This is the second in a series of occasional stories about events leading up to the War of 1812. In our first segment, which appeared June 17, we recalled how smugglers working along the St. Lawrence River defied the U.S. government's Embargo Act. The law, which prohibited American vessels from landing in any foreign port without presidential authorization, taxed the north country economy. The roles of Jacob J. Brown, Hart Massey and Augustus Sacket were presented. Today, we introduce more players.

The order went out 200 years ago, in April 1808. A 27-year-old lieutenant in the Navy, Melancthon Taylor Woolsey, was directed to go to Oswego. His mission: to build an armed vessel.

Sails were being set for the arrival of an eventual hero of Sackets Harbor and for a brig that was to play a key role at Sackets — the Oneida. And a legend, the debatable story of the "Old Sow," may have been in the making.

The United States, while attempting to enforce its Embargo Act, which restricted trade across the Canadian border, had no naval presence on Lake Ontario. The British, meanwhile, had established themselves along the northern waterways.

Since the Navy had a native of the Plattsburgh area in the person of Lt. Woolsey, Navy Secretary Robert Smith tapped him as the man best suited for raising the young nation's flag on a warship on the lake.

Lt. Woolsey, who eight years earlier to the month had entered the Navy as a midshipman, had just served about three years aboard the frigate Constitution in the Barbary wars. More recently, having been promoted to lieutenant, he had developed a code of signals for the Navy while stationed at Washington, D.C.

On a different north country "front," a power struggle was in progress at Ogdensburg — a struggle within the ranks of the would-be defenders of that riverfront community. The name of Thomas Brigdum Benedict would eventually emerge.

Navy Secretary Smith specified in his written directive to Lt. Woolsey that he wanted a vessel "made sufficiently large and armed to cope with any vessel of war now in Lake Ontario or with a small sloop of war."

He sent Capt. Isaac Chauncey, 36, commandant of the New York Navy Yard, to assist Lt. Woolsey. Like Lt. Woolsey, Capt. Chauncey was a veteran of the Barbary wars, and he was nearing his 10th anniversary in the Navy.

Still in New York in July, Lt. Woolsey negotiated a contract with Henry Eckford, a 33-year-old Scottish-born naval architect who had apprenticed in Quebec, and Christian Bergh, of German background. Mr. Eckford had introduced important changes in shipbuilding, his vessels proving to be superior in strength and speed, according to Virtual American Biographies, Museum of History.

Upon reaching a $20,505 agreement with the shipbuilders, Lt. Woolsey received $1,900 from the Navy to get the project under way.

In a letter dated Aug. 6, 1808, Lt. Woolsey informed Secretary Smith that he was ready to depart for Lake Ontario, with Mr. Eckford to follow with his crew of shipwrights and the ship fittings and supplies necessary for the project. The expedition went north on the Hudson River, then west along the Mohawk River, the traditional route to the northern frontier.

Lt. Woolsey's traveling party included the job foreman, Henry Eagle, a detachment from the 6th U.S. Infantry Regiment to serve as a guard, and a midshipman.

Soon to be assigned to the detail was another midshipman, 20-year-old James Fenimore Cooper.

The keel was laid down in September 1808, constructed of the best available white oak. As work progressed, Lt. Woolsey saw something he did not like in the plans. Penning letters to Secretary Smith in January and February 1809, he expressed concern for the raised forecastle mounting a 32-pound long gun. But construction continued unabated.

The hull was finished in January 1809 and the vessel was fitted out the next month, made ready for launch on March 31, 1809.

Since Oneida was a popular name in the region, Lt. Woolsey selected that as his ship's name. Setting aside his earlier concern, he was proud of the Oneida, boasting, "She is, I think, the handsomest vessel in the Navy."

The craft, with a listed weight of 262 tons, was devoted to ordnance with crew quarters and storage space below. It was fitted with cramped cabins, the captain's quarters comparable in size to an alcove.

There were ports for 18 carronades. Plans called for a 32-pounder to be placed on a pivot-mounted carriage on the upper deck for use on a circular track. This weapon, Lt. Woolsey contended, would interfere with the brig's sailing qualities as well as the handling of anchor cables.

And here legend steps in. Lt. Woolsey ordered the 32-pound gun removed from the ship and left it on a shore. There the cannon sat as time passed by, subjected to the lake's waves and the buildup of sand and debris until only its black barrel was visible. Because of its alleged unceremonious resting place, it eventually became dubbed the "Old Sow."

"What really happened," War of 1812 historian Gary M. Gibson wrote in 2003, is quite a different story.

