Tag Archives: Raquette Lake

The Search Begins…

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While this book hopes to expand  beyond simple stories of my family, it is through our history that I became aware of the heritage of Indian Point both before and during our tenancy.

red cabin

To be clear, “our” tenancy speaks not solely of those named Thacher.  My father’s sister Ellen married Michael FitzPatrick.  Both families enjoyed summers together sharing the cabin and two lean-tos until 1981 when our family built a new place on the north shore of the peninsula.  Each summer, a growing brood of FitzPatrick cousins continues to inhabit the little, red one-room cabin at the point’s tip.

My journey began with a desire to learn when this cabin was built.   As a child I would fall asleep in the lean-to that sits just to the right of this cabin, being driven to sleep by the flames dancing in the stone fireplace and the hypnotic pulsing of the green and red lights which adorned the channel buoys in the Needles.  My father is shown here as a boy in the same lean-to.

1945 Ken in Indian Pt

Kenelm R. Thacher Jr. in 1945.

By the fire, my father and aunt would tell stories of their times here and on Blue Mountain Lake.  Originally, the main family summer home was on Thacher Island on Blue Mountain Lake.  The island lodge was the first and only privately owned summer home on the lake for a decade beginning in 1867.  The island was purchased by John Boyd Thacher, who built a lodge for the use of his father, George Hornell Thacher.

Photo by Seneca Ray Stoddard 1880's Courtesy of the Adirondack Museum.

Photo by Seneca Ray Stoddard 1880’s Courtesy of the Adirondack Museum.

The island lodge remained in the family until the 1940s while the lands on Indian Point, purchased in 1876, were always referred to as the “hunting and fishing” grounds.  We have always considered ourselves extremely lucky to still possess these wonderful acres on Indian Point.  Yet we wonder what transpired here between 1876 and now.

The oral history speaks of John Boyd Thacher and his brother George Hornell Thacher Jr. using Indian Point for guided camping adventures, with their father remaining at the island in Blue Mountain Lake.  Family lore holds that the red cabin was the first thing to be built on the point.  We have vague memories of our parents claiming that the cabin dates to 1910.  My challenge is to prove them right.

A review of several historic maps of Raquette Lake show no indication of a cabin at the point between 1886 and 1903.

Survey Map Raquette Lake in 1886 shows the Thacher property in gray but no structure on the point.

Survey Map Raquette Lake in 1886 shows the Thacher property in gray but no structure on the point.

1890 Map of Raquette Lake by Seneca Ray Stoddard makes no mention of a Thacher cabin.

1890 Map of Raquette Lake by Seneca Ray Stoddard makes no mention of Thacher at Raquette but identifies Thacher Island on Blue Mt. Lake.

Map of Township 40 in 1900 shows the Thacher property line traversing Indian Point, but no cabin location.

Map of Township 40 in 1900 shows the Thacher property line traversing Indian Point, but no cabin.

1903 USGS Raquette Lake Quadrangle shows numerous structures on the lakeshore and nothing on the point.

1903 USGS Raquette Lake Quadrangle shows numerous lakeshore structures but nothing on the point.

A 1905 photo from the family of Donna Phinney Geisdorf (owners of Sunny Cliff Camp deep in Sucker Brook Bay) shows Birch Point.   It shows no cabin and no dock.

1905 photo of Birch Point

1905 photo of Birch Point. Courtesy of the Geisdorf Family.

It is unclear if the photo shows any structure, but when blown up larger, there is an image that might be a primitive, makeshift lean-to.   It has oddly straight edges and corners that would seem unlikely to be natural trees.   I have highlighted the lines in red.

Possible evidence of a lean-to at the Point in 1905.

Possible evidence of a lean-to at the Point in 1905.

 

The only map that I have found to date which does indicate a structure in the location of the little red cabin is the 1954 USGS Raquette Lake Quadrangle.   Unfortunately, there appear to be no USGS surveys done between 1903 and 1954.

USGS Raquette Lake 1954

USGS Raquette Lake 1954

So the cabin was built sometime after 1905 and before 1954.   Couldn’t we narrow it down a little better than that?  Perhaps it was time to talk with the locals of Raquette Lake to see what they knew of the cabin’s history.

