. War- rensburg is doubly equipped for the future, possessing both industrial and resort facilities.
This completes our survey of the individual cities and townships that comprise this historical resort area. Each has its own peculiar story and its own cherished traditions. Those, whose legends have survived the lapse of time, are singularly blessed. Although some of the anecdotes mentioned make no pretense of truthfulness and others of a historical nature could not possibly stand up under scien- tific scrutiny, nevertheless they make the past seem more real and understandable to us and have quite definitely become an integral part of the towns themselves. Queensbury would not be Queensbury, without the Harris family, for example. Carelessness and ignorance have cheated many towns out of their birthright. Not only that but these twin agents of destruction are even now continuing their work, almost unchecked. In this study I have had space only to trace the general outline of the development of the communities. Even this has been an extremely difficult task and, sometimes, an almost hope- less one. Not even one county out of the eleven studied has an ade- quate, accurate and readable account of its development. Books are
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honeycombed with contradictions and mistakes ; certain phases of devel- opment are entirely neglected and others overemphasized, depending upon the interest of the author; information covering the last fifty years is disorganized and in a chaotic condition; while in some cases the English language is as hard to decipher as Egyptian picture writ- ing. This situation challenges us. Local traditions cannot be allowed to perish. A town without traditions is a town without pride. Each community possesses the story of its own heroic achievement. The knowledge of this is just as essential in developing a town's citizen of tomorrow as the narrative of the sacrifices of our forefathers in the early days of our country's history is in preparing youth for his place in the national arena. While it is true that the future is more important than the past, there is danger in being on a ship without a rudder, floundering on high seas without rhyme or reason, or destination.
CHAPTER XII
Transportation
Trade and travel tend to follow the paths of least resistance. In a wilderness or in a newly-settled area the easiest and most rapid mode of transportation is by water. Man, whether white or red, when faced by these circumstances invariably prefers to set out on rivers or lakes rather than to penetrate unknown forests. Although trails or roads are necessary and do occur where waterways do not exist, without exception their purpose is clearly to supplement and not in any sense to duplicate watery thoroughfares. Even when we consider land routes alone, we find the Indian following the trails already beaten by the larger animals, while the white man invariably traces the foot- steps of the savage. Eventually this primitive pathway becomes wid- ened to form turnpikes, in turn is transformed into a railroad line, later becomes an artery for trucks, buses and pleasure cars, and finally becomes the route of the airways. In all these improvements in trans- portation, except that of the airplane era, it is imperative to follow the routes which provide the most level ground or the easiest grade ; while the ships of the air are the servants of the communities which invariably grow up along the sides of these paths of commerce. The development of our economic life is dependent to a large degree upon the existence and location of these routes, although the presence or absence of mineral resources and many other factors also influence us greatly. The knowledge that our transportation avenues were actually laid out before man ever existed, impresses upon us once more the incredible power of the Creator. Man has drilled tun- nels through mountains, has by means of locks made water run up hill, and has blasted away hills here and there. In a sense he has conquered his environment. Yet when we realize that today he fol- lows the same route used by animals and red men, it is clear that
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environment has also conquered him. The tendency to follow the line of least resistance has been as true of the Champlain Valley and its vicinity as in any other section.
The history of transportation is not as simple, however, as one might decide from this generalization, for there is often a choice of routes. The Indian would sometimes use one, and on other trips, another. The early white traders and pioneers also preferred variety when two possible routes seemed equally attractive. When the day of the turnpike, the canal boat, or the railroad came, however, this multi- plicity of routes was not feasible. One route was selected then to the exclusion of the others. Happy were the communities located on the favored route, and forlorn were those not so situated. This was par- ticularly true when we consider the railroads, in this area and elsewhere. Towns, whose stars seemed in the ascendancy, in the stagecoach era, dwindled to obscurity when another route was selected for a railroad for reasons sometimes better known to politicians than to engineers. On the other hand some communities date their existence from the year a railroad was built, while others, like St. Albans, owe their major devel- opment to the iron horse. In any case, the man-made choice between various routes was often as far-reaching and important as were the location and creation of the routes themselves.
