Dr. William Seward Webb

Dr. W. Seward Webb is most often remembered today as the person who designed, financed and supervised the building of the Mohawk & Malone Railroad across the Adirondacks [see my post of 4/27/21]. In this post I’m taking a closer look at some lesser-known aspects of Webb’s personal life. Along the way I’ll touch on how his management of his Adirondack real estate empire profoundly influenced the future of the Beaver River country and the surrounding area. 

William Seward Webb was born in New York City on January 31, 1851. His parents were James Watson Webb and Laura Virginia Cram. His middle name was chosen to honor William Henry Seward, New York’s governor from 1839 until 1842 and later Lincoln’s Secretary of State. When governor, Seward pardoned James W. Webb just before he was to start a two-year prison term for participating as a second in an illegal duel.

 

In 1861 the Webb family moved to Rio de Janeiro because James W. Webb was appointed U.S. Ambassador to Brazil. In 1863 at the age of 12, Seward, as his family always called him, returned to the United States to attend boarding school at Churchill’s Military Academy in Sing Sing [now Ossining], NY. He graduated after five years and entered the medical course at Columbia College but left Columbia in 1871 to study in medicine in Paris and Vienna. In 1873 he returned to complete his medical training at the Columbia College for Physicians and Surgeons. He earned his medical degree in 1875, then worked as an intern at St. Luke’s Hospital for two and a half years before entering private medical practice in New York City.

 

W. Seward Webb met Elisa “Lila” Osgood Vanderbilt at a dance in 1877. Lila was the youngest daughter of William H. Vanderbilt, president of the New York Central Railroad. Seward and Lila were married on Dec. 20, 1881. As a wedding present, William Vanderbilt gave the couple a grand mansion at the southeast corner of Fifth Avenue and Fifty-fourth Street. They lived there for the next thirty years. They had four children: Frederica, James Watson II, William Seward, Jr., and Vanderbilt.

At the urging of the Vanderbilt family, Webb gave up medicine and joined a Wall Street investment firm. Webb entered the railroad business in 1885 when his father-in-law arranged for him to be elected president of the Wagner Palace Car Company. He would remain involved in the transportation business for the rest of his life, eventually serving on the board of directors of the Pullman Company, the Rutland Railway Co. and the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway. In the Adirondacks he was founder and president of the Mohawk and Malone Railway, and on the boards of directors of the Fulton Chain Railway Co., the Fulton Navigation Company, and the Raquette Lake Transportation Company.

 

Dr. Webb’s Adirondack Real Estate Empire

 

Beginning in early 1891, Dr. Webb purchased a huge tract of mostly undeveloped forest in northern Herkimer and Hamilton Counties. At its largest, his real estate empire stretched all the way from the St. Lawrence County line to the Fulton Chain of Lakes. It included most of the land surrounding the upper Beaver River. Although Webb used a sliver of this land for the right-of-way needed by his railroad, that was not the primary reason for this massive land acquisition. Webb was a shrewd businessman who knew the land he bought included thousands of acres of forest on which the marketable timber had not yet been harvested. He also believed that a handsome profit could be made by selling vacation cottage lots on the most attractive lakes. Perhaps the most important reason for his acquisition was that Webb coveted beautiful Smith’s Lake as the location for his private wilderness retreat, Nehasane Park.

 

Logging

 

Webb knew that significant income could be derived from logging on parts of his purchase. He drew up long-term contracts with three major logging contractors, and directed one of them, Firman Ouderkirk, to build a sawmill near the railroad. In return, Webb had a train depot and siding built next to the sawmill. Thus, in 1892 the small community of Beaver River Station was born.

 

To his credit, Dr. Webb was one of the first large Adirondack landowners to believe that wilderness preservation and timber harvesting could successfully coexist. Webb was convinced that scientific lumbering practices would allow for natural reforestation and actually improve the health of the forest. Webb hired one of the early proponents of selective cutting, Gifford Pinchot, to conduct a timber survey of his lands. As a result of his work for Webb, Pinchot published "The Adirondack Spruce" (1898), a classic text on scientific forest management. Although Pinchot provided Webb with a forest management plan, there is little evidence that Webb’s logging contractors followed Pinchot’s plan.

