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Don Thompson Remembers

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Donald Kempton Thompson was born ninety years ago on October 20, 1934. He is the sole living member of the third generation of the Beaver River Thompson family. His paternal grandparents, William and Hattie Thompson, moved to the Beaver River country to operate a sportsman’s hotel in 1911 [see my post of 6/2/21]. That’s Hattie Thompson with most of her grandchildren in the photo above. Don is not in that picture because he had not been born yet. Don’s maternal grandparents were Will Kempton [see my post of 8/27/23] and Etta Wagner Kempton [see post of 8/17/23]. We know a great deal about Etta and Will because of the survival of Etta’s remarkable daily journal. Don’s parents were Walter Thompson and Gladys Kempton. Walter was the oldest son of Hattie and William Thompson. Walter’s brother Clinton is the grandfather of the three brothers of the fifth generation of the Thompson family that now operates the Norridgewock [see my post of 10/20/22]. Gladys Kempton, Don’s mother, was the only
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The Norridgewock Saloon

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The photo above shows me talking to   members of Adirondack Architectural Heritage inside what was once the Norridgewock Hotel saloon. That room played an important part in social life at Beaver River for more than 50 years from 1912 until 1964. Its story deserves to be remembered.   The saloon started out as a rather grand, multipurpose stable. These days livestock is pretty rare in Beaver River, but back in the early decades of the twentieth century  there was a considerable herd in and around the hamlet. There were three small sportsman’s hotels, Elliott’s, Darrow’s and Pop Bullock’s, each of which had at least one team of horses and a cow or two. The Norridgewock Hotel needed a small herd of cows to furnish guests with fresh milk.  Some of the teamsters from nearby lumber camps would occasionally come to town with their horses. In addition to these animals there were a considerable number of wagons and buckboards that needed protection from the weather.   Each hotel had a barn for
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The Beaver River Inn

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  Harlow C. Young bought the Old Homestead from H. C. Churchill at the end of the 1910 tourist season. Young changed the name of the hotel to the Beaver River Inn but kept everything else the same. As seen above, the photographer Henry Beach did not have time to take a new postcard photo before the 1911 season started, so he simply scratched out the former name and replaced it.  Harlow Young was born February 21, 1865. He grew up on the east side of the Black River in the Lewis County Town of Watson on the edge of the Beaver River wilderness. He married a neighbor, Minnie J. Schmidlin, on January 6, 1892. At the time of their wedding Harlow was almost twenty-seven years old; his bride Minnie was born May 19, 1872, so she was nineteen on their wedding day.    Harlow and Minnie settled in Crystaldale, a small community along the Number Four Road. When the railroad started carrying passengers to Beaver River Station later in 1892, Harlow decided to supplement his income by working as an o
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The Old Homestead

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  The history of the Stillwater Hotel is a bit complex. It starts with the construction of the Old Homestead by H. C. Churchill. Harlow Young subsequently bought the hotel and renamed it the Beaver River Inn. When the reservoir was expanded in 1925, Young demolished the hotel, saved what material he could, and reconstructed it on higher ground in its current location. After Young retired, the hotel had a number of owners each of whom renovated and added to the hotel until it reached its current configuration. I will tell the hotel’s story in three chronological posts, beginning with the story of Churchill’s Old Homestead.   The historical record does not clearly identify exactly when or why H. C. (Henry Charles) Churchill first came to work at Stillwater. The Churchill family was from Binghamton, N.Y.  An advertisement in the  Utica Daily Press  on June 12, 1901 lists him as the manager of Stanton’s Adirondack Camp. Stanton’s Camp was located on the north shore of the Beaver River on a
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Jim Dunbar and the Dunbar Club

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The Dunbar Fish and Game Club was informally founded in 1905. Ever since then a small group of member sportsmen have come to the club at Stillwater on the Beaver River for hunting and fishing expeditions. The club was founded by James C. “Jim” Dunbar who lived and worked at Stillwater from 1879, when he was just fourteen, until his death in 1926 at the age of sixty. During his forty-seven years as a full-time Stillwater resident Jim Dunbar worked as a guide for sportsmen, a hotelkeeper, the first Stillwater dam keeper, a subsistence farmer and as the founder and first president of the Dunbar Club. Jim Dunbar was born on July 27, 1865 on a farm a few miles north of Dannatberg, Town of Watson, Lewis County, NY. His parents were Joseph C. Dunbar and Mary E. Warmwood [sometimes spelled Wormwood]. About 1877 the Dunbars purchased the Wardwell place at Stillwater on the Beaver River plus 100 adjourning acres. They demolished or repurposed Wardwell’s cabin and built a two-story frame hotel wi
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