Adirondack Characters and Campfire Yarns – The Hermit of Piseco Lake

Lucinda

AMONG THE RUGGED, eccentric woodsmen who wove their lives into the North Woods, Floyd Ferris Lobb, the hermit of Piseco lake, was unique.

Adirondack Characters And Campfire Yarns

“Old Lobb,” the hermit of Piseco Lake

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Old Lobb

A postcard of Floyd Ferris Lobb, commonly known as “Old Lobb,” the hermit of Piseco Lake.

COURTESY EDWARD BLANKMAN (THE LLOYD BLANKMAN COLLECTION)

Old Men of the Mountains

Mortimer Norton believed Adirondack characters should not be forgotten and that accounts of their lives and exciting adventures should be repeated over and over again. He believed the younger generation should learn about the old-time characters like New York State frontiersmen Nat Foster, Jonathan Wright, and Nick Stoner. Canadian “French” Louie who lived on Big West Lake would have been included. The story “Old Lobb of Piseco” is one of Mortimer’s stories born of his experience, knowledge and research.

OLD LOBB OF PISECO LAKE

Mortimer Norton

AMONG THE RUGGED, eccentric woodsmen who wove their unusual, sometimes turbulent, lives in the North Woods of New York in an early era, Floyd Ferris Lobb was one of the most unique. The events that occurred during his latter days form an interesting chronicle of the wilderness.

Without any intention on his part, the activities in which Lobb engaged while staying alone on the westerly shore of Piseco Lake, couched in the dense forest of southern Hamilton County, notably influenced numerous sportsmen who invaded the Adirondack Mountains to test their skill at trout fishing.

This impression, rife to some extent even at present, came about because Lobb, goaded either by the impulse to invent or the necessity to appease his recurring hunger, devised a trolling spoon that, in brass, copper, and nickel finishes, was highly appealing to lake trout.

To the fish, its shape, size, and color apparently resembled a golden or silver shiner – two species of minnows prevalent in the lake then and which the trout prized as food – when twitched through the water At any rate, the spoon readily proved to be the most alluring of all those used in the region, and certainly resulted in exceptional catches for the bewhiskered old-timer.

Naturally, visiting anglers became aware of this phenomenal spoon, despite every furtive attempt in the beginning by Lobb to hold it a secret. Their curiosity was aroused to a sharp pitch; they were anxious to try it out themselves, and to have a few safely stashed in their own tackle boxes for frequent trials. Several fortunate fishermen did manage somehow to obtain samples, and thus inevitably the fame of Lobb’s pet trout teaser at length spread far and wide. n view of this notoriety, more people began to hear of “the hermit of Piseco Lake,” and to wonder from whence he had come and why he chose to seclude himself from society.

Being extremely reticent, and almost totally deaf after middle age, Lobb would confide in very few acquaintances and had scarcely any personal friends. He refused to divulge much about the incidents that took place in his boyhood years. As far as the residents and summer vacationers around Piseco were concerned, most of his life was shrouded in an impenetrable mystery. And so it remains!

Nearly everyone who came into contact with the veteran trapper, hunter, and fisherman knew him solely as “Old Lobb.” Just where and when he was born, no one could seem to discover beyond that he started life “somewhere in Pennsylvania” at a date probably between 1820 and 1825, and that his parents came from Connecticut.

Stirred by the adventurous tendencies of the pioneer and wanderlust, in his late teens or early twenties young Lobb departed from home, traveled northward, and finally arrived in the cozy village of Poland, a few miles south of the Adirondacks in the scenic and historic West Canada Creek Valley.

Here, it has been told, he opened a small tailor shop to earn a livelihood, and exercised his talents as a musician and writer. On weekends when lumberjacks and other mountaineers drifted into town to drink away their wages, Lobb might be found listening raptly to exciting tales of the North Woods.

Adirondack Characters and Campfire Yarns

These whetted his yearning to partake altogether in an outdoor life, a feeling that was intensified when he heard repeatedly about the wild game – panthers, deer, black bear, foxes, bobcats, beaver, fisher, pine marten, otter, raccoons, snowshoe rabbits, and gray squirrels-that thrived in the region about Piseco. He longed to hunt and trap these animals, to explore seldom-trod tracts of forestland, and to fish in lakes and streams that abounded with trout of huge proportions.

The opportunity to fulfill these desires came to pass sooner than he could have foreseen, and in a way that was hardly expected. A part of his youth, it seems, was enlivened by a wife, but in some manner there arose adverse marital problems that greatly changed the course of his career. It is reported, at least, that “when about twenty-four years of age, disappointed in love, or for some reason best known to himself, Lobb retired to Piseco Lake, where he lived as a hermit until his death in 1891.”

Adirondack Characters and Campfire Yarns – Fun with greenhorns

Lucinda

George Wendover guided hunting parties deep into the headwaters country and he usually got two out of every three running deer he shot at.

Adirondack Characters And Campfire Yarns

George Wendover's Fun with Greenhorns

An excerpt from " Adirondack Characters And Campfire Yarns ", Starting on page 29

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They've been icons of the Adirondacks sporting population for over one hundred and fifty years. Thousands of city slickers, also referred to as greenhorns, dudes, and sports, trusted a guide to point the way when navigating the mountain wilderness.

The era of the old-time woodsman and resident guide approached its twilight by 1900. Walk into any saloon in the North Coy back then, and chances were any number of drinkers would be guides with idle time, all suffering from a debilitating illness of the tongue called storytelling.

The Morrison Inn, across the tracks from the old Forestport train depot, was one such watering hole where "goyds" would congregate. The gathered men of the woods were what any client would call first-class guides-all experienced, congenial, respected, loyal, and crack shots to boot. Add to the list yarn-spinners.

