Dear Rita,
In the mid-1820's, the State constructed/improved the Port Kent/Hopkinton
road. This was a main thorofare for many years after that. Port Kent is on
Lake Champlain. In those days, the Lake was the main transportation artery
in the region. The route was right through the mountains, so the
likelyhood of settlers/farmers planting themselves along the route was
low. Hopkinton is on the north slope of the mountains, in St. Lawrence
county about fifteen miles east of Canton. The 1830's and 40's were an era
of great growth in the North Country and the farmland around Canton is
rich with a longer growing season that in the mountains along the Port
Kent/Hopkinton route to the south and east. This was an area to which many
people living in more established communities in Vermont, New Hampshire,
Connecticut, and east-central New York migrated prior to the Civil War to
obtain fresh, fertile, cheap farmland.
Wayne Miller
Plattsburgh State University


On Wed, 26 Aug 1998 [log in to unmask] wrote:

> Dear Linda,
>
> I have been doing genealogical research in St. Lawrence County.  Several of
> the settlers in the DePyster/Canton area were from Hebron.  I wondered if
> there was a trail that settlers followed or a land agent may have been in
> Hebron sending people that way.  It just seemed odd that so many seemed to
> have come from Hebron.
>
> Rita Craska
>

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Wayne L. Miller                         Special Collections Librarian
Feinberg Library                        2 Draper Avenue
518-564-5206                            Plattsburgh, NY 12901
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        "I wonder what will happen today!"  -Maggie Muggins-
"Not even God can change history...which is why he tolerates historians."
                                        -Voltaire
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