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History on the Village of Keeseville (Information Collected by Sean Reins)
Keeseville: Origin of the name “Keeseville” and 19th Century Descriptions of the Village (entered as a Story)
Keeseville [pronounced ‘Keez-ville’], nestled in the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains along both sides of the Ausable River, is a community built on manufacturing. Its development was hastened by the immense water power afforded by the Ausable River, which attracted white settlers and led to the formation of a variety of water powered industries. Proximity to plentiful timber resources and rich iron ore deposits also fueled the emergence and growth of the community, which, like most communities around the region, post-dates the American Revolution. A little known fact about Keeseville: The community was first known as “Anderson Falls” and, within a few years, its name was changed to “Keeseville.” Each name represents the persons and/or families—Anderson and Keese [pronounced ‘Kee-ss’]—whose initiative and contributions proved crucial to Keeseville’s early and continued growth, development, and importance.
The beginnings of the settlement that would become Keeseville can be traced to 1808. In that year, Captain Jonathan Bigelow had a dam and sawmill built on the rapids of the Ausable River just upriver from the present Stone Arch Bridge. Bigelow employed a German by the name of George Shafner to blast the rocks in the river preparatory to erecting the dam. A log hut housed the crew during the dam’s construction.
Two years later, Robert Hoyle (an Englishman) and John W. Anderson bought out Bigelow, expanded the lumber business, and built a grist mill. Hoyle and Anderson engaged in the commercial sale of timber, transporting logs by raft north up Lake Champlain to the province of Quebec, Canada. This is a good example of how the local lumbering industry evolved over the years, from sawmills cutting planks and timbers for local/regional use to an international export business that flourished for a period during the 1800s. The small settlement growing around these businesses was named for John W. Anderson, taking the name of “Anderson Falls.” Anderson also ran the first commercial establishment to locate on present-day Front Street—a tavern, store, and hotel housed in a long, one-story wooden building. It was built to serve the needs of the American militia units that patrolled the territory west of Lake Champlain (including Keeseville area) during the War of 1812.
In 1812, Hoyle sold his interest in the lumbering partnership with Anderson to John Keese [pronounced ‘Kee-ss’], who lived at a nearby Quaker settlement called “The Union,” located in Clinton County a few miles west of Anderson Falls/Keeseville near the present-day community of Peru. John Keese’s brother Richard Keese (Sr.), also from “The Union,” soon joined the enterprise as a third partner, creating the firm of Keese, Anderson, and Keese. By 1815 or 1816, due to the prominence of the Keese family, particularly brothers Richard Sr., John, and Oliver, the name of the community was changed from Anderson Falls to “Keeseville” [pronounced ‘Keez-vill’].
About the Keese family. . . .
The Keese family, led by Richard Keese, Sr. (1761-1821), came to The Union in 1791 from Dutchess County in southeastern New York State. The Keeses were one of a number of Dutchess County Quaker families who moved to Clinton County during the 1790s and first decade of the 1800s. Another was the Arnold family, whose holdings would include the vast and profitable Arnold Hill iron ore deposits near Clintonville, discovered in 1806. At the time, Clinton County, with its mixture of heavily timbered forest lands and agricultural lands, was open for settlement. (For above paragraph, “The Modern Hercules,” The Elizabethtown Post, January 8, 1890, page 2).
After Richard Keese, Jr.’s birth in 1794 (he lived till 1883), Richard Keese, Sr. relocated from The Union to the place that would later be called Keeseville in honor of him and his siblings. Here, over a period of years, Richard Keese, Sr. started an iron business and made significant land purchases, becoming owner of most of the land upon which Keeseville is now situated. As early as 1815, Richard Keese, Jr. began working in connection with his father’s business activities, which included land, iron, and lumber.
Back to “Keese, Anderson, and Keese”. . . .