Fortunately, there is one person with direct personal knowledge of the cabin.  Warren Reynolds was born and raised at Raquette Lake.  His family rented the little red cabin for the summer of 1938 and then lived there for a whole year beginning in the summer of 1939.  He shared stories with me of his family living through the winter of ’39-’40 in the small one room cabin.  Warren travelled to school by boat when the water was open and by dogsled over the ice in winter.

His father worked as a guide in season and hunted, fished and trapped for his family’s sustenance.   The family could not have survived if his father had obeyed the Game Warden’s regulations.  To hide his illicit bounty of fish and venison taken out of season, Warren’s father dug a 6′ by 4′ hole six feet deep and set 350 feet back in the woods to the west of the cabin with a wooden cover camouflaged with pine pitch, sticks and leaves.  The remains of this “ice box” are still there today.

I next approached the local Raquette Lake historian, Jim Kammer, to see what he might know of the cabin.  He produced a photo that is part of a collection from the Carlin Boat Livery, one of the first marinas on the lake, located near the present day dock of the Raquette Lake Navigation Co.’s W. W.  Durant.

The Carlin Boat Livery was in operation from 1900 to 1935 and dates the photo of the cabin to within those years.

Earliest photo of little red cabin. Courtesy of Jim Kammer.

Earliest photo of the little red cabin. Courtesy of Jim Kammer.

We know from the previous photos that this has to be after 1905.  When I showed Warren Reynolds this photo, he remarked that the boat appears to be a row boat without motor moored off shore with no dock visible.  In 1938 there was a dock and the Thacher’s gave Warren’s family use of a boat with a small outboard engine.  The photo is also missing a tool shed that Warren remembered being between the little red cabin and the lean-to.  Lastly, Warren commented that the cabin was far from brand new when his family lived there.  He thought it was about twenty years old at the time, which would date it to 1918.

Given all that we know – the local lore, photographic and map evidence – we can say that the little red cabin was built sometime between 1905 and 1918.   While this does not contradict the family oral history, I strive to narrow the window in time.  Perhaps through reviewing historical newspapers and contemporary literature, I might glimpse proof of this alleged 1910 date….

The Changing Times to the Adirondacks

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I apply the brakes just a tad as the car hugs the downhill S-curve – getting closer.  The wheels straighten out and I sprint for the sign.  Up ahead on the right, there it is – the golden letters on brown wood canvas inviting us to enter Golden Beach State Campground.  We whiz by, thankful for the guidepost that alerts me to the prize.  Just a thousand feet.  There! As the trickle of Death Brook drops into the lake, the trees part and I can see the sun glinting on the waves of South Bay.  I am here.

My trip from our home in Western Massachusetts has ended when I see the water.  A simple three and a half hour drive.  Ok, my wife insists the trip is not over until we unload the car, pack the boat at Burke’s Marina, traverse the lake, unload the boat and schlep everything into the cabin.  A five-hour ordeal in her mind, but my blood pressure has lowered and serenity floods my mind and heart the minute I see the water.

Be it 3.5 or 5 hours, our trip is nothing compared to the arduous travels our ancestors took to reach these shores.

In 1862, George Hornell Thacher first travelled to the region, guided by Mitchell Sabattis who maintained a camp at Crane Point on Blue Mountain Lake. 1   At this time, the railroad to North Creek and the stage road from North Creek to Blue Mountain Lake did not exist.  Access to Blue Mountain Lake was only from the north, down from Long Lake.  The trip from Albany took between three and four days.

The Adirondack Museum has a description of a trip made by Miles Tyler Merwin, founder of the Blue Mountain House, which indicates the travel route that GHT likely followed. 2   On day one, he would have taken the train from Albany to Glens Falls, then a stagecoach similar to one shown below to Minerva.  On day two, he would have travelled again by stagecoach to Long Lake and spent the night.

Published in Heydays of the Adirondacks by Maitland Desormo

Published in Heydays of the Adirondacks by Maitland Desormo

From Long Lake to Blue Mountain Lake he would have taken either of two routes, each one potentially lasting more than a day in travel.  We do not know whether Mitchell Sabattis led GHT through the arduous South Pond route to Blue or the longer yet easier water route via Raquette Lake to Blue.

