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Showing posts from April, 2023

Frank Rice, a typical part-time Adirondack guide

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Frank U. Rice at Beaver River, courtesy of Larry Koch “I bought your Beaver River Country book for my mother.” Larry Koch and I had just met. Late last summer we were both on a tour of the Bartlett Carry Club organized by Adirondack Architectural Heritage.     “For your mother? Is she interested in Adirondack history?”   “Yes, especially in Beaver River. See, her grandfather was a guide who had a camp there. My mother is 95 now. She visited her grandfather’s camp with her mother when she was a child.”   I did some quick calculations. If she were between five and ten years old at the time, then her visit to her grandfather’s camp would have occurred between 1932 and 1937.    “Do you happen to remember your great-grandfather’s name?”   “I should, but I can’t recall it right now.”   As luck would have it, I had recently studied the census reports for the settlement of Beaver River from 1900 until 1940 in an attempt to cross reference the names w...