The first craft to provide water transportation was, of course, the Indian canoe. This met the requirement of a boat that was substan- tial enough for navigation yet was light enough to be carried without too much labor from one waterway to another. These varied in con- struction, one interesting distinction being that the sides of the Algon- quin canoes were of birch bark, while those of the Iroquois were pri- marily of elm. The People of the Long House were known to use birch canoes, it is true, but only when they had captured or bought them from other nations. As a rule those used on Lake George and Lake Champlain by the red men were of the smaller variety carrying approx- imately six persons. They were narrow, rounded on the bottom, had no keel and were easily overturned. During a brisk wind they were no place for one who did not fully understand their eccentricities. Kalm observed on his travels that the occupants of Indian canoes "by no means must be unruly, but sit at the bottom of the canoe in the quietest way possible lest the boat upset." When the first settlers moved into the Champlain Valley many of them came by canoe, while
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in some towns on the upper Hudson this represented the sole method of travel and trade for many years other than carrying goods over forest trails. Although delicate and untrustworthy at times, the canoe provided an easy and a rapid type of transportation and was of immense value to early man, white as well as red.
Also of considerable importance in early times was the French bateau. Upon this particular craft, armies bent on conquest most
( Courtesy Lake Placid Chamber of Commerce)
THE STEAMER "DORIS" ON HER DAILY RUN IN THE SUMMER AT LAKE PLACID, AS SHE HAS BEEN SEEN FOR THE PAST FORTY-FIVE YEARS
depended. Abercrombie is said to have had nine hundred of them when he advanced against Ticonderoga in 1758. When Benjamin Franklin and his colleagues went to Canada in 1776 to attempt to win the people of that Province to American independence, Commissioner Charles Carroll recorded in his diary a description of typical bateaux : "The longest of the boats, made for the transportation of troops over Lakes George and Champlain, are thirty-six feet in length and eight
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feet wide; they draw about a foot of water when loaded, carry between thirty and forty men and are rowed by the soldiers. They have a mast fixed in them to which a square sail or blanket is fastened, but these sails are of no use unless with the wind abaft or nearly so." After the war bateaux were frequently used by the early settlers, Zephaniah Platt, the founder of Plattsburgh, using them to transport goods on both Lake George and Lake Champlain in 1785.
There was also a variety of other craft as time passed. Aber- crombie used a number of whaleboats (and it might be said that he would have had as profitable a business hunting whales here as he did waging war on Montcalm). There was about every known type of raft and ferry and flat-bottomed boat. Logs and timbers were con- structed into rafts on all the major waterways. Some of the early ferries were nothing but rafts, without sides, while others were large raft-like boats with side boards, propelled by large-bladed oars called sweeps. There were ferries of one type or another at several places along the Hudson, beginning in early times. None of any importance were established on Lake George. Samuel Deall, one of Ticonder- oga's pioneer business men, petitioned for the exclusive right to have a ferry on this lake in 1773, but his request was not granted. On Lake Champlain there were several. One of the best known among them was the McNeil ferry operating between Essex, New York, and Charlotte, Vermont, a distance of three miles. It is said to have been established in 1790, but to have received its charter in 1821. At first this ferry was operated by means of an endless cable with six horses furnishing the necessary power. One of the most interesting was a horseboat named "Gypsy," operating in the Port Henry region. In this case there were horses on treadmills on each side of the deck to supply motive power. Mckenzie's ferry here was established in 1785.
Boats with sails had an early beginning on Lake Champlain. The first sailing vessel built here was the yacht on which Peter Kalm traveled down the lake from Fort St. Frederic to St. Johns in 1749. Philip Skene, founder of present-day Whitehall, built a sloop before the Revolution which he used for communication with Canada. The first real sailboat on Lake George was Samuel Deall's, in 1768. It has been variously called the "Petty Anger," the "Petty Augur," and the "Petti-auga." This was a small vessel with two masts and two
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large sails. It had no keel, the lack of it being overcome by the use of lee-boards. During the Revolution, Benedict Arnold and his men constructed a fleet hurriedly on Lake Champlain to delay the approach- ing British conquest. They built galleys, gunboats, gondolas and schoon- ers. The English also had a variety of craft including an eighteen- gun ship. During the War of 1812, Macdonough had considerably larger vessels. In fact they were as large as the majority of the deep sea ships of that day, and Macdonough's flagship was larger than the famous "Bon Homme Richard." The "Saratoga" alone weighed 734 tons.