Like all the other guides, George Wendover served his apprenticeship by observing the senior men in action and soaking up all the counsel and wisdom they could hand him. Then too, of course, by carefully examining the habits of the big game animals, he was able to pick up a great deal by himself. He went on to become one of the Black River headwater country's best guides.

George guided fishing and hunting parties deep into the headwaters country. It was said that if George had any decent chance at all he usually got two out of every three running deer he shot at. In aiming his gun he looked down along the side of the barrel and kept pumping the lever and pulling the trigger every time the deer crossed an opening through the trees. The report sounded very much as though he was using an automatic.

Guiding kept George busy during the spring, summer and fall. When waiting for a party to arrive at the train depot, friend Rev. Byron-Curtiss knew George to join the local boys at the Morrison Inn.

Like other trusted woodsmen of the golden age of guides, George was also a storyteller. Gathered together and a bit whisked up, the men enjoyed telling good-natured stories when they got together and recalled the names and exploits of their most unforgettable characters among the sports they shepherded. It was their yarns, Byron-Curtiss said, that gave the saloon a goodly part of its particular notability. In the 1960s, Lloyd Blankman interviewed George Wendover's relatives. The story that follows is his restatement of one of George's accounts. Such ever-green memories provide convincing proof that George was also a bit of a prankster.

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Soon after a party of tired hunters got back to camp, George sneaked out, cut off one of the feet of a hedgehog he had recently caught and sprang the trap on it, pulling the trap out of the hole, until the chain was tight. Next morning, a city boy hustled up to tend the trap. He soon came back with the "bear's foot" that he had found in the trap. He went back to the city with the story in his head of the bear that he had caught and lost, leaving the foot behind.

Of course this was just one of the tricks that George played on any unsuspecting person that he could find.

George liked to have fun at the expense of greenhorns. He invented the Drawboys, who lived in small caves under the roots of large spruce trees. When a greenhorn came into camp the Drawboys were always present just outside among the bushes. They never bothered people when they were awake, but as soon as they went to sleep the little men came in groups and took the city men out the window and-?

Adirondack Characters and Campfire Yarns – Introduction

Lucinda

Adirondack Characters Introduction: When I was a boy I would listen in awe to the stories of exploration told by avid fishermen and hunters.

Adirondack Characters And Campfire Yarns

Introduction

An excerpt from ” Adirondack Characters And Campfire Yarns “, Starting on page 9

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WHEN I WAS A BOY I would listen in awe to the stories of exploration told by avid fishermen, hunters, and mountain climbers who stopped by as they passed from Seventh to Eighth Lake on their return from some deep woods haunt, to share their experience at my parents’ tent site at Eighth Lake campground.

Grandpa managed the Potter Boat Company, a sales and repair shop that sold Evinrude outboard motors, boats, and accessories. In those days business was relaxed. Customers stopped by the shop to talk before and after trips to the lower lake country. Sportsmen and recreationalists, whether campground passersby or customers, were easygoing, friendly folks who offered tidbits of their adventures afoot in the Adirondacks. Some were natives who worked the land with horse teams. Others had ancestors who had cut down trees and built log cabins. One man had been given a contract to cut the timber on hundreds of acres of land; he was to have as half-payment a portion of the acreage after the timber was cut. Others worked on crews that cut out improved roads and built bridges. Those who talked about trapping in the mountains, hunting black bear, boating and fishing the big waters, and bushwhacking to reach the summits of trail-less peaks were intriguing storytellers. The men who rode rolling logs and broke up jams seemed to tell the most exciting and dangerous tales. How could I not want to join the river drivers who broke log jams to send rolling, tumbling, masses of logs rushing down river with several men riding along? They had to jump from log to log until they could reach the riverbank or a boat. Sometimes a man would slip, be carried under and lost forever.

As a result of my exposure to mountain life, I couldn’t wait to grow up: I wanted to see the wilderness. I wanted to go beyond the beaten path with only the supplies I could carry in a packbasket.

A large portion of my summers was spent living at Camp Oasis, my maternal grandparents’ riverfront camp. They knew how to make do on their own. They raised most of their own vegetables, fruits, and meat. Gardening was second nature. I remember gathering eggs in the A-frame hen house and learning the lessons of life and death at the chopping block. Root cellars were as ordinary as the coal bin and the stacks of cordwood. Blocks of ice were bought to keep perishable foods cool. Few grandparents today would give their young grandson a hatchet, even with proper instruction. I enjoyed the grown-up feeling gained from being trusted to take billets of wood and split them into the proper size for the wood-fired kitchen range. Responsibility came early in a child’s life.

One of the most important qualities Grandma and Grandpa had was self-sufficiency. Their conviction was passed on to me.

When I was about twelve years of age I began picking baskets of raspberries. Heritage red raspberries are everbearing; they provide a good yield over a long period of time. I marketed them at a roadside stand, along with angle worms raised in our camp’s garbage pit. I earned twenty-five cents a quart for red raspberries. One well-heeled gentleman asked me to keep his family supplied with berries. At the end of several weeks I handed him twenty one-quart baskets of berries at twenty-five cents a quart.

“Great Scott!” he exclaimed, “I made my money by hard work, and as a boy, I would have been glad to get five cents a basket for berries. It seems to me the price has gone up.”

“Yes,” I replied, fully aware of my toil. I had helped string and tighten the wire between the poles, trained bramble canes over wire supports, kept the berry patch weeded, and mowed between the rows with a heavy iron-wheeled push mower. “The price has gone up,” I explained, “but the berries are cultivated and require more work.”

