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June 26th, 2019

6/26/2019

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So a little background on me. I am a retired science teacher, never much liked history. Then just before I retired, we moved into a little town called Fish House. Part of our house was a 200 year old brick house that used to be a tailor shop and then a doctor's office. The history of the area intrigued me. I volunteered at the Fish House Community Center and organized a history tour in 2009 and 2012. The historian for the town of Northampton (Fish House is part of that town) asked me to be deputy historian of Northampton and concentrate on Fish House. You see, in 1930, when the Great Sacandaga Lake was made, Fish House was essentially cut off from the main part of Northampton. It is on the east side of the lake, most of Northampton is on the west side. So I gladly took on the challenge and started to really dig into the history. Houses had been moved in preparation of the lake, roads had been altered. The houses took up a lot of my research time. But I also am involved in the Fish House Community Center, organizing the annual rummage sale, cooking at their breakfasts. And since Fish House is seven miles from a tiny library, I started a Little Free Library. Suddenly my retirement years were full of things.
My latest project is cleaning the stones in the abandoned cemetery of the old Presbyterian Church. Forgive me if my Fish House posts are obsessing on this cemetery. I can't seem to find enough time to clean the stones and learn all I can. The good news, is hopefully the Town of Northampton will be helping me with some of the repairs. Fingers crossed.
I went up this morning to clean some more stones,,,had a little time between obligations. There is never a set time, just whenever. Lydia Tanner's stone is improving due to the D2 Biologic. Squire Maxwell's stone is getting more legible,, I applied more D2 on his. The sun was hot, so I went into the shade to work on some stones. I found this little one lying in the ground,,,hard to read, but I could read John H.,,,so after checking on the 1930's list of gravestones,,,I think it is the grave for John H. Fairchild who died at age 3. Some people think this project would make me sad. At times it does, when you realize how young these "residents" were when they died. I find the project fulfilling,,,giving people a look into what life was like in Fish House and learning who lived here. If you sneak up on me at the cemetery, you might hear me talking to the stones. Call me crazy...that is fine.

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Mariah B. Gibbs

3/28/2019

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Gibbs, Mariah B., wife of Jabez Gibbs.  d. Sept. 6, 1842 in 31st year


There is only one stone in the old Presbyterian Church graveyard with the last name of Gibbs, so it caught my curiosity.  I thought, that by the age of 31, Mariah  B. Gibbs might have left some mark on the world that I might be able to trace.  I filled up 7 pages in my legal pad and many days, but have very little to show for it.  I figured, with a husband’s name of Jabez Gibbs, that finding out information about Mariah would be fairly easy.  I was very wrong.  Be careful in taking all the information on ancestry.com at face value.  Remember, it is other people, just like you, that are searching and wrong information can be easily found there. And the name Jabez Gibbs is not as unique as I thought.  
    If Mariah died in her 31st year, then her birthday was probably around 1810.  I couldn’t find much on Maria, so I started researching Jabez Gibbs.  One family tree had Mariah married to a Jabez Gibbs who lived in Broadalbin and died in 1826, but Mariah would have been around 16 years old, so that did not seem feasible.   I then found another Jabez Gibbs who lived in Providence who was born in 1808.  I never found any proof that this Jabez was related to the Jabez Gibbs who died in 1826, but really, two Jabez Gibbs within miles of each other,,how can they not be related?  But with no proof, I cannot jump to that conclusion.
    After much digging, this is what I found out.  Jabez and Mariah Gibbs had three children, David D. Gibbs born 1831, Sarah M. Gibbs born 1833 and Reuben A. Gibbs born 1835.  Mariah died in 1842 when her youngest, Reuben was only 7.  Jabez Gibbs then remarried, in 1843, to a Sarah Dunnell Pitman.  She was a widow (married to a David Smith).  Sarah and Jabez had a son, Edward Stanhope Gibbs, born around 1845. ( That middle name begs me to research him!!) Jabez and Sarah and the four children lived with Sarah’s parents.  Jabez lived until1857.  Sarah married a third time to another Northampton resident, William Isley. But I digress.
   Too often in history, trying to research women is extremely difficult.  I believe Mariah’s maiden name is Gifford.  I found that information on a family tree , but that tree had several errors, so a second source would be ideal, if I could find one.
    So here is this lonely gravestone of a woman named Mariah, who died in her 31st year.  The only thing I can find out about her is the name of her three children.  Her oldest, David D. Gibbs fought in the Civil War.  Her youngest son, Reuben, married a Susan and they had four children, Henry, Emma, Edward and Willie.  I was not able to find anything definitive about Mariah’s daughter, Sarah M. Mariah B. Gibbs, wife of Jabez Gibbs, did leave a mark on this world, three children.  Perhaps the most important legacy for which one can be known is their children.  