GHT route map

Click on the map and open to full screen to see an animation of these presumed routes. 

If we are to believe John Boyd Thacher, GHT’s son, it is more likely that Sabattis chose to go via Raquette Lake.   JBT wrote the following in a letter published in Forest and Stream magazine in 1874.

“From Blue Mountain Lake to Long Lake there is a more direct route with four miles of “carry” but even the guides will take the longer and all-water route.”

If JBT was right, it is even conceivable that GHT camped on Indian Point during his passage to Blue a full fifteen years prior to owning the land.

Of course JBT had an easier trip of only two days in 1874, which he chronicled in his letter.

Blue Mountain Lake, Adirondacks, Café Hathorne, June 15, 1874

             Already has the winter of our discontent yielded to glorious summer in these parts, and the faithful tide of tourists and sportsmen is setting in toward the woods.   Doubtless from now till November snows will your desk, drawers and basket be filled with letters concerning the delights and joys here experienced.

            We do not know of any easier of more accessible entrance to the North Woods, especially to the New Yorker than the route we have taken and always take, no matter at which point we may eventually aim.   Leaving Albany at seven o’clock in the morning on the Rensselaer and Saratoga Railroad, we connect at Saratoga with the Adirondack Railroad, reaching North Creek, its northern terminus, at about noon.  Thence by stage to Dick Jackson’s, a distance of nineteen miles, where we spend the night.   This is the last place on the route where one can experience the comforts of a good hotel, although there is soon to be one opened at Wakely’s on the Cedar River.

            Bright and early the next morning a buckboard wagon will take us to Blue Mountain Lake, a distance of twelve miles, over a road that has never been submitted to the process of Macadamization.  You remember it was one of Macadam’s theories that a bog was preferable to a hard bottom in constructing his roads.  There is plenty of substratum of that nature here.

            At Chauncey Hathorne’s shanty will we find a smoking hot fish-chowder in thirty minutes after we tear ourselves off the buck-board, and, in fact, it were no bad idea to consume a goodly portion of this time in gradually performing this operation.  About twenty minutes is the average time allotted for accomplishing this in safety.

See the complete letter as published in Forest and Stream magazine.  3  The letter begins at the bottom left side of the page.

JBT route map

Click on the map and open to full screen to see an animation of his presumed route.

From 1879 to 1893, the route to Blue Mountain Lake continued to be via train to North Creek; however a shorter stagecoach ride out of Indian Lake brought people to Blue along what is now Route 28.    Those travelling to Raquette Lake would take guideboats, and in later years steamboats, that flowed from Blue Mountain Lake through Eagle Lake and Utowana Lake (the Eckford Chain) and the Marion River into Raquette Lake.

In 1893, the railroad was extended from Utica, NY, to Thendara Station near Old Forge.  From that year until 1900, there were two paths to Raquette Lake.  Some still chose to take the train to North Creek, stagecoach to Blue Mountain Lake and by water through the Eckford Chain into Raquette Lake.  Others approached from the West; they would take the train to Thendara and then go by steamboat and buckboard through the Fulton Chain of Lakes to Raquette Lake.   If their final destination was Blue Mountain Lake, they would reverse the previous route from Raquette Lake through the Marion River, Utowana Lake and Eagle Lake into Blue Mountain Lake.

In 1900, the Raquette Lake Railroad was built to extend the rail lines from Carter Station (just north of Thendara) all the way to Raquette Lake Village.  In the same year the Marion River Railroad, the shortest full gauge railroad in the world, was built to transport travelers and their luggage the three-quarters of a mile of the Marion River Carry.  4   Travelers would take steamboats from Raquette Lake Village to the end of the Marion River.

Published in Heydays of the Adirondacks by Maitland Desormo

Published in Heydays of the Adirondacks by Maitland Desormo

They would then board the train for the short trip to the landing of the steamboats of the Eckford Chain (Utowana, Eagle, and Blue Mountain lakes).

