It Happened There -- "Incorrigible ..."

This week, because I have been out of New York all week I will have no regular post so I thought I might share some pictures from my last vacation. My wife and I stayed at an old inn, in Rockport, MA right on the shore. Ralph Waldo Emerson had stayed there and we had a room just a few doors down from his.

 

  We didn't run into him, though. Perhaps he was vacationing with his friend Hank Thoreau.

 I heard Thoreau had a little place on a pond, a short distance from their homes in Concord, MA.

                                                                                     .

    Here are some other
    pictures I took.

When I showed them to my wife I heard her mumble something about "Incorrigible....', but the rest of her words were drowned out by the crying of seagulls.



Next Week -- It Happened Here will be back, in New York, with more NYSHMs !

It Happened Here --"John Brown's Body Lies A Mouldering..."

John Brown.s body lies a mouldering in the grave,

 John Brown.s body lies a mouldering in the grave,

 John Brown.s body lies a mouldering in the grave,

 His soul is marchin' on.
        --Civil War Ballad/Marching Song

Consider what a strange and convoluted saga it is for a failed wool merchant and farmer on a little hardscrabble farm in the middle of the Adirondacks to sally forth to stage a revolution to free the slaves of the American South.  Then once he had ignited the passions of the South against the North and vice-versa, for his "martyred" body to be returned like some sacred relic (or reviled symbol), per his request, to be buried a few dozen feet from front doorway of that little farmhouse!

         John Brown's Farmhouse, North Elba, NY

           (in John Brown Rd, off of Co.Rte 73

                                                  
















                                                                             John Brown Statue



Dozens of historians from the 19th, into the 21st century  have attempted to explain the psyche of this man driven to risk everything to make a revolution to free the slaves. In more recent years some historians have argued this focus demeans the man and distracts from what he tried to achieve. Most would agree, however, that Brown was a man obsessed with his father's and grandfather's perceived accomplishments and driven to make his mark in the world that would rival theirs.
Brown saw his grandfather as a martyr who had died for the cause of  American freedom. (Captain John Brown was a revolutionary war militiaman who, mustered from his home in Connecticut, died of disease while in camp with Washington's Army opposing the British invasion of New York.) His father he saw as a financially successful patriarch who ruled and shepherded his large family of eight, and became a pioneer leader of Hudson Ohio. Repeatedly frustrated and failing in business ventures John Brown gradually shifted his attention to the plight of black men in America. As he became involved in northern abolitionist politics, Brown thought he had discovered his place in 1848 when he offered to be a model and teacher for free blacks trying to set up  independent farms in the Adirondack wilderness as part of a project by the fabulously wealthy land speculator Gerrit Smith. Smith's plan was to give away 3000 parcels of 50 acres each to blacks to enable them to become economically independent and wealthy enough to meet property requirements to vote under New York law.

Brown wrote to is father,  "I can think of no place I would sooner go then to be with these poor despised Africans, then try to encourage them, and show them as far as I am capable."

 Though nearly 2000 parcels had been given away, the plan was faltering by the time Brown became associated with it. Few blacks, recruited from Albany, Troy and Kingston, with rural roots in the South, were prepared for farming in the Adirondacks with its short growing season,  poor rocky soils, and long bitterly cold winters.  Most of those chosen were even unable to amass the $100 or so necessary to buy supplies--wagons, livestock, farm and construction equipment necessary to make the move and begin farming.  Those that were able to relocate frequently fell victims to unscrupulous white neighbors who, posing as guides, led them to poorer pieces of property, charging them exorbitant fees for their services and employing other schemes to defraud them of their property.  By the time Brown arrived, and began clearing his piece of land, to begin farming, a mere twenty two families had made the move and begun to settle in.  Bravely they banded together, calling their community "Timbucto," named for the ancient black sub-Saharan city famous as a center of learning and racial tolerance.1

In 1850 Richard Henry Dana, author of Two Years Before The Mast, stumbled upon the Brown cabin, after he and a companion had wandered for several days, lost in the Adirondack wilderness. Brown invited them in, giving them supper and provisions before sending them on their way the next day. Dana reported in his diary he was struck by the respect and deference Brown showed several black dinner companions with whom Brown and his family were sharing his dinner table that evening.

JOHN BROWN
OCCUPIED A HOUSE ON THIS
SITE IN 1848-50 WHILE                              A missing State Marker that was originally located along Co. Rte 73, 1 1/2 mi.
CLEARING THE LAND                              south of Lake Placid.
NOW KNOWN AS
JOHN BROWN'S FARM.

Had John Brown continued on this course as his life's work, he might have been remembered as a benign and salutatory figure in the struggle for black equality--a footnote in history. But this was not to be.

