Editor’s note: Dave Shampine retired this month after four decades at the Times. He hopes to contribute occasional Times Gone By columns in the future.

Some 100 Italian families — most of them living in the “flats” off Arsenal Street, few of them speaking English — wanted a pastor who shared their native tongue.

Ogdensburg Bishop Henry Gabriels had just the man.

A priest, recently turned 33 years old, was in for some disappointments when he arrived in Watertown in October 1913. The Rev. Claude Sechi, a native of Italy, had come to take up the bishop’s assignment.

The priest, who a year earlier had arrived in America, expected to find an established church, but what awaited him was an old wood-frame house that had been converted to a chapel — St. Anthony’s Chapel on Arsenal Street, named for a “doctor” of the Catholic Church who died in 1231 in Padua, Italy. There was no place for the priest to live, and his parish flock was a poor lot, hardly able to build a church, never mind support their priest.

Those humble beginnings are remembered this year as the seventh pastor, the Rev. Donald A. Robinson, and people of St. Anthony’s Church look back to Father Sechi’s arrival and celebrate their parish’s 100th anniversary.

Claude Sechi, born Sept. 11, 1880, in Sassarri on the island of Sardinia, was ordained Dec. 7, 1904, in his hometown church. The vocation was not really of his choosing, he revealed years later to Peter Cook, one of his altar boys at St. Anthony’s.

“He said he wanted to be a music teacher,” Mr. Cook is quoted as saying in the Frank P. Augustine book “La Bella America.”

“He loved music, but his parents got him to be, you know, religion.”

He thought of coming to the United States after he was introduced to a priest from Benson Mines, the Rev. Onesime A. Boyer, who was in Rome doing archaeological studies. The visitor, of French Canadian background, was introduced to Father Sechi after asking at the University of Rome for instruction in the Italian language. Their four months of working together nurtured a friendship which continued after Father Boyer returned to Benson Mines.

During the summer of 1912, at Father Boyer’s urging, Father Sechi came to America accompanied by his sister, artist Francesca Pasella, and her husband, Flavio. They settled in New York City, where Mr. Pasella became a newspaperman and Father Sechi served in a city parish.

About midway into 1913, Bishop Gabriels, responding to a referral from Father Boyer, invited Father Sechi to come north. The priest agreed and made Benson Mines his first-month stay to visit his friend.

“Eyes brimming with tears, he told (Peter Cook) how he cried upon seeing what was at Benson Mines,” Mr. Augustine wrote. “He said there was one Italian family there. That was probably the biggest shock in his life.”

The family was that of Cataldo Morgia, a Watertown man working in a paper mill. Mr. Morgia’s family, Father Sechi’s first friends from the homeland, would eventually return to Watertown to become restaurateurs.

St. Anthony’s actually traces its origin to 1903, when the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart purchased the house that would serve as a chapel. With that start, the missionaries set out to organize a parish for the Italian settlement. And it was that house — that chapel — that Father Sechi laid eyes upon when he arrived.

He had expected to find a church already built.

With his Watertown assignment, the newcomer priest with a limited English vocabulary was welcomed as a guest in the rectory of St. Patrick’s Church’s pastor, the Rev. Peter J. Devlin. The arrangement lasted perhaps a month, according to notes taken in a February 1945 interview by a Times reporter with Father Sechi.

The late Monsignor Anthony A. Milia, eventual St. Anthony’s pastor, told Mr. Augustine that other priests in the area were good to the Italian priest, “but I’m sure that it was not as comfortable a relationship. It wasn’t a warm relationship. He soon moved out of there.”

Old Watertown city directories indicate that Father Sechi boarded at 203 N. Massey St. for a couple years, then at 103 N. Orchard St. from about 1917 to 1927, and at 312 Prospect St. up to Dec. 12, 1937, when finally he had his own parish house on church property.

One of his contemporaries, Julia Fearon, said in 1945 that when Father Sechi first read the gospels in English he had difficulty making them clear.

His landlady on North Massey Street, Julia’s aunt, Catherine McClair, helped him learn English. He had great difficulty in understanding some words, she told an interviewer, so he would bring to the house a group of words carefully written out and have Mrs. McClair explain them to him.

The priest relied on his first love — music — for financial survival. In his Orchard Street apartment, he began teaching music and fundamentals of the Italian language to Italian children. This continued for seven years, with lessons in piano and violin. But his skills went beyond that. Father Sechi also could play the organ, accordion, guitar and mandolin. He also did some composing.

In his free time, he visited parish members in their homes, bringing his violin and guitar so that he could accompany his hosts while they sang.

From his best students, he formed a 10-boy orchestra. Patsey N. Brindisi, the 1945 notes said, was Father Sechi’s first pupil at age 10. He became a popular musician and teacher in Watertown and was leader of orchestras in the city’s Avon and Olympic theaters.

With six years into his pastorate, Father Sechi was finding it impossible to find couples who were willing to have their weddings performed in the old house still being used as the chapel. It got to the point where he had to beg somebody to accept a chapel wedding.

“Nobody liked to get married in there because they didn’t think it was fancy enough,” Jennie Surace Benedetto told Mr. Augustine. As plans began for her marriage to Dominick Benedetto, the priest asked her, “Will you do me a favor? Let me marry you in our church. Your sister didn’t let us. Your sister didn’t want to get married down here. Will you? All I got to do is break the ice.” She acquiesced, and he was granted his wish on Nov. 2, 1919.

Finally in 1920, Father Sechi and the two charter parish lay trustees, Antonnio Galluccio and Cruciano Digatti (anglicized to Charles Digate), made the move that the priest and his people had longed for. They were going to build a church.

Both trustees, respectively 39 and 50 at the time, were natives of Italy and were independent grocers. Mr. Galluccio’s store was on Breen Avenue; Mr. Digatti did business at 949 Arsenal St. The two men in 1916 had founded the parish’s Mount Carmel Society, which played a large role in making the desired church a reality.

Work began in 1920 for what was to become a long-term project, with the old house being moved by a team of volunteers from the front lot to a back section. The volunteers dug out an area for the new church’s cellar and foundation, which was completed in the spring of 1921. And then, the work stopped due to a lack of funds. The basement was covered with a temporary roof, and for the next nine years, that partial structure was the place of worship for the Italian congregation.

Not until at least $30,000 had been raised would the bishop of Ogdensburg allow construction to resume. To meet that challenge, a drive was conducted in which parish members purchased bricks for the structure.

That accomplished, work resumed on April 5, 1930. A $35,000 mortgage was obtained four months later, covering the balance of the total cost of $75,000.

Over the next six to seven months, the old house that had served as St. Anthony’s Chapel was again filling that role.

Come September 1930, the anticipated completion of the new church seemed a distance off. The work was coming along, but funds were running out. Cosimo Renzi, a 46-year-old founder of Renzi Brothers wholesale grocery company, was compelled to speak out in his position as chairman of the building and financial drive committees.

