HISTORY: Brandon Township; Franklin co., NY

submitted by Joy Fisher (sdgenweb at yahoo.com) 
************************************************
Copyright.  All rights reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.org/copyright.htm

http://www.usgwarchives.org/ny/nyfiles.htm

Submitted Date: February 12, 2005
This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/nyfiles/
File size: 13.0 Kb
************************************************
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 VIII BRANDON

Brandon was set off from Bangor January 28, 1828, and then included seven
townships, one and a half of which, after a long and hard contest, were
detached from it and added to Harrietstown in 1883, and afterward four and a
half others were set off to make Santa Clara. The original settlers were
mostly from Vermont, and the town was named by them from Brandon in that
State. It has never had importance industrially, commercially or
agriculturally, and until within a few years it never had a single inhabitant
whose financial rating exceeded more than about twenty thousand dollars, and
only one whose estate reached that figure, which sum he accumulated simply by
spending practically nothing and saving everything. He lived to be about
ninety years of age, and his earnings were never large. Living alone, and
having neither wife nor child, and being very abstemious, it is doubtful if,
except when he was in Malone, serving the town as supervisor, his expenditures
for sustenance amounted to half a dollar per week, and clothes and other items
cost correspondingly.

Brandon's people were industrious, frugal and generally shrewd and
hard-headed. An illustration is found in the fact that when the distinction
between county and town poor was abolished, eighty odd years ago, and the
statute permitted each town to make disposition as It might choose of any
surplus in its poor fund, Brandon voted to apply such surplus to the payment
of the taxes of residents, notwithstanding it must have been the fact that
substantially all of the amount had been contributed by non-resident
taxpayers.

The character of the locality is such that opportunity for money-making in a
large way has never been present, except perhaps through extensive lumbering
operations, which required larger capital than any early resident possessed.
Almost the only arable land within the present limits of the town, except a
few river bottoms, lies along the northern border, comprising a strip of from
a mile to a mile and a half in width. Within this belt are a few fairly good
farms, though most are of light soil and not very productive. South of this
belt is only a wilderness, abounding in rock and sand, and utterly worthless
save for the timber on it. The river bottoms referred to are adapted only to
the raising of hay and oats, frosts precluding cultivation of corn and other
crops. Fortunately the ownership of Brandon's timber lands has been so divided
that no one large concern, anxious for a quick clean-up, has had control, so
that the town's natural resources have been conserved, and, as operations are
now conducted, the timber may be made to last for moderate cutting for a
generation yet. Had it been otherwise, the larger part of the town's area
would be to-day a denuded waste.

The nearest approach to a village or hamlet in Brandon is Reynoldston, in the
western part, where within a mile or such a matter there are a sawmill,
planing mill, blacksmith shop, one small store and possibly thirty or forty
dwelling houses. Half or more of these houses and the store, mills and shop
are owned by Reynolds Brothers, viz., Herbert H., Berton L. and Newton, who
have about ten thousand acres of timber lands, stretching across the southern
end of the town. The father of these brothers, Orson L. Reynolds, moved to
Brandon from Bangor in 1870, buying a water power and a small tract of land,
to which he added other parcels as he had opportunity and could find the
means; and the like policy has been followed by the sons since his death.
Prior to the time of Mr. Reynolds's original purchase his father-in-law had
been offered practically all of the township at the price of a shilling an
acre, whereas adjacent tracts no better timbered and no more accessible have
sold during the past few years as high as ten dollars per acre.

For a number of years past Reynolds Brothers have had a contract for the
delivery annually of from three to five million feet of logs from the southern
half of their holdings to the Brooklyn Cooperage Company, which has a private
railroad running from its mill in St. Regis Falls across "Waverly and through
the Reynolds lands in Brandon, a distance of about fourteen miles, and
delivery of logs to it was made at any convenient point along the railroad
line. The contract expires in 1918, and now Reynolds Brothers plan to confine
their activities to lumbering the soft timber on the south half of their tract
and both the hard and soft on the north half exclusively for their own mill at
Reynoldston. During the life of the contract with the Brooklyn Cooperage
Company they employed as many as a hundred men in the winter season, but with
the completion of their contract the number will doubtless be smaller.

The number of sawmills that at various times Brandon has had has been large,
but all of them except the Reynolds proposition and one other have had only a
small product. The second exception was that of Hon. Joseph B. Flanders, of
Malone, which was disastrous. Having acquired a large tract by contract in
1866, Mr. Flanders proceeded to build a road in the winter across very
difficult country south from Skerry, and also to build a dam and mill in the
same season at a point on Deer river where he proposed to operate. The cost
was heavy, and the burden of this initial expense, together with the long haul
that had to be made to the railroad, compelled abandonment of the enterprise
in 1873. Pretty much everything in and about the mill was stolen or left to
rust and decay, and the property was never operated afterward. Webster
Brothers subsequently obtained control of the lands, and cut large quantities
of bark there for their tannery in Malone. Reynolds Brothers now own the
tract.

