Historical Society of the Town of Chester

10/15/2026

You could once “drive” on what is now Panther Mt. Drive by sending a gutta-percha ball flying with your “bulger brassie.”

Thirty-three years before a golf course opened at Green Mansions in 1930, Chestertown had a nine-hole golf course within a minute’s walk of the “Four Corners” (the intersection of Main St., Riverside Drive and Theriot Avenue in the center of the village).

When the Glens Falls Daily Times announced the 1897 opening of the new course, it rhapsodized on its setting. “The links have been laid out over the beautiful stretch of rolling land just at the foot of Panther mountain on the Chester House farm. It is an ideal spot for golfing, the little hills and valleys affording many desirable hazards, while the piney shade of the mountain invites the onlooker to a comfortable seat in nature's grand stand. The club promises to be a big success from the start.”

This gushing appraisal could have been from a press release written by Harry S. Downs, the owner and chief promoter of the golf course. Mr. Downs was also the owner of the popular Chester House (located at the Four Corners), which attracted many affluent downstate visitors around the turn of the 19th Century. Chester House advertisements in the first decade of the 20th Century touted golf as one of the recreational attractions available to its guests.

Despite the enthusiastic tone of the 1897 article, one of the regular summer visitors to the Chester House (C. Albert Jacob, Jr. – whose family later owned Bonnie Belle Farm on Loon Lake) wrote decades later in his recollection of life at the Chester House a somewhat less glowing review of the Panther Mountain Golf Course. “Mr. Downs did put in one recreational facility that lasted for several years – a nine-hole golf course. It took in all his former pasture land at the foot of Panther Mountain. The course was laid out by a professional, but there were physical limitations he could not overcome. The so-called greens were just areas twenty feet or so in diameter from which the sod had been removed and the ground raked fairly smooth; they were really just sand or dirt greens. No artificial hazards were necessary as nature had provided plenty, and the only difference between the fairways and the rough was that the fairways were rough and the rough was rougher.”

This more objective assessment may explain why the Panther Mt. Golf Course did not survive. By 1909, Chester House advertisements in New York City papers no longer mentioned golf. Chestertown’s original golf course with its colorfully-named holes like “Devil’s Defeat,” “Over the Swamp” and “Burnt Stump” was apparently no more.

The Panther Mt. Golf Course score card shown is from the collection of the Town of Chester Historical Society at the Local History Museum in the Chester Municipal Building, Chestertown, NY.

References:

“Bulger brassie” is an archaic name for a wooden golf club used for long shots on the fairway. Charles Larcom Grave, “Lauder on the Links” in Party Portraits, and Other Verses, p.67 (1910) (“I love my brassie, my bonnie bulger brassie, It’s the finest club that ever yet was seen. Over ev’ry bunker sailing with energy unfailing, it lands my Dunlop deftly on the green”).

Hutchinson, The Book of Golf and Golfers, p. 275 (1899) (the gutta-percha ball has revolutionized the game of golf “within comparatively recent years”).

"Green Mansions Course Has Been Completed," Glens Falls Times, p. 11 (Sep. 24, 1929) ("new nine-hole golf course ... will be ready for use next summer").

Glens Falls Daily Times, p. 4 (Apr. 17, 1897) (Chestertown golf course opens).

Troy Daily Times (___, 1900) (Chester House ad touts "Pure air. Mountain spring water. Electric lights. Golf. Tennis. ...").

Brooklyn Daily Eagle, p. 15 (Jun. 18, 1907) (Chester House ad notes "mountain scenery; lovely drives; good fishing, golf, tennis, etc.").

C. Albert Jacob, Jr., Old Days at the Chester House, pp. 9-10 (1966).

Brooklyn Daily Eagle, p. 13 (Jun. 14, 1909) (Chester House ad mentions "lovely drives, good fishing, tennis, auto headquarters, etc." but not golf).

10/13/2026

“The dreamy haze of autumn time is in the slumbrous air … leaves are turning red and brown and golden everywhere…”

Benjamin F. Leggett (1834-1924) was born and raised in Chestertown, the grandson of one of the Town of Chester’s original settlers, Charles Leggett (1761-1834) (as well as the great-great uncle of Chester’s recent supervisor, Craig R. Leggett). He spent most of his professional life as an educator in Pennsylvania, only returning to his boyhood home in Chestertown near the end of his long life. Nevertheless, in his secondary career as a poet, Dr. Leggett often turned to the scenes and events of his Adirondack boyhood as inspiration for his verse. At a time when accessible poetry was very popular with the reading public, Dr. Leggett published a number of volumes of poetry and was a frequent contributor to literary and other magazines. The lines quoted above are from “In Harvest Time,” which was included in his book Out-Door Poems published in 1906. The entire poem is as follows:

IN HARVEST TIME

The dreamy haze of autumn time
Is in the slumbrous air.
And drowsy insects pipe and chime
Without a seeming care,
While leaves are turning red and brown
And golden everywhere.

