HISTORY: Altamont; Franklin co., NY

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HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF FRANKLIN COUNTY WITH MANY SHORT BIOGRAPHIES
BY
FREDERICK J. SEAVER MALONE, NEW YORK

ALBANY: J. B. LYON COMPANY, PRINTERS
1918

CHAPTER IV ALTAMONT

  Altamont was formed from Waverly in 1890, and comprises three townships, or
76,168 assessed acres. In 1913 a strip one mile wide by five miles long was
added from St. Lawrence county in furtherance of a highway policy for the
construction of a road designed to give Tupper Lake an outlet to eastern and
central New York points, but which St. Lawrence was unwilling to aid in
building. The strip in question has no inhabitants.

  The population of Altamont in 1892, at the first enumeration following its
erection as a town, was 1,051, which increased in eight years to 3,045, and in
the next ensuing five years to 4,843; but, owing to the closing of some of the
manufacturing plants and to curtailment of operations by others, it decreased
to 4,691 in 1910 and further to 4,480 in 1915, of whom 703 were aliens. The
aliens are becoming fewer, however, as over 200 of them filed applications for
naturalization during the summer of 1917. The population is now increasing,
and it is expected that within a short time the losses above noted will be
fully recovered.

  Altamont's principal waters are a part of Big Tupper lake, Raquette pond,
Big and Little Simons ponds, Lake Madeleine in Litchfield Park (formerly
called Jenkins pond), and Raquette river. The latter, having its source in
Hamilton county, flows half way across the town from east to west into Big
Tupper lake, near the foot of that water, and, continuing as its outlet,
courses north and thence west into St. Lawrence county. There is no other
considerable stream in the town, nor has any good water power ever been
utilized there. Raquette pond is simply an expansion of the river, caused by
the reservoir dam, which was erected by Potsdam lumber interests in 1870.
These interests had experienced difficulty in making clean runs of their logs
down the river, and had been inconvenienced also by low water in operating
their mills. They accordingly united in erecting the reservoir at a point
known as Setting Pole Rapids, three or four miles west of where Faust now is.
There was no mill in the vicinity, and all of the timbers that went into the
structure had to be hand hewed. These were mostly twelve by fourteen inches,
and two hundred acres were stripped of all the trees that would square to that
size. Including the wings, the dam was 300 feet long, and had ten gates. Its
height was ten feet above still water, and 38,000 cubic feet of stone went
into it. The result was the flooding of lands for a distance of nearly thirty
miles up the river and the lake, varying in width as the high land on either
side met the bottoms. At one point on the lake the width was about two miles.
Of course all of the fine timber lining the shores was killed, transforming a
beautiful section into a dead forest indescribably desolate in appearance. The
dam broke in May, 1871, and the flood was thirty-six hours in reaching
Potsdam, where it wrought great havoc. The dam was repaired in 1872, but in
anger because it was believed to injure the fishing, and also because it was
thought that with a recession of the waters meadows could be established along
the tract that had been flooded, men from the vicinity of Moody cut away parts
of the structure in 1885, and dynamite afterward lowered it still further. The
land where Faust is was at one time wholly under water by reason of the
existence of the dam, as also was a considerable part of the upper section of
the village known as Tupper Lake. As the locality became more settled, a great
deal of the dead timber was cut by residents for fuel, and more of it by the
lumber companies in order to improve navigation for their steamboats and
scows, so that now much of the former repellent aspect has disappeared. Owners
of water powers down the river now plan to reconstruct the old dam, though not
to its former height, so as to regulate the river's summer flow; and the town
of Altamont has appropriated $3,500 for expenditure in connection with this
project for payment of flowage damages. The restoration of the dam is expected
to cause a disappearance of sloughs above it and by holding the water at
nearly a uniform level greatly better sanitary conditions. Incidentally it
should be noted that as early as 1850 the State appropriated ten thousand
dollars for the improvement of the upper Raquette for the benefit of Potsdam
lumbermen. A part of the fund went into the building of a small dam at
Setting Pole Rapids.

  In the southern section of Altamont especially, and to a less degree in the
northern part, the surface is broken by mountains and ridges, while in the
central portion there is considerable marsh land. Before the reservoir was
built nearly the entire town had been covered with a magnificent forest of
both hard and soft timber, and this condition still prevails in many
localities, most of the area still remaining a wilderness. It is, however, the
fact that the big mills have taken heavy tolls from the forests during the
past quarter of a century, and that fire has ravaged large areas. There is
hardly a year without some destruction by fire, and sometimes the losses so
caused are stupendous. In the memorable dry summer of 1903 the tax alone
simply for fighting such fires in Altamont was $3,858.44, and individual
concerns claimed to have themselves expended no less than $14,000 additional
in protecting their own tracts. What the actual property losses aggregated no
one can say with anything like precision, but unquestionably they were
enormous. For illustration, a single owner claimed damages to the amount of
one hundred thousand dollars, though his recovery was for a much smaller sum.

  The "great windfall of 1845" stretches across the central part of the north
third of the town, and, until fire followed, the devastation wrought by it
visualized what must have been the most terrific storm that ever touched
Northern New York. It developed on the Grasse river in St. Lawrence county,
and forked at about the Franklin county line, one arm sweeping straight across
township nineteen, and the other passing to the north of where Derrick now is.
Its path was from a half mile to a mile in width, and it is told that not a
single tree was left standing in its track. All were snapped off or uprooted,
with a resultant tangle of trunks and limbs and tops that was impenetrable.
The hunters of the time had had trails across the tract, and, desiring to
continue them, set fire to the slash. Ten years or such a matter afterward,
when Cyrus P. Whitney, the surveyor, first saw the locality, on a hunting
trip, these fires had made it as bare as a pasture; but it has since become
pretty well covered by second-growth timber.

