Jim Dunbar and the Dunbar Club
The Dunbar Fish and Game Club was informally founded in 1905. Ever since then a small group of member sportsmen have come to the club at Stillwater on the Beaver River for hunting and fishing expeditions. The club was founded by James C. “Jim” Dunbar who lived and worked at Stillwater from 1879, when he was just fourteen, until his death in 1926 at the age of sixty. During his forty-seven years as a full-time Stillwater resident Jim Dunbar worked as a guide for sportsmen, a hotelkeeper, the first Stillwater dam keeper, a subsistence farmer and as the founder and first president of the Dunbar Club.
Jim Dunbar was born on July 27, 1865 on a farm a few miles north of Dannatberg, Town of Watson, Lewis County, NY. His parents were Joseph C. Dunbar and Mary E. Warmwood [sometimes spelled Wormwood]. About 1877 the Dunbars purchased the Wardwell place at Stillwater on the Beaver River plus 100 adjourning acres. They demolished or repurposed Wardwell’s cabin and built a two-story frame hotel with finished lumber. The new sportsmen’s hotel was ready to open in 1878. The Dunbar family operated the hotel and kept working the farm where they lived during the winter. For more on the life of Joe and Mary Dunbar, see my post of 4/9/21, at https://beaverriverhistory.blogspot.com/2021/04/jolly-joe-dunbar.html
Jim Dunbar moved with his parents to the newly built hotel at Stillwater in the spring of 1879. For the next ten years during the warmer months, Jim worked at the hotel as well as on the family farm. Running a popular sportsmen’s hotel required the efforts of the whole Dunbar family. Lucy Dunbar, Jim’s older sister, helped her mother Mary manage the hotel and do the cooking. Jim and his two younger brothers, Albert and Talcott, helped their father maintain the hotel, guide tourists, and do the farming. Joe and Mary’s nephews, Chester and William Elliott, also worked at the Dunbar Hotel when they were teenagers. In 1889 twenty-four-year-old Jim Dunbar married Clara Smith of Lowville and Clara moved to Stillwater to work with Jim at the Dunbar Hotel.
Stillwater is 29 miles from Lowville, a day’s journey by horse and wagon. Its location on the Beaver River above the rapids made it a favored destination for sportsmen and their families. The Dunbar Hotel did well. It expanded over the years and added a number of cabins to accommodate families. Then, in December 1892 the Dunbars sold the hotel to a group of regular guests who had banded together to form the Beaver River Club. Joe and Mary Dunbar retired to the family farm. Jim and Clara Dunbar remained at Stillwater to work for the Beaver River Club. For more details about the Beaver River Club refer to Chapter 11 of my book Beaver River Country and my post of 05/03/21, at https://beaverriverhistory.blogspot.com/2021/05/the-beaver-river-club.html
In 1905 Jim Dunbar started to consider how he might stabilize his income from guiding sportsmen. Perhaps the wealthy members of the Beaver River Club had become less interested in his services. One of those members, prominent Lowville businessman R.J. Richardson for whom Dunbar and guided for many years, offered to help Jim organize a sportsmen’s club. Newspapers around the region soon announced that “a group of sportsmen” intended to buy 6000 acres north of the Beaver River at Stillwater as their private hunting preserve. This same piece of land had previously been leased by the Beaver River Club. Dunbar, Richardson and friends did not end up purchasing that tract, although Richardson did buy ten acres of it for himself. Nonetheless, the group Jim Dunbar organized started to use his Stillwater farm as their hunting headquarters.
The Dunbar Fish and Game Club came into formal existence at its first annual meeting on Sept. 7, 1909 when the ten members in attendance ratified a constitution and by-laws. The constitution was written to allow the club to someday purchase its own property at Stillwater but in the meantime, it was based at the Dunbar farm. The by-laws limited the club to ten members. James Dunbar was elected president and Charles Steinhilber was elected Secretary - Treasurer.
Jim Dunbar’s life took a turn in January 1914 when his wife Clara died unexpectedly from a stroke. Then in the spring of 1915 Jim Dunbar married Lucy H. Fenton. She was born in Number Four in 1861, the daughter of John B. & Emogene Fenton. John B. Fenton was a son of Orrin & Lucy Fenton, who built and operated the original Fenton House. Lucy’s uncle was Charles Fenton, the famous guide who expanded the Fenton House beginning in 1870. Jim and Lucy, both in their 50s, lived at the farm at Stillwater where Jim Dunbar continued to work as the state dam keeper and as a guide.
