Carl McCormick, Beaver River guide

Photo from the collection of Tim Mayers

The photo above has intrigued me for some time. The names of the people are written on the back of the postcard in fancy, hard-to-read script. A caption appears at the bottom that reads, “These are the boys from hear [sic] and the Guide house.” I have added the names to the photograph based on my best guess. Mr. and Mrs. Goons probably ran a boarding house that catered to guides. Because I recognize a few of the names, I know the photo was taken in Beaver River Station, but I have never heard of a building called the guide house. The card is not dated and because it was never mailed, it has no postmark. 

Carl McCormick, standing on the far right, sports a distinctive walrus mustache. He shows up in a few other photos taken between 1900 and about 1920 in various locations along the upper Beaver River. I decided to try to find out more about him from old newspapers and the census. 

 

Carl Charles McCormick was born on March 7, 1875. I was unable to discover the names of his parents or the exact location of his childhood home, except that it was somewhere in the Town of Watson, Lewis County, NY. The Beer’s Atlas for 1875 shows two McCormick residences along the Number Four Road in Watson. Most likely Carl grew up on a farm. Like many farm boys living on the edge of the forest he learned basic outdoors skills on his own, as well as carpentry and other farming skills. According to a Census report, he did not attend school.

 

Carl started to work as a Beaver River guide when he was in his early twenties. A few other farm hands from Watson did the same thing after a train station opened at Beaver River in late 1892. That same year a group of wealthy businessmen established the Beaver River Club nearby at Stillwater. They hired a group of guides and maintenance workers overseen by Pop Bullock, the club’s manager and famous guide in his own right. The 1900 U.S. Census lists Carl McCormick as a day laborer living as a boarder with the Bullock family at the Beaver River Club.

 

Carl stayed on at the Beaver River Club after Pop Bullock was replaced as club manager by H.C. Churchill in 1902. Churchill owned a small steamboat he called Alice that he used to ferry members and guests to and from the club at Stillwater. Churchill hired Carl McCormick to pilot the boat. Here they are posing for a picture on the Beaver River.

Photo from the collection of Ginger Thompson

When a reporter from Watertown came to Beaver River on the train in late May, 1902 to inspect the progress being made on the construction of the first concrete dam at Stillwater, Carl McCormick met the reporter near the station at the Norridgewock Hotel early in the morning, walked with him to Grassy Point, then rowed him from Grassy Point to Stillwater and back during a snowstorm [Watertown Daily Times, May 31, 1902]. In those days, the trip on the Beaver River was about twelve miles each way. McCormick had to dig his boat out of a snow bank and break ice on the edge of the river before the boat trip could begin. Clearly, Carl was in great physical shape. When the reporter offered to take a turn at the oars, Carl refused saying the rowing kept him warm.

 

During the hunting season in October 1902 and for a few years thereafter, McCormick occasionally guided for members of the Rap-Shaw Club. Presumably Carl still primarily worked guiding members of the Beaver River Club where he boarded, but as an independent contractor he could pick and choose his jobs. Here he is posing with Jimmy Wilder and Jay Smith, the club’s primary guides, in front of the Rap-Shaw clubhouse at Witchhopple Lake.

 

Photo from Rap-Shaw Club archives

It stands to reason that Carl McCormick continued to work at the Beaver River Club for the next few years, although I could not find any mention of him again until 1908. In 1906 Harlow Young replaced H.C. Churchill as club manager. The club flourished. New members joined, and built cottages. Large groups held parties at the clubhouse. Then, in April 1908, the clubhouse caught fire and burned to the ground. Harlow Young hired Carl McCormick as his assistant manager while the club rebuilt and struggled with financial problems. 

 

In October 1910 Harlow Young resigned as club manager to purchase the nearby Old Homestead Hotel. Young renamed it the Beaver River Inn. Carl McCormick followed him there where he worked as a guide and handyman. This made sense since the membership and usage of the Beaver River Club was in decline. Business was quite good at Young’s Beaver River Inn so Carl had plenty of work. Here he is with Harlow Young cutting ice at Stillwater sometime in the mid-nineteen teens. The woman on snowshoes wearing a white sweater in the background is Minnie Schmidlin Young, Harlow’s wife. The other woman is probably Florence Harris. 

 

Photo from the collection of Dennis Buckley

Who was Florence Harris? Why, of course, she was Carl McCormick’s girlfriend. Who else would be standing on the ice watching him work in the dead of winter? A more interesting question might be, how does a backwoods guide manage to meet and court a woman from Syracuse, NY? It all became clear when I discovered that Florence was the younger sister of Ella Harris, who a few years earlier had married Burt Darrow. For many years thereafter Ella and Burt owned and operated Darrow’s Sportsman’s Lodge in Beaver River Station [see my post of 06/29/21]. The two Harris brothers, George and Arthur, both owned camps next to Darrow’s hotel. A short notice in the Syracuse Post Standard reported that Florence Harris was vacationing at Camp Darrow during the summer of 1916. She would have been 26 years old.

 

As a young woman Florence L. Harris [born Aug. 2 1889] worked as a Licensed Practical Nurse at the large L. C. Smith typewriter factory in Syracuse. She married Carl McCormick on Nov. 25, 1920 at a ceremony in Syracuse where her parents John and Alice Harris lived. Carl and Florence settled in Lowville at a house they rented at 140 Highland Ave. Carl apparently gave up guiding and went to work as a carpenter. Carl was 45, and Florence was 31. Their daughter Winifred Ella McCormick was born Jan. 4, 1926. Their son Arthur Carl McCormick was born June 1, 1929.

 

Although the McCormicks now lived in town, they retained a strong attachment to Stillwater. In 1925 Carl bought cottage lot #15 in the new Stillwater hamlet. That lot was directly across the access road from Harlow Young’s reconstructed Beaver River Inn, roughly where the Stillwater store is now. By 1930 Carl had built a cabin and a shed on that lot. I like to imagine that they and their young children spent many happy days there, visiting old friends and telling stories.

 

Unfortunately, Carl suffered a stroke in June 1936 that left him weakened. In November 1936 Carl had another stroke that rendered him bed-ridden. Florence tended him at home assisted by her sister Ella. Carl died at home on September 19, 1937. He was 62 years old.

 

Florence and her children remained in the Lowville area until the children were grown and married. Arthur McCormick moved out of state, first to New Jersey then to Annapolis, MD. Winifred McCormick married a man named Domago and moved to Turin, NY, not far from Lowville. In her later years Florence lived with her daughter’s family until July 1965 when she moved to the Masonic Home in Utica, NY. Florence died there May 3, 1969 at the age of 79.