  The New York and Ottawa Railroad (originally the Northern Adirondack) enters
the town near its northeastern corner, and extends to the heart of Tupper Lake
village, a distance of perhaps ten or twelve miles   giving the place a direct
outlet to Moira on the Rutland Railroad, and also a through line to the
Canadian capital. It reached Tupper Lake in 1889. The Adirondack and St.
Lawrence Railway, built in 1892, traverses the central part of the town, its
mileage in Altamont being about the same as that of the New York and Ottawa,
which it crosses at that part of the village called Faust, nearly two miles
north from the terminus of the latter. Both lines are controlled by the New
York Central.

  Until two or three years before Altamont was erected as a town it was all
uninhabited except for a section in the neighborhood of the village and at a
point on Big Tupper lake that is called Moody. A half a century ago, in a
presidential year, a few among the voters here would travel to the polls at
Dickinson Center in order to exercise the elective franchise   sometimes going
by way of Potsdam and Moira, and at others through the woods on foot along a
"tote" road that was little better than a trail. Now, though Altamont has
three convenient polling places, it is perhaps doubtful if a larger percentage
of its seven or eight hundred electors take the trouble to cast their ballots
than was the case with the little handful when it was necessary to journey a
hundred-odd miles if they went via Potsdam, or thirty-five or forty miles if
they tramped through the woods. Still, it is the fact that Altamont is one of
the liveliest towns in the county politically, and its party leaders are
always zealous and awake.

  Still another illustration of the former inaccessibility of the place is
that when Mr. Whitney was school commissioner he visited the district but once
in six years, and then walked to it through the forest. When Mr. Dewey of
Moira was commissioner, some years later, and visited the Tupper Lake school,
he made the trip via Saranac Lake. Even as late as 1884 the entire assessed
valuation of resident property in the school district, which comprised the
entire town, was barely five thousand dollars, while now the school houses axe
estimated to be worth sixty thousand dollars   the high school building at
Tupper Lake, with its furnishings, having alone cost forty thousand dollars.

  A man named Michael Cole is said to have been the first settler something
like seventy years ago, and _____ Epps probably the second. The latter
remained for only about two years, Simeon J. Moody buying his betterments, and
continuing to occupy the place until his death, two or three years ago. Other
early comers were Ziba Brigham and Reuben R. Stetson with their families, and
Theodorus Westcott and William McLaughlin. The latter came to be foreman for
the Pomeroys, who owned lands in the vicinity which they were about to lumber,
and whose operations made the Tupper Lake village clearing. Mr. McLaughlin was
for many years the only resident within what are now the village limits, a
large part of which he owned at one time, and where he died in 1905. George
McBride came about 1860, locating about two miles up the river, near the iron
bridge, and was a combination of farmer, guide, fisherman and trapper; and in
1865 Martin M. Moody built the hotel at the point on Big Tupper lake now known
as Moody, which he managed until he sold to Pliny Robbins about 1888, when he
moved up the lake about a half a mile and built the Waukesha, owned later by
Jabez D. Alexander. "Mart's" fund of stories was inexhaustible, and made him
one of the best known characters of the wilderness. Fact or even probability
entered into few of them, and the more grotesquely imaginative or wildly
extravagant he could make them the more characteristic they were. A single one
may be quoted: Seeking to impress a visitor with the intensity of the cold
which was sometimes experienced, he told of having started one morning for the
barn with a pail of boiling water, which froze almost as soon as the door
closed behind him. Re-entering the house, he discovered that the water had
congealed so quickly that the ice was actually hot!

  Other familiar names in the region forty, or fifty years ago are Sam.
Moriarty, Nelson LaFountain, William E. LaFountain, William Johnson, "Mother"
Johnson, "Priest" _____ Clark, and Donald G. McDonald, though "Mother" Johnson
was at the falls, perhaps thirty miles distant. Mr. Clark was a local
preacher, but of what denomination or whether an ordained minister I do not
know. He held religious services in his own house and at the homes of others
until the first school house was built, after which the latter served for a
meeting house. McDonald is remembered as a vocalist and exhorter. William E.
LaFountain came in 1876, and married a daughter of Mr. McLaughlin. He was a
school teacher and surveyor until his removal a few years ago to Cass Lake,
Minn., where he is engaged in the mercantile business. He was one of the early
supervisors of Altamont. Perez M. Freeman settled at Moody about 1878.

  Theodorus Westcott and Sarah Cole, daughter of the first settler, were the
first couple married in the locality, about 1850. The story runs that a
surveyor or timber cruiser, who was a justice of the peace from Potsdam or
Canton, chanced to visit the place, whereupon it was determined to take
advantage of his presence to have the ceremony performed. In order to avoid
any question of jurisdiction, the party repaired to a small island two miles
from the Cole homestead, in Grindstone Bay, and in St. Lawrence county, where
the twain were made one. The island has been known ever since as "Sally's
Rock." Mr. Westcott died in 1853, and William McLaughlin married his widow in
1855.

  "Peter's Rock," better known and more talked about in the old days, was
named for Captain Peter Sabattis (the surname a corruption of St. Baptist).
The legend is that Captain Peter once jumped from the rock to the shore, a
distance of sixteen feet. Sabattis was an Indian hunter and trapper, is said
to have served as a soldier in the war of the revolution, and is reputed to
have lived to the age of one hundred and eight years.

  It was the advent of the Northern Adirondack Railroad that brought real life
to the region. Until that event the only activities were small farming,
hunting, trapping and guiding, the entertainment of the rarely occasional
sportsman who penetrated here even as early as 1855 or 1860, and logging
operations early by the Pomeroys and by others in the few years immediately
antecedent to the railroad. These latter reflected the reaching out by mill
owners down the river for a larger supply and a better stand of timber than
was left along the lower stretches of the stream, and John Snell, the father
of our present Congressman, was the principal contractor and jobber along
these lines. The railroad extension from Brandon or Bay Pond was distinctively
a lumber project, undertaken by John Hurd, of Santa Clara, to create new
business for the road and also to open a new field for his side enterprises,
but who in developing the western part of our county involved himself in ruin.
Tupper Lake in particular owes its very existence to Mr. Hurd, and is the best
monument to his persistence and his faith in the future of the region.