To the people who were failing to keep up on their pledges for the construction, he appealed, “The quicker we receive the money, the sooner the church will be completed.”

His words apparently served well. Some of the colors of autumn may still have been in place when St. Anthony’s Church was completed.

At the conclusion of a dedication ceremony on Dec. 14, 1930, Bishop Joseph H. Conroy said in Italian, “In the span of my life, and I am in my 73rd year, I have seen four churches built in Watertown and I am proud of St. Anthony’s Church by reason of the fact that it stands on the street of my birth and that it is located near St. Patrick’s School, which covers the very spot where I was born.”

Mr. Renzi, speaking later at a banquet, praised Father Sechi for the accomplishment, noting the pastor “has been here for years and has been criticized many times by people who thought he could not build a church.”

Cheers of “Viva” greeted Father Sechi, who responded, “I want to thank all my dear people and the people outside the parish. They worked hard, hand in hand.”

Adornments in the new church eventually included a personal touch from the pastor’s sister. Francesca Pasella late in 1943 completed about five months of work, leaving her oil painting of St. Anthony holding the infant Jesus covering the lofty cupola over the sanctuary. She had a year earlier painted in the building murals of St. Blase, St. Mary of Madgalene and St. Veronica, St. Anna, the Mother of Sorrow, St. Charles Borromeo, medallions of the 12 apostles and other displays.

To help pay up the building debt, Father Sechi declined his salary. The mortgage was not satisfied until 1948.

The people of St. Anthony’s had their new church, but their pastor was still a renter, a tenant. The nation and world were in the midst of the Great Depression. With a debt hanging over their heads to pay for their church, parishioners could not afford to spend the $12,000 deemed necessary to build a new rectory. So Father Sechi patiently waited seven more years before he could say he had a home.

It was not a structure built from scratch, however. A Sears & Roebuck prefabricated house, erected in 1918 on church property at 850 Arsenal St., was purchased in 1937 from Rose A. Gaffney, to serve as the parish rectory for the decades that lay ahead. It has since been razed.

There were other developments in 1937. Bishop Conroy presented the 57-year-old pastor a birthday gift in September: an assistant pastor. The Rev. James T. Lyng was the first assistant pastor in Father Sechi’s 24 years at St. Anthony’s. Also arriving that September were four nuns of the Religious Sisters Filippini, assigned to St. Anthony’s to do social service work and provide religious education to parish children. The old chapel was remodeled and redecorated to be the nuns’ convent.

Bishop Conroy told the press he reached out to the diocese of Newark, N.J., to acquire the sisters’ services, “to lighten considerably the burden of the priest.” While a parish priest “is capable only of ministering to 1,000 souls,” the bishop said, “in St. Anthony’s parish there are 3,000 souls.”

A special honor was bestowed upon Father Sechi in 1937. He was appointed papal chamberlain by Pope Pius XI — the first priest to be so honored in the history of the Ogdensburg diocese. After being invested by Bishop Conroy on Dec. 12, 1937, he was to be addressed as Monsignor Sechi.

Eleven years later, at Christmas Eve Mass, the monsignor had a special announcement for his people: The final payment had been made on the church construction debt. He followed with a letter from Ogdensburg Bishop Bryan J. McEntegart.

“I hasten to send you my sincere congratulations,” the bishop wrote. “It is always cheering when I know that another church is free of debt. In your case, it is doubly so for I am very mindful of the struggle which you have had.”

With that accomplishment, the pastor made the case for his next goal — his long-cherished ambition of having a parish school. It was an ambition that he would see fulfilled, but not during his tenure as pastor. Monsignor Sechi retired in June 1954, concluding a stay of just shy of 41 years with the people of St. Anthony’s. The school opened in 1959.

Early on Sept. 2, 1966, Monsignor Sechi died at age 85 in a hospital in the Bronx.

Father Sechi, who became a naturalized citizen on June 25, 1921, made his only return to Italy in the fall of 1936. The Times reported that he was disappointed that his relatives and old friends did not recognize him.

Another of Francesca Pasella’s donations to St. Anthony’s Church was a painting of the Pieta. At an unknown time it was moved and tucked away into storage. The painting was discovered in 2001 and now hangs in the church. Mrs. Pasella was 91 when she died in June 1980 in the Bronx.

The society that developed the parish’s annual celebration of the Mount Carmel Feast was founded Jan. 1, 1916, “to foster the Catholic Faith of almost 800 families of Watertown and to build an appropriate Catholic church for their people,” according to a historical sketch.

The group conducted a subscription drive to raise funds for the church construction. Its first president was Loreto Fioretto, then a 55-year-old owner of a gardening business on Breen Avenue.

Mount Carmel has nothing to do with Italy. A coastal mountain range in northern Israel, off the Mediterranean Sea, it was there that the Carmelite religious order was founded in the 12th century. The order dedicated its monastery to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The Rev. Onesime A. Boyer was born in Acton, Quebec, in 1874. His family moved when he was young to Rhode Island. He spent four months in Europe as interpreter for the director of the Apostolic Mission House of Washington, and authored “She Wears a Crown of Thorns,” a biography of Mary Rose Ferron, also a native of Quebec, a mystic and stigmatic. Father Boyer died Aug. 19, 1959, at age 84.

Developments over the past 55 years:

1958 — Filippini nuns move into their new convent, and the original chapel is razed.

1959 — New school is dedicated.

1973 — Parish hall beneath the church is dedicated as Monsignor Sechi Hall.

1978 — New parish house is completed and dedicated.

1979 — Mount Carmel pavilion is completed.

1986 — St. Anthony Apartments is built on land sold by the parish.

1995 — St. Anthony’s bids farewell to the Filippini nuns, due to their declining vocations.

2003 — Church restoration is completed.

2004 — St. Anthony’s School is closed.

2010 — Church renovation is completed.

Today — Father Robinson says “slightly over half of the present 550 families are of Italian descent.”

The parish’s centennial celebration opened with a New Year’s Eve gala and continued in February with a dinner honoring married couples. Activities remaining in the year include:

March 17— Celebration of St. Joseph’s Table, an Italian-American feast of bread varieties, vegetables, egg dishes, pasta and desserts.

April — Celebration for parish children, date to be determined.

May — Publication of parish pictorial family album.

June 13 — Celebration of the feast of St. Anthony.

June 28 to 30 — Mount Carmel Feast.

June 30 — Unveiling and blessing of new rose window at church front by Bishop Terry R. LaValley.

July — Publication of St. Anthony’s cookbook.

August — Parish picnic, date to be determined.

September — Apple festival, date to be determined.

Oct. 6 — Centennial Mass to be celebrated by Bishop LaValley, followed by formal dinner.