Published in Heydays of the Adirondacks by Maitland Desormo

Published in Heydays of the Adirondacks by Maitland Desormo

The photo above by Seneca Ray Stoddard serves to authenticate the following two photos taken by members of the Thacher family traveling on the Marion River Railroad in the mid-1920s.

1925 Marion Carry RR

1922 Marion Carry RR

At this time, those travelling to Blue Mountain Lake preferred to take the train all the way to Raquette Lake and travel by steamboat into Blue Mountain Lake, thus avoiding the long stagecoach ride from North Creek.  It was now possible to reach Raquette Lake and Blue Mountain Lake in only one day of travel from Albany and even from New York City.

In 1929, the auto road was built between Raquette Lake and Blue Mountain Lake and brought to an end the Marion River Railroad.  The Raquette Lake Railroad and the steamboats of the region ended service in 1933.  5

Getting to the lakes was never the end of the journey.  Our daily trips from cabin to mainland have changed as well.  My father told us stories of my grandfather rowing a couple of hours to the village every day in his guideboat.

1922 JBT2 in guideboat

As a boy, I would sit in the bow of a 17 foot aluminum fishing boat, holding the bowline as we bounced and crashed against the waves – water spraying my face for the forty-five minute ride powered by a 15 horsepower Johnson outboard.  Fifteen minutes marks the duration of my kids’ trips from our cabin to the Raquette Lake Village dock in our Four Winns 190 Horizon speedboat.  I think my kids are missing out. (They don’t.)

Timeline

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Events on these Fifty Acres of Beach and Wood

These points in time reveal some of the stories, of import and of good sport, that are yet to unfold in this blog.

1650-1794

Indian Point is used as a Winter hunting encampment by the Mohawk tribe.

1776  

The tory Sir John Johnson camps at Indian Point during his harrowing 19 day escape to Canada.

1837

At a pond northwest of Indian Point (Lone Pond or Cranberry Pond?), William Wood traps the last beaver seen alive in the Adirondacks until they were reintroduced in the beginning of the 20th century.

1837-40

Matthew Beach and William Wood became the first permanent settlers of Raquette Lake with their cabin built on Indian Point.  Exact date undetermined.

1840-43

Professor Ebenezer Emmons, first surveyor and the person to give the region the name “Adirondacks”, repeatedly stays with Beach and Wood while surveying the area.

1844-46

Joel Tyler Headley writes in his 1849 book The Adirondac – Life in the Woods of visits with Beach and Wood during his earlier explorations with guide Mitchell Sabattis.

1845

J.H. Young publishes the first map of New York State that shows a body of water in the location of Raquette Lake.  Only Long Lake to the north is named on the map and the drawing of Raquette Lake is almost completely inaccurate except for the detailed, near accurate depiction of Indian Point.

1849

Beach and Wood purchase from Farrand Benedict legal land titles giving them each an equal share of the 50 acres they have occupied on Indian Point.

1854

Beach deeds his 25 acres to Amos Hough of Long Lake contingent on Hough taking care of Beach until his death.

1856

Hough sells the 25 acres to land speculator Marshall Shedd Jr. allowing Beach to still reside there.

1859

John Plumley, -“Honest John” – famed guide of Adirondack Murray purchases William Wood’s 25 acres.

1860

Matthew Beach goes to live in Long Lake in the home of John Plumley, who as Amos Hough’s son-in-law has taken over the family obligation to care for Beach.

1861

In July at the South Inlet of Raquette Lake, William Wood shoots and kills the last moose seen alive in the Adirondacks until they were reintroduced by W. Seward Webb on his private preserve at the end of the 19th century.

1862

Mitchell Sabattis guides George Hornell Thacher on his first exploration of Blue Mt. Lake and Raquette Lake at the suggestion of Joel Tyler Headley, Thacher’s old friend from Union College days.

1865-1868

Alvah Dunning – one of the most notable of Adirondack Guides – squats on the south side of the southern fork of Indian Point.

1867 

John Boyd Thacher purchases an island in Blue Mt. Lake to build a lodge for the use of his father George Hornell Thacher.

1868

Verplanck Colvin, Superintendent of the Adirondack Land Survey from 1872-1900, as a 21 year old seeks the advice of his old childhood friend John Boyd Thacher as he plans his early explorations of the Adirondacks.

