USA > New York > Franklin County > Historical sketches of Franklin county and its several towns > Part 39
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The name chosen for the institution was Stony Wold Sanatorium. The date of incorporation was April 10, 1901, and eight months later property consisting of twelve hundred and fifty acres, situate near Lake Kushaqua, in the town of Franklin, and having an elevation of over seventeen hundred feet above sea level, was purchased. Building opera-
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tions were begun as soon afterward as practicable, and the institution was formally opened August 15, 1903. Where there had been only an unbroken forest there have risen an administrative building with dormi- tory adjoining ; Stony Wold Hall, a building for purposes of worship and for entertainments; a dormitory for the help; a woodworking shop; a store and post-office; five rest shacks; one industrial settlement house ; seven cottages ; a power house for generating electricity for lighting the institution ; an outdoor school; and a model cow barn, stable and pig- gery. A farm has also been developed. The administration building alone cost eighty-four thousand dollars, and the entire property is valued at $302,435.16, and is not mortgaged. The institution has, besides, an endowment fund of $64,258.75.
The corporation has fifteen auxiliaries with a total membership of nineteen hundred. In the beginning each auxiliary contributed six hundred dollars to build and equip a room, and pledged itself to sup- port thereafter an occupant, the charge for which is fourteen dollars per week. Further funds for building, equipment and maintenance were realized from subscriptions, and also considerable amounts from fairs and entertainments given at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel and other places in New York and at the institution itself.
Mrs. James Edward Newcomb is the president of the board of trus- tees, and has served in that capacity from the beginning. She was the originator of the enterprise, and devised the plan of organization. She spends a good deal of time at Lake Kushaqua, and is constant and untiring in effort on its behalf.
Stony Wold has a capacity for twenty children and ninety-three adults and is practically always full. No children under the age of six years are admitted. The staff includes the physician in charge (who is at present Dr. Malcolm D. Lent), an assistant physician (Dr. W. G. Milan), a number of nurses, a dietician, a storekeeper, an outside super- intendent (Albert E. Paye), and other workers averaging between ninety and one hundred in number.
Stony Wold Hall is used by the Episcopalian, the Catholic and the Jewish denominations, though none of them has a resident preacher. The Episcopalians and the Jews use one room in common, and the Catholics have a part of the structure separately. When the hall is wanted for a card party or for a dance, the seats are removed, and a room nicely adapted to the purpose is available.
The institution is doing a magnificent work, and hundreds who have enjoyed eare in it, gaining strength and vigor, and enabled to return
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to life's duties and lators with new hope and courage, bless daily the philanthropists who have given so fine an institution to the world, and who cause it to be managed with such care and loving kindness.
Paul C. Ransom, a graduate of Williams College, having been com- pelled by failing health to relinquish the practice of law in Buffalo, turned in 1897 to the work of fitting boys for college, and in 1903 estab- lished the Adirondack-Florida School, which holds its spring and autumn terms on Rainbow lake, near Onchiota, and a winter term at Cocoanut Grove, Florida. A school building or lodge was erected at the former place in 1906 at a cost of $15,000, and a number of cabins and other structures have been added since. Mr. Ransom died in 1907, when Mrs. Ransom assumed charge, and has since conducted the school, with L. H. Somers, a Yale man, as headmaster. Of Mr. Ransom it is said that his quiet influence over boys was wonderful, and that he was " a rare master, and a rarer friend." Originally the school was planned to accommodate twenty pupils, but now has a capacity for thirty ; and inasmuch as it is believed that the best results are attainable only with a small enrollment no effort is likely to be made for further enlarge- ment. The Rainbow Lake branch is called Meenahga Lodge. The school is intended to give boys the best advantages attainable in the way of individual attention and wholesome surroundings, the opportunity to pursue a course of study in preparation for college, and at the same time the benefit of outdoor life under the most favorable climatic con- ditions. Invalid boys or those suffering from any organic disease are not received. A chief aim of the school is the cultivation of character, and particular attention is given also to outdoor sports and physical training. The charge for tuition and care is $1,600 per pupil per year, which does not include traveling expenses, text books or stationery, and no deductions are allowed for absence, withdrawal or dismissal. The naked statement of terms is evidence that only the sons or wards of wealthy people are included among the pupils, who come from all parts of the United States. The school's standing is very high, and it has the unqualified indorsement of eminent educators and of many distin- gnished men whose sons have been among its pupils.
