To view full size images and read captions, click on an image.
If you enjoy local history, put Saturday May 10, 2025, on your calendars! That day, the Chateaugay Historical Society will be hosting:
Details for all of these activities are in the following Press Release:
PRESS RELEASEThe Chateaugay Historical Society is busily involved in the planning and development of our Summer 2025 activities. We will be honoring our community’s founders: Nathan Beman and Benjamin Roberts.
Both first came here in the summer of 1795 when they were part of a survey party that was tasked with laying out the Great Lots of what would soon become known as “Four Corners” or Chateaugay. They were so impressed with the wilderness here that they both returned the next year with their families and became the first settlers in Chateaugay.
Our events will begin on Saturday May 10, 2025, when an opening ceremony will be held at the newly completed information kiosk at the Nathan Beman Homestead Site on the Chasm Road, approximately .2 miles from Route 11.
At 10:00 that morning, a short dedication and ribbon cutting ceremony will open this significant location from Chateaugay’s earliest history. The events will be less than 30 minutes long. No seating or restrooms will be provided. Attendees are welcome to bring a chair if desired.
The formal ribbon-cutting and opening of the Beman kiosk will be followed by a light reception in the Public Meeting Room on the second floor of the Chateaugay Town Hall at 191 East Main Street. Coffee, other drinks and pastries will be provided.
Adjacent to the reception in the Meeting Room, the Society’s Archival Center will be open as we debut our Summer 2025 exhibit: “Nathan Beman and Benjamin Roberts: The Founders of Chateaugay”.
In addition to the kiosk and exhibit openings that day, we will also be unveiling our other major project: A Heritage Trail in Chateaugay. The Society will have placed thirty historic markers throughout the town and village at that point. In addition, we have identified another twenty-one buildings and sites of historic significance and will also be marking all twelve cemeteries and burial grounds throughout the Town of Chateaugay. On May 10, we will have our newest publication available. It is a 100+ page full-color book of 60+ significant sites in Chateaugay. This guide to our local Heritage Trail will be complete with maps, photos and illustrations. It will also provide more in-depth details and some history for each location. In addition to the printed booklet, the Heritage Trail information will also be available via a QR code (found on any of the historic markers) which will allow phone and tablet users to utilize an online version of the booklet.
Using either the printed or electronic versions, anyone interested will be able to do a self-guided driving tour of all 60+ sites within our town.
Also, if you prefer to walk, the markers and sites within the village lend themselves to an enjoyable walking tour of those thirty-one locations. The thirty-two sites outside the village limits would still await the driving portion of your Heritage Trail experience.
May 10, 2025, will be an eventful day for Chateaugay as we celebrate even more of its unique and colorful history.
If you are able to, please join us for any or all the events on that day: the kiosk dedication, the reception, the exhibit opening, or exploring our local Heritage Trail.
To view full size images and read captions, click on an image.
Earlier today on the "I am From Chateaugay" page, Willard Selkirk posted a photo of a starch mill on the Marble River. This was an image Scott Durant had previously posted. Scott, by the way, has an amazing and vast collection of area historical photos.
Above is the Historical Society's high-resolution scan of the original photo, which was taken by Holmes Photo Studio of Chateaugay in the early 1890s. It is of the Jenkins starch factory on the Earlville Road. A photo of the area, taken this afternoon, is also posted above.
The starch mill was first built by Thomas Bennett around 1850. About 1870, he sold to Adams and Jenkins, who operated it as partners for a short time. It was solely owned and operated by William F. Jenkins from 1871 to 1891, when he sold it to G.H. Main and John Percy. Main's interest in the operation was soon bought out by Nathan Beman (the grandson of Nathan Beman-one of Chateaugay's founders). Beman appears to have been a silent partner as John and Elizabeth Percy operated it until 1893. They ceased operations that year and the mill never operated again.
Charles R. Green bought the vacant starch mill and five acres around it in 1910. The factory building was torn down the same year.
The farm at the top of the hill was owned by Alanson Green and later by Walter and Adelaide Silver. The farm obscured by the trees was owned by Charles Green, and later by Matthew Sheehan, James and Marilyn Jones and Neil and Shirley Cook. The farm on the very top right was owned by P. Bennett, and later by Spencer and Linda Dumont.
The mill dam can be seen to the center right with the penstock running to the mill building. At the center bottom is a spring covered by a pumphouse that sent water up the hill to the farms there.
The child in the buggy is believed to be Gordon Russell Green, son of C.R. Green. The man at the watering trough and the two women standing by the fence are unidentified, but the man and one of the ladies could well be Gordon Green's parents: Charles Russell Green and Cynthia Hawthorne Green. Gordon R. Green would eventually become the president of the First National Bank of Chateaugay.
More on this starch operation in an upcoming article in the Chateaugay Historical Society's newsletter entitled: Starch Factories in Chateaugay. This particular industry is noteworthy as Chateaugay was the top potato producing town on the Rutland Railroad. Not only were uncounted tons of potatoes shipped in bulk by rail, but an equally impressive tonnage ended up in local starch operations.
To view full size images and read captions, click on an image.
The first photo was posted this week by Willard Selkirk on the "I am From Chateaugay, New York" page. It is of the interior of one of the District Schools in Chateaugay. It is believed to be the school at the Forge. Note the design elements in the photo above; the tin ceiling, the moldings, high ceilings, and large windows (although the shades are drawn in this image). This image prodded my memories of school built in Chateaugay. Eventually referred to as the "old school", it sat on the east end of Church Street and began as the Chateaugay Academy which was built in 1879 (see second photo). Over the years, several additions were constructed. By the 1940s and '50s it was just referred to as "Chateaugay High School" (see third photo). It was closed in the fall of 1954, when the new Chateaugay Central School was opened on River Street. When centralization took place all of the 17 small, District (or "Country") Schools were closed, and all students eventually attended the new River Street complex (see fourth photo for a map of the 17 District Schools). The school on Church Street was considered as state-of-the-art when it was built in 1879 and the major additions that followed kept the building in top repair and filled with the latest educational resources and design details. The fifth and sixth photos show views from inside the "Old School" - the first is looking down on the main entrance as students were entering and the second is the music room. The seventh photo shows one of the elementary classrooms. The eighth image shows the old building during demolition in 1958. The final two photos are of the Church Street grounds after the old building had been demolished. Who knows how many hundreds (or thousands) of us skated at the rink on the Old School grounds? Kids would skate until their feet were too cold to continue, go into the skating house to warm up next to the stove, and go right back out and skate some more. Music blared from the speakers outside the skating house, the clear winter sky would display its twinkle of countless stars overhead, and skaters would go around and around on the rock-hard ice that was kept in prime condition by Doug Barnes, Jack Rosen, and so many others who ran the operation over the years. Cold conditions, but many, many warm memories of Chateaugay back in the day!!
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