HISTORY: Bombay Township; Franklin co., NY

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HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF FRANKLIN COUNTY AND ITS SEVERAL TOWNS

WITH MANY SHORT BIOGRAPHIES BY FREDERICK J. SEAVER
MALONE, NEW YORK

ALBANY: J. B. LYON COMPANY. PRINTERS 1918

CHAPTER VII BOMBAY

The town of Bombay, comprising township Number One of Macomb's purchase and
all of the St. Regis reservation on the American side of the boundary, was
erected from Fort Covington by an act of the Legislature passed March 30,
1833, to be effective on the first of May following. Its name was chosen by
Michael Hogan in compliment to Mrs. Hogan, who was a native of Bombay, India.
Mr. Hogan himself was a merchant in New York city, and so continued for a
number of years after his first investment in lands in Bombay (then a part of
Constable) in 1807, when he purchased 10,168 acres from Alexander Macomb for
$15,250. In 1809 he bought 9,949 acres additional from John McVickar for
$19,899.80, which gave him all of the township originally called Macomb. A few
years later he conveyed this entire tract to John Oliver, of Baltimore,
Maryland, afterward repurchased it, mortgaged it to Oliver for $43,000, and
the year following again conveyed it to Oliver, for whose estate and heirs
William Hogan (son of Michael) acted as agent in the sale of Bombay lands for
many years. Asa Hascall and William A. Wheeler were subsequently agents for
the Olivers. In all of the instruments recorded in Franklin county to which
Michael Hogan was a party his residence is given as New York city, and in an
act passed by the Legislature in 1824 as Waterford. So far as I am able to
ascertain, he never resided at Bombay for any length of time, though it is
altogether probable that he visited the place occasionally, and for a time
kept in touch with matters there, as Hough refers to building operations which
he caused to be undertaken in 1811 and 1818. The first of these was the
erection of a mill (probably a saw mill) in the eastern part of the town, and
the second a grist mill at Hogansburgh. In 1817 Mr. Hogan leased from the
Indians one hundred and forty-four acres of land and water at the point where
the hamlet of Hogansburgh now is, agreeing to establish and maintain a ferry
there and to pay an annual rental of three hundred and five dollars therefor.
The term of the lease was for ten years, with the privilege of perpetual
renewals. A couple of years later this lease was assigned to William Hogan for
three thousand dollars, and the land itself was ceded in 1824 by the Indians
to the State of New York for one dollar and an annuity in perpetuity of three
hundred and five dollars. The younger Mr. Hogan then acquired the fee from
the State.

The earliest recorded deed given to or by William Hogan is dated 1821, and his
residence is stated therein to be Fort Covington. Until 1836 all subsequent
deeds in which he appears as grantor or grantee state his residence as Fort
Covington or Hogansburgh, and after that as New York city. Mr. Hogan was born
in 1792, lived in South Africa in his youth, studied the Dutch language there,
and upon his return to this country entered Columbia College, New York, was
graduated from it, studied law and was admitted to the bar. He served both the
towns of Fort Covington and Bombay as supervisor, was elected to the Assembly
in 1822, became one of the judges of the court of common pleas for Franklin
county in 1829, and was elected to Congress in 1830. As a candidate for
re-election in 1832 he was defeated. In 1850 he was appointed a clerk in the
department of State at Washington, and held the position until 1866 or later.
He died in Washington in 1875. In his younger years he was an intense partisan
of the Andrew Jackson school of Democrats. The Franklin Telegraph said of him
during his Congressional canvass that his bearing was "offensively
aristocratic," that he was a free-trader, and that in sentiment he was a
Southerner. But in a letter of the week following to the Telegraph Mr. Hogan
declared himself a protectionist, and in a letter to the Malone Palladium in
1861, written from Washington, avowed himself vigorously a Union man, and
declared it to be the duty of all good citizens to stand strongly against
secession.

Michael Hogan was born in Ireland in 1765. Hough's history says that he was
for several years consul general of the United States at Valparaiso, Chile,
and that he "was distinguished throughout various reverses of fortune by his
enterprise, intelligence and probity, as well as by his hospitable and liberal
disposition, and the urbanity of his manners." He died in Washington, D. C.,
in 1833. A further reference to him appears in the first chapter.