The Chateangay Railway and the Adirondack and St. Lawrence Rail- way enter Franklin at nearly the same point, in the vicinity of Pluma- dore pond, on the northern central border of the town, and, trending a little to the west, parallel each other to Onchiota, whence the former continues almost due south to Saranac lake, while the latter swings westward into Brighton. The former was built as far as Loon Lake in
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1886, and extended on through the town a year or so later. The St. Law- rence and Adirondack was built in 1892. Each of these roads has a sta- tion at Loon Lake (three miles from the Loon Lake House), at Lake Kushaqua and at Onchiota, and the Chateaugay has one also for the hamlet of Vermontville, two or three miles distant therefrom.
Franklin has more small settlements and separate post-offices in proportion to its population than any other town in the county. They are : Inman, Loon Lake, Goldsmith's, Forestdale, Alder Brook, Frank- lin Falls, Pine Park or Onchiota, Lake Kushaqua and Vermontville. Merrillsville was formerly a post-office. Union Falls is partly in Frank- lin and partly in Clinton county, the post-office of that name being just over the line in Clinton. Not all of these are even hamlets, some of them being merely neighborhoods a little more closely settled than the surrounding country.
Inman lies a little to the west and north of the center of the town, and consists only of the two depots of the Chateaugay Railway and the Adirondack and St. Lawrence Railway, three or four dwelling houses, a store, and a small hotel, built by Deming M. Roberts, formerly of Malone and Chateaugay, and now kept by William DesChamps.
Loon Lake is three miles distant, and between the two points the town built a macadam highway a year or two ago at a cost of thirteen thou- sand dollars, an expenditure that would have horrified the earlier resi- dents. At Loon Lake there are only the group of buildings comprising the Loon Lake Hotel and cottages, and the store and dwelling house of Fremont F. Smith.
Forestdale, formerly known as "French's," is in the extreme south- eastern part of the town, and has a post-office, a store, a Catholic church, and a few residences. It formerly had a hotel.
Onchiota or Pine Park is in the western part, and is a small settle- ment, with store, post-office, two railway stations, a saw mill, and a club house or hotel now in course of construction by the Rainbow Club and Improvement Company. Several thousand young pine trees have been set out here within the past year or two by the same corporation as a step in reforestation, and the state is planting hundreds of thousands of young spruce and pine in the same locality.
Lake Kushaqua. also in the western part, is exclusively the home of Stony Wold Sanatorium, through the establishment of which in 1901 the place came into being.
Goldsmith's is on the North Branch of the Saranac river about five miles below Hunters' Home, and is only the site of an old saw mill
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and a lumber camp. To it and beyond, to the Clinton county line, a highway is soon to be built from Hunters' Home, which will cost over eighty thousand dollars.
Franklin Falls has already been sufficiently described.
Vermontville is the largest hamlet in the town, and yet now has no industries except farming. The place has two churches, a post-office and a store or two.
Merrillsville is south and east of the center, and consists only of a small group of dwelling houses and a church.
Sugar Bush, so named because of the large quantity of maple sugar formerly made there, and still retaining the name though scarcely any sugar is made at present, is a string of farm houses stretching over a mile or two.
Alder Brook, named for the brook that runs through it, is a couple of miles east of Merrillsville, and is the same character of place as Sugar Bush. The two were among the earliest localities in the town to be settled, the settlers coming mostly from Vermont and Clinton and Essex counties.
Though a considerable proportion of the early settlers in Franklin were of the Roman Catholic faith, these were dependent for nearly a quarter of a century for enjoyment of the services of their own church upon Keeseville and the mission at Redford, which involved several miles of travel. Nevertheless interest so grew that at length a mission was established at Union Falls, and not long afterward, in 1854, Father James Keveney built a church at the place now known as Catholic Cor- ners, which lies between Alder Brook and Union Falls. It was blessed under the name St. Rosa's of Lima, and has since been maintained. Incorporation was not effected, however, until fifty years later, with the bishop, the vicar general, the rector ( Rev. Father Richard O'Don- nell), Edward McKillip and Peter A. Tracy as trustees. Father O'Don- nell is still the rector, and the church has nearly four hundred members.