​The above is the bio I wrote for my Facebook post and it will also be the one that I attach to Mariah B. Gibbs grave photo for information.  What I am adding here is my "rant" from a woman's point of view.  I know times have changed, but it still frustrates me that when doing research, it is still daunting to find out information about women.  I am often in the town clerk's office, looking up records and it still amazes me when only men owned property. The other frustrating thing is that many times, on gravestones, there is no mention of the woman's maiden name. It is only in recent times that women have opted to hold onto their family name.  I did not and at times I regret it.  So I make a point to include it whenever I can.  I cannot say with certainty, still after many many days of research, what Mariah B.'s maiden name was.  I will continue to search.



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Deacon Abraham Beecher 1771-1845

11/30/2018

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So my cemetery project continues.  Just before the weather turned cold, I cleaned two more graves.  Deacon Abraham Beecher's and his wife, Lydia's.  I used a mild cleaner, Simple Green,but it has it's limits. Thankfully, the town of Northampton has backed me financially in purchasing the D2, Biologic Solution, that is used specifically for cleaning gravestones. Hopefully I will get another warm day in this crazy fall, so I can clean more of  this beautiful gravestone.
   If you go to the Cemetery Bios page in this website, you will see that I am researching every "resident' of this graveyard, as I clean each stone. 
   I started concentrating on Deacon Beecher's life and as always, it is fascinating to me.  Abraham was born in Connecticut, but for some reason, he and three of his brothers (Ely, Isaac and Amos) ended up in this region of New York.  Ely started in Fish House but then moved up into Edinburg where he started many businesses.  Beecher's Creek and Beecher Hollow are named after this brother.  Isaac farmed up in Edinburg, as did Amos.  Abraham had a farm just over the town border from Fish House.  He referred to it as the Sheffield Farm. His farmhouse, that he built in 1803, no longer stands.  But it was located on Sinclair Point, near the Roslyn House, which was built in 1919 by the Sinclair's. The chimney of the Roslyn House, has two bricks from the original fireplace of Abraham Beecher's house.  One has A.B. on it and the other has 1803.
    Abraham, along with Isaac Noyes, were responsible for the construction of a wooden Presbyterian Church in 1814. Abraham was Deacon of this church. The present brick church was built on the same site, in 1860, 15 years after the death of Abraham.  
   There is a house across the street from the Presbyterian Church, that I refer to as the Beecher House.  It was not built by Beechers, but in 1880 it was purchased by the Beecher line.  James Fuller Beecher, grandson of Abraham and Lydia Beecher, lived there with his wife Elizabeth and their three daughters.  Sadly, just  this past summer, a tree fell on the house and I fear it is beyond repair.
   The Beecher family has many connections to American history, one main one is Harriet Beecher Stowe, who wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1852..  Abraham Beecher's grandfather, Isaac (1716-1801) was Harriet Beecher Stowe's great grandfather.  
    