In 1815, the firm of “Keese, Anderson, and Keese—once again, comprised of John Anderson, Richard Keese, Sr. and his brother John Keese—constructed the first iron manufactory in the community, a rolling mill [which is a factory that rolls iron into sheets, bars, or other forms]. This venture became the Keeseville Rolling and Slitting Mill Company, which began operations in 1816 making boiler plate [partly for steamboats that plied Lake Champlain, specifically the “Congress”] and nails from iron ore mined at the nearby Arnold Hill mine near Clintonville. Oliver Keese, brother of John Keese and of Richard Keese, Sr., was also a principal member of the firm, as were Rodman Brown, Caleb Brown, and Joseph Call. In 1816, Richard Keese, Jr. became a permanent resident of Anderson Falls. By then, the community’s name had changed to “Keeseville” in recognition of his father and uncles.
The Keeseville Rolling and Slitting Mill established by Keese, Anderson, and Keese was the forerunner to several important iron-related industries that operated in Keeseville through the years. Among these was the Keeseville Manufacturing Company, of which Richard Keese, Jr. was a stockholder and a director.
By 1820, Richard Keese, Jr. had embarked on his own career and for many years, was actively engaged in various branches of the local iron business. In 1820, he built a dam (the so-called “upper dam”) in Keeseville and a forge that processed iron ore mined from the Arnold Hill mine, and partnered with Elias A. Hurlburt in this enterprise. Richard, Jr. succeeded his father, who died in 1821, as a principal partner in the Keeseville Rolling and Slitting Mill Company.
Richard Keese, Jr. became politically active in the community and was elected to the U.S. Congress in 1826, representing New York’s 19th District from 1827-29. He served as a Judge of the Court of Common Pleas in Clinton County and in 1832, started the Essex County Bank, of which he was Vice President for many years. After retiring from the iron business, Keese became the secretary of the Clinton and Essex Mutual Insurance Company. Richard Keese, Jr. lived in the stately circa 1823 Dutch Colonial residence that still stands on Main Street in Keeseville. This house, built of native sandstone, is on the National Register of Historic Places as part of the “Keeseville Historic District.” For many years, Richard’s next door neighbor was Silas Arnold (1801-1879), born into the Arnold family that migrated to this area from Dutchess County at about the same time as the Keese family. The Silas Arnold House still occupies the northeast corner of the intersection of Main and Pleasant Streets.
Richard Keese, Jr. lived till the age of 89, passing away in February 1883.
[Clarification of terms for your information: Arnold Hill iron ore deposits discovered 1806]; a “rolling mill” rolls iron into sheets, bars, or other forms; a “slitting mill” transformed, or “slit,” bars of iron into rods, which could then be made into nails with the addition of a point and a head].
From these early industrial beginnings, Keeseville generally prospered as a manufacturing and commercial center through the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries. The wide array of manufacturing enterprises that included horseshoe nail factories, textile manufacturing establishments, rolling mills, blacksmith and wheelwright shops, tanneries, and a large factory that made furniture, window and door frames (and later) television and radio cabinets.
As industries began and flourished along both sides of the river, so too did the village’s commercial centers along Main and Front Streets. Stores of all kinds, stables, churches, hotels, taverns, restaurants, theaters, an opera house, banks, doctor’s and lawyer’s offices, and other establishments lined both streets at various times. The residential areas surrounding the commercial and industrial areas included the elegant homes of manufacturers, entrepreneurs and merchants, the smaller more modest dwellings of the village’s clerks, laborers, tradesmen and artisans, as well as churches and schools.
Below are some firsthand descriptions of Keeseville during its 19th century heyday (with citations included):
In 1830, John W. Stearns wrote a letter to his parents, exclaiming, “you would think you were in a city, teams so thick in the streets that you can hardly pass. There is more business done here in one week than in all Sullivan County [in southeastern New York] in a month.” [Quoted in Virginia Westbrook, A Thoroughly Wide Awake Little Village: A Walking Guide to Keeseville’s Historic District (Keeseville, New York: Friends of the North Country, Inc., 1996), 26].