Vermontville has a Methodist Episcopal church and an Episcopalian chapel, known as St. Paul's. The latter is supplied irregularly by the rector resident at Bloomingdale. Apparently the first religious organiza- tion was of a union order, which was for a long time without statutory incorporation, though the records of the Presbytery of Champlain show a Presbyterian society at Vermontville in 1860. A church building had been erected in 1856, and a friend who was then and still is a resi- dent there writes me that it was a Methodist Episcopal church, though Presbyterians helped to build it. It was to be open for use by any
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denomination, but with preferential claim to occupancy belonging to the Methodists. There has always been a good deal of church friction here, It would seem that, besides the Episcopalians, the place has had in turn religious organizations of the union order, Presbyterian, Wesleyan and Methodist Episcopal. The Presbyterian must have been feeble and of short duration. The Wesleyan Methodists held the field principally from 1876 to 1896. The Union Evangelical church was incorporated in 1888, and the Methodist Episcopal not until 1895. In 1897 the Union Evangelical church deeded the house of worship to the Wesleyan Meth- odist church, which ten years later deeded it to the Methodist Episcopal church. The latter is, except for the Episcopalians, in sole occupancy of the field.
A Methodist Episcopal organization has existed at Merrillsville for three-quarters of a century or more, supplied at first by the pastor of the church at Saranac, and now Vermontville. The present church edifice at this point was built about twenty years ago.
Notice that an application would be made to the supervisors to divide the town was published in 1859. The new town, to consist of the west half, was to be called Concord. But there was not town concord in the matter, and the project died without even having been presented to the supervisors. The opposition was political.
John B. Secor, a horse buyer from Westchester county, was shot and killed in the town of Franklin, between Hatch's and Loon Lake, June 6, 1853, by James Madison Bickford of Dickinson. Bickford was at a prayer meeting at the latter place when he saw Secor and a com- panion ride past, and, leaving the meeting, persuaded Thomas Cook, a mere boy, to accompany him, and followed the men, whom they passed somewhere in Duane. At the point of the tragedy in Franklin they awaited the appearance of Secor and his companion, and upon their arrival Bickford, in ambush at the side of the road, took Secor's life. The companion fled and gave the alarm. Bickford and Cook were apprehended the next day in Burke, the former having Secor's purse and watch in his possession. On the trial, a year later. Secor's friend identified Bickford and Secor's property, and conviction was a matter of course. Bickford was hung September 22, 1854. and his father denounced the execution as a murder. Cook wished to plead guilty, but a trial was insisted upon by the court, resulting in a conviction and a death sentence- which was commuted to life imprisonment, with a pardon granted later. Cook returned to Dickinson, married, and one night, forty-odd years ago, when he was in bed and asleep some one placed a keg of powder under the bed, and fired it. Cook was killed.
CHAPTER XVII HARRIETSTOWN
Harrietstown was erected from Duane March 19, 1841, and included originally three townships. A township and a half taken from Brandon was added in 1883. It has 134,247 assessed acres, is mountainous in considerable part, contains many lakes and ponds, and has only a com- paratively small area, in the northern section, that is adapted to agri- culture, the pursuit of which is heavily handicapped by early and late frosts. Among the larger waters are Lower and Middle Saranac lakes, a part of each of Upper Saranac and Upper St. Regis, and Lake Clear. The more noteworthy of the smaller waters are Ampersand, Follansby, Colby, Oseetah, Lake Flower and Kiwassa (formerly Lonesome). Lake Flower is an expansion of the Saranac river, and lies within the cor- porate limits of Saranac Lake village. On the shores of these several waters are many summer hotels and wilderness cottages or camps, some of which represent the expenditure of many thousand dollars and reflect a wealth of care and adornment of grounds that make them exceedingly attractive. The only considerable stream in the town is the Saranac river, which takes a tortnous course of perhaps six or eight miles through the eastern and northern part before passing into Essex county. The Chateaugay Railroad runs for five or six miles almost along the eastern boundary before swinging to its terminus at Lake Placid; the Paul Smith Electric Railway runs northerly from Lake Clear Junction into Brighton ; and the main line of the Adirondack and St. Lawrence extends in a southwesterly direction for five or six miles through the northern part, with a branch running from Lake Clear to Saranac Lake village.
