Women's History Month: Mildred Phelps Stokes Hooker

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!

Learn more about Mildred Hooker!