  At once upon the completion of the railroad to Tupper Lake, settlers began
to arrive in considerable numbers, and founded industries, established stores
and opened hotels. The growth was marvelously rapid for a wilderness town, but
raw and rough at first. The railroad and the lumber interests imported labor,
and the varieties were many, without all being attractive. A single early lot
included city toughs, Italians and negroes, who were scrapping even before
they had finished their breakfast. Such structures as were erected for the
shelter of workers, bosses and mechanics were of the flimsiest and roughest
kind, and most of the goods that the stores handled were coarse and cheap,
while prices were all that "the traffic would bear." One concern had as stock
practically nothing except goods not salable in an establishment owned by one
of the firm in an older community, and included in the lot were hundreds of
pairs of heavy pegged boots that had been taken in trade through many years
from country makers, and which the merchant would have been glad to close out
at the home store at fifty cents per pair. Here, however, there was a hot
scramble for them at from four to six dollars per pair. And pretty much
everything else was of a similar grade, and sold in proportion. Whiskey
brought twenty-five cents a glass, and beer half a dollar a bottle. A store
trade of thousands of dollars a day when camp orders came in to be filled was
not uncommon.

  Howard H. Hobson came from Vermont, and Moses Potvin erected the first
sawmill for him. He remained for only a short time   selling his plant to the
A. Sherman Lumber Co. of Potsdam. At this date Potsdam and Norwood
establishments had found that to get logs from a point so remote as Tupper
Lake was unwarrantably expensive. The "hanging up" of a drive meant, first,
that two years' cuts were on the hands of owners at the same time, thus tying
up a large capital; and, second, that a considerable part of a drive was apt
never to reach its destination, because of logs lodging along the river banks,
or becoming so water soaked that they would not float.   Facilities for
transportation of lumber having been provided, it seemed to be the better
business course to locate the mills close to the source of timber supply. The
Hobson mill went up in smoke after a time, but was rebuilt by the Shermans or
Sissons, or both, who continued to operate it until 1915, when the structure,
but not the machinery, and the surrounding lands were sold to the Oval Wood
Dish Company of Traverse City, Mich. The old mill will be demolished, and one
of concrete with modern and special equipment will supplant it. The machinery
for this plant is to be brought from Michigan, which the company is abandoning
because it has exhausted the timber on its holdings there. The company has
bought lands outright or the hardwood stumpage on a good deal more than one
hundred thousand acres in Altamont and vicinity, which it is claimed will keep
it going for half a century; and it will drive the work of building its plant
energetically. It began manufacturing in the autumn of 1917, but other mills
are yet to be equipped. Its plans call for the erection of eight or ten
immense structures along the highway leading from Tupper Lake Junction to
Tupper Lake proper, which will help toward closing the vacant territory
between the two points, and perhaps eventually, as operatives fix their homes
near the mills, fill completely the gap now not built up there. All of the
buildings are to be of concrete, and all are to be heated from a central
plant. Electricity is to be generated with waste from the mill as a fuel, and
it is estimated that besides having an abundance of power for itself the
company will have a considerable surplus to sell to other interests, which it
is hoped may be attracted to the locality by the inducement of cheap power.
Moreover, the municipally owned electric light works do not pay the cost of
operation and upkeep, and the company has contracted with the village to
supply current for the tatter's plant, which makes the distribution to
consumers. One of the Oval Dish Company's buildings will be exclusively for
the use of operatives for recreation purposes, and will contain a gymnasium, a
hall for games and entertainments, and a kitchen. Here the management expects
to serve free coffee to such of the employees as may lunch there. Another
structure, for a warehouse, is to be two hundred and forty by four hundred
feet on the ground, with two railroad tracks running into it. The roof area of
the entire group of buildings will measure about seven acres. Of course the
management is not itself giving out figures of the probable amount of its
investment, but the talk among outsiders is that it can not fail to reach at
least a half a million dollars. Opinions differ widely as to the number of
people that these works will add to the population, ranging from five hundred
to four thousand   the lower figures being based upon the assumption that a
good deal of the help will be recruited from among those who are already
residents, and the latter upon belief that the entire force will come from
outside, and that other industries will develop in connection. The management
states that three hundred and fifty men and about three hundred women and
girls will be employed. In a way, the corporate title of the concern is a
bit misleading, as its principal output will be hard wood lumber, probably six
or seven million feet per year, and its other products will consist
exclusively of clothespins and the thin oval dishes used so commonly by
butchers and grocers, to be made from those parts of the logs which otherwise
would be waste. Chopping bowls and other wooden ware, contrary to what many
have understood, are not to be made. Railroad spurs are to be built very soon,
running four miles east and an equal distance west from the New York and
Ottawa at Derrick, and another line will be run later from Tupper Lake toward
Axton and Wawbeek in order to tap the company's timber tract in that
direction. The enterprise stands for the largest single industry that Franklin
county has ever had the good fortune to have located within its borders, and
it has every indication of having ample capital back of it and of being under
a management that is to be considerate of its employees and helpful in many
respects to the community at large.

