Glenn Pearsall 2/10/23 Glenn Pearsall 2/10/23

Mill Creek Wesleyan Methodist Church

DRAFT / Photos to Be Replaced with Originals

With thanks to Glenn Pearsall, we excerpt the following from the second edition of Echoes in These Mountains, the first edition of which he originally published in 2008. His goal: "To document the many historic sites and stories in the Township that were fast being forgotten and lost as nature reclaimed these places." He has impressively succeeded. We talk with Glenn about this decades-long labor of love here.

Although Rev. Enos Putnam is the individual most associated with the Mill Creek Wesleyan Methodist Church and the anti-slavery movement locally, it was actually Wesley Somerville who, as a layman, was one of the first in Johnsburg to advocate for secession from the Methodist Church in 1843 when the church failed to mirror his anti-slavery sentiments.

The Mill Creek Wesleyan Methodist Church was built in 1859 by Methodists who separated from their parent organization in their opposition to slavery. It is said the Rev. Enos Putnam, a carpenter, single-handedly built the belfry.

Wesley Somerville was born in Johnsburg in 1817, the son of Archibald Somerville, born in 1776 in Ireland, and Rebecca Armstrong. Wesley Somerville is said to have cast the first anti-slavery vote in Johnsburg.

His position as an abolitionist was initially a lonely one, but slowly, over several years, others in Johnsburg began to agree with him. Through Somerville's encouragement, anti-slavery Wesleyan ministers from Chester were employed to come to Johnsburg to preach. Membership grew in this new faction of the Methodist Church with many of the converts coming from the Methodist Episcopal Church on South Johnsburg Road.

In 1851 Wesley had married Nancy Noble, the daughter of Edward Noble, the minister of that other church in town. One can only imagine the friction within the family as Somerville led the defection away from the Episcopal Methodist Church where his father-in-law was minister; Thanksgiving get-togethers with the family might have been something really "special."

In 1849 Wesley Somerville and others hired Rev. Enos Putnam to hold revival meetings and to organize a Wesleyan Church in the township. Putnam, in addition to being a farmer and carpenter, was a "circuit rider from Chestertown" and was one of the dedicated group of Methodist ministers who, at the Syracuse Conference in 1848, twelve years before the Civil War, seceded from the Methodist Church because the parent body refused to condemn slavery.

An Outspoken Abolitionist

The secessionists formed the Wesleyan Methodist Church. For their members, crusading against slavery and helping escaping slaves was a basic religious imperative. It has been written that Enos Putnam moved to Johnsburg in 1833 and it was there that he met his future wife, Sybil (Daly), who was a schoolteacher from Vermont who was visiting the area. It is believed that she taught Enos to read. I do not know about the reading part, but research indicates that Enos Putnam was born in Bethel, Vermont in 1810 and he married Sybil in Barre, Vermont, on January 3, 1833, All of the children were born in Vermont; Henry (adopted) on Feb. 14, 1834, at Montpelier; Enos O. on May 15, 1835, in Barre: Francis O. on Oct.31, 1836, in Middlesex; and Mary on Sept. 21, 1838, in Westfield.

Enos and Sybil ran the underground railroad locally, and personally helped several escaped slaves reach freedom in Canada. He was known throughout Johnsburg as a fiery abolitionist.

The historical record is clear that Rev. Enos Putnam was an outspoken abolitionist. For years primary documentation lay in a letter handwritten years later by his adopted daughter Lucia Newell Putnam. Lizzie states, as a little girl, she woke at midnight to see Rev. Putnam carrying food to the basement. She followed him and discovered escaping slaves hiding there. Given Rev. Putnam's strong associations with the Mill Creek Wesleyan-Methodist Church it has always been assumed this happened at Putnam's residence on Garnet Lake Road. Lizzie was born March of 1855 in Minerva. From the tone of her story, Lizzie was likely 3 to 8 years of age when this happened; in other words, the discovery incident would have been between 1858 and 1863. It is unclear, however, if Reverend Enos Putnam was even in Johnsburg at that time.

Excellent research by Town Historian Deana Hitchcock Wood indicates Rev. Putnam arrived in Johnsburg about 1848, age 38. But he did not stay. In fact, he delivered his sermons, typically espousing passionate anti-slavery sentiments, as a traveling preacher throughout the north country. Putnam had joined the Methodist Church in Barre, VT in 1824, at age 14, and by age 19 was the leader of his class and soon after received an Exhorter's license from the presiding elder of the Danville District, New Hampshire Conference. He preached in Barre, VT (1836-1839), and in 1844, joined the Champlain Conference of the Wesleyan church at Keeseville where he was ordained as an elder. Then he preached in Beekmantown, Clinton County (1845), West Plattsburg (1846-1847, Hadley (1847), Warrensburg (1849), Crown Point (1851), and Chittenden, VT (1852 & 1854). In 1855 he fell ill and travel was out of the question. He stayed in Johnsburg and preached here from 1855 until the spring of 1859. In May of 1859, he was able to return to the circuit; ironically the same year the Mill Creek Wesleyan-Methodist Church was built. Putnam's travels have him then preaching in Macomb, St. Lawrence County, NY (1859-1860) and in West Plattsburgh (May 1861 & April 1862).

