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Image of the Week: Teresa Dare

3/22/2022

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Women's History Month Image of the Week: Today we're highlighting another woman whose story we recently learned through a donation to the collection. Teresa "Terry" Dare came to the New York State Hospital at Ray Brook for treatment in the early 1940s from Utica. She is pictured here seated on the arm of the chair next to a fellow patient, Theresa Grillo, in August of 1942. Teresa's photo album shows what life was like for young women coming to Ray Brook, and includes images of parties, picnics, and growing friendships.

[Historic Saranac Lake Collection. TCR 679. Courtesy of Donna Hartless.]
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Tuberculosis Thursday: Stony Wold Sanatorium

3/25/2021

4 Comments

 
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As we mark the last Tuberculosis Thursday of Women's History Month, we want to share a bit about Stony Wold Sanatorium. Stony Wold was started by Elizabeth Newcomb to serve as a sanatorium for underprivileged young women suffering from TB. It opened on Lake Kushaqua in 1901, and at its peak in the 1930s it consisted of 20 buildings and a farm, and generated its own electricity.

Thousands came to cure at Stony Wold, including Lillian Synoracki Wilczak, who is pictured, waving, at bottom left in this group photo in the late 1920s. The Sanatorium also treated children, and eventually allowed some men. Elizabeth Newcomb died of tuberculosis in 1938 and was buried on the property. Stony Wold closed in 1955.
Learn more about Stony Wold and some of the women in its history on our wiki.

[Historic Saranac Lake Collection, TCR 638. Courtesy of Karen Jacobs.]
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Tuberculosis Thursday: Elizabeth Widmer

3/18/2021

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This week's Tuberculosis Thursday feature is Elizabeth Widmer. Widmer was from Berne, Switzerland, and came to Saranac Lake as a patient after graduating from Johns Hopkins Nursing School. She also worked as a nurse in Saranac Lake. She cured in a few locations around Saranac Lake, including Trudeau Sanatorium. She married Beanie Barnet, publisher of the Trotty Veck Messengers, in 1940 at William Morris' Camp Intermission. Their family always included a cocker spaniel. Pictured here is Breezy, who apparently preferred hamburger!

[Photograph of Beanie and Elizabeth Widmer Barnet, and their dog, Breezy. Historic Saranac Lake Collection.]
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Tuberculosis Thursday: Jean Monaghan

3/11/2021

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For Tuberculosis Thursday, we want to tell a bit of the story of Jean Monaghan, and share an exciting new donation to the collection in her honor. Jean was a patient at Stony Wold Sanatorium in the 1940s. She was a talented artist, and her time as a patient instilled in her a love of nature and an appreciation for its healing benefits. After her successful cure, she pursued a career in apparel design, and continued to create art for pleasure. When she died, she left behind more than 100 paintings, drawings, and photographs from her lifelong love of the arts.

While Jean did not discuss the details of her illness while she was alive, her nephew Philip recognized her in a photograph at Stony Wold in the American Experience documentary, the Forgotten Plague. This chance moment led to a visit in 2018 to the Saranac Laboratory Museum to find out more about her time as a patient, and a connection with Historic Saranac Lake. This winter, Philip generously donated a portfolio of 10 pieces that Jean painted while curing, including this self-portrait at right. We are hard at work rehousing and cataloging these fascinating paintings, but we couldn't wait to share a peek at them. Stay tuned for more on Jean's life and the works she produced at Stony Wold!

[Photograph of two of Jean Monaghan's paintings; one landscape showing the water tower at Stony Wold, and one self-portrait. Photograph of Jean Monaghan and her parents and siblings during a visit at Stony Wold, 1940s. Historic Saranac Lake Collection, TCR 671. Courtesy of Philip Monaghan, in memory of Jean Monaghan, 1923-2011.]
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The Poetry of Adelaide Crapsey

3/10/2021

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Adelaide Crapsey was a fascinating poet who came to Saranac Lake for the cure in 1913. To hear a reading of one of the poems she wrote while taking the cure, check out this video from Curiously Adirondack!

To learn more about Adelaide, visit our wiki!
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Image of the week: Annie Baldwin

3/9/2021

7 Comments

 
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Our next Women's History Month feature is Annie Leonard Baldwin. She operated the Baldwin School on Pine Street with her husband Ernest H. Baldwin, who was the brother of Dr. Edward R. Baldwin. The Baldwin School opened in 1908 as a "private day and tutoring school" that served students of all ages. While its offerings and student body changed throughout its 34 years, its main focus was on schooling students whose education had been "interrupted" elsewhere, including those with health concerns. Following the death of her husband in 1922, Annie continued to operate the Baldwin School for 20 more years. She died in 1956.

[Historic Saranac Lake Collection, TCR 448. Courtesy of Barbara Baldwin Knapp.]

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Image of the Week: Nurses at Trudeau

3/2/2021

4 Comments

 
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March is Women's History Month, so we're going to share images that tell the stories of women in local history. This image shows the 1931 graduating class of the D. Ogden Mills Training School for Nurses at Trudeau Sanatorium. This training school was originally established in 1913 with support from Mrs. Whitelaw Reid, and had an unusual requirement for admission--an arrested case of tuberculosis. Dr. Trudeau believed that young women who had endured tuberculosis and regained their health would have a greater understanding of patients' needs and care.