1869

Renowned landscape artist Arthur Tait spends the summer in Matthew Beach’s old cabin. He sketches here the paintings he named “The Adirondacks” and “Deer in the Woods”.

1873

Amanda Benedict, the sister-in-law of Farrand Benedict, organizes the first major all female expedition of the Adirondacks.   Four groups of women botany students traverse different routes starting from Schroon River, Saranac, Lake Pleasant and Moose River to converge at Indian Point.  The women and 16 of the most famous Adirondack Guides are brought together at one time on these acres.

1876

John Boyd Thacher purchases Matthew Beach’s 25 acres from Marshall Shedd Jr.

1876

Verplanck Colvin establishes an observation station for the Adirondack Land Survey on Thacher Island in Blue Mt. Lake.  He uses it to test a new technique for synchronization of time among survey field teams separated by great distance within the Adirondacks.

1877

First written description appears of George Hornell Thacher Jr., age 26, camping on Birch Point with a large group of young friends.

1877

Levi Wells Prentice, famed landscape artist, sketches from a vantage point within these acres the scene later depicted in his painting “Raquette Lake from Wood’s Clearing”.

1878

Reverend Henry Gabriels conducts Catholic Mass at the “Thacher Camp” on July 11, 12, 13, 14.  This is one of the earliest Catholic missions within the central interior of the Adirondacks.  At the time, Rev. Gabriels is the President of the St. Joseph Seminary in Troy, NY.  He later became the Bishop of Ogdensburg – the Diocese covering all of the Adirondack region.

1879

The Map of the New York Wilderness by Colton-Ely in the 1879 edition superimposes the name “Thatcher” written across the whole of Indian Point.  Earlier editions of the same map lack this detail.

1880

George Hornell Thacher Sr. begins his annual summer visits to the Thacher Camp staying in a “fine lodge” that pre-exists the current little red, one room cabin that is there today.  The location of the original cabin and its subsequent disappearance by 1886 is a mystery that drives my on-going research.

1883

George Washington Sears – a famous outdoorsman and author who penned articles and books under the name Nessmuck – visits with George Hornell Thacher at Thacher Camp during his Cruise of the Sairy Gamp.  This exchange is included in Nessmuck’s book titled Woodcraft.

1883

John Boyd Thacher, as New York State Senator representing Albany, fights for funding to expand Verplanck Colvin’s role to oversee an expanded New York State Land Survey.

1885

John Boyd Thacher in his role as Senator joins a unanimous vote to pass the Forest Preserve Act which is the first step toward the eventual creation of today’s Adirondack Park.

1887

George Hornell Thacher Sr. dies.

1893

John Boyd Thacher invites the Spanish Duke of Veragua, a direct lineal descendant of Christopher Columbus, to attend the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago and arranges for him to travel through the Raquette Lake and Blue Mt. Lake region on a trip hosted by Verplanck Colvin.

1909 

John Boyd Thacher dies.

1910

George Hornell Thacher Jr. inherits the Thacher lands on Indian Point and builds the little red, one room cabin.

1915

George Hornell Thacher Jr. donates the use of the land for the month of August to the first annual State Forestry Camp of the State College of Forestry at Syracuse.

1939 

Two young boys of British Aristocracy are hosted at Thacher Camp and their guide is later paid with a barrel full of fine English china which legend says now lies at the bottom of the Needles Channel.

Where in the world…

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Before I write more stories of the history of these fifty acres of Beach and Wood, I think it may help to show you where they are.

Where shall I start.  Those who have had the privilege of gracing her waters will not accuse me of grandiosity when I claim that Raquette Lake is the most beautiful place on Earth.  Better writers than I  have extolled her virtues as the Queen of the Adirondacks.

The beauty of Raquette Lake has been sung by poets; and the charm of its clustering islands, bright gleaming bays, and jutting points are now famous throughout the land yet, few would know that out of the thousands of acres of dense forest, which reach from its shores to the encircling mountains, only here and there a point has private owners, and that all the rest is public domain.

