Munger Grist Mill

Recently donated to the Franklin County Historical and Museum Society by William Loring:

Handwritten on the back is: "Munger Grist Mill, Lower Park Street, Malone 1892"

From Seaver (1918), p. 450:

"A stone flouring mill, five stories in height, near the Gravell plant, which was begun by George F. Dickey in 1868 and finished in 1870, with the expectation that it would have an output comparable with that of the large mills at Oswego and Rochester.  It was too big a proposition for Mr. Dickey's means, however, and the property soon went into the hands of Henry A. Paddock.  About 1882 it was bought and run by A. Munger for a number of years.  For a time it did an ordinary country mill business, and after Mr. Munger's death was converted into an excelsior mill.  It burned in 1911."

The "Gravell plant" referenced was a slaughter house and pork packing plant north of the center of the Village of Malone.  (ibid)   Excelsior (wood wool) is a product made of stranded wood fibers - once used as protective packaging in wood crates and as filling material for bedding and furniture products, and now used as Easter basket grass, in cooling pads, animal bedding, erosion control and archery backstops.



Fun Facts

(Well, if you consider historical/demographic facts fun, that is.... and we do.) 

In any case:
o Chateaugay is the oldest town in Franklin County, NY (founded 1799)

o Tupper Lake is the youngest town in Franklin County (founded 1890 and renamed in 2004 – originally town of Altamont)

o Duane is the least populous town

o Malone is the most populous town

o The 2000 census recorded 51,134 people living within Franklin County.

o Harrietstown is the largest township (in square miles)

o Constable is the smallest township (in square miles)

Malone Streetscape

The view that most of us are familiar with of the intersection of Main and Elm Streets in Malone either precedes the building of the Hotel Flanagan (1914) or includes that dominating structure.  But almost every image of that section of the Village of Malone includes the Rutland Railroad depot. 

Except this one:

From the collection of the Franklin County Historical and Museum Society



This print, taken from an ambrotype by Christie Fay, is from the 1850s.  At left is the Hiram Horton homestead, which was torn down to make way for the Rutland Railroad Passenger depot and is now the site of Community Bank.  The small building next to the Horton house is the first bank building in Franklin County, of which Vice President William A. Wheeler was its first cashier. 

From Seaver's Historical Sketches of Franklin County:

(p.414) Describing Malone circa 1815:  "On Elm street there were the Hosford Hotel at what is now the railroad crossing, the Horton home on the site of the present passenger station, a store and six dwelling houses. " and "... and Oliver Booge, just opposite the Wead Library on Elm Street."  

(Pp.458-9) "... in 1851, when the Bank of Malone... was incorporated by Mr. Wead, John and Hiram Horton, Edwin L. Meigs, William King and William Andrus of Malone, Henry B. Smith of Chateaugay, Leonard Fish of Bangor, and a number of individuals residing in Vermont.  Mr. Wead was the first president, and William A. Wheeler the first cashier.  Business was begun September 15, 1851, and while a bank building was in course of erection was continued in the law offices of Asa Hascall on or near the site of the present Episcopal Church.  The bank building was a one-story stone structure located where the Wead Library now stands."

[Ed. note:  the Wead Library referred to in these passages is the first Wead Library building, established in 1881 and where the site of the current Village offices are (next to Community Bank), not the current library building on the corner of Elm and Park Streets.]