There was little disposable income for what folks might refer to as fun today. Rural children of my generation knew how to entertain themselves the way modern children can’t, or won’t. The simplest things were big deals. Being outside was important: investigating the riverbank, building huts in the woods, roaming cow pastures, and playing made-up games. I can remember being near the big box Zenith radio listening to “Gunsmoke” and “The Lone Ranger.” I would lie on the camp’s sheepskin rug on the floor in front of the cobblestone fireplace. I would be perfectly silent one minute and shouting the next as the broadcast sound effect of a galloping horse or squeaking saloon door came over the airwaves. I took it seriously, becoming so wrapped up in the story that I thought it was true. Then I would go to bed, afraid to close my eyes because a villain might find his way to our camp.

I was no less absorbed when a hunter dragged the carcass of an enormous black bear or whitetail buck from a pickup through the front door of the meat market.

“Where did you get the big brute?” I might have inquired.

“We shot him in the wilds around Hoffmeister up in the West Canada Crick country,” might have been the reply. “We’ve got ourselves a huntin’ camp up that way. Built it from an old barracks we bought from the government after the air base closed.”

“Be jagers!” I thought. A hunting camp! Wilderness! Wild animals! Names of far-away places in the Adirondack Mountains. I was intrigued.

My youthful imagination was a rich source of entertainment. As a result of my interest in listening to the stories of men and women who visited and lived in the mountains, I developed an insatiable thirst to experience the pleasures of exploring the Adirondacks. I’ve logged almost sixty years of pleasure in “God’s country” now, and I’m still counting.

Today the North Woods provide a totally different experience from the Adirondacks of my youth. The aged folks I knew in those days knew an even more profoundly different North Country. Those who went deep into the woodlands found land to range and privacy far back from the newly constructed highways that brought rushing crowds of motorists.

Enter Lloyd Blankman. He was a senior gentleman in my youth. Like my parents and grandparents, he knew from firsthand experience that family and community were the most important things to rural folks during and after the Great Depression. Nothing was closer than blood, followed by community spirit. And nothing brought people closer together than going through hard times.

Adirondack Characters and Campfire Yarns

As a boy, Lloyd Blankman knew the dread of entering the “little house out back” in winter, the blisters earned working a buck-saw or a hand hoe. He knew the smell from a village drug store where the pharmacist ground his ingredients, and the care needed by a tired boy following the evening milking as he carried pails of milk from the barn to the cool farm cellar. He seldom slipped into store-brought clothes. Patched-up hand-me-downs made up the bulk of a child’s wardrobe.

Lloyd Blankman also loved the same region around the Adirondack headwaters in which I have spent so many years knocking around. His avocation in old age was to ferret out the history of the natives who lived in the south- western Adirondacks. Whatever sporting he enjoyed in his life always led him back to the native Adirondackers in the lower mountains. Nestled in those headwaters, he found the rich folklore that he decided to record.

Over a span of twelve years Lloyd Blankman talked with dozens of family members of mountain residents. He personally interviewed notable old-timers who held that they had many advantages in the “old days” that their kin are deprived of now-abundant wild meat, economic opportunities, and freedom from government overregulation. Most folks had plenty to eat and wear but, whipped by the Depression, had no money. They learned to get by the hard way-not because they viewed experience as being the best teacher, but because they couldn’t find or afford any other way. Blankman, as an interviewer, understood how the older generation felt. It was his wish to record for future generations what rested within the memory of men and women living in his beloved Adirondacks. He gathered their stories and began presenting them in his weekly newspaper column, “Adirondack Characters.” The setting is Herkimer County, in the southwestern corner of the “blue line” that outlines the Adirondack Park, in the middle of the twentieth century.

These are the stories of those Adirondack characters.

Adirondack Characters and Campfire Yarns – Preface

Lucinda

They were Adirondack Characters and they all found the region’s history to be as captivating as its varied landscape.

Adirondack Characters And Campfire Yarns

Preface

An excerpt from ” Adirondack Characters And Campfire Yarns “, Starting on page 1

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THE SUMMER HIKING and camping crowds leave by Labor Day. The hunting public ends their season. The beautiful forests of the southern Adirondacks become virtually empty, returning to their natural state of quiet simplicity. This is excellent news for people who like solitude.

I favor unconfined recreation. The majority of marked foot trails in the West Canada Creek and Black River headwaters lead to ponds, lakes, rivers, or low mountains. Trails do not lead to the far-removed places I enjoy seeking out. The contest on many of my excursions is to find the locations of former “green-timber” traplines, hunting and fishing shanties built from forest resources, and to identify strategically-placed logging camp sites. Having knowledge of an area’s history gives my adventures greater meaning. Several years ago I reproduced a copy of W. E. Wolcott’s Map of the North Woods by Shady P. Groves, drawn in 1891. It’s one of the many Adirondack artifacts that I have collected over the years. On the reproduction I highlighted the trapline trails that “French” Louie Seymour (1831-1915), the colorful West Canada Lakes character, slogged over. His trails covered territory few modern bushwhackers have ever seen.

I carried that old map on outings into the West Canada Lakes country, not for the scanty navigational information it provided-topographic maps served that purpose-but for the nostalgic feeling of walking in the footsteps of an Adirondack legend. It served that purpose well.

I am a dyed-in-the-wool Adirondack history buff and I’ve spent time most winters traveling, researching, listening to stories and reading about the historic Adirondack destinations that fascinated me the most.