– Verplanck Colvin 1884 Report of the State Land Survey

So let us begin with the proper perspective and start here

1 world jpeg

As we come down to Earth, we see the State of New York.  Notice how even from space the lush forests of the Adirondacks are a verdant green in the northern one third of New York State.

2 NYS

The Adirondack Park is the largest protected area in the contiguous United States, encompassing 6.1 million acres of both private (55%) and public lands (45%).    The park covers a land area roughly the size of Vermont and is larger than the Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Glacier and the Great Smokey Mountains national parks combined.  The public lands were forever protected by an amendment to the New York State Constitution in 1894.  However, these lands are unique because 137,000 Adirondackers make their home here year-round.  It is not and hopefully never shall be a land without its people.  These lands are bounded by the famous blue line, which is visible from the International Space Station (ok…perhaps not).

3 Adirondack Park Blue Line

Raquette Lake is found in the West Central Adirondacks, a golden curve of bays and coves that stretches a shoreline of ninety nine miles. She is the largest natural lake within the original Adirondack Forest Preserve.

4 Raquette in yellow line

Jutting out from the western shore is Indian Point.  Although this peninsula encompasses hundreds of acres, the “Indian Point” written about here and in many Adirondack histories refers to the twin tips at the northeastern end.

5 Indian Point in blue

Within the years of 1837 and 1840, Matthew Beach and William Wood became the first permanent settlers of Raquette Lake, building a cabin and clearing land for crops on the fifty acres to the east of the red line.  In 1876, John Boyd Thacher purchased the lands to the east of the yellow line.  The little red, one room cabin stands at the extreme eastern edge of the northern fork of Indian Point which our family named Birch Point.

Screen Shot 2014-08-04 at 7.22.48 PM

 

Bird of Flight

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“Thunk-Ping” “Thunk-Ping” echoed through the woods as the head of the sledge came down upon the maul.  Rhythmically the forged steel struck the maul, driving the blade into the round section of the old oak deadfall’s trunk.  My hands tried valiantly to not retreat, but hold fast to the maul handle as my father sent the sledge’s head crashing down.

Each summer we would split a deadfall and stack the wood in our shed for future fires in the Vermont Castings stove.  Beautiful sunlight barely broke through the thick canopy of white pine and spruce as we sweated within a few hundred feet of our cabin.   The sledge hit the maul over and over, sounding like the chimes of a slow clock that strikes its bell every ten seconds.

Father saw me staring at my watch as if to time the blows.  A few more sections were split and yet I still stared at my watch.  “Do you have some place you would rather be?” he asked.  “No, no…just thinking of a swim when we’re done.”   A simple white lie, as patiently my anticipation grew.

“Are you expecting someone?” he asked, just as I heard the sound.  The drone of an engine–high above us—supplanted the whine of mosquitoes flying around our heads.  The tone of the prop lowered in pitch, as the speed slowed and the wings lost their loft.   “Come on Dad–let’s go!”

He looked at me with gleeful surprise, a child on Christmas morn completely shocked and giddy.  We reached the dock just as the seaplane touched the waters of North Bay.  “The workhorse of the skies” came to rest with a pontoon rubbing the far end of the dock and the wings just barely clearing the dock poles.  I grabbed the wing’s strut and held her to the dock while the prop continued to turn.

The cockpit door swung open and the pilot stepped down to the pontoon and ushered us aboard.  I saw a face weathered with the creases of time and tanned like the leather of an old baseball glove.  A tuft of white hair and an aged body belied the strength still possessed.  I sat in back and watched the buttons, knobs and dials as my father moved into the seat aside the pilot.

The prop re-engaged and pulled the plane away from the dock.  Slowly we built speed as we bumped along the waves.   The drone of the engine rose higher in pitch as we gained momentum and moments before we lifted, the pilot leaned over to my dad: “Thacher, eh…  Any relation to Judge Thacher?”  
“He was my uncle,” said my father.  
 
As the pontoons broke their bond with the water and the plane angled steeply up, the old pilot replied, “I guided for your uncle back in 1929.”

Eighty-two-year-old Buster Bird was at the controls of our maiden voyage in an Adirondack seaplane.  