It was doubtless due to the nativity of the Hogans, father and son, that Irish
settlers began to swarm into Bombay about the year 1825, generally coming by
steamship to Montreal directly from Ireland, and thence overland or up the St.
Lawrence. Mr. Hogan the younger is said to have received these with great
kindliness, and to have located them upon what was then regarded as the very
best lands in the town, which, location came to be known as the "Irish ridge."
These lands to-day are very far from the best in Bombay, but in early times
the bottoms and intervals were too wet to be worked, and thus the uplands
alone were available for farming. These settlers, as Mr. Reed says in his
story of "Life on the Border," were apparently delighted to have an "illigant
Irishman " for their boss, notwithstanding they found him invariably an
exacting creditor and master, though not unjust.

A few months ago an application was made to the court somewhere by a man named
Hogan to have his name changed, and the incident brought out the statement
that all Hogans are the descendants of Irish kings, and that in ancient times
they had a fortified residence at Ardcromy and another at Ballylusky. Assuming
this to be true, the statement of the Telegraph regarding Mr. Hogan's
aristocratic bearing may readily be believed to have been correctly
descriptive. No descendant of the Bombay Hogans is known to be living, and the
only evidences of the family remaining in Bombay are the buildings which they
erected and a skeleton of a coach which was in its day an elegant equipage,
richly upholstered, fitted with lamps, and painted and gilded to be fit for
royalty itself. It was imported from England, used for a time in New York, and
finally sent to Hogansburgh for storage. It was of great weight, and required
four horses to haul it even on fairly good roads. On such roads as the county
then possessed it could hardly be used at all. Though moth-eaten, dismantled
and a wreck, it is still preserved at Hogansburgh, and a few years ago it was
not uncommon to bring it out on a Fourth of July, and drive it up and down the
street. The dwelling house built by William Hogan in Hogansburgh still stands,
and is in a remarkably good state of preservation.

There remains in Bombay scarcely one even of the group of men who were of the
generation next after the earliest settlers, and records of their time or data
concerning them seem not to have been kept. The first white settler in the
town, one Hadley, a hunter, is said to have located in 1803, and to have been
followed by Samuel Sanborn and family in 1805; but immigration did not begin
in any volume until about 1822, and was at first largely from Vermont and New
Hampshire. Ten or twelve years later nearly all of the original settlers had
removed to Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, selling out to other
arrivals, mostly from Vermont, and at about this time a good many Irishmen
also came.

Among the first merchants in the eastern section of the town, at Bombay
Corners, were James Luther and Jesse A. Clark, the former having established a
store there in 1824, and the latter having followed in 1826. Early hotel
keepers were John Diggins and William P. Moseley, and later Mortimer Russell.
Benjamin Reynolds came from Vermont in 1824, and his son Jacob G. followed in
1831. The latter, after engaging in farming for several years, became the
principal merchant and business man at the Corners, and one of the moneyed men
of the town. William McRoberts settled in 1821, taught school for one term,
and with his brother, James, built a tannery south of the Corners in 1823. He
afterwards engaged in farming. Joseph Elliott, Jr., located in 1819, Amasa and
Rufus Townsend, farmers, about 1825, Moses B. Elliott in 1826, John McCabe in
1831, Pearson Rolfe in 1832, Jonathan Wiggins and George H. Russell in 1833,
Charles Russell in 1835 or earlier, Elvin K. Smith, a physician, in 1835,
Alanson Donaldson in 1837, Preserved Ware in 1839, and Mortimer Russell in
1844. Benjamin Rolfe was a resident as early as 1825, and was the third or
possibly the fourth school teacher in the town having been preceded by Jacob
Travis, who taught in a log barn a mile west of the Corners, in which, at
least a cord of wood was burned daily to keep the pupils from freezing; also
by Wilson Randall, and probably by William McRoberts. Either Randall or Rolfe
was the first to preside in a real school house, which was finished in 1824 or
1825, near the Corners. A considerable number of the boys and girls in
attendance were men and women grown. Sylvester Parr was pedagogue a couple of
years after Rolfe, and later became a Baptist minister. Then, in 1828, came
Amos Emerson, a superior type, and also an ardent believer in the virtue and
efficacy of the blue beech.

There is little to be told of life in the town in its early days, the story
differing in no essential particulars from that of any other frontier
settlement of the period. Forests were converted into fruitful fields by dint
of hard labor, privation prevailed and was endured as a matter of course and
without especial realization of hardship, schools were provided as soon as
might be, religious services supplied a little later, with the hotels and
their bars keeping up a regular devil's side show or chapel (rather worse here
than in most similar communities), and men and women lived and loved and died
as is the law of the universe.

