The Naming of Twitchell Lake in the Adirondacks

“Toponym” is the technical term for a place name, especially one derived from a topographical feature.  I’m hooked on toponyms. My starting point is Twitchell Lake in Big Moose, located in the town Webb, Herkimer County, NY, in the Adirondacks where six generations of my family have vacationed in a cabin since the early 1900s.

Debate on our lake’s name has reached a crescendo as a history committee collects our stories for a Twitchell book. This article explores the fascinating connection between our lake’s name and the Twitchell family of Copenhagen, in Lewis County, NY. This map traces the 50-mile route from Copenhagen through Lewis County, across the Black River, and then up the Number Four Road into the Adirondack Mountains. Which leads to my question: How on earth did this dairy farming family get its name attached to this lake?

The Story I Grew Up With

Twitchell Lake old timers believed our lake had a connection with Mark Twain (1835-1910), including personal visits by him around the turn of the century. One real estate broker showing lakefront property added to his pitch, that “Mark Twain fished for trout here at Twitchell Lake.”

The picture here was framed and hung in my cabin for years, purporting to prove how our lake got its name. Seated just across the table from Mark Twain for this celebration of his 70th birthday at Delmonico’s in New York City was the Rev. Joseph Twichell (1838-1913), pastor of Hartford’s Asylum Hill Congregational Church for almost 50 years. According to my parents, the reverend’s seating with Twain’s intimate friends at the head table, circled by 20 tables seating over 150 eminent party guests, established this minister as the authentic namesake for our lake.

There are multiple problems with this story. Granted both men had an Adirondack connection — Twain spent the summer of 1901 writing in a camp on Lower Saranac Lake and the Twichells owned a cottage in Keene Valley, Twain one of their summer guests.

Asked in an interview whether he had caught any trout on his Saranac getaway, Twain retorted that he hated fishing and hunting. It is certainly possible Twain hopped on the Montreal Express in Lake Placid or Saranac Lake for a Twitchell Lake visit with several ministers who summered there.

Dr. William Seward Webb‘s cross-Adirondack railroad was completed in 1892 and he sold three Methodist-Episcopal ministers their lakefront property on the lake. The daughter of one of them, Beatrice Noble, was the source on the Twain visit and she was not known for telling tall tales. Rev. Twichell was among Twain’s closest friends, as the title of his biography exclaims – Joseph Hopkins Twichell, The Life & Times of Mark Twain’s Closest Friend. And a visit to Twitchell Lake by one or both men is certainly fair fodder for speculation. But the actual naming of Twitchell Lake occurred early, not late, in the 1800s.

Searching the Twitchell Family Tree

The careful reader does not need a spell checker to spot the difference in spelling between the minister’s surname and the lake he supposedly christened. The lost “t” traces to Joseph’s grandfather whose first wife kept the “t,” while his second wife for unknown reasons dropped it. The 800-page Genealogy of the Twitchell Family tracks this family to Dorchester, MA, from England in 1632, the following of interest here:

“In the closing years of the 18th century and in the first decades of the 19th, younger sons of those who had aided in reclaiming New England from the wilderness, accompanied in some instances by their parents, began moving westward; some to New York and Pennsylvania; others to the South; again others  to the Ohio and Illinois sections and before 1850 representatives of the family had penetrated the Far West and settled in Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, Utah and California , always leading with the pioneers and building new homes on prairie, desert, mountain, and plain.”

It turns out that two brothers from Holliston, MA – Joseph’s second cousins (3x removed) – responded to ads placed by Lewis County land agents in New York and New England periodicals, purchasing rich farmland along the Black River at discounted prices. Urial Adam Twitchell (1777-1856) opened the first store in Denmark, NY, in 1802, hosting an 1807 meeting that renamed his pioneer hamlet “Copenhagen” in sympathy for Denmark’s capital after bombardment by a British fleet.

His brother Timothy (1770-1843) joined him in 1808, building this wooden residence in 1811, which he then sold in 1815 to the village blacksmith. Together the Twitchell brothers “[assisted] in constructing the log road for the transportation of the cannon from Fort Stanwix to Sackett’s Harbor during the War of 1812.” (Genealogy). This article will offer several possible occasions in which this family name with the extra “t” was assigned to my lake. My preferred theory will build on the brothers’ survey and road-building experience.

