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Sackets Harbor: On The Cliffs of Lake Ontario

May 2, 2018 by Jeannie Brennan - Constance Brennan Barone Leave a Comment

Guthrie distilleryOver the centuries, history unfolded in so many ways along the cliffs of what is today the Sackets Harbor Battlefield State Historic Site.

The oldest story about the cliffs appears in the oral traditions of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) when the Great Peacemaker crossed Lake Ontario in a white stone canoe, landing where Sackets Harbor is located.

The cliffs played a defensive role a May 1813 attack by British and Canadian forces during the War of 1812.

On a War of 1812 era map, a slaughterhouse shown on the cliffs probably inspired villagers to use the 30-foot tall cliffs as a convenient place to dump garbage and waste for many years.

In the early 19th century an enterprising inventor, Dr. Samuel Guthrie, bought land along the cliffs to build a large distillery of stone. Guthrie’s more famous legacy is the first recorded use of chloroform and the development of the percussion cap for firearms.

Guthrie attended the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City from 1810 to 1811, and the University of Pennsylvania in 1815. In 1817, the family moved to Sackets Harbor where he set up his medical practice in Jewettsville, created an experimental chemistry lab, and invented a priming powder (or “percussion pill”) that allowed the transition from flintlock muskets to percussion cap firearms. A biographer in the 1920s noted: “unnumbered woodland creatures uttered their death-cry to this powder.“

A confirmed tinkerer and entrepreneur, Guthrie is most well-known for making “Guthrie’s sweet whisky” or “chloric ether” by distilling chloride of lime with alcohol in copper, thus yielding the anesthesia chloroform. In 1888, the Chicago Medical Society studied several claims for the discovery of chloroform, and after much deliberation concluded that Guthrie indeed was “justly entitled to the honor of first discovering chloroform in 1831.”

According to Guthrie’s primary biographer, Dr. Jesse Randolph Pawling, a distillery in Jewettsville produced 120,000 gallons of vinegar in 1831. With abundant potatoes in the vicinity, Guthrie created alcohol by fermenting potato skins, molasses and yeast yielding 100,000 gallons of his distilled spirits concoction, called “potato molasses.”

Biographer Dr. Victor Robinson said: “His vinegar house was patronized by farmers’ wives for miles around, and he distilled a brand of alcohol that has rarely been equaled.” The use of vinegar for culinary purposes, as a disinfectant, and medicine, gave Guthrie a variety of reasons to distill vinegar in large quantities. According to his grandson, the vinegar distillery primarily supplied the community’s Army post Madison Barracks.

Always the entrepreneurs, deed searches from 1832 to 1840 show the Guthrie family accumulated about 10 acres of former War of 1812 battleground land along the cliffs, today part of the historic site property. In an 1840 indenture between Guthrie and Chauncey Baker, the land had become “known and distinguished as the Horse Island distillery lot.” Guthrie’s grand two story stone distillery measured a substantial 54 feet by 45 feet, plus an adjacent wooden structure.

The last sixteen years of Guthrie’s life were a challenge. His wife died in 1839 and deteriorating finances plagued the family. Guthrie’s years of exposure to explosives and chemicals caused various physical ailments which led to his decline. He died in Sackets Harbor on October 19, 1848 and is buried in the community’s Lakeside cemetery.

Today, visitors following the cliff top shoreline at the historic site enjoy a panoramic view of Black River Bay. Dr. Guthrie might have enjoyed the same view when not tending his distillery vats.

Photo: Remains of Guthrie Distillery.

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Filed Under: History Tagged With: Great Lakes, Lake Ontario, Sackets Harbor

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