Northern Oswego County once abounded in tall stands of beech, spruce, hard maple and hemlock. Realizing the great potential resource in this area, Rome businessman Calvert Comstock, in the fall of 1860, entered into a contract with the New York Central Railroad for cutting a large quantity of wood and lumber in the town of Williamstown.
Calvert Comstock was also the first mayor of the City of Rome.
This contract called for 40,000 to 50,000 (full) cords of firewood a year to the New York Central to fuel locomotives. In addition the Comstocks removed five million feet of lumber annually. They also operated a lumber yard in Rome. Working for Comstock, Adam Van Patten supervised construction of a railroad from Williamstown station on the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburg to a point four and a half miles north. Here a small village sprang up around a cluster of sawmills that was named Maple Hill. One of the steam-operated sawmills was capable of turning out eight million board feet of finished lumber a year. Two of the sawmills were operated by the Comstock firm, and the other by William Maher who had come from Ireland. Many of the workmen boarded at a hotel operated by Brian Goode.
A post office was established there on August 22, 1864. Edgar Thompson was the first postmaster, succeeded by John S. Wardwell. Calvert Comstock’s son, Theodore Sill Comstock became postmaster on January 30, 1866. He ran post office and the company in the same building. Here employees also purchased their supplies. At its peak, the Maple Hill operation employed 500 men. Three district schools were established.
On March 31, 1865, the Articles of Association of the Williamstown & Redfield Railroad and Forest Company were filed with the Secretary of State in Albany. The capital stock was $200,000 in shares of $199 each. It was to be a standard gauge railroad. Directors were Mr. Comstock, Lewis Lawrence, Lewis. H. Lawrence, Hiram Hurlburt, George Tallman, Enoch B. Armstrong, and Bloomfield J. Beach (Comstock’s business partners), all of Rome and Utica.
The Articles further state: “The undersigned hereby form a company for the purpose of maintaining and operating an unincorporated railroad already constructed for public use in the conveyance of persons and property and for the purpose of constructing, maintaining and operating railroad for like public use, including enlarging and extending the aforesaid unincorporated railroad constructed.”
Map of the Williamstown & Redfield Railroad
At one time there were 500 men engaged in the lumber operations and 40 carloads of wood were delivered at Rome daily. By the end of the Civil War, the wood became scarce the railroad was extended to Dent’s Mills in the town of Redfield, named for its proprietor, Samuel Dent. He was an Englishman who came to this area at the time Comstock started lumbering there. He was a wood sawyer, had several sawmills, and ran a boarding house. A half-mile spur for horse drawn cars near what was later known as the Finnerty farm was constructed to William Maher’s mill.
The promoters planned to extend the line to the hamlet of Redfield which was formerly called “Centre Square,” but this never occurred. One apocryphal story was the town board would not approve construction of a railroad bridge across the Salmon River.
But it doesn’t appear this endeavor was ever meant to be anything more than a logging railroad and no real effort was ever made to formally organize the company. When the contract with the New York Central expired the operation was abandoned, although the Comstock’s held on to the property for many more years.
Monday, August 23, 1869
The first locomotive that ever startled the shades of the Redfield forests, came over the Williamstown and Redfield RR., the 18th inst., with Mr. Calvert Comstock and his associates have been quietly pushing through the forests in this direction for a few years past, and it brought a car load of machinery and took away half a dozen car loads of wood.
We understand it will repeat its visits daily, carrying every day some thirty or forty car loads of the productions of the forest, in the shape of wood and lumber. The road stops some 3 miles from Redfield Square and 7 from Williamstown, at the new steam mill.