One Historian Much Closer to the Truth

An Iowa shoe salesman who retired to the Adirondacks for health reasons, adopted Old Forge as home, becoming a local guide and historian of note. Joseph Grady’s The Story of a Wilderness got much closer to the truth when he stated of Twitchell that “The lake derives its name from Charles Twitchell, an amateur sportsman of Lewis County, who frequented its shores in the mid-century period.”

Charles E. Twitchell (1845-1922) was born in Copenhagen, grandson of Urial and listed in the family genealogy as an inventor. Charles’ name does not show up in the huge collection of Lewis County news briefs for fishing or hunting parties in the Adirondacks, but he is listed numerous times as a member of the award-winning J. H. Raymond Cornet Band of Copenhagen, pictured here on the base drum at the rear of the group’s horse-drawn band wagon.

This photo dates to 1870 when Charles was 25 years old. Clearly, Grady here had the right family tree, but misjudged the era when my lake was named by a wide margin of years. Charles’ musical avocation will, however, figure in on this story’s plot.

Twitchell Name Found in Early Sources

Initially accepting Grady’s theory for Twitchell Lake’s naming, great was my surprise when my search for “Twitchell Lake” on the New York Historical Newspapers website turned up an 1856 article titled “Melancholy Occurrence” (The Lewis County Banner, December 3).

The tragic drowning of Briggs Wightman through November ice on Twitchell Lake, recreated here in my pencil sketch, happened almost 15 years before Charles paraded down Main Street in Copenhagen. Wightman was part of an Oswego County sportsman group which made annual treks to the Champlain Road, for the celebrated hunting and fishing available at lakes and ponds along the Beaver River.

As described in my New York Almanack article on this incident, this Oswego group became known for several projects that provided shelter in the wilderness, erecting a Rock Shanty in 1855 about 14 miles beyond Number Four and then in 1859 helping noted guide Chauncey Smith construct his wilderness hotel four miles further at the South Branch of Beaver River.

The trail Wightman took to Twitchell that fateful November left the Champlain Road just before Rock Shanty and turned and angled southward a rugged six miles through virgin wilderness. Interestingly, the last body of water that trail passed before reaching Twitchell received the name “Oswego Pond.”

My search for Twitchell Lake’s early history intensified, taking me in 2019 to Lewis County Historical Society’s research room in Lowville. While combing through the Watson Township box I stumbled on several volumes of an old diary kept by a Nelson Beach (1800-1876). It turns out he was a leading citizen in Lewis County in the early period, well-respected as a lawyer, surveyor, businessman, and member of the New York State Assembly and Senate during 1846 and 1847.

Beach was hired by New York State to survey and run a road through the middle of the Adirondacks from Carthage to Lake Champlain for settlement and commerce. When I read Beach’s June 4th entry, I was floored:

“Friday 4 June- Go up Twitchel creek and explore the country between the falls and when we left our boat find it but a succession of high hills and ledges no good. Late in returning down the creek with the boat we catch about 30 pounds Trout — light frost last night. Mr. Ingerson gets to the Stillwater with his line distance by it from No.4. We send D. Smith up the River and across the country in a boat with four pack loads of provisions to meet us at Long Lake.”

Here was the first of five 1841 references not to the lake but to a “Twitchel Creek,” predating Charles’ alleged lake visits by 31 years! The plot thickened. Beach’s survey team established its base for shelter and supplies at Twitchell Creek’s mouth on the Beaver River, David Smith’s boat ready to ferry them across.

Brandreth Lake, ten miles past the Chauncy Smith shanty, was originally named after Nelson Beach. Smith became the namesake for a favorite fishing destination and the source of the Beaver River, Smith Lake, until it was purchased by Dr. Webb in the 1890s and renamed after his wife, Lake Lila.  

The Naming of Twitchell Creek, Theory #1

Three points along the Carthage to Lake Champlain Road shown on this 1879 map of the Adirondack wilderness will offer significant clues on how Twitchell got its name. In 1886, this part of the Carthage to Lake Champlain Road was flooded by New York State in creating the Stillwater Reservoir. The first point was this crossroads where the road met the mouth of Twitchell Creek.

