Orrin and Lucy Fenton

Every traveler who visited the upper Beaver River between 1826 and 1863 probably knew Orrin and Lucy Fenton, early settlers of the pioneer village of Number Four.

John Brown Francis (1791 – 1864), a wealthy politician from Rhode Island, inherited a share of his grandfather’s essentially uninhabited “John Brown’s Tract” in the west central Adirondacks. Like his grandfather, he knew that one way to make money from wilderness property was to sell lots to settlers. He decided to attempt settlement in his Township No. 4 that was only eighteen miles from the Black River village of Lowville, rather than try to revive his forebearer’s settlement efforts at Thendara [Old Forge]. Accordingly, in 1822, he financed the building of a road from the east side of the Black River just outside Lowville through the forest to the Beaver River. The location he chose had promise, as the river was wide enough there to create a beautiful natural lake. To spur initial settlement, John Brown Francis offered 100 acres free to each of the first ten families willing to clear the land and establish farms. Ten families responded to the offer and a pioneer village slowly started to take shape. 

 

By 1835 there were about seventy-five residents at Number Four and for a few years it even had its own school. In 1842 a religious revival took place that was attended by 60 settlers. But, after this hopeful start, the settlers gradually discovered that conditions at Number Four were not conducive to farming. The soil was thin and rocky. The winters were cold and long. Any potential market was a good distance away over a rough road. Most of the early settlers of Number Four concluded that life was probably easier elsewhere and moved away. 

 

Orrin and Lucy Fenton settled in Number Four on March 20, 1826. Orrin Fenton was already 41 years old. He was born July 1, 1784 in Mansfield, Conn. He subsequently moved to Lowville with his wife, [unknown first name] Barber, by whom he had seven children, five of whom survived to adulthood. He served in the army as a private during the War of 1812. His first wife later died, and Orrin married Lucy Weller who was born Dec. 1, 1793 in Westfield, Mass. In those days it was not at all unusual for the people who settled in and around Lowville to have been born in New England as pioneers moved west into the valleys surrounding the Adirondacks looking for inexpensive new farmland. Orrin and Lucy had five children together of which four survived to adulthood.

 

It’s believed that they moved to Number Four because Orrin’s first wife had relatives there. Two of the first ten settlers who qualified for free land were named Barber. The property where Orrin and Lucy built their homestead was on the 100-acre plot formerly owned by Levi Barber.

 

A short time after establishing their homestead, the Fentons started to provide meals and a place to sleep to a small number of visitors. Meals were simple fare often taken with the family. Overnight guests slept upstairs in a vacant room, in the children’s bedroom while the children slept downstairs on the floor, or in the barn. There were not many visitors in the early days before the Carthage-to-Lake Champlain Road was built since travel beyond Number Four was difficult. 

 

We know that brothers John and Stevenson Constable of Constable Hall and their friend Casimir De Rhamwere guests of the Fentons in 1836 as they returned from a long wilderness trek that started on the Fulton Chain, continued to Raquette Lake then Tupper Lake, returning by way of Smith’s Lake [now called Lake Lila], and down the Beaver River. John Constable subsequently visited the Fenton’s often enough that they permitted him to build his own shanty on their property at Number Four that members of the Constable family used for many years.

 

After the Carthage-to-Lake Champlain Road opened in 1845 the number of visitors to Fenton’s increased steadily. As the number of visitors increased, they periodically enlarged their accommodations. In a few years the Fenton House had expanded to become a well-known sportsmen’s hotel run primarily by Lucy Fenton who also did the cooking. Orrin began to provide guiding to sportsmen bound for Smith’s Lake at the headwaters of the Beaver River. When the artist Jervis McEntee stopped at Fentons for a mid-day dinner in June 1851 he noted in his journal that prior to the trip he had heard much praise for Lucy Fenton’s cooking and that she did not disappoint.

 

The Fenton’s enterprise prospered even as their neighbors struggled, then moved away. By 1863 only three families remained at Number Four: Orrin and Lucy Fenton, Chauncey and Irena Smith, and Isaac and Lucinda Wetmore. All three families made their living primarily from the wilderness around them, not from farming. The women raised the children, tended to large subsistence gardens and cared for some farm animals. Lucy Fenton also managed accommodations for their guests. The men worked in the woods as market hunters, trappers, loggers and wilderness guides.

 

Most of what we know about the founding of Number Four and the Fentons was recorded by a Lowville attorney, W. Hudson Stevens in his pamphlet Historical Notes of the Settlement on No. 4, Brown’s Tract, in Watson, Lewis County, N.Y. with Notices of the Early Settlers (1864). Stephens visited the Fentons in 1863 to gather information and signatures needed when they sold their homestead and moved to town. He described the scene at Number Four in those days as follows:

 

An irregular winding road, through woods for eight miles, and we emerge amid partially cleared lands, with here and there an apple and cherry tree in the grass plot of a deserted farm – into quite a “deserted village” – houses without tenants – barns wanting boards and crop – an abandoned school-house, windows out and door gone – into the cultivated clearing of No. 4. Beyond Chauncey Smith’s on the left, and the Champlain Road, extending eighty miles into the Wilderness, on the right, the red house of Fenton, perched on brow of the hill, is approached by road leading down to Wetmore’s, and through the lot to the landing on Beaver Lake.

 

Fenton’s remained a modest place during Orrin and Lucy Fenton’s tenure. They raised their five children at Number Four while eking out a wilderness subsistence. Finally, after residing in the woods for nearly forty years, in 1863 the Fentons reluctantly moved to the village of Watson and sold their homestead to Losee B. Lewis, son-in-law of Chauncey Smith, another of the remaining residents of Number Four. Orrin Fenton was something of a North Country legend by the time he and Lucy finally moved to town. W. Hudson Stephens, the Lowville attorney who presided at the closing of the sale of the original Fenton homestead, mused:

 

The silence and solitude of the northern forest has had its charms for him. Who will say his heart’s earlier aspirations have not been as effectively satisfied in the solitude of the uncultivated forest, as if he had moved amid the crowded haunts of the busy city? This sportsman by land and stream, this forest farmer, looks back upon the woodland scene and experience with sighs.

 

Orrin Fenton died March 9, 1870, aged 87. Lucy Fenton died October 8, 1877. 

Charles Fenton, a son of Orrin and Lucy who had grown up in Number Four, returned in 1870 and purchased the old homestead. The story of how he revived and expanded the Fenton House will be recounted in a future blog post.