The first religious movement in the vicinity of the Corners was
Congregational, a minister having been engaged at a salary of four hundred
dollars a year, but he remained only a twelvemonth, after which the
organization went to pieces, and has never been revived. Rev. Nathaniel
Colver, then stationed at Fort Covington, seized upon the opportunity
presented by abandonment of the field by the Congregationalists, and was
quickly successful in developing an interest in the Baptist faith and in
winning converts. He was a man of aggressive energy and force, but in 1827,
though formerly himself a Mason, became an open assailant of the order,
lecturing and inveighing bitterly against it, and thus antagonized and
alienated a number of his leading parishioners. That breach and scandalous
conduct on the part of two or three prominent members of the Church
discredited the society and led to its disruption. Mr. Colver had no successor
of his denomination in Bombay, and so died the effort to found and maintain a
Baptist Church there. But Methodism was becoming a power in the world, and its
zealous and tireless circuit riders were already disputing even this little
field with Mr. Colver before the latter's ministrations failed, and were
holding services alternately with him on Sundays in the school house. This
denomination is the only one that succeeded in maintaining itself in the
eastern part of the town from early times to the present. Its first pastor or
preacher was Luther Lee, in 1828, who was then stationed at Malone, and of
whom the story runs that at the age of eighteen he was without education, but
that, marrying a woman of superior mind and acquirements, was taught by her to
read, and influenced to study. Mr. Lee served in Bombay once a month for a
year. He afterward became an eloquent divine and a fiery anti-slavery
crusader. Who were his immediate successors the records fail to show, but in
1832 "The Bombay Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church" was incorporated,
and was associated with churches at South Bombay, Helena and Brasher, a single
pastor serving all of these points. From 1877 to 1901 it was joined with Fort
Covington. The first church edifice was erected in 1836 or 1837, and was
rebuilt and enlarged in 1867. A fine parsonage was built recently.

There is also a Methodist Church at South Bombay, which has been an out
appointment of Bombay since 1904. The church edifice here was erected in 1891,
though services by clergy of this denomination had been held more or less
regularly in the school house from a very early time.

Notwithstanding the number of Roman Catholics in the eastern part of the town
had not been inconsiderable from early times, their privilege of worship
according to the rites of their faith until recent years, except as mass was
said irregularly and infrequently in the hotel or at a private residence, was
enjoyed only by journeying to Fort Covington or Hogansburgh. About 1905,
however, services began to be held at Bombay with some approach to regularity
by priests from Fort Covington, and were so continued until 1912, when the
Church ceased to be a mission, and was given a resident rector, the Rev. James
E. Duffy, who continued in charge until 1918, when he became a chaplain in the
army. A church building was erected in 1905, and is clear of debt. A rectory
was built in 1913. The parish is small.

The Roman Catholic Church at Hogansburgh was founded in 1827, soon after a
visit to the place by Bishop Dubois of New York, of which diocese it was then
a part. The bishop's counsel to the people of his faith there was given at a
meeting held in a barn, and proceedings for building a church edifice and for
incorporation of a church society followed in due course. Incorporation was
had by residents of Bombay, Brasher and Fort Covington, November 7, 1834, as
the "Roman Catholic Church of St. Patrick at Hogansburgh," and the first
trustees, besides the bishop of the diocese and two men from Brasher, were
David O'Neil and James Murphy of Bombay and Patrick Feely and Lantry Adams of
Hogansburgh. The meeting for incorporating was held at Mr. Feeley's house, and
the certificate recites that, a chapel being then in course of construction,
steps were taken at the meeting to assure its early completion. Between 1827
and 1833 or 1834 services were held only irregularly, and were conducted by
priests from neighboring localities, but mainly by Rev. Father Marcoux, the
rector of the Roman Catholic Church for the Indians at St. Regis. In 1829 or
1830 Bishop Dubois again visited the parishes in his see in Franklin county,
journeying by sledge drawn by dogs, and still again in 1835, when he was
accompanied by Rev. Father Hughes, who afterward became archbishop. Upon his
return to New York from one or the other of these later visits, probably the
first of them, he assigned Rev. John McNulty to the Hogansburgh charge. Some
authorities place the beginning of this rectorship in 1833, and others in
1836. Hogansburgh was the mother church of the Romish faith in Franklin
county, and it included as parts of its parish Massena, Fort Covington,
Brasher, Brushton, Trout River, Constable, Malone, Chateaugay and Cherubusco.
Father McNulty was a man of fine presence and broad attainments, and an
indefatigable worker. The church edifice at Hogansburgh, which he found
unfinished, was completed during his rectorship, and the work of organizing
churches throughout the district was prosecuted with great energy. A
scandalous charge was brought against him by one of his parishioners in Malone
(claimed by him and his friends to have been a conspiracy between disaffected
Catholics and Protestants); the case went to the courts, with a verdict
against the priest, who was incarcerated in the jail at Malone. He escaped and
fled to Canada, where he continued to reside until his death. While in service
at Hogansburgh Father McNulty conducted a spirited discussion with Rev. Ashbel
Parmelee of Malone concerning Romanism, the letters being published in the
Malone Palladium. Great ability and learning were displayed by both of the
controversialists. After the departure of Father McNulty the church at
Hogansburgh was without a settled rector until 1843, the people having been
attended in the interval by the priest at St. Regis and by Father Moore of
Huntingdon, Que. Since then it has had rectors of its own continuously. The
original church edifice was of stone, and served the needs of the parish until
1876, when a new structure was erected, which was burned in 1905. A year later
it was replaced by a handsome brick edifice, finely finished within, and
costing about fifty thousand dollars. The original church building was given
over in 1878 to the uses of a convent school until 1880. From 1880 to August,
1915, when its roof and interior were burned, it was used as a parochial hall.
Rev. Father Michael J. Brown, a Malone boy, who was a student at Franklin
Academy fifty years ago, became the rector of St. Patrick's in 1879, and so
continued until his death in 1917. In his interesting book, "History of the
Diocese of Ogdensburg," Rev. John Talbot Smith says of the people of this
parish that they are "unaffected by the indifference and scepticism of the
Champlain and Black river portions of the diocese, simple in their customs and
style of living, and comfortably situated. Their children are growing up like
their fathers, and the future of the parish spiritually and financially is
well assured." The parish contains about two hundred families. In 1849 all of
its then several charges except Massena, Brasher, Fort Covington and Constable
were set off from it, becoming independent parishes, or included in the then
newly created district of Malone. The exceptions noted are now independent
also.