Promoting Tourism

Webb was far-sighted enough to envision the day when outdoor tourism would become the economic backbone of the Adirondacks. His railroad was designed from the beginning to carry passengers as well as freight. Webb also invested heavily in providing transport for tourists on the Fulton Chain and Raquette Lake, connecting, of course, to the main line of his railroad. While his transportation network served a small number of the ultra-wealthy with their private rail cars, most passengers were from the growing class of middle-income people. Webb was certain that a healthy market for his lakeside property would develop once people discovered there was a convenient and affordable way to travel to the area. 

 

Webb’s grand plans for his west-central Adirondack real estate empire were disrupted when the state enlarged the Beaver River dam at Stillwater in 1893. Webb sued for damages. In a settlement reached in 1895, Webb agreed to sell about 75,000 acres of his land to New York State for $600,000. Although not his primary goal, this sale actually spurred outdoor tourism in the Beaver River country by opening up a large tract of unspoiled forest to the general public for camping, hunting and fishing.

A unique aspect of the sale was an extensive agreement between Webb and the state that came to be called “the Webb covenant.” Some key elements of the Webb covenant were that the roads and waterways existing at the time of the sale were to remain open to public use and that the forest would not be sold for commercial purposes except for forestry, hotels, camps and cottages. Logging activity was prohibited near the principal lakes. The covenant also provided that large plots of land could not be sold to private owners, limiting cottage lots to no more than 25 acres and hotel sites to no more than 250 acres. These limits were intended to prevent any more of the forest and lakes being closed off from public access. 

 

Webb protected his own financial interest by having the state agree that his existing logging contracts could continue to their expiration dates. Webb’s own private 40,000-acre Nehasane Park was exempt from the covenant allowing him to continue to exclude public access to that area. Although many other factors later came into play, the Webb covenant set in motion forces that resulted in the creation of the current vacation cottage communities along the Fulton Chain, Big Moose Lake, Twitchell Lake, Stillwater and Beaver River Station.

 

Nehasane Park

 

According to Charles Howard Burnett in Conquering the Wilderness (1932), Webb had always been an Adirondack outdoor enthusiast. Burnett knew Webb personally and based his assertion on the fact that in the early 1880s Webb and his new brother-in-law, Frederick W. Vanderbilt, purchased a 10,000-acre plot a few miles outside of Tupper Lake to use as a private hunting and fishing preserve. Like many young city men of wealth at the time, Seward and Frederick shared a desire to periodically test themselves against the wilderness. They recruited a few family members and friends and named their preserve the Kildare Club. Burnett notes that Webb went to the Kildare Club regularly for fishing and hunting throughout the 1880s.

 

It’s clear then that Dr. Webb was already familiar with the charms of the Adirondack wilderness well before he became involved in building his railroad line. He had to have known that other wealthy New Yorkers were already purchasing large tracts of Adirondack forest to establish game preserves and to build elegant vacation homes. He also was aware of the reputation of Smith’s Lake, the famous destination of the old-time sportsmen since 1845. He could have even visited the area prior to deciding to purchase land in the area. From the very beginning, he set aside 40,000 acres surrounding Smith’s Lake from his other lands, closed it off to the public, and created his own private wilderness park where he could entertain his wealthy friends [see my post of 10/29/21].

Lila Webb and Frederick Vanderbilt (center) at Nehasane

Webb named his private preserve “Nehasane Park,” after the original Mohawk name for the Beaver River [see my post of 02/13/21]. As a tribute to his wife, Webb renamed Smith’s Lake “Lake Lila.” He hired architect Robert H. Robinson, who also designed the buildings at Shelburne Farms, to design a complex of buildings including a main lodge, two train stations, eleven sleeping cabins and two boathouses, all in a sophisticated shingle style. The main building was completed in 1893. It had room for twenty-five guests, including space to accommodate eight to ten guides. There were separate quarters for the ten full-time staff. Webb’s great camp eventually had eighty-six ancillary buildings. Nehasane Park is described in detail including a large number of photos in Harvey H. Kaiser, Great Camps of the Adirondacks (1982 edition), pp. 183 – 187 and in Gladys Montgomery, An Elegant Wilderness (2011), pp. 110 – 121. 

