By Fred V Provoncha, coordinator, the Ticonderoga Heritage Museum
There are many Ticonderoga stories worth telling, here is
just one: I will tell you the ending of the story first:
:
SILAS B. MOORE, born 25 Aug
1854 in Chilson, to Silas Jewell Moore who was born in Ticonderoga in 1822, and
his wife Caroline died 20 Mar 1929 in Ticonderoga.
“Totally deaf and
blind for nearly two years, after having suffered a paralyzing stroke, and
undergoing indescribable suffering, a merciful death early yesterday morning
ended the torment of Silas B. Moore, aged Ticonderoga resident.
Mr. Moore was long associated with business
affairs of the community, and while he was impaired with partial deafness the
greater part of his life, it was not until two years ago that his eyesight
began gradually to fail. Slowly, day by day, his vision became dimmer and
dimmer, until finally the familiar scenes about him were forever blotted out.
Modern science was unable to aid him, and for the intervening two years he has
been confined to his home, unable to see or hear, enduring untold mental and
physical agony, living hours that must have seemed like endless days, until
death, in the form of a merciful angel, yesterday brought his earthly existence
to a close.” Endquote: And that was the sad ending of a very useful and
productive life.
Moving backward in
time, we can see a young healthy Mr. Moore beginning to build his gristmill in
1879-80 in the building where Agway now stands. The rectangular rear addition
was added in 1885. Across the street, he built a rooming house for his workers,
which also still stands today. But it should be noted that the rooming house
faced Wiley street, and was later turned around by the Ticonderoga Pulp and paper company in 1913 to face on
Montcalm. The river was much wider then, and the Agway building was built
directly on the waters edge. Some time after the gristmill, Silas had a large
sawmill constructed on the East side of the building, and over the water. Logs
from the D dam were routed into the mill to the saw. The water wheel that
powered the grist mill, also powered the sawmill. Sadly his sawmill and the one
behind the Library destroyed the fine salmon fishing that the LaChute had been
noted for. The river had its revenge in 1896, when water and mud swept through
the middle of town, damaging the Sawmill and rooming house, as well as the
Methodist church. I can find no record that he ever married, so wrapped up in
his business I guess, that he never found the time, so much the harder to
endure the end that fate had decreed for him.
Silas’s father had
married twice having children by both wives, Silas was one of four by the first
wife, and a half brother, Ralph J Moore a retired Ticonderoga policeman was a
son by the other. Ralph built a grain and wood store in 1929, just a hundred
yards away from Silas’s mills. In 2005, I bought that latter building, which
has become an apartment house, and where my wife and I now live..
The years have
passed, the pioneers of Ticonderoga have long since gone to their rest, it is
my hope, that her sons and daughters of today might remember them, and carry on
the process of building here a place where their children and their children’s
children can grow up and prosper. This spot on the Earth has always been
special, and together we may make it specialer…:--)
Comments,
corrections to: unclefvp@verizon.net