  The second mill at Tupper Lake, a wonder in its day, was built by John Hurd
in 1890, and the expenditure which it necessitated, piled upon his other
undertakings and obligations, made a load heavier than he could continue to
carry. As a consequence, the mill went into the possession of the
Shepard-Morse concern of Boston for a year or two, and then to the Export
Lumber Company of New York. Next Patrick A. Ducey ran it for a year, and C. L.
& D. J. Becker and W. W. Wheeler also operated it, after which the Norwood
Manufacturing Company had it until 1913, when that company was merged into the
Santa Clara Lumber Company. The latter has remodeled the mill, and added to it
  one of its adjuncts being a large pulp and planing mill. The saw mill is the
largest in the State. It cuts only soft timber, its annual product running up
to ten million feet. Besides making lumber and pulp, the company turns out and
sells large quantities of chips, ready for conversion into pulp by the
chemical process, and cuts and ships hemlock bark by the thousands of cords to
tanneries. It has another mill, near Faust, which it operated until it
acquired the Hurd property, but which is now idle, though not dismantled.
While no one assumes to know such to be the expectation of the Santa Clara
management, outside opinion is that both local and general market conditions
will have to become exceptional, not to say anything about the available
timber supply, to start the property into activity again   at least under its
present ownership.

  In 1898 the Legislature authorized Cornell University to establish a school
of forestry, and to acquire thirty thousand acres of timber lands in the
Adirondacks for practical experiment and operation. The State paid for the
lands, which were in the town of Harrietstown, just east of Altamont. The
forester in charge of the school planned to cut all hard wood on the tract
down to fourteen inches at the butt, and all soft timber down to eight inches,
upon the theory that light and air would thus reach the trees left standing,
the growth of which would then be more rapid. It was a part of the scheme also
to fill in vacant places with young pine. The procedure would to-day be
accounted good forestry provided that the territory so treated could be
assured immunity from fire ravages. When about six thousand acres had been cut
over as thus indicated, a wind upturned or snapped off nearly all of the trees
that had not been felled, whereupon the school cleared the lands so that they
were practically bare, and then undertook to reforest with seedlings. About
two thousand four hundred acres were in fact so dealt with, and then fire
swept in upon the tract, destroying many of the young plants. The practice as
outlined was characterized at the time as vandalism, and action by the courts
was invoked successfully to suppress the operations, and to recover the lands
from the school for the State. Of course the school had to have a purchaser
for its cut timber, and found one in the Brooklyn Cooperage Company, which had
theretofore operated at Santa Clara and St. Regis Falls, but in 1900 built
works at Tupper Lake, and constructed a lumber railroad seven miles in length
from the latter place over toward Wawbeek in the town of Harrietstown for
hauling logs from the school lands to its mill. Its contract was to pay five
dollars per thousand feet for logs delivered at the railroad, which price
barely covered the cost to the school of cutting and hauling, so that funds
for replanting were insufficient. Operations ceased in 1904, when the courts
prohibited further cutting and returned the tract to the State, whereupon the
railroad was abandoned, and the rails sold for old iron.

  Besides its mill at Tupper Lake for making barrel staves and headings, the
cooperage company installed and until 1915 operated a chemical works for the
manufacture of charcoal, wood alcohol and acetate of lime from the waste at
the stave mill. These works use hard wood only, and are at present operated by
the Tupper Lake Chemical Company under lease from the cooperage concern. It
buys the waste from the latter, and gives employment to from fifty to
seventy-five men. The cooperage company's mill and logging camp hands number
one hundred and fifty or more.

  C. H. Elliott, formerly at Derrick, has an establishment at Faust for making
mangle rolls for laundries. He obtains his material from the Brooklyn
Cooperage Company, and does a considerable business.

  There is also a railroad machine shop for repair work at Faust or Tupper
Lake Junction, and the fact that this point is a division terminal makes it
headquarters for a number of railroad operatives, contributing to its
prosperity and importance.

  In 1896 Charles H. Turner, now of Malone, bought a large tract of timbered
land in the northern part of Altamont, and the next summer built a sawmill at
the place now called Derrick. His lumbering was on an extensive scale, the
mill running both day and night for several years. Something like a hundred
families comprised the then population, and the place, if of the mushroom
order, partook also of a "boom" character for a time. The mill has been idle
now for about ten years, but still stands, partly decayed, with all of the
machinery in it as last used. Most of the inhabitants removed perforce with
the discontinuance of operations by Mr. Turner, though twenty to thirty
families continued to make the place their home   occupying Mr. Turner's
houses without payment of rent, and also having their gardens, pasturage,
fuel, etc., free of cost. The stumpage remaining on the tract has been sold to
the Oval Wood Dish Company.

  After the sawmill ceased to be operated C. H. Elliott, now at Faust,
conducted a plant at Derrick for two years for the manufacture of wood mangle
rolls, turning out a product of three carloads a week  all of which was
shipped abroad. The A. Sherman Lumber Company has recently maintained logging
camps in the vicinity. When the Oval Wood Dish Company gets into full swing
with its plant at Tupper Lake and with its logging camps, Derrick is expected
to recover some of its former life and activity.

  Moody is the only point in Altamont other than Derrick, Tupper Lake and
Tupper Lake Junction that even approaches the character of a hamlet. It lies
near the foot of Big Tupper Lake, on the Raquette river, three miles up from
Tupper Lake village, is accessible by small steamers that ply the river and
lake, and comprises a settlement of a dozen or fifteen families, a school, a
church, a number of summer camps, and two hotels. One of the latter was an
early sportsmen's resort, and, as previously noted, Mart. Moody, its
proprietor, had an unique reputation as a raconteur of fanciful imaginary
experiences with game, capable of qualifying under competitive tests with any
of the older guides as a picturesque and entertaining liar. The church here,
if not built by Colonel William H. Barbour of New York city, famed as the
thread manufacturer and as an apostle of the benefits of the policy of a
protective tariff, is at least supported by him. He has a summer camp on the
western shore of the lake, in St. Lawrence county.* The church has a regular
pastor, but has no denominational affiliations or connections  
notwithstanding which, however, it must not be classed with the church officer
who, as told by Booker Washington, when seeking to quiet the emotional
manifestations of a negro auntie during a service, retorted to her explanation
or excuse that she was "under the power," " adame, this is no place to get
religion." The key to the life at Moody is of course its location as a good
sporting center and the business and employment based upon its neighboring
summer camps of wealthy visitors.