November — Parish outreach to the Watertown community.

December — Parish entry in Festival of Trees; publication of book summarizing the anniversary year’s events.

Monsignor Sechi’s line of succession, pastors at St. Anthony’s.

Monsignor Dennis E. Lynch, pastor 1954 to 1960. He died Jan. 5, 1979, age 74.

Monsignor Paul G. Brunet, pastor 1960 to 1964. He was with the New York National Guard, served as chaplain in the Pacific theater, was wounded in Saipan in 1944 and received the Purple Heart, Bronze Star and a Presidential Citation from Franklin D. Roosevelt. He died Aug. 24, 1991, age 80.

Father Aloysius R. Isele, pastor 1964 to 1966. He died Jan. 19, 1974, age 63.

Father Henry W. McFadden, pastor 1966 to 1971. He became an Army chaplain in 1942, served in North Africa and Europe, and received six battle stars with cluster for heroism. He died Jan. 3, 1978, age 66.

Monsignor Anthony A. Milia, pastor 1971 to 2001. He died Aug. 10, 2010, age 84.

Father Donald A. Robinson, pastor 2001 through present, and since Sept. 30, 2009, additionally pastor of St. Patrick’s Church when the two parishes were merged.

There were no big parades, no speeches, no field days, not even a barn dance to mark last year’s special occasion. In fact, the day went by unnoticed.

What occasion?

May Day 2011 marked the centennial of a hamlet tucked off Route 11 in the town of LeRay, five miles north of Watertown. A hundred years ago, or 101 now, the post office at Harlan Dunn’s grocery store in Sanford’s Corners — named in 1810 for settler John Sanford — took on a new postmark, according to the U.S. Postal Service archives. The community became Calcium, thanks, apparently, to the efforts of one of its new residents, Madison Cooper.

And who was he?

Mr. Cooper, descended from French nobility, was the community’s industrialist. Yes, an industry right in bustling little Calcium. And in a few short years after Calcium took its name, Mr. Cooper was to become fairly well known nationwide to anybody who enjoyed growing flowers, if they were reading his magazine, the Modern Gladiolus Grower, later called the Flower Grower.

But that touches only the surface of this man’s resume. He was, at different times, a store clerk, bank clerk, hotel clerk, printer, cheesemaker, shipper of dairy products, bookkeeper, pipefitter, machine installer, carpenter, painter, architect, engineer, breeder of cattle and swine, founder of an amateur baseball league and builder of a baseball park for his community. The list encapsulates his jobs, his sidelines and his interests.

An entrepreneur in refrigeration, he built a business in Minneapolis that became Cooper Cold Storage Systems. With his business booming along the East Coast, he took advantage by returning to the region where he was born, relocating the company to Watertown, and ultimately to Sanford’s Corners, the home of his relatively recent ancestry.

Two families, Bacon and Cooper, are cited in “History of Jefferson County New York, 1797-1878,” published by L.H. Everts & Co., Philadelphia, Pa., to have been the earliest settlers in what would become the southeast portion of the town of Pamelia. The Cooper settlement began with Guillaume Coupert, born in 1773 in Normandy, France.

According to a story told in John A. Haddock’s Jefferson County history, Guillaume (French for William) was a teenager in a fishing crew that set out for Newfoundland in the early 1790s. Captured by the British, the crewmen were imprisoned in Nova Scotia. Guillaume escaped to Connecticut. After about three years, he heard about unsettled land to the north, where a wealthy Frenchman named LeRay was selling good farmland at low prices. He joined a company that brought him into the Black River valley, where he was attracted to land featuring a natural flow of water spouting from a hillside. There he acquired 150 acres on the north side of the river, which he cleared for his Cooper homestead.

Now that he was settled, the adventurer found a settlement of Frenchmen near present-day Great Bend. He met a priest and the cleric’s widowed sister, Marguerite Charton, an educated woman who could trace her family back to the nobles of France. On March 21, 1801, Guillaume, 28, and Marguerite, 27, married.

They had seven children, including a son, William, whose next generation would include a son, Madison Cooper. A generation later, another Madison Cooper came into the world on March 19, 1868 — the youngest of three children of Madison and Diana Benoit Cooper.

The ancestral farm served as home for the second-generation Madison Cooper for the first eight years of his life, until his parents moved to Evans Mills. That would be where he attended school and where he would live until age 19. Being a villager did not take the farmboy out of him, however.

“Moving to the village was only a step from the farm,” he wrote in an autobiographical sketch, “and the farm was in mind at all times, and frequent contacts made with what was happening there. At 14, I worked seven months of the year on the farm.”

The teen found time to develop another interest, however: baseball. He was captain of a junior team and was centerfielder on a men’s team. At 18, he experienced the satisfaction of being a winner when his team captured a Northern New York championship.

As the 1880s dawned, the Cooper family was looking in new directions. The 19-year-old Madison headed to Utica to explore a future in journalism. At 15, he had bought a small hand card press with which he printed and published the Evans Mills Graphic, selling at 3 cents a copy. Printed one page at a time, the paper was eventually expanded to four pages.

When he wasn’t printing community news, he was working as a cheesemaker in one of his father’s dairy factories.

In Utica, he took on a temporary job as proof-puller and copy-holder for a morning newspaper office, but after four months, he enrolled in Utica Business College. His parents, meanwhile, were heading out to Ottumwa, Iowa, where they would launch a butter- and egg-shipping business.

Back at Utica Business College, Madison became acquainted with fellow student Clara May Matteson. Their relationship blossomed, and on Dec. 3, 1889, they began a marriage that would last the rest of their lives. Having completed their studies in Utica, the couple moved to Iowa, where the young man worked in a crockery store and later in a bank. They then journeyed to Arrowhead Springs, Calif., where his brother-in-law had a job for him — in hotel management.

He and Clara followed when Madison’s father made another move, this time to Minneapolis. Madison went to work for his father as bookkeeper.

Meanwhile, a family was growing. Madison and Clara had three sons, all born in Minneapolis. The first, Daniel, arrived Nov. 10, 1890, and William followed nearly two years later, on Oct. 29, 1892. A third-generation Madison Cooper, the one to be called Junior, was delivered May 9, 1901.

Not long after William’s birth, Madison began studies in chemistry and freehand drawing at the University of Minnesota, and completed algebra and geometry studies in a Minneapolis high school. To gain mechanical experience, he worked for the Minneapolis Street Railway Co.

Putting his new skills to work, Madison set out on a project that was to shape his future. In shipping dairy products, the Coopers needed to improve their methods of keeping the goods cold and fresh. Madison invented and patented the Cooper System of Cold Storage. His success prompted him to go into business for himself, running a cold storage engineering and construction business. For about two decades he planned, designed and installed refrigeration systems in more than 100 plants in the United States and Canada.

