As a boy growing up in the Battle Hill section of White Plains, NY, I remember my excitement at reading a brass memorial telling me “George Washington slept here.” White Plains was the site of a battle during the American Revolution.
Now as an adult I have had the thrill of learning that Verplanck Colvin surveyed Twitchell Lake and took measurements on the shore where my log cabin stands in Big Moose, NY. That realization launched me on a quest to find a benchmark placed by one of Colvin’s surveyors on an important boundary line nearby. [Read more…] about Deep In The Adirondack Woods, A Colvin Survey Benchmark Revealed
Frank Tweedy’s 
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This is part three of this series A Twitchell Lake Love Story – part two can be 
The first part of this series, A Twitchell Lake Love Story, can be 
I am a fourth generation Sherry owning a camp on Twitchell Lake in Big Moose, NY, in the Adirondacks. with my wife Ingelise. We share ownership of “Little Beaver” with my three brothers and their wives. Four diaries from our second generation have helped to solve the mystery of how the family first came to Twitchell Lake. It turns out it all started with a love story! 
Many of the lakes in John Brown’s Tract had guides who took their sporting parties to their own fishing or hunting camps north and south of the Beaver River. This is how lakes like Hitchcock, Beach, and Salmon got their names. 
On July 8, 1874, The Lowville Journal and Republican ran an article about a party of six men who trekked to Twitchell Lake in Big Moose, NY, for a nine-day stay. They came by horse and buggy up the Number Four Road through Watson Township from some town to the west. 
“Melancholy Occurrence” was a fairly common expression for a tragic event in the middle of the 19th century. A search of historic newspapers revealed the phrase was used some 250 times from 1820 to 1870. Several of these were murder cases, such as the son of the Spanish Consul being stabbed through the heart with a cane sword by an angry neighbor. But most were unexpected events such as a fatal strike by lightening, a young fire victim, or a drowning. 
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, three generations of the Crego family worked as wilderness guides in the Western Adirondacks. Along the way, they raised families, worked for prominent employers, adapted to new forms of transportation, and helped lay the groundwork for the conservation movement in New York State.