A Northern Light (36 page)

There were no eyewitnesses to Grace Brown's death and no one knows for certain what happened on Big Moose Lake on July 11, 1906. Chester originally stated that Grace's death was an accident, then later claimed she'd committed suicide. George W. Ward, the district attorney who prosecuted the case, reconstructed Chester's activities before and after Grace's death—among them his use of an alias when registering at the Glenmore Hotel, the fact that he fled the scene and did not report Grace missing, and the fact that he was found enjoying himself at an Inlet hotel three days after her death—and argued that Chester had killed Grace. Instrumental to Ward's case were Grace's own letters.

In
A Northern Light,
I've taken the liberty of having Grace give a fictional character—Mattie—all of the correspondence between herself and Chester. In reality, however, when Grace was in the Adirondacks, she had only the letters Chester had written to her packed among her things. The letters
she
had written to
him
were found by the police in Chester's room in Cortland after he was arrested.

Grace's letters had a profound effect upon those who attended Chester's trial. People sobbed openly as they were read. Everyone wept, it was said, except Gillette. Though the case was based solely on circumstantial evidence, the jury found for the prosecution. Chester Gillette was convicted of murder in the first degree and executed in Auburn Prison on March 30, 1908.

Nearly a century after her death, Grace Browns words have the same effect on me that they had on the people who attended Chester Gillette's trial—they break my heart. I grieved for Grace Brown—a person I'd never known, a young woman long dead—when I first read them. There is so much fear and despair in those lines, but there is much else, too—a good heart, humor, intelligence, wit. Grace liked strawberries and roses and French toast. She had friends, and a brother who teased her about her cooking. She liked to go riding and shoot off firecrackers. Her letters remind me of what it was like to be nineteen, and I often wonder what she would have made of her life had she been allowed to live it. I'm glad that she helped Mattie live hers.

My grandmother, who worked as a waitress in a Big Moose camp in the twenties, says Grace Brown still haunts the lake.

Her letters will always haunt me.

Jennifer Donnelly
Brooklyn, New York
October 2002

Though Mattie Gokey, her family, and her friends are fictional beings, some of the story's characters, like Dwight Sperry and John Denio, were real. Others, like Henry the underchef and Charlie Eckler the pickle boat captain, are fictional but drawn from descriptions of real people. Several area authors helped me put the flesh back on old bones. I would like to acknowledge my great debt to Marylee Armour; W. Donald Burnap; Matthew J. Conway, my grand-uncle; Harvey L. Dunham; Roy C. Higby; Herbert F. Keith; William R. Marleau; and Clara V. O'Brien. Their memoirs and histories allowed me to weave fact with fiction by providing names, dates, and events; accounts of area people and their daily lives; and chronologies of towns and resorts. A list of books by these authors, plus additional sources and suggestions for further reading, follows.

Jerold Pepper, director of the Adirondack Museum's library, allowed me access to a transcript of the Gillette murder trial and much else, including the diaries of Lucilla Arvilla Mills Clark—a Cranberry Lake farm wife—and ephemera from the great camps. The museum's exhibits provided me with information on logging and transportation. The Farmers' Museum in Cooperstown, New York, gave me valuable insight into earlier methods of farming and animal husbandry. I am obliged to the staff at both of these excellent museums. They could not have been more helpful, or more patient, with my endless questions.

I am also indebted to Peg Masters, Town of Webb historian and former director of the Town of Webb Historical Association, for allowing me to view the associations collection of photographs as well as its census and tax records. She also provided information on early Inlet businesses and the Inlet Common School. I would also like to thank the librarians at the Port Leyden Community Library, who gave me extended loans of out-of-print Adirondack titles.

My thanks, too, to Nancy Martin Pratt and her family for keeping the beautiful Waldheim just as it always was, and to the staff of the current Glenmore (originally the Glenmore store, now a pub) for letting me prowl the premises and play with their very own "Hamlet."

A very heartfelt thank-you goes to my mother, Wilfriede Donnelly, for introducing me to Grace Brown; my father, Matt Donnelly, for lessons in botany and the fine art of bug roping; my grandmother, Mary Donnelly, for telling me stories about her lumberjack father and her waitressing days at the Waldheim; and my uncle, Jack Bennett, for having more stories about the woods than the woods has trees. Lastly, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Steven Malk, my agent; Michael Stearns, my editor; and Doug Dundas, my husband, for their unstinting encouragement, wisdom, and guidance.