With his product selling well in the East, Madison Cooper resolved it would be “desirable to move the business from Minneapolis,” he wrote. In 1903 and 1904, his business was moved to Watertown, with the family living at 108 State St. (later changed to 1042 State St.). At about the same time, he bought the old Cooper homestead, near Sanford’s Corners, which he would use for the next seven to eight years as a summer home.

He continued to purchase more land at Sanford’s Corners and relocated his business there in 1909, and then settled in a new house there two years later.

In later years he described what brought him back to Jefferson County:

“One great advantage of the north temperate zone is what I call its Verdure ... wherever the eye carries may be seen a beautiful green ... yet with the coming of mid-summer and early fall the browns and yellows which result are attractive in themselves, and never do we have the bareness of appearance which prevails in sections where the rainfall is less uniform. So it may readily be seen why this old editor, after sojourning for 20 years in the west, was satisfied to come back to his place of birth.”

As Mr. Cooper settled into his new surroundings in 1911, the community’s new industrialist is said to have led the charge for a name change. No official documentation substantiates the account, nor did he claim the honor when he penned his personal sketch. The only known source is the late Lowell Jewett, who wrote a community history.

“Madison Cooper, a prominant businessman of Sanford’s Corners, changed the name to Calcium. He was disturbed that his mail was being miss-sent to Sanford,” in Broome County, Mr. Jewett wrote.

Mr. Cooper’s refrigeration business used a chloride of calcium process, so he stocked calcium chlorate at Sanford’s Corners. Hence, the name Calcium.

The industry that gave Calcium its name was not to last long, but it was still going strong as World War I approached, with one customer being a future Cold War adversary of the United States.

“We contracted with the Russian Government for equipment for 20 cold storage plants,” Mr. Cooper wrote. “These were shipped on termination of the war.”

The development of mechanical and electric refrigeration in the early 1920s made Madison Cooper’s cold storage systems obsolete, although in 1935, he provided his plans to Poland. Time had come for the versatile gentleman to nurture other interests: publishing and flower-growing. For 29 years, beginning in 1914, he edited and published magazines devoted to flowers, gardens, horticulture and nature.

The magazine, he said in his personal sketch, “was established as a hobby, and for the reason that I had taken a great interest in growing the Gladiolus, which was at that time quite new. I have probably done more to popularize the growing of Gladiolus, in the early days, than any other man.”

A Watertown Daily Times editorial on July 8, 1946, following his death, endorsed Mr. Cooper’s boast. “The village of Calcium became known throughout the country as the home of the man who knew everything about gladioli and also the home of the magazine which he established for the public which admired that regal flower.”

The Times account reported that he interested his friend, Charles E. Holbrook of Hungerford-Holbrook Co., in a magazine for flower growers. The magazine became Mr. Cooper’s major interest, and he went to Albany to have it published. After it passed out of his hands, he established another publication, Gardening, and a baseball magazine, but they did not succeed as did his original.

“He wrote of commonplace things and with unusual skill. He was a homespun sort of an individual; wrote of the soil and the wholesome philosophy of the farm. He knew what appealed to his audience. The Flower Grower under his hand became a most interesting and widely read magazine.”

Among his subscribers, according to a 1926 item in the Watertown Times, were Mrs. Henry Ford of Dearborn, Mich.; horticulturalist Luther Burbank, and inventor Thomas Edison.

He is said to have had as many as 13 acres of bulbs planted on his farm.

The late Jack Case, who was sports editor of the Watertown Daily Times, wrote a story quoting local sports personality Henry “Hank” Hodge about his memories of north country sports. His article included a recollection about baseball in Calcium.

“Hank also recalled that Chappie Johnson used to have a better than average Negro baseball team based here, playing in a Central New York league. The team had old ‘Flower Grower Field,’ owned by the late Madison Cooper at Calcium as its home base.”

Johnson was a standout professional Negro League catcher. Among visiting teams were the House of David and the Detroit Clowns.

Flower Grower Field in Calcium, a 5-acre fence-enclosed baseball park with bleachers, a grandstand and dugouts, was an outgrowth of the Jefferson County Amateur Baseball League, organized in 1927 by — who else — Madison Cooper, who served four years as president.

“I built the best equipped baseball park in New York State, north of the New York Central Railroad,” Mr. Cooper boasted in his life sketch.

At the time, “the sport was unusually popular and successful in Northern New York,” he wrote.

Games were played on Sundays, and Mr. Cooper rewarded the ladies in attendance with gladioli.

When Pine Camp military reservation, now Fort Drum, was expanded in the early 1940s, Mr. Cooper’s showcase baseball field was struck out for a spur track serving the Army training ground.

Mr. Cooper was also “a prime mover in forming the Amateur Sports Federation, a statewide organization, in 1931, and became its president at inception,” according to his obituary. He was also editor of the federation’s official magazine, Amateur Sports.

The year 1941 was not so flowery for Madison Cooper. Sept. 8 must have been particularly trying for him, when one of his sons was compelled to testify against him in a federal government civil action.

A portion of the 75,000-acre Pine Camp expansion was a 160-acre site on Mr. Cooper’s North Star Spring Farm. The springs that had attracted his paternal great-grandfather to the region was “an inexhaustible source of water spouting from a natural rock formation,” the Times reported. A year earlier, he had completed development of the spring for commercial use, and by the end of 1940, more than 3,000 people had taken advantage of the spring for drinking water and for its natural beauty.

He balked at the government’s purchase offer, and he subsequently claimed that in doing its expansion work, the government had caused $5,529 in damage to his property. The government, meanwhile, was admitting a $1,500 responsibility.

His son, Daniel C. Cooper, a layout engineer with Deline Construction Co., in his testimony supported the government’s damage assessment. When the case was closed, federal condemnation commissioners awarded Madison Cooper $2,000 to satisfy the property sale and damage claim.

Part of Madison Cooper’s damage claim involved Flower Grower Field, which had fallen into disuse about 1939. The commission ruling considered the baseball park’s building and improvements to be of no value, the Times reported.

Four years later, on Aug. 21, 1945, Mr. Cooper suffered a stroke that left him almost completely paralyzed. At 8:45 a.m. July 8, 1946, he died in his sleep in his home at the age of 78.

Mr. Cooper was predeceased by his second son, William, who was 52 when he died of heart disease on May 25, 1944. The twice-married draftsman and World War I Navy veteran had no children.

Clara May Matteson Cooper survived her husband by about 17 months, dying at age 77 on Jan. 3, 1948. She had been active with civic and charitable organizations, particularly the American Red Cross.

The couple’s third-born, Madison Jr., a radio technician, died on Christmas Eve 1968, in Livingston County. He was 67, and his only immediate survivor was his brother Daniel.