This theory proposes that one member of the first generation of Copenhagen Twitchell’s, Urial or Timothy, headed up a fishing or hunting trip to this junction along what at that time was just an Indian trail. That event at the creek crossing was memorialized by the Twitchell name, inscribed on an early map, and then passed down to this day.

Just such an occasion accompanied the naming of nearby Sunday Creek (on this map). Copenhagen historian H. Hudson Stephens (1823-1917) described what he called a “first fishing party” in detail, six Lowville pioneers guided by Thomas Puffer, camping at the junction of that creek with Beaver River just to the east of settlement Number Four:

“The most noticeable incidents of this pioneer party, who camped at “Fish Hole,” and fished at Beaver Falls, for eight days, early in June, was, the naming of the creek, at the Fish Hole, “Sunday Creek,” alike from their attachment to the name, and it being commemorative of the day of their camping there. The burning, at the camp fire, by Low, of both his boots, and improvising bark ones; and that Sam lost his horse, which was found after an absence of three weeks (Historical Notes of the Settlement on No. 4, Brown’s Tract).”

Stephens dated that memorable event to 1818 or 1819, probably the era in which Twitchell Creek received its name. He added to his account the burned-boot and lost-horse incidents. It is thus possible that Twitchell Lake was so named as the source of Twitchell Creek, although it is hard to imagine an early guide or sportsman bushwacking his way from the mouth of the creek the meandering 10 miles up to its lake source, long swampy patches of this Big Moose stream impassable by boat or on foot.

The First Trail to Twitchell Lake, Theory #2

The second significant point on the Carthage to Lake Champlain Road is shown on the Ely map several miles east of the creek crossing. It is not known who cut this first trail six miles south to Twitchell Lake, but it would have been after the establishment of Number Four in 1822 by a governor of Rhode Island – John Brown Francis (1791-1864), who gave his name to Lake Francis. Within ten years this hamlet had failed as a farming community, but it became a main “western door” to the Adirondacks.

The Orrin Fenton House on this 1857 Lewis County map hosted what became a flood of sportsmen and women by 1860. Chauncy Smith was one of the early guides to fishing and hunting parties from his house here in Number Four and from his shanty 18 miles to the east. This trail was most likely cut in the early 1830’s by the same guide who named Wood’s Lake, halfway down that trail. That guide could also have discovered that the outlet to my lake led to Twitchell Creek’s mouth at Beaver River, assigning the same name to its source, Twitchell Lake.

The Surveying Connection, Theory #3

Less than a mile past the Twitchell Lake trailhead on the Carthage to Lake Champlain Road, one of the most important boundary lines in the Adirondacks crossed from NW to SE, separating Brown’s Tract from the Totten & Crossfield Purchase. That boundary line shown on the Ely map saw several very early surveys completed for both parcels of land.

Projecting that boundary line southward about five miles brings it within a mile of the shore of Twitchell Lake, suggesting a third clue on the naming. Noted historian Franklin Hough identified two Lewis County men who surveyed Brown’s Tract in the late 1790s (History of Lewis County).

Herkimer lawyer Charles Snyder added the names of three more Lewis County surveyors who subdivided John Brown’s 210,000 acres into eight townships after Brown gained clear title to the land (“John Brown’s Tract”). New surveys were conducted each time a township came up for sale, Twitchell located on the eastern edge of Township 8. Many of those surveyors ran their lines over the foot of the mountain that separated Twitchell Lake from that historic boundary line.

Predating all these surveys, Archibald Campbell divided up more than a million acres for what was one of the earliest Adirondack land deals, the Totten & Crossfield Purchase. In 1792 he was accompanied by a team of Native American guides to lay out that huge land patent into 50 townships. A subsequent survey and subdivision of the township nearest Twitchell into lots, number 43, was completed in 1816 by a prominent judge named John Richards. Then in 1854, Martinsburg surveyor Squire Snell resurveyed this line for the Sackets Harbor & Saratoga Railroad, exploring a route for their trans-Adirondack track. That project was never completed.

When Frank Tweedy led a survey crew down this same borderline for Verplanck Colvin’s mapping project in 1879, he stopped for the night of July 31st, drilling, and setting his fourth benchmark for that season in bedrock, marking the important corner of Townships 42 and 41.