Other mills have been Ira Ewings's, the first built in the town, and owned
later by Lyman Weeks; James Skerry's, later owned by Warren Aldrich, and now
by L. C. Bowen; one built by Charles J. Adams of Bangor, three miles south of
Skerry, and sold to D. Adolphus Dunn, on whose hands it was twice burned
during the year 1885. and after which it was owned by Michael Donahue, and
again burned and the site abandoned; one built by Warren Aldrich three miles
south of the Adams mill (sold to George Walker, and now torn down) ; one in
the western part of the town, built and operated by William C. Better]y; and
the "priest" mill, built by H. Y. Tarbell, and afterward owned by Father
Francis of Malone, James Dwyer, David McGivney, McGivney & G. C. Stevens, and
finally by McGivney again, during which latter ownership it burned, and was
not rebuilt. There may also have been earlier mills, but none of them large.

Brandon formerly had two starch factories   one north of the Center, built by
J. V. E. Bowles and Jonathan Farr, who sold to Benjamin and Stoughton Lawrence
and they to Hannibal Wilcox: and the other built by Lyman Weeks. Both went up
in flames.

It has also had at least two creameries, one of which is at Skerry, and still
running. It was built by Gaius A. Lane about 1880, and sold to Fred Lawrence.
It was next sold to. Norman Wilson, who now owns it. The other was built by
George Taylor, in the western part of the town, near the Bangor line. It was
burned.

The population of Brandon fifty-eight years ago was eight hundred, and the
gain since then has been less than one hundred, though this does not take into
consideration the loss by the setting oft to other towns of the southern
townships. There is no ground for reasonable hope that the number may ever
increase, because, as has been seen, there are no lands that may be converted
into farms, nor waters on whose shores a summer hotel business might be
developed. Therefore, the outlook would seem to be for a decrease in the
number of inhabitants as lumbering operations fall off. The only settlement
other than Reynoldston which has even a resemblance to a hamlet is Skerry, at
which there are a store, a blacksmith shop and a scattering of houses.

Before Brandon lost its southern townships to Harrietstown and Santa Clara it
had a few settlers around the head of Upper Saranac Lake, forty-odd miles as
the crow flies, and perhaps seventy miles by highway, from the center of town
government. There were not enough of them to justify the creation of an
election district in their section, and it speaks well for the quality of
their citizenship that at least a part of them could be persuaded in years of
intense political interest or excitement to make the long and arduous journey
from their homes in order to cast their votes. The memory of such a public
service ought to shame the men of to-day who shirk the duty of registering and
voting even in cases where they need take hardly more than a step from their
residences or places of business in order to exercise the privilege of the
electoral franchise.

The dismemberment of Brandon alluded to was fought strenuously by its
supervisors for several years because the lands set off to be added to
Harrietstown and to create Santa Clara, amounting to almost a quarter of a
million acres, owned by nonresidents, paid something like two-thirds of the
town's entire tax levy. Since the dismemberment the remaining nonresident
lands have borne only about one-fifth of the tax. Thus the two partitions
added heavily to the tax burdens of the residents  requiring them following
the first partition to contribute a half instead of merely a third of the
town's expenses, and after the second nearly four-fifths instead of the
original third part.

An almost forgotten murder occurred in Brandon in 1862. Peter Mulholland, a
dissipated and violent character, was visited on the day of the crime by an
associate of like habits, who brought liquor with him. Mulholland proceeded to
get drunk almost to the degree of unconsciousness, but yet was able to see, or
fancied that he saw, improper conduct between his guest and his wife. Crawling
along the floor, Mulholland lunged with a knife at his visitor, as is
believed, but struck his wife instead, the knife penetrating her abdomen. The
woman lived until the nest day, but utterly refused to make any statement to
Coroner Lyndon K. Hutchins in explanation of her condition, or to inculpate
anybody. Mulholland was arrested and indicted. While awaiting trial he made a
confession to the district attorney, and upon arraignment pleaded guilty to
murder in the second degree. He was sentenced to imprisonment at Dannemora for
ten years.

If Brandon had any church history of date earlier than 1848 I have been unable
to ascertain it. In that year it had a Baptist organization, which numbered
fifty-two members, and at about that time was served by Elder Thayer of Burke
as pastor, or at least as preacher. L. C. Herrick was pastor also in 1848, and
John C. Smith in 1853 and 1854   serving at Burke also. The society was
manifestly poor, as it reported to the St. Lawrence Baptist Association in
1848 that it could not afford to maintain a pastor, but could raise fifty
dollars a year for "support of preaching." In 1855 it reported that some who
had been regarded as pillars in the church had left them, and in 1856 that the
church was feeble. In 1857 it reported forty-three members, and after that
date no mention of the Brandon society appears in the association's
proceedings.

There seems to have been no regular church organization in the town after the
collapse of the Baptist society until 1891, when the First Congregational
Society of Brandon was incorporated, and a church edifice erected the same
year at Skerry. While the Baptist organization was in existence, and from that
time continuously down to 1891, religious services were held, though usually
with considerable irregularity, in school houses in one or another part of the
town   sometimes by a clergyman of one denomination, and then by another, from
Bangor. Rev. Alonzo Wells preached there for a time. Since 1891 the church has
had a pastor regularly for most of the time, but not exclusively its own   the
Congregational minister at Bangor so serving usually. In 1916 and 1917 before
entering the army as a chaplain Rev. J. B. Webster, of the Malone Baptist
church, officiated there Sunday afternoons.

A Holiness church was built near Skerry in 1905. It has a pastor, and enjoys
services regularly.

Rev. Father Lauzon of North Bangor officiates at intervals at Reynoldston.