Daniel Cooper lived to be 82. He died in Florida on Jan. 15, 1973, leaving his wife, Marion, and a daughter, Betty J., who became Mrs. Marvin Boos, and later Mrs. George Schneider. She had a son, Garin C. Boos Schneider, the only great-grandchild of Madison and Clara Cooper.

The home built in Calcium by Madison Cooper still stands. With 18-inch-thick ground-level concrete walls and tongue-and-groove wood construction, the 10-room structure remains insulated with cedar shavings.

Following the death of Clara Cooper, the Cooper home and associated property were purchased by Russell Ryor, who used the former Cooper refrigeration facilities for the slaughter and cold storage of turkeys. Ryor’s Turkey Farm was in business until 1978.

The succession of owners of the Cooper home continued in 1979 with Army Maj. James and Mary Dickey, and in 1985 with Lt. Col. Paul and Linda Callen. The current owners, James and Karen Powell, purchased the property in 1988. Mr. Powell has done extensive research about Madison Cooper and is a significant contributor to this story.

A flower that grows wild in Calcium is the Madison Cooper iris, a variegata introduced in 1918 in Mantorville, Minn., by Willis C. Fryer, who was a friend of Mr. Cooper.

Plans for the manner in which U.S. Route 11 bypasses Calcium were devised about 1946, and drew the regrets of Syracuse columnist Roy E. Fairman.

“With the removal of the ‘blind corner’ on Route 11 at Calcium,” his April 20, 1947, column in the Syracuse American Herald read, “motorists will pass by that hamlet without being aware it is there.”

Mr. Fairman noted that “Calcium, like most other rural hamlets, has lost much of the importance which characterized its early years.”

The writer was a native of Chaumont who often wrote in Syracuse about his Northern New York ties. He retired from a 42-year newspaper career in 1954, writing the final lines of a history column that carried a vaguely familiar title, “As Time Goes By.”

He died on May 29, 1961, at the age of 77.

In Watertown, the days of politically correct journalism had not yet dawned when this headline appeared in the Watertown Daily Times in March 1924: “COLORED BOY TO WRITE CLASS WILL”

A black student, possibly the only African American in the Watertown High School senior class, had been elected to write the class will for the Annual, the yearbook.

Charles F. Wright Jr., 16, son of a chauffeur, had quite handily bested a prominent member of the class, Wilfred Nugent, for the task.

Was his election cause for a rift among the 85 young people anticipating their graduation in June? The Times, responding to rumors, wanted to know.

“The selection of a colored person for a class honor of this kind is unprecedented in the annals of the high school,” the Times reported.

A vote was taken without discussion after the two candidates were asked to leave a gathering of seniors in the school at 134-138 Sterling St. The discussion came after the tally was in.

“Wright, who has been in the high school four years, is said to be an exceptionally bright and intelligent student,” the Times' account continued.

There were some who “were bitterly opposed” to his election, including “one girl of southern blood (who) is said to have been scathing in her remarks on the subject.” Others declared themselves opposed to him on the grounds that he had never taken part in class activities and that this honor should go to some loyal class worker.

But the majority of classmates “believe that he is well qualified as a writer of the will owing to his proficiency in school.”

Many were of the opinion that Charles Wright was entitled to the honor as much as any member of the class. “They feel that no racial distinction should be made in matters of this kind.”

The report said Mr. Nugent's support came largely from the boys, while Mr. Wright seemed to have significant support among the girls, although he was nominated and seconded by boys.

When the loose-bound 1924 Annual came out, pages 80 through 84 carried “The Last Will and Testament of The Class of 1924,” by Charles F. Wright.

Mr. Nugent, a future Roman Catholic priest, was not forgotten. He accepted the task of writing his class's history for the Annual.

Art was Charles Wright's true calling. The same yearbook recognized that. Beside his senior photo ran the caption, “This is the (W)right man for the artistic work.”

The writer of the class prophecy added for Mr. Wright, “the distinguished artist, has opened a studio in gay Paris.”

Mr. Wright must have been a baby-face, as a Times reporter in 1927, three years after his graduation, displayed confusion about his age, estimating him to be 16. The topic was an art exhibit at a city book shop.

The young Mr. Wright “has on exhibition some excellent pen and ink and pencil drawings,” the story said. The artist “has been an elevator boy in the Traveler's Hotel where he has had the opportunity to see all sorts of people. It has been his custom to observe guests while taking them on the elevator, and then draw their heads from memory. He has done several fine sketches in this way, particularly of actors who have been playing Vaudeville at the Avon theatre.”

Mr. Wright had also copied pictures from magazines and theater billboards to give his own renditions of the featured personalities, “displaying talent to a marked degree,” the article continued. There was Rudolph Valentino in a serious mood and a pencil drawing of boxer Luis Angel Firpo in a characteristic pose.

Sketches of babies also commanded the artist's interest, “catching the essential spirit of babyhood,” the Times' writer noted.

Unfortunately, the class prediction for Charles Wright was never realized. Although he continued to dabble in art — some of his drawings of nationally known blacks were shown in a 1940 New York City exhibit — he earned his living by less glamorous means.

Charles Wright was born Aug. 14, 1907, in New York City. His parents, Charles F. and Ina E. Hall Wright, who brought four girls and three boys into the world, moved to Watertown at just about the time Charles was reaching high school age.

The first record found regarding his employment came from 1930, when he was married in August to a Watertown girl, Margaret Anne Stevenson. He was a worker at the home of Lucien C. Mitchell, president and treasurer of J.B. Wise Co., Watertown.

Living on Morrison Street, as did his parents and his bride's parents, he was honored by the congregation of AME Zion Church in April 1933 to take charge of the church. Commissioned by a bishop in New York City, he succeeded a pastor who had retired because of poor health.

By 1937, Polk city directories list him as “houseman” for an attorney, A. Raymond Cornwall, 242 Paddock St., and then in 1941 as a chauffeur for Harold W. Conde, 531 Washington St., president of W.W. Conde Hardware.

Early in 1942, while still on the Conde house payroll, Mr. Wright was compiling more sketches, focusing on prominent blacks, people in history as well as his contemporaries.

And then, something happened. In about June 1942, he was admitted to “an Ogdensburg hospital,” according to his obituary. He was still a patient there when on Nov. 15, 1942, at the age of 35, he died.

He was survived by his parents, wife, two sisters and two brothers.

Margaret Wright went to work as an elevator operator at Empsall's Department Store, remaining single for 14 years. She began a new life on Dec. 21, 1956, when she became the wife of a military man, Charles T. Smith. The couple lived in Baltimore as a result of his assignment in the nation's capital.

Mrs. Smith was 79 when she died on Feb. 7, 1989.

The class of 1924 boasted of a child prodigy, an eventual president of St. Regis Paper Co. and a beauty contestant.