   

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Truman B. Shew. 1817 - 1848

11/9/2018

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    Truman B. Shew was the son of Elizabeth Beecher and Godfrey I. Shew, a cousin of Godfrey Shew Jr., the first settler of Fish House.  Truman was one of six brothers.  Two became doctors.  Truman and his other three brothers (William, Myron, and Jacob) became photographers. They were trained in 1841 by Samuel T, B. Morse (the telegraph inventor) in the art of daguerrotype. Samuel Morse had been in Paris in 1839 , when Louis Daguerre had demonstrated this process of photography for the first time. It was the first form of photography and it was the primary form from 1839  to 1859.  
   The four brothers, after being trained,  first traveled in upstate New York doing their own daguerrotype photography.  Eventually they settled in different east coast cities and ran photography studios for John Plumbe Jr.  Truman ran a studio on Chestnut Street in Philadelphia.
    “[Daguerreotype] creates a silver image on a silver surface using some of the more dangerous chemicals like mercury and iodide, and that’s why a lot of early photographers, especially daguerreotypists, didn’t lead the longest lives.” – Arthur Kaplan of the Getty Conservation Institute.
 Truman Shew became very ill.  His brother, Joel, was a doctor in New York  City and tried to cure him, but to no avail. Truman died in 1848  at the age of 31. He was buried next to his maternal grandparents in the Fish House cemetery next to the Presbyterian church where his grandfather had been a deacon.  Myron and Jacob bought Truman’s Philadelphia studio, but a year after Truman’s death,  Jacob joined the gold rush of 1849 and went to California.  William and Myron headed to California a short time later.  All three brothers continued in the photography business but it was William who became well known.  William died in 1903 and unfortunately most of his work was destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire.  Some of his works can still be found in history books and also in the Smithsonian.    
     The above information on Truman Shew is also found in the bios of the cemetery residents on a different page on this website.  I have just started this project of learning everything that I can about the people who are buried in the cemetery by the Presbyterian Church here in the hamlet of Fish House.  Fish House was first settled in 1762 and it slowly grew into a beautiful little town that included humble people making a living here as well as wealthy people who were summer residents.  What has surprised me in my research are the connections to the "big" names in history.  Truman Shew, was trained by Samuel Morse, the inventor of the telegraph.  Truman then worked for John Plumbe Jr. who is the photographer that took the very first photo of the White House.  Truman's brother, William, became a noted photographer and some of his photos are in the Smithsonian.  Truman's mother, Elizabeth Beecher, was related to Harriet Beecher Stowe.  So how is it that residents in such a little town, such as Fish House,
​ intersected with famous people in our American history?  


​

In the fall of 2018, I started to clean some of the gravestones using Biologic D2. Then, when the weather warmed up in 2019, I went back up to the graveyard and was amazed that Truman's gravestone was even cleaner!  The Biologic D2 continued  to work on the stone during the winter months. I was encouraged by the results and worked on his gravestone even more, as well as most of the other gravestones.  Truman B. Shew's gravestone has had a dramatic transformation. I have posted below, the before and after shots.
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This is the earliest known photograph of the White House.  It was taken in January of 1846 by John Plumbe Jr.  It is a daguerreotype.  
Plumb took several photographs of government buildings that year.  But the photographs were lost until 1972 when they were discovered  in a flea market in Alameda, California , The  six daguerreotypes were cleaned up and are now at the Library of Congress.

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Joseph Ranney Gravestone

10/25/2018

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    So earlier this year I decided to research the “residents” of the old Presbyterian Church graveyard in Fish House.  This time I chose the grave of Joseph Ranney.  He died on July 18, 1823.  His gravestone is the only Ranney gravestone in that cemetery, so I was curious as to why.   Joseph died at the age of 25, not enough time to really make his mark on the world.  So I decided to go back a generation or two.  Joseph’s father was Hezekiah Ranney Jr., he was born in Connecticut.  Joseph’s grandfather was Hezekiah Ranney Sr., also born in Connecticut.  So how and why did Joseph end up in Fish House, New York?    Be patient as I go back a couple of generations.
   Joseph’s grandfather, Hezekiah Ranney Sr. was born in 1742, he married Lucretia Hartshorn  and they had 7 children from 1766 to 1780.  Lucretia died in 1784.  Hezekiah Ranney Jr., was the fourth born of their seven children.   Hezekiah Ranney Sr. then married a widow, named Martha Stocking.  They had one child, David, born in 1787.  Martha was the widow of Captain John Stocking.  All these names are prominent names of Middletown, Connecticut.  Here my research gets a little murky.  Certain records have Martha dying in 1790.   But then I came across a wonderful article written  by Diana Ross McCain for The Hartford Courant on November 4, 1998.  It was titled: “An Old Fascination With Sensational Crime News” The article was about stories found in Middletown ,Connecticut’s first newspaper, the Middlesex Gazette,


