The town and village of Lowville have a rich history dating back to the late 1790s, when the first settlers put down roots at a time pre-dating the County’s formation. Since those early days, Lowville has been the prominent point in Lewis County due largely to its early focus on education, the entrepreneurial and spirited efforts of its merchants and businesses, its central location, and the large number of influential citizens that decided to call the community home.

Prior to the 1790s, however, there is a considerable lack of knowledge about the northern sections of New York State, and even evidence of people passing through the area is sparse. Ancient maps of the North Country simply referred to the area as a “dismal wilderness” in the “Land of the Iroquois,” full of “beavers and otters” – but in fact no surveyors or documenting explorers are known to have spent time in the area. Indeed, so little was known of the Black River region generally, that the river itself shows on no map before 1795 and, when first plotted, it was erroneously shown to run due north into the St. Lawrence River at Oswegatchie on one map and due west from the Moose River to Lake Ontario on another.

In pre-Revolutionary times, with a couple of exceptions, the area making up Lewis County had been largely avoided by the early explorations of the French adventurers, or the missionary zeal of the Jesuit missionaries or even by the British as their soldiers spread through other parts of the State. This would not have been unusual, as there were no permanent Indigenous settlements or settler homesteads located here to be visited in the times before settlement began in the mid to late 1790s.

The tribes of the commonly known “Six Nations” Iroquois Confederacy were mostly south of Lewis County, and those of the less commonly known “Seven Nations of Canada” Confederacy were mostly situated along the St. Lawrence River and well to the north. Of the archeological and Indigenous peoples evidence that does exist, it generally appears that the Black River valley, the Tug Hill plateau and the western slopes of the Adirondacks were used only as transitional hunting and fishing grounds – occasionally by the Oneidas of the Six Nations (in the southern part of the County) and the Iroquois of the Canadian Seven Nations (in the northern parts of the County).

It was not until the State’s sale of a huge tract of land in the North County in 1791 (some 3,670,715 acres, or over a tenth of New York State) to New York City residents Alexander Macomb and his silent partners, William Constable and Daniel McCormick, that knowledge of this area began to take shape. This sale, known as “Macomb’s Purchase,” was pure land speculation, but it quite quickly opened the North Country to settlement.

All of what now is Lewis County was initially subdivided by Constable and put in the hands of land developers and speculators, and these men, in turn – many of whom never set foot in Lewis County – began to further subdivide, develop and sell tracts and plots of land in the area.

One of those men was Nicholas Low, a patriot of the Revolutionary War, a well-to-do merchant in New York City, and a friend of many eminent men of his day. In the mid-1790s, Low acquired several large tracts of land in the North County from that portion of Macomb’s Purchase then known as the “Black River Tract.” Low’s purchases comprised what is today Adams and Watertown in Jefferson County and Lowville in Lewis County. 

Low had the Lowville tract, known then as Township 11, promptly surveyed by the acclaimed surveyor Benjamin Wright (later the chief surveyor on the Erie Canal) – and the township was subdivided into 40 lots. Low then appointed the 24-year old Silas Stow, a native of Connecticut, as his agent, conveyed approximately a fifth of the acreage in the central part of Township 11 to Stow – what would come to be known as Stow Square – and he had Stow open all of his lands for sale.

Stow would later stop at the office of New York’s Surveyor General, Simeon De Witt, in Albany in the summer of 1799, and “procured him to enter onto the map the name of Lowville” in Town No. 11 – and since that time it has been known as Lowville.

But even before that, Stow had begun actively looking for buyers. With Wright’s surveys in hand, the lands of Lowville were described as being “very good, especially in the South part, the soil excellent”… “various trees and many places along the river… exceedingly handsome.” And as a result of his solicitations, the first settlers begin to travel to the area in 1797-1798, acquire property and settle here, both around Mill Creek in Lowville and a few miles north in Stow Square. Daniel Kelley would build the first mill; Jonathan Rogers would build the first inn; and Fortunatus Eager would build the first store.

So it was during the last decade of the 18^th-century that a substantial immigration of pioneers to Lowville and the North Country began. This was a difficult undertaking, as it was a vast wilderness, and the fields and forests had yet to feel a wood-cutter’s axe or a farmer’s plow. These early settlers found their way by following a line of blazed trees and crude roads from Fort Schuyler (Utica) or Fort Stanwix (Rome) northerly to the now communities of Remsen, Boonville, Leyden (Talcottville-Locust Grove), Constableville (then Shaler’s Mill) or Collinsville and thence either to High Falls (Lyons Falls) to continue by boat or raft to Lowville or, if by land, on through Deweyville or Turin through the “eleven mile woods” to Lowville.