Leland B. Norton was a 10-year-old when he entered WHS and graduated at 14, believed to be the youngest boy to graduate from the school up to that time. Principal Gary M. Jones said in 1922 that Leland Norton was one of the brightest boys who'd ever entered the school. Despite that, a Times story said “he is not entirely devoted to his books, but is fond of all athletics and participates in several sports.”

When he entered Hamilton College, Clinton, in September 1924, he was believed to be the youngest student ever admitted there. He graduated in 1928 with a bachelor of science degree at 18, then did graduate work at Cornell University, Ithaca, where in 1934 he received a doctorate in chemistry. He became a professor of insecticidal chemistry in Cornell's Department of Entomology and had 40 articles published in scientific journals, his focus being chemical properties of insecticides.

The professor died June 10, 1953, at age 43 after a long illness. He was married twice, and was survived by two sons and a daughter.

The 1924 Class Prophecy foresaw him becoming “president of the association for suppression of unnecessary noises and grimaces.”

His yearbook photo caption: “He's small, but can pull ties faster, and manage a battery of paper wad shooters more efficiently than any other male member of the high school.”

Another member of the class of 1924 who went on to make his mark on the world was William R. Adams, the class prophet. He predicted of himself: He is “known now as the slide rule king (and) is attempting to figure out how many baseball diamonds can be made from the Sahara desert.”

And William Adams's photo caption read, “It is hard to find a word big enough to describe Bill. He is big in body, big in mind and big in heart. Oh! Bill!” They expected big things from him, and their confidence was rewarded. Mr. Adams was for 15 years president, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of St. Regis Paper Co. He retired in 1972 and died seven years later at the age of 72.

The Times editorialized, “Bill Adams was typical of a generation which understood two career responsibilities, that of his corporate employment, and that of volunteerism toward unpaid government and public service to all people, a hallmark of the American system which was understood and practiced selflessly by him.”

The apparent last survivor of the class of 1924 was Anna M. Lyng, who died at age 97 on Jan. 10, 2005. After attending Potsdam Normal School, she taught in Deferiet, Boonville and Watertown schools. She never married.

Her classmates predicted her future a little differently from how it turned out: She “is in Florida, participating in the Bathing Beauty Contest.”

The class prophet missed the boat about who would be the beauty contestant. That honor went to classmate Hilda Farrell. In August 1924, a panel of judges selected her from among 40 young women to be Miss Watertown, to compete for the title of Miss America at the National Beauty Tournament in Atlantic City, N.J. She was not among finalists at the pageant.

Later the wife of John B. Butler, she became a nurse. She was the mother of former Watertown Mayor Joseph Butler and grandmother of City Councilman Joseph Butler Jr. She died at 77 on Feb. 21, 1983.

Wilfred A. Nugent, Charles Wright's challenger in the class will contest, was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1932 and was given the honorary title of monsignor in 1964. He died in May 1991 at age 87.

His senior photo caption more closely reflects upon the career he chose than did the class prediction: “Whenever anybody's needed to help make anything a success, you can always count on Wilfred.”

The prediction: He “is living comfortably on the proceeds of his patented receipt for shiek oil and patent leather grease.”

Errington A. Whiteford was another class member who became a paper industrialist, but his stage was New York City, where in 1941 he founded Whiteford Paper Co., a specialty paper designer and distributor. He died in June 1982 at age 77.

His future, according to the yearbook: He “has lost his tendency toward women and has settled down already as a 'Bach.'” Mr. Whiteford was married twice.

Said his senior photo caption, “When he smiles, he dimples, and he is always smiling.”

Graduate William G. Lewis, who died at age 69 in January 1977, was a chemical engineer who, as company vice president, had his name attached to a Watertown business, Lewis and Clinch. That foiled the class prediction for him: “The two Lewises, Jimmie and Bill, have just established a radio station in Borneo, to bring the inhabitants there closer to our civilized world.”

Bill Lewis must have been into radio technology, however. In the class will written by Charles Wright, Mr. Lewis bequeathed to a lower classman “my knowledge of the mysteries of radio.”

June 25, 1924, was certainly a memorable day for one of the graduates. When she woke up in the morning, she was Dorothy S. VanLuven, but by the time she arrived for the 8 p.m. commencement ceremony, she had become the 18-year-old wife of John G. Case, who was to become known as Jack Case, sports editor of the Watertown Daily Times.

Speaking of marriage, two sets of classmate sweethearts later tied the knot: Stuart Wager and Annis Combs, and Veneita Lobdell and Ralph Gagnon.

Buster Crabb of Watertown assisted in tracking history about Charles Wright, and Times librarian Lisa Carr assisted with research.

NRF indicates no record found; NORF, no other record found.

William R. Adams, St. Regis Paper Co. president, died 1979, age 72

Ralph Balfour, merchant, died 1971, age 71

Genevieve Bamford (Reynolds), NORF

Charles M. Boynton, mechanical engineer, died 1969, age 64

Kathryn F. Bangert, NRF

Pauline Bedoar (Dorr), nurse, died 1998, age 93

Ruth Bennett, NRF

Doris Brennan, NRF

Laurine Carpenter, NRF

Rhea Carter, NY Central Railroad, died 1995, age 91

Dorothy Colburn, NRF

Marguerite Collins, NRF

Annis Combs (Wager), died 1995, age 88

Herbert Cooper, merchant, died 1994, age 90

Stanley Corp, pharmacist, died 1966, age 64

George Crawford, laborer, died 1935, age 28

Marie Desormo, died 1989, age 83

Ward Dobbs, NRF

Esther Douglas, NRF

Francis Donahue, laborer, died 1993, age 89

Emmett Duggan, business, died 1977, age 72

Doris Evans, NRF

Katherine Evans, teacher, died 1952, age 45

Hilda Farrell (Butler), nurse, died 1983, age 77

Alberta Flick, NRF

Doris Fralick, NRF

Phillip Gaffney, civil engineer, died 1967, age 61

Ralph Gagnon, New York Telephone, Chaumont mayor, died 1991, age 87

Lois Gould (Bisnett), banking, NORF

Arthur Hale, Alcoa, NORF

Kenneth Harris, NRF

Eleanor Hawkings, nurse, NORF

Robert Healy, NRF

Grace Hedge, NRF

Camilla Hofferberth, NRF

Alice Holbrook (Wright), died 1987, age 81

Marion Irvine, dietician, died 1993, age 86

Alta Joslin (Ward), government, died 2001, age 97

Margaret Keegan, NRF

Lucy E. Kendrew, teacher, died 1981, age 73

Ina Knapp, NRF.

Alice Lafave, NRF

Mary F. Langford, NRF

Alice Langworthy, NRF

Gladys Lawton (Doane), died 1983, age 76

William G. Lewis, chemical engineer, died 1977, age 69.

