Frank Rice, a typical part-time Adirondack guide
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 with the maps and deeds in my research collection. There were only a few guides operating in the area in the 1930s who owned property. I knew who it couldn’t be, so I took a guess.
“Was his name Frank Rice?”
Larry looked mildly surprised. “Yes, that’s it. He had a farm near Herkimer. My mom remembers being told that he got into guiding because one Sunday while the whole family was at church, a disgruntled farm hand burned down the farmhouse and attached barn.”
We chatted occasionally during rest of the tour. I learned that his mother, Dorothy Koch, remembered taking the train to Beaver River. Frank picked her and her mother up along the tracks in a small boat with a tiny outboard motor and took them on a short ride to the camp. She remembered that there were three camp buildings. She liked sitting on the porch but hated having to use the outhouse. I knew instantly that I needed to learn more about Rice. Larry and I agreed to stay in touch.
Back home, I did some research on Frank Rice. He was born to a farm family near Herkimer, NY on Nov. 22, 1867. He married Elizabeth “Lizzie” McKennan in 1895. They had three daughters: Elizabeth, Rachel and Larry’s grandmother Catherine, born in 1901.
 |
Formal portrait of the Rice family, courtesy of Larry Koch |
According to US Census reports they had a farm that included a sawmill and by 1915 they had a hired hand living with them. Lizzie’s father, John McKennan, aged 88, was also living with them in 1915. Newspaper reports place the Rice farm on Herkimer Hill outside of Frankfurt, NY in the Mohawk River Valley. Frank Rice’s obituary confirms that a disastrous fire in 1918 destroyed their farm buildings and led Rice to give up farming and move into the village of Frankfort.
The first mention of Frank Rice vacationing at Beaver River can be found in the daily journal of Etta Kempton, the wife of the railroad section foreman. Etta lived near the train depot and saw Rice and his family arrive on the train on June 1, 1912. Since she knew him by sight, it’s likely that this was not his very first visit. Indeed, Rice and his extended family, including his brother-in-law Morrell McKennan and his family, appear to have rented a camp from Bert B. Bullock for the stay. Amazingly, that camp still exists. In the upstairs there is a homemade wooden box, too large to be removed by subsequent owners. Inside the lid are tracings of the largest fish caught by early visitors staying there. One such drawing is labelled, “Speckled Trout, Jessie McKennan, Frankfort NY, 11 yrs. old, June 4, 1912.” Jessie was Morrell’s daughter.
 |
| Jessie McKennan’s trout, June 4, 1912, courtesy of Mary Kunzler-Larmann |
By 1915 Frank Rice had decided to buy the camp they had been renting. In order to afford the purchase, he convinced two close friends to become co-owners. One was his brother-in-law Morrell McKennan. The other was William J. Petrie, a Herkimer neighbor. The three camp owners were all involved in farming. Rice was a farmer. McKennan operated a Frankfort farm supply store. Petrie sold farm equipment. In March of 1915 Bert B. Bullock, who then owned nearly all the private property at Beaver River Station, sold the three friends a lot of 1.65 acres [Book of Deeds #229, page 51]. In mid-November of 1915 Etta Kempton noted that Rice was guiding for a party of ten men at his camp and that they got nine deer. On April 9, 1916 Etta recorded that B.B. Bullock came up to Beaver River from Utica to give Rice his deed.
A 1921 map shows that the parcel where the camp was located was at the far eastern border of the private Beaver River Block, a little south of the railroad tracks immediately adjacent to state forest. This was the area where the Ouderkirk sawmill had been located until 1902 or so. A photograph of the sawmill in the collection of the Adirondack Experience Museum shows a few frame houses in the vicinity of the parcel Rice and his friends purchased from Bullock. Although not mentioned in the deed, I believe that the lot included a small frame house originally built to house a sawmill supervisor, or possibly even the owner Firman Ouderkirk himself.
A significant problem with this location is that it’s not on an island as Dorothy Koch clearly remembered. That mystery is partly resolved when we consider that she visited her grandfather’s camp during the 1930s. The lot that Rice bought in 1915 was totally flooded in 1925 when the dam at Stillwater was raised to its current height. Maps of the flooded properties made for the Black River Regulating District show and list the Rice/McKennan/Petrie property as one purchased by the state, then completely flooded.