On March 14, 1800, Lowville formally became a town of Oneida County by act of the New York State Legislature. Initially, the town included all of modern day Lowville, plus all of what today is the town of Denmark south of the Deer River (the north side of the river was Champion). Its present dimensions were re-set by the Legislature in 1803.

Residents of the new town of Lowville lost no time in calling a town meeting: the record shows that on April 1, 1800, a meeting was held at the house of Silas Stow where Daniel Kelley was chosen supervisor, Moses Coffeen town clerk, and other citizens were chosen to fill the offices of assessors, commissioners of highways, overseers of the poor, a constable and collector, pathmaster for each of the five road districts, poundmaster and fence viewers. Finally, local laws were enacted (concerning the control of hogs by yoke), taxes were assessed (to raise four dollars), annual town meetings were scheduled, and a committee was appointed to find a suitable place for the purpose of a burying ground.

Although current names would come later, within the first 10 years of Lowville’s existence, the following streets (essentially rough wagon trails) had been established and were in use: State St.; River St.; Stow St.; Water St.; Shady Ave.; Clinton St.; and Bostwick St. In addition, the following roads had been laid out and were in use: the Old State Rd., the River Rd. (now Number Four Rd.) down to the Black River, the East Rd., the Number Three Rd., the West Rd., the road to West Martinsburg, and the road to West Lowville and on to New Boston.

Families began to slowly spread throughout the town – Stow Square, West Lowville, Dadville (or Smith’s Landing), along the highwater marks of the Black River, and clustered next to the new roadways that were being laid out across the town.

But it would quickly become the area along the banks of Mill Creek, and the hills overlooking them, where more and more people would put down roots. Multiple mills were established up and down the creek. Taverns, inns, and hotels were established; hardware, dry goods and grocery stores sprang up; as did houses, churches, schools and the like. On the north side of Mill Creek, much of modern day Lowville is located on what was originally the farm of Jonathan Rogers.

The first log school house was built in Lowville along Mill Creek in 1803, although home schooling had begun several years before that. The first public provision for schools in the town was made in 1813, and a two-room stone school house was built on State St., just south of today’s Methodist Church. But the biggest boost to Lowville was the early decision by Lowville’s founding citizens to charter the private school, Lowville Academy, in 1808. That school would go on to attract students from all over the North Country who were desirous of an education. And Lowville Academy, though now public, continues to excel to this day.

From the earliest days, religious organizations took hold. Silas Stow had held Episcopal services in his house from at least 1800, Daniel Kelley held Free Will Baptist services at a house in Stow Square from 1799, and travelling Methodist preachers are reported to have held services as early as 1798 at Noah Durrin’s home at the Lowville Landing on Black River. The first church building in Lowville (a Methodist Episcopal church) was erected in 1805. In rough order, the other churches to be established in Lowville and Stow Square were: the Congregational Presbyterian Church (1805); the First Congregational Society of Lowville (1807); the Free Communion Baptist Church (1816); the Presbyterian Church (1818); the Lowville Presbyterian Society (1820); the Lowville Baptist Society (1824-25); the Society of Friends (1825); the Evangelical Lutheran Society (1827); the Old Schools Baptists (1834); and Trinity Church (1838). Of them all, the First Presbyterian Church on N. State St. remains the oldest church building in Lowville (and, indeed, the County) still standing (1831).

Over the rest of the first half of the 1800s, Lowville saw a gradual increase in service providers, which in turn would become a key to its future growth:  attorneys; bakers; blacksmiths; boot makers; butchers; dentists; druggists; dry goods purveyors; grocers; gun smiths; hardware merchants; land agents; masons and bricklayers; milliners; physicians; and stone cutters. Those businesses not only brought people from around the County to Lowville for their services, but increasing more and more people built houses and lived in the community, as well.

A number of Lowville’s earliest structures from this period remain: the Judge’s Quarters on S. State St. (c. 1800-02); the Isaac Clinton House on Clinton St. (c. 1808); the painted brick Stephens Tavern on N. State St. (c. 1809), the stone Jabez Carter House on River St. (c. 1810); the brick 1812 House on N. State St. (c. 1812); Bostwick Hall on Reed’s Terrace (c. 1821); the painted brick Boshart House on upper N. State St. (c. 1825); the Calvin Lewis stone house on W. State St. (c. 1826); the old stone Presbyterian Church (c. 1831); the stone Lewis Hat Factory on W. State St. (c. 1832); and the stone Northrup Knapp House on N. State St. (c. 1840).