A Home on Garnet Lake Road

This is Rev. Eno Putnam's home on what today is called Garnet Lake Road but in his time was known as Mill Creek Road. According to local lore, Rev. Putnam sheltered slaves in an old log cabin that stood to the left of the farmhouse Rev. Putnam shared with his wife Sybil. However, recent research has questioned this assertion.

Putnam purchased his property on Garnet Lake Road in October of 1861, while still assigned to the church in West Plattsburgh (1861-1862). It was from the West Plattsburgh ministry in 1862, age 52, he left the ministry without appointment at his own request. He died 3 years later in Johnsburg and is buried, with his wife Sybil, in the churchyard of the Mill Creek Wesleyan-Methodist Church.

Is it possible, even probable, that Lizzie discovered the escaping slaves in her father's basement, in West Plattsburgh, N.Y., rather than here in Johnsburg? The Plattsburgh area was part of a major underground route up the Champlain Valley. Escaping slaves, if they could find a sympathetic captain, might even safely stow aboard cargo vessels sailing north on the lake. Another major route was through central New York, crossing Lake Ontario from Rochester or Oswego. But along these routes escaping slaves would likely encounter slave catchers, who received a bounty for each escaping slave they captured and returned south. To avoid possible detection and capture, some escaping slaves bushwhacked through deep Adirondack forests at night, their paths lit only by moonlight. Some lucky families might find a sympathetic farmer who would move these freedom-seeking people north, clandestinely stowed away in a wagon bound for market.

There is also some thinking that slaves escaping to Canada for freedom may have stopped at Wesley Somerville's house, not Reverend Enos Putnam's. Somerville and Putnam were neighbors, close friends, and both adamant anti-slavery advocates. Determination awaits further documentation; difficult since abolitionist activity was illegal at the time and not widely publicized.

A Vote for Emancipation

The Mill Creek Wesleyan Methodist Church was built in 1859 on land given by Wesley Somerville. Margarita Flansburg Yeaw, in Pictures in My Heart, describe it as "a beautiful Georgian building with a horse shed attached where horses were stabled during church services. It had three floors. The upper rooms were for church socials and meetings of the governing body. The church was never quite finished. It had a belfry, but no bell was ever installed. A great chandelier in the center served as light, and two wood stoves, in separate corners of the room, provided heat."

Camp meetings where tents were set up and day-long sermons before hundreds, typical of the era, were held *on the flat ground near W. Somerville;" believed to be the flat, open field just south of the church along Garnet Lake Road. Wesley Somerville is believed to have lived in the farm just down the road.

On September 15, 1862, the church voted that "we believe that it is the duty of the President to liberate all the slaves in the United States and let them be free and forever free." This was fourteen weeks before Lincoln freed slaves through the Emancipation Proclamation, but Lincoln's proclamation only impacted "persons held as slaves in areas in rebellion against the United States; it did not free the slaves held up north, in the border states, or even in the sections of southern states already under Union control. Slavery was actually not wiped out in the country until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment on December 18, 1865...

Enos died March 17, 1865, less than a month before Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House. Enos was buried in the churchyard, in the shadow of the Georgian steeple which, the story has it, he built single-handedly. His grave lies along with his wife Sybil's near the center of the cemetery. Also in the cemetery is a plaque about the church.

The church was a rather severe institution by today's standards. Church records indicate that on December 12, 1857, they "resolved that tobacco, tea, and coffee are expensive and self indulging and stant [?] opposed to economy and self denial as taught in the Scriptures." The church, in its quarterly meetings, also reviewed the moral behavior of its members and regularly tossed people out of the church for "backsliding" in their Christian duty or "because they could not here [sic] the truth preached" ...

Schisms in the Church -- and Its Demise

Take a moment to admire the scene as you travel onto our next historic site and reflect on what life must have been like during these difficult and turbulent times in our nation's history and how, in days past and today, so much of what we call society so easily falls prey to small-minded bickering. The grand barn with the beautiful stone work alongside it just south of the church on the west side of the road lies on what was Somerville's property and, as it seems to predate 1869, it might well have been built by or for Wesley Somerville and used by him and his family.