“Progress,” writing to the Utica Herald, says:
“A law was passed last winter authorizing the towns on the route to bond themselves for a railroad from Redfield to the Midland road and Oneida Lake. If Redfield, Williamstown and Amboy chose to take hold of it, and if Mr. Comstock and the owners of his road will cooperate with us, the road can be built next year, and give a connection not only with the Rome, Watertown and Oswego and Midland roads, but also with water navigation at Oneida Lake. "
On Page 566 of the annual report of the New York State Engineer and Surveyor is a note written by Comstock himself stating:
Blank forms for reports have been sent to some of the Directors named in the Articles of Association of the Williamstown & Redfield Railroad Company, filed in the Secretary of State’s office. I deem it proper to inform you that the Company has never been organized, and nothing done since the filing of the Articles of Association.
The Oswego Advertiser & Times reported on August 22, 1869:
Adam Van Patten managed Comstock’s lumber operations at Williamstown and Maple Hill for a few years. Later, he secured a contract to furnish 40,000 to 50,000 cords of firewood a year to the R., W. & O. Railroad that was cut in Altmar. This required eight sawmill operations. The wood was used to fuel railroad locomotives.
The Rome Sentinel on February 18, 1866 reported that Rufus Bryant of Verona was severely scalded when a boiler exploded in the steam sawmill Williamstown & Redfield Railroad & Forest Company at Maple Hill. This description of Maple Hill appeared in the Pulaski Democrat on January 19, 1868:
Sketches By The Way - Maple Hill
“Where is Maple Hill? I hear some one ask, A few months ago I could not have informed you; since then, I have learned there are very many places of interest, and of business too, even in our own county, which are very little known.
“About four years ago, Mr. Comstock, the gentlemanly proprietor, in search of wood and timber to supply the more destitute portions of this State, looked upon the goodly timber between Williamstown and Redfield, and conceived the idea, which proved to be a good one, of converting some of the timber into lumber, for various purposes, and into food for the fiery horse, as he drags his ponderous load along the iron track of the New York Central Railroad.
“Maple Hill is situated about four miles from Williamstown depot, towards Redfield, and is so called, I suppose, from the large amount of maple timber originally found there. Four years ago last October, Mr. Comstock first broke ground and commenced constructing a railroad from Williamstown into the vast woods towards Redfield.
“He has pushed the enterprise ever since; winding along valleys, and climbing hills, which a few years ago would have been thought too steep for the iron horse to climb, until 6 or 7 miles of road are now in use, nearly or quite reaching to the border of Redfield; cutting the timber and converting it into wood and lumber, as he goes, and dotting the country with hamlets of the workmen, some of whom will become permanent residents, and others, more temporary, will pass along as the forest recedes before there.
“At the hill are the head-quarters of the establishment, where there is a fine store, a Post-Office, a schoolhouse, a large steam saw mill, and a mill to grind the grain, for the use of teams engaged in hauling wood and saw logs, in which a large number are employed, a blacksmith shop, &c.
"For the past four years, Mr. Comstock has furnished the Central R.R., 30,000 cords of wood annually, besides manufacturing six million feet of timber in that time. A considerable portion of this lumber has been hard wood, but most of it hemlock, a large share of being railroad ties.”In 1867 there were six sawmills operating in the vicinity north of Williamstown.
“As many as 40 carloads of lumber a day left Williamstown for Rome. The enterprise of Mr. Comstock has added very materially to the business of the town, beside increasing the population some 600 or 700. The trustees of Maple Hill school district reported nearly 200 persons between the ages of 5, and 21, and 105 of them attended school last summer. “If any one is disposed to make a summer trip to Maple Hill, for amusement, recreation, or for the purpose of information in regard to the business of our county, it will be a pleasant and agreeable way to leave the cars of the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburg Railroad at Williamstown depot, walk along the track, about 80 rods, where an engine will be found almost every hour in the day ready for the Hill; the pleasant and gentlemanly driver will give you a seat (standing, of course, ) on the engine or in a wood car, and in about 20 minutes you will see the glories of Maple Hill.”
This advertisement appeared the Albany Evening Journal on September 25, 1868:
Williamstown and Redfield Railroad and Forest Company have on hand 300,000 feet Hemlock two and three inch Plank, 14 and 16 feet. Also, can cut this Fall one million 14 feet Hemlock to any dimensions. Address. C. Comstock Rome.
