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North Warren: The Heart of Your Adirondack Experience |
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Town of Horicon and the Civil WarMany of the men on the Town Clerk’s Enrollment List are from neighboring towns, and as one can see on the Enrollment List transcribed by Mr. Dunne on the Rootsweb site, they returned to their towns after their time at war had ended. Many more had moved to Horicon and returned there after the war.As I looked at the men who returned to Horicon, many went back to their farms and families, resuming their lives as they had been before. Some became the leaders of the town, something that might have happened anyway, but their war experience may have changed their view of our area. One such soldier was Austin Ross. Austin Ross was born in Vermont, but moved to Horicon at the age of 5. In August of 1864 he answered his country’s call and enlisted in the Union army for the remainder of the war. He was sent to the front from Plattsburgh with replacement troops, and they were assigned to the 142nd Infantry regiment which was recruited in St. Lawrence County. He came back to Horicon after the war and spent the remainder of his life working at farming and lumbering.  He had three, and to my knowledge, the only steamboats on Brant Lake, used to move logs from one end of the lake to the other. This, not the war, was what earned him the title of “Captain”. He did building jobs for many of the lake homes, and kept diaries of his life that show a man who knew no bounds in what he would try, including flying in one of the first airplanes in the area. As a Republican, he served the town in every elected position. He was supervisor in the 1880’s, and justice of the peace for 25 years.A correspondent from Brant Lake paid the following tribute to Captain Ross: “This town mourns the death of a grand old man, Capt. Austin A. Ross, eighty-six years old, who passed away to his eternal rest last Thursday morning. As a soldier we knew him, as a soldier he passed away. He was always the same—cheerful, quick to respond to a joke, ready to take one; ready to give in time of trouble, ready to help whenever he was needed in a big place or a little one. His memory will live on.” There were men who served more than one term, one for themselves and one for someone else, brothers who were killed and were the first to be buried in an Adirondack cemetery. Although we have no great national monuments to our war veterans, and whether the men of Horicon enlisted due to patriotism, hatred of slavery or economic need, we are proud of those who served from our community. Photos from the Horicon Historical Society’s Collection |
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