In his 1854 book Hills, Lakes, and Forest Streams; Or, A Tramp in the Chateaugay Woods, Samuel H. Hammond described Keeseville this way: “It is a quiet place, away from the thunder of railroads, the roar of the steam-pipe, or the scream of the steam-whistle; but you hear, day and night, other sounds quite as indicative of civilization, quite as suggestive of progress. The blows of the monster trip hammer, the ceaseless rumbling of great water wheels, the puffing of the great bellows and the clank of machinery, are never silent, save for the Sabbath.” [Samuel H. Hammond, Hills, Lakes, and Forest Streams; Or, A Tramp in the Chateaugay Woods (New York: J. C. Derby, 1854), 331].
The 1860 edition of the Gazetteer of the State of New York, edited by John H. French described Keeseville as a bustling Adirondack hamlet with a population of 2,569 and containing “seven churches, the Keeseville Academy [school], two extensive rolling mills, three nail factories, a machine shop, an ax and edge tool factory, a cupola furnace, a planing mill, two gristmills and a nail keg factory.” [John H. French, ed., Gazetteer of the State of New York (Syracuse, New York: R. P. Smith, 1860), 235].
In the 1874 edition of his guidebook, The Adirondacks Illustrated, Seneca R. Stoddard, the noted landscape photographer and guidebook writer who focused much of his work on the Adirondacks region, described Keeseville as “a thoroughly wide-awake little village.” “The water power is immense,” reported Stoddard, “and utilized by the twine, wire and horse-nail manufacturers—the latter being the principal industry of the town. There are also several elegant private residences, churches and stores, built of Potsdam sandstone, which here abounds.” [Seneca R. Stoddard, The Adirondacks Illustrated (Albany, New York: Weed, Parsons & Co., Printers, 1874; reprint, Bedford, Massachusetts: Applewood Books, 2008), 51-52 (page citations are to reprint edition)].
In the 1889 (14th) edition of his Descriptive Guide to the Adirondacks, (Land of the Thousand Lakes), E. R. Wallace wrote: “Keeseville, an important manufacturing village, located on both sides of the Ausable, enjoys a situation of great beauty and picturesqueness. Its streets are adorned with tasteful residences and stately business blocks. Being the center and market of an extensive iron district it teems with business life and activity. Among the objects worthy of inspection, in and around the village, may be named the twine, horse-shore nail, and wire factories.” [E. R. Wallace, Descriptive Guide to the Adirondacks, (Land of the Thousand Lakes) 14th Edition (Syracuse, New York: Watson Gill, Bible Publishing House, 1889), 244].
Sources used for this narrative:
Virginia Westbrook, A Thoroughly Wide Awake Little Village: A Walking Guide to Keeseville’s Historic District (Keeseville, New York: Friends of the North Country, Inc., 1996, 1-34 (entire booklet).
Duane Hamilton Hurd, comp. History of Clinton and Franklin Counties, New York. With Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of Its Prominent Men and Pioneers. Philadelphia: J. W. Lewis & Co., 1880, 205-237; 351-352 for specific section on the Keese family.
“The Modern Hercules.” The Elizabethtown Post. January 8, 1890, page 2, for the information about the Keese family and the Arnold family as part of a wave of Dutchess County families who migrated to Clinton County in the 1790s.
Kathryn Stanley. “Guide to the Keese Family Letters” (at Special Collections, Benjamin F. Feinberg Library, State University of New York at Plattsburgh, Plattsburgh, New York). April 1999.
“Death of Hon. Richard Keese.” The Plattsburgh Sentinel. February 9, 1883, page 1.
Steven Engelhart, Crossing the River: Historic Bridges of the AuSable River (N.p: Distributed by the Friends of the North Country, Keeseville, New York, 1991), 10-12.
Steven Engelhart. National Register of Historic Places Multiple Property Nomination for “Historic Bridges of the AuSable River Valley,” June 8, 1999. Section E, pages 6-8.
William P. Chamberlain and Steven Engelhart, eds. The Historic Bridges of Keeseville. Keeseville, New York: No publisher, printed by Adirondack Litho, 1987, 5-7.
For More info: https://keesevillehistoricbridges.com
Adirondack Architectural Heritage: https://aarch.org/