Right of way of railroad at Case Road north of Williamstown.
When the Syracuse Northern was being organized one of the proposals was to build it from Syracuse to Lowville, utilizing the existing Williamstown & Redfield Railroad to Redfield. From there it would run east 22 miles to Martinsburgh, and connect with the Utica & Black River.
On July 24, 1869 Antoine Deaut, 60, a French Canadian employed by the Williamstown & Redfield Railroad at Maple Hill, was struck and killed by a passing freight train while walking on the tracks of the R.W. & O. at Williamstown. It was reported “he had been drinking freely during the evening.”An inquest revealed the engineer had tooted the engine whistle, but he continued unmindful of the approaching train. He was struck by the cowcatcher of the locomotive.
An interesting letter to the editor appeared in the Utica Weekly Herald on August 24, 1869 and dated Redfield Square, August 18th:
Although this town has been settled over sixty years, and the State made improvements here in roads, in the shape of the ‘State Road’ from Rome to Sacket’s Harbor and the ’Old Salt Road’ from here to ‘Salt Point,’ both largely used during the War of 1812, it was not until to-day, that the first railroad locomotive arrived in the town. It arrived over the Williamstown and Redfield railroad, which Mr. Calvert Comstock and his associates have been quietly pushing through the forests in this direction for a few years past, and it brought a car load of machinery and took away half a dozen car loads of wood. We understand it will repeat its visits daily, carrying away every day thirty or forty car loads of products of the forest, in the shape of wood and lumber.
But the railroad as yet is only in the southern border of our town, and it is said will stop for this year at the new steam mills just erected by Mr. Comstock and his associates p some three miles from this village and seven miles from Williamstown. It seems to have been built thus far by the proprietors exclusively for their own business, but if they would extent it here and open it to the public, they would receive considerable revenue from freight and passengers, It would be an outlet for this town, Osceola and part of Florence, and open up the great forest beyond us.
A law was passed last winter authorizing the towns on the route to bond themselves for a railroad from Redfield to the Midland road and Oneida Lake. If Redfield, Williamstown and Amboy choose to take hold of it, and if Mr. Comstock and the owners of his road will cooperate with us, the road can be built next year, and give a connection not only with the Rome, Watertown and Ogdensburg and Midland roads, but also with water navigation at Oneida Lake. [Note 1.]
“At all events, having now the end of a railroad within three miles of our village, we expect in some way to secure its extension here, when you and your piscatorially inclined friends will be able to visit these fishing grounds more conveniently than hitherto.” (Signed) Progress.
Daniel Dimmick
[Halfshire Historical Society]
In a letter to the editor of the Oswego Palladium in January, 1870, Daniel Dimmick, a local farmer, and Supervisor of the town of Redfield, urged the directors of a proposed railroad connecting Oswego and New England He said:
Redfield can furnish her full quota of business to the road. She has two large tanneries that consume annually 12,000 cords of bark, and the lumber from which it is stripped teaches two million feet. The freightage on this alone would form an important item and the opening up of transit facility would immediately increase the business very largely.
“We have millions of cords of hardwood here which sells now for $2.50 per cord, and brings in Oswego and Syracuse $8. The freight on leather and hides also will be no unimportant item, add there are many other sources of freight which we need not now enumerate. The indications of oil here are very definite, and Pennsylvania well-diggers say there are no better shows in their state.”There is coal within five or six miles of here, also grindstone quarries, flagging and building stone, sand and clay for brick, and the streams and valleys out of the woods form easy grades for rail or tram roads to get the lumber, &c.
The Midland should have a branch from Central Square to this point, as also the Syracuse Northern. The distance is less than 24 miles, with a grade of no more than 10 feet to the mile. This branch would pay 10 times as much as the rest of the Syracuse Northern.
