Notes for ALVAH GREENE DUNNING:
The following information was copied from "HISTORY OF HAMILTON
COUNTY.", by Frederick C. Aber, Jr. and Stella King copyright 1965. Information
contained here is applicable only to Alvah Dunning around the Speculator,
NY area of the Adirondack mountains. Pictures are included in another section
of Alvah Dunning information. written by John Henry Houck, 4/6/2000.
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They were preceded many years before by another race of men. It
was always understood that the Indians roamed the area. Pestles, arrowheads,
pipes, and primitive honing stones are among the relics found. But evidence
exists that a prehistoric race preceded the redman. At Indian Lake, the
late Portus Burgess once unearthed fragments of a dish, which was proclaimed
the oldest piece of pottery exhibited at an archeological meeting. At Blue
Mountain Lake in the early 1860's, the noted hermit, Alvah Dunning, felled
a cedar tree, three feet in diameter and judged to be between four and
five hundred years old. Beneath it, he found an ancient hearth with bits
of three earthen pots. Again, the hermit came upon finely decorated bits
of pottery, and a handsome axe of greenish stone, judged of great antiquity.
page 4
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Raquette Lake Guides John Ballard, William Ballard, Wesley Bates,
Phillip Bell, George W. Bentley, Richard Bennett, Joseph A. Bryere, William
Cornell, John Crogan, Alvah Dunning, James Harrington, Samuel Jenkins,
George Jenkins, John A. Jones, "Doc" Francis LaPrairie, "Cal" Alexander
LaPrairie, Edward Martin, Clifton Pierce, Seth M. Pierce, Seth M. Pierce,
Jr., John J. Richards, Arthur Sheldon, Hiram Steaves, Andrew Syms, Paul
Tibhets, Alonzo Wood, Jerome Wood, William Wood. page 142
**********
It was about this time that the hermit, Alvah Dunning, having left
Piseco Lake to settle at Lewey Lake, finally migrated to Blue Mountain
Lake. Ned hired him as guide. The two men, so different in characteristics,
never got along. The final quarrel came over the killing of game. Ned Buntline,
well able to buy all the supplies he needed, championed the few game laws
then existing. Alvah Dunning, without money and subsisting by his rod and
gun, claimed the right to take fish and game whenever he was hungry. At
last, the two parted, each threatening to shoot the other on sight. page
470
**********
The hermit, Alvah Dunning of Lake Pleasant and Piseco, in his eternal
search for solitude, chose Eighth Lake around 1880. There on the north
shore, he built a cabin of sorts and fished and hunted as his needs required.
Constantly, he was annoyed by the encroachments of civilization in the
form of guideboat parties from Fourth Lake. His stay on Eighth Lake was
no longer than in the other locations he had sought at Lewey, Blue Mountain,
and varied sites on Raquette Lake. page 560
**********
TOWN OF LAKE PLEASANT
.... On October 13, 1848, William and Betsey Ann Schuyler transferred
2,400 square feet of land for one dollar to Alvah Dunning, Michael Dunning,
and William Schuyler, trustees of joint School district 6, "part of said
district lying in the Town of Lake Pleasant, and the other in the Town
of Arietta." Page 666
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TOWN OF LAKE PLEASANT
Lewey Lake gained other residents within the next few years. In 1860,
the renowned hermit, Alvah Dunning, left his wife and home at Piseco Lake
and took to the woods. Alvah first settled at Lewey Lake, building a camp
to which he guided fishing and hunting parties for several years. Then
the hermit moved to the Eagle's Nest vicinity beyond Blue Mountain Lake.....
The lumbermen had gained most of the land around Lewey Lake in
the early 1870's. Then it was that William Ferguson, the blacksmith, a
native of Glens Falls who had been living since about 1848 at Long Lake,
came to live in Alvah Dunning's old camp while attending to horseshoeing.
Phebe Stevens, 57, was his housekeeper and it is assumed that the house
was open to lumbermen who required lodging. page 725
**********
TOWN OF LONG LAKE
Then in 1865 arrived Alvah Dunning, woodsman supreme, who had left
his home at Piseco five years earlier after a violent disagreement with
a wife he accused of being unfaithful. Intent on the life of a hermit,
he had gone first to Lewey Lake in the northern part of the Town of Lake
Pleasant, building a hunter's cabin there. Then he had moved to Blue Mountain
Lake and became engaged in a serious battle with the writer, Ned Buntline,
who was then living at Eagle's Nest. Now it was time to withdraw from any
semblance of civilization and Alvah had selected the wilds of Raquette
Lake. It was just one year before "Adirondack" Murray began frequenting
the locality during summers. Alvah later told that, at the time of his
arrival, Mike McGuire and Bill Nash were at hand, making a living by providing
deer and trout to the fashionable hotels at Saratoga Springs. page 789
**********
Murray made his headquarters on Osprey Island in Raquette Lake,
where he erected two or three camps and occupied them during the summers
of 1867, 1868, and 1869. Alvah Dunning first settled on Indian Point. Then
he took possession of Murray's camps on Osprey Island and lived there,
winters and summers, for several years.
