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AN EARLY CATHOLIC SETTLEMENT. 33
“ Cornelia,”$ with keel ninety feet long, and beam of twenty-
two. On Saturday, September 22, of the same year, the
iloating “ Cornelia ’ ’ made her nrst trip to Lowville.
So far in this paper we have touched mainly on what may
be styled James Le Ray’s business standing in the community.
‘We go back now to his colonization scheme in J'e&'erson and
its neighboring counties in the first quarter of the century. It
will be remembered that Le Ray measured his land by hun-
dreds of thousands of acres. Hither by attractive offers he
succeeded in drawing large numbers of immigrants-French,1‘
Irish and Germans, all prospective buyers, though doubtless
not all of equally desirable character, to settle down on his
lands, chieliy along the Black River.I
The Irish colonists (at least many of them) had come direct
from “the old country ” to Canada--to Quebec, where being
met by Le Ray’s agents they were induced to wend their way
to the newly opened settlement at Carthage.
Le Ray is represented as having been a man of much amia-
bility, a liberal and popular landlord,eone full of enterprise,
all which was enough to draw settlers to his home, where
besides their chance to get land on easy terms, they were
" This name was given doubtless in memory of Madame Cornelia Juhel, whose
daughter had been married to Vincent Le Ray.
f Haddock (p. 329) speaks of the elder Le Ray’s purpose to supply homes to French
refugees, who were leaving France in large numbers in order to escape the terrors oi
the great Revolution. I
I I am tempted here to add a brief sketch of one of these agents of Le Ray,-Patrick
Somerville Stewart, for fifty years his attorney, and entrusted by him with the charge
of his estates in New York.
Mr. Stewart, :1 Scotchman by birth, having first seen the light of day at Edinburgh,
on August 4, 1791, came to the United States when about fourteen years of age. In 1835,
Mr. Le Ray choose him as agent. Some twenty years earlier, in 1815, Mr. Stewart had
married one Marie Jeanne Cornu, in the service of the Le Ray family, a native of Brest,
in France, where she was born on September 28, 1791, by whom he had eight children,
one ofthem afterwards the wife of L. J. Goodale, whose name as well as his father-in-
1aw‘s, will be frequently met in these pages.
Mr. Stewart and his wife both lived and died at Carthage, where they are buried, he
going to his eternal rest on November r, 1874; his widow on February 15, 1876.
A friend, who was well acquainted with both these old Carthaginians, relates of
Mrs. Stewart, that besides being an excellent woman, she always kept Catholic ser-
vants, whom she was wont to remind of their church feasts and fasts; that moreover
(as far as one could judge from casual utterances) she seemed to be in heart in utter
sympathy with the Catholic Church and its doctrines; and doubtless (he believes)
would have been Catholic by profession, only for the stout adherence of her children
to Methodist tenets. of which they were earnest followers along with their father.