The Thompson Brothers, Walter and Clinton
Both Thompson families in front of the Norridgewock II
Walter and Clinton Thompson were the children of William and Hattie Thompson. Until 1914 the family had a farm outside of the tiny settlement of Sperryville on the north side of the Independence River not far from Chase’s Lake in the Town of Watson, Lewis County, NY. Bill Thompson farmed and worked in the woods. Hattie was a school teacher. Walter Samuel Thompson was born August 18, 1894. Clinton Rennie Thompson was born three years later on July 6, 1897. The boys helped with the farm work as soon as they were old enough. It’s likely that their mother taught them to read, write and do basic math.
In 1911 Bill and Hattie bought a sportsman’s lodge at Loon Lake along the Carthage to Lake Champlain Road just a few miles west of Beaver River Station [see my post of 6/2/21]. The Thompson brothers were both teenagers by this time and were able to help their parents run the lodge. In 1914 Bill Thompson purchased a house along the Number Four Road with five acres and a blacksmith’s shop in Crystaldale, NY from Jimmy Wilder [see my post on Jimmy Wilder of 5/9/21]. Just two years later Bill Thompson died of cancer on May 18, 1916 at the age of 61. Hattie Thompson inherited the Crystaldale property and the Loon Lake Lodge.
The Loon Lake Lodge proved to be a mixed blessing. It wasn’t long until Hattie received an eviction notice from the New York State Conservation Commission. Like many sportsmen’s hotels at that time, the lodge had been built on state land, part of the Adirondack Forest Preserve. Hattie owned the buildings and furnishings, but not the land. Rather than just walking away, in the fall of 1916, the Thompson brothers dismantled the lodge and hauled the usable pieces to a piece of property they purchased just across the Norridgewock Pond from the Beaver River train station. They reassembled the building and renamed it the Evergreen. By the spring of 1917 they were back in business.
Probably anticipating the need for a larger and more predictable income, in May 1918 the Thompson brothers jointly purchased a farm of 160 acres in the Black River valley 2.5 miles from the thriving Lewis County village of Martinsburg. During the summer of 1918 Walter and Gladys lived primarily on this farm, with frequent trips to Beaver River. In August 1918 Walter and Gladys gave up farming and moved back to Beaver River where they had built a house. Their first son was born the following spring. The Martinsburg farm was rented to another family in early 1919. It’s likely that it was sold shortly thereafter.
As Walter and Gladys Thompson got settled in Beaver River, Clinton, the younger Thompson brother, cast around to see how he could best financially contribute to the family. During 1917 and 1918 Clint helped at the Evergreen, periodically worked elsewhere in places like McKeever or Hinckley, probably in the lumber camps, and helped work the Martinsburg farm. In April 1917 the United States entered World War I. The list of Lewis County men eligible to be drafted included both brothers. In the fall of 1918 Clinton was drafted into the army. I can find no record of his service. Fortunately, the war ended on November 11, 1918 so it’s unlikely that Clint had to face combat. By the spring of 1920 he had returned home. There is no evidence that Walter was drafted.
Small items in the Lowville paper make it clear that by 1920 both of the Thompson brothers were committed to making a living by working the tourist trade in Beaver River. This was particularly fortunate timing because at the beginning of the 1920s the number of sporting tourists arriving on the train supported a good number of establishments. In addition to the Evergreen, sportsmen could find accommodations at the Norridgewock II run by Louis Beach, at Pop Bullock’s hotel, at Darrow’s, at Dave and Mabel Conkey’s camp and at the three modest guide’s camps on the east edge of town run by Frank Rice, Morrell McKennan, and William J. Petrie.
Also, beginning in 1916 the hamlet of Beaver River started to develop as a location for vacation and hunting / fishing camps. This trend started after Bert B. Bullock, the owner of most of the property at Beaver River, decided to sell everything and move to Thendara [see my post of 7/13/22]. By 1916 the land on the west side of the railroad tracks, including the recently opened Norridgewock II, had been purchased by a Tupper Lake banker, Albert Hosley, and managed by his friend Peter Propp, a Tupper Lake merchant. The land on the east side of the railroad tracks was purchased by the Beaver River Campsite Co. owned by partners George G. MacFeggan, Howard C. Weller and Vernon K. Snyder. Both groups of developers filed subdivision plans with Herkimer County and advertised small plots for sale. A few people bought lots and built camps.
These cottage development plans came to an abrupt halt in 1921 when the Black River Regulating District [BRRD] publicly announced that it intended to increase the height of the dam at Stillwater by nineteen feet. Maps drawn by BRRD showed that a substantial number of the lots of the Beaver River Campsite Co. and a small number of the lots owned by Hosley / Propp would be wholly or partly submerged after the dam was completed in 1924. The Beaver River Campsite Co. subsequently dissolved after selling its lots to be submerged to the State and the remainder of its unsold lots to E. E. Cullings, an officer of the BRRD.
Part of the BRRD’s plan included removing all the timber and brush from about 4000 acres that would be flooded by the higher dam. Logging contracts were signed and soon a large number of lumberjacks from all over the Adirondacks and lower Canada started to arrive at Beaver River Station. Most of the loggers were undoubtedly lodged in temporary lumber camps, but many of them, especially the supervisors and teamsters, filled the hotels and boarding houses to capacity. New businesses opened. There was a full-time barber and a baker. Prohibition was the law of the land but in Beaver River a few new “lunchrooms” provided liquid refreshments illegal elsewhere. It is rumored that a few enterprising Beaver River men, including the Forest Ranger Dave Conkey, operated clandestine breweries and stills deep in the forest outside of town. A future post will describe those boom-town years in more detail.
