19th Century Ti — Thoughts from ‘Horse Citizen’

A writer using the penname “Horse Citizen” suggested that the annual “Ice Meeting” horse trading event held locally be renamed the “Ticonderoga Horse Exchange” to recognize the prominence of the community.

It couldn’t match the heat and humidity of Saratoga in August, but in the 1870s, Ticonderoga was the January place to be.

“We are approaching the annual ‘Ice Meeting,’ for which we have become so justly celebrated. Ticonderoga can boast the finest show of young horses that can be found anywhere between New York and Montreal,” Horse Citizen wrote in the Jan. 16,1875 issue of the Ticonderoga Sentinel.

“These meetings cannot with fairness be called a meeting for jockeys, but one at which you have an opportunity to show your horses to good advantage to men of means, who are looking for picking up good horses and willing to pay large prices for the same.”

In other Jan. 16, 1875 Ticonderoga Sentinel news:

• Industry: The cotton factory manufactured 35,000 yards of cloth that week and Burleigh’s Saw Mill was set to begin operations the following week.
• Elizabethtown weather: “We are now having some cold weather. — Ice was never better and in time is being improved and ice houses filled.”
• Hague history: “The ax of the lumberman had not yet leveled the forest (in 1845). The deer, the lear, the fox, and other animals roamed at their pleasure. Trout Brook flowed from its source through the valley, and was filled with beautiful trout. All was profound stillness save the growl, the bay and the hoot of the wild animals and birds of the forest.
• Quotable: “M. Gilligan refused a cigar the other day. Strange! Wonderful! Incomprehensive! — Is he sick?”

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