A Conversation with Glenn Pearsall
FACT-CHECKING:
Glenn:
Do you know how you relate to Wright Pearsall? I suspect so. If not, we’ll just say “ancestor”
Is it accurate to say “The family ran the ranch as a lodge for vacationers?”
Is it correct to say that Pearsall Realty was across Route 28 from the Robert and Electa Waddell House?
Would you care to share any early (or later) photos of you, you and Carol, your father, the ranch, or Pearsall Realty? We’ll be happy to include them.
I'd been looking forward for a long time to sitting down with Glenn Pearsall. I finally had that opportunity after the dual December 10 book launch that he and Sterling Goodspeed hosted at the Johnsburg Town Library.
Sterling gave a reading from True North, his remarkable collection of short stories rooted in his youth in North Creek.
Glenn introduced his new edition of Echoes in These Mountains, now a voluminous 512-page tome that describes in detail 55 historic sites throughout the town of Johnsburg. This is the land in which Glenn and his wife Carol have lived for 42 years at the base of Crane Mountain. The property was once an old dude ranch bought by his father in 1964, having made the decision to leave Long Island, where Pearsalls had settled in 1639.
"Pearsall is a big name on Long Island," says Glenn. And so it is, as just a few clicks in Google will show you. In 1830, Wright Pearsall -- Glenn's [relation?]-- purchased land in what we know today as Lynbrook and opened a general store that became so well known the surrounding community became known as Pearsall's Corners. You'll find a historic marker at the site today. You'll also find a classy restaurant, Pearsall's Station.
Glenn Pearsall (left) and Sterling Goodspeed (righ) hosted a combined book signing at the Johnsburg Town Museum in December. Glenn introduced the second edition of "Echoes in These Mountains," while Sterling read from "True North," his collection of short stories. Glenn's $132,000 donation has made it possible for the Johnsburg Historical Society, of which Sterling is president, to purchase the Robert and Electa Waddell House, which the the historical society aims to open this summer as a museum.
Arