North Country At Work

Mining graphite in Hague, NY. Circa 1890 – 1900. Photo donated by Fred Provoncha.

In 1961, the summer before Carl McLaughlin’s freshman year in high school, he moved with his family to the Moshier Falls Dam on the Beaver River, in the Town of Webb in Herkimer County. Carl’s father worked for Niagara Mohawk and was responsible for the maintenance of the hydro station. The whole family lived in […]

The Crooks and McLean Company monument shop at 225 State Street in Carthage. In the early 1900s, Crooks and McLean Co was the largest retail dealer of granite and marble monument work in northern New York. One of Crooks and McLean’s biggest projects was the mausoleum for the Frederick Marcy estate in Boonville in 1907, which […]

Lumberjack Philip Jackson operating a 1978 John Deere 440C skidder. In the foreground is Jack Pulsifer. The skidder is on top of a pile of large, soft maple logs cut close to the Boquet River. Spring 2016. Elizabethtown, NY. Courtesy of Philip N. Jackson IV. Jackson says he’s been logging for about 66 years. Listen […]

Siblings Dave & Elaine Johnson spreading out chair flag, the green leaf of cattail, out to dry. The chair flag was the green leaf of cattail, which they used to weave the bottom of seats when making chairs. 1976. Three miles north of Redwood, a hamlet in the town of Alexandria, NY. Courtesy of Dave […]

Roy C. Johnson is in the process of checking a chair flag, curing it and making sure it’s dry. “Chair flag” is a local term for the green leaf of the cattail,  which are dried and twisted into ropes of rush that were/are used in furniture-making for the bottom of chair seats, often referred to […]

A large wall of muskrat pelts trapped by Roy Johnson. Johnson was known as the “preacher-trapper” because he worked as both. Circa 1979. Philadelphia, NY. Courtesy of Dave Johnson. Listen to Dave Johnson on his father’s trapping in the audio clip. 

Roy C. Johnson, who was known as the “preacher-trapper” because those were his two occupations, displaying pelts he trapped. Circa 1960. Hamlet of Brier Hill in Morristown, NY. Courtesy of Dave Johnson.

Roy C. Johnson, who was both a preacher and a trapper, posing in front of a rack of pelts, including fox, coyote, raccoon, mink, and muskrat. Circa 1970. Philadelphia, NY. Courtesy of Dave Johnson.

The “preacher-trapper” Roy C. Johnson, so-called because those were his two jobs, posing with the pelts of foxes he trapped. Circa 1960. Morristown, NY. Courtesy of Dave Johnson.