Whitehall Rules

Fort Edward
No LL
Saturday
Boy did I underrate Whitehall. Despite the fact that we passed through here twice before by boat, and countless dozens of times by car, I had no idea what jewels it was hiding. The past 24 hours have been among the most fun ones we've had on our travels.

Last night we went to a benefit fish fry at the American Legion hall. It was delicious. After that, we went to an open air concert at the war memorial park right in front of the canal wall where Tarwathie was tied up. After the concert, we still had time before dark so we walked around a bit.

I was very surprised to find that the other thing close to the canal was the resting place of the USS Ticonderoga. The Ticonderoga, was built in Vergennes Vermont, right at the Macdonough shipyard where we spent time quite recently. She was also the principle object of victory at the Battle of Plattsburg, just north of Valcour Island, in 1814. I remember well reading about her in the book called The Battle of Plattsburg.













This morning, Libby and I went to the nearby Skenesborough Museum. What a jewel that turned out to be. It was packed with very interesting local history. Better still, we met Wayne at the museum. Wayne (he says just think of John Wayne) is a local and a museum volunteer and one of the team of people who raised the USS Ticongeroga from the lake bottom. Wanye personally dove into the muck to lift out the timbers. Wayne also turned out to be a great narrator of the local history and he even had his own theories about the thinking of Benedict Arnold and Ethan Allen. He made the visit great.


The museum also has a wonderful collection of 18th and 19th century antiques. Not all of them are historically linked but most seem to have a local connection. It seems that Whitehall was once a bustling and prosperous center of commerce and industry. It had many wealthy citizens who left behind interesting artifacts. For example, consider the beautiful chair in the picture below, built with Texas longhorn horns and hooves.












We learned about Julio T. Buel, who invented metal fishing lures, and the whole concept of glittering metal fishing lures. Mr. Buel was a local who was launched on his career one way in Whitehall when he dropped one of his mother's silver spoons in the lake and a big lake trout came along to swallow it. After cleaning out the rest of his mother's silver service, he had to start manufacturing his own.

One small fact we learned at the museum was that the big house up on the hill that I mocked yesterday as the Frankenstein House, is actually Skene Manor. Not only that, but we learned that one can get a free tour of the manor and even to eat lunch in the manor tea room. Great! Wayne even volunteered to drive us up the mountain to the manor. That was very kind of him.












At the manor, Wayne stopped to gossip with the manor staff, while Libby and I joined the manor tour being conducted by Joanne, another charming local resident. Skene Manor, built by the Potter family is a real jewel. In some ways it reminded us of our former home in Schenectady's Stockade. In other ways, it was grand enough to try to aspire to Vanderbilt scale greatness. What resulted is just an elegant mansion up on a hill overlooking a formerly grand city below. I can't post a photo documentation of the whole place. Just look at the fine detail in one of the door hinges as a partial example. Who puts such attention on door hinges?
















Mr. Potter was a state Supreme Court Justice. His son was an admiral who sailed around the world. The admiral mailed back his nautical charts to his father, and his father used them to make wallpaper in the so-called chart room on the third floor of the mansion. We finished our great tour with a nice lunch in the tea room. After lunch we chatted more with Joanne, she was a lot of fun. The picture below shows part of the wallpaper I loved. The fireplaces in the manor were made of slate finished by a special technique. They were sunk in water, then oil paints were floated on the water, the fireplace slate lifted up, picking up the surface patterns of the paint, then baked to fix the image. No two fireplaces were alike.
















The picture below shows the view from the window with the light in it that I photographed last night. Below, you can see Whitehall, and Tarwathie, and a canal boat. The canal boat was one of the charter boats that one can rent in Waterford. It was chartered this week with a nice young couple on their honeymoon. We met the couple yesterday, and they also had lunch today at Skene Manor.
























Libby and our guide Joanne

After walking back down the mountain we retired to the town hall, which the town graciously leaves unlocked on weekends so that boaters can get in to use the showers and rest rooms. We intended to shower away the heat of the day. Unfortunately, the town's hot water must have been shut off because we couldn't get any warm water out of the shower. I went ahead and took a cold shower. Libby declined.

On the way back to the boat, we encountered the local gang. A bunch of teenage boys were hanging around behind the museum and telling jokes. They stopped me, and asked if I minded if they called me Popeye. They thought I looked like Popeye. They asked if I would throw one of the boys in to the canal while they filmed with a video camera. I obliged them. Look for me on youtube.com