  * Colonel Barbour died suddenly in New York in March, 1917, leaving a
fortune of many millions. His camp and park on Tupper Lake embraced about
twenty thousand acres, and the buildings cost probably close to two hundred
thousand dollars. In April, 1918, the State purchased thirteen thousand one
hundred and ninety acres of the Barbour park, or practically all of it except
the buildings and the farm. The price paid was one hundred and fifty thousand
dollars, which is considerably less than it cost Colonel Barbour.


  Altamont includes a number of summer camps and private parks owned by
wealthy nonresidents, among which are those of H. M. Levy, the Kildare Club,
J. V. Sheppey, Martin Sheppey, Wm. L. Ketcham, William A. Read, Charles
Wheeler, B. L. Amerman and Edward H. Litchfield. The Kildare Club is composed
of eminent and wealthy Jews, has a fine club house and owns seventeen or
eighteen thousand acres of forest in the western part of the town.

  The Litchfield park, established in 1893, lies in the southwest corner of
Franklin county, and comprised originally nine thousand acres laid out in
rectangular form   to which six thousand acres, including Mount Morris, have
since been added. It contains three lakes and two ponds. Mr. Litchfield, the
owner, formerly a lawyer, but now retired from active pursuits, has been
devoted all of his life to nature and the wilderness. His Adirondack
attachment dates from 1866, when he began camping out and hunting in the
region   continuing the practice for about ten years, when with the
disappearance of the wolves and catamounts the woods here seemed to him no
longer really wild, and he transferred his activities as a sportsman to the
Rocky Mountains, though he had visited Europe even earlier for shooting. In
subsequent years he has hunted in Asia and Africa, where he secured many
trophies, as the contents of the great hall of the chateau in Litchfield park
bear abundant witness. In establishing his park Mr. Litchfield intended to
breed wild game under natural conditions, and, after erecting a wire fence
eight feet high to inclose the entire tract, stocked it with large numbers of
moose, elk, deer, wild bear, beaver, hares, etc., besides pheasants,
black-game, capercailzie and other varieties of birds. But unfortunately
breaks in the fence caused by falling trees, the severity of the climate and
depredations by poachers combined to defeat his plan in considerable degree,
and now the moose have entirely disappeared, and the elk and deer largely so.
The beaver remain, however, and are doing well. Mr. Litchfield's efforts in
this regard deserve commendation, and should be employed by park owners
generally in the hope of better success, now that the game laws are more
thoroughly enforced and a more salutary sentiment prevails against poaching.
The general practice in the past has been simply to kill, and those who
frequent the wilds and love them owe it to the future to do something toward
repairing the depletion that destructive energies have wrought. Alluring in
itself, the great wilderness has added charm where wild life is abundant.

  Besides the features already noted, the work by Mr. Litchfield includes the
construction of roads and the erection of buildings on a Scale that has not
been duplicated, so far as I know, on any property in the Adirondacks. In
addition to having built a road to his park gates from Moody (now taken over
as a public highway), and joining with his neighbor, Wm. A. Read, in tying the
latter's park with his own by a drive three miles in length, he has
constructed over fifteen miles of drives through his own grounds. His
residential property consists of a chateau, finished in 1903, and built of
stone, steel and concrete, on the shore of Lake Madeleine (formerly known as
Jenkins Pond, but renamed for Mrs. Litchfield). This water is irregular in
shape, and its winding shores and islands, all densely wooded and unscarred by
fire, make it one of the handsomest lakes in the Adirondacks. The floors of
the chateau are of tile and marble, and the entire structure, including the
roof, is as nearly fireproof as it was practicable to make it.. Wherever wood
trim had to be used it is merely a sheathing over steel beams or massive
masonry, the least thickness of wall being three feet, and the greatest nearly
six feet. The finish is in mahogany except in two or three rooms, and the
furniture the same, much of it being inlaid or beautifully carved. The living
rooms are many, and both in winter and summer are occupied frequently by
guests. The chateau is of the French medieval type of architecture, and is as
imposing as an old-world castle. It has two great towers, each three stories
in height, and the land front is 146 feet long, with an arcade extending along
about one-half of the building, which is two stories in height. On the lake
side there are three terraces stepping down to the water edge. Besides the
living rooms, there are a library two stories high in one of the towers,
containing 4,000 volumes of English, French and Italian literature; a great
hall 30 feet wide by 30 feet high and 65 feet long, hung along the walls
with the heads of 160 wild animals, all of them sporting trophies of Mr.
Litchfield or his son, from all quarters of the world. They include lions,
rhinoceros, a giraffe, and, indeed, almost every species of game or predacious
animal except leopards, tigers, elephants and buffalo. A number of grizzly
bear skins serve as rugs. Two suits of ancient armor stand at the entrance. At
one end of this hall is a great fireplace with an antique black-marble mantel
of the time of Henry II fifteen feet high with a six-feet opening, which was
brought from France, and over which is superb filigree work in gilt. There are
in other rooms a large number of antique fireplaces, all brought from old
chateaux or castles in England or France, and the collection of which extended
over a period of several years preceding the erection of the building. All of
the corridors are decorated with deer or stag horns, mostly foreign. There is
also an art gallery containing many fine paintings, some of which are by old
masters. The chateau is lighted throughout by electricity and heated by steam,
and has every convenience to make it not merely a comfortable but a luxurious
home, either for summer or winter occupancy. There are a boat-house, garage
and stable, each of stone, corresponding in type of architecture to that of
the chateau. Three quarries were developed within the park in order to obtain
the necessary varieties and colorings of stone to give harmonious and
impressive effect to the chateau walls.