Veneita Lobdell (Gagnon), died 1977

Anna Lyng, teacher, died 2005, age 97

Mary Marshall (Phalen) NORF

Raymond Mattraw, died 1987, age 81

Catherine McGowan, real estate, died 1978, age 70

Mary McKinley, NRF

Doris Moore, secretary, died 1994, age 88

Doris Moulton, NRF

Harold Moyer, government, died 1968, age 62

John Nolan, NRF

Leland Norton, professor, died 1953, age 43

Wilfred Nugent, priest, died 1991, age 87

Smith Parks, NRF

Howard Parrott, locomotive engineer, died 1986

John Pattengill, electrician, died 1990, age 82

Mary Phillips, NRF

Seymour Pitcher, NRF

William Renison, NRF

James Rich, building contractor, died 1974, age 70

Mary Riddle, NRF

Webert Rouble, NRF

Harold Shaw, NRF

Louise Shepherd (Hydon), teacher, died 1989, age 82

Lucian Shepherd, theology, died 1986, age 81

Theodore Swan, NRF

Stewart Swartout, gas station operator, NORF

Mary Toomey, NRF

Lillian Traxler, NRF

Viola VanDeWalker (Hughes), died 1968, age 61

Dorothy VanLuven (Case), accountant, secretary, died 1985, age 79

Stuart K. Wager, business, civil engineer, died 1983, age 77

Gerald Waite, Watertown Times state editor, died 1933, age 25

Lawrence Walker, NRF

Clara Westcott, NRF

Kathleen Whearty (Evans), teacher, died 1997, age 91

Errington A. Whiteford, paper industrialist, died 1982, age 77

Arthur Wilson, operated gas station, NORF

Charles F. Wright, artist, died 1942, age 35

Mary Wylie, NRF

Oleda Young, NRF

Who was making more noise in town of Wilna Court — the barristers or the hens and rooster?

How much more could 72-year-old Judge James H. Dawley take before he’d pound his gavel and send everybody home, including the notorious Pine Plains Gang?

And what should be done about the latest deposit on the evidence table?

Wednesday, May 6, 1896, certainly wasn’t a typical day in court for the judge of three decades.

The man on trial was Charles Carr, who at 22 was considered the ringleader of “an organized band of thieves and plunderers,” as a Syracuse newspaper described them. In fact, his reputation was soon to crown him “the king of the plains.”

The Pine Plains Gang made its headquarters throughout the “region of sandy barren flats, dotted with myriads of decaying pine stubs and broken at intervals by mirey cedar swamps, tangled ravines and deep hollows filled with stagnant water,” the Syracuse report continued. Today we know the area as Fort Drum.

The Pine Plains Gang was capable of committing any number of transgressions, not the least of which was rustling cattle — and even fowl — from their neighbors in such nearby communities as LeRaysville, Sterlingville, Great Bend, Carthage and all the way to Natural Bridge. And that was why the unpopular Mr. Carr, who also liked to steal men’s wives, was seated here before judge and jury.

The widow Mary Farrell was here too. She’d had her fill of having her hens stolen, as well as just about all of her household goods. She wanted justice, and that live black hen right over there on the evidence table was hers, she insisted.

The chief prosecution witness was a man named Savage, who claimed he had bought the fowl from Mr. Carr, fair and square.

Prosecutor Antonio F. Mills was ready to fight for Mrs. Farrell’s claim, while defense lawyer Frank T. Evans had insisted on a trial. He was accompanied by “a motley crowd” of “berry pickers” arriving “in full force,” according to a Carthage Tribune story that was picked up by other newspapers, including the Daily Journal of Ogdensburg. And Mr. Carr’s mother was there as well, with bushel baskets populated by four more hens and a rooster. They were evidence also, with Ma Carr contending that one of this special breed was what Mr. Savage had purchased from her son — not Mrs. Farrell’s squawker.

So what about the fowl Mr. Savage claimed he bought — the widow Farrell’s hen? Had he, and not Mr. Carr, stolen it? That was the challenge presented by Mr. Evans.

While the lawyers tried to impress jurors with their queries to sworn witnesses, “the hens in the baskets and the hen which had taken refuge in Squire Dawley’s cap on the table kept up a continual noise,” the Carthage paper reported. “First it was the hens, and then it was the lawyers, until one couldn’t tell which was which. The hens in the baskets would make so much noise that Mills would object, and Evans wanted the one on the table fined for contempt of court.”

The loudest of the cacklers was indeed the hen at issue. Judge Dawley could take no more; he instructed his court officer to get her out of the room. The bailiff quickly discovered what all the cackling was about — the widow Farrell’s hen had deposited an egg in the middle of the old magistrate’s cap.

The prosecution’s case went downhill from there. Mr. Mills had a key witness, Mary Britton, the wife of Lewis Britton. Charles Carr had “stolen” this woman from Mr. Britton about six months earlier, and she had given town Constable Edward Simmons an affidavit implicating Mr. Carr in the intrusion upon widow Farrell’s property. But suddenly, she was an uncooperative witness. She did not want to testify against Mr. Carr, and nothing could be done to change her mind.

When time came for the jury to get the case, Judge Dawley tossed it for lack of evidence, setting Mr. Carr free to go break the law again.

What the judge did with the egg, or his cap for that matter, the Tribune did not report.

Although Mary Britton was apparently not disciplined for her refusal to testify, she managed a few months later to land in the county jail. The 26-year-old was jailed a few weeks in February and March 1897 on a burglary charge.

Charlie Carr began making a name for himself in June 1891, when he was 17. A housewife in Carthage said he’d assaulted her. She wasn’t the only one; he kept on fighting, netting himself sentences in Jefferson County Jail in 1893 and 1896, the latter just three weeks after the fowl caper. The jail welcomed him back in November 1896, now accused of burglary.

Mr. Carr was due to stand trial in August 1897 for stealing a sheep from one of his neighbors, John Kinsson, but he was a no-show in court, having jumped the $200 bail that his father had posted for him. Pop Carr was out his 200 bucks.

It was the persistent pursuit by town of LeRay Constable Hamilton Timmerman that brought Carr and some of his allies to justice late in April and May 1898. One night, the constable approached a pasture where he heard three men talking. The men, with bundles on their shoulders, appeared to be looking for something on the ground. They panicked when the constable’s horse whinnied, and ran into the darkness.

Mr. Timmerman also retreated, but not before marking the spot, the Syracuse Herald reported. Come daylight, he returned and began digging where the trio had searched in darkness.

“On removing a layer of turf, he came upon what proved to be an old door, and upon taking this up, he found that beneath it was the entrance to a cellar or cave, some 10 feet square and near as deep,” the Herald reported. He found a coat and evidence that plunder had been stored here.

By month’s end, the constable had the infamous Mr. Carr in custody, “after considerable trouble,” the Watertown Re-Union reported. And he also recovered four wagon wheels that had been stolen 10 months earlier off William Wilbur’s wagon; Mr. Timmerman had recognized them when he saw them on Mr. Carr’s buggy.