I also collected artifacts. Some are faded, others tinted yellow and brown-toned, dog-eared and fly-specked. Glimpses of bygone days in the Adirondack Mountains stored as they came in a Fanny Farmer chocolate box, a red and white cardboard Royal Medjool pitted dates container, a Peter Schuyler-Victor cigar box, and a vintage Utica Club beer case-no bottles included! Other snapshots were given to me in little stacks tied with old Christmas ribbon, in metal recipe tins and in family scrapbooks. Others came singly. My most prized pictures showed up in a worn manila envelope. It contained just negatives-the old square, thick film variety. They belonged to Lloyd Blankman. His son, Edward, had them stored on an upstairs closet shelf.

Most are snapshots, casual family photographs taken with a hand-held camera without regard to technique. I have no idea who some of the men and women are. Lloyd’s notes identify others.

Twelve are very old professional photographs: thin photographic paper fixed to a thick cardboard backing. One shows French Louie and Truman (Trume) Haskell standing in front of Louie’s camp at Big West. Lloyd wrote on the back: “Taken about 1900. Given to me by Trume Haskell. One of my best and rarest pictures.” Another shows a buckboard bound for Barber’s on Jocks Lake road. One of my favorites is of guide Giles Becraft standing with a party of two “sports” on the shore of Jocks Lake. Dut Barber, owner/ operator of Barber’s Lodge, stands next to his woodsman guide.

Another favorite shows “Red” Jack Conklin and buddies in 1926 at Red’s camp on Gulf Brook back in the woods north of the Haskell Hotel. Hunting success is evident in many of the photos of his camp. That area today is a bushwhacker’s longing.

Those dingy pictures and yellowed journals of bygone days guided me to places where trappers trapped and loggers ran river drives, to one-room school houses and stone fences around the fields of hardscrabble farmers. Many trips to the headwaters of the Black River and West Canada Creek were inspired by stories about the first wealthy sportsmen traveling there by horse and jumper and the guides who led them to the bounty of that pristine wilderness.

Year after year, I collected. Eventually I found that I was depending more and more on materials directly connected to a handful of amateur Adirondack historians: Lloyd Blankman, Rev. A.L. Byron-Curtiss, Harvey L. Dunham, Mortimer Norton, and Thomas C. O’Donnell. They too had spent much of their lives collecting pictures and stories about the backwoods folks of the highland interior. Now I was collecting them.

They were all sportsmen. They loved the Adirondack Mountains, and they all found the region’s history to be as captivating as its varied landscape, as captivating as I find it now.

People who knew them describe men haunted by the chase. They amassed a wealth of woods lore over their lifetimes. Perhaps because the men instinctively knew technological progress would replace the pioneers’ readiness, they made voluminous and amazingly detailed notes to record the skills of survival afield and the ability to live in a harsh climate.

All the men lived during a time when gathering scores of amusing anecdotes and information was painstaking. Many of their subjects were old or had died. The personal histories of natives they sought were already being obscured by the gathering mists of legend and hearsay.

The most important thing to me is that they gathered a supply of sidelights on the nature and texture of mountain life that is factual. Their recordings bring to life the distinctive voices of hermits, moonshiners, gum pickers and anglers with stories of families, feuds and sporting in the North Woods when Adirondack waters were a trout haven.

They wanted people to remember the names of the men they researched, respected and revered. Men like French Louie and Johnny Leaf, the St. Regis Indian who would kill a deer for a pint of whiskey. The bear-teasing Frank Baker, guide for the famed Dut Barber at Jocks Lake, now Honnedaga. Burt Conklin, a local frontier legend. Ferris Lobb, hermit of Piseco Lake. Johnny Jones, Bill Pardy, Roc Conklin, Will Light and other unadulterated “wildcrafters.” These men became some of the best-known characters in the lively headwaters country, because of the numerous newspaper and magazine articles the collectors produced.

Adirondack Characters and Campfire Yarns

Their notes, writings and photos are extremely helpful to me as I plan what I call historical bushwhacks-trips where I make use of the extensive personal papers, diaries, unpublished manuscripts, published articles, and photographs that generous relatives and friends of the men have offered me.

I admired these men for spending a lifetime searching and recording historical information. My adventures were thoroughly enriched because of their interest and research. I realized I should do something with their notes, pictures and out-of-print stories, to continue their work; I just didn’t know what-until an accident brought my thoughts together.

One winter night, as I twirled my swivel chair away from the computer to dart out to the kitchen for a handful of pretzel rods, I tripped over my cat, Rascal, who had curled up underfoot. I fell on the rug, “a double s over tea kettle,” as my grandmother used to say. As I went down, my arms went out to soften the fall, but my aim was misplaced. As I grabbed for the desktop I accidentally knocked over a pile of photographs that included photos from Rev. Byron-Curtiss’ albums and those Edward Blankman had loaned me. Mixed in with scattered vintage images was some correspondence from a 90-year-old occasional pen pal, Walt Hastings.

I cursed as I lay sprawled on the floor. Papers and photos were every- where. The hours I had taken to organize the pictures seemed like a huge loss. As I berated myself for not putting rubber bands around the various stacks, my eyes fixed on a letter from Walt. It was the last letter he ever sent me. I picked it up and began to read. In reminiscing about the history and happenings of the area in question . . . I dug into some old deeds and as far as I can determine, my Granddad arrived on the North Wilmurt scene in 1900, give or take a couple of years, some 30 years after the Reeds . . . arrived to settle at the mill.

I have no idea how long Granddad was at North Wilmurt before he met Addie [Hull].

Addie was a good friend of Granddad’s. [As a result of his infantile paralysis] Addie’s method for get- ting from here to there was by crawling. He wore a pair of hip boots cut off at the feet (so the toes would not catch on roots and rock) and a pair of heavy rubber gloves similar to those worn by power company linemen. With his double barrel shotgun slung beneath his chest he would crawl on all fours, like an animal, to a favorite deer run to watch and wait. Because of his infirmity, balance was a problem and to prevent being toppled over from the “kick” of the gun, he would sit with his back against a tree. After bagging his deer, he would crawl back home to get help to retrieve the carcass. On a visit to his home in 1932, he told me many stories of his life and showed me 28 notches cut on the inside groove of the forepiece of his shotgun, each one representing a deer he had killed.