A Methodist Episcopal Church was established as an Indian mission in 1847, two
Indians having visited the church at Brasher and entreated such action.
Sectarian rancor was more prevalent then than now, as well as more virulent,
and there was apprehension that the attempt to introduce Protestantism among
the Indians might involve personal danger to the participants. Therefore,
three or four wagon loads of the parishioners of the Brasher pastor, Rev.
Ebenezer Arnold, accompanied him as a sort of protective guard to his first
meeting, which was held in the home of one of the Indians. However, though the
movement was antagonized by the priest at St. Regis, and caution voiced to the
Indians against attending the services, there was no violence offered, nor
were the services even disturbed to any serious degree. The first meeting was
attended by a couple of dozen Indians, and such interest was awakened that a
few months later a band of them attended a camp meeting at Canton, where they
professed conversion. In the autumn of 1848 a house was leased as a place for
worship, and the next year solicitation for funds for building a church and
buying land for a cemetery was prosecuted throughout Northern New York. Bishop
Janes also collected a few hundred dollars elsewhere. Land could not be had on
the reservation itself, and therefore a site was bought next adjoining. A
church building was erected and dedicated in 1849, the bell for which was
provided through Bishop Janes, who also caused a parsonage to be erected and
furnished  Only devotion and a willingness to endure privation and isolation
could induce clergymen to accept assignment to this charge, and continue their
labors in it under difficulties and with results which, on the surface at
least, carry no great degree of encouragement. The church counts as adherents
about three hundred Indians, of whom something like sixty are members. For
twenty years, from 1866 to 1886, Thomas LaFort, an Indian, was pastor of the
church, the records of which note that his ministry was disorganizing and his
influence hurtful to the cause.

As early as 1834 William Hogan provided for occasional services of the
Episcopal Church at Hogansburgh, and erected a house there for worship. The
structure was large enough for a much more populous community, and was never
finished. It is now owned by Mr. Fulton, and used as a barn. In 1850 Eleazer
Williams, either a son of an Indian or of the King of France, returned to St.
Regis from his mission work in Wisconsin and from lobbying at Washington, and
established an Episcopal mission at Hogansburgh. He had been there as a
teacher and missionary in 1831, 1834 and 1836 also. Such services as he held
were conducted usually in the homes of the few adherents of this faith, and
rarely in the structure that Mr. Hogan had erected. From 1858, when Mr.
Williams died, there was no Episcopal Church organization in the place until
twelve or fifteen years later, when it was revived by Rev. J. C. Stewart,
rector of St. Mark's, Malone. A neat church building was erected, largely
through the liberality of the late Alfred Fulton, and services have since been
held there more or less regularly   usually by divinity students from
Montreal.