Charles Carr was back to interfering in domestic tranquility early in the summer of 1899. At first, reporters were a bit stumped about the identity of the man who ran off with another man’s wife, as shown in this July 4, 1899, account in the Ogdensburg Daily Journal:

“John Hemmingway and wife were an apparently happy couple who for the past 15 years had lived in matrimony. Their home was at Reedsville, Lewis County, (a community later swollowed up into present day Fort Drum) and here they lived with their family of four children. Some time ago a young man named Charles Collar began paying attention to Mrs. Hemmingway and of course, this attention was not received with kindly eye by her husband. A few days ago, Mrs. Hemmingway asked her husband for some money ($4) with which she might buy provisions at Carthage. The husband granted the request and she hitched up their little black mare and started for Carthage. At some point on the way Charles Collar was met, and together they began their journeys. They drove from Carthage to Natural Bridge, from there to Antwerp, thence to Gouverneur, and from here to Canton. Where they went from Canton is not known, but the officers ... were able to trace them there. The husband is much infuriated, and is set on following them to the last stretch.”

Collar was said to be in his early 20s; Mrs. Hemmingway was 40.

An officer named Ostler tracked the couple doggedly, writing letters to his acquaintances throughout the region to put them on the watch. Sightings were reported at Waddington, Edwardsville and Chippewa Bay. Finally, the trail got hot enough by the end of July that Officer Ostler, assisted by George Alexander of Reedsville, caught the villain, finally identified as Carr.

“Hemmingway has taken back his wife, and they passed through this village (Gouverneur) yesterday, in company with their many children, and will visit friends at Hanawa Falls,” the Ogdensburg Daily Journal reported.

Aside from that incident, Carr, “a member of the Pine Plains gang which gave the officers so much trouble several months ago,” the Journal reported, was also facing a charge of killing a cow.

Pine Plains was, according to Syracuse newspaper accounts, “the breeding spot for crime near Watertown.”

Deputy Sheriff B.C. “Charlie” Budd of Carthage was given credit for “rounding up an organized band of thieves and plunderers, whose headquarters were the cabins of several of the members on the Pine Plains” in 1894. Their cabins were “invariabley crowded with ragged unkempt children and mongrel dogs.”

Named among the gang members were William and Louis Draper and Jim Brookmeyer, Melvin Phelps and Henry VanTassell, who “had for a long time been a terror and scourge to the surrounding country.”

William Draper, convicted of burglary, was sent in 1896 to Auburn prison for a three-year stay.

Edward Brotherton was arrested in 1897 for breaking into cottages at the Riverside campground at Felts Mills.

“Constable Hamilton Timmerman drove up to the place where he was supposed to be in hiding and arrived shortly after dark,” the Watertown Re-Union reported. “He walked into the house unceremoniously, discovered the fugitive seated at a table and proceeded to place him under arrest and bring him to Watertown.”

Eventually, Mr. Brotherton was sent off to the Monroe County prison.

The following year Constable Timmerman was still shadowing the Pine Plains outlaws. “There is still an organized gang of thieves on the Pine Plains,” he told a Syracuse reporter. “It is more than 50 years since the first organized gang of criminals was ferretted out and broken up, and since that time more than two score of criminals have been sent to the penitentiary from those sandy wastes.”

One of those was George Baker, who was convicted of burglary and dispatched to Auburn.

Others were Andrew Garvey, Warren Russell and Lysander William Steele.

Mr. Steele faced four indictments in May 1898. Stolen property, some received from Andrew Garvey, was his game. He had a $12.50 carpet belonging to Jacob Sixbury, a stove that owner John Rice valued at 50 cents, and some items missing from Henry N. Howard’s horse stable, including collar, sweat pad, rubber blanket and a whiffletree (a device used in connecting a horse harness to a carriage), all valued at $4, according to the Re-Union. Another charge was escaping from Constable Timmerman.

And then there was Joseph Cramer, said to be an accomplice of Charles Carr. Cramer was one of those guys who spent more time behind bars than on the outside. Between 1889 and 1901, he was booked into the county jail 15 times. His first venture was forgery, but the majority of his early bookings were for drunkenness. He stepped it up to assault in 1891 and three years later began to tinker with burglary, robbery and theft. Seven times he was sent to prison.

One episode took place in December 1899, after a jury convicted him for the killing of a heifer and the sale of its hide. At his sentencing by County Judge Edgar O. Emerson, Cramer, one of Watertown’s “best known police court characters,” the Re-Union reported, “made a sensational speech, asserting that he was innocent and that the court and every one else but the 12 jurors knew it.”

A prosecution witness against Mr. Cramer was none other than his partner in crime, Charles Carr. For his testimony, Charles got a day’s break from prison.

Joe Cramer was back in Judge Emerson’s court in May 1902, this time for robbery. And off he went on the familiar trek to Auburn, with a reservation for a six-year stay.

Judge Emerson was quite familiar with members of the Pine Plains Gang, inasmuch as he presided on the County Court bench about 18 years, from 1893 to 1911. Born in the town of Brownville, he was 74 when he died Dec. 14, 1923, at his 324 Keyes Ave. home.

Wilna Judge Dawley, a native of Maine, could boast that in his 36-plus years as a magistrate, serving also in his later years as Carthage village judge, he was never defeated in an election. He died in October 1898, survived by his wife, two sons and a daughter.

The barristers in Judge Dawley’s fowl trial both conducted their law practices in Carthage. Antonio Mills, a graduate of Albany Law School, was just starting his career when he took on the hens. Perhaps it was this trial that steered Mr. Mills in a different direction.

“He was not a trial lawyer,” said his Sept. 16, 1935, obituary in the Watertown Daily Times, “specializing rather in the handling of estates and insurance.” He died at age 63.

Mr. Evans was 43 at the time of the Carr trial and had “quite a reputation as an attorney,” according to his July 9, 1913, obituary in the Times. He was 60 when he died.

Of the lawmen who practically made careers out of tracking the Pine Plains Gang, we find record only of Charlie Budd. Born in 1848, he served as a Jefferson County deputy sheriff and as a Carthage police officer. His March 1900 obituary in the Watertown Herald reported that he and Watertown police chief Miles Guest “have together chased many a criminal, from petty thief to murderer, across the Pine Plains and brought them to justice. It was Mr. Budd who first brought Charles Carr, the notorious leader of the Pine Plains gang, to justice. His one boast was that after he once laid hands on a criminal (the bad guy) might as well give up.”

We wish to thank one of our readers, Terry Baker, for cluing us into the Pine Plains Gang and for giving us direction for research. Times librarian Lisa Carr assisted with research, and Mary Grant of the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department helped scour through century-old jail records. Resources at Jefferson County Surrogate Court were also utilized.