The gun was not on the Oneida when the ship set sail because Lt. Woolsey had convinced his superiors of the disadvantage it posed, according to Mr. Gibson. He found documentation indicating that in March 1810 a new Navy secretary, Paul Hamilton, allowed Lt. Woolsey to substitute two 24-pound carronades.

A good Navy officer would never have simply deposited such a weapon on shore, Mr. Gibson said.

More will be told about the Old Sow in a future segment of this series.

While work on the craft progressed, the Navy recognized that Oswego would not be a suitable base for this new warship. Lt. Woolsey, writing to Secretary Smith in January 1809, suggested there were only two harbors the brig could possibly enter after May.

One could be the Niagara River, directly across from the British at Fort George, but that was deemed not suitable for a naval base.

The other option: Sackets Harbor. There, the Oneida would later become the first vessel of the American Lake Ontario fleet.

When the Oneida sailed to Sackets Harbor, Lt. James Fenimore Cooper was not aboard. After a stay with Lt. Woolsey's unit of about a year, he took a transfer in 1809. Two years later, he resigned from the Navy.

A native of Burlington, N.J., he was about a year old when his parents, Judge William and Elizabeth Cooper, moved to the Otsego Lake frontier and settled the community that adopted their name to become Cooperstown.

The young Navy officer, to become famous as author of "The Leatherstocking Tales," gathered material for a book, "The Pathfinder," while he was stationed at Fort Ontario, Oswego, in 1808. Although it is unclear if any assignments brought him to the St. Lawrence River, there have been suggestions over the years that an island in his story was Georgina Island, in Canadian water.

"The Pathfinder" is a pre-Revolution romance of a young girl who is brought to live at Fort Oswego with her father, a British captain of the fort. The captain arranges her marriage to Pathfinder, or Leather Stocking, a famous scout.

A company of soldiers from the fort is stationed on a hidden island in the St. Lawrence to intercept French vessels transporting goods for trade with the Indians at what is now Kingston, Ontario.

"Cooper's three years in the navy seem to have been relatively quiet," a Milwaukee Journal story said on April 15, 1950. "They made him an authority on nautical matters."

In the years leading up to the war, the security of Ogdensburg rested mainly in the hands of the St. Lawrence County militia, a unit that New York Gov. Daniel D. Tompkins would one day label as being "in an unsettled, undisciplined, disorganized state."

The descriptive word for the militia in 1808 was uncertainty, since the unit was in the midst of a power struggle. Organized in 1805, the militia had as command officers Lt. Col. Turner, 1st Maj. Joseph Edsall and 2nd Maj. David Ford. Below them was a man commissioned a captain in 1806, Thomas B. Benedict.

Col. Turner died, leaving as his apparent successor Maj. Edsall, about 45, a surveyor who had moved from New Jersey to be a land agent for developer David Parish. David Ford had other ideas, however.

Mr. Ford, also born in New Jersey, was a pioneer settler of Morristown in 1804. Three years later, when he was about 47, he obtained the help of his brother, Judge Nathan Ford, to upstage Maj. Edsall. The judge elevated his brother David to lieutenant colonel.

The state Council of Appointments stepped in and voided the Ford appointment. In the four years that followed, leadership of the unit changed hands between David Ford and Joseph Edsall a number of times.

During this turmoil, the militia of St. Lawrence County had only sporadic training, seeing none at all for a year. This was while the Embargo Act was in force and border tensions were building.

Finally, in 1811, Judge Ford was proven to have perjured himself to benefit his brother. David Ford ended up a loser in the struggle, but so did Mr. Edsall. The Council of Appointments turned to Thomas Benedict, elevating him to lieutenant colonel and giving him the command.

At 28, Mr. Benedict had been in the region about six years, having left his home in Woodbury, Conn., at the invitation of his brother-in-law, Nathaniel Smith. Mr. Smith, an investor in Judge William Cooper's business affairs in the town of DeKalb, was able to have Mr. Benedict appointed manager of the judge's store in DeKalb.

Mr. Benedict quickly became involved in prospecting for property and also entered the local militia, being appointed captain in 1806. With a promotion in 1809 to first major, he was now in waiting as an alternate for the command position.

To him would fall the responsibility of rebuilding the unit. But on a day that the defenders of Ogdensburg failed in their obligation, in a surprise British attack on the morning of Feb. 22, 1813, he was in Albany.

"Thank God, Ogdensburg did not fall while I commanded there," he wrote.

Material for this War of 1812 segment were provided by Timothy J. Abel, director of the Jefferson County Historical Society; Gary M. Gibson, who provided valued guidance for this story, and town of DeKalb historian Bryan Thompson. Sources included "Warships of the Great Lakes" by Robert Malcomson, "Bugles on the Border" by Harry F. Landon, and Wikipedia.

We anticipate another 1812 segment later this year.