Walt’s letter went on, but Rascal interrupted my reading as he returned to the room. He now wanted the warm spot under the light. I watched him jump up and settle down. “Lucky cat,” I muttered.

As I fumbled over the photos, now totally out of any sequence or context, I began to look at them in a way I had never seen them before. Walt was still alive and kicking, but Byron-Curtiss and the others were all gone now. The pictures appeared ghostly on the floor, like faces in clouds, a mosaic of vanishing history blowing in the wind.

Instead of reorganizing I found myself randomly reviewing individual items. I focused on details I originally had overlooked. A new order was revealing itself. Pictures were no longer grouped according to whom I had received them from, but by what story they told. Pioneering natives, loggers, stage drivers, guides, well-to-do early camp owners could be categories. So, too, could moms and dads. Barefoot children, posing with rifles, standing by elders. Girls adorned in bows and ruffles with long curly locks, clutching bouquets of ferns. Boys dressed in bib overalls with a single pant strap buttoned at the waistband. Children rowing, carrying packbaskets or riding in them. Proud exhibits of fish hanging from stringers or singly from the ends of makeshift fishing poles. Gangs of loggers posed at their lumber camps. Clothes revealed whether it was warm summer, cool autumn, cold winter or buggy springtime.

For each, I had questions: What became of you, whatever your circumstances? Are any of you still alive? What families still live in the mountains? Do the settings in the pictures still look about the same, or has the landscape so changed that all that remains of those days are the ghosts of those who once roamed the land and the now-silent voices of the people frozen in a moment of time, calling out, “Hurry up and take the picture!”

I handled, sorted and filed one picture. I didn’t have a clue who the little boy in the blue-tinted photo was. I came across his picture in a copy of a 1912 edition of The Life and Adventures of Nat Foster: Trapper and Hunter of the Adirondacks. It had been placed inside the front cover. I believe it is Joseph Byron-Curtiss because his father, Rev. A.L. Byron-Curtiss, wrote the book. Tom Kilborne said it was one of twenty-seven books he inherited when he purchased the Reverend’s camp. A rubber stamp was used to identify where the book was stored. On several pages, a red and blue ink sign reads, “Nat Foster Lodge, North Lake. Adirondacks. P.O. Atwell, N.Y.”

I know the names of the two sporting writers standing on a beaver dam across Fall Stream in Piseco because someone penned the celebrities on the picture postcard. I estimate the picture to be close to a hundred years old, but from personal experience I can attest that paddling that stream is just as chal- lenging now as it would have been when the photo was taken.

Two photos showed interesting portraits of a young Byron-Curtiss and a fishing buddy. Someone scrawled with an old-fashioned pen-the type that required periodic dipping of the steel stylus into a jar of permanent ink- “Row, Row, Row.” Nothing there gives a clue to the person’s identity, but I showed it to one old-timer in Forestport who thinks it might be Ira Watkins, a turn-of-the-century guide who lived in Atwell. I figure there is a good chance he is right. There is also a good chance that every natural setting shown in the photographs could be rediscovered today: The landscape of the headwaters has changed very little in the last one hundred years.

Mortimer Norton once said that outdoorsmen tend to overlook significant features of the North Woods-“its mountain meadows and wild flowers.” Lloyd Blankman would have added, “and the lore of the mountains as well as the Adirondack characters.”

Lloyd’s essays colorfully recreate life in the Adirondack Mountains in firsthand accounts. They contain little formal history, because unlike the works of scholars who sift and arrange facts into understandable sums and patterns, Lloyd’s stories are the stuff of history before it is worked by the hands of historians.

I knew Lloyd had dreamed of organizing his newspaper and magazine arti- cles, along with the published and unpublished works of Harvey Dunham and Mortimer Norton, into a book. It was to be titled “Adirondack Characters,” after the banner of his column in The Courier, Clinton, New York’s hometown newspaper.

A similar book of campfire yarns and Adirondack characters, which would include those authors themselves, was taking shape in my mind. It wasn’t long before I was making further inquiries to find relatives, additional materials, and permission to use them.

In the summer of 2002 I visited Lloyd Blankman’s son Edward and talked with him about the project. I quietly suggested to Ed that I would like to finish his father’s dream, by way of incorporating material I had collected that bore a likeness to stories told by Lloyd. I wanted to produce a book that told the stories of early settlers-stories that originated from the West Canada and Black River headwaters.

Almost immediately Ed replied, “You have my permission to use all the material my father gathered and was given permission to use.” He disappeared into another room, coming back shortly with two boxes containing additional treasures of antiquity.

“You’re tapped into an interest of mine,” he said. “My father enjoyed gathering fresh and authentic material for his lectures. Yes, go ahead. As a matter of fact I would love to write an introduction.”

Funny how things go. If Rascal had not been underfoot, the idea to assemble these early Adirondack folklorists’ anecdotes and photographs into a book might never have crystallized. I’ll say thanks now, Rascal, because I certainly didn’t then.

My other colleagues in the preparation of this book are Lloyd Blankman, Rev. A.L. Byron-Curtiss, Harvey L. Dunham, Thomas C. O’Donnell, and Mortimer Norton. They were all woodsmen at heart, their haunt the south- western Adirondacks. There they fished and hunted, and were “regulars” sharing their lives with the natives of the region. The writers are long deceased, but their stories, articles and memories about a variety of Adiron- dack characters, their vocations and their uniquely Adirondack way of life live on. This book weaves their works together with mine to present a glimpse of Adirondack pioneer life, an artifact that can provide future readers with an appreciation for a plain-spoken way of writing and some good old campfire yarns.

