The misadventures of Watertown's John Haddock
John A. Haddock had thought it would be "a very cunning thing" to ride high above earth in a basket fastened to a huge balloon. Several days later, after landing in the Canadian wilds, he found himself struggling to stay alive.
The north country has had many great adventurers, and John Haddock has to rank among the greatest of them.
A printer, editor and historian, he was also a manufacturer and a soldier who invaded a Canadian island during the Civil War. And at the age of 37, he had the rare opportunity of reading his own obituary in a Canadian newspaper.
Perhaps the irony of his life is that after fighting to survive after his air odyssey, his death decades later involved a more conventional means of travel: a train.
It was 150 years ago — precisely 5:33 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 22, 1859 — that a hot air balloon, the Atlantic, rose above Watertown's Public Square with two aeronauts, one of them experienced, the other the novice Mr. Haddock, proudly waving to the multitudes below. Their mission: simply a "short experimental flight." Or so it was billed.
The cheering masses — some 10,000 folk — were comfortable in the 84 degree air that prevailed for this summer finale event. But according to a thermometer provided to Mr. Haddock and his pilot, professor John LaMountain, by Watertown bank president Talcott H. Camp, the unseasonable warmth on the ground belied the reality above. "In eight minutes after leaving the earth, the thermometer showed a fall of 24 degrees," the journalist later wrote. "At 5:50, we were at least two miles high — thermometer 34."
Their birds-eye view lasted about four hours. The two men, already numbed by the cold, then drenched by a steady rain, and worse yet, aware they were off course, decided to return to solid ground. Ahead was a journey that would total a dozen days in which two chilled and hungry men pondered their fate.
The Atlantichad arrived in Jefferson County more than two months earlier, and not at all intentionally. Mr. LaMountain, of Troy, had launched from St. Louis on July 1 in the company of celebrated aeronaut professor John Wise of Lancaster, Pa., as well as St. Louis Republican editor William Hyde and A.O. Gager of Bennington, Vt. Their destination — the Atlantic, of course, via New York City and Boston.
They didn't reach the ocean, but their flight still set a record, 1,100 miles. Their goal was blown away by gale-force winds over Lake Ontario. Thwarted in an attempt to land at Rochester, the craft continued off-course, propelled by the storm.
"We saw the city of Oswego on our left, in passing, and at length our balloon struck in a piece of woodland at the mouth of Stony Creek," said Mr. Wise in an address to people at Henderson, quoted on July 7 in the Jefferson County News. "The iron grapple on our car caught hold of the trees, and broke them off like reeds, clearing its way through the branches, until striking an old elm, the balloon collapsed, and our journey ended. A person would scarcely believe the balloon could have made such havoc among the trees."
The site of their rough landing, according to the Jefferson County News, was "in the woods of Mrs. Whitney, in the town of Henderson, near the mouth of Stony Creek."
The four escaped with minor injuries, if not battered nerves. Mr. LaMountain, 28, remained determined to carry on, however.
The balloon and its basket were repaired in Watertown, and on Aug. 11 he took it for a solo run. This was not intended to be a test; it was yet another effort to reach the ocean. But the fuel he procured to inflate the balloon was inferior, and after elevating to 17,000 feet, he was back on the ground 80 minutes later near Perch Lake in the town of Orleans.
Still ahead was the flight that would test his endurance, and that of Mr. Haddock.
"I had heard of other newspaper editors making trips in balloons, had read their glowing accounts, and it seemed to me like a very cunning thing," wrote the editor of the Watertown Reformer. "I felt safe in going, as I knew that LaMountain was an intrepid and successful aeronaut, and I thought his judgment was to be depended upon."
John Haddock had been involved in the newspaper industry since he was an 11-year-old. Born in Sulphur Springs in 1822, he began his training with the Democratic Standard, a weekly paper in Watertown. His mentors brought him to Syracuse when he was 14 to continue his apprenticeship. He became associated with the Democratic Union of Watertown in 1846, and three years later was the sole publisher.
Now, he was setting out on the biggest story of his career.
A launch was set for Sept. 20, but a storm forced a two-day delay. Finally, after accepting numerous wishes for a happy voyage and God's blessings, "away we soared," he wrote.
"In an instant all minor sounds of earth had ceased, and we were lifted into a silent sphere, whose shores were without echo, their silence equalled only by that of the grave."
As they reached an elevation of what they believed to be two miles, "An unpleasant ringing sensation had now become painful, and I filled both ears with cotton." Soon the partners in flight were donning gloves and shawls. Their thermometer was registering 32 degrees.
The mercury continued to drop, eventually down to 18 degrees. While dealing with the chill, the men, Mr. Haddock especially, were choking from the nauseating fumes of their fuel.
By nightfall, they were over a vast wilderness, and Mr. LaMountain brought the craft back to earth.
"We rolled ourselves up in our blankets, patiently waiting for the morning. The cold rain spouted down upon us in rivulets from the great balloon that lazily rolled from side to side over our heads, and we were soon drenched and uncomfortable as men could be."
Come dawn, the rain failed to let up. They discarded some of their soaked cargo to lighten the vessel for a new launch. Once they were again soaring with the birds, viewing the wilderness below, "I began then to fully realize that we had indeed gone too far, through a miscalculation of the velocity of the balloon. As the current was still driving us towards the north, we dare not stay up, as we were drifting still farther and farther into trouble."
They made another landing, in the middle of nowhere, it seemed. And they found themselves ill-equipped for their next journey — a long hike in search of civilization.
"We had not a mouthful to eat," Mr. Haddock wrote. They had no means of starting a camp fire, no knife, no pin to fashion into a fishing hook.
