Indian River at Rossie - Foundry Building on left, Machine Shop in middle, behind it first home built in 1812, on right is the Grist Mill (1830)

Home to the Parish Iron Works, Rossie was a bustling industrial town long before its lead mines came into production. Coal Hill was so named for the production of charcoal there, which was used to fire the blast furnace in the village. In 1817, President James Monroe visited the Iron Works, and by the 1830's hematite ore was being smelted from a number of nearby mines, including the Sterling mine near Antwerp, famous for its millerite specimens (Robinson and Chamberlain, 1984).

Probably the first to discover lead in the Rossie area were the St. Regis Indians, who reportedly smelted the metal from galena ore in open fires. However, it is Arthur Bacon, an early resident of Rossie, who is credited with finding galena in the roots of an overturned tree on the Coal Hill (Nash) vein (Hough, 1853). In 1829, the Jepson (Victoria) vein was discovered by Eliza Jepson, the nine-year-old daughter of Joel Jepson. As a reward, George Parish, owner of the Parish Iron Works, gave her a calico dress, and her father received 40 acres of land. a team of oxen and a barrel of salt pork (Simons, 1951; 1958).

By 1835, Parish had become interested in the prospect of mining lead, and in December of that year contracted with B. T. Nash to search for ore and develop a mine. Shortly thereafter, Nash sold his rights to J. C. Bush, and two companies with ten-year charters were incorporated in May, 1837 (Hough, 1853; Curtis, 1894). Each company had a working capital of $24,000 and was to work different sections of the Coal Hill vein: the eastern section by the Rossie Lead Mining Company, and the western section by the Rossie Galena Company. Preliminary work began on the western section late in 1836, and by January 1, 1837, serious work had commenced on both sections. Parish also worked the Victoria and adjacent Union (Ross) veins to the north, as well as the Robinson (Indian River) vein to the west. The New York State mineralogist, Lewis Beck, visited the mines in August of 1836, providing the following contemporary account (Beck, 1842):   read more here:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3672/is_200107/ai_n8959837

From Canton Library Scrapbook - 1933 article - "St. Lawrence University gets David Parish Letters"

St. Lawrence Gazette Published in Ogdensburg  1817