The town takes its name from Harriet, eldest daughter of William Constable and wife of James Duane. Hough's story attributes its erection to pique on the part of Major Duane, occasioned by a vote at the town meeting in 1840 providing that the next such meeting be held at Saranac Lake, thirty-odd miles distant from Major Duane's home. ITough states that this action was accomplished through an unusual and unexpected attendance at the meeting by so many voters from Saranac Lake that they had control; and that, resenting the procedure and resolved not to be inconvenienced again by having to drive a long dis-
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tance in order to attend an election, Major Duane forced a partition of the town against the wish and remonstrance of the Saranac Lake people. But inasmuch as Major Duane was continued as supervisor in 1841, which would hardly have been the case if there had really been serions frietion between the two sections of the town, I think that the Hough account should be received with some degree of allowance.
Another town meeting story runs that in early days, when it was the custom of every elector to go to the polls in the morning, and stay through until the votes had been counted, the canvass showed upon one such occasion something like twenty Democratic ballots to one lone Whig, whereupon Captain Pliny Miller, for many years the political autocrat of Harrietstown, forbade announcement of the result, insisting that some one had made a mistake, and that the vote must be retaken. After everybody had voted a second time, the count showed twenty-one straight Democratie ballots, which, naturally, was sufficient and satis- factory. Still another anecdote with a political tang represents that a visitor once reminded Milote Baker as he closed his store for the night that he had neglected to lock the door, to which Mr. Baker responded that it was quite unnecessary to fasten anything since there was not a Whig in town.
Settlement in Harrietstown began prior to 1820, but was of slow development for sixty years or more, as census figures show :
1845
1850
1860
1870
1880
1890
1900
1905
1910
1915
129
181
340
416
533
1582
3390
4133
4755
4716
While the figures for 1915 are slightly below those for 1910 it is claimed that the decrease is apparent only, due to the fact that in the one case visitors were erroneously enumerated, while in the other none but actual, permanent residents were counted. The number of aliens is returned as 218.
Though Jacob Moody is said to have located in that part of Saranac Lake village which lies in Essex county as early as 1819, and Isaac Livingston at about the same time near West Harrietstown, Pliny Miller was the first settler on the Saranac river in Harrietstown. He had com- manded a militia company from the vicinity of Troy in the war of 1812, and on his way with his command to duty at Fort Covington had been persuaded by a relative at Keeseville to buy a large tract of land in Wil- mington, to which he removed at the close of the war, and engaged in lumbering. The failure of a Montreal concern which had contracted for his output involved him so seriously that he had to close out his
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HISTORY OF FRANKLIN COUNTY
Wilmington properties, after which he established himself, in 1828, at Saranac Lake, where at two dollars per acre he bought a three-hundred acre tract, on which is now located a considerable part of the village. Here he again engaged in lumbering. For more than thirty years he was the town's foremost and most influential citizen. His residence was near the present power house, across the river from the village office, on what is now the Miles-Tucker place. One biographical sketch repre- sents him as having kept a tavern, but his descendants do not under- stand that he ever engaged in such business beyond having perhaps occasionally accommodated a traveler in his home. He was, however, the owner and probably the builder of the hotel which stood on the site of the village office, which was burned in 1856, and which was run by various lessees, including Wm. F. Martin and Virgil C. Bartlett. In 1859 Captain Miller removed to Wilmington, where he died a year later at the age of eighty-five years. He was a man of indomitable will, forceful energy and enterprise, and public spirited. For a number of years he was supervisor, and when he did not hold the office himself usually determined the man who did. The late Milo B. Miller and Seaver A. Miller, both gentlemen of character and substance and of large usefulness, are among his descendants. Hilyer Miller, the father of Milo, was the first merchant in the village, though of course in a very small way; and Van Buren, the father of Seaver, was often super- visor, was more familiar with town affairs and in his time more useful in a public way, than any other resident. With the paucity of people and with no local industries of consequence, the life and business of the locality were long insignificant in volume, though some of the incidents of the earlier time are interesting.