     “There were occasional brief notices of the marriages and deaths of prominent local people, and every so often an item that served up a little slice of life, such as the advertisement placed by Hezekiah Ranney of Middletown on Nov. 3, 1797, that, "Whereas, I . . . am about to move out of this state, and my wife Martha having absolutely refused to accompany me, although she has been often urged and requested thereto -- This is therefore to forbid all persons trusting her on my account as I will not pay any debt of her contracting after this date.”


   So this looks like Hezekiah Ranney Sr. was trying to divorce himself from his second wife.  That would fit with the marriage dates of Hezekiah Ranney Sr. to his THIRD wife, Ann Wright Sage ( another widow) in 1798.  Ann Sage had married Giles Sage and they had 8 children in eleven years, from 1785 to 1796, the year that Giles Sage died.  Two years later Ann Sage married Hezekiah Ranney Sr.  He had inherited the family homestead from his grandfather, Captain Joseph Ranney and he sold it so he could move to New York. * He and Ann moved to Edinburg,New York and had two children.  Hezekiah Ranney Sr. died in 1826, in Edinburg, New York.  His wife, Ann, went to live with her son, Orrin Sage, in Rochester, New York.


     Hezekiah Ranney Jr., Joseph’s father, was born in Connecticut in 1774.  He married Mary Richardson in 1797.  They had six children. The first two, Jabez and Roland were born in Connecticut.  Joseph was the third, but I am not sure if he was born in Connecticut.  Then, Elizabeth (known as Eliza)  was born in 1801 in Saratoga County. She only lived until the age of three and is buried on Sinclair Point, in the Partridge Cemetery, which is near where Hezekiah Ranney Sr. lived in 1804.   Records show that Hezekiah Ranney Jr was living in Edinburg at that time.  Perhaps he was living  with his father but I have yet to find any proof.
      Eventually Hezekiah Ranney Jr. and Mary relocated to Rochester, N.Y.  and then to Geneseo, NY.*  where they both died in1857 and are buried in Temple Hill Cemetery in  Geneseo.  Their oldest son, Jabez, is buried in Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester, NY.  Their second son, Roland, died in 1856 and was buried at sea.  So why is Joseph buried here in Fish House? Perhaps Joseph was visiting his grandfather, Hezekiah Ranney Sr. at the time of his death.  If so, why didn’t his grandfather bury Joseph in the Partridge Cemetery next to his sister, Eliza?  Another question, where is Hezekiah Ranney Sr.’s grave? There are some things, as an historian, I might never be able to discover. 
    
* Middletown Upper Houses: A History of The North Society of Middletown

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Osborn(e) Gravestones

10/13/2018

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     My goal, this past spring, was to research as many of the gravestones as I could that are in the old Presbyterian Church graveyard.  One of my research tools is the extensive website that Pete Shew has constructed.  It was with dismay that I discovered that that website was unavailable.  It had been "down" for several months.    Just recently it is now up and running.  Even with Pete Shew's website and with my access to ancestry.com. I have only found out information about a small number of the graveyard "residents".  I learned all about George Osborn and that information was made public on my Facebook page in June of this year.  But I wondered why that was the only Osborn gravestone in that cemetery.  Where were the other family members buried?  So I did research on George's wife, Mary Anne Paul Osborne.  Please note: the Osborn spelling sometimes has an e on the end, and sometimes not.  Many times it is due to a hastily scrawled name on a census form.
     George was listed as a farmer on an 1850 census.  His farm was near the vicinity of Osborn's Bridge (now underwater).  I have not been able to connect George to the original Osborn's Bridge settlers,,,perhaps cousins, perhaps not.  George died at the young age of 38, Mary was left to raise four children, all under the age of ten.  She continued to stay on the farm until after 1860.  The 1865 census has her living in Johnstown with her three daughters.  The son, Robert, would have been around 14 at the time, if he was still alive.  But he was not on the census.
       Doing more research on Mary Paul Osborne I discovered that she ended up in Nebraska!  What would have motivated her to move all the way out there?  My guess is that it was due to the Homestead Act of 1862.  Nebraska allowed women to own land for free. Much of the Nebraska Territory was populated due to that Homestead Act.
    As far as I can tell, Mary brought her children with her to Nebraska.  Her oldest daughter, Lucy, died in 1929 Missouri.  I have not found any information  of the other three.  Did Mary continue to farm?  I do not know.   She never remarried.  She died at the age of 62 and is buried in Cairo, Nebraska.
​      It is so easy to just look at birth dates and death dates when doing ancestry research.  But when I start to delve into people's lives, I start to realize the challenges that people faced.  What an amazingly strong and brave woman Mary Paul Osborne had to have been.  The inscription on her gravestone is from a hymn.  There Are No Partings in Heaven.
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Presbyterian Cemetery of Fish House

