Clark Maine of Hermon.

Russelltown to Marshville

Clark Maine was born on 8 May 1815 in Russelltown, a hamlet in the township of Franklin, Huntingdon County, Quebec, just over the line from Clinton and Franklin counties in New York. It was the last year of the War of 1812, and that corner of southern Quebec had been fought over two years earlier. He was the son of Gilbert Maine and Thirea Calkins.

Gilbert had come north around 1804 after working on the new macadam roads in Montreal. With a future brother-in-law, Jacob Manning, he bought lots in Franklin, cleared the ash forest, burned the timber for potash and sold it in Montreal. The land was rocky. They farmed it anyway. Gilbert died while Clark was still young; by the 1825 census Thirea was head of the household with several children.

Clark came to Hermon, St. Lawrence County, by 1834. He was one of the earliest residents of Marshville, a mile south of Hermon village, and he appears in the town clerk's records and the land records from that year on. His brothers and sisters scattered: Lathrop stayed in Quebec and then moved to Burke, and his descendants became three generations of judges in Malone; Huldah married Albert Law and settled in Russell; Stephen and Benjamin went to Wisconsin.

Farmer, lawyer, Squire

He married Lucinda J. Miller in Hermon on 29 October 1836. She was born in Rutland, Jefferson County, in 1817, the daughter of Jared Miller and Lucinda Blackmer. They had seven children.

He farmed several properties in Marshville and, in the same years, acted as a lawyer for his neighbors: conveying land, entering deeds, trying civil cases. The census lists him as both. He served as town clerk for twelve years, was elected Town Supervisor for one term, in 1860, and sat on the county board of supervisors during the Civil War. For more than forty years he was a justice of the peace in Hermon. He tried cases and married a great many young couples. In 1880 he was the census enumerator for part of the town.

He was an early Republican, at a time when the new party had formed to stop slavery spreading west, and was a delegate to a New York judicial convention in the late 1850s. Later in life the town knew him as Squire Maine. Stan's aunt Florence called him Square Maine, for his square dealings in the justice court.

The war

Three of his sons went. Harrison enlisted in the 16th New York Infantry in May 1861 at eighteen, fought at First Bull Run, on the Peninsula, at Crampton's Pass, Fredericksburg and Salem Church, and mustered out a sergeant in 1863. Clark Jr. served in Battery E of the 1st New York Artillery with the Army of the Potomac at Petersburg. Erwin served in the heavy artillery.

The youngest, Elgin, born in 1849, travelled to Syracuse late in the war to enlist. The recruiters knew his father, and sent him home.

In the diaries and the papers

His diaries from 1869 to 1880 survive. They record farming, the cases he tried, and how he got around: on foot to the surrounding villages, by stagecoach, and for longer trips by train from DeKalb Junction. The newspapers of the day wrote about the large parties he and Lucinda gave for family and neighbors at Christmas, and about winter sledding.

They also record a murder. A Hermon bar owner was poisoned in his beer. Clark had spoken with him earlier that evening. As justice of the peace he followed the investigation and ordered the arrest of a local man, then testified at the county trial. The man was acquitted. A year later the dead man's son was tried, and acquitted. No one was ever convicted.

And one case that went against him. Around 1865, defending a woman in Hermon who happened to be his sister-in-law, he said something about the opposing lawyer loud enough to be heard. The lawyer sued for slander, and won a small fine.

Hermon Cemetery

His health failed in his last years but he kept working until he died at home on 29 August 1885. He is buried in Hermon Cemetery under a large monument, with Harrison's family around him. Lucinda lived until 10 December 1901 and is buried beside him. All of their children lie in Hermon except Elgin, who is in Bayside Cemetery in Potsdam.