Foremost among the prominent men associated with the early navigation of Lake Champlain was Burlington's great Gideon King, who was known throughout this area as the "Admiral of the Lake." He came here from the Shaker settlement at New Lebanon in 1788, and was quick to grasp the possibilities of commercial navigation of Lake Champlain. With an associate he soon built two small cutters which connected Burlington with Essex and Plattsburgh on the New York shore. In 1790 they obtained two heavy schooners that had been previously used for military purposes, and established a route between Burlington and St. Johns. One of these ships was equipped to carry horses. In this same year two other men built a thirty-ton sloop on the Winooski. Others soon followed in their footsteps, but the rapid development of fast sailing schooners was primarily due to the genius of King. According to Crockett, "From 1790 to 1815 he furnished business for the greater part of the lake craft; and although many of them were originally built for others, he advanced money for their construction, and sooner or later they came into his hands in whole or in part, practically giving him control of water transpor- tation." John Jacob Astor chose him to look after his fur interests in this area. It is with considerable justice that the street on which he caught his vision is today named in his honor.
The tonnage of these ships varied from thirty to seventy-five. More of them were built at Essex, New York, than anywhere else, although several were constructed at Burlington and some came from the shipyard which was established at Whitehall during the War of 1812. The building of the schooners was apparently as completely dominated by Captain Moses Eggleston as the finished ships were controlled by King. Of twenty-four built between 1800 and 1814,
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Eggleston was responsible for fifteen. At this time, Whitehall was the southern terminus of lake commerce, merchandise being hauled between this place and Troy by teams. Most of the commerce, how- ever, was with Canada. Vermont exported lumber and logs, pot and pearl ashes, grain, bar iron, wrought nails, beef, pork, peltry, maple sugar and flax; whereas northern New York exports were more con- fined to logs, lumber, pot and pearl ashes, peltry and iron. Products imported by northern New York were, primarily, grain and various supplies and merchandise of no special type. Vermont's imports were more selective and we can easily enumerate them as rum, wines, gin, salt, tea, coffee, chocolate, coarse linens and woolens and certain build- ing articles. The chief difference between the two sides of the valley was that the New Yorkers of this period were more dominated by lumber and less attached to agriculture than were their Vermont neighbors. Wharves in many cases were conspicuous by their absence. When possible, a cargo was thrown overboard and floated ashore. On other occasions teams managed to reach boats with little draught. People with live stock to land would run their craft to a favorable place and then throw the animals overboard and swim them ashore. Sometimes smaller supplementary boats were necessary to connect the ship with the land. Barter was practiced extensively. On many occasions we find the early pioneers trading wheat for salt, bushel for bushel, while pot and pearl ashes offered a common medium of exchange.
The War of 1812 seriously crippled transportation on Lake Champlain as we have already seen, and lawful trade and commerce threatened to disappear. As soon as peace was declared, however, white-winged sloops and schooners appeared in profusion. Although the first steamboat was built in 1808, "Admiral" King's fleet of trim, fast schooners continued to dominate lake traffic for some time. The day of the sailing vessel was certainly a picturesque one. When we are told that in Westport Bay alone as many as twenty sails could be seen at one time it is not difficult to appreciate their importance, while it is easy to imagine these proud, graceful craft speeding by us in the sunset in front of a driving breeze.
Early man traveled by water whenever possible, but often he was forced to proceed by land. When this necessity confronted him he tended to follow the tortuous trails created by animals and savages. When this was not practicable he was forced to slash his way through
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the brush, blazing a trail of his own by chopping pieces of bark off sides of trees as he went. As a rule the early trails followed the courses of brooks and rivers, pursuing all manner of curves and sinu- osities. Swamps were avoided when possible, but mountains were evi- dently not considered important impediments. Trails were as a rule extremely rough, while the only way to cross water was by fording. When ferries were later provided there was a natural tendency to have them as close as possible to the fording places, directly above or below, as near as navigation would permit. Bridges, needing shallow water, tended to be directly over the fords. Walking was the standard mode of travel, although it was customary to ride horseback over the better trails.
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