In up through the 1920's and 30's Grandfather Failing and great grandfather Drury had a series of camps on the other end of Bonaparte, the later ones between Priests port and Jim's Feron's cabin, up under the big bluffs not far from the piped spring. The picture you see here is a xerox of a newspaper photo (from an old photograph), which Ila Priest, the daugher of Irv sent to us about twenty years ago. The photo illustrated an article by Gladys VanWyck, who was working on a book about the lake pioneers at the time..... and I hope she is still at it.

From her article, and Irv Priests account I learned that Jim had wanted to build on the hotel shore near the people to whom he intended to sell moonshine. According to Irv Priest (the lakes original historian and one of its more colorful characters himself) Jim was more or less driven to build his cabin on that more remote shore by citizens concerned about his intended illegal activities.

Jim's main occupation was suposed to be selling charcoal burners, which of course were handy for all sorts of things, but he also hunted, trapped, and fished for a living.

He probably used a flat bottom boat rather than a canoe on the lake, as did my grandfather, who also used set lines and nets around he same time (I still have his net-making shuttle - he baited the birch island shoal with corn and netted whitefish until they were gone from the lake, but later atoned by carrying trout in milk cans to far corners of the forest) But Bert was probabably congeneal rather than competitive with Jim Farron and a customer for the liquor, to which H.A.F. and his pals, especially Doc Howe, took a bit of a shine. v Jim's plumbings of the lake and knowledge of the shoals and deer yards was another thing making him congeneal. And he was able. One of the things said of him, is that he once towed a boat across the lake swiming. No reason to doubt that, but it is doubtful that he was ever hired, as was reported in a Loon Island Star years ago, to lurk at the far end of Green Pond and impersonate an Echo for selected New Hermitage tourists, or to perform related duties at Bonaparte Cave.

Jim lived at the lake for many years but in the winter of 1935 his cabin burnt down, perhaps in a moonshining incident.

The next winter, so writes Irv Priest, Jim took to working and drinking on the hotel side, and sheltering secretly upstairs in the great pavilion, with his dog tied to a bed there.

One night as he slept there the Pavilion caught fire, from causes I don't know. Jim couldn't get down the stairs and had to jump out the window into the lake. The first people down from the hotel saw him standing there in the water screaming fire.

Friends helped him rebuild on his old home site, but he never recovered from his burns and, after for some time being fed through a tube, shaved, and bathed regularly by Leroy Sherman, he was finally taken to the into the care of the County, which was against his will. People judged that he was ninety something years old.

Irv Priest and Gladys VanWyck tell us that Jim Farron came to Bonaparte from Pig Town, a little town of pigs of people a few miles over there on the Oswegatchie, to which he had come from his home near Ogdnsberg (at the mouth of the river) where he had family.

Gladys VanWyck adds to all this, the bare facts that Jim had a son named Perly who lived for a while with his own son Harold and a house keeper in a house on the hotel road.. Perely died in 1932. I am worried about what might have become of Harold. A google search hasn't turned up either of them.

Still and again I see Jim Feron or Farron, always standing there in the water below the flames, holding his dog and, for some reason nobody explained to me, he always has the firey brass headboard of his bed like a harp and he was only singing, though there is nothing to suggest that he ever did sing, or even play the harmonica.

The pavilion was not rebuilit. and the New Hermitage didn't last much longer either, living on in a few copies of the New Hermitage Hotel Brochure