5/30/2018

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    In the center of what is left of Fish House stands an abandoned brick church.  It once was the Presbyterian Church. It has not been used in decades.  It is now the property of a resident of Fish House.  
     Next to the church is a very old cemetery.  It is referred to as the Presbyterian Cemetery.  It has grave stones from people born dating back to the 1770's.  There is even a Revolutionary War solder, David Marvin, buried there.  Neighbors, from time to time, mow and weed the cemetery, but it is still in sad shape.  A few years back, some neighbors and I, went to document the gravestones there.   Photos were taken, names were written down.  There is a list of "occupants" for this cemetery that was written in 1930 and later put on the internet, but we discovered that several people were not listed. 
     The cemetery continues to degrade, the names continue to erode to the point of oblivion.  In an effort to save history, I have put together a spread sheet of all the names on the gravestones with the photos.  Sadly it is too late for some gravestones. 
     There is already a page on this website with photos of the gravestones. It is there that you will find a link to the cemetery spread sheet.    I hope to expand on that with as much information as I can find about each person buried there.
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       David Marvin           
​   David Marvin was born in 1764 in Sharon, Litchfield, CT to John J. Marvin and Katherine St. John.  When he was 19, (1782) he served as a Private in the Revolutionary War with the Fitch's Independent Volunteer Company. 
    He married Deborah Baldwin in 1801.  In 1815, they moved to Fish House where David was a blacksmith and a farmer.  They had four children, including a son named Langdon Ithiel Marvin who later became a prominent doctor.
    David died in 1841.  His wife lived until 1849.  They share a gravestone.
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Brick Store is the Smith Store??

10/30/2017

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   In the fall, when the water level goes down, one can walk into what was the center of Fish House before the lake was made.  There is a foundation that is there that belongs to what I have always referred to as the Brick Store, since the store was made of brick.
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I never knew much about this store,,,some literature has it listed as the Noyes store in 1919.  A resident of Fish House is making a quilt of all the historical buildings of Fish House and I thought she should include this store, but that presented a problem.  I didn't know when it was built.  So I started doing some research and studying the old maps.  There was another store, a wooden structure, just down the road from the brick store, that was referred to as the Smith Store.  I had just assumed that the book I was reading was accurate, but the more I studied the maps, the more I became convinced that there were errors in the literature.  
     If you were to walk down Old Fish House Road today, you would come to the end of the road, literally,,and the lake would be there.  If you were there in 1900, you would have continued to walk right to the center of the village.  On the right of the road you would have passed the Henry Smith house (a beautiful Victorian), the brick store pictured above, then a small wooden structure (on an old map it was referred to as a barber shop), then a wooden store, and then finally the Fish House Hotel. Pictured below, from Left to Right: Wooden Store, Barber Shop, Brick Store. 
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     So after so many years of referring to the wooden store as the Smith Store, it was hard to wrap my brain around the fact that I was probably wrong.  I studied lots of maps and looked at census records to determine who owned which building.  What I found out was this:
     The Wooden Store was owned by:
       1865 - 1894 Robert Humphrey Sr & Jr
       1894-1910 - John T. Moore
       1910-1912- Charles Henry Mosher
       1912 - 1927 - Delbert Noyes
       1928 (circa) - it was moved up to South Shore Road and run by the Stead family
                         (Harry Noyes (Delbert's brother) was married to Sarah Stead 
    No where did I find that it was owned by Smith.