Rev. Enos Putnam and his wife Sybil are buried in near the center of the cemetery of the Mill Creek Wesleyan Methodist Church. Although the building was razed in 1964, the cemetery remains as a testament to the religious community that supported emancipation.

Like the national schism of the Civil War just a few years earlier that tore apart this nation, the growing friction among the groups using the church ultimately lead to its demise. There is a story indicating that the congregation dissolved into three groups that didn't agree. Emotions and North Country stubbornness ran so high that in time each group locked up the church with their own locks and refused to share the keys with the others. The result was that no one could gain access to the church.

I have not been able to document this, but church records do indicate that on October 1, 1910, the second quarterly meeting of the church in Johnsburg was to meet at the old church, but the church was locked and they were forbidden to go in so they moved and adjourned to the church in Bakers Mills. In 1893 apparently someone suggested that the church building be given to the Methodists or Episcopal denominations; feelings still ran high, however, as church records indicate church members took this as an insult. Nevertheless, in 1913 it was decided that the Wesleyan Church be joined with the Bakers Mills Wesleyan Church (1891). In the summer of 1964 the Mill Creek Wesleyan Church was razed and the usable materials transported to Bakers Mills to add to the church there. For the next few years Johnsburg Central School bus #32 would periodically get flat tires on the dirt road cut-off from nails apparently tossed when the church was taken down.

If you have a moment, stop and take a few minutes to walk through this fine old rural cemetery. You'll easily find the tombstones of Enos and Sybil Putnam.

Rev. Putnam's own log home was just south of the intersection of today's Gamet Lake Road and Coulter Road. Today all that is left is a mall stone foundation on the side of the hill.

Dan Forbush 2/10/23 Dan Forbush 2/10/23

Tracing the Route of the Underground Railroad

It all begins with an idea.

DRAFT

Glenn Pearsall never considered himself a writer. When he got out of the service in 1975, he joined his father in establishing Pearsall Realty at the intersection of Routes 8 and 28 in Wevertown, five miles from North Creek and the slopes of the Gore Mountain Ski Area.

Spending days with clients looking at properties, Glenn started stockpiling stories about the area he told to inform and entertain potential buyers. Impressed by his storytelling, a friend said, "You have to start writing these down."

Glenn published his first 400-page edition of Echoes in These Mountains in 2008. Twenty-five years later, in December, he published his much expanded second edition with 500 pages and 400 photos. The book takes us all over Johnsburg, encompassing North Creek, North River, Silver Lake, Sodom, Bakers Mills, Garnet Lake, the Glen, Wevertown, and Riparius.

If it's interesting and historic, you can be sure that Glenn has included it among the 55 sites he spotlights with precise GPS coordinates. These were considered a great innovation when Glenn introduced them in his 2008 edition, and they're of great value to us still as we transition into "spatial storytelling" with the Warren County Planning Department.

By a twist of fate, Glenn has published his new expanded work at the very moment we're gearing up to start uploading points of interest to the The Gore Region Story Cloud. We plan to produce short audio adaptations of his chapters to be triggered on our phones by GPS markers. We also will publish longer adaptations of his chapters as Stories from Open Space features.

So it is that we're privileged to publish the first of what we foresee as many Pearsall-penned pieces: his chronicle of the Mill Creek Wesleyan Methodist Church established by Wesley Somerville and the Rev. Enos Putnam in the abolitionists movement of the 1850s. This story fits nicely in Warren County's Underground Railroad ArcGIS StoryMap.

Allison's latest project is still in development, but we're able to share the start she has made on it with Zoom interviews we've hosted with two experts:

Jacqueline Madison, president of the North Star Underground Railroad Museum, who gives us the big picture on the thousands of freedom seekers who made their way to Canada through the Adirondacks between the 1820s and the end of the Civil War;
Donna Lagoy, Chestertown historian, who -- as author of The Underground Railroad in the Adirondack Town of Chester -- provides a closer look at the abolitionist movement and Underground Railroad in Warren County.

We hope you'll also enjoy our conversation with Glenn Pearsall about his lifelong love of Johnsburg and his multi-decade commitment to writing its history. His foundation's gift of $132,000 to the Johnsburg Historical Society to purchase the Robert and Electa Waddell House for a museum is a further demonstration of his commitment to local history and storytelling.