This sketch from page 77 in his survey journal for that season labeled the mountain separating his camp from the lake. The top of this 2,445-foot mount affords an excellent view of Twitchell Lake when the leaves have fallen. What is remarkable is that this mountain was not labeled by its current name “East Mountain.” Tweedy marked it “Twitchell Mtn.,” reading that right off one of the older survey journals Colvin supplied him with, which included those of Richards and Snell.

It’s hard to resist the logical conclusion that one of the early survey teams working this important borderline included a Twitchell family member. And given the experience Urial and Timothy had with road building and surveys, that is entirely possible. Surveying has been one of the sources for Adirondack toponyms. This theory has an early crew member like Urial passing his name to this mountain in about 1816, and the lake at the foot of the mountain inheriting that same surname, “Twitchell Lake.”

Corroborating the Copenhagen Connection, Part 1

In 1855, Watson livery stable owner Losee B. Lewis married Chauncey Smith’s daughter Anna, joining a family of Adirondack guides that included two of Chauncey’s sons – Charles and Marcus, and three of his sons-in-law – Arettus Wetmore, James Lewis, and Hiram Burke. By 1864 Lewis was included in a family business advertising these guiding services to Adirondack adventurers:

“From each of the above [Losee Lewis, Arettus Wetmore, Chauncey Smith], home entertainment, guides, keep of teams, boats, fishing tackle, guns, traps, etc., etc., are obtainable. Livery, for freight and parties, into, from, and beyond No. 4, at reasonable rates, on notification, by mail, P.O. Address of either: Watson, Lewis County, N.Y. (W. Hudson Stephens’ Historical Notes).”

Lewis was not only a guide and equestrian, but he was also a prominent Lewis County citizen and leader, hosting a Special Town Meeting in his Watson home in 1869 to vote on “An Act in Relation to the Bridge over the Black River at Beach’s Landing” (Lewis County Democrat, June 30, 1869).

Interestingly, he received a five-dollar disbursement recorded in the annual budget each time he hosted a town meeting, which he did often (January 26, 1870). That same year Lewis was elected as Collector and Constable for his township and appointed as a Watson delegate to the annual Democratic County Convention (February 16, 1870).

But what is most significant for this article is that in June of 1869, Lewis was granted a hotel license by the Board of Commissioners of Excise for the County of Lewis (June 23). A search of Lowville’s Lewis County Democrat shows that for numerous holidays and special events, the new L. B. Lewis Hotel hosted the Raymond & Ryels’ Band as entertainment, announced in these ads.

This was the award-winning Copenhagen trumpet group that Charles Twitchell drummed for. Which on at least one holiday occasion put him together in the same room with Twitchell Lake guide Hiram Burke. My New York Almanack article “Hiram Burke, Noted Adirondack Guide of Twitchell Lake” explains Hiram’s role in guiding sports parties from Lowville and Number Four down the trail for the exceptional fishing and hunting this lake was famous for. In guiding terms, Twitchell was Hiram’s Lake.

I can just imagine how a conversation between Charles and Hiram might have unfolded at an event like the December 24, 1869, Christmas Festival:

Hiram: “Charles, I couldn’t help notice your last name is spelled exactly like the lake I take all my fishing and hunting parties to.”

Charles: “Really? Wow, I have always wanted to visit Twitchell Lake. The story in my family has my grandfather as the one who named it.”

Hiram: “That’s amazing! I’m glad we met. Would you like to visit this summer and help me cut timber for a shanty? I’ve been planning this for years. I will show you around ‘Your Lake!’”

Charles: “Yes, count me in. When can we start?”

William Marleau – Forest Ranger and author of Big Moose Station – affirmed that the first log cabin on Twitchell Lake was erected in the summer of 1870 by guide Hiram Burke. That rough structure with no windows and one door is pictured here, included with Joseph Grady’s collection of historical photos.