 Five of Brown's grown sons, who shared his views about race and slavery, but not his personal mission, had moved to the Kansas frontier.  In 1854 the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed, dodging the slavery question by requiring the settlers of the territories, themselves, to decide if they would become "free" or "slave-owning" states.  As tensions rose between pro and anti-slavery forces, a small army of pro-slavery "Border Ruffians" from Missouri flooded across the state border to intimidate "free soil" advocates and skew the vote. John Brown's sons wrote him asking for assistance
and begging him to bring weapons to enable them and their companions to defend themselves.  Soon Brown was in Kansas, fully involved in a guerrilla war as pro and anti-slavery communities went up in flames. John Brown gained fame for his role in defending the settlement of Osawatamie, against a Border Riffian force seven times as large as his. He also gained notoriety for his suspected role in a midnight raid against pro-slavery supporters, in which five settlers were taken from their homes in Pottawatamie Kansas and brutally hacked to death with homemade broad swords. (In recent years, some historians have attempted to understand Brown by applying the model of  'terrorist' to him and comparing his actions and psyche to the likes of Timothy McVeigh and Osama Bin Ladin.)

Before the issue of slavery was finally democratically decided in Kansas, Brown and his surviving four sons had left the state, but John Brown had become committed to waging war against Southern Slave Power, through militant actions. Brown began to travel in New York and New England, speaking to abolitionist groups and supporters, attempting to raise money for arms and recruit followers for what he called a "Subterranean Pass-Way," a kind of militant underground railroad  that would operate from the Appalachian wilderness to swoop down to raid towns and plantations to forcibly free their slaves who could either continue on to sanctuary in Canada or join Brown's army to fight to destroy slavery, piecemeal.

In 1857, on a fundraising swing  through Connecticut, Brown found his grandfather's grave site. He had his tombstone shipped to North Elba and erected in front of his house. He had it inscribed on the back, in memory of Frederick, his son who had been killed in Kansas. A week later he let it be known he wanted it inscribed with his own name if he should not return from one of his operations.

 
The gravestone John Brown brought from his grandfather's grave in Connecticut. The inscription reads "In memory of  Capt. John Brown
Who died in New York. September ye 3, 1776, in ye 48th year of his age"

to which the inscription requested by John Brown was added
"John Brown, Born May 9, 1800, was Executed at Charles
-ton Va., Dec 2, 1859"

and his son's inscription "Oliver Brown, Born Mar 9, 1839, was
killed at Harper's Ferry, Oct 15, 1859,"

On the other side is an inscription for Frederick Brown, killed in Kansas.














John Brown's grave is set in front of the second set of trees on the right.




By the beginning of 1859, Brown's thoughts had evolved to where he  no longer talked about the "Subterranean Pass-Way". Instead he began to dwell (mostly privately) on schemes to facilitate a black revolution. To that end he ordered 1000 pikes to be made by a Connecticut blacksmith and he began making plans to capture arms from the arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia.
 

Twelve months later, John Brown was dead,  executed for "Treason against the State of Virginia" and as an accomplice in the murders of four men in Harper's Ferry.  Ten of his co-conspirators were also dead and two more would die by hanging.²

Between the time of his capture and his execution, Brown, through his trial testimony, letters to supporters and his pronouncements from prison would ignite a firestorm of controversy.  To Northern liberals he became a hero and a martyr.  Ralph Waldo Emerson compared him to Jesus Christ.  To Southern slaveholders he had become the symbol of the palpable threat to their way of life; the vanguard of unknown numbers of radicals ready to ignite a racial war.  Increasingly it had become clear to them that their only option was to secede from  the nation that had become hostile to them.

The last chapter in the Brown saga was one that eerily mimicked one that would occur six years later, to another "emancipator".  Brown's backers arranged for a special train to bring Brown's body home to be buried, and supporters lined the tracks to see his train pass. Then, a guard of local citizens met the ferry that brought Brown's body across Lake Champlain from the Vermont rail-head, and, as the NYSHM says,
guarded it at the local court house in Elizabethtown, before it continued on to its final resting place in the front yard of the Brown Homestead.3



Marker of the Week -- Re-purposed (Again!)  There are just too many examples of buildings that have gone through a succession of uses not to return to this topic.

Beginning life as a jail, it became the City Hall of Hudson, before it became a theater and then the home for many years to the Register-Star  Hudson's paper.  After some years vacant it is undergoing a face lift and presumably a new future.










1 By 1860, only one Black family was left in North Elba.

2 The raid on Harper's Ferry has been written about extensively. A good, readable account of the raid is Tony Horowitz' book, Midnight Rising, published in 2011.

3 Mary Brown, John Brown's stoic and long suffering wife, only lived at the farm until 1863 when, perhaps overwhelmed by the continuing painful reminders of the past sold the farm and moved to California.

It Happened Here -- Pay As You Go

 

All across New York State there are NYSHMs

identifying old Turnpikes; The Highland Turnpike ran through central Columbia County.