Dan Forbush 5/28/19 Dan Forbush 5/28/19

A Conversation with Glenn Pearsall

FACT-CHECKING:

Glenn:

Do you know how you relate to Wright Pearsall? I suspect so. If not, we’ll just say “ancestor”
Is it accurate to say “The family ran the ranch as a lodge for vacationers?”
Is it correct to say that Pearsall Realty was across Route 28 from the Robert and Electa Waddell House?
Would you care to share any early (or later) photos of you, you and Carol, your father, the ranch, or Pearsall Realty? We’ll be happy to include them.

I'd been looking forward for a long time to sitting down with Glenn Pearsall. I finally had that opportunity after the dual December 10 book launch that he and Sterling Goodspeed hosted at the Johnsburg Town Library.

Sterling gave a reading from True North, his remarkable collection of short stories rooted in his youth in North Creek.

Glenn introduced his new edition of Echoes in These Mountains, now a voluminous 512-page tome that describes in detail 55 historic sites throughout the town of Johnsburg. This is the land in which Glenn and his wife Carol have lived for 42 years at the base of Crane Mountain. The property was once an old dude ranch bought by his father in 1964, having made the decision to leave Long Island, where Pearsalls had settled in 1639.

"Pearsall is a big name on Long Island," says Glenn. And so it is, as just a few clicks in Google will show you. In 1830, Wright Pearsall -- Glenn's [relation?]-- purchased land in what we know today as Lynbrook and opened a general store that became so well known the surrounding community became known as Pearsall's Corners. You'll find a historic marker at the site today. You'll also find a classy restaurant, Pearsall's Station.

Glenn Pearsall (left) and Sterling Goodspeed (righ) hosted a combined book signing at the Johnsburg Town Museum in December. Glenn introduced the second edition of "Echoes in These Mountains," while Sterling read from "True North," his collection of short stories. Glenn's $132,000 donation has made it possible for the Johnsburg Historical Society, of which Sterling is president, to purchase the Robert and Electa Waddell House, which the the historical society aims to open this summer as a museum.

Arrival in Johnsburg

"My father liked doing different things," Glenn says. "When he got out of the service for World War II, he was in construction for a few years. My mother's father co-founded a bank in New York as a federal savings and loan. Because of his construction background, my father became a mortgage officer."

"When he was forced out of the bank in a political upheaval, my father sold electronics for a few years, then started a sporting goods store, where I started working at age 11. We had 150 guns and shotguns. On Fridays, my father would go out for dinner Fridays and I would be the only one running the store.

"In the summer of 1963, my father said, 'Enough. I'm tired of the rat race on Long Island. I want to move to the Adirondacks.'

"It took us a year to sell the house and store. The dude ranch he bought had been vacant for three years and it took eleven days to get running water in the place. All the fields were overgrown. There were all sorts of fence posts and barbed wire that had to be taken down."

"Prior to the closing of the property, my parents came up for Easter to show us kids what we were moving to. The driveway is a quarter-mile long and there were two feet of snow on it because it had not been plowed all winter. We had come up in a station wagon with my three younger brothers and two dogs. I got out of that station wagon and -- I can't explain it -- I felt I had come home."

"I'm not a spiritual person by nature. I just felt completely at ease with the place, with my identity there. I subsequently bought 27 acres from my father, and built a house with Carol, which we completed ourselves in 1980. We've lived there for the past 42 years within 100 feet of where I got out of that station wagon."

It was to this dude ranch at the base of Crane Mountain that Glenn's father brought the family in 1964. They called this the Buckskin Valley Lodge. Glenn and his wife Carol built their home on part of this property in 1980.

First Edition

The family ran the ranch as a lodge for vacationers, then his father got into construction and real estate. When Glenn got out of the service in 1975, he and his father established Pearsall Realty in what was a general store when it was built in 1865 at the intersection of the roads we know today as Route 8, which runs from Wells northeast to Lake George, and Route 28, the straight shot from Warrensburg to North River and beyond.

"Our neighbor was Ernie Noxon, who was kind of a legend in this area, having made it into the Guiness Book of World Records for being reelected town clerk 30 times and spending 60 years in that position. Ernie befriended me and would come over and we would start talking and he would share with me the history of the area because he'd grown up here.

"Soon thereafter, Lewis Waddell, who was the town historian, also would come and visit me. I would share those stories when I was showing real estate to people, telling them a little more about the area. And one day we were coming back from attending a music concert down at the Troy Music Hall and my friend [who?] said, 'You have to write this stuff down.'"

"I knew I was in trouble when my first draft was a hundred pages," he says.

"I don't remember where the title came from, but Echoes in These Mountains had a ring to it," he says. "As I walk through the woods and find old foundations, they kind of speak to me. You walk through the woods and suddenly you come across an old abandoned road. You can see it was a road. But it's no longer on any maps. Along that road, you might find a foundation. You find the root cellar. You find apple trees. Look more closely, and you may find an old lilac bush. Why a lilac bush? The explanation that makes the most sense to me is that they hoped the sweet smell of the followers would disguise the smell of the outhouse."

