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July/August 2009: Among Friends |
Among Friends
Living and learning at the crossroads
By Annie Stoltie
The 1837 stone house, in what was Quaker Union.
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Harkness Road slices from the Clinton County hamlet of the same name to Peru. If you've ridden this route you know the stately sandstone home on the corner of Harkness and Union Roads, at what always seems to be a busy intersection. Maybe at this stop you rubberneck for the house's inhabitants, or toss your Dunkin' Donuts coffee cup out the window (someone litters here), or roll on, preoccupied with the errands you'll run if you're continuing on to Plattsburgh. Or, perhaps, disgusted by your impatience with the tractor idling ahead of you—this is ag country, with stripes of cornstalks, cows and apple orchards—you abandon your car on Union Road's shoulder and walk.
If you choose to tune in, this stretch has such a good—such a friendly—vibe. Beginning in 1789 a Religious Society of Friends community lived, loved and liberated in these fertile foothills. The settlement, called Quaker Union, had a school, blacksmith shop, post office, a couple of meetinghouses (the Quaker equivalent to church) and many humble homesteads and farms.
In 1788 Friend William Keese, of Dutchess County, requested this land as payment after surveying 12,000 Champlain Valley acres for Plattsburgh founder Zephaniah Platt. A year later William put a log cabin on the parcel, on today's Davern Road. Soon after, his brother Richard settled onto what's now the stone house property, where he built a cabin. Though that structure is long gone, his next abode, a walk-in-closet-size wood-frame one erected in 1795, remains. As Richard pieced together this home for his family—what would swell to around a dozen children—President George Washington was serving his second term, Southern-territory settlers and Native Americans were clashing, and Quakers, persecuted for their split from mainstream Protestantism, sought a peaceful place to live. Which explains the Keese clan's willing exodus to the wild, isolated North Country.
And they stayed. When Richard moved four miles east, where he founded Keeseville, his son Peter took over the family homestead, building the stone house in 1837. For more than a century Keeses lived here, until the property was finally sold, in 1974. (Though Quaker Union dissolved after the Civil War, there's still a population of North Country Friends.)
When they purchased it, Peru schoolteachers Ann and Lincoln Sunderland knew it was a plum parcel—about 25 acres, sleepy rural surroundings, a magnificent Ausable River Valley sandstone mansion, plus 13 of the original 30 early-19th-century outbuildings. They've been stewards of the estate ever since, maintaining what time and weather haven't toppled.
Inside the creaking granary, Lincoln—who, with his wife, has the kind, patient disposition of a teacher—shows the vertical grain of its boards, cut with a reciprocating saw and hammered together with anvil-pounded nails. He scales the cow barn's ladder to point out monster hand-hewn beams interlocked with oak pegs, and describes his three daughters, who played on the same turf as the Keese kids. Lincoln also mentions local historians, quick with suggestions about what he and Ann should do to save their relics. He says he doesn't have the cash for the expert preservation required, that Richard's 1795 hut, for one, belongs in a museum. No one from area historical societies has stepped forward, reinforcing his concern that "northern New York State has never expanded to its potential, historically."
The Sunderlands, who are now retired, have done what they can. When a car took out their front yard's cast-iron state historic marker, they got a new one, sharing the cost with individual donors and funds raised by a regional Underground Railroad group. For decades they opened their doors to local schoolchildren, hosted Adirondack Architectural Heritage tours, welcomed Keese descendants and tolerated trespassing picnickers. Now "we're getting tired," explains Lincoln.
It's not just the fragile wood structures in their keep, but Peter's elegant home, a more than 6,000-square-foot showplace, with 11-foot ceilings on every floor, even the attic, which is so sound, says Lincoln, you could drive a Cadillac up there without feeling a thing. The eight-hole outhouse is gone, but the hardware on, and the gorgeous keys to, each door and the five fireplaces are original; the Redford windowpanes are mostly intact; there's still milk paint in spots; the nine-and-a-half-foot pocket doors separating the front and back parlors—with twin Italian black-and-gold-marble fireplaces—are in impeccable condition; and, to the dismay of Ann, the five-by-seven-foot reproduction of Raphael's Jacob's Dream remains above the main stairwell landing, where it was hung 172 years ago.
Make no mistake: Friends dressed in drab and, famously, practiced equality—in Quaker Union, Keeses helped runaway slaves get to Canada—but they were the commercial class, often wealthy business owners. Peter's money came primarily from the lumber trade, and he put much of it into the mansion to lure his new bride, who lived lavishly downstate, to the sticks. Sadly, she died before she saw her husband's efforts.
You have to wonder if it's best that Peter never saw the strip-mall-looking 1,300-or-so-cow farm that today obstructs the stone house's eastern view of the wide-open plains. Quakers have always been fans of progress, but what would they think of Adirondack Farm's dairy operation, where the animals exist solely indoors? A Friend and Peter's great-great-great-grandnephew offers this: "Quakers don't judge."
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