Summer in central New York
means many things, but one of the most popular is the yard sale. On a sunny
Saturday morning you are bound to find one in your travels.
Every few years I pick my
way along the annual “Route 90 Sale” looking for things I don’t need. I am
always browsing for old books, and this year I found one that lends itself to a
Scipio story - Little Loo by W. Clark Russell.
A prolific writer, Russell authored a total of 57 novels;
collections of short stories and newspaper articles; a volume of historical
essays; popular biographies and a collection of verses.
When I opened the front cover of Little Loo, I found that it
had been a Christmas gift in 1900. The flyleaf is inscribed “Presented by
Grandma Clark to Alpha Clark December 25, 1900.”
I thought those names were familiar, so I checked into the
historical family records I have for Scipio and there it was. Grandma Clark was
actually Joanna Malvina Johnson, wife of George Clark who built and ran
Ensenore House. Her son Frank and his wife Emma had two girls – Alpha and
Louisa.
In June of 1863, George
Clark registered for military service in the 24th Congressional
District. The register shows he was a 22-year-old unmarried carpenter. He was
mustered in to the 1st Engineers (or Serrell’s Engineers) on
February 16, 1863. As a Private, his pay would have been $13 a month. By
September of 1863, he married Malvina.
In the spring of 1865, Mr. and Mrs. Clark bought the Hiram Close farm and took up their
residence in the town of Scipio about one mile west of Ensenore where they
resided for over 40 years.
In the 1900 census, I found that George
and Malvina were still living in Scipio, right next door to his son Frank, his
wife Emma and their children Alpha and Louisa. In fact, after George Clark died
in 1906, Malvina moved in with Frank’s family until her own death in 1916.
You may already know that
George Clark built a four-story hotel and named it the Ensenore Glen House,
which opened in June of 1875. It had 40 rooms, a huge hotel for our area. Each
room had access to porches that encircled the hotel, with a large observatory
at the top. In 1875, it cost two dollars a day to stay (about $40 in 2015
dollars) and another fifty cents for meals. The Ensenore House had a black
walnut staircase and a large barroom with an L-shaped bar.
Captain Clark had 10 boats,
supplies for croquet and other games, and of course you could get a ride on his
steamer The Owasco, which was later renamed The Ensenore. The featured
attraction that drew people from far and wide was a walk up through the Glen to
the falls. Clark had constructed stairs for the trail, some of wood and some
carved right out of the native stone, which ended with a downward view of 437
feet – almost one and a half times the length of a football field!
The recipient of Little Loo,
Alpha Clark, married to Dr. Benjamin Fordyce, a well-known and respected man of
Scipio who spent over two years accumulating the cobblestones from Lake Ontario
to build their home in 1843; it still stands just west of Scipio Center.
I can't wait to see what treasures I find in this year's yard sales!
