Some Came to Cure
"Some Came to Cure" by Pat and Tom Willis, photo of display taken 2/2009. Click on the image to enlarge the display.
James M. Wardner
As a young man in the early 1850’s, James M. Wardner had hoped to go West to make his fortune. After he had been working in Toledo, Ohio, he returned to his parental home near Keeseville. He was engaged to marry Delia Marshall, but had to explain to his family and fiancée that he had been diagnosed with consumption (TB) and might not live more than 2 or 3 months. The Toledo doctor had told him his only chance would be to go up into the mountains to live.
“Mother slipped her arm around me, the tears were running down her dear old face. The rest of our family expressed deep sympathy. The situation was getting to the point beyond the limit of my self control when Lavona (his sister) broke the spell:
‘Nonsense, James, I don’t believe you are as sick as all that …you will soon be all right when you go up in the mountains on another hunting expedition.’
‘That is exactly what I want to do,’ I told them,’…I intend to stay up there summer and winter for 2 or 3 years at least…if I see that I am going to get over this lung trouble, I will come back and get Delia…’
‘How do you expect to earn a living up in the woods?’ Mother wanted to know.
‘Hunting and trapping mostly,’ I told her ‘…I also want to have a farm up there somewhere,’ I was filled with strong determination, not alone to regain my health, but also to make a comfortable and prosperous home somewhere in the Adirondacks. I loved farming almost as well as I did hunting, trapping and fishing. If I could make these pleasures earn a good living for me, then I would indeed be happy. I also felt sure the mountain air would fully restore my health. It was worth trying at any rate.”
Before leaving, James went to buy a canoe from the Abnenaki Indian, Perejeune, father of his friend Mitchell Sabattis. He was given a canoe as well as medicine for his cough, made of balsam, spruce and pitch pine. He reported “the cough remedy helped me greatly.”
So James, with his brother Seth and friend Lorenzo Rand, camped all winter in a log cabin on Osgood Pond. They did well with hunting and trapping and James earned enough to buy land in 1855, for a farm on his chosen site at Rainbow Lake. He recovered from TB to marry Delia, clear a farm and build a house that he later enlarged to become the Rainbow Inn, a successful resort. After one son had been born, Delia died. Later James married Addie Macomber and they had three more children. James Wardner lived a long and productive life, becoming a school superintendent and Town of Brighton Supervisor. He lived to age 73 (1831-1904). His descendants still return to Rainbow Lake each summer at this son Charles Wardner’s camp, and his great granddaughter Joan Wardner Allen now lives year round at the Rainbow Camp.
Source: Wardner, Charles A. (d.1952). Footprints On Adirondack Trails. Unpublished typescript at Adirondack Museum, Blue Mt. Lake and Paul Smith’s College Library, no date.
George S. Brewster
In 1904 George S. Brewster came to Brighton to cure for TB. He built camp “Longwood” on Spitfire Lake, hiring architect Robert F. Stephenson in 1906-08 who designed a typical Adirondack “Great Camp” with separate buildings sited to blend into the woods. Brewster later became treasurer for Trudeau’s Sanitorium.
Sources: Kaiser, Harvey H. Great Camps of the Adirondacks. Boston: David R. Godine, 1982. Trudeau, Edward Livingston. An Autobiography. Garden City, NY: Doubleday Page & Co., 1916.
Brighton History Days have been held one weekend each summer since 1994, sponsored by the Brighton Architectural Heritage Committee.