  Tupper Lake village is divided into two parts, viz., Tupper Lake and Faust,
which is the post-office designation, or Tupper Lake Junction in the railroad
nomenclature. The corporation's boundaries extend more than two miles from
north to south, and, of course, include a good deal of vacant land between the
two sections of the village. Though the census of 1915 shows a population of
3,910 in the village, a critical examination of the enumerators' original
returns discloses that one of them includes as residents within the
corporation several hundred persons whose homes are in fact outside of the
village boundaries. Thus the figures overstate the actual population by nearly
a half. It is estimated that perhaps a third of the village inhabitants are at
the point called Faust, and the remainder in the section known as Tupper Lake.
The altitude here is 1,540 feet above sea level, but, as is the habit in most
Adirondack villages, the residents are wont to call it more. The village
derived its name from the lake, which is three miles distant, and which was
named in compliment to ___ __ Tupper, the surveyor, who, with Mr. Mitchell,
established the outlines of the Macomb purchase a little earlier than 1800,
and who almost perished of starvation in making his exit from the wilderness.

  Tupper Lake is distinctively a business and manufacturing point, and has
expended little or no effort to attract visitors or residents in search of
health, though its natural advantages as a sanatorium would appear not to
differ appreciably from those of Saranac Lake. But sentiment is rather averse
to investing the place with the character of a center for tuberculous people,
though in 1910 Rebecca LaFountain, Lena S. McLane and Dr. Chas. Ryttenberg
incorporated the Tupper Lake Sanatorium, capitalized at $25,000, erected a
building for the care of patients, and for a time had a business that
indicated that with due effort and attention an institution of considerable
proportions might have been developed. Two physicians were employed, but upon
the death of one of them and the removal of the other from the town the
enterprise was abandoned.

  As indicated earlier in this chapter, the settlement of Tupper Lake upon the
extension of the railroad there in 1889 and in the years immediately following
consisted in larger part of rude and ignorant classes; common laborers who
were attracted by assurance of steady employment at good wages, and an
attendant sprinkling of men who saw in the then prevailing conditions
opportunity for profitable merchandising and other commercial undertakings.
The buildings originally erected corresponded with the general character of
the population, and the place was a typical frontier hamlet, little restrained
by law and caring less for the comforts, luxuries and refinements of maturer
communities  all of which has changed vastly within fifteen or eighteen years.
Still, the people are more mixed than in any other village in the county, and
include many differing elements and many racial extractions  the native
American, the Irish and the French predominating, with perhaps a five per
cent, representation of Jews.

  The real modernization of Tupper Lake began with, or, rather, followed
closely, the great fire of July 30, 1899, when property estimated to have a
value of a hundred and fifty thousand dollars or more was destroyed, and
practically the entire business section of the upper village left in ruins.
One hundred and sixty-nine buildings, two-thirds of which were dwellings, were
wiped out; and so severe was the loss that momentarily there was talk of
abandoning the site utterly, and concentrating all that it had been at Faust.
But that counsel of paralysis and- despair commanded no serious consideration
after recovery from the first shock of the calamity, and almost at once a
spirit of pluck and enterprise asserted itself, which in due course made the
place far more substantial, more attractive and larger and thriftier than
could have been thought possible in its younger life   winning for it on the
part of its people the proud characterization of the "Tiptop town of the
Adirondacks," which signifies their confident belief that it is destined to
become the most prosperous and the most populous municipality in Franklin
county. While some of the conditions may be taken as warranting that
expectation, those who hold it and hope to see it realized must yet not
overlook the fact that disappointment is certain to be experienced if those
who are exploiting the natural resources of the region continue to disregard
the necessity for reforestation. Unless this policy be instituted and
practiced, the place can not fail eventually to go to decay and practical
abandonment.

  The installation of a gravity water-works system was undertaken in 1899 as
an individual enterprise, a company for the work having been incorporated by
home business men, who afterward sold to the late Colonel Barbour. The source
of supply is a spring pond up on the hills three or four miles distant, at an
elevation of over two hundred feet thus affording a pressure adequate for fire
protection. Its present capital is $50.000, and of an authorized issue of
$150,000 trust mortgage bonds $87,500 are outstanding. The mains of the system
radiate through all parts of the upper village, as well as through the streets
of Faust, and leave no occasion for maintaining fire apparatus other than hose
and carts. The fire department, therefore, consists of three hose companies of
thirty members each, and local opinion deems these organizations admirable and
efficient.

  A municipal electric lighting plant, with steam power, was built in 1903 at
a cost of $16,500, to which extensions and further equipment have added about
$9,000. It gives a twenty-four hours' service at rates which are claimed to be
as low as those of any other place in the State, and considerably lower than
most. (They are less than two-thirds of those prevalent in Malone.) All
payments for the retirement of bonds and for interest charges have been made
thus far from the proceeds of a direct village tax instead of from earnings,
but, on the other hand, there has been no tax for street lighting. When the
plant was run with waste from the mills for fuel it is said that the revenue
was sufficient to cover current expenses, but when coal had to be used almost
exclusively there was an annual deficit. The annual cost of operation and
upkeep is about $14,500.

  The village employs one uniformed paid policeman, and spends altogether for
police service about $3,000 a year.

  Other village expenses include about $6,000 for street work and an equal
amount for bond and interest payments. The total expenses run to about $35,500
per annum.

  Always excepting William McLaughlin's residence, at which he was long
accustomed to entertain the sportsmen who occasionally found their way in
early times to the locality, the first hotel at Tupper Lake, in 1890, was the
Altamont, built by J. H. and Thomas L. Weir, unless possibly John Hurd's
American House, with Nelson Parks as manager, may have preceded it, and unless
also the boarding house of Joseph Demars, erected in 1889 near the Hurd mill,
be classed as an inn. The latter was in fact the first place opened in the
locality for the accommodation of the public, though mostly it served workmen
employed on the railroad, in the lumber camps and in the mills. Kenneth
Kinnear also had an early hotel. Since these pioneer days hotels, so-called,
have multiplied surprisingly, and the liquor tax records of the county
treasurer make their number in 1917 no less than eighteen, though not more
than three or four of them do a genuinely commercial business. The others are
in fact boarding houses, claiming to be hotels only in order that they may as
such exercise the privilege of selling liquor. There were in 1917 eleven other
places in the town   saloons, stores, etc.  which held liquor tax receipts,
making the whole number one to every one hundred and thirty-odd of the
population.

