The year was 1854. Harvey Moody, together with his younger brothers, Cort and Mart, were rowing their guide boats, each with gear and a single passenger, down the Racquette River. The Moody boys, all well-known Adirondack guides, were leading Alfred B. Street, the New York State Librarian, and several of his friends on a leisurely hunting/fishing trip that would take them across the Saranacs, up the Racquette to Long Lake and then back down the river to Tupper Lake.
After several side trips to picturesque smaller ponds such as Dawson, Palmer and Follensby, they would return to their starting point on Lower Saranac and take the long, rigorous stagecoach ride to the steam boat on Lake Champlain.
As they passed the canoe carry that leads to Upper Saranac, Harvey announced that it was only another 3.5 miles to the outlet of Follensby Pond. That area near the carry’s end was years later called Axton. The name was derived from the “town of Axe” of a Santa Clara Lumber Company camp and referred to, in the 1800s, a large area with many buildings that included Coreys and extended along the east side of the three Stony Creek ponds.
Today, Axton means only the sandy beach at the southern end of that same Indian-carrying place, and it still provides access to the river from Upper Saranac.
Let’s leave the librarian’s party as they continue down river and take a closer look at the three guides.
Harvey, the chief guide on this trip, was the oldest son of Jacob Moody, the first permanent settler of the Saranac Lake region, having arrived there in 1819. Harvey had four brothers: Cort, Mart, Smith and Daniel, all of whom became famous hunters, trappers and guides, and their names appear frequently in early travelogs by various authors, journalists and historians.
The Moodys had early on discovered the richness of game around Tupper Lake. They had marveled at its scenic surroundings and its many hidden ponds full of speckled and lake trout, which Harvey described as “some of ‘em full grown, too.”
“Yes,” he once said, “that Tupper’s Lake, it’s all sorts of a nice place. As for huntin’, the deers about those slews, it’s real inkstand with them. There’s Stetson Slew and Simons Slew. If their ain’t the places for night huntin’, then there ain’t none.”
Cort would become the second or third settler in Tupper Lake, arriving here in 1850. It should be mentioned that Cort, born in 1822, was the first recorded birth within the present-day village limits of Saranac Lake.
Maitland DeSormeau in his book, The Heydays of the Adirondacks, relates “the Saranacs were once Cort’s favorite stomping grounds.” His main bailiwick was on Deer Island, opposite the original Wawbeek Hotel (now Stiles’ residence) on the Upper Lake. Of further local interest, Deer Island was once owned by the Tupper Lake Santa Clara Company, of which Ferris Meigs was president.
Having a large camp on Big Wolf, the Ferris Meigs family didn’t build on Deer Island. However, the Ferris family, who were related to the Meigs, owned half of the island, a part of which was later bought by Dr. Craig Potter. Alfred White bought the other half of the island from Meigs and built a camp named Rest-a-While (now Bircholm, and six generations later it is currently owned by members of the Lyons family – A History of Sekon and Its Surroundings, private printing, Longacker).
In 1850, Cort decided to move even further into the wilderness, so he bought the cabin and “improvements” at the foot of Lake Simond (Simmons Pond) near the Moody bridge from the legendary Elijah (Lige) Simond, himself a pioneer settler, hunter and trapper, who roamed over the entire northern and central Adirondacks before making the Tupper area his headquarters in the early 1840s. Later on, Court sold his place to George McBride. George appeared listed in our 1860 census as age 25. His son, Jim, would become a well-known Tupper Lake engineer and surveyor, and Jim’s name appears on many property maps yet today. After selling his property to McBride, Cort then moved up river to the vicinity of today’s LeBoeuf’s Bridge.
A small settlement called Racquet, consisting of six families, grew up there along the river, some foundations still discernable today.
As the children of these families reached school age, a school of log construction was erected in 1862, probably the first school here, and it was located on Stetson Road near the present-day Dennis Dechene home.
Cort’s four sons would cut across what is today the fields of the Gontowich farm to attend school.
Simeon Moody, Harvey’s son, had built a house on Stetson, and his four sons also attended that school. Until the hamlet of Moody built its own school (near Pine Terrace, torn down in 1946), the McBrides on Simond Pond would also attend the Stetson school. Those children were Sarah (Johnson); Jim the engineer; Allie, who never married; Dell (Huntington) and Millie (Manning). Manning Hill, the first rope tow here, was located to the rear of Dr. Scranton’s Veterinary Clinic.
Those children would go by boat to the turn called Bend O’ the Road on Racquette River Drive. They would then walk from there to Stetson Road and down to the school. When the river was frozen and they could not use a boat, they walked the entire distance from Moody.
Cort died in Saranac Lake in 1902, leaving five sons, several of whom became well-known guides and woodsrunners.
In the files of the Tupper Lake Free Press for Jan. 2-9, 1914, there is a story, probably about the oldest son, also named Cort (Cortez), that may be worth repeating:
In response to a newspaper ad placed by C.M. Daniels, who wanted live otters to stock his fur farm at Sabattis (now the Boy Scouts of America property on Bear Pond), Cort got busy and caught one only to find that he had tangled with a buzz saw. He managed to cram the formidable animal into his packbasket – and then put his coat over it and sat on it while the angry otter clawed frantically at the obstruction. He finally was able to put sticks and bits of board across the mouth of the basket and bound them on with his trapchains. The otter earned him $100 delivered but Moody’s coat, pants and packbasket were just about ruined.