It was about this time that Dr. Thomas C. Durant, building his
Adirondack Railroad from Saratoga to North Creek in the late 1860's, began
occasional explorations to Raquette Lake. But it was not until the arrival
of his son, William West Durant, in 1876, that the hermit Dunning had cause
for concern for the solitude he had sought. page 790
**********
At the Forked Lake House of George Leavitt, 53, lived "Captain"
Calvin S. Parker, 70, with his wife, Permelia, 54. Listed as boarders and
guides at the establishment were Robb Hartson, 32, Thomas Cary, 64, and
Alvah G. Dunning, 65. Alvah, incidently, had had his last brush with organization
when he was elected game constab1e of the town of Long Lake on March 19,1878.
He served for one year only and was replaced by Warren W. Cole. page 792
**********
The location of the village of Durant, reached by old woods road
in winter and by boat in summer, proved remote for the march of progress.
The hermit Alvah Dunning was living on the southwest shore of the lake,
having been induced by the Charles Durants to relinquish Osprey Island
so that they might build their "Fairview" Camp there. Always retreating
from civilization's inroads, Alvah felt safe in this wild setting until
he was approached by a young lawyer asking him to sign documents that would
release his uncertain claim on his new location. The hermit was stunned
to learn that the spot was needed for a railroad station. Alvah left for
the Rocky Mountains for a few years. page 796
OLD TIMES IN THE ADIRONDACKS by Seneca Ray Stoddard 1873, pages
109, 110 & 111.
....At the foot of one of these giants old Alvah Dunning has built
a bark shanty, and with his dogs lives there-a modern Robinson Crusoe.
Two or three dogs came out with their master to see us. I cannot say welcome,
for the dogs growled, and the old hunter growled, and our suddenly concieved
idea of stopping there until the next day was changed by his surly permission
when our desire was made known. So we continued on toward the east inlet.
Old Alvah was in his normal condition-suffering from ill treatment.
He has always been a sufferer, because he doesn't always look at things
in the same light as others, and he believes to this day that it was only
by chance, aided somewhat by an overruling Providence, that his life is
spared, for did not "Ned Buntline," the terrible, chase him all over Blue
Mountain Lake with intent to deposit lead in his venerable cuticle? It
is said that he hunted for Ned one summer and a misunderstanding arose,
to settle which, Alvah felt called upon to embezzle a boat of the novelist's,
and after perforating it in various places to sink it in the lake. This
manner of procedure struck Ned as being out of order, so as a preliminary
move he shot the old man's dog, one while the latter was standing between
his master's legs. Alvah was grieved thereby, and with a longing to indulge
in cremation, threatened to set the "Eagle's Nest" on fire. When asked
about the affair, Ned said, "I drove him out of that section when I was
there because he threatened my life. The Old Rip steered clear of me after
he found that I was as ready to throw lead as he was threats."
It is said that the first house at Raquette Lake was built on Indian
Point, then one nearly opposite by a Mr. Wood, who lived there about twenty
years, then became discouraged and left. Now the sole occupant of this
fair land is old Alvah Dunning, the hermit of the Raquette.
TALES From An ADIRONDACK Co. by Ted Aber and Stella King 1961 pages
24-29
"Perhaps it was his love for the woods that interfered with Alvah's
domestic life, In any case, the hunter felt obliged to leave Piseco Lake
in 1860, when he outraged public feeling by beating his wife, who had been
unfaithful to hime. His marriage had lasted two years. Immediately he wennt
deeper into the Adirondack heartland."...
"He was back (from the West) in a year at Raquette Lake, but he
was a changed Alvah, bitterly disappointed with the changing world. He
travelled more frequently. In his last years, he spent his winters principally
with his sister, Mrs. Charles Potter, in Syracuse.
In view of his distaste for modern inventions, the manner of his
death proved a crowning irony. In March 1902, he attended the Sportsmen's
show in New York City. On his return, he spent the night of March 14th
at the Dudley House in Utica. The next morning, he was found asphyxiated
in his bed. The gas jet had been leaking all night. Alvah had blown out
the light."
>More About ALVAH GREENE DUNNING:
1: His body was moved by Emily Dunning Houck to Onondaga Co.
2: 1843, School Commissioner
Burial: Onondaga Cemetery, Onondaga Co., Syracuse. NY