  The village has three school houses, one of which is in the section called
Faust. The high school building cost, including furnishings, not far from
$40,000, and six teachers are employed in it. Work of an academic grade is
done here. In the entire town, which is all combined in a single school
district, there are seven public school buildings, with twenty-nine teachers.

  Tupper Lake has also a parochial school, supported by the Church of St.
Alphonsus, at which between four hundred and five hundred pupils are enrolled.
The teachers in it number nine, and are Sisters of the order of the Holy
Ghost, exiled a few years ago from France. The building is a substantial
two-story brick structure, adjacent to the church, and was erected in 1903
under the pastorate of Rev. Father Constantineau.

  The banking facilities have been adequate and satisfactory for over ten
years past, but prior to the organization of the present institution gave
trouble and caused hardship. The firm of A. C. Wilcox & Co., private bankers
of New York city, had one of their numerous branch offices at Tupper Lake when
they suspended in May, 1905. They were under no governmental supervision, and
had no reliability or responsibility beyond that afforded by their personal
resources  which proved not to be large. The amount of deposits held by this
branch when the break came was about twelve thousand dollars, a considerable
proportion of which represented the savings of poor and hardworking men and
women, and in some cases the little all of depositors who were carrying their
small accumulations in the branch for safe keeping until they should be large
enough to make a payment on a home. Six months later men of the village who
commanded public confidence took steps to organize a real bank, paid in
$25,000 of actual money as capital, obtained a charter under the national
banking act, and in June, 1906, opened for business an institution which has
been of substantial benefit and helpfulness to the business interests of the
town and of profit to the stockholders. The first board of directors was
composed of the following: Ira B. Hosley, Dr. J. A. Thissell, James L. Jacobs,
Wm. J. Dievendorf, P. H. McCarthy, U. S. Scott, Barnett Propp, B. Seigel and
Henry H. Day. The bank began business with Mr. Scott as president and Frank D.
Barry of Malone as cashier   the latter giving place after a few months to
Charles E. Knox, who has held the position continuously to the present time,
and to whose services the bank is indebted in no small measure for its
pronounced success. Mr. Jacobs is the present president, and until his
entrance into the army Clarence S. Potvin was the assistant cashier. The
capital has not been increased, but a surplus of nearly $25,000 has been built
up, deposits have grown to a total of nearly a half million, and total assets
exceed $600,000. In 1913 one of the handsomest small banking houses in
Northern New York was erected at a central point, and is carried in resources
at a value of $18,174. New names in the directorate, due to the death or
retirement for other causes of Messrs. Hosley, Dievendorf, Scott, Thissell,
Propp and Day are Albert S. Hosley, Mr. Knox, D. J. Hayes, R. J. Hosley, L. C.
Maid, Ralph Hastings, J. Howard Brown and Leon P. Demars.

  The Church of St. Alphonsus (Roman Catholic), incorporated in 1890, was the
first to be formed in Altamont. The parish originally included Faust. Rev. D.
J. Halde was the first pastor, himself building a log cabin for a parsonage,
but occupied that relation for only a short time, as he died from exposure and
arduous work. He was succeeded by Rev. Michael W. Holland, who served for ten
years, and under whose ministration the church edifice was erected in 1891. It
was enlarged in 1903, and is capacious and attractive. It represents a cost of
about thirty-five thousand dollars. The society is by far the strongest and
largest religious body in Altamont, and counts nearly five hundred families in
its membership.

  In 1904 Rev. Father Constantineau, the then rector, ceded the territory
known as Faust in favor of a new and separate parish, and Rev. Father
Alexander A. Klauder founded under such cession the Church of the Holy Name,
drew the plans and began the erection of a church edifice, which was seven
years in reaching completion, and, including the furnishings, stands for an
expenditure of about thirty thousand dollars. Before the building of the
church was undertaken services were held in Firemen's Hall. The society has a
membership of two hundred families. Father Klauder remained pastor for five
years, when differences between him and some of the members led to his
displacement. It is not my province to enter at all into the particulars or
even to touch upon the merits of this local quarrel, or the breach to which it
led between Father Klauder and the higher dignitaries of the Church, and it
must suffice to state that the feeling became exceedingly bitter, that Father
Klauder was forcibly prevented by his former parishioners from even entering
the church to attend a service conducted by his successor, that during his
absence his household effects were thrown from the rectory into the street,
and that subsequently the trouble broadened and was intensified by other
factors until Father Klauder was committed to a hospital as insane, and has
since been unfrocked. In turn he has sued the bishop and vicar-general for
personal damages, and in a publication issued by him at irregular intervals
the bitterest of attacks are directed against these dignitaries and a number
of priests in the diocese. Father Klauder has had no ministerial assignment
for several years past, and now resides in Malone.

  Services in accordance with the ritual of the Protestant Episcopal Church as
first held at Tupper Lake consisted of lay readings by John Hurd in a room
over the office of the Northern Adirondack Railroad. Mr. Hurd ran Sunday
excursion trains from Santa Clara to Tupper Lake during this formative period.
A few years later a missionary was stationed at Tupper Lake for a time. The
church edifice was erected in 1899 through the efforts of Rev. John N. Marvin,
diocesan missionary, and cost about a thousand dollars. The society has
thirty-five members. A few years ago a fine rectory was given by a gentleman
as a memorial to his son, who had died at Tupper Lake.*

  * In the winter of 1917 the rectory with all of its contents was burned. The
vector, Mr. Boyd, was alone in it at the time, and escaped, though severely
burned.

