by Roy Crego, Guest Contributor
Among the early vacationers at Big Moose Lake was Frank Williams. Frank was born around 1842 in New York City to immigrant Welsh parents. He rose steadily in the business world and eventually became the senior partner in Williams, Russell & Co., a major coffee and sugar brokerage with offices at 101 Front Street in Manhattan.
On the 1880 Census, Frank, his wife Lavinia, daughter Julia, and a servant were listed as living across the East River in Brooklyn at 55 3rd Place—an attractive brownstone.
Coffee may have been Frank’s business, but for pleasure he and his wife traveled regularly to the Adirondacks and Big Moose. Joseph F. Grady, in his The Adirondacks: Fulton Chain-Big Moose Region (1933), tells how guides Jack Sheppard and Richard Crego built one of the earliest permanent camps on the lake for Williams. It was located on the northeast shore near the inlet.
Williams called his camp Lake View, which is not to be confused with the later Lake View Lodge owned by Charles Williams (no known relation.) A diary reprinted in William Marleau’s Big Moose Station, describes hunting and fishing activity at the camp as early as 1882.
For the 1885 season, Williams funded the stocking of Big Moose with 65,000 salmon trout fry from the state hatchery at Caledonia.
Vacation season apparently started early. In his diary, guide Richard Crego records meeting Mr. Williams in Boonville on May 1, 1889 and heading toward Big Moose. Fall trips were also taken.
The Boonville Herald reported on September 30, 1886 that Mr. and Mrs. Frank Williams of New York started from Boonville to Big Moose with the intention to stay “until the snow flies.”
Frank Williams died suddenly at the place he loved, Big Moose, on June 14, 1897 at the age of 56. Funeral services were held at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Brooklyn. He was survived by his wife Lavinia L. Williams (d. 1921). Their daughter Julia had died in 1881 at age 17.
Frank and his family are buried in Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn. Lake View camp was later renamed Deerlands and burned in 1964.
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The author Roy Crego is a descendant of guide Richard Crego (1853-1925), who was employed regularly by the Williams family.
