The Townships

By Christopher Miller

I want to first start with an apology. I neglected to thank a friend, Loretta Coltrane, for providing me additional information on my piece about Gallagher/Gallauher/Gollauher Township last week. Thank you, Loretta, for preserving the past and sharing some of your notes with me.

This week I head to Noyes Township in the western end of Clinton County.

As most of you may already know, Noyes Township was named in honor of Colonel A. C. Noyes, a prominent citizen who resided there. It was chopped off of Chapman Township in 1875 while the Colonel was still alive which is quite unusual as most of the other townships in the county tended to be named posthumously.
The Colonel, also known as Amos C. Noyes, was born in Grafton County, New Hampshire in 1818. At the time of his relocation to Clinton County from Emporium in Cameron County, he was fully engaged in the lumbering business. A news article from 1967 tells more about his time as a lumber man.

“In the lumbering business he met with great and merited success. He was at the head of the firm of Noyes, Bridgens & Co. who were at the time the largest square lumber dealers in the West Branch, and for many years his time was engrossed by the cares incident to so large and extensive a business, also by growing an interest in the momentous public and political questions then agitating the country, and which culminated ultimately in the Civil War.”

“During the Rebellion, he was an active and warmly interested Unionist, and exerted himself to the utmost to uphold the rights and honor of his state and country. In politics Col. Noyes (taking his title from a militia colonelcy which he held some years before) was a Democrat.”

As most people might know, the Colonel was a politician who had served five terms in the state legislature and afterward was elected state treasurer, but he had lost the nomination for state Governor.

He passed away, or as his obituary quite eloquently phrased it, “he calmly and peacefully passed out from the bright sunshine of life,” during the late summer months of 1880. “Starting life poor, he soon acquired valuable possessions, but he never defrauded a man out of a dollar. His great success in life was due to his superior judgment and business capacity.”

The book Historical View of Clinton County says that “its surface presents the same general appearance and characteristics as that of the adjoining township of Chapman, being rendered exceedingly uneven by hills and mountains.”

Natural resources abound here, both past and present. “No approximate estimate of the quantity or value of timber, pine, oak, and hemlock in the township can be given; but there are millions of feet, worth perhaps millions of dollars in value,” and a mention of the discovery of seams of bituminous coal being found in the mountains.

The principal industry back in the day was by far lumbering, though attention was also paid to the farmers. “Farming is beginning to receive, however, considerable attention, as the price of lumber has been so low and sales so unreliable that its manufacture is a very uncertain business to depend on,” (boy do I wish I could go back in time and buy that cheap lumber now!)

All of the early settlers of Noyes Township, prior to it being known then as Noyes, “were, as a general rule, noted for their hospitality as there were no hotels at that day, they fed and lodged each other free of charge and with no begrudging hand.”

Mail first arrived in the area around 1847 or 1848 when a post office was established at Kettle Creek but it did not last long having been discontinued, leaving the area without any for over a year, the nearest office being down in Cook’s Run. A post office was established at Westport in 1850.

There were originally three school houses in the township: Cook’s Run, Westport, and Shintown that were kept open during the warm months and had about 125 students enrolled.

I must not forget that the village of Bitumen is also within the confines of Noyes Township, but that was not established until after the book referenced above was published, prior to 1890. Bitumen and the old cemetery there is a fine specimen of a turn-of-the-century coal mining town. An annual “homecoming” celebration still takes place here around the fourth of July where past residents and those whose genealogy includes the location of Bitumen, gather for a church service and reunion.

Former President and Union General Ulysses S. Grant was also known to be a frequent visitor of the Westport area, having stayed in a few of the oldest homes there and fished in the river and Kettle Creek.
Today about 350 people call Noyes Township home, mostly within the southern portion of the township that hugs Route 120, but a great portion of the township is included in Sproul State Forest and the Bucktail State Park Natural Area. It is still as wild as it ever was…just with two major state roads criss-crossing through it: Routes 120 and 144.

If you get a chance, check out Route 144 in mid-October. It’s surely a beautiful sight to see.