In his discussion of Charles Twitchell as the lake’s namesake, Grady referred to this Burke shanty as “a humble log hut built on the upper north shore by Hiram Burke, a native of Lowville.” Marleau and Grady are not the only ones to link Charles with Hiram at Twitchell Lake. Edwin Wallace, editor of the popular Descriptive Guide to the Adirondacks, offered these curious remarks in his 13th edition:

“Twitchell Lake…. is an interesting body of water, beautified by several islands and islets, and encircled by densely wooded heights… It received its unpoetic title from a settler, rejoicing in that name, who once made a clearing near by… Hiram Burke, (P. O. Lowville), the very efficient guide, has erected a substantial hunting lodge on the N. shore of Twitchell L., where sportsmen are entertained and furnished with the best fare that the forest affords.”

The only lake clearing and logs in the early 1870’s were for the Hiram shanty and the only settler who would have “rejoiced in that name” would have been a Twitchell, so that would put Charles Twitchell and Hiram Burke together on this building project.

Edwin Wallace overnighted with Chauncey Smith at his Elk Horn Shanty and knew the guides and the Beaver River area well. While a bit mysterious, his words and knowledge of Twitchell Lake were firsthand. All three of these Adirondack authors and historians strengthen my lake’s connection to the Copenhagen branch of the Twitchell family tree.

Corroborating the Copenhagen Connection, Part 2

Apparently, Hiram Burke was a fan of toponyms, too, and his acts of naming the ponds around Twitchell Lake deepened this lake’s connection with Copenhagen, NY. In the words of Edwin Wallace (Descriptive Guide, 13th Edition):

“When desired, he [Burke] will conduct his guests (no better woodsman than he) to the various choice sporting grounds which lie in the neighborhood. In the immediate vicinity, in different directions, are twelve or fifteen tiny ponds; usually swarming with large trout, and gleaming like gems in their solitary fastnesses amid the deep green of the forest. These include Silver, Oswego, Arthur, East, Mud, Marenus, Hackmetack and Twitchellette.”

Twitchell Lake does, in fact, have 12 to 15 smaller ponds in its “orbit,” East Pond, Silver Lake, and Oswego Pond retaining their 1870 names. The common designation “Mud Pond” is now South Pond; “Hackmetack,” another term for tamarack, is the name Colvin gave to the Lilypad Ponds upon discovering them in 1876; and “Twitchellette” describes the small pond Anne LaBastille memorialized in her books, Little Birch Pond.

That leaves two ponds which stumped me until I read this May 11, 1882, Journal and Republican “short” for a ten-day fishing trip at Twitchell Lake guided by Hiram Burke and James Lewis, two Smith family guides. Charles Sumner Mereness, Sr., was the Lewis County District Attorney from Copenhagen, Eugene Arthur a Copenhagen lawyer who started a Lowville hardware business in 1884.

These Lewis County leaders were repeat customers of Hiram Burke at Twitchell Lake, and Hiram named two ponds for them, possibly because they caught their biggest trout there. “Marenus” is now Jock Pond, “Arthur” became Razorback Pond. Edwin Wallace, avid hiker and early guest of Chauncey Smith on the Carthage to Lake Champlain Road preserved these acts of naming by the patron guide of Twitchell Lake, highlighting Copenhagen, N.Y.

Of the dozen Lewis County news “shorts” I found describing fishing trips to Twitchell Lake between 1867 and 1891, many of the party members were from Copenhagen, N.Y. One party stood out, a group of six who trekked to “Twitchell’s Lake” in July of 1874 for two weeks of “rest from our labors, fish in abundance, together with all that quietude and repose that one ever imagines can be found amid ‘Solitude’s Mystic Wilds’” (Journal & Republican, July 8, 1874).

The writer of this 2,400-word essay only identified party members by first name with the following adjectives – “the gentleman, his brother, the farmer, our literary man, the tooth puller, and the writer.” I wrote this up for New York Almanack as “A Mystery Writer’s Tramp to Twitchell’s Lake,” examining the collection of clues by which I finally figured out exactly who these men were.

It turned out John “the writer” was in fact John C. Wright, Proprietor of Copenhagen Mills, manufacturer of wooden butter tubs, and President of the Lewis County Teacher’s Association for Lowville Academy – a Lewis County leader par excellence. He led a Copenhagen group on this Twitchell getaway for many years after the summer of 1874.

My big eureka moment with this mystery fishing party brought me right back to the Twitchell family in Copenhagen, NY. I discovered that three members of this party – Amos and Charles Chickering, and John himself – were in fact related by marriage to Charles Twitchell.