Something like forty years ago, after an exasperating and financially
disastrous attempt to establish and maintain an educational institution at
Malone, the Sisters of Mercy founded a day and boarding school at Hogansburgh,
occupying initially the old St. Patrick's 'Church building. Then, in 1880, the
work having prospered, the Sisters purchased a tract of fifteen acres near the
St. Regis river, and erected a three-story building, with basement, of their
own. It is substantial, capacious, and attractive in appearance, and located
in very pleasant grounds. Sister Frances McGarr was then the Mother Superior
of the local chapter, and it speaks eloquently for her zeal and devotion that
with her own hands she dipped in a preservative solution every brick that went
into the structure. For years the institution was maintained as a parochial
school, with a large attendance of white children and a few Indians. Something
like fifteen years ago Sister Stanislaus McGarr persuaded Miss Katherine
Drexel to visit Hogansburgh, and succeeded in interesting her in the school
and its field for work among the St. Regis Indians. The institution was
thereupon converted into the "Indian Girls' Industrial School," and cares for
and educates fifty Indian girls. It is paid five thousand dollars per year
therefor out of the income from the Drexel fund. Miss Drexel is the daughter
of a Philadelphia banker, and inherited a fortune of millions of dollars.
Reared in luxury, accomplished, a favorite in society, she nevertheless in
1889 renounced worldly pleasures and fortune, became a novitiate of the
Sisters of Mercy, and devoted her inheritance to Christian and philanthropic
work   a large part of it to the education of negroes and Indians. She is now
the Mother Superior of the Order of the Blessed Sacrament. The school at
Hogansburgh is supervised and conducted by six or seven Sisters, four of whom
apply themselves to teaching. The girls in attendance are trained in household
duties and domestic economy, so that when they return to their homes, and
eventually become housewives themselves, they are equipped to do their work
far better than could possibly be the case but for Sister Drexel's benefaction
and the conscientious efforts of the Sisters who administer it.

Most of the pioneers   merchants, millers, farmers and teachers   were men of
energy, enterprise and rugged character, and nearly every one named had a
noteworthy part in the town's development and in administering its affairs. At
least six of them served as supervisor, and two (Charles Russell and John S.
Eldredge) as Member of Assembly also. A son of Charles Russell (Horace A.)
became an eminent lawyer and acquired wealth in New York city, was assistant
district attorney there for a number of years, and afterward a judge of the
superior court and judge advocate on Governor Cornell's staff. Charles Russell
and George Russell, the latter of whom removed to Malone, became merchants at
the Corners, conducting what was known as the "union store," which was in its
time the principal mercantile establishment there.

Another son of Bombay who has made a success in life is Daniel B. Murphy; born
in the Cold Spring neighborhood in 1848, and educated in the district school,
Fort Covington Academy (where he was a classmate of Hon. F. D. Kilburn and
Charles A. Burke), and the Potsdam Normal. After teaching for three years in
St. Lawrence county, he became principal of the Dunkirk high school in 1870,
and in 1873 of the Brothers' Academy in Rochester. Two years later he
associated himself with the wholesale and retail department store of Burke,
FitzSimons & Hone in Rochester, acquired a financial interest in the business
in 1886, and was admitted four years later to full membership in the concern,
which is one of the largest in Western New York. Mr. Murphy has never sought
political preferment, but, on the contrary, has declined nomination for one of
the highest city offices and for member of Congress at a time when election
would have been certain. He has been for nineteen years one of the board of
managers of the Craig Colony for Epileptics; a delegate annually for ten years
past to the Mohonk Peace Conference; a prominent member of important business
associations of national scope, the volume of business of one of them running
into hundreds of millions of dollars; and standing so well at home as to be
intrusted with consequential fiduciary assignments. In 1907 he was State
president of the conference of charities and corrections, which includes all
correctional institutions and all public and private hospitals.

Another Bombay man who has emphatically "made good" is John Daly, a grandson
of one of the Irish pioneers of 1826. Mr. Daly was appointed on the New York
city police force in 1886 as a patrolman   a not particularly agreeable rank  
but, possessing ambition and the impulses and manners of a gentleman, Mr. Daly
determined early to win promotion. In five years he had become a sergeant; in
another five a lieutenant, and in 1903 a captain, with assignment to a
gambling district. The usual course at that time in such a precinct was to
levy blackmail on such resorts, and undoubtedly Captain Daly had opportunity
to become rich through graft; but he had already won designation as "honest
John," and showed here that the characterization was deserved. In six months
he effectually suppressed the dens. The reputation thus made gave him still
more important assignments, and in 1909 he was promoted to an inspectorship.
In 1918 he became chief inspector.