The thistle-down is on the wing,
The purple asters shine,
The goldenrod - a royal king -
Is drowsy with his w**e,
And dreamily in Autumn sheen
He trails his banners fine.

Through fields of corn the reapers stray
'Mid dry leaves crisp and rolled;
And tented shocks In thick array
Reveal the maize's gold—
The manna God sends down to man.
As in the days of old.

The summer wanes—her work is done.
Her royal banners furled.
While leaves that crimsoned in the sun
Are downward swept and hurled.
And autumn brings the golden grain
That feeds the hungry world.

References:

Benjamin F. Leggett, “In Harvest Time,” Out-Door Poems, pp. 76-77 (1906).

Glens Falls Post Star, p. 5 (Jul. 19, 1924) (Dr. Leggett’s obituary).

Knickerbocker Press, p. 3 (Dec. 21, 1919) (Dr. Leggett returns to live in Chestertown).

Troy Times, p. 5 (Feb. 9, 1915) (announcement of publication of Dr. Leggett’s book, The Cruise of the Half Moon and Other Poems).

The Magazine of Poetry, pp. 355-359 (Ju. 1891) (short biography of Dr. Leggett with several of his poems).

The Bookman, A Literary Journal, p. 239 (Nov. 1897) (publication of Dr. Leggett’s poem "The Oak in Autumn").

10/09/2026

Yesterday’s playground was different!

Chester’s legendary community photographer, Itsuzo Sumy, captured this action shot of the Chestertown playground at the beginning of the new school year in 1958. If the boy on the left side of the merry-go-round continues to push it faster and faster, the girl riding side-saddle on its right side may find her perch precarious! Does anyone recognize themselves in this photo?

10/06/2026

In the 1880s, some folks thought “Starbuckville” needed rebranding.

“Starbuckville” is a locality on the eastern border of the Town of Chester along the Schroon River at a spot where a dam has held back the river’s waters for nearly two centuries. Isaac Starbuck, a scion of one of Chester’s oldest families, started a tannery there during the sole leather boom years of the 1840s, and the village that grew up around the tannery was given his name. Although calling anything in its vicinity a village now would be a stretch, Starbuckville remained one of the distinct localities of the Town (with its own school – District 3) well into the 20th Century. The continued existence of the Starbuckville Dam keeps the name alive.

However, in the 1880s, some residents of Starbuckville apparently felt that the name of their village was ludicrously rustic and sought the stature of residing in a community with a chic and prestigious name. Someone made the bland but elegant-sounding suggestion of “Riverdale,” already the name of a stylish section of the Bronx. Soon, newspaper articles were being written that referred to “Starbuckville — now Riverdale.” Then the community news started being published in one of the local newspapers under the dateline of “Riverdale.” Homely old Starbuckville seemed to be on its way to becoming posh Riverdale.

Although we can’t be certain of what motivated the residents of Starbuckville, a prominent historian of American place names observed that “[i]n the years following the Civil War, a horrible malady called ‘good taste’ began to rage throughout the United States.” In naming or re-naming localities, people with “good taste” “rejected the honest names of earlier times” in preference for “conventional terms of pale elegance.” A generic name, with the Scottish-northern English suffix “dale” (popularized by the romantic novels of Sir Walter Scott earlier in the century), “Riverdale” simply reeks of “good taste.”

For better or worse, “good taste” did not prevail in Starbuckville. Some newspapers continued to publish local news under the old dateline even through the height of the infatuation with “Riverdale.” Governmental publications and published maps also continued to call the place “Starbuckville.” Eventually, the taste for “Riverdale” faded and everyone went back to the old name. Today, the U.S. Geological Survey’s current topographical map for the area still identifies a place called Starbuckville located along the Schroon River on the eastern border of Chester, and a longstanding name that memorialized an important era of local history has been preserved.

References:

N.Y. Laws, ch. 173, § 1 (“Alanson Fox and Reuben H. Green are hereby authorised to erect a dam across the Schroon river, at the town of Chester, in the county of Warren, on lot number nineteen…”).

Smith, History of Warren County with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of Some of Its Prominent Men and Pioneers, p. 600 (1885) (“Starbuckville” named for Isaac Starbuck who, in the 1840s, started a tannery which burned in 1870).

F. W. Beers & Co., Warren County Atlas (1876) (Starbuckville school is District 3).

Glens Falls Messenger, (Oct. 1885) (“From Chestertown the party went to Starbuckville—now Riverdale—and took the new river road up the Horicon bank of the Schroon, en route for the foot of Schroon Lake.”)

