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Titus Meigs
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The year is 1909 and Titus Meigs is sitting on the
veranda of his summer home overlooking Follensby Pond. Mr. Meigs, of course,
is the successful entrepreneur who in 1888 had helped form the Santa Clara
Lumber Company and is the great grandfather of Donald Clifford of Big Wolf,
the president of the board of trustees for the fledgling Natural History
Museum of the Adirondacks.
We can imagine that the day was a Sunday and, in what was probably a
somewhat rare time in the normally and busy enclave ringing with the shouts
of grandchildren and visitors, Mr. Meigs found himself alone. Jim Trombley,
his guide, and Angus, the chore boy, were out on the pond, well into Osprey
Bay, baiting the lake trout buoy with a mixture of rice and perch chunks.
Mrs. Meigs and the household staff had earlier that morning walked to Teal
Pond, a tiny kettle of impounded water where once a large, detached segment
of ice became buried during the breakup of a glacier. When the broken ice
finally melted out, the enclosing earth caved in over the spot, leaving a
hollow that then filled with water. It was a boggy spot and Mrs. Meigs was
there to collect cattails (Typha Latafolia).
In just two days the Meigs would celebrate their 48th wedding anniversary
and a great party had been planned.
The cattails would be soaked overnight in lantern oil and when ignited would
be used as torches to add a festive air to the grounds and to guide the
guests from the boat landing to the main house called the Birches.
One of the guests expected would be Dr. Ed Emerson, whose father was one of
a group of notable intellectuals who had in 1858 spent the summer at the
pond in a bark lean-to they called Camp Maple. Their guides have called this
learned group the “Philosophers,” and their colloquial designation was the
one that lasted. Historians now refer to that celebrated spot as the
“Philosophers’ Camp.”
As so often happens when alone and surrounded by the natural beauty of a
place like Follensby Pond, Mr. Meigs found himself in a reflective mood. He
thought of how well the Santa Clara Company was doing. His son, Titus, had
joined he company direct from graduation at Yale and had proven himself an
excellent leader and hard worker. Yes, he could be assured the company would
be in capable hands. The operation itself was blessed with exceptional
employees. There was Joe Gauthier (Gokey), mill foreman, James Jacobs, who
had only recently graduated from Annapolis and was a fiscal whiz, and Gene
Bruce, forester and river drive foreman without a peer. In fact, Stewart
Edward White, the famous author, had based his hero character in “Riverman”
on the Santa Clara foreman. Also outstanding was Fred LeBoeuf, who succeeded
Bruce when he went on to national stature in his field with the U.S. Forest
Service. Pete LeBoeuf, Fred’s son, and Alphonse Beaudette, his son-in-law,
were also superior foremen on the various logging operations that
contributed to the company’s success.
This writer often “shared a pint’ with Mr. Beaudette when in his later years
he would visit the Grand Union Hotel bar. In his wonderful French-Canadian
patois, he would tell me story after story of the Cold River operations. Mr.
Beaudette was extremely laudable in his opinion of the father-in-law, whom
he termed “the best woodsman ever.” He once told me that the engineer
Barringer might have been given credit for developing the Barringer Brake (a
friction drum with cable to aid the horses in hauling logs down the steep
slopes of Seward Mt.), but it was actually Fred LeBoeuf, unlettered but with
innate engineering ability, who worked out the inadequacies of this braking
system and developed it so it was functional.
As Mr. Meigs continued his reflections, he noted that the company had
recently closed some excellent land sales that prompted him to smile.
William Rockefeller had recently purchased 85,000 acres in Brandon. Cornell
University, seeking to establish a College of Forestry, had purchased 30,000
acres of surplus land, with Axe-Town (Axton) as its center, for the princely
sum of $165,000. In addition, the company had successfully defended the
lawsuit in which the state had sued them for $550,000 claiming trespass of
2.270 acres in an area known as “The Gore” in Cold River country. (The state
tried to claim it as unappropriated lands.)
Yet Mr. Meigs was troubled this early morning. Yesterday, John Hinkson, the
guide and mailman from Tupper Lake, had detoured from his regular mail route
and rowed his guideboat two and a half miles upstream from Tromblee’s
Landing on the Raquette to the Follensby outlet and then up the outlet to
the middle of the pond to deliver a specially marked envelope.
Note: As a young man, John Hinkson had worked as a chore boy for Uncle
“Mart” Moody at his Redside Camp Hotel (later the Waukesha). Uncle “Mart,”
though his friendship with U.S. President Chester Arthur, whom he had
guided, had at Mart’s request agreed to establish the first post office here
on April 30, 1884. The President also appointed Mart as the first
postmaster.
One of Hinkson’s chores was to deliver the outgoing mail to Saranac Lake and
to pick up the incoming mail from that community. He would row up the
Raquette from this village to Tromblee’s Landing, where for $1 a wagon would
transport him and his boat to Upper Saranac Lake (near the present Wawbeek
Inn). He would then row down that lake to Bartlett’s Carry, where for fifty
cents a wagon took him to the middle and lower Saranacs, then to the Saranac
Lake village, where for seventy-five cents he stayed overnight before
returning with the incoming mail — a distance of some fifty-two miles! (In
1885, daily scheduled trips by the steam yachts “Altamount” and “Forester”
to Tromblee’s would shorten this trip considerably.) John Hinkson would live
to the ripe old age of 85 after a varied career such as crewman for state
surveyor Verplank Colvin, lugging surveying gear to the top of Mt. Morris,
and as a guide and accomplished boat builder. He died here in 1949.
The letter contained a confidential note from an Albany source warning that
a proposal was in the planning stage for creating a dam with the Tupper Lake
area as the focal point. The lake created by the dam would contain 180 miles
of shoreline and would be the largest lake in the Adirondacks. It would
submerge Follensby Pond, not to mention Ampersand Lake, Tromblee’s, Axton,
Litchfield lake holdings on Tupper Lake, and the Barbour Estate (American
Legion Mountain Camp). Mr. Meigs’ Albany source, history would reveal, was
well informed and there was certainly cause for concern. In fact, four
stadia parties from this village would begin testing surveys that very
summer. I’ll provide details of that project in the next column. |
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