Though not a native of Bombay, nor even having been connected with it in any
way except as a teacher of the Cold Spring district school during one winter,
and afterward as an occasional visitor, Patrick Gavin Duffy is so associated
in the local public mind with the town that reference to him seems to belong
here. He was born in Ireland in 1835, and came to New York at the age of
twelve years. There he found employment in a livery stable for a year or two,
when he went into the country to make his home with an uncle who was a priest,
in order that he might receive the rudiments of an education while earning his
keep as a chore boy. The priest, Rev. Father Thomas Callan, was soon
transferred to missionary work in Northern New York, and was located for a
time at Malone. The lad Duffy accompanied him, became a student at Franklin
Academy, and taught school in Bombay. He returned to New York, and became a
teacher in the schools there   afterward studying law and winning admission to
the bar in 1874. Even while teaching he manifested an interest and displayed
such activity in politics that by the time he had become an attorney he had
attracted the attention and gained the friendship of a number of Tammany
leaders, and in 1875 he received appointment as a police justice   continuing
in the office for nearly twenty years. Upon his retirement it was estimated
that no less than a hundred and seventy thousand prisoners had been arraigned
before him. He was known always as "the Little Judge," and his quaint humor
and individualistic methods made him known the world over. Often he would
disregard the particular accusation preferred against a prisoner, and
pronounce sentence for "impertinence" or for some other incident arising
during the hearing or trial   as, for instance, when he sent a man to the
penitentiary for having falsely given his name as John Kelly, who was
particularly revered by Judge Duffy. As one of his obituary notices put it, he
"coupled sentences with sound advice delivered in a Solomonesque way," and
"dispensed justice as no one before or since has done." It was also said of
him that there was "never a hint that he was venal, politically or personally
biased, or other than decorous in private life." In the field of politics he
was almost a genius. He perfected a marvelously efficient organization in the
ward of which he was the leader, and his ambition and aim were to carry it for
the Democracy year after year by an almost unanimous vote. It is told that at
some elections the whole number of votes cast against his candidates in the
entire ward did not number more than three or four. Mr. Duffy was a fluent and
eloquent speaker, and his wit, geniality and kindness of heart made him a
multitude of friends. He died in 1895.

There have been four separate surveys of the township   by Church, Gill,
Dawson and McDonald   and not improbably each numbered the lots differently,
so that it is impossible to determine locations by deed descriptions with
certainty; nor are there elderly residents who are familiar with the story of
early industries. Thus the facts as to these must be in a measure somewhat
conjectural. Daniel W. Church, surveyor., erected the first mill for Mr."
Hogan in 1811 on the Little Salmon river near the center of the town, and it
seems not improbable that it was the same, or at least on the same site, of
the one subsequently owned and at various dates operated by Mortimer Russell,
Jacob G. Reynolds, Charles and Orange Phelps, Thomas Donaldson, Daniel
McCarthy, Ernest G. Reynolds, and Thomas A. Sears and W. B. Babcock. In 1849
it was known as Sylvester's mills, and a newspaper item of that date
chronicled that Reed Niles, the elder, was killed there by the falling of a
timber for a bridge that he was helping to build. There was also a
comparatively early saw mill at Dog Hollow, owned by Amasa Townsend, which was
built over into a flax mill by Alvin Russell, and converted later into a
creamery. William McRoberts had a tannery more than ninety years ago on Little
Salmon river about a half mile south of Bombay Corners, which was owned
subsequently by Jacob G. Reynolds, and then by James Blood, and again by Mr.
Reynolds. It was torn down about 1888 by Dr. H. S. Rockwood, and the material
in it used to build a barn. There are a grist mill and a saw mill at South
Bombay, the latter very old. The original grist mill was carried off by a
flood, and its successor has been rebuilt or remodeled a number of times. Both
of these mills were built originally, I think, by William W. Townsend, or
possibly by George F. Burgess, and are now owned and operated by George
Russell, as they had been by his father before him. Something like half a
mile north from the Russell properties Jonathan Wiggins had a saw mill
fifty-odd years ago, which a freshet destroyed, and which was not rebuilt. Mr.
Wiggins and James Dougherty at one time burned lime in the southern part of
Bombay, and their output supplied all of the county south of their kilns and
west of Malone. While no one recalls having even heard that there was ever an
iron forge in the town, the deed of the Russell saw mill lot by Townsend to
Burgess carries the privilege of maintaining a dam across the river at or near
the site of the old forge, and, again, a deed from the Olivers to Elisha
Barney of Swanton, Vt., in 1827, is for two acres of land and water at this
same point, known as the "forge lot.". The record in the county clerk's office
shows that the Olivers wiped Barney out by foreclosure in 1830. Though no
discoverable record or local tradition tells more, the present owner of the
premises, Mr. Russell, has found ore there which was plainly mined elsewhere.
Only a mile to the west there is a deposit of bog ore, now owned by Ernest G.
Reynolds, which is known to have been a source of supply for the Skinner works
at Brasher, and the existence of which may easily be taken as the reason for
the Barney venture at South Bombay, which must have been of brief duration. A
starch mill was built on the Little Salmon a mile southeast of Bombay Corners
by James Parr, and also one on Little Deer river, east of South Bombay, by
Wilcox & Adams of Bangor. The former passed to the ownership of Oren Jenkins,
and Hazen K. Cross had an interest in it at one time. The other was sold to
Newton Lawrence, and by him to James H. Sargent. It was torn down when the
manufacture of potato starch became unprofitable. In this same vicinity there
was still another saw mill, built by John Moore, and operated by him, and then
by his son, Thomas, until it was carried off by a freshet.

