chapter 1 - the dream
the people:
the timeline:
the story:
The year was 1936. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was serving his first term as President of the United States. The country was still suffering from the financial ruin left behind by the Great Depression. The global financial crisis continued to ravage parts of Europe. A young, ambitious politician named Adolf Hitler had recently been appointed the Chancellor of Germany, and his Nazi Party was rapidly dismantling Germany’s democratic institutions.
Americans feared job loss and poverty, all while the potential of another World War loomed overhead. It’s important to understand the mood of this era because it makes what Charles and Miriam Parlin did that much more extraordinary.
the dream
Charles and Miriam sat at their kitchen table in Tenafly, New Jersey, discussing the next chapter of their lives. It had been 11 years since they were married and now they had three young children (Charlie, Camilla, and Blackwood).
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Tenafly was a lovely town to raise a family, but the summers were dreadfully hot and humid (air conditioning had not been invented yet). They needed a place to summer where they could get some fresh air, teach the kids about the natural world, and re-energize.
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But deciding where that should be was a surprisingly difficult decision. Both wanted to spend the summers where they had as children — Charles at the New Jersey shore and Miriam at Lake George in the Adirondacks — and choosing between the two starkly different places was, in their minds, like choosing between the Alps or the Mediterranean. Sand, waves, boardwalks, and salt water taffy versus fresh water, mountains, hiking, and apple cider.
Their ultimate dream was to build a place that would last for generations, so there was no in-between. They had to choose one or the other.
Silver Bay, Lake George
New Jersey Shore and Boardwalk.
The family at Wildwood Crest 1936.
the decision
The couple was still deadlocked in their decision so that evening they consulted the children. All three were in favor of Lake George. Charles turned to Camilla and asked her why she liked Lake George better.
“Because there is more water there!” she said. Charles and Miriam burst out in laughter. That sealed it.
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They were already familiar with Silver Bay because they had summered there with Miriam’s parents, William and Corabel Boyd. In June of 1936 they found a piece of property that fit the size of their dream. It was a beautiful parcel of raw, deeply-forested land with steep hills that rolled down to the lakefront.
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The east-west boundaries extended from the lakeshore to Route 9N and north-south from the dirt road that goes out to Armes Point (and passes by what is today Chris and Angie’s house) to the area where the Friendship Trail starts (close to what today is Andrew’s house and was previously Camilla’s house).
Charles and Miriam bought the property from Dr. White. Dr. White was president of the Biblical Seminary of New York. He had long been associated with the missionary movement, the YMCA, and the Silver Bay Association.
White owned a huge parcel of land that stretched north to Charles and Miriam’s property, south to Van Buren Bay (to the end of the Friendship Trail), west to the lakeshore, and east up to the northeastern slopes of Sunrise Mountain.
He had bought the land from Edwin McBrier in 1925. McBrier was vice-president of the Woolworth Company and quite wealthy. He knew Dr. White because he attended his weekly Bible classes at the Railway Club in New York. McBrier sold his vast property for less than half of what it had cost him. Why? Because he was a firm believer in Dr. White’s dream of establishing a retreat where students, ministers and others could come for recreation and serious study of the Bible.
Dr. White’s endeavor, called the Columbiona-on-Lake George Conference Center, was launched with great enthusiasm. There were already many ministers and YMCA leaders living in the area that supported it. But then the Depression and financial setbacks caught up to White and he was forced to give up his dream.
The exact purchase price that the Parlins paid Dr. White in June of 1936 isn’t known, but it was somewhere in the neighborhood of $30,000, which in today’s terms would be about $600,000. One only has to go on Zillow and look up what property in the area is going for today to quickly realize that Charles and Miriam got a bargain.
Charles and Miriam Parlin at Pudding Island Farm in the early days.
Construction Begins
“The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.”
― Michelangelo
Where the Pudding Island House (aka the Big House) now stands, there was just a wooded bluff with a steep drop into the lake. No houses, no dock, no raft, no tea house, no nothing. The pine trees were dense and huge, the underbrush thick and the lakeshore barely accessible.
