This collection consists of personal and business correspondence, business papers and legal documents of George and James Redington. Also included are account books, records of the lumber business, notes (purchase and expenditures), orders (to pay bills), church papers/records of the First Presbyterian Church of Waddington, post office correspondence, prints of rafts and boats, and materials on the Sons of Temperance (minutes of meetings, constitution and black book). St. Lawrence University purchased this collection in 1958 from a Canadian book dealer.
Collection Overview
George Redington, lawyer, land speculator and lumber entrepreneur was born November 23, 1798 in Vergennes, Vermont. His family moved to Madrid, New York in 1799. He was educated at the St. Lawrence Academy and taught school in Montreal from 1816-1819. He returned to Waddington to study law and was admitted into the bar in 1823.
He held various offices; postmaster of Waddington 1829, 1831 Justice of the Peace, 1833-36 Supervisor of Town of Madrid, 1841-44 served in the State Assembly, and in 1845 was Judge of the Court of Common Pleas (County office). In the 1930's he rafted lumber down the St. Lawrence River to Montreal and Quebec. He was the Director of the Ogdensburg Bank when George Parish was its' President and was also served as Director of the St. Lawrence County Mutual Insurance Company and the Northern Railway in 1836. In 1837 he built a grist mill on the Grass River in Louisville, a timber mill and wharf in Waddington, and purchased land for merchants in New York City. He married twice, first in 1827 to Amorette Stone and had seven children, he married Lorain Sheldon after the death of Amorette and had three more children. After George's death on September 15, 1850 his brother James took over the estate and brought up his children.
James Reddington was born in 1810 and died in 1891. During his lifetime, he was admitted into the bar in 1831 and was Surrogate of St. Lawrence County, President of Waddington Village, United States Consul at Prescott, Canada and was active in the local Sons of Temperance.