South Bombay formerly had a hotel, which was the old homestead of Rufus Berry,
built over by his son, Homer T., about 1869, and conducted by him for a time.
It was leased later to Reed Niles, the younger, and was then kept by 0. W.
Berry. It has now been changed into a private residence again.

In 1877 the town was visited by a plague of grasshoppers. The pastures were
stripped almost as bare as a floor; orchards were stripped of their leaves;
corn was almost altogether destroyed, and the harvest of oats and barley was
not more than a quarter of what the fields had earlier promised. The damage
was estimated at not less than fifty thousand dollars.

In the western part of the town, comprising the Hogansburgh district (formerly
known as St. Regis Mills, and still earlier as Gray's Mills) Rev. Father
Anthony Gordon, who came from Caughnawaga to St. Regis with a band of Indians
about 1760. is supposed to have erected a saw mill as early as 1762, and to
have shipped rafts of lumber and timber thence to Montreal. This mill is said
to have burned in 1807, and replaced five or six years later by two Frenchmen.
The place was Gray's Mills when Michael Hogan leased lands there from Gray,
who, made a captive in youth in Washington county, had grown up with the
tribe, and became one of its most intelligent and influential leaders. The
grist mill was built by Michael Hogan in 1818, and still stands. It and the
saw mill are now owned and operated in a small way by Maurice W. Lantry. Early
merchants in Hogansburgh were John Clendenning in 1819, John S. Eldredge and
Elisha Belding in 1825, Isaac Seymour and Sylvester Gilbert in 1826 or 1827,
Gurdon S. Mills in 1824 (whose son bore the same name) and Alfred Fulton about
1830. Mr. Eldredge was a Member of Assembly in 1840 and 1841, removed to
California in 1849, and died there in 1854. Mr. Mills and Mr. Fulton each
accumulated a handsome property, lived useful lives, and died respected and
lamented. They were as good citizens as any town ever had, though perhaps not
as pushing and enterprising as a busier environment might have made them. A
later comer, in 1854, who belonged in the same class with these, was Samuel
Barlow, who died in California a few years ago. Other early settlers at
Hogansburgh were Benjamin 0. Harrington, in 1828, who built a tannery there;
Lemuel K. Warren, landlord in 1831, and John Connolly the same year; Alpha
Burget in 1832; and Amherst K. Williams, a man of parts and prominent, in
1833. Philip Walsh had a saw mill at one time on the west side of the river. A
son of Alfred Fulton is still in trade at Hogansburgh, and another son (Louis)
is a successful lawyer in New York city. Bombay is no more populous to-day
than it was three-quarters of a century ago, notwithstanding a considerable
part of its area is as fine farming land as there is in the county. (In 1835
it had 1,357 inhabitants, and now has but 1,377). At the former date it was
the fourth town in the county, only Chateaugay, Fort Covington and Malone
being larger. In its western part the St. Regis reservation stands a bar to
extension of farming or other enterprises, the original splendid forests of
pine and other timber have disappeared before the axe or fire, and the town
has never enjoyed satisfactory transportation facilities. At one time small
steamboats ascended the St. Regis river from the St. Lawrence to Hogansburgh,
but the channel now lacks sufficient depth for even such navigation. Nor is
there hardly a rowboat owned in the place. True, there is a branch of the
Grand Trunk Railway through the town, but it affords access to American
markets only by way of the west, the line running into Canada six or eight
miles to the east, and there is no competition.