Mr. Dimmick was right. Both the Syracuse Northern and the New York & Oswego Midland were foundering financially within a short time after they were built which might not have occurred if they had a good source of revenue - which they didn’t. It’s also interesting that Calvert Comstock, who built the Williamstown & Redfield Railroad, was the chief proponent of of the Boston, Rome and Oswego Railroad which was surveyed to pass through Redfield.
A 340-acre spread called the “Old Col. Lord Farm”located on Salmon River Flats, a mile west of the village of Redfield, was advertised for sale in the Mexico Independent on April 6, 1870. It alluded the property had the advantage of being located near the nearly completed Williamstown to Redfield Railroad.
A few interesting anecdotes have survived down through the years concerning the railroad. In 1865 Henry Greene, 43, and his two sons, Edward, 18, and William H., 16, made up the engine crew. Mr. Comstock had a house constructed for them adjacent to the engine terminal. Madison Winsor, 34, was the train conductor. Stephen G. Zimmerman was the agent for the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburg railroad in Williamstown in those days. One story is told of a farmer near Pekin, a settlement south of Orwell, who was so anxious to have the railroad pass his door step he built an engine house. When the railroad extension failed to materialize, he converted into his residence and lived there the rest of this life.
Legend has it that a pro-railroad faction in Redfield actually built a few hundred yards of grade and even a depot. Williamstown blacksmith Dave Shaw had a hair-raising experience in the cab of the "Maple Hill Railroad" locomotive. One evening he was riding in from the woods and as the engine rounded the curve into Williamstown, "the fireman let out the darndest yell I’ve heard in my life. Just then, we went slam, bang, smash, through three or four cars the R.W. & O. boys had shoved clear in on our main track instead of leavin’ them back on the connection."
‘From the engine house, the railroad swung to the northwest a few hundred yards, to ‘Lane's Mill,’ where logs were unloaded for sawing. The Comstock firm also handled large quantities of bark and ‘shingle bolts’ for the famous Williamstown tannery on Fish Creek, in its day reputed to have been the largest such facility in the state. Comstock’s contract with the New York Central expired in 1871, but was renewed for two or three years. The Maple Hill Post Office was discontinued on July 23, 1874.
Life was harsh in that rural area. For the common folk it was all they could muster to survive from day to day. Children usually didn't spend too much time in school as there was work to be done on the farms. One such person was James H. Kinney, who was born in Evans Mills in 1856 and died in Brewerton in 1929. He said his father was killed during the Civil War, which left the family in difficult circumstances.
Mrs. Kinney, thinking that things would be better in a bustling community, moved her family to Williamstown. But they were barely able to eat out a living. Mrs. Kinney did odd jobs, such as washing and sewing. The children's clothes, at times, were made from old grain sacks. The milling companies were aware of this and printed calico patterns on the bags to attract attention.
The Kinneys and people like them were “self-made.” "Jimmy" became proficient in handling horses and found employment in the woods, at the age of 12, driving teams hauling logs for the Williamstown & Redfield Railroad.
The railroad also had its share of unintended misfortune. Once, Tom Ryan of Williamstown, a brakeman, was seriously injured when a train of cars loaded with shingle bolts got away from him and tore down grade towards Williamstown. Fearful of impending disaster, Ryan, instead of jumping, burrowed himself into the load of bolts. But one of his legs became so badly mangled in the wreck it had to be amputated. After that three brakemen rode the log trains.
In 1871 an act incorporating the Salmon River Improvement Company was passed of the New York State Legislature with a capital of a capital of $50,000 with the option to increase it to $100,000 in shares of $100 each. The incorporators were Calvert Comstock; his sons, Theodore S. and Edward; Samuel Dent and William Maher. Its purpose was to impound the river and its tributaries below the village of Redfield Square to make it navigable for floating and running logs. As far as can be ascertained this plan was never carried out. A few years later, however, this plan was carried out by DeWitt C. Littlejohn of Oswego who purchased large tracts of timbered lands in the town of Redfield.