Until 1916 the annual meetings of the Dunbar Club were usually held at the offices of R. J. Richardson & Co. in Lowville. R.J. Richardson resigned his membership that year due to his advanced age. He died the following September. In business Richardson had been incredibly successful, rising from life on a farm in Martinsburg to found his own produce business that became the largest wholesaler of cheese in the Black River Valley. His company built the Lowville Cold Storage Plant that could warehouse up to one million pounds of cheese. Kraft Cheese later bought that plant. A much-expanded Kraft plant is now one of the largest employers in Lewis County. For more on the life of R.J. Richardson see my post of 01/24/24, at https://beaverriverhistory.blogspot.com/2024/01/rufus-j-richardson.html.
Members of the Dunbar Club continued to convene at Jim and Lucy Dunbar’s farm at Stillwater during hunting and fishing seasons until the fall of 1924. They had known for some years that the dam at Stillwater was going to be substantially enlarged and that the about half of the Dunbar property, including all of the farm buildings, was going to be completely flooded.
Obviously, loss of the Dunbar farm would deprive the Dunbar Fish and Game Club of its headquarters. Fortunately, the club was able to negotiate a long-term lease of the Fisher Camp on the south side of the little hamlet that was taking shape on the west shore of the new reservoir. Fisher Forestry and Realty Company then owned most of the land in Stillwater above the projected high-water line. The Fisher Camp at Stillwater was probably built in 1924 as a sales office and residence. It is worth noting in this regard that Albert Dunbar, younger brother of Jim Dunbar, was then the superintendent of the Fisher Forestry and Realty Company. By the time the gates on the expanded dam closed in February 1925, the Dunbar Club had a new headquarters.
Fisher Forestry did not own all the land at Stillwater. A portion of the land of the Jim Dunbar farm would also remain above the high-water line of the new reservoir. Accordingly, in 1919 Jim and Lucy Dunbar subdivided that land into five building lots for cottages. Three of those lots sold in 1919. W. H. Dancey and Frances B. Dancey of Rochester, purchased Dunbar Cottage Lot #3 consisting of 0.43 of an acre for $100. That lot and the cottage on it would eventually be owned by the Dunbar Club.
The Danceys also purchased one of the oldest cottages on the Beaver River Club, had it carefully dismantled and then reconstructed on their new shoreline lot. This cottage was originally known as the Hayden cottage. It was built on lot #21 at the Beaver River Club for S. E. Hayden from Syracuse. Hayden was one of the original members of the Beaver River Club. He bought lot #21 before 1898 so the Haden cottage must date to the later 1890s. It had a large living room, bathroom and small kitchen downstairs with bedrooms on the second floor.
Before the current dam at Stillwater was completed in 1924 the Regulating District hired hundreds of loggers to clear all the trees from the 4000 acres to be flooded. The Regulating District also hired long-time Dunbar Club member Charles Steinhilber to supervise a crew of fifty men to remove all the logging debris and brush from the reservoir basin. In August 1926, only a year after the new Stillwater Reservoir filled, Charles Steinhilber and his wife purchased the reconstructed Hayden cottage and Cottage Lot #3 lot from the Danceys. Even though Steinhilber was a founding member, the Dunbar Club continued to meet at the Fisher Camp until 1945.
Jim Dunbar died of pernicious anemia at the age of 60 on May 14, 1926. He was still president of the Dunbar Club at the time. Lucy Dunbar died at the age of 71 on December 8, 1932. She was buried beside her husband in the Lowville Rural Cemetery.
The Dunbar Club continued to function as usual until September 24, 1945 when their headquarters at the Fisher Camp burned down. Hunting season was fast approaching so the club held a special meeting in early October to discuss what to do. They decided to rent the Steinhilber camp for $50 during the hunting season. The members must have liked the accommodations because they met again in January to discuss buying the Steinhilber camp. Charles Steinhilber had died in 1937 and his wife and heirs were interested in selling the property. The club purchased the camp and lot along the shore on March 23, 1946 for $2,100 [$35,200 adjusted for inflation].
The Dunbar Club is still active and it still owns this same property. It now has fifteen members. Their historic camp building is in excellent condition. The only major renovations include removal of the cupola from the corner of the porch due to snow damage, installation of metal roofing, interior plumbing and addition of a one-story kitchen wing. Their camp is one of the oldest buildings in Stillwater and one of the few surviving intact buildings of the Beaver River Club.
Sources: much of the information for this article was provided by Jeff Fox, the current treasurer of the Dunbar Club. I toured the club as Jeff’s guest on May 18, 2024. Photographs of Jim Dunbar, the Dunbar Hotel, and the historic Hayden cottage are from the H.C. Churchill album of Carol and Jim Fox.
Comments
Post a Comment