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Historic Saranac Lake frequently receives queries regarding local history. Do you have any answers to the questions below? Please feel free to add what you know in the comment box, or email <amy AT historicsaranaclake DOT org> with your knowledge or your own question.

• 5/17/10 Dan Bodah is seeking information about a Swiss executive for the Renault car company, named something like Rumpf, who spent time as a TB patient in SL in the early 1930s.

• 4/10/10 A query published in the Enterprise letters: Looking for Irene Dieskow, born in SL in 1908. She had a sister named Florence, born 1906. Her parents were Gustave Dieskow and Lucy Williams Dieskow. Lucy had a sister named Lillian who married Matty Gauthier. Gustave and Lucy divorced in the mid-1920s, and both remarried. Irene never spoke of her family, and her son, now in his 70s, would like to get at least some idea of what caused this rift in the family.

• 5/15/2010 A reader is searching for information about a young girl named Josephine Gronland DeCroix, who came to the sanitarium in 1901 or 1902 with TB and was "miraculously healed". The place she stayed was called the "Siberian huts"; (this may have been a nickname for some facility.) The autobiography brings out that the Doctor called her the miracle girl. She was approximately 15 years old. Are there any records? From <lightalma  AT hotmail DOT com>

• This is apparently not referring to Trudeau's An Autobiography, as neither the term miracle nor the girl's name appear in the book. — MWanner
  

• Josephine's autobiography?

• 4/13/2010 We're looking for more information on the Palmer-Simpson Company that made airplane pontooons, etc., during World War I, apparently on Lake St., at Martin's boatshop and somewhere on Olive Street — but where? Most of the available information on this topic is about the plane, with Saranac Lake's part in it amounting to a footnote! Please feel free to add any detail that you can. (See notes at the bottom of the Palmer-Simpson page.)

• 4/7/10 Philip Williams is looking for information on Ruth Marie Rosser, a nurse in Saranac Lake in the late 1940s, now living in Fayetteville, NC, and on her husband Jim Rosser, a Navy lieutenant and Rochester native.

• 3/31/2010 A resident is looking for information on the park at the corner of Ampersand and Broadway and stone pillar in the corner on the Ampersand side. He writes "We used to play there when we were kids, and there used to be a long circular driveway there. Any ideas??
  

• We created a very brief article on the Adirondack Greenhouses that occupied that space back at the turn of the last century. We would be interested in further information on the greenhouses, and any other entities that occupied this spot.

• 3/24/10 Janice Moody-Schroeder, great great great granddaughter of Jacob Smith Moody is looking for any and all pictures of the Moody's of Saranac lake for a family tree on ancestry.com.

• 3/11/10 We received a query about a patient, Anna (Nan) McClain. We did find her TB Card in the library archives. Please contact <amy AT historicsaranaclake DOT org>.

• 2/28/10 The owners of the Sorrel Street School — also called Bloomingdale No. 5 and now a residence — would like more information and photos of its history, especially from anyone who attended school there.

• 2/10/2010 Phill Greenland would like information, programs or publications of the Thursday Evening Club, a social organization for all patients at Trudeau Sanatorium.

• 2/4/10 <scott.hazelwood AT sasktel DOT net> noticed a photo of Washburn Cottage at 4 McClelland Street. Does anyone know anything of the history of this house? Seeing that it is on what was McClelland land, he wonders if it was occupied at one point by Garrie & Martha Washburn, the daughter of James McClelland.

• 12/29/09 Colleen Bennett is looking for information on her grandmother, LaVerne Strough, who was a TB patient who lived in Saranac Lake from 1911- c. 1927.

• LaVerne Strough's father, Arthur Strough, and her siblings moved here from Dolgeville, NY because she and her mother, Carrie Strough, had TB. Her mother was ill for a year or so before they moved and may not have made it to Saranac Lake.
  

• Phill Greenland has found a LaVerne Strough in Graton, California in 1934 and a LaVerne C. Strough at University of Nebraska in 1936.
  

• Arthur remarried Anna (Patterson) Strough sometime between 1913 and 1918. Her sister and brother-in-law, Hazel Strough Paye and Robert Paye, also lived here for many years.

• Arthur Strough and his friend Joseph LaBeau were killed in a tragic car accident in April 1922 on Bloomindale Road near the Trudeau Sanitarium.

• 9/29/09 Bill Hogan is seeking information on the Blue Gentian Restaurant. Please post any information or email amy@historicsaranaclake.org.
  

• Lucy Jones Berk writes, "I remember the tearoom well. It was a very special treat for a youngster to go there with a parent and often out of town guests."

• 9/23/09 Does anyone have any information on Mathew Joseph Makaus, who came to Saranac Lake for the cure in May of 1921. He was a WWI Veteran from Brooklyn, NY.

• 5/7/09 Fred Mader is trying to remember the name of the man who used to pass out lollypops at the Pontiac Theater.

• 4/20/09 Reviewers Club, a Saranac Lake women's organization that is 100 years old this year, is looking for descendants of its founder, Grace (Mrs. Ralph) Leonard. The family owned Leonard's Department Store and lived on Riverside Drive. Their daughter, Louise?, married a Dr. (Kyle?) Hardesty. They had a son named Kyle and a daughter, Mary Lou, and are believed to have moved to California.

• Phill Greenland notes that there is a photographer named Kyle Hardesty in Burbank, California, who would be the grandson. A google search for "Kyle Hardesty" brings up 1500 hits, starting with http://www.kylehardesty.com/.

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