Close resemblance to actual Williamstown & Redfield locomotive
On May 28, 1872 the Utica Morning Herald reported on the arrival in Rome of a new locomotive purchased for the railroad. What was used prior to this is unknown. One may have been borrowed from the R.W. & O.
“Mr. C. Comstock has purchased a new locomotive for, and to be put upon the railroad track of the Williamstown and Redfield Railroad Company. The engine is a very fine one, indeed, costing $13,000, and was manufactured by Hinkley & Williams, of Boston. The cylinders are 15x22 inches, and has 4 1/2 feet driving wheels. It came to Rome a day or two since, and is being put together at the railroad shops of the Rome, Watertown and Ogdensburg Railroad Company here, and is expected to go up the road this evening. The name of this new locomotive is Redfield, and is to run on the railroad track which the above named company has constructed to run into its forest.”
In 1870, according to the census reports, the Williamstown & Redfield Railroad and the mills connected with it operated on a year-round basis. At that time, the mills at Maple Hill employed more than 200 men. The mills were equipped with burr-saws powered by steam engines. The annual yield of hemlock and spruce was five million board feet. How busy was it? The Oswego Palladium of March 13, 1876 reported: “William Maher, of Maple Hill, near Willamstown, has over two and one-half million feet of logs in his mill yard ready for sawing.”
The best of the timber south of the Salmon River was quickly cut off. The lumbermen left for other jobs, although some work was carried on until 1876. Then the mills were dismantled and the railroad abandoned. The post office at Maple Hill was closed in 1873. The 1875 New York State census stated: “A large wood job has been partially stopped, reducing the population to about 140 persons.” Several buildings constructed at Maple Hill while this contract was in operation still remained but were vacant. This is was the plight of such communities that prospered for a time and then became ghost towns.
After the operation was abandoned, the Comstocks retained ownership of the properties and left the rails in for several years, Neighborhood farmers were allowed to use the railroad to take out small quantities of wood on push cars. The late Walter Fox of Olean, formerly of Williamstown, once said:
"Old heads asserted that the track was left in place because the Comstocks hoped Redfield would concede and build a bridge across the Salmon River. ” Finally, the lower bridge over Tanner Brook, near Williamstown, collapsed under the weight of a push car, and the Comstocks had the tracks removed, lest someone be injured and hold them responsible.”
Fox continued: “It was laid of the best oak stringer and strap-iron construction practices of the day. If we attempt to judge such engineering by our knowledge, such standards will look primitive, indeed. But looked at at, say, 1860s eyes, it was a good solid track, for light-weight equipment operated at low speeds.
“Anyway, Dave told me, ‘They never had any head-on collisions on the Maple Hill Railroad, for a darned good reason. There was never but one train at a time on this line. But one evening the Rome Road boys set three or four cards in our main truck, instead of stopping them on the connection. When we got around the big curve coming into Williamstown, it was ‘wham, slam, bang’ before we’d even got a good look at those cars out there in the dark a little ways ahead of us.
‘We made kindling wood out of them in a hurry. All the damage it did to us, was to knock that oversized headlight off to one sided a little. Old Man [Henry] Greene, the engineer, ran with it that way for a week or two before the got around to fix it. But after that when riding in from work of an evening, I’d grab on a few cars behind the engine, in case the Rome boys forgot their good manners again.
‘Dave, born about 1837, helped build the Rome Road, when only 14 or 15. It was where he had learned the blacksmith trade.”
Henry White of Williamstown, who was 73 in 1966, said: “I remember Dave Shaw. In regard to the tracks I think they were iron from here to the woods and in the woods they must have been wood as they used to call it the rubber track. If Mr. Shaw hammered the kinks out they must have been iron.
“I have heard that two carloads came down every day. The logs were taken by rail to Lane’s mill by the same railroad. The largest sawmill at that time was in Orton Hollow, where some 30 men were employed. This mill had the best waterpower of any and the R.W. & O. built a spur to this mill where the lumber was loaded on cars. Most of it was shipped to the Erie Canal and railroads. The Comstock property on Maple Hill consisted of virgin hardwoods and was purchased some years ago by the Blount Lumber Company.”