Despite this, Charles and Miriam envisioned a lakeside retreat where they could be with family and friends. They wanted a place where they could entertain large gatherings, sharing the beauty and wonder of the Adirondacks.
It was a big dream, but they had to start somewhere.
The first step was to build a house with enough rooms for Charles’s parents, the three children, guests, and themselves. A spacious living room for entertaining, a screened-in porch for summer evenings, and a kitchen big enough to feed everyone.
Construction started in 1936. They had a small cabin[1] built where they could stay for the weekend to supervise construction and to serve as a hide-a-way for the family winter holidays and as guest space in the summer.
The original cabin (now Blackie and Joan's place).
Charles had met with a handful of homebuilders earlier in the year. He wanted to find one who didn’t see the job as just building another house, but who would be a partner who understood and embraced the larger vision. Charles selected a local builder, Milton Grinnell, who was excited to push his talents as a craftsman. Milton had always wanted a big project to show the world what he could do.
One example of Milton’s craftsmanship is the beautiful living room that looks out on the dock and lake. The log beams that stretch the length of the ceiling are from timber that was harvested on the property. Rather than simply milling these timbers, Milton chose to hand-hewn them with traditional tools like an adze and drawknife, giving the living room the rustic Adirondack feel that Charles and Miriam were hoping for.
Living room with hand-hewn ceiling beams.
The construction proceeded smoothly with questions being dealt with during daily check-ins between Charles and Milton [2]. There was only one issue that started to concern Charles. After two months of construction, he had not received an invoice. He knew Milton was incurring significant costs already.
When he asked Milton about this, Milton’s reply was that he had no faith in the Ticonderoga banks.
“These banks are on thin ice and if I put my money with them, who knows when I’ll get it back?” Milton proclaimed, “I’d rather you owe me money than the banks. I know you’ll pay!”
Charles got a big kick out of this and they agreed to a more regular payment schedule.
In addition to the house, Milton’s team built a boathouse to store all the canoes, kayaks, and ski boats that would eventually come. They also had the foresight to build a big room above the boathouse for the day when the children would become rowdy teenagers and wanted a place to blast the radio, play games, and generally stir up trouble as only teenagers can do.
With the structures drawn out and construction underway, it was time to turn to the lake. Charles and Milton walked up and down the rocky shoreline looking for the right place for a dock. While no spot was really that ideal, they eventually settled on a place where Charles and Miriam could keep an eye on the kids via the main house’s living room window.
The original dock [3] was a wooden rectangle and extended about 30 feet into the lake. There was a series of paths carved down the steep hillside from the main house and a set of dirt steps carved into the final stretch.
With the design of the dock complete there was only one question left to answer: Where would they swim to?
Most likely the raft was an afterthought, or at least the most minor of the Parlins' concerns. They thought it would be fun to have a place for the kids to do cannon balls and catch fish. Unbeknownst to them at the time, they were building what became one of the most important fixtures of Pudding Island Farm memories.
The original raft was a square box of planks nailed to a frame suspended by floating drums. It required a sturdy enough mooring to withstand wind and waves. What could do the job? A few different options were considered and discarded. A large boulder would probably do the trick in terms of weight, but how would you secure it to the anchor chain? A cinder block would be easy to secure but not heavy enough to keep the raft from drifting. Eventually someone had the brilliant and unconventional idea to strap the raft to an old Ford Model T engine. It had the weight to hold the raft in place and plenty of footings to latch onto. [4]
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Raft in the early days.
Remains of engine that was used to anchor raft.
Photo credit: Blackie Parlin
Construction was completed in late fall of 1937, just in time for Thanksgiving.
Late in the evening, after a large gathering of family and friends for a Thanksgiving meal and parlor games, Miriam and Charles sat on the dock admiring the stars. Evenings on the dock were their favorite time because there were almost no other lights along the lakeshore. It was a darkness that they couldn’t experience in Tenafly and certainly not in New York City. They sat on the dock and with every shooting star they’d point and yelp, playfully arguing about if that was the best one they had seen.