     The little building still remains a mystery.
       On one map, it is implied that it was owned by the Noyes brothers.  
      There is also reference that at one time, Robert Humphrey owned a barber shop.

    The Brick Store was owned by:
      1860-Charles Fay Smith
      1880 - James Henry Smith
     1890-1908- James Henry Smith (son of Charles Fay Smith)
     1908 - Harry Noyes
     1912- 1924 - Delbert Hoyes
     After Delbert's death in 1924, I have not determined who ran the store until
    it was torn down before the lake was made in 1930.  I read somewhere that the
    Stead's ran the store,,,I have yet to verify that.

I have tried to be as accurate as possible, using newspaper articles, federal  and New York census records, and family trees.  I am not presuming that these facts are rock solid.  There are still gray areas...for instance, in the New York 1910 census, it lists John Moore, Charles Mosher, and Harry Noyes all as store proprietors.  Was there a third store or was there an overlap of ownership during that year?  I might never find out.
 
   As an historian, I have come to the realization, that when I am trying to learn something as simple as the date a building was built, I find out so much more than I had anticipated.  Yet, I still don't know when the Brick Store was built.  I can hazard a guess, but please remember, it is only a guess. On the 1860 map, it is listed as belonging to Charles Fay Smith. he was James Henry Smith's father.  Charles Fay Smith was listed as a merchant on the census and James, at 21, was probably a clerk at the store. Charles Fay Smith died in 1864 and that is when James Henry Smith took over the store.  As for when Charles Fay Smith built the store, it is difficult to say.  In the 1840 census, he is listed as living in Northampton, but nothing specific. So at this point in time, my guess would be that the store was built between 1850-1860.  I will continue to look.  
   If the above information has not confused you,,here is a little more confusion.  The very first store in Fish House was built by John Fay in 1809.  It was a brick building that was located across the street from the Fish House Hotel.  It was later run by John Fay's son, Charles and then later by Harvey Smith (cousin to Charles Fay Smith).  That brick building was torn down in 1887 by Hiram Osborn who built the Osborn Hotel.
    In 1895, there was an attempt to burn down three buildings, the Wooden store, the Brick store and the Osborn Hotel.  The first two fires were put out, but the Osborn Hotel burned to the ground.

    
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FISH HOUSE HOTEL BURNS!

8/9/2017

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     One of the most popular photos of Fish House depicts the old Fish House Hotel.  It was located at the village square.  (the square wasn't really square, but it was the center of Fish House where five roads converged).  The hotel was built somewhere between 1803 and 1817 by John Fay.  Fay came from Galway and first built a brick structure which served as part residence and part commercial.  His first wife bore him ten children before she died at the age of 45.  To accommodate all the children, Fay built a wooden structure across the "square" .  After the last of the Fay children moved out, the structure was converted into a hotel. It was a very popular place for hunters and summer visitors.
    Earlier this summer, I received a phone call from a woman who was the great granddaughter of the last proprietor of the Fish House Hotel.  She was doing research and was hoping I could help her locate a photo of her great grandfather, Martin Kelly and to learn more about the history of the hotel.  
     So I set out doing research, using old newspapers, to find out the chain of proprietors. Searching old newspapers can be frustrating.  Many times, back 100 years ago, they would report who what having tea with whom, who went to visit relatives.  One of my tools that I use is Old Fulton NY Postcards,,,I have learned so much from that website!
    I was able to put together a timeline of proprietors, as well as some other information on the hotel, but I still have not found a photo of Martin Kelly. As for why the hotel burned, the reference books I used stated that the hotel burned down in 1920, no other specific information.  I turned to looking through old newspapers but my big problem was that I was referring to the hotel at the Fish House Hotel. Apparently when Martin Kelly took it over, it started being referred as Kelly's Hotel.  Using that title, the great granddaughter was able to find an article about why the hotel burned down and she sent me a copy.  
       Below is a photograph of the hotel circa 1906, the year Martin Kelly bought it.  He ran the hotel successfully until it burned down in November, 1920.  The article,below, is from the Amsterdam NY Evening Recorder, November 19, 1920. 
     I am delighted to know why and exactly when the hotel burned down.  Now if I can only find a photograph of Martin Kelly.  Maybe that is the man standing on the porch of the Fish House Hotel in the photograph below.  I might never know, but I will keep searching.