William J. O’Hern, March 2004

The Hermit’s cabin moves to a museum

Lucinda

Harvey Carr took on the arduous job of moving the [hermit’s] cabin to the [Adirondack] museum. He painstakingly numbered each log, each board, and each item, carefully dismantled it all …

The Hermit and Us – Our Adirondack Adventures with Noah John Rondeau

The Hermit’s cabin moves

An excerpt from “The Hermit and Us”, Starting on page 220

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“Harvey Carr was another Blue Mountain Laker. He worked as a logger for a spool company. His company had either bought land in the Cold River country or the timber rights, I don’t remember. I don’t think Harvey knew anything about us knowing Noah John until he approached Monty and me saying it was ‘a shame’ Rondeau’s cabin was about to be bulldozed. Harvey had been living back there, staying in an established lumber camp. He hoped that we could help him to rescue one of the cabins. Although we really had no idea on how to go about it, we agreed to at least try. One day shortly after we agreed to help, Harvey took his wife, Mary, and us into Rondeau’s old camp site on top of Cold River Hill.

Hermits cabin

Courtesy of Ruth King

Noah was pleased to know his past way of life would be preserved in the Adirondack Museum’s display of his hermitage.

After seeing the little dwellings and having talked at length with the grand gentleman Noah John was, we felt that the Adirondack Museum should indeed find it an interesting exhibit. By the way, thinking at the time the cabins would almost certainly be bulldozed, I took Noah John’s big white coffee cup as a reminder. It is now on the table in the cabin at the museum. “As I said before, Monty talked to Mr. Bruce Inverarity. He was the first director of the new museum. Inverarity had heard of Rondeau. He felt that the Adirondack hermit, because of Rondeau’s appearances at the Sportsmen’s Shows, was commercial and a fake. He also assumed that Rondeau had made a small fortune out of that. Quite the contrary was true. Actually Noah John had been taken advantage of. The sporting goods manufacturers only paid for his expenses and one hundred dollars

for each show appearance …

If I remember correctly, it was not until after the success of the Enoch Squires story that Mr. Inverarity rather grudgingly consented to accept the cabin into the museum grounds where it became, if not the museum’s most popular all-time exhibit, certainly the most popular at that time.

“As soon as that permission was granted, Harvey Carr took on the arduous job of moving the cabin to the museum. He painstakingly numbered each log, each board, and each item, carefully dismantled it all, prepared it for travel the long way out over the rough logging road and then was almost defeated trying to get some help and some way of transportation out [to the museum]. I think one man [Paul Crofut] helped him after he had gotten the consent of the museum to send a truck. Then Harvey put it all carefully together again on the farthest-out perimeter of the grounds.” Eleanor ended her last letter by bringing the cabin placement up to date. “Unfortunately, exposed log cabins do not last too long. Therefore, several years ago, under a new director, the exhibit was moved indoors.” Richard Smith would probably have been right had I placed a bet with him. A hermit in the 1940s and ’50s would have been more popular than he ever would be in the 21st century. But, as late as the 1980s and ’90s, when I was presenting historical slide programs for Adirondack Discovery throughout the Adirondack Park and for the elderhostel program at Sag- amore Institute at Raquette Lake, I realized that the majority of people in attendance still wanted to learn more about the Adirondack hermit.

Rondeau’s Writings

Lucinda

“Now it was my turn to inquire about Rondeau’s writings. He certainly had ample enough opportunity to give Thoreau some stiff competition in the literary-hermit field

The Hermit and Us – Our Adirondack Adventures with Noah John Rondeau

Rondeau’s Writings

An excerpt from “The Hermit and Us”, Starting on page 212

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Seated in the small, snug cabin made partly of logs, partly of rough sawn boards Noah salvaged from a deserted lumber shanty, Ed thought of his buddy waiting in an adjacent wigwam that provided a camping place for hikers, fishermen, and hunters who came this way and wanted to bed down on the bluff above Cold River. Jack was no doubt studying the pole structures and had discovered they served as Rondeau’s woodpiles, as Ed was gearing up to learn a few things that were still on his mind.

Rondeau wigwam

Courtesy of Peggy and Wayne Byrne

Noah’s method of drying firewood stacked into wigwams added to Cold River Hill’s mystique. Each mass had a name: Beauty Parlor, Mrs. Rondeau’s Kitchenette, Meat Wigwam, Pyramid of Giza, Summer Wigwam.

“Now it was my turn to inquire about Rondeau’s writings. He certainly had ample enough opportunity to give Thoreau some stiff competition in the literary-hermit field—if he wanted to work at it. Rondeau claimed he made almost daily entries in his diary. I was dismayed when he told me that much of his writings were in coded hieroglyphics.

“Next, Rondeau brought out one of his coded books. I looked at it and wondered why anyone would spend so much time writing something no one else could decipher unless it was to describe the location of a hidden treasure. So I asked what the purpose of writing in code was if its value dies with its creator. ‘It’s so no one else can read it,’ was Rondeau’s curt reply. Evidently he did not think it an onerous and senseless way of keeping things to himself. Maybe they were not worth reading. On the other hand, maybe they were directions to cached traps and overnight camps, great fishing holes, set locations for taking fur bearers or special deer hunting watches. Maybe, it was just a game he was playing with people so they could always have something to talk about. He also mentioned that he was working on his autobiography. Of course, he would want others to read his autobiography, so it would not be coded. That he would produce a finished literary work of any kind in this primitive environment would be highly commendable, I thought.