Between 1921 and the end of 1924 business was extremely brisk at the Norridgewock II Hotel requiring Lou Beach to hire additional employees. When his chief handyman Ed Butcher left to work at Darrow’s Lodge in 1921 or 22, Beach must have decided it was time to wrap up his business and move elsewhere. He continued to live at Beaver River until 1923, probably still managing the hotel. Then he sold his camp, married Myra Smith, a woman from Auburn, NY, and moved to Old Forge to work as a carpenter [see my post on Lou Beach of 12/16/21].
With Beach planning to leave, Propp and Hosley made a deal with the Thompson brothers to take over management and eventually purchase the Norridgewock II. Details of this transaction are unclear. Deeds on file show that Hosley didn’t transfer the hotel and land on the west side of the tracks to Peter Propp until January 1924. Propp in turn didn’t transfer the property to the Thompson brothers until November 1928. Most accounts say the Thompson brothers ran the Norridgewock through most of the 1920s. Given that in 1924 the Thompsons built a large new two-story building called “The Annex” on the site of the original hotel to serve as a store and home for Walter and Gladys Thompson’s growing family, they must have already agreed to purchase the Hosley / Propp holdings by that time. The deeds probably weren’t filed with the County Clerk’s Office until the final payments were made.
Donnelly’s “Short History of Beaver River” [p. 38] claims that during the 1920s Clint Thompson did not live in Beaver River but worked as a salesman for an oil company and then as an automobile salesman in New York City, not returning to Beaver River until 1931. Donnelly is only partly right about this. Local newspaper reports and family stories establish that Clinton did live in Beaver River during most of the 1920s.
After returning from the army Clint had resumed his relationship with Jennie Shaw, a Crystaldale neighbor, and on June 16, 1920 they were married. A few days later they left for Beaver River to spend their honeymoon at the Evergreen. For the next three years Clint and Jennie lived at his mother’s house in Crystaldale full-time in the winter while spending considerable time during the spring, summer and fall in Beaver River. As business picked up at the Norridgewock in 1923, Clint and Jennie began to live primarily in Beaver River. Throughout the rest of the 1920s the Lowville paper refers to Mr. and Mrs. Clinton Thompson as Beaver River residents.
Donnelly was right, however, about Clint working as a traveling salesman for an oil company during the 1920s. Scott Thompson, Clint’s grandson, recalls that his father Stanley told him that Clint would go out from Beaver River for a few days at a time to sell oil products to farms and garages. I can find no evidence that Clint ever worked as an automobile salesman in New York City or elsewhere.
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| Jennie, Clint and their children: Stanley, Marion and Lucille |
Local newspaper reports show that Walter, Gladys and their children spent nearly all their time during the 1920s at Beaver River. That makes sense since Gladys grew up in Beaver River, her parents still lived there and she worked part-time as a telegraph operator for the railroad. Under these circumstances Walter Thompson probably assumed primary responsibility for running the Norridgewock II with Clint working along with him during busy times like the hunting and fishing seasons. Hattie Thompson also spent considerable time at Beaver River. When she was there, she lived at the Norridgewock II as did Clint, Jenny and their children while Walter, Gladys and their children lived upstairs at the Annex nearby.
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| Hattie Thompson and her grandchildren |
After the new Stillwater Reservoir filled in early 1925 things got a lot quieter in Beaver River. All but a handful of the loggers left town. The extra railroad crews who had come to relocate and stabilize the section of line that was flooded by the higher water of the reservoir finished their work and left. Over the next five years the resident population of the hamlet fell from 62 to 39.
By 1930 three places remained where visitors could find lodging: the Norridgewock II, Darrow’s Sportsmen’s Lodge and Ellerby’s boardinghouse. The Norridgewock was the largest and most preferred hotel. Darrow’s, now on an island reached by a floating bridge, was a modest place that catered mostly to hunters and fishermen. Ellerby’s, based in Lou Beach’s former camp, was known as a small, rough place that catererd mostly to loggers.
Things didn’t change much at Beaver River during the 1930s. The great depression from 1929 until 1939 meant many people did not have enough disposable income to go on vacation. Business at Beaver River was generally slow. The Norridgewock and Darrow’s placed small advertisements in the New York City papers to try to attract new customers. It appears that those residents who stayed in Beaver River during these lean years just held their breath and coasted along on whatever income they could get from the reduced tourist trade.
Newspaper reports reveal that Walter and Clinton Thompson and their families continued to live in Beaver River full-time with regular visits to Crystaldale where their mother, Hattie, still had a home. Hattie also spent much of her the time in Beaver River during the early 1930s but as her health declined, she started to spend more time in Crystaldale. On January 30, 1935 Hattie Thompson died at the Norridgewock. She was 75. According to her obituary, her body was brought out across the reservoir on the ice in Carl Rowley’s early version of a snowmachine [probably a modified car] accompanied by Walter and Clint.
Both Walter and Clint had families to support. Walter and Gladys had six children, the youngest of which was born in 1934. Clint and Jennie had three. It seems that the income from the Thompson Brothers’ enterprises was not adequate to support them all during the depression. Finally, in September 1939, after years trying to make ends meet, Walter and Gladys sold out to Clint and moved their family to Ft. Edward, NY where Walter went into the lumber business.
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| Gladys and Walter Thompson with their children in the 1930s |
Thus, with Walter’s departure, the era of the Thompson Brothers ended. During their twenty-nine years of joint hard work [1911 until 1939] they saw the fledgling settlement of Beaver River through many changes. Now it was up to Clint and Jennie Thompson and their children to guide the little oasis in the wilderness through its next phase. I will tell that story in a future post.
All photo illustrations in this post courtesy of the Thompson family
Research on deeds and maps provided by Tim Becker
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