As we floated above the lakes and gazed at the mountaintops, Buster regaled my father:  “Your uncle and your father would stay at the cabin enjoying their spirits while I went off to fish or hunt.  We would take pictures of the two of them surrounded by their catch to keep the women folk back home none the wiser.”   Dad recounted, “The Judge, while Mayor of Albany, broke the arm of a patron at the Fort Orange Club, and escaped up here to hole up while the storm blew over.”   The two delighted in their memories.

Buster Bird book photo

From the cover of Changing Times in the Adirondacks – 1

Later that day we pulled our boat up at Bird’s Marina for gas.  My father could not stop talking about our flight and lit upon our pilot’s great nephew, Joe Bird.  “It was as if Buster knew every tree in the forest,” crowed Dad.   Without missing a beat Joe retorted, “Hell, he ought to.  He hit most of them.”

Flying with Buster Bird–over two decades ago–began my fascination with our family’s history on Raquette Lake.   I recently began a search to discover the age of our family’s little red, one-room cabin.  In subsequent postings, I will unravel the clues unearthed and reveal new mysteries discovered on these fifty acres of Beach and Wood.

Newly Built Red Cabin

the earliest known photo of the cabin — 2

the cabin as it looks today

the cabin as it looks today

Preface

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“The author has been an assiduous but superficial student of the literature.  He has read extensively rather than intensively.  The resulting work is that of an enthusiastic amateur, who  handles in a jaunty manner the most difficult historical manuscripts, as if every word was to be accepted with utmost faith.  The very style in which the book is written throws discredit on the scholarship.  The language and phrase are stilted, and too much fine writing shows an undue desire for popularity.”*

I could not find a better description of my book.   Written in 1903, this critique of my Great-Great Uncle John Boyd Thacher’s book on Christopher Columbus speaks to my attempt at being a writer.  Wherever possible I have chosen to close my mouth and let the voices of the past speak through reprints of earlier writers.

In 1867, JBT purchased an island on Blue Mountain Lake for the use of his father George Hornell Thacher.  Three years later, Rev. Murray’s Adventures in the Wilderness brought throngs of tourists to the North Country.  To provide his father with a quieter, more remote retreat, JBT purchased the tips of Indian Point on Raquette Lake in 1876.

Our family still enjoys every summer on Birch Point, the northern fork of Indian Point.   What began as a search to discover the history of our family’s little red, one-room cabin grew into years of research and discovery.

Discover with me the story of Matthew Beach and William Wood, the first permanent white settlers of Raquette Lake.  Search for the remains of their original cabins on Indian Point.   Learn the part they played in the early extinction of the beaver and the moose in the Adirondacks.

A lover of Adirondack history will recognize the names of Sir John Johnson, Professor Ebenezer Emmons, Joel Tyler Headley, Mitchell Sabattis, Alvah Dunning, John Plumley and Rev. Murray, Verplanck Colvin, Nessmuk, Arthur Tait and Levi Wells Prentice.   Few would suspect the intricate weave of life’s thread that ties all these icons to Indian Point.

I seek to capture both fact and fiction and the attention of my readers as I chronicle the amazing Adirondack heritage that flows through these fifty acres of Beach and Wood.

Adirondack histories are full of embellishments and half-truths.  The local Raquette Lake author Ruth Timm famously claimed William Wood was present at the death of his friend Chief Uncas, the fictional character of The Last of the Mohicans.    Ned Buntline lived at Indian Point according to Thomas Morris Longstreth in The Adirondacks.   Neither of these is factually accurate.

I could follow the footsteps of these writers and exaggerate the history of my family:

“John Boyd Thacher was instrumental in writing and passing the Forest Preserve Act of 1885 which was the first step in creating the Adirondack Park.” **

I will not spin a yarn with this chronicle.  I do use the conceit of historical fiction to make reasonable allusions to unknown but probable fact.   The difference is that I will not leave the reader guessing.  For the studious among you, the footnotes reveal the truth.

** Although John Boyd Thacher was a NY State Senator in 1885 and did vote to pass the Forest Preserve Act, he was just one of 35 senators who unanimously passed the law.  He was not a member of the Agriculture Standing Committee that drafted the law.

NOTES:      * The Independent. Vol 55 May-Aug. 1903 pg. 1460