Old railroad depot at Williamstown in early 1900s.
In a letter to the Clinton Courier published on February 19, 1880, a visitor to noted Maple Hill “presents a scene of desolation and ruin. A few years ago, millions of feet of lumber were cut here and hundreds if thousands of cords of wood and stave bolts were moved over the branch railroad, which is now abandoned, and a few settlers scattered over the region to till the soil.”
The hamlet of Maple Hill continued to exist with a sawmill or two and a cheese factory well into the 1900s. The Sandy Creek News of December 1, 1904 reported there was renewed interest in building a railroad to Redfield:
“For several weeks a party of surveyors have been at work on a proposed railroad from Camden to Redfield. Capitalists who have secured options on the vast timber tracts beyond Redfield and Osceola are investigating the most feasible route by which they can reach the R.W. & O. railroad line.” Nothing ever materialized.
On December 30, 1957, the Comstocks deeded the property to the Blount Lumber Co, of Lacona, who logged it for a time and then sold it to private individual. Later, it was seized by the County of Oswego for failure to pay delinquent taxes.
So died the Williamstown & Redfield Railroad, its days of usefulness ended. A few homes still remain at Maple Hill. Today one can still find traces of the embankment, wending its way northward to a town that no longer exists. Brush and dense undergrowth hide traces of the old engine house at Williamstown. At the former Case Road crossing there was long a curious looking rectangular hole in the ground, lined with cut stone, It is said that this was a remnant of a cattle guard. When an unwary cow tried to stray into the railroad, she'd stumble into a pit, about three feet deep, which was filled with water. There she'd stay until someone came along to rescue her. At the site of the engine house in Williamstown a bit of excavation for many years unearthed wood ashes, where the locomotive engineer dumped the fire of his iron horse long ago.
Notes and Sources
[Note 1] Born in Western, Oneida County, on July 2, 1812, Calvert Comstock attended Hamilton College for two years and studied law with his brother-in-law, I.C. Baker, of Whitesboro. He was admitted to the bar in 1836 and over the years became a prominent attorney. He served as District Attorney and was the first mayor of Rome when it was chartered in 1870 He also served as president of the Board of Education. He was active in politics. He had been editor of The Democratic Sentinel, a weekly newspaper that became the Rome Daily Sentinel and for a time was editor of the politically influential Albany Argus. He was involved in various business enterprises. He founded the Comstock Lumber Company in 1856 with a sawmill in Williamstown in partnership with a Mr. Huntington.
He was one of the projectors of the Watertown & Rome Railroad and was a director of the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburg Railroad for 20 years. He was president of the Boston, Rome and Oswego Railroad Company, a proposed railroad intended to take advantage of the completion of the Hoosac tunnel, and personally superintended the entire survey of the line. It was never built.
On April 27, 1836 Comstock married Eliza Mann Sill, daughter of General Theodore Sill, an attorney of Whitesboro. She died in 1868. They had 11 children. He died in Rome on October 10, 1876. The lumber company then passed to his son, Edward who served a cavalry staff officer during the Civil War. War. He was mayor of Rome in 1881 and 1885.
[Source: Wager, Daniel E., Our County and Its People, Boston History Co., 1896 Part II Biographical, PPP 530-31 (biographical sketch of Calvert Comstock) ; obituary, Roman Citizen, October 12, 1876; Four Generations of Comstock, Rome Daily Sentinel editorial page 4, April 7, 1856 )
[Note 2: Chapter 451, Laws of New York, passed April 30, 1869, “An Act to authorize certain towns in Oswego county to issue bonds and take stock in any company now organized within two years after passage of this act, for the purpose of building a railroad from some point on Oneida Lake, in the town of Constantia, to Williamstown, or by way of Williamstown to some point in Redfield or to some point in the county of Lewis.” Vol. 1, PP. 989-995, Laws of New York, 1869.]