Glens Falls Messenger, (Sep. 4, 1885) (“The Schroon Lake and Riverdale steamer, Capt. A. A. Bailey, is making regular trips, leaving Schroon at 8 A. m. and arriving at Riverdale at 10 A. m.”).

Glens Falls Messenger (Sep. 18, 1885) ("new steamer ... left her moorings [in Schroon Lake] as usual yesterday morning on the trip to Riverdale").

Stewart, Names on the Land, pp. 270-272 and pp. 330-332 (1945, 2008, ed.) (Scott novels popularize “dale” for American place names; “good taste” era).

The Post-Star, p. 8 (Dec. 30, 1911) (local news for the locality formerly known as “Starbuckville” reported as occurring in “Riverdale”).

Glens Falls Times and Messenger, p. 11 (Jul. 6, 1916) (local news still reported under the dateline “Starbuckville”).

Post-Star, p. 8 (Apr. 4, 1922) (refers to a local living in “Riverdale”).

New York State Engineer and Surveyor, Annual Report, p. 295 (1916) (refers to dam at Starbuckville).

North Creek News Enterprise, p. 14, (Jul. 2, 1987) (“Mr. and Mrs. Coolidge Braley and son moved into their new home at Starbuckville, Chestertown”).

U.S. Geological Survey, Chestertown Quadrangle 1:24,000 Map (2023).

09/30/2026

Did you know that Gaslight Village began in Pottersville NY in 1950? It ran there for 2 years, when Charles Wood bought it & moved it to Lake George!

09/30/2026

Why would anyone say that an Adirondack rock was floating?

Floating Rock was a tourist attraction that opened in 1959 in the Town of Chester near Friends Lake. (The location is now private property.) The promoters of the attraction made a number of difficult-to-verify assertions, which, in the spirit of the tourist industry of the times, should be taken as all in good fun. In addition to the Floating Rock itself, they claimed visitors could see “Lost Indian Mystery Mounds” and the “Great Ritual Rock,” as well as the “Giant Ferns” on which woolly mammoths once fed. The attraction appears to have closed after the 1967 season.

One of the assertions made by the promoters was that, “[o]ver 30 million years ago, during the great upheaval, when the earth was pushed up from the ocean floor, the Great Floating Rock was left resting on four feet of ledge.” If the Floating Rock is indeed perched on a ledge, the more likely explanation would seem to be that it is a glacial erratic, a boulder transported far from the bedrock of its origin by a moving glacier and then deposited when the ice sheets receded about 12,000 years ago.

The origin of the name “Floating Rock” is a mystery to this writer. Perhaps someone thought that the great rock on its mountain perch appeared to almost float in the air? Perhaps someone with a geological turn of mind was inspired by the idea that water in the form of glacial ice had “floated” the boulder to its present location. A highly speculative possibility is that the name was bestowed by the second generation Irish-Americans who settled around Friends Lake in the latter half of the 19th Century. Some of them might have recalled the legend of St. Vouga, said to have been the Archbishop of Armagh in the 6th Century, who, seeking relief from the burdens of his See, traveled to the seacoast to obtain transport to Brittany where he hoped to spend the remainder of his days in serene reflection. Finding no vessel to take him, he prayed atop a giant boulder, which then miraculously separated from the shore and floated him across the Celtic Sea to his destination. When they acquired homes around Friends Lake in the 19th Century, the new landowners were completing a multi-generation journey that had taken their families from a famine-ravaged land across the sea to a place of beauty and opportunity. Perhaps some of them felt their families’ journeys had rivaled in wonder that of St. Vouga’s on his floating rock, and named the local glacial erratic in homage.

Does any reader know the real answer or wish to offer an alternative hypothesis for the name?

References:

Glens Falls Times, p. 16, (Jul. 10, 1959) (“Floating Rock” opening).

Floating Rock Brochure (circa 1959).

Chestertown-Pottersville Chamber of Commerce, p. 5, Tri-Lakes Area
Brochure, p. 5 (1962) (Floating Rock advertisement).

Chilson, et al., An Adirondack Chronology (2010) (date of ice sheet recession).

NYSDOT, Geotechnical Design Manual, p. 3-10 (Jun 17, 2013) (definition of glacial erratic).

O'Hanlon, Lives of the Irish Saints, pp. 668-671 (1873) (journey of St. Vouga).

09/27/2026

“Just across from Panther Mountain …” The alma mater of Chestertown Central School was sung to the same tune as that of Cornell University (“Far above Cayuga’s waters …”), which, according to university’s website, was originally the tune of an 1857 ballad called “Annie Lisle.”

09/25/2026

1967 Senior trip to Washington DC

09/24/2026

Oh Pottersville, our school so dear ...

09/19/2026