[1931 graduating class, D. Ogden Mills Training School for Nurses. Historic Saranac Lake Collection, TCR 582. Courtesy of Jan Dudones.]
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Women's History Month: Women of HSL

3/31/2019

3 Comments

 
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HSL Executive Director Amy Catania, Oral History Coordinator Kayt Gochenaur, and Museum Administrator Chessie Monks-Kelly in front of the Cure Porch on Wheels.
Keep learning about Saranac Lake history!
From the all-woman staff of Historic Saranac Lake, we want to give a huge thank you to all of you for enthusiastically following along as we shared the stories of women in Saranac Lake for Women’s History Month. We appreciate your support, your stories, and your requests and hope you’ll continue to follow along with us on Facebook and Instagram all year long! And if you have a story you’d like to share, or know a great woman in the Saranac Lake area whose story we didn’t cover this month, let us know and we’ll share it!

Did you know that Historic Saranac Lake was started by a group of eight women (and one man!)? Betsy Minehan, Dot Fobare, Jeanne DeMattos, Janet Decker, Mary Hotaling, Helen Todd, Barbara Parnass, Nadia Slack, and Phil Gallos officially incorporated HSL on September 25, 1980. That's almost 40 years of HSL history!

As always, you can learn more about Saranac Lake area history by visiting our wiki!
3 Comments

Women's History Month: Elizabeth Newcomb

3/28/2019

2 Comments

 
Today is Tuberculosis Thursday, so our Women’s History Month feature is Elizabeth Newcomb! Newcomb founded Stony Wold Sanatorium in 1901 on 1800 acres of a hillside overlooking Lake Kushaqua, just north of Brighton in the Town of Franklin. Her idea was to create a charitable sanatorium for the treatment of underprivileged young women suffering from TB. She was encouraged by her husband, Dr. James Edward Newcomb and by Dr. E.L. Trudeau, and received support from many prominent people of New York City as well as from AT&T, DuPont, Gould, Biggs, Potter, Pond, Morgan, and Rockefeller. Elizabeth Newcomb herself succumbed to TB in 1938 and was buried between Stony Wold Hall and the lake, at her request, where she “could look out over the waters of the quiet lake” Kushaqua (Algonquin for “beautiful resting place”).

Stony Wold closed in 1955 with the advent of new drugs and was sold to the White Fathers Catholic Order, missionaries to Africa. It then became St. Joseph’s Seminary until 1972. By 1974 the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation became owner of most of the property and the buildings were torn down. Stony Wold Hall and two cottages remain in private ownership.

Sherwood Davies, who grew up at Stony Wold, remembered that Newcomb “spent her summers at a camp on the Lake and the winters in New York City. She was transported in a straight eight Packard car and chauffeured between Lake Kushaqua and New York New York Central every spring and fall.”

To learn more about Elizabeth Newcomb and Stony Wold, visit our wiki!
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Elizabeth Newcomb. Courtesy of Sherwood Davies.
Learn more about Elizabeth Newcomb!
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Women's History Month: Mildred Phelps Stokes Hooker

3/27/2019

1 Comment

 
Today’s Wednesday Writer for Women’s History Month is Mildred Evelyn Phelps Stokes Hooker. Hooker wrote “Camp Chronicles,” a recollection of life at the family camp on Birch Island on Upper St. Regis Lake. The book, originally sent out as a Christmas greeting to 95 people in 1952 and published in 1964, features photographs and memories of camp life.

Hooker’s father was Anson Phelps Stokes, who was a merchant, banker, publicist, philanthropist, and became a multimillionaire. The Stokes family was the first to build a summer camp on Upper St. Regis Lake, bought from Paul Smith in 1876.

An excerpt from “Camp Chronicles” reads, “it will be seventy years this summer since I first came to camp as a little girl of two, so I think I can fairly claim to be the longest, if not the oldest, inhabitant. In 1876, five years before I was born, father brought his family to Paul Smiths’ and went into rough camp with them on what we later called ‘Birch Island.’ … Father was so charmed by the beauty and peace of the Upper Lake, there were no camps at all on it then, that he bought the island from a Mr. Norton for $200.”

The family eventually returned to spend the summer at the camp, based on a recommendation from Dr. Loomis, and built a more permanent camp in 1876. It was the first of what would become a small colony of summer camps of the wealthy and powerful, who had been drawn to the area by Paul Smith's Hotel.

To learn more about Hooker, and follow links to see the manuscript and photographs from “Camp Chronicles” in the Adirondack Experience’s collection, visit our wiki!
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Learn more about Mildred Hooker!
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Historic Saranac Lake at the Saranac Laboratory Museum
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Historic Saranac Lake is funded in part by:
  • the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature;
  • a Humanities New York SHARP Grant with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the federal American Rescue Plan Act;
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Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this website do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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​© 2023 Historic Saranac Lake. All Rights Reserved. Historic photographs from Historic Saranac Lake Collection, unless otherwise noted. Copy and reuse restrictions apply. ​
  • Visit
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    • Historic Saranac Lake
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    • Trudeau Building >
      • Contractor Portal 2023
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    • Architectural Preservation
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      • Pandemic Perspectives
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