April 4

1767 -last night we had a little snow and some frost, but which was gone by 9 o'clock; this day was soft and not cold, good growing weather; the snow quite gone off the cleared land and off the wood land too that inclines toward the south.  Our cattle finding the wood feed god yesterday, did not come home last night, even old spark (the weakest of them all) stayed out. -Gilliland.

1784 Peter Sailly from the Province of Lorraine in France reached America on his first visit - one of investigation.

1785 The two tracts of land obtained by Zephaniah Platt and associates were incorporated into a town called PLATTSBURGH, by a special act of the legislature.  At that time it embraced all of Plattsburgh Old Patent, Frizwell's Patent, and Cumberland Head Patent.
    "At the close of the war I had purchased a few class rights of the soldiers and having collected a little something, set out for the woods, and after viewing several places, I set down on the west side of Lake Champlain, an entirely new country and wilderness and called the town Plattsburgh."

Charles Platt in letter to Dr. Samuel Jenner of Northfield, Mass.

1805 The bill for the building of the Great Northern Turnpike became a law.  The commissioners were: Theodosius Fowler, Elkanah Watson, Charles D. Cooper, Theodorus Ross, Benjamin Mooers, Charles R. Webster, Robert Gilchrist, James Rogers, Pliny Moore, Micajah Petit.
    Also, the towns of Lewis and Essex were "set off" from Willsborough, the former, names in honor of Governor Morgan Lewis, who owned land there purchases from General Philip Schuyler; the latter as well as the county Essex, being named for Essex. England.

1812 The Trustees of the Presbyterian Church, Plattsburgh, made an agreement with Ichabod Fitch, to frame and raise the building for $500.

1848 Schuyler Falls formed from Plattsburgh.  Ezra Turner, one of the original thirteen settlers in the town of Plattsburgh, made the first settlement in the Town about 1794 when he married Amy Beman daughter of Nathan Beman, then only sixteen years old.  Their home in the woods was seven miles from the little settlement on the Lake.

1866 "The Jewish Congregation of Plattsburgh" purchased from the trustees of the First Universalist Church, their lot and church building on Oak Street, and fitted it up as a place of public worship.

1883 Y. M. C. A. of Burlington incorporated.

1888 The S. F. Vilas Home for Aged and Infirm Women incorporated by the gift of Mrs. Harriet Hunt Vilas, widow of the late S. F. Vilas of Plattsburgh.

1909 At Galena, Ill, died Ann Elizabeth Felt, widow of B. F. Felt and daughter of Zephaniah C. Platt.  Her aunt Caroline Adriance Platt Diell died a few years since in Adriance, Virginia, in the 94th year of her age.  She was the widow of the Rev. John Diell, eight years Seaman's Champlain at Honolulu, Sandwich Islands, who died at sea in 1841, when homeward bound.

 Today In the Champlain Valley History