  Grace Methodist Episcopal Church of Altamont was incorporated January 20,
1896, though divine worship by members of this denomination had been
maintained from 1891. A church building was erected a little later, and was
destroyed in the big fire in 1899. It was replaced almost at once at a cost of
about five thousand dollars, the new structure being of brick and
architecturally attractive. The church has seventy-five members.

  The Presbyterian Church of Tupper Lake, N1. Y., had its beginning in the
summer of 1900, when services were held in the school house at Faust by a Mr.
Ferguson, then by Kev. Joseph McNeil of Piercefield, and next by John Nevin, a
Princeton theological student. The church building is the same that was
formerly at Brandon, and was brought from there to Faust in 1901 and
re-erected at a cost of about four hundred dollars. It was not until December
10, 1905, that incorporation was effected, the Adirondack Mission contributing
meantime to the support of the undertaking. Eev. Aaron W. Maddox, since famed
as the lumberjack missionary, served the society as stated supply from
November, 1901, to April, 1911, and then as pastor for two years and a half.

  The only synagogue in the county is at Tupper Lake. It was built in 1906 by
Congregation Anshey Beth Joseph, and was afterward conveyed to Congregation
Beth Joseph. Prior to the date stated services according to the Jewish ritual
had been held at private residences. The Congregation Beth Joseph is served by
B. Brennglass, rabbi, who acts also as teacher of the school which the
organization supports, and whose sessions are held in the basement of the
synagogue. There are twenty-eight families and a few single men attached to
Congregation Beth Joseph.

  A Roman Catholic church or mission was formed at Derrick about 1900, and was
served for six or seven years regularly by Zeno De Carey, Joseph Hervieux and
J. E. Berard; but -with the suspension of the Turner lumbering operations the
population became so scant that discontinuance of regular services followed,
and there has since been no resident rector. Father Berard, now at Lake Clear,
continues to visit the place once in a month or two, however.

  Altamont Lodge No. 609, I. 0. 0. F., was organized September 9, 1891, and
has thirty-seven members.

  St. John Baptist Society, formed in 1893, is a strong and flourishing
organization, owns its own lodge room, and has about one hundred and fifty
members.

  Mt. Arab Lodge No. 847, F. and A. M., was organized June 1, 1904, and has
one hundred and six members. It owns its lodge room.

  On Sunday evening, February 24, 1889, four men were playing cards at the
house of William McLaughlin in Tupper Lake, when one of them, Ziba Westcott,
son of one of the earliest settlers and stepson of McLaughlin, accused one of
the others   John Smith, son-in-law of McLaughlin   of having cheated.
Westcott was slight, sightless in one eye, and Smith a physical giant with
muscles like tempered steel, the most powerful man in the locality, and said
to have been of vicious disposition. There had been previous bad blood between
the two, and Smith was said to have threatened to "get" Westcott. Instantly
following the accusation, Smith struck Westcott a smashing blow over the eye,
cutting a gash from which the blood flowed into the good eye, blinding him
completely. Westcott drew a knife, and in the striking and parrying which
followed Smith's throat was cut to the windpipe, and he expired within a few
minutes. Westcott was indicted for manslaughter in the first degree. His
defense was that, having been blinded by blood, he used the knife only to
stand Smith off, and did not even know that he had cut him until after the
affair was over, and he was told of its fatal issue. The jury returned a
verdict of not guilty. Westcott became insane about fifteen years later, and
is now an inmate of the State hospital at Point Airy.

  Erastus L. Sabin, familiarly known as "Rat" a former resident of St. Regis
Falls, but at the time a liveryman at Tupper Lake   was found dead back of the
Hurd sawmill in the morning of September 28, 1898, shot through the head and
through the breast, and with the head badly battered and crushed. Before the
district attorney and the sheriff could reach Tupper Lake, the case had been
bungled by local inquiry, and notwithstanding expert detective service was
employed no sufficient grounds could be established to justify an arrest. The
story as told at the time was that a stranger had called at the livery during
the evening of September 27th and arranged for the delivery of a rig to him at
a later hour at the place where Sabin's body was found; but that
representation was not credited by the district attorney or by the sheriff,
who were convinced in their own minds of quite other conditions and
circumstances. General belief was that there was a woman in the case, and that
it was her paramour who, finding Sabin with the woman, committed the murder.
But whoever the murderer may have been, he escaped detection, and the mystery
of the crime was never solved.

  March 21, 1913, Joseph McWade. a New York Central special officer or
detective and also a special deputy sheriff, saw two men riding "blind" under
the baggage car as a train was pulling out of Faust. Upon his indicating that
he had seen them the men jumped from the car and started to run in opposite
directions. McWade shot one of them (Arthur Lerrin) fatally, and wounded the
other. He was indicted for manslaughter in the first degree the charge being
that without design to kill he had nevertheless unjustifiably and inexcusably
caused death. The jury returned a verdict of guilty of manslaughter in the
second degree, with recommendation to the court for clemency. MeWade was fined
five hundred dollars.

  At Faust on January 2, 1915, John Morrison shot Ezra Alpert in the breast,
inflicting a wound which resulted in death the same day. Alpert was an
employee in the hotel where Morrison, a meat cutter, was boarding, and had
refused to sell liquor to the latter, who was already under the influence of
drink. In the frenzy of intoxication Morrison went to his room for his gun,
and committed the crime. The men had been ordinarily on quite friendly terms.
Morrison was found guilty of murder in the second degree, and was sentenced to
twenty years' imprisonment at Dannemora.

  Other tragedies in Altamont include the burning of the boarding house of
Julius King on Christmas morning, 1902, when one of the boarders and Mrs.
McGovern (King's daughter) and her four children perished in the flames, and
also the burning of Antoine Caron's house in 1906. Two children were burned to
death in the latter fire.