Champion, Great Bend, and Deferiet

Farming has always been the lifeblood of Champion; Noadiah Hubbard--original settler, land agent, merchant, and builder--did much to encourage its settlement and growth. Great Bend's location on the Black River drew various mills looking to utilize inexpensive waterpower. Such corporations included the Sherman Paper Company and the Great Bend Paper Company, which was incorporated in September 1868 to manufacture straw wrapping papers and strawboard. F.W. Woolworth, of five-and-dime fame, endowed a church here in honor of his parents on September 15, 1915. Deferiet was originally founded by French émigré Jenika de Ferriet. It became a mill town in 1899 when the land was acquired by the St. Regis Paper Company, which employed immigrants of Italian and Polish extraction. As the mills gradually left the Northeast, these communities reverted to their farming roots, in many cases attracting families for settlement and retirement.