Although whitetail deer were naturally plentiful along the upper Beaver River, Webb wanted his guests to have a more varied hunting experience. Accordingly, he had his game keepers construct a ten-foot-high wire fence around 10,000 acres near Lake Lila to create a protected game preserve. Over the next decade he variously stocked the preserve with moose, elk, caribou, English stags, black-tailed deer, wild boars and other game animals. In 1903, the threat of forest fires caused Webb to dismantle the fence and set the remaining animals free.

Shelburne Farms

 

During essentially the same time that W. Seward Webb was developing his Adirondack real estate empire and his railroads, Lila Vanderbilt Webb embarked on her own project, designing and building Shelburne Farms financed by $10 million she had inherited from her father.

 

In 1886 Lila Webb purchased and consolidated thirty-two existing family farms on Shelburne Point on Lake Champlain just south of Burlington, VT. She consulted with landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead on the layout of the resulting 3,800-acre estate and hired New York City architect Robert H. Robertson to design the buildings. Lila Webb also managed all aspects of the household including planning meals, hiring servants, hosting guests, interior decorating and garden design. The main Shelburne house was completed in 1888. The building and renovation process at the farm continued until 1902.

The Webbs often hosted state and national dignitaries at Shelburne Farms, including Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Taft. On many occasions they entertained large house parties of their friends, bringing the guests from New York City to Vermont in a private train. Seward and Lila shared a deep appreciation for fine horses. Dr. Webb was especially interested in the hackney horse then popular in England but rare in North America. He made a thorough study of this type of horse, imported stallions and mares from England, and established a breeding facility for hackneys at Shelburne Farms.

 Later life

 

By the turn of the twentieth century both Shelburne Farms and Nehasane Park were essentially completed, and the Webbs settled into the sort of life typical of the ultra-wealthy. They divided their time between their Fifth Avenue home in New York City and Shelburne Farms with the occasional extended stay at Nehasane. In winter they retreated to their home in Palm Beach, Florida.

When not attending to business affairs, they were active in a large range of New York social clubs including the Metropolitan Club, the University Club, the Riding Club, the New York Yacht Club, and the Turf and Field Club. Dr. Webb was also a founder and second president [1890 & 1891] of the national organization of the Sons of the American Revolution. The couple showed horses at the annual New York Horse Show and Lila competed in coaching competitions riding behind a four-in-hand team of hackneys. They amassed a large collection of carriages, many of which can still be seen at Shelburne Farms in Vermont.

 

For a number of years Dr. Webb was active in political affairs in Vermont. Beginning in 1891 he served as Inspector-General of the rifle practice of the Vermont militia with the rank of colonel. He represented the town of Shelburne in the Vermont House of Representatives from 1896 to 1898. In 1902, he intended to campaign for the Republican nomination for Governor of Vermont but bowed out in favor of a political ally.

 

In his later years, Seward developed severe rheumatoid arthritis, and he eventually became addicted to the morphine prescribed to lessen the pain. He gradually withdrew from business affairs and social events. He died at Shelburne Farms in 1926.

 

Lila Webb continued her active life after Seward’s death. She enjoyed playing golf and bridge, gardening and traveling. She was an avid reader, sometimes devouring up to three books a day. Despite a growing hearing loss, she hosted large groups of guests at her residences until her death at Shelburne Farms in 1936.

 

The Town of Webb

 

On January 25, 1896, only five years after Dr. Webb began to acquire his Adirondack real estate empire, the Herkimer County Board of Supervisors voted to create a new town out of the northern half of the former Town of Wilmurt and to name it the Town of Webb. Joseph Harvey, then the Wilmurt town supervisor, initiated this change. Harvey argued it made sense to form a new town and name it for Dr. Webb because it was Webb’s railroad and the resulting surge in the logging business that had attracted so many new settlers to the area. 

 

I believe Dr. Webb deserves the honor of having a town named for him for more reasons than financing and supervising construction of a railroad. Although his actions were driven by self-interest and a desire to make a profit on his investment, unlike many of his contemporaries he had a remarkably clear vision of the future of the Adirondacks built around outdoor tourism. Anyone living in, visiting, or passing through Old Forge and the Town of Webb today will experience the tangible results of Dr. Webb’s vision.