Milote Baker opened a boarding house or hotel and store in 1851 about a mile below the village, but in Essex county. He was a natural host, and his place had a wide reputation and great popularity, though of course in a small way as compared with later enterprises of a similar sort. The sportsmen who stopped with him sought their fishing and hunting for the most part at the lake, and as indicative of the former abundance of game it is told that Mr. Baker employed thirty men as hunters in 1868, kept two teams constantly on the road in autumn and early winter, hauling venison to market, and shipped five hundred deer. His store burned in 1869, but was rebuilt.
Saranac Lake's first hotel, on the site of the present village office, was leased in 1849 by William F. Martin, who came from Westville, and ran it until he built and opened in 1851 or 1852 the house, a couple
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of miles distant on the lower lake, that was known for years as " Mar- tin's," and afterward as the Saranac Lake House. This was almost or quite the first hotel in this sector of the Adirondacks that was more than a shack or rude structure, and Mr. Martin's friends and the community generally were certain when he began to build that the venture was a folly, sure to prove a failure. But in twenty years it had been enlarged to a capacity of a hundred guests, and so equipped that its accommoda- tions were deemed at the time luxurious. Its business included, besides the entertainment of guests, the outfitting of parties who sought remoter waters and wilds with everything needed by the camper or sportsman, In 1881 the property passed to the ownership of Milo B. Miller at a consideration of eighteen thousand dollars, and was doubled in size. Mr. Miller managed it until it was destroyed by fire in 1890. It has not been rebuilt, and the site is now owned by the Hotel Ampersand interests.
Virgil C. Bartlett succeeded Mr. Martin as landlord of the hotel leased from Pliny Miller. He was a picturesque character, and when excited or annoyed his language was apt to be emphatic, not to say vivid. But he was quite as much a man of action, as of words, and is credited with having established the first line of stages which gave communica- tion between Saranac Lake and Lake Champlain points. In 1855 he built the hotel at Bartlett's carry, on the outlet of Upper Saranac lake, which he made a popular resort until his death in 1884. The house was bought in 1890 by the Saranae Club, which had only a short life, during which the hotel burned. At present a large and fine property occupies the site, with a dozen or more cottages auxiliary to it. J. H. Reardon is the manager. James W. Daly occupied the hotel in the village after the Bartlett tenancy, and was its landlord when it burned in 1856.
The hotel in the village which Martin and Bartlett had kept having burned, John Jay Miller bought from his father, the captain, a consider- able traet of land, inclusive of the site of the Riverside Inn, where he erected a modest, plain inn or tavern, and leased it in 1860 to the Bloods - Orlando, Alonzo and Arvilla. After five years of occupancy and management the Bloods bought the establishment with about eighty acres of land for two thousand dollars. Charles H. Kendall was the next owner and landlord after the Bloods, and was followed by George Berkley, who named it the Adirondack House. When Berkley was mur- dered something like thirty years ago, Wallace Murray became the pro- prietor, and changed the name to Riverside Inn. Pine & Corbett, young
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HISTORY OF FRANKLIN COUNTY
men who had received hotel training with Paul Smith, next bought the property, which has been greatly enlarged and improved, and is at least as fine an all-the-year hotel as there is in the Adirondacks.
Another of the early summer hotels in Harrietstown was Jesse Corey's Rustic Lodge at the foot of Upper Saranac Lake, which was built about 1859 at the Saranac end of the portage between that water and Stony Creek ponds, formerly known as the Indian carry. Here the Indians are claimed to have had a summer village long before the advent of the whites, and many relics of their occupancy have been found in the vicinity. Tradition is that the Indians knew of a lead mine near by, from which they obtained the metal for making bullets, but white men have never been able to locate it. Corey's was kept later by Charles H. Wardner.
A small and rude house was built at least as early as 1857 by John Sweeney on Upper Saranac lake at the eastern end of another carry from that water to the Raquette. It was kept later by David Sweeney, and afterward by O. A. Covill, and was displaced about 1886 by the Wawbeck, an excellent house while it continued in existence; but, the only approach to it at the time having been by water, it never paid, and in consequence was torn down in 1914.
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