After a while, they just sat quietly. The evening frost was beginning to settle on the dock.
Charles was lost in thought about his plan to explore the mountain that sat adjacent to his parcel just across Route 9N. He knew the area was well known for maple syrup and he wanted to see if there were maple trees there to someday make his own.
Miriam was thinking about the abandoned farm just down the dirt road. She wanted to learn more about it because she was starting to think about someday bringing it back to life. As a young girl in Evanston, Illinois, she remembered having a small flock of chickens in her backyard. She had had so much fun caring for them.
But for now, these were all just thoughts.
House construction contract for $16,000.
The main house in the 1940s.
The original dock and waterfront.
House featured in an Architectural Magazine.
The Expansion
In May of 1943, Charles and Miriam purchased the abandoned farm just down the dirt road from Janet Cratty. The property included two barns, one farm cottage, a large expansive meadow including a fish pond teaming with catfish, and a mountainside with a sugar house for producing maple syrup.
The parcel stretched from the dirt road at Armes Point to just past the barn (what is today Sue and Bill Rigger’s house).
It was this purchase that really completed their dream. They called it Pudding Island Farm, named for the small island that rises from the lake like a dollop of pudding.
Approximate boundaries of Pudding Island Farm.
The owner prior to the Cratty’s was a character worth noting: Colonel William d’Alton Mann.
Mann was the kind of person that historians write books about (and some, like the author of “The Man Who Robbed The Robber Barons,” even did).
The jacket cover of the book sums up his life:
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”Colonel d'Alton Mann was a protean figure, hero of Gettysburg, designer of the sleeping cars for the Orient Express, defendant in the first major trial for oil swindling, and a millionaire even before blackmail swelled his bankroll. He was a striking example of the vigorous, exuberantly talented, and unprincipled age in which he lived and thrived.”
- Andy Logan, “The Man Who Robbed The Robber Barons” ©1965
So how did he rob the robber barons? The colonel was the owner and editor of a weekly magazine called Town Topics. It was essentially what today would be considered a tabloid, with a lively and controversial gossip section. The colonel didn’t make his fortunes via advertising and paid subscribers. The real money was in writing scandalous articles about wealthy, famous New York City residents like the Morgans and Vanderbilts, then giving them the option to pay him to suppress the story or see their name in print the following week.
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Today we call what Colonel Mann was doing “catch and kill” journalism - basically paying off a publisher not to publish a story. All of this eventually caught up to him and he was successfully sued for libel, faced time in prison, and had to pay out large financial settlements. It was the beginning of the end for Town Topics.
Colonel Mann died in 1920. At first his heirs were anticipating an inheritance of millions from his vast portfolio of properties, investments, royalties and other assets accumulated over his eclectic lifetime. But, he’d unfortunately also accumulated a lot of debt, and when the accounting was complete, the estate was insolvent and tied up in probate and lawsuits for years.
So the farm had been neglected for over two decades and it showed. The fields were overgrown, the farm equipment rusted out, and the fishing pond more of a swampy jungle.
But, Charles and Miriam could see the potential for developing the farm into a true working farm. While many people may have shied away from all the work that would be required to reboot the farm, they saw it as a challenge and an opportunity.
And eventually Pudding Island Farm did grow into a fully functioning farm with cows, chickens, horses, and various sundry cats and dogs (not to mention the mice, rats, bats, and woodchucks hiding in the barn’s walls).
There were also gardens carved into the hillside where vegetables grew for the dinner table. Stretches of raspberry bushes provided dessert and apple trees supplied gallons of apple cider each autumn.
Animals come to Pudding Island Farm.
Blackie (head turned), Ed, Howie, Camilla (1941).
Charles and Miriam working in the garden.
Camilla and friends (Proudfits) at the Barn.
Corn rows.
Charlie and his hog.