“Twenty years after my visit, part of Rondeau’s literary legacy became known to the world when Maitland De Sormo of Saranac Lake published the book Noah John Rondeau, Adirondack Hermit. The book contains Rondeau’s “Recollections of Sixty Years,” excerpts from his journals, and some of his colorful poems, all more or less untouched to preserve the rustic flavor of the self-educated man. I promptly bought one. It is still one of the best-selling Adirondack books about a genuine lover of the wilderness.

Before leaving the hermitage, Rondeau gave us a final tour of his tiny municipality in the wilderness. The many bones and skulls hanging from buildings or laying on the ground he identified as those of deer and bear and various fur bearers. Unlike Thoreau, this hermit was a hunter and trapper, a good rifle shot and something of a bowman who crafted his own bow and arrows. Thoreau, however, had a good eye for finding ancient arrowheads on his many walks.”

Rondeau on Thoreau

Lucinda

Talking about Thoreau with a real, live hermit deep in the Adirondack wilderness was a great experience. There could not have been a better classroom for such a discussion.

The Hermit and Us – Our Adirondack Adventures with Noah John Rondeau

Rondeau on Thoreau

An excerpt from “The Hermit and Us”, Starting on page 209

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He also valued the philosophy of Henry David Thoreau. “From my middle teenage years, I had self-Thoreauized myself — so now I needed a little real-life Rondeauizing to give balance to the bookish ideas as to what a hermit is really like in the wilds. Rondeau was a primitive Thoreau, a Thoreau gone to the wilderness instead of Walden Pond.”

Rondeau and Thoreau

“With this in mind, I could not help but bring up the subject of Walden and its author, Henry David Thoreau. Rondeau said he had read Thoreau but did not think much of him as a hermit. Then, in a short diatribe, he blasted the sage of Walden Pond. To a young disciple of Thoreau, this was embarrassing and unnerving. Though his acid criticisms seemed unjust, I listened. ‘You call Thoreau a hermit,’ barked Noah, ‘when he spent less than two years at Walden Pond and walked into town almost every day to see his folks. He may be the most talked-about hermit, but to me he was a phony.’”

Noah admitted to reading quite a bit. “Back here I would take a kind of course, like something — astronomy, religion, philosophy or something like that just on my own authority. I’d get a few good books and when I’d get through with it, I’d know more than when I started.” …

Ed said, “I considered Noah’s words but did not know if they had anything to do with Thoreau. If people considered him a worthy hermit, that was one thing, but the fact is Walden was a part of Thoreau’s deliberate experiment to put transcendental theories into a life form and he did it. Noah had a firm and narrow concept as to what made a hermit authentic. Evidently, it was not what he [Thoreau] accomplished, but how long he stayed. So, Thoreau was verbally excluded from his fraternity of hermits.

Nor would he give him any credit for sublimating the solitary life. His fiery criticism of the 19th century sage assured me, however, that Noah was probably one of Thoreau’s most unusual and most avid readers …

Edwin’s thoughts swung back to comparing Thoreau and Rondeau. “Both hermits were good with their hands in repairing and building things. This basic skill of self-reliance appears to be one of the prime requirements for a successful hermit.

“As far as formal education went, Rondeau, an elementary school dropout, had very little. On the other hand, Thoreau grew up in an atmosphere of intellectualism, in close contact with such great minds as Ralph Waldo Emerson.

“Talking about Thoreau with a real, live hermit deep in the Adirondack wilderness was a great experience. There could not have been a better classroom for such a discussion. In this environment, however, Thoreau seemed at a terrible disadvantage, not only because he could not represent himself, but because he seemed tame and academic, and not the man of the wilderness often depicted in books by his modern-day admirers, but a man of the gentle, pastoral scene.

“Mon” Lost in the Woods

Lucinda

“Mon” Lost in the Woods

An Excerpt from Life at a North Woods Lumber Camp

Around eight o’clock one October evening, before he turned in, Old Pat Moran laid down the last stick of shavings for the morning fire and went down to the stable for a final time thinking something might have been overlooked. While closing the double doors he suddenly stopped dead in his tracks when a faint sound of a rifle shot reached his ears. The old warrior suddenly sprang into action and rushed to our house, his hand trembling as he shook his cane upon finding Father.

“There’s a mon lost, George! I hear’n his gun!”

Loggers in the North Country

Photo courtesy of JohnDonahue

In the early days of logging, man power and horses were the only power used.

A gunshot at night was a sure sign that someone out in the woods needed help. The household was suddenly electrified at the news, as was the lumber shanty below the house as quickly as Father could get down with the news.

Presently the jacks gathered on our porch. Father directed the searchers to concentrate on the east and north sides, reasoning properly that men could not easily get lost in the land to the south or to the west.

Ben Watson, who this season had been taken off the list of sawyers and made a swamper, was for everybody setting off in different directions, the women folks of course excepted. He was certain that by climbing trees and yelling at the top of our voices someone would be sure to make con- tact with whoever was lost out there in the night. Father suggested that it would be best to first fire a salvo from our double-barrel shotgun. The roar hardly died away when a faint report came from afar off, easterly.

“They hear’n us!” Jut Gannon declared.

Everybody agreed except my brother Fred.“How do you know?” he asked.“Maybe he didn’t hear you at all, Pa.”

At that point Mother broke in, “What direction did it come from?”

Discussion indicated that the report came from several directions. The men decided to strike out in pairs, in various directions. Emory Lewis would carry Old Bet on his shoulder for future soundings.

Just as the rescuers began to filter out, Dave Wright dashed in asking if any- body had seen his old man, who had gone out hunting birds that morning in the region east of the O’Donnellses.