By the time of the flooding Rice and his partners had owned the property for ten years using it periodically as a base for the hunting and fishing groups they guided. Since there were three of them, it makes sense they had three cabins prior to the flooding. There is good circumstantial evidence that Rice and his two friends built at least one of their cabins using materials they salvaged from the railroad section house. Etta Kempton’s journal reveals that Rice and a few other men from Herkimer came to Beaver River in April 1916, took down the old section house that was in the process of being replaced and hauled the salvage to Rice’s camp.
What happened to those three cabins? Dorothy Koch visited them in the 1930s, so they clearly had survived the flooding. Then I remembered I have a copy of a photograph that shows a house being moved across the railroad tracks in 1924, not far from the old location of the Rice property. I got that photo from my friend Mary Kunzler-Larmann. I contacted her at once.
 |
Moving the camp across the tracks in 1924, courtesy of Mary Kunzler-Larmann |
She confirmed that the house being moved is her current camp. Further, she knew that her property was once owned by Rice, McKennan & Petrie. A deed in her files shows that the three friends purchased that lot in February 1924 [Book of Deeds #270, pages 206 – 207]. The timing leads to the conclusion that the three men saved their cabins by moving them prior to the flooding. Mary further confirmed that there once was a second old cabin on her property that had deteriorated to the point it needed to be taken down. Based on all this, I believe that Mary’s current camp is the sole surviving building of the Ouderkirk sawmill complex, built sometime between 1893 and 1902.
That accounts for two of the Rice camps, but what about the third one? Dorothy Koch’s photo album includes a picture of a cabin built with vertical logs.
 |
Island camp in the 1930s, courtesy of Larry Koch |
Since this unique building style sets it apart from the other two cabins, I guessed it must be the missing third camp. Mary Kunzler-Larmann agreed and noted that the cabin in the photo strongly resembles one that still exists on a small island a short distance from the railroad tracks just across from Mary’s lot where the other two cabins had been relocated. She shared the photo with the current owner who positively identified it as her camp. Rice and his friends must have moved it to its current location in 1924 before it became an island. When Dorothy Koch visited in the 1930s, Frank Rice took her to that island in his motorboat.
 |
| Rice’s boats in the 1930s, courtesy of Larry Koch |
Frank Rice and his partners must have bought that lot in the early 1920s, but I’ve been unable to find a relevant deed, so far. Later deeds show that Rice eventually bought out his partners’ shares of all their joint property.
Frank Rice was not a famous guide, but he is representative of the hundreds of part-time Adirondack guides of the time who periodically hosted groups in their camps for hunting and fishing. Their camps were built to be dual purpose. They served as vacation cottages for the owner’s family and were configured so they could host groups during hunting and fishing seasons. Having access to three cabins came in handy for Frank because it allowed him to host larger groups.
 |
| Frank Rice in front far left with hunting party, Oct. 17, 1928, courtesy of Larry Koch |
When the state cleared squatters from the Forest Preserve in 1916 Rice and his friends who already owned their land were perfectly positioned to continue to operate and probably prospered. They were doing well enough by 1924 that it made economic sense to move their cabins rather than see them disappear under the newly enlarged reservoir.
As noted above, in 1918 Frank Rice stopped farming and he and his wife moved into the village of Frankfort where he delivered the mail and worked as an assembler in a typewriter factory. After he retired about 1940, he continued to own his camps at Beaver River and presumably used them as his guiding headquarters from time to time. When his wife Lizzie McKennan died in 1948, Frank moved in with his daughter Elizabeth Lanning and her family. A photo in Dorothy Koch’s album shows Frank guiding a hunting party in November 1950, only a few weeks before his death.
 |
Frank Rice on far right with hunting party, Nov. 1950, courtesy of Larry Koch |
Frank U. Rice died Dec. 7, 1950 in Herkimer, NY and is buried in Herkimer’s Oak Hill Cemetery. Frank Rice’s daughters inherited the camps and sold them.
Sources:
Interviews and emails with Larry Koch and Mary Kunzler-Larmann
Etta Kempton’s daily journal 1909 – 1916, courtesy of Scott Thompson
Comments
Post a Comment