Combs, Kenneth L., History of the Town of Orwell, N.Y. 1806-1950. P. 6
Cook, W. George, New York Logging Railroad List (online - based largely on Lumberman Magazine directories.)
Child, Hamilton, Gazetteer & Business Directory of Oswego County, N.Y. For 1867
Dimmick, Daniel letter originally published in Oswego Palladium; excerpts reprinted in Syracuse Standard, January 24, 1870.
Fox, Walter Adventures of Maple Hill Detailed in Letter of Ex-Billtowner, Camden Advance Journal, June 9, 1961
Hough, Franklin B., Gazetteer of the State of New York, published by Andrew Boyd, 1872.
Johnson, Crisfield, History of Oswego County, Philadelphia, Pa. 1877, PP 354-355.
Laws of New York, passed by the 94th session of the New York State Legislature, April 27, 1871 The legislation creating the Salmon River Improvement Company states in part:
The object of said corporation shall be, first, to improve the Salmon river, its branches and tributaries, in the counties of Lewis, Jefferson and Oswego , and make the same navigable for the floating and running of logs and timber down said store s from their source to a point of said Salmon river two miles (as it winds and turns) below the village of Redfield Square, in Oswego county; and the said corporation is hereby authorized and empowered to make such improvements, without expense to the State.
The said corporation is hereby authorized, and power is hereby conferred upon the same, to dam said streams and build chutes or cur new channels at such points or places as may be deemed necessary to afford a sufficient depth and supply of water to float such logs and timber, and as my be most advisable for the purpose of forming a reservoir or reservoirs of sufficient capacity to hole the logs and timber which may, from time to time, be floated or run down said streams, and to furnish a proper supply of water for floating and running the same.
Said corporation shall have the right to an open passage in the middle part of said streams of twenty-five feet in width, for the purpose of floating and running logs and timber over mill-dams now existing, or to be hereafter erected on said streams, and across the ponds of said dams, and also the right to build and connect slides with said dams whenever they shall deem the same necessary, and, on reasonable notice to occupants, to control and keep back the waters in said ponds sufficient time, not exceeding ten days in succession, to float any accumulated stock (ready for floating) of such logs and timber.
And when any dam shall have been built by said corporation, as provided in this section, for the purpose of providing a supply of water for floating logs, the owner of the land on which the same may be located may draw water therefrom, for hydraulic purposes when not in actual use, as last aforesaid, by said corporation, by paying an annual compensation therefor two percent per annum on the cost of said dam.
Those portions of the Salmon river, its branches and tributaries, in the counties of Lewis, Jefferson and Oswego, described, are hereby declared a public highway, for the purposes mentioned in this act.
This notice appeared in the Watertown Reunion of April 11, 1872:
mNotice is hereby given that the subscribers, Commissioners appointed by law for that purpose, will, on the 27 of April next, at nine o’clock in the forenoon, at the Office of the Williamstown & Redfield Railroad & Forest Company, in the town of Williamstown, Oswego County, open Books and receive Subscriptions to the Capital Stock of the “Salmon River Improvement Company.”
Commissioners: Calvert Comstock, Samuel Dent, Theodore S. Comstock, William Maher, Edward Comstock
Milton, J. Elet, Note regarding James H. Kinney and the Williamstown and Redfield Railroad
Obituary of Mrs. Adam Van Patten, Rome Daily Sentinel, January 30, 1888
Sweeting, Charles H. and Heather L., History of Post Offices in Oswego County.
Items concerning Charles Babcock, Sandy Creek News, January 5, 1888 and September 28, 1899.
The Rome Sentinel of April 16, 1928 noted the Comstock lumber tract in Williamstown was sold to Blount Lumber Company.
Theodore Comstock Claimed by Death (obituary in Rome Sentinel, January 11, 1919)
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