The town has three small hamlets   Bombay, Hogansburgh and South Bombay.
Bombay has a population of possibly five hundred. It has six stores, two
churches, a town hall, a school employing five teachers, a railway station,
the manufacturing establishment of Shields Bros., a feed and grist mill, and a
moving picture hall and theatre. The Bombay Grange, which owns its building
and has a considerable membership, is the only public organization in the
place, except those of a religious character. Shields Bros, have built up an
extensive business in the manufacture of moccasins, play suits of Indian,
cowboy and cowgirl costumes, and baseball, military and boy scout uniforms.
They make also burned leather and burned wood goods, and deal largely in
Indian-made baskets of splint and sweet grass. They employ about fifty hands
in the factory itself, and nearly as many more in the salesrooms and in
outside work, and a large corps of selling agents represent them in far
places.

Hogansburgh claims a population of about three hundred, and has practically no
business enterprises other than mercantile, though formerly it had a large toy
and basket factory, operated by Dwyer and Lantry. The St. Regis river cuts the
hamlet in two, and the parts are about as separate and distinct as if miles
apart. The saw mill and grist mill do only a small business, and of wholly a
custom character. Fire has scourged the place severely upon a number of
occasions, especially on the west side of the river. A fire in August, 1915,
wiped out the hotel there, all but two of the stores, and several dwellings,
entailing a loss estimated at forty thousand dollars. A few weeks later the
basket and toy factory building, which contained an electric lighting plant
also, was burned. The village is electric lighted, has four or five stores,
three churches (one an Indian mission) and the Indian Industrial School for
Girls, conducted by the Sisters of Mercy.

South Bombay consists only of a church, a saw mill, a grist mill, and a few
scattered houses.

In July, 1849, a forest fire swept over the central part of the township,
destroying forty buildings, fences, crops and bridges, and burning to death
large numbers of sheep.

In 1863, in order to escape a draft, the voters of the town authorized a bond
issue to provide funds for bounties to be given for volunteers, but the
supervisor refused to sign the bonds. Retribution came to him the next year,
when he was defeated for re-election. The people of the town were understood
to be largely in sympathy with the Southern cause, and I recall having heard
in my boyhood that a rebel flag had been raised there, which was probably not
true, as later I have been told that the report originated from the fact that
an irresponsible character in the town, acting only upon his own initiative
and responsibility, did put out a nondescript emblem, which had quite a
different significance.

The Massena Springs and Fort Covington Railroad was built by the Grand Trunk
Railway through the town in 1887. It connects at the former place with the New
York Central system, and at the latter with the Grand Trunk. Bombay
contributed
nothing but the right of way to the enterprise. Two years later, Ernest G.
Reynolds, in association with the Central Vermont Railroad, built a line from
Moira to Bombay Corners. At Moira it had a connection with the then Northern
Adirondack (now the New York and Ottawa) Railroad and with the Ogdensburg and
Lake Champlain (now the Ogdensburg division of the Rutland Railroad). This
line never did much business, and never paid. Effort was made to sell it to
the Grand Trunk, but the latter would not buy even at the value of the rails.
The road was abandoned in 1896 and the rails taken up and sold. In 1891 a
company was organized to build a railroad from Bombay Corners to the St.
Lawrence, via Hogansburgh, but it never began operations.

Bombay ranks perhaps seventh among the towns of the county as a dairy
district, and finds the industry more profitable than it used to be, for in
1843 an Eastern buyer purchased a large quantity of butter there at ten cents
per pound, and ten years later a local operator contracted with the farmers
for all of their June, July and August product at fourteen cents. A cheese
factory was built by Mortimer and William Russell in 1872, which was burned
three or four years later. In 1S75 the farmers of the vicinity united to build
a creamery, which Thomas A. Sears bought and enlarged, and in 1892 sold to
William McKenna, who bought also and operated the Clark & Ross creamery at Dog
Hollow. These two establishments are now owned by the Franklin County
Condensary Company of Bangor, and the milk received at them is shipped to Fort
Covington. Another co-operative creamery was located between Bombay and
Hogansburgh, but friction between its patrons led to its sale to Bradley &
Monaghan. Work in it has ceased, and the building is to be torn down. There is
also a creamery at Hogansburgh, built by Henry Bowker, sold after his death to
Michael Crowley, and now owned and operated by Benjamin & Totman.