As part of their trip in September, 2023, Pete and Lee traveled north from the Bronx up the Hudson Valley ending in North Hudson (the first homestead of the DeLorme’s in New York) before crossing over to St. Anicet in Quebec, Canada (the last Canadian home of the three brothers who moved to New York).
Based in the Town of Schroon we visited the homesteads of Joseph, Alex and Daniel and the house on the lake that George DeLorme owned before the family moved down to the Bronx.
One stop was at a small house on the North Hudson/Schroon town line that might have been where Daniel had his home. While taking pictures, another car pulled up to see what we were doing. It turned out to be the owner of the Blue Mountain Motel which is just to the south and was across Route 9 on the flat land below the hill on which Joseph lived.
Talking to her the next day we found out that Joseph had in fact lived there up on a hill that was locally known as the DeLorme Estate. Lee and I drove up what is now a private road for several properties. At the end we met an attorney who had decided to retire there and was adding a big addition to the back of her house. She told us that there were trails up the mountain that went past several old tumble down buildings (I like to think they are part of the old farmstead). On another property there is another new house that looks out across the Adirondack Park. If I were Joseph, that is where I would have built my house.
Joseph’s property (purchased in September of 1875) passed down to his son George, and then to his son, also George, who still lives in a neighboring town. Hopefully we can get more family history from George Jr. when I have a chance to contact him.
Alex and Daniel jointly purchased land adjacent and north of Joseph just over the line in the Town of North Hudson in November of 1875. A few years later Daniel was killed one winter when a logging cart broke loose and ran him over. Alex and his wife Josephine remained on the property. When Alex passed away, there was a court case resulting in Josephine buying the property from all of the other members of the extended family for $2,500. Eventually Josephine moved down to Hudson Falls/Glenns Falls to live with her daughter (Ida?).
Alex and Josephine’s son George and his wife Abigail lived in a house on the Schroon Lake which still stands today. Unfortunately when the property was last sold it was first offered to George’s son Francis who was my father. He told the seller he was not interested, so the house and property were sold to the owner of the funeral parlor which is directly across Route 9. Lee and I spoke to the current funeral director, the son of the purchaser. He believes he remembers playing with the DeLorme kids and a log cabin up on one of the old farm properties. He provided us with the Obit that was run for ???)
Uncle Charles, George and Abbe’s youngest son, told the family that the DeLorme’s had once owned the land which in time became a local tourist attraction – Frontier Town. As kids on summer vacation we would go there to see the Wild West Show which, yes, included a live action stage coach robbery. That property is now the Frontier Town State Park which sits on the Schroon River. From the camp sites it is possible to work your way through the woods to the swift flowing river. The video shows the woods coming right down to the river, and I think givea a good idea of that it might have looked like 150 years ago.. But just across the campground is a deep gulch. It is easy to see that this was logging land, not farm land. And in the census the brothers are listed as woodcutters. and Joseph was killed by a logging sledge.
This is all from memory and the facts have to be checked, but the story does follow this trajectory