History of Hogansburg and Bombay New York

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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.

In 1832 John Grow came from Cornwall and located at Bombay, Franklin county, N.Y., a mile and a half south of the village of Hogansburg, then a wilderness, and there nine of his children were born. The old homestead there still bears his name (1910). He was a Roman Catholic is religion and a staunch Republican in politics. He died June 20, 1892, aged eighty-seven years, two months and twenty days. His wife, Mary, died Nov. 4, 1890, aged eighty-six years, ten months and eighteen days.

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~hubbard/NNY_index/grow.html

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. (p.22)

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 town was understood to be largely in sympathy with the Southern cause, (p.23)

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 1875 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 Condensar Company of Bangor, and the milk received at ‘them is shipped to FortCovingtou. 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 running into Canada six or eight miles to the east, and there is no competition. (p.24)

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.RegisRiver 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 IndianIndustrialSchool for Girls, conducted by the Sisters of Mercy. (p. 26)

History of Bombay, New York
FROM: HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF FRANKLIN COUNTY
AND ITS SEVERAL TOWNS
BY: FREDERICK J. SEAVER
PUBLISHED BY J. B. LYON COMPANY, ALBANY, NY 1918

It is difficult for the present day reader to appreciate the remoteness of the Northern New York of that day. There was a much closer contact with Montreal and the Canadian settlements along the northern bank of the St. Lawrence than there was with Utica and Albany. It is not surprising to find Americans in St. Lawrence county therefore referring to those living along the seaboard as being “in the states.” In 1809 government mails were four weeks in going from Philadelphia to Ogdensburg and one letter from Scotland to John Ross at Ogdensburg was nine months on the way.

Bombay is named for the wife of Michael Hogan, an Irish ship captain who grew wealthy in the East India trade. He came to the US in 1805 with his wife, an Indian princess and bought 20,000 acres (81 km²) just north of what became the Adirondack Park, including the town of Bombay, which was named in honor of his wife’s birthplace. It is the only USA town which is named for an Indian city His son, William Hogan, served as supervisor, and was elected to the New York State Assembly in 1822. In 1829 he was made a judge of the court of common pleas for Franklin county, and in 1830 he was elected to Congress.

Settlement began around 1805. The region was then known as the Town of Macomb, being part of Macomb’s Purchase.

The Town of Bombay was organized from part of the Town of Fort Covington in 1833.

In 1877, the town was devastated by a plague of grasshoppers, which consumed more than half of the field crops.