My emotions were not unmixed. I harbored certain prejudices toward Old Man Wright. He was a short, stocky man, proud of his bulging paunch. Mutton- chop whiskers without a mustache adorned his face.

All the kids called him “Pussy.” Pussy liked to tease us in a not-so-friendly way. Suddenly another report of gunfire reached us.“That’s old Bet,” Fred declared.

“It’s coming from over at the Cedar Swamp northeast.”

Then came another and another followed by an answering shot. Within min- utes, from various directions there began to be heard the calls of our men, who, from tops of trees, would be cupping their mouths with their hands and letting go with a hair-raising “Hoo-oo-oo-oo!”

Meantime Dave Wright was declaring, “Pop was never lost before.”

“Howjuh know? Ever ask him?” My brother wanted to know.

Presently another shot was heard. Evidently impatient, Pussy was going away from the rescuers.

“Now he’s getting rattled,” declared Father. “He’ll never stay in one place and let the men

come to him. No. He’s got to dash around and find them!” Ten minutes later more shots showed that he was moving farther away and veering to the south. Bert Stahl and Emory Lewis had gone across the river and struck into the timber when they caught the report of

Pussy’s firearm. The two soon closed in and at long last had their man, safe and sound, back at our camp.

Buy “Life in a North Woods Lumber Camp” Now

Stephen Klein’s memories of Noah

Lucinda

Klein’s Memories of Noah: In 1991, Stephen Klein Jr. wrote about his first meeting with the hermit and a gesture of kindness.

The Hermit and Us – Our Adirondack Adventures with Noah John Rondeau

Klein’s memories of Noah

An excerpt from “The Hermit and Us”, Starting on page 194

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In 1991, Stephen Klein Jr. wrote about his first meeting with the hermit and a gesture of kindness.

“I’ve admired Noah ever since I shook hands with him in New York City when they had his set-up in the Sports Show in 1947. I was 17 years old then. Me and two of my friends went to the Grand Central Palace. We had to wait in line [to see the hermit]. I…got his autograph on the show program…”

The next summer Klein visited Rondeau at Cold River. Forty-two years later, Klein duplicated that trip twice for the express purpose of commemorating his idol.

“… I hiked back twice that year [to Rondeau’s site] in one day. Each time I took my boat to Plumley’s Landing on Long Lake. From there I hoofed it over the N.P trail. It was eleven miles one way. I hiked 22 miles in 10 hours …

Stephen Klein

From Noah’s photo album. Courtesy of Richard J. Smith

Young and old alike enjoyed meeting Noah. Stephen Klein Jr. said, “I used to beach my boat at Plumley’s Landing, hike along the N-P Trail to Cold River Hill and return to my boat all in one day — 22 miles in 10 hours.”

There wasn’t much left there from when I first dropped in on the hermit. I saw the sign needed replacing…so I returned with a handmade one with the type engraved into the wood and then filled in with paint…I go to the [Adirondack] museum every year to see Noah’s display …”

Recollections of Scoutmaster Erwin Miller

Lucinda

Scoutmaster Erwin Miller reflected upon the stir the hermit made when they brought him to a sportsmen’s show at Madison Square Gardens.

The Hermit and Us – Our Adirondack Adventures with Noah John Rondeau

Reflections of a scoutmaster

An excerpt from “The Hermit and Us”, Starting on page 191

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As our interview drew to a close, Erwin shook his head in wonder, then looked for a moment as if he had another thought. He then shook his head again confidently, and started a last recollection.

“In the late 1940s my Explorer Post was looking at projects, fund raisers, for a log cabin meeting place we planned to build. Some of our committee had visited Noah at Cold River and thought it would be a hoot to see an old friend at New York City’s Madison Square Garden for the February 1947 Sportsmen’s Show.

“We could not help to notice how Noah’s lifestyle and social status had taken a considerable turn because of that show. Newspapers heralded his airlift from his wilderness hermitage by helicopter. Rondeau was set up in a simulated forest environment at the Garden. He turned out to be the show’s main attraction. Although paid a $100 fee for his appearance, the enterprising hermit placed his large pack basket at the edge of the display into which the crowds could contribute coins and bills toward a poor hermit’s well-being. He also sold pictures of himself (for which he paid one-half cent each) for twenty-five cents apiece, fifty cents if autographed. He loved signing his name. We heard his ire, though, when he talked about the light-fingered gentry who occasionally made off with one of his photos at the show.

“It was then we decided that it would be a great experience for our explorers to run such a show in Burnt Hills. We started organizing the show months in advance. We requested the Conservation Department to make Noah available for our local show. They did so and he stayed at my home for two nights.

Noah and scout

Courtesy of Richard J. Smith

Noah autographing a picture for a wide-eyed youth.

We had a great exhibition with all the attractions expected at an outdoor extravaganza. My daughter was about three years old at the time and she sat on Noah’s lap in a rocking chair. His long beard fascinated her and he seemed to enjoy entertaining her. He was soft-spoken and very clean — not a rough and gruff backwoods creature. His language proved he had some education and enjoyed literature. My wife remembers our daughter believing that he was a Santa Claus. He was a salesman and loved to push his photographs, etc. He enjoyed our conventional breakfast.

The following year, 1948, we learned Noah received five hundred dollars for appearing in Boston’s Sportsmen’s and accordingly jumped his picture rates to fifty cents and a dollar.”

And with that last recollection, Erwin H. Miller, former Scoutmaster and Explorer advisor, found himself heading for Cold River Hill in his mind, listening to the soft rushing waters of Cold River, to the crackle of a camp- fire ringed with delighted scouts, and perhaps to the haunting sound of an old hermit’s fiddle.