The farm took on special meaning during WWII. A sense of patriotism mobilized the country as men were shipped off to Europe and the South Pacific to fight, and women poured into factories to build planes, ships, and armory. At the time, there was nothing more patriotic than creating a garden (commonly called a “Victory Garden”). The more citizens could feed themselves, the more of the national food supply could be sent to the troops overseas.
The farm provided not just for the family but also for the community at-large. Every Saturday they gave away fresh chickens at their road-side stand. The children and their cousins would manage the stand. Cars would pull up and place their order, the kids would run to the coops grab the right size chicken, behead it with an axe, drop it in a pot of steaming water to de-feather, and package it up. The kids enjoyed it because it gave them purpose. The surrounding community loved it since fresh meat was very expensive, if available at all, during the war.
This free-chicken enterprise is best described by Camilla Smith (Charles and Miriam’s daughter):
“Dad got the idea of supplying chickens to all the neighbors at Silver Bay- Armes, Seerups, Mrs. Stevenson, etc. As a result, Saturday morning became chicken-for-free at the Parlins. This meant that the chickens had to be slaughtered, the feathers plucked off and the internal organs - liver, heart and gizzard - had to be cleaned. All of our family and helpers were roped into the process of preparing the chickens.
It fell to cousin Howie Sanborn, a worker on the farm for the summer, to chop off the heads of the chickens. Now this was no easy task. A chicken is not a docile animal to kill. A chicken will wiggle ferociously when held up-side-down by the feet. Holding the chicken’s feet in one hand, the executioner must try to get the chicken’s head on a block, swing down with a hatchet in the other hand and chop off the head. Now a chicken does not lie still when headless. The nerves in a chicken neck evidently go into high gear when the head is cut off. As Howie learned, to his frustration, a headless chicken will jerk so violently, that it is very hard to keep hold of, and a headless chicken will run at a very high speed all over a yard until it is caught or drops of exhaustion. We had a lot of laughs at Howie’s expense!
You may have heard the expression used of someone, “Running around like a chicken with its head cut off.” We certainly learned what that meant those summers at Silver Bay.”
- Camilla Smith via email 10/10/2021
Miriam and a White Sussex.
Blackie and John Sanborn feeding the chickens.
Charles and Miriam soon learned that a working farm required a lot of work. Even with their clan of children, nieces and nephews they couldn’t keep up, so they hired Henry Watts. Henry was the son of Captain Watts. Everyone referred to him as captain because he was a surveyor for the US Army. The Watts had their own working farm so Henry had the experience and knowhow that was required. He was a student at the nearby Middlebury College and had summers off. He also had lost one eye in a firecracker accident when he was a boy so he was not able to serve in the war.
Henry was already familiar with the property because he was part of Milton Grinnell’s crew that built the Big House and served a caretaker during the winters.
Without Henry it would have been difficult for the farm to operate in the war years. In the years after the war, it was possible to hire other men to help on the farm, but Henry remained the boss man until the early 50s.
Charles and Miriam could have just bought a house on the lake - that would have been much easier. But their dreams were much bigger than that. Even more impressive than the size of their dreams was their ability to bring them to reality. Where others saw rough, forested lakeside, they saw a family compound with generations of kids enjoying the lake and nature. Where others saw an abandoned farm full of rusted out equipment and crumbling barns, they saw a working farm that could help feed the community.
Walt Disney once said, “All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.” Never has this been more true than what Charles and Miriam created at Pudding Island Farm.
Footnotes:
[1] The cabin they stayed in during this time was later renovated and today is Blackie and Joan’s log cabin
[2] Milton and Charles developed a lifelong partnership that extended into future generations. Milton's son, Dick, built Charlie's house, Camilla’s house, renovated Blackie’s cabin, and renovated the Barn. His Grandson, Bill, built what is now Tim's house.
[3] The dock was later torn down and replaced by a cement dock that was much larger. The winters took a toll on this wooden dock as ice and rain pelted turning the wooden dock into a quilt of splinters.
[4] It turns out the Model T was not formidable enough to do the job as a few years later it had to be replaced with the even more robust engine of a Chevy – which to this day still sits on the floor of the lake, diving distance from the current raft