A close examination of this 1857 Lewis County map placed the John Wright homestead (starred) right in the middle of three Twitchell family neighbors just south of Copenhagen’s center. “E. E. Twitchell” was Erastus Eames, Charles’ father, “U. A.” was Urial Adam, Charles’ uncle, and “Jer.” was Jerome — Timothy Twitchell’s son — also an uncle. Interestingly, John “the writer” Wright announced his party’s destination as “Twitchell’s Lake,” because he knew why their family name was so memorialized at Twitchell Lake. But he neglected one thing – to tell his readers the story behind the name.

What is Known and What is Not

This is a postcard picture taken from the Twitchell Lake Inn in the 1950s looking down the lake toward East Mountain. Clearly the story of my lake’s naming is a complex one still shrouded in mystery. What is not known is whether Twitchell Creek led to the naming of Twitchell Lake or vice versa? Nor is it clear whether the naming of either or both happened because of surveying or as the result of a fishing or hunting event.

It is even possible that the lake and creek were named independently. I favor a survey crew connection as the genesis for both names. But what is almost certain is that the naming of both the lake and the creek came from the Twitchell family which settled in Copenhagen, NY, early in the 1800s.

The answer to my question is probably written down in an old Twitchell family diary, scribbled as marginalia of an early survey map or journal, explained in a news clip still hidden on microfilm, or explained by an old letter tucked into the Edwin Wallace archive in some attic in Syracuse, NY.

Most of the lakes in this story are not technically toponyms because they were named for a person or family, like Lake Francis, Beach Lake, Smith Lake, or Twitchell Lake. But what I have come to realize is that I am very proud of this deep connection I share with the pioneers and dairy farmers of Lewis County. The coat of arms or family crest for this old English lineage stood for “a dweller at an ally or crossroads,” a Devonshire fork in a road called a “twichin.”

“Twitchell” may not be a poetic name, but Urial and Charles left a positive legacy that is instructive in all eras but of special value to us today. Their family genealogy expressed it this way:

“A sturdy yeoman pedigree is more in keeping with our ancestral ideals and the character of our Puritan ancestors. It is sufficient for one of our descendants, at least, to have determined that in New England colonial chronicles they were gentlemen, soldiers, pioneers and husbandmen engaged on every frontier in home building in the New World … The list of Twitchells which follows proves that the family, as represented in the Massachusetts towns, was animated to a high degree with that spirit which achieved American independence … When the alarm of April 19^th 1775, was sounded, the minute men proved themselves worthy of the title by marching immediately to meet the enemy at Lexington and Concord (Genealogy).”

I admire the courage it took to pull up roots in Holliston, MA, and start a brand-new life in Copenhagen, NY. And what about the pioneer spirit shown by an early trek into the Adirondack wilderness to map its myriad lakes or supplement family income with trout and venison, wolf and cougar still roaming free?

Naming is a sacred rite we share with our Creator and with our scientists who discover a new star or find a new member of a species. Or when a special place receives a name. Erik Schlimmer was right on target when he said, “Behind every name there is a story, and the story’s usually pretty good.”

