The Forge House: Owners, Proprietor & Managers, Part II
I now return to J. Milton Buell and Dr. George Desbrough, who on April 1, 1871, bought the 250-acre “Grant Lot” from the executors of Lyman R. Lyon’s Estate.
Before partnering with Desbrough, Buell, born in 1813, and his wife, Lucy Loomis Buell, were farmers in Westmoreland, N.Y. with a daughter, Sarah Adelaide (she preferred “S. Addie”).
They were living in Whitestown at the time of the 1860 census. Buell soon after became proprietor of Utica’s Mansion House which he operated for many years.
He was perhaps in this position when he was listed in the 1870 census as “Hotel Keeper” living in the town of Leyden. Listed on the census line after daughter S. Addie was Dr. George Desbrough, physician. Dr. Desbrough was born in Cold Brook in 1825 and moved with his family to Middleville where as a youth he worked for a farmer.
He transferred his interest in the care of animals to the care of humans and studied medicine, and obtained an Oswego County medical license in the 1850s.
Soon after obtaining his medical degree, he suffered consumptive symptoms, was considered hopeless, and moved west where he worked as “medicine dispenser” for the Butterfield Overland Coach Company and the Pony Express in New Mexico and Texas.
Recovering his health, he practiced at Trenton Falls and opened a drug store in Port Leyden where he would meet J. Milton Buell. Dr. Desbrough was also the family physician for Lyman R. Lyon’s family.
He learned the medicinal qualities of roots and herbs and later developed remedies for common chronic ailments that were still sold under his name into the 20th century after his 1899 death. The Country Hotel Years: 1871–1887 Buell’s wife Lucy died in late January 1871 of consumption, but she probably was aware of her husband’s plans with Desbrough.
The Utica Weekly Herald in May 1870 informed readers that the pair were building a hotel at the “Old Forge.” Desbrough brought machinery to the tract and rebuilt Herreshoff’s sawmill beside the dam to prepare lumber for the hotel’s construction.
In a transaction dated April29, 1871, the Desbrough & Buell partnership purchased the Forge Tract, 1,358 plus acres, from the Lyon Estate for $10 (Joseph Grady wrote that the published price was $10,000). It included the right to raise the dam three feet above its original height.
After building a dwelling nearby for workers, the partners built the Forge House. The first building erected on the Fulton Chain intended as a hotel, Grady described it as “built of rough sawed, perpendicularly arranged spruce boards, battened at the crevices.” The first wing opened on May 1, 1871 and a second wing in 1872. The Sperry family leased the new place.
NOTE: Research subsequent to the writing of last week’s Part 1 corrects the information for the times of death for Charles Grant, Otis Arnold and his wife Mrs. Amy Arnold, which were not reflected in the version printed. Charles Grant died April 8, 1868 on his way to Arnolds after passing Otis Jr., not Ed, on his way to Boonville for a doctor; Mrs. Arnold died June 22, 1868, not in 1869; and Otis’s death by suicide in Nick’s Lake is assumed to be September 21, 1868 and his body was found a month, not months, later. The information provided was from Joseph Grady’s history and probably reflected Esther’s memories of events over sixty years earlier.