The second half of the 1800s saw Lowville’s growth and establishment growth as the County’s principal business, municipal and transportation hub. It became the County’s first incorporated village in 1854 and took over as the county seat ten years later, in 1864, when it finally wrestled the County’s administrative center and seat of government away from the declining community of Martinsburg.

By 1855, Black River Canal traffic had arrived in Lowville, with landings at Lowville Landing (originally Spafford’s Landing) and Smith’s Landing (now known as Dadville). But even more important to Lowville’s growth was the arrival of the first rail line in 1867, the Utica and Black River Rail Road. And with that, Lowville began to develop as the County’s principal shipping hub.

Across the Town (as over much of the County) agricultural production was increasing, both in terms of cash crops and particularly dairy farming. Farmers exchanges were set up and produce buyers like Miller, Richardson, Easton, and Rea began to concentrate in Lowville, acquiring much of the produce from Lewis County farms and beyond – products like potatoes, hops, oats, barley, eggs, butter and cheese – and in turn shipping it from Lowville to markets outside the County. Cheese factories sprang up in such numbers that, by 1900, B.B. Miller & Son (later Miller Richardson) had built the Lowville Cheese Cold Storage Plant along the railroad tracks in the Village, which would go on to become the largest cheese cold storage facility in the world, from which millions of pounds of cheese were shipped all across the county.

Manufacturing concerns were started: carriage and wagon makers; chair factories; door, sash and blind factories; furniture manufacturers; iron foundries; and machine shops. And because of the need for business and home financing, banking concerns developed, with the First National Bank of Lowville (later Lewis County Trust Company and now Community Bank) and the Black River National Bank (later National Bank of Northern New York and now Key Bank) setting up shop in the Village.

While their names changed over time, major hotels like the Bateman, the Strife House, the Central, the Windsor, and the Lowville Mineral Springs House were also built during this period. Noted photographers like William Mandeville and H.M. Beach set up studios in Lowville. And as the community’s stature increased in importance, newspapers like The Journal and Republican, The Lewis County Democrat and The Lowville Times increasingly brought news not only to the town but most of the County. And although downtown Lowville suffered several major fires during this period, it always quickly rebuilt – and built back better.

By the early decades of the 1900s, the Village had a thriving downtown. Brick buildings and blocks lined State St., Dayan St. and Shady Ave., housing professionals, merchants and other small businesses. Lowville had established its own municipal water system, brought electricity and telephone service to the community and begun moving from dirt, plank and cobbled streets to paved roadways. Employment opportunities existed at large and growing businesses like Haberer’s Furniture, the Asbestos Burial Casket Factory, Payne-Jones, Miller Richardson (later Kraft Cheese), Fulton Machine and Vice, and the Lowville Farmers Coop. A new short-line railroad (the Lowville and Beaver River Railroad) provided Lowville with a rail connection with Beaver Falls and Croghan, further increasing Lowville’s importance as a rail hub for the wood and paper products coming from those communities.

As the first half of the 20^th Century progressed, Lowville continued to build and expand. The Village limits were increased significantly to the south and east. Municipal services increased: all of Lowville’s streets were paved; building code and zoning ordinances were first put in place; the Village built its first municipal sewers and sewer system; the reservoirs atop Reservoir Hill were expanded; and the Village acquired and established a village dumping ground north of Lowville (today’s Lewis County Solid Waste Transfer Station).

The Town built a new concrete “High Bridge” on outer Dayan Street. The Village embarked on the County’s first major reforestation project on the Lowville Waterworks property in Watson, ultimately planting 750,000 trees – which in turn led to the State’s establishment of the Lowville Tree Nursery in Dadville.

Lowville Academy became a public school and erected a new building on State St. (today’s high school); a new building for the Lowville Free Library was opened on Dayan St.; the Lowville Masonic Temple was erected in downtown Lowville;  St. Peter’s Church on Shady Ave was built; the Lewis County Hospital was constructed and opened as the first general care hospital in Lewis County; a new Post Office building was constructed and opened on State St.; and while a major fire at the Lewis County Court House damaged much of the building and the county’s extensive law library and destroyed a great many county records, a new brick, fire-resistant County Court House was quickly rebuilt. And that’s the way it was over the course of Lowville’s first 150 years or so.

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