Illustrations

(1) Google map showing the 50.7 mile drive from Copenhagen in Lewis County, through Lowville and via the Number Four Road, to Twitchell Lake in Big Moose, N.Y.; (2) Picture of Mark Twain celebrating his 70^th birthday at Delmonico’s in New York City with friends on December 5, 1905 (from L to R) Kate Biggs, Mark Twain, Rev. Joseph Twitchell, Bliss Carman, Ruth Stuart, Mary Freeman, Henry Alden, and Henry Rogers, a picture that appeared in Harper’s and Life Magazine; (3) Picture of the oldest building in Copenhagen, N.Y., built by Timothy Twitchell in 1811 and featured in an undated article “Now-Idle Blacksmith Shop Memorializes Earlier Era,” written by Mrs. F. C. Hill; (4) 1870 Photo of the J. H. Raymond Cornet Band on Main Street in Copenhagen, N.Y., published in an article titled “Sprucing-Up in Works for Historic Bandwagon” in a Watertown paper, ca 1890; (5) Pencil sketch by Noel Sherry of the 1856 drowning of Briggs Wightman in Twitchell Lake discovered by guide Amos Spofford, described in the Lewis County Banner’s article “Melancholy Occurrence,” December 3,1856; (6) First page of Nelson Beach’s Survey Journal for the Carthage to Lake Champlain Road  from 1841 to 1842; (7) W.W. Ely map of the Adirondacks showing the Carthage-Champlain Road from Number Four to Beach’s Lake, with landmarks highlighted by Noel Sherry, 1879; (8) Hamlet of Number Four on Ligowsky & Taintor’s “Topographical Map of Lewis County, N.Y., from Actual Surveys,” Library of Congress Collection, 1857; (9) Frank Tweedy map sketch titled “Running all the way on the Northern slope of Twitchell Mt.,” in Journal of SW Division of Adirondack Survey 1879 — Line of Levels from Lowville to Raquette & Blue Mtn Lakes, provided by the N.Y.S. Archives, N.Y.S. Volume 247_A1b, 1879; (10) Chauncey Smith guiding ad found at the end of Historical Notes of the Settlement on No. 4 by W. Hudson Stephens, 1864; (11) Picture of Hiram Burke Shanty built in 1870 on Twitchell Lake from page 204 in Joseph Grady’s The Story of a Wilderness, Little Falls, N.Y., 1933; (12) Google map showing the current ponds and lakes around Twitchell Lake, labeled by Noel Sherry; and (13) Postcard of Twitchell Lake from an ektrachrome photo taken by Anthony Mario, Jr., ca. 1955.

Sources Cited

Erik Schlimmer’s “When They Name the Wilderness: A Briefing on Toponyms” published on The Trek, an online forum dedicated to helping the hiking community, Nov 28, 2018; Steve Courtney’s Joseph Hopkins Twichell, The Life and Times of Mark Twain’s Closest Friend, Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2008; Ralph E. Twitchell’s Genealogy of the Twitchell Family: Record of the Descendants of the Puritan Benjamin Twitchell, Dorchester, Lancaster, Medfield and Sherborn, MA 1632-1927, New York, NY: 1929; Joseph F. Grady’s The Adirondacks: Fulton Chain — Big Moose Region: The Story of a Wilderness, Little Falls, N.Y.: 1933; “Melancholy Occurrence” in The Lewis County Journal, December 3, 1856, found in a search of https://nyshistoricnewspapers.org/; Nelson Beach’s “Journal of Proceedings Relative to the Carthage and Lake Champlain Road” in several volumes covering April 14, 1841 through February 18, 185;  H. Hudson Stephens’ Historical Notes of the Settlement on No. 4, Brown’s Tract, in Watson, Lewis County N.Y. with Notices of the Early Settlers, Utica, N.Y.: 1864; Franklin Hough’s A History of Lewis County, in the State of New York, from the Beginning of its Settlement to the Present Time, Albany, N.Y.: 1860; Charles E. Snyder’s paper “John Brown’s Tract” presented to the Herkimer County Historical Society in 1896; Archibald Campbell’s “A Field Book of the Survey of the West Bound & Part of the North Bound of the Land Purchased for the Benefit of Joseph Totten & Stephen Crossfield & Their Associates, provided by the N.Y.S. Archives, NYSA_A4019-77_V39, 1772; John Richard’s “Fieldbook of Township Number Forty Three in Totten & Crossfield’s Purchase,” provided by the N.Y.S. Archives,  NYSA_A0452-79_V04, 1816; Squire Snell’s “Field Book for Totten & Crossfield Purchase & Brown’s Tract,” provided by the N.Y.S. Archives, Vol. 152_152_A1b, 1854; Bill Marleau’s Big Moose Station: A Story from 1893 to 1983, Marleau Family Press: 1986; Erwin R. Wallace’s Descriptive Guide to the Adirondacks: Land of the Thousand Lakes, 13^th Edition revised and corrected by the author, Syracuse, N.Y.: Bible Publishing House, 1888; an article titled “North Woods” describing a mystery party from Copenhagen fishing at Twitchell Lake from the Lowville Journal & Republican, July 8, 1874; and “Twitchell Coat of Arms/Twitchell Family Crest” from the website https://www.4crests.com/twitchell-coat-of-arms.html/.