 

The Columbia Turnpike linked to the Susquehanna Turnpike was the main road west for thousands of southern New Englanders on their way to find new homes and lives in Connecticut's "Western Reserve" or the Northwest Territory.

For Northern New Englanders, before the Erie Canal,  often the Great Western Turnpike (US 20) was their road to a new life.



Before 1790 the construction and maintenance of most roads was the responsibility of the local townships that they ran through. New York State law required all eligible males to contribute three days labor a year or pay a fee of 62 ½ cents per day to the local towns for the upkeep of roads. Fines for avoiding the tax were $1 per day. The shortcomings of a system like this were obvious. While towns might undertake limited repair projects, the difficulties in creating a coordinated system of roads for farmers to bring produce to market was nearly insurmountable. The coordination of labor and political agreements necessary to run a road through multiple townships could be difficult and stretches of road running through sparsely populated areas would be under-funded. Added to these difficulties were the necessity of working around planting and harvesting seasons which occupied most able body citizens in New York's agrarian based economy.
America, however, had an alternative model in the English system of turnpikes. ("Turnpike" comes from the long pole or "pike" used to bar traffic on the road. Once a toll was paid, the pike was swung or "turned" out of the way allowing traffic to continue.)

 Small towns would often spring up around toll gates










 In 1792 the first American turnpike was built from Lancaster to Philadelphia, financed by the selling of shares in a joint stock company,. It was a large success and attracted widespread attention. By 1800 13 companies had incorporated to build and operate turnpikes in New York. By 1810 this number had swelled to 126 companies and this number continued to rise until after 1820. The costs of road construction and maintenance were high, however, and only 35 to 40% of the turnpike corporations succeed in creating an operational turnpike.

                                            Bridges were only one of several major expenses. Covered bridges kept
               snow and rain off the road surface, helping to preserve it. Their reinforced box structure was inherently                      strong,  making center piers often unnecessary, and the enclosed box helped calm horses distracted by the rushing water. 

Mile Marker on the Susquehanna Turnpike
 ("26 Miles to Catskill"-in Cooksburg)




  And there were other problems.  State governments fearing the monopolistic power of turnpike interest, placed limits on the rates that could be charged. They limited the frequency of toll stations, and gave many exemptions. People living within a mile of the tollgates were often exempt, as were people engaged in local activities-- going to or coming from church, attending militia musters; going to vote, attending court or attending funerals. People were exempt when going for a doctor or a midwife, going on business to the local grist mill or blacksmith or on family business. Much local traffic was allowed to travel for free. Stage coach companies and other major users often had their tolls deeply discounted, as were some freight wagons if their wheels were wider than six inches. It was felt these wagons helped pack the road bed and contributed to its upkeep.
 
 Once in operation, many travelers became adept at avoiding the toll gates.  Paths, called "Shunpikes," often quickly developed around toll gates and their existence became public knowledge, winked at by the local authorities.

The White Creek Shunpike received official recognition, becoming a paved town road. Here is where it intersects with the Great Northern Turnpike, south of the Cambridge tollgate.



From almost the beginning it was apparent that turnpikes would not bring their shareholders much in the way of direct profits, yet plans for turnpikes proliferated and investors continued to invest. Community pride and neighborhood pressure motivated most investors to buy shares, and most investors realized the indirect dividends of better access to markets and increased property values that more than made up for the slim or non-existent direct profits they might see. 

 Jacob Crounse had a prosperous inn and livery business in West Guilderland (Altamont) on the Albany/Schoharie Turnpike

 One of the first of many taverns built along New York's turnpikes.

 After the Susquehanna Turnpike declined, this crossroads, outside of Conesville declined as well; its businesses never rebuilt.





It was only after the network of canals and railways captured most of the turnpikes' heavy freight business that these private/public roads fell into disrepair and were allowed to slip into the public domain.




Marker of the Week -- The Inn by the Side of the Road

  While there is nothing unusual about this marker, per se, or the multiple uses the old inn has seen, the location of the inn is quite remarkable.  Built quite close to Nobletown Rd. when the road was only a one lane dirt track, today the inn stands only inches from Dutchess County Rte. 56 as eighteen wheelers and bulk milk trucks roar past it at 45 to 55 miles per hour, or more! It seems little wonder that the state marker is no longer on its post and for some time, it appears, has clung to the front of the building.