"Indeed, we were about as well equipped for forest life as were the babes in the woods."
They correctly suspected they were in Canada, perhaps between Ottawa and Prescott.
They set out to the southeast and eventually came to a stream, which all that day they followed to the west, assuming it would lead them to some evidence of human occupation. They were encouraged when they arrived at a lumber road, but it was a dead end.
The weary hikers found a shanty for a night's shelter, but it was across the creek. Mr. LaMountain built a small raft from timbers and reached the opposite shore. But when Mr. Haddock's turn came for the crossing, "the frail structure sank under me, precipitating me into the water."
Straw blanketed them for the night. In the morning, the rested wanderers removed hollowed log halves that had formed the shed's roof and created a more secure raft.
All that day — it was now Saturday — they were carried by the stream and eventually into a lake. Then they paddled shore to shore, again seeking evidence of humanity. Undaunted by rain and darkness, they continued their voyage through the night into another creek, shooting some rapids and discovering another lake. Then another stream, and another lake. All day Sunday brought them no closer to rescue, it seemed.
"It had now been four full days since we ate a meal. All we had eaten in the meantime was a frog apiece, four clams and a few wild berries, whose acid properties and bitter taste had probably done us more harm than good. Our strength was beginning to fail very fast."
They backtracked and were rewarded. Hearing the sound of gunfire, they shouted out but apparently were not heard. They paddled until they saw smoke spewing from a hillside. And then, a canoe.
Paddling to shore, they approached a cabin where they were greeted by "a noble-looking Indian. Adding to their relief, the gentleman could speak English. They were introduced to a second man, a Scotchman, Angus Cameron.
"Imagine my surprise when he said we were 180 miles due north of Ottawa, nearly 300 miles from Watertown."
The Cameron party hosted the lost travelers, eventually delivering them on Saturday, Oct. 1, to an Indian party for a continued escort into civilization.
Told of the ill-fated balloon flight, a superstitious Indian woman spoke of it to her friends as a "flying devil." Said Mr. Haddock, "As we had travelled on this flying devil, it did not require much of a stretch of Indian credulity to believe that if we were not the Devil's children, we must at least be closely related."
Initially by horse, then by buggy, and finally aboard stagecoach, Mr. Haddock and Mr. LaMountain made their way to Ottawa. During a rest stop at a frontier post office, the Watertown newspaperman picked up a newspaper.
"In it read an account of our ascension and positive loss, with a rather flattering obituary notice of myself."
Later the afternoon of Oct. 3, they arrived in Ottawa and immediately went to a telegraph office to send home word of their survival.
"That was a happy moment — the happiest of all my life — when I knew that within 30 minutes my family would know of my safety."
Word spread quickly in Ottawa about the arrival of the missing adventurers. A crowd gathered to cheer them, and a hotel gave them free lodging for the night. A day later, they were receiving a hero's welcome in Ogdensburg. From there, during a train ride to Watertown, "All along the line of the road we found enthusiastic crowds awaiting our coming."
The send-off the two had been given on Sept. 22 was matched, if not exceeded, when they reached Watertown.
"The enthusiasm had reached fever heat, and the whole town was out to greet the returning aeronauts," Mr. Haddock wrote. An old cannon which at the time was part of the Public Square decor "belched forth the loudest kind of a welcome," he said.
Only his wife, the former Mary F. Lull — the first white child born in Theresa — had not given him up for dead.
"I felt very cheap about the whole thing, and was quite certain that I had done a very foolish act," he said.
Not long after his Canadian adventure, John Haddock became associated with Lotus Ingalls in publication of the Watertown Reformer, forerunner of the Watertown Daily times. Later, he was running Jefferson Cotton Mill on Watertown's Factory Square when the Civil War broke out. The separation of North and South tore apart his cotton business, however, and he enlisted in the 35th New York Volunteers. Appointed first lieutenant, responsible for recruiting, he went beyond his duty by leading a party of soldiers to capture Union deserters who had established a refuge camp on a Canadian island near Clayton.
The British government's protest prompted Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton to dismiss Mr. Haddock from the service for having "crossed into the territory of a friendly power and made an arrest there." But Mr. Stanton was quick to forgive — he commissioned Mr. Haddock a major in the invalid corps. After all, the British were sympathizers of the South.
Mr. Haddock was later appointed assistant provost marshal at Elmira, where he was accused of fraud and accepting bribes. He was convicted in a court-martial, but claimed his prosecutor, Roscoe Conkling, distorted evidence and put "things in a false light." He was fined $10,000 and jailed briefly.
When that scandal was behind him, he settled in Philadelphia, Pa., where he established a printing business. The operation and his savings were wiped out in a fire, prompting him to return to Watertown in 1893. He took up a centennial history of Jefferson County and also published "The Picturesque St. Lawrence."
Shortly before Christmas 1897, Mr. and Mrs. Haddock, with a son and daughter, moved back to Philadelphia. On the morning of May 2, 1898, Mr. Haddock, about 75, went for a walk.
He "was remarkably vigorous, mentally and physically, and his step was as firm, his body as erect and his mental faculties as clear as they were 25 years ago," his obituary read.
As he strolled onto a grade crossing at the corner of Ninth and Thompson streets in Philadelphia, he was struck and instantly killed by a train.
Mr. Haddock's partner in the flight odyssey, John LaMountain, brought the Atlantic into the Civil War. An advocate of reconnaissance by balloon, he took his well-traveled craft to the air while he was stationed at Fort Monroe, Va., and gave the Union Army its first effective aerial observation of enemy lines.
We offer appreciation to the Henderson Historical Society, which provided source material for this story. Research was also conducted by Times librarian Lisa Carr.
