Hello to Our Website Friends!
 
We are very excited to have a great exhibit of Hammond People at Work, done by NCPR as part of the "North Country at Work" project..  The 24 photos that the NCPR team enlarged into 18 x 24 size are very nicely displayed in our main museum with descriptions and some have a bar code so you can listen on your smart phone to the related work story.   http://www.northcountryatwork.org/browse/?pDate=1860%2C2010&search=hammond%2C%20ny&pPage=1

 
Our new website is up and running, thanks to Erica Demick Garllock.  If you have any suggestions, we are more than happy to hear about them. Just email us at [email protected]

Below is what our 2018 year looked like for a year packed full of activities, expecially commemorating the 200th anniversary of the Scottish coming to Hammond & Rossie.
 

Jun 12, 2018 — Drive around Hammond - a small town on the St. Lawrence River in northwestern St. Lawrence County - and you might notice a one of the beautifully built, old stone houses scattered around town, most of which are nearly 200 years old.
Donna Demick, the Hammond Museum Director, has been researching them for years, and says at one point there were over forty stone homes plus a large stone commercial block at Hammond Corners, all built by one particular group of people: Scottish settlers.  

They built with stone not because it was particularly easy or convenient (wood was the natural and wide-spread choice all over the North Country, being cheap, fast, and killing two birds with one stone by clearing forest for farmland), but because it's what they knew - Hammond's stone houses look an awful lot like traditional Scottish crofter's cottages, the kind built by poor tenant farmers a few hundred years back.

Hammond saw a huge influx of those poor farmers starting in 1818, when the first Scottish settlers arrived and bought land from a Mr. Parish, a land speculator who bought 29,000 acres along the St. Lawrence River in 1814. He was looking to sell it off in parcels and start clearing the land for farming and logging, and sent land agents to Montreal to entice newly arrived immigrants south to the Hammond and Rossie areas........

VIEW FULL ARTICLE HERE

Full Article in Watertown Daily Times | MAY 2018

HAMMOND — The residents of Hammond will be paying homage to the Scottish immigrants who settled the area 200 years ago, with a series of special events throughout the summer.
Although the town wasn’t officially incorporated until 1827, the community of Hammond has existed much longer, according to historian Donna Demick.

She said this year’s planned bicentennial of Scottish immigration honors those who settled the community beginning in 1818, nearly a decade before the township was formed by splitting off from the nearby towns of Morristown and Rossie.

She said one of the most common stories is that David Parish, who owned vast tracts of land across the region, lured Scottish immigrants to what is now Hammond with a promise of free farmland and other amenities of the day.
“Mr. Parish sent an agent up in Canada where they were and lured them with the promise of 10 acres of land, a log cabin, provisions for the first year, a cow and a pair of oxen to share between every two settlers,” Ms. Demick said. “I mean, he made it look really good.”

She said the historical accounts point to those first Scottish settlers putting down stakes along what is now the Chippewa Bay Road in Hammond. In many cases they did not find the open spaces and easily tillable bottom land that Mr. Parish’s agent had promised.

“They had to forge their way through the forest to get to land and then clear the land,” she said. “It turns out he was just putting a cookie out there.”

Ms. Demick said she is not sure whether the settlers received the free land and other perks they had been told awaited them. But what the immigrants did find, Ms. Demick said, was a beautiful landscape near the St. Lawrence River, one very similar to what they had left in Scotland.

“They found a lot of stone,” she said. “They started with log cabins and eventually, when things got settled, they started using the sandstone, which was right in their back yard and easy to get. That’s why we still have 40 stone houses in the town.”

Following is a tentative list of events beginning this month. For more information contact Ms. Demick at 315-528-4742.

■ May 19: The public is welcome to join students to place Scottish flags next to the immigrants’ gravestones. The event will take place at 10 a.m. in all five Hammond cemeteries. The Pleasant Valley Cemetery houses approximately 100 of the 200 recorded Scottish immigrants.
■ May 28: Memorial Day parade will honor Scots who served in the military.
■ June 25 to July 13: Three mystery sightings of Kelpie, the St. Lawrence River beast, will occur.
■ July 14: A Celtic music party from 7 to 9 p.m.
■ July 15: Legendary Celtic harpist Kim Robertson will perform at the Iva Smith Art Gallery at 4 p.m.
■ July 16: “Three Weeks in the Highlands.” Mark and Louise Scarlett, Susie Wood and David Duff will present a photo talk at the Hammond Historical Museum at 7:30 p.m.
■ July 18: Hammond Historical Museum will be open from 10 to 6 p.m. with Scottish-themed displays and merchandise for sale.
■ July 18: Hammond farmers and artisans market from 3 to 6 p.m. with some Scottish-themed items.
■ July 18: Tartan weaving with Harriet Burris
■ July 20: Scottish stone house bus tours beginning at 9 a.m.
■ July 21: Main celebration at the Hammond Historical Museum. Events planned throughout town all day, to include Highland Games competitions and blacksmithing, sales and music.