This week’s Transitions column continues to look at the “Moody Boys,” as they were known. Members of the Moody family from Saranac Lake, who came to this village, were our pioneer settlers, and they had early gained reputations for being outstanding guides, hunters and woodsmen.
These Tupper Lake Moodys, as I will call them, arrived here each in his own time, rowing a guide boat built by his own hands. They crossed the Saranacs, carried boat and gear over the divide to the Racquette River and continued downstream to the unsettled area, where “one would meet more Indians than white men,” near Tupper’s Lake, the wild heart of the wild northern forest.
The river was the only truly accessible route to this place, and their only possessions were items that could be stowed in the narrow confines of their boat. They would, no doubt, have had blankets, some cooking utensils such as pots and pans, a few items of homespun clothing, a few dishes, candles, perhaps a lantern or two fed by bear grease or deer tallow and, above all, an axe to build a rude shelter and a rifle so necessary to provide food.
What giants those early settlers-turned-guides must have been! Here is how one early writer described them: “A fine, quaint lot of fellows, they were usually splendid physical specimens, intelligent and witty, thorough woodsmen, good cooks and tireless workers.”
It only makes sense that if you weren’t a good hunter, trapper, woodsman, cook and builder of shelters in those primitive days, you wouldn’t survive. The Moody Boys were survivors and their reputations made them famous and frequently sought after as guides. During their lifetimes here, they would guide many distinguished visitors to this region. That list would include two presidents of the United States, Chester Arthur and Grover Cleveland. They would be guides for the Emerson party at the Philosopher’s Camp on Follensby Pond and they would guide Verplank Colvin when he surveyed this section as part of his topographical survey of the Adirondack wilderness, to name a few of their guiding accomplishments.
The Moody Boys didn’t just sit on the dock or on their front porches waiting to guide visitors. Two of the Moodys also established the first farms here. Cort, who had arrived in 1850, cleared land along the river and Stetson Road, which later became the Fred LeBoeuf farm. Only a few years later, Simeon, Harvey’s son, established a farm also off Stetson Road, which later became Mark Barry’s “Pioneer Place” (now the Richer farm).
Mart, who became one of the original settlers further downstream on Tupper’s Lake in 1886 and the third Moody to settle here, would become a famous and successful hotelier and this community’s first postmaster (originally Tupper Lake Post Office when this village got its own post office). Mart was also a justice of the peace, an assessor and a highway commissioner.
If you were to look at the current tri-lakes area telephone directory, you would discover a listing of 34 Moody names. I am going to hazard a guess that most of those Moodys are direct descendants of Jacob Moody, who became Saranac Lakes first settler in 1819. A friend of mine recently observed that one reason there are so many Moody names is the fact that “Jake” had seven children, and five of them were boys. Harvey had eight children, seven of whom were boys, and Cort had five children, all of whom were boys. This, of course, helped perpetuate the Moody name.
It is beyond the scope of this article to pursue a genealogical study of the Moody clan. Perhaps of some interest, however, is a brief look at some of the Moodys who were so prominent here.
Let’s start with Simeon, Harvey’s son, who, as previously mentioned, established a farm on Stetson Road as early as 1857, and who also had the first store here that catered to the guides and “sports” trickling into this area downriver near “Sims’ Place.” Sims had four sons: William, Fred, Charles and John. John was only one week old when his mother died, and he was adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Henry Johnson of Lewis, N.Y., and given the name of his adopted parents, which he legally used throughout his lifetime. Strangely enough, some 20 years later, he met and married Sarah McBride, who was working as a nanny for a family in the same town of Lewis. Sarah was the daughter of George McBride, early settler, who had bought Cort Moody’s “betterments” near today’s Moody Bridge before the Civil War.
In 1892, John and Sarah returned here, where each had been born. For 14 years, John was employed as superintendent of Litchfield Park under Edward Litchfield. For 11 years, he was then employed as a guide in Canada by Ernest Ryle of New York City, who was a brother-in-law of Bert Strange, one of the founders of the Read and Strange Preserve. He also worked for a time as superintendent at Whitney Park, where, as noted in an earlier Transitions column, he was in the exciting “Last Wild Boar Hunt,” killing several wild boar that had escaped from confinement at Litchfield’s game preserve. Like the earlier Moodys, he was considered an outstanding woodsman and a prominent resident. Following retirement, Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, who at the time had been happily married for half a century, lived with their daughter, Mrs. Charles Hathaway at Hillcrest Farm in Moody, across from today’s MacDonald Boat Livery.