If you walk through the woods, you pay attention. You come across these things and they speak to you, like an echo."

The book ultimately came in just over 400 pages. Glenn published 1,500 copies and gave them to the Johnsburg Historical Society to sell as a fund-raiser. A decade later, he saw that the price asked on eBay for a signed copy was listed at $143.

"That's when I decided it was time to produce a new edition."

*Glenn has contributed "Echoes" to the First Wilderness Story Collaboration. We'll upload to the Gore Region Story Cloud audio narratives for as many of the 55 sites he describes as we can.*

Second Edition

Among the 55 sites Glenn spotlights in "Echoes" is Matthew Brady's childhood home, in which we learn that it was Samuel B. Morse, a portrait painter and inventor of the single wire telegraph system, who introduced Brady to the new art of capturing images through daguerreotype.

Glenn initially thought figured he'd just fix a few typos and add a few photos, but it became a much bigger two-year research project as he explored the roots of famed photojournalist Matthew Brady, who unquestionably grew up in Johnsburg and may or may not have been born there, and peered more deeply into the histories of such places an Indian settlement near Thirteenth Lake marked on an 1855 map and the slopes of Gore Mountain, where skiing began in the 1920s.

"I also researched 175 soldiers from the Civil War from Johnsburg, which is a surprisingly large number for a small town. And I added an index."

This time he published 800 copies, again to benefit the Johnsburg Historical Society.

Glenn says that will be the last printing -- which is another reason we want to upload as much of Echoes as possible in text and photos in ArcGIS StoryMaps and in audio into the STQRY App that will support the Gore Region Story Cloud. In so doing, we aim to make the years of meticulous research and writing that Glenn has put into this work widely available to Warren County residents and visitors.

*Glenn's intensive research of Mathew Brady's led to him to the foundation of what he believes was Brady's childhood home.*

Story Cloud Edition

Built in 1870 by lumber baron Robert Waddell, this 14-room house was Ernie Noxon's home for many years and will soon open as the Johnsburg Historical Society's new museum, thanks to Glenn's $132,000 donation.

*These are the stairs where, as Glenn recalls, Ernie Noxon piled his National Geographic magazines in stacks three feet high.*

Assuming all goes well, we expect to be able to make an introductory version of the Gore Region Story Cloud available for downloading this summer when the Johnsburg Historical Society opens its new museum in the Robert and Electa Waddell House, which happens to sit directly across the road from the site of the former general store in which Glenn and his father established Pearsall Realty.

Built in 1870 by lumber baron Robert Waddell, "it's an architectural gem," says Glenn. Ernie Noxon lived here for many years, and it was from here that he would cross Route 28 to join Glenn on Sundays when business was slow in the summer and share his stories.

"At one point he said, 'Glenn, the house is not for sale, but we need a physician in this area and that this would make a nice physician's house. I'd like to show it to you.'"

"So I was one of the very few people, to my knowledge, that ever got a personal tour of the house by Ernie Noxon. I was impressed by its black and pink marble fireplace and the plaster cornices, which were done by superb Italian craftsmen who were brought into the area. It has a great curved railing that goes up the stairs. But what I remember most are the three-foot high stacks of National Geographic magazines we had to wind our way through to get to the second floor."

After ten years in real estate, Glenn would enter E.F. Hutton's training program and go on to become a successful wealth manager, accumulating sufficient assets to establish the Glenn and Carol Pearsall Foundation, dedicated to improving the quality of life for year-round residents of the Adirondack Park.

"I like to focus on organizations that have reached an inflection point at which, with just the right amount of help, they can attain a whole new level. That's where the Historical Society was a few years ago. It was floundering. They had trouble putting a board together. They never had public space to display their exhibits and so they were never eligible for a permanent charter from the State Education Department. When we heard the house was for sale, we saw an opportunity to reinvigorate the Historical Society."

Glenn contacted Sterling Goodspeed, who was president of the society at that time and still is.

"You never know how a five-year plan is going to work out, but Sterling and his board put tother a good proposal and, through the foundation, I gave them $132,000 to buy this 14-room gem of a house, which they're now working very hard to restore and open this summer."

Sterling is offering the First Wilderness Story Collaboration space to host a display at the museum's grand opening. Meanwhile, we're pulling out the stops to introduce at this event an audio GPS-triggered tour of the Gore Region in which we'll hear Glenn share the stories that Ernie Noxon told to him a half-century ago on those summer afternoons.