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Grinnell House Facts & Assumptions

11/9/2016

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     When I first became the Deputy Historian, I read any books available that dealt with the history of Fish House.  I wrote down what I learned and accepted the information as factual.  But many of these "facts" had been passed down from one person to the next, and as anyone knows, who has played the Gossip game, the information gets mangled.
So when I first started researching the old house up on Shew Hill, that I refer to as the Grinnell house, the information I read said that Alexander St. John built it for his daughter Parnell.  What I didn't catch, at first, was that his daughter, Parnell, died at the age of four.  Alexander St. John did have a granddaughter, Parnell, so I made an erroneous assumption that he built the house for THAT Parnell.  But the more I studied the dates and the family trees and the research,,,the more I realized that this was probably also wrong.  It would be wonderful if the tax records went back that far. It would be great if the state census of the 1800's included actual addresses, but they don't.
    So I will never know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, but this is what I believe probably happened in the early history of this beautiful old house.  First, what I know...the right section of the house was built in the early 1800's...that is the most exact "year" I could find. The left, larger section of the house was built in 1841.  Second, Alexander St. John did build part of the house, but he couldn't have built the larger section, as he died in 1825.  Now for some assumptions mixed with facts:
     * Fo whom did Alexander St. John built the first section of the house? Well, his daughter, Elizabeth, married Nathanial Wescot in 1810, so it makes sense that it was for her. It couldn't have been for his granddaughter, Parnell, as she was born in 1811 and didn't marry until after Alexander St. John died.
     * So I assume that Elizabeth St. John Wescot and her husband, Nathanial Wescot, lived in the original part of the house (the right side).  They had 7 children! The original part of the house is not that big...so they were probably the ones responsible for building the bigger addition in 1841.  
     * Parnell Wescot( Alexander St. John's granddaughter) married Clark Grinnell around 1828.  Perhaps they continued to live in this house or perhaps they moved away, only to return once Parnell's father, Nathanial Wescot died in 1844. It is a fact that they lived in this house, I am just not sure when they started to live there as a married couple.  By 1841, Parnell would have been married for about 13 years.  I can't imagine this married couple living at this house before the big addition was built in 1841.  The year they were married, 1828, there were 5 other children living in the house under the age of 15.
    * Side note: In 1840, Parnell's brother, David died at the age of 24. Then in 1841, Parnell's daughter, Elizabeth, died at the age of 12 and Parnell's sister, Josepha died at the age of 28.  I can't imagine how awful this had to have been.  These deaths might have been the reason that Parnell and her husband, Clark Grinnell moved back to this house.  In 1844, Parnell's father, Nathanial Wescot died, at the age of 54.
     * So another assumption, Parnell and her husband Clark Grinnell lived in the house to help out Parnell's mother, Elizabeth, after all these tragedies.  This is where the facts that I read in the deeds and the census records don't help.  I can only assume.

    With the internet, comes great responsibility.  In the past, I have put information out there that later I recalled,,as erroneous.  But once a "fact" is in the internet, it is very difficult to reign it in.  So please note,,,that much of this blog entry is based on assumptions.
     In researching this house and who lived in it and when, the many deaths around the 1840's peaked my interests.  I tried to find out the reason for their deaths, but was unable to find death certificates.  In the 1840's, there were outbreaks of influenza, typhoid, and cholera.  Did one of those diseases cause so much heartbreak in this family?
     If anyone can enlighten me about this family, and where they lived  and their deaths, please contact me. 



     
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    In 2009, I prepared the first Historical Tour of Fish House. As a result of my work and interest, the Historian of Northampton made me Deputy Historian, concentrating on Fish House which is part of Northampton.

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