Peytonville

**Peytonville** is a small town in Essex County, New York. It is located ten miles north of Mill City on Route 25 and five miles north of Bethlehem and twelve miles south of Lake Placid on the Albany, New York to Montreal, Ontario railroad passage.

Originally known as Chapel Heights, it was founded as a farming community by Leonard Peyton in the 1830s. A farmer and a preacher, Peyton was joined by around three hundred homesteaders from England, France, Germany and Ireland who grew and raised apples, cherries, grapes, cabbage, onions, potatoes and dairy products. The area also raised horses that were sold to the Ashford Falls Riding Stables. Locals like Jason Pryde and Marcia Caldwell often traveled here for the craft festivals.

The railroad in the 1870s established by Franklin Hedison brought much prosperity to the community, bringing the population from 1,200 to 1,700, but the 1888 and 1922 Winters hit the town hard. The area continued struggling and the heirs of Leonard Peyton started selling off sections of their vast farm to developers. Among them was Lincoln Hedison, who in the 1950s through the Ashford Falls Realty Company acquired much of the south and northeast properties in town. Realizing how despondent the family was in losing their family property, he added an addendum to their contract that gave them an additional $1200 that increased by two percent every two years from the money made from the properties into perpetuity for their grief. The family ended up become very wealthy from the deal and became involved in the developing town government.

Previously run by the local church council and deacons, the town built a courthouse in 1944 and renamed itself Peytonville to honor Leonard Peyton. The first mayor was James B. Hood, the heir of a prosperous Ashford Falls family, who later went on to become mayor of Ashford Falls. One of his first endeavors was to create a town reservoir with the help of Lincoln Hedison as an investor in widening and digging out the basin of Black Creek, creating Black Creek Lake, which made the town a winter and fishing spot for Ashford Falls citizens as Dr. Albert Waverly and Jerrold Waverly.

In 1985, Carter Hedison in control of his father's companies burned the original contract his father had made with the Peytons and had a new version drafted that cut out the addendum to the family, now up to almost $5000. To force the family to sign it, he had Dash Andrews plant drugs into the car of Sheldon Peyton and notified the state police to have him arrested. Given the publishing of Andrews's diary in 1995, the case has since been expunged.

In 2008, reporter Melissa Strickland and former horror movie hostess Jenny Turbeville arrived in Peytonville doing research on Tic-Toc, a fabled creature that reported dragged its victims into the woods. Believing it was responsible for a string of disappearances, they instead found evidence that linked the seven missing persons to a member of the Children of the Sun.

## Gallery

* House on Black Creek Lake
* Peytonville Train Station
* Old Peytonville Church
* New Peytonville Church
* Peytonville City Hall and Historic Society
* Peytonville Grammar School
* modern site of the Old Peyton Farm
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