GRACE BROWN AND CHESTER GILLETTE

Brandon, Craig.
Murder in the Adirondacks: "An American Tragedy" Revisited.
Utica, N.Y.: North Country Books, 1986.

Brown, Grace.
Grace Browns Love Letters.
Herkimer, N.Y.: Citizen Publishing Company, 1906.

People of New York
v.
Chester Gillette.
Court transcript,

Adirondack Museum, Blue Mountain Lake, N.Y.

EAGLE BAY, INLET, BIG MOOSE LAKE, BIG MOOSE STATION

Aber, Ted, and Stella King.
The History of Hamilton County.
New York: Great Wilderness Books, 1965.

Armour, Marylee.
Heartwood: The Adirondack Homestead Life of W. Donald Burnap.
New York: The Brown Newspapers, 1988.

Higby, Roy C....
A Man from the Past.
Big Moose, N.Y.: Big Moose Press, 1974.

Marleau, William R.
Big Moose Station.
New York: Marleau Family Press, 1986.

O'Brien, Clara V.
God's Country: Eagle Bay Area—Fourth Lake/In the Heart of the Adirondacks.
Utica, N.Y.: North Country Books, 1982.

Scheffler, William L., and Frank Carey.
Big Moose Lake, New York in Vintage Postcards.
Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia Tempus Publishing Group, 2000.

ADIRONDACK GUIDES

Dunham, Harvey L.
Adirondack French Louie: Early Life in the North Woods.
Utica, N.Y.: North Country Books, 1953.

Keith, Herbert G.
Man of the Woods.
Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1972.

FARMING

Allen, Rev. Daisy Mavis Dalaba.
Ranger Bowback: An Adirondack Farmer.
West Virginia: Edwards Hill Press, 1997.

Clark, Lucilla Arvilla Mills. Diary entries of a Cranberry Lake farm wife, from 1897, Ms 87-18. Adirondack Museum Library, Blue Mountain Lake, N.Y.

Cutting, Edith E.
Whistling Girls and Jumping Sheep.
Cooperstown, N.Y.: Farmers' Museum, 1951.

Davidson, J. Brownlee, and Leon Wilson Chase.
Farm Machinery: Practical Hints for Handy-Men.
1908. Reprint, New York: The Lyons Press, 1999.

Herbert, Henry William.
Horses, Mules, and Ponies and How to Keep Them: Practical Hints for Horse-Keepers.
1859. Reprint, New York: The Lyons Press, 2000.

Myer, Ruth.
A Farm Girl in the Great Depression.
Ithaca, N.Y.: BUSCA, Inc., 1998.

LOGGING AND LUMBERJACKS

Bird, Barbara Kephart.
Calked Shoes: Life in Adirondack Lumber Camps.
Prospect, N.Y.: Prospect Books, 1952.

Hochschild, Harold K.
Lumberjacks and Rivermen in the Central Adirondacks
(1850-1950).
Blue Mountain Lake, N.Y.: Adirondack Museum, 1962.

Welsh, Peter C.
Jack, Jobbers and Kings: Logging the Adirondacks
1850–1950.
Utica, N.Y.: North Country Books, 1996.

GENERAL HISTORY

Beetle, David H.
Up Old Forge Way.
Utica, N.Y.: North Country Books, 1972. Originally printed in the
Utica Observer-Dispatch,
1948.

Grady, Joseph F.
The Adirondacks: Fulton Chain–Big Moose Region: The Story of a Wilderness.
Little Falls, N.Y.: Press of the Journal & Courier Company, 1933.

Janos, Elisabeth.
Country Folk Medicine: Tales of Skunk Oil, Sassafras Tea, & Other Old-Time Remedies.
Guilford, Conn.: The Globe Pequot Press, 1990.

Kalinowski, Tom.
Adirondack Almanac: A Guide to the Natural Year.
Utica, N.Y.: North Country Books, 1999.

Milne, William J., Ph.D., Ll.D.
High School Algebra.
New York: American Book Company, 1892 and 1906.

Peterson's Magazine.
Philadelphia, Pa.: 1860.

Teall, Edna West.
Adirondack Tales: A Girl Grows Up in the Adirondacks in the
1880s.
Jay, N.Y.:
Adirondack Life
magazine, 1970.

J
ENNIFER
D
ONNELLY
is the author of a novel for adult readers,
The Tea Rose,
and a picture book,
Humble Pie.
For
A Northern Light,
her first teen novel, she drew on stories she heard from her grandmother while growing up in upstate New York. She now lives in Brooklyn, New York.