—Part SEVEN —
In November 1906, Frank Williams would join several other Inlet residents in testifying at the Chester Gillette murder trial for the Grace Brown murder on July 11, 1906 at Big Moose Lake.
According to Frank, Gillette came to the Seventh Lake House on the day after the murder with a boat rented from the Arrowhead boat house.
After paddling around the lake, Gillette wanted dinner at the hotel and signed the hotel register, “Chester Gillette, Cortland,” the register page being Exhibit 47 for the court.
Frank testified that Gillette was seeking two young ladies from his town.
Gillette later climbed the trail to Black Bear Mountain to take pictures.33
Frank began the tradition of advertising the hotel as, in addition to its amenities, being the highest at 1820 feet on the Fulton Chain.
In 1909, the hotel added an annex named Rockledge Cottage.
By 1910, the hotel advertised the availability of four “rustic” cottages as well. Lodgers could be met at Eagle Bay station and taken 3.5 miles through Inlet over a “good road” to the hotel.
The needs of new automobile traffic encouraged Inlet to install a steel bridge to replace the original wooden works, approved by the town in 1911.
In October 1913, A. H. Barber represented the Seventh Lake camps in meetings at The Wood hotel with the County Commis-sioners in a futile petition for a “shore road” at the lake.
It advanced far enough that valuations were made for obtaining the necessary right of way.34
But other county residents were against the expense to taxpayers for a road benefiting only a few private land owners.
In 1915, the State funded the bridge’s replacement near Frank Williams’s hotel.35
By 1916, a new paved state road in took travelers to the steel Seventh Lake outlet bridge.
But if you missed this turn and stayed right you shortly found “a long lane cut into the heart of the wilderness…pocked with great holes in which pieces of roots still lie, twisted and shattered, attesting to the power of the blast that blew the foundations of forest giants from the place of their birth and growth.”36
In April 1916, Frank’s first wife Jennie Scribner Williams died and a year later Frank married Mrs. Emma Sasbaker Smith.
Later that year, in a transaction dated October 1, 1916, Frank’s brother Charles conveyed the hotel property to him for $5,000.37
Frank Williams continued to operate the Seventh Lake House until 1922.
During his management, the hotel continued to attract lodgers who enjoyed the remoteness and beauty of the surroundings.
The hotel’s attractions included a new car garage (1921), cement tennis courts, a dance hall in the boat house and orchestra music.
Dinners were enhanced by fresh milk and vegetables.
A long sufferer of heart trouble, before dying in 1924, Frank sold the hotel back to his brother Charles Williams in a transaction dated January 29, 1922, with Charles assuming outstanding mortgages on the property including Frank’s 1916 mortgage for Frank’s original purchase and another mortgage.38
Subsequent to this transaction, Charles and Margaret Williams conveyed the properties to Frank Breen on April 29, 1922.
Frank lived summers with his brother Charles at Lake View Lodge until dying in Utica in 1924.39
Frank Breen and his wife Barbara Kline Breen had worked 13 years for William Dart at his camp at the lake named for him.
Often they drove William Dart and his family to the Darts’ winter home in Florida.
Sometime after 1925, the architecturally impressive round adjoining dining room was added to east side of the hotel building.
Frank also erected supposedly the first electric fence locally for purposes of keeping away deer.40
To be continued…Past columns can be found at weeklyadk.com and adirondackalmanack.com