It Happened Here -- "The Grand Old Man of Nature"

He was born on a little farm in Roxbury, Delaware County overlooking the western slopes of the Catskill mountains and spent his childhood, when not doing farm chores or receiving a basic one room school education, exploring the fields around his home and climbing Old Clump Mountain, Fascinated with words, and with a facility for mathematics, John Burroughs had an intense desire to learn, but his father saw education, beyond the basics, as a frivolous waste of time and money and would not pay for books or tuition in any academy, seminary or other secondary school.  At age 17 John left home to earn money for school by teaching in several small schools in the communities of Olive, High Falls and Highland. From 1854 through 1856 he taught and took classes at Cooperstown Seminary. He would teach until 1863 when the Civil War presented an opportunity for John to work in Washington as a treasury clerk. His training there would enable him to work as a bank examiner until 1880. While in Washington, John determined he wanted to pursue a career in writing and he produced several essays published under different pseudonyms. It was then he met and became friends with poet Walt Whitman. One of the first writers to appreciate Whitman's poetry, Burroughs wrote the poet's first biography Notes on Whitman as Poet and Person (1867). Four years later he published his first collection of nature essays, Wake Robin.  Burroughs would be regularly published in national magazines and would publish collections of essays about every two years for the rest of his life.

In 1874 Burroughs moved with his wife Ursula North, to West Park, New York, on banks of the Hudson.  Working as a bank examiner, he also farmed, cultivating table grapes, and he continued to write.  He built a home, "Riverby", and 21 years later on additional land he purchased, he built a rustic cabin/study with help from his grown son Julian. He named it "Slabsides" for its rustic exterior, made from slabwood, the bark-sided waste from saw mills produced when planks are cut from logs.

With every passing year Burroughs popularity and fame grew. His twenty three volumes of essays would sell 1 1/2 million copies.
Burroughs would encourage a post-Civil War America to get out and experience the natural world for themselves. He would instruct them on how to observe, and how to avoid allowing one's personal emotions and prejudices to distort one's perceptions. Presenting the right message at the right time he became immensely popular--required reading in most of the nation's schools. A dozen schools were named in his honor.

Soon visitors would be flocking to his door--first students and teachers from Vassar College, members of the Wake Robin Nature Club;

eventually the wealthy and politically powerful came.  The likes of Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone, John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt would walk this porch, sit and spend time with him.  (T.R. and Burroughs shared a special interest in birdwatching. On a trip to Washington, Burroughs and the President created a bit of a stir when on the spur of the moment they took off for a birdwatching walk around the White House grounds.) Ford, Edison and Firestone invited him on camping vacations in the Adirondacks, extensively documented in their early home movies. Ford gave Burroughs what was probably the first automobile in Ulster County.

In 1900 Burroughs returned to Roxbury, buying an old farm
and making it into a summer house. He called it Woodchuck Lodge. In 1901 he met Clara Barrus, who at 37, was a women half his age, who became "the love of his life." After Ursula died in 1917, Clara moved in with him and became his biographer.

In 1903 Burroughs sparked controversy in an essay titled "Real and Sham Natural History" in which he complained about the trend of some nature writers to anthropomorphize their animal subjects--ascribing human thoughts, feelings and intentions to them. Singling out several authors he indicted them as the "yellow journalists of the woods."

Up until the last month of his life, Burroughs remained vigorous, alert and productive. He died in 1921.

After World War I Burroughs' popularity declined. Though Burroughs had taught Americans to heed and value the natural world, it increasingly seemed he was oblivious to the forces that threatened it. He did not become an activist in the growing environmental/conservation movement. He did not become a member of his friend--John Muir's Sierra Club. And all those movies of him vacationing with leading industrialist (Edison, Ford, Firestone) seemed somehow inappropriate as it became public knowledge of Big Industry's part in the degrading of the environment. All this having been said,  Burroughs was among the first, after Thoreau, to lift up the natural world and extol its inherent beauty and value, and valuing a thing is the first step on the road to protecting and preserving it.

Marker of the Week  -- The Other Johnstown

 I commented several weeks ago on the inherent conservatism of people regarding their selection of place names ( MOW--"Place Name Spellings Persist",  7/15/13).
Johnstown, Columbia County was named for the son of the 3d, and last Lord of Livingston Manor after he had helped settle that hamlet.

After several decades, the establishment of a Post Office posed a dilemma.  The name Johnstown was already taken by another, larger community in Fulton County.  Named for Sir John Johnson, son of Sir William Johnson, when Sir William founded the town in 1762,  the residents kept the name through the Revolution, despite the activities of the town's namesake. Sir John had organized Tories in the Mohawk valley, taking them into Canada and recruiting two Loyalist regiments. He organized the ambush at Oriskany and led the 1780 assault on the Mohawk valley that caused widespread devastation.

On April 1, 1805 the new post office of Livingston opened for business and though residents became accustomed to receiving mail at that address, for decades they apparently continued to refer to their community as Johnstown.  Franklin Ellis in History of Columbia County published in 1873 still used the heading   Johnstown in his short summary of the history of the hamlet. (Only in a later edition was this changed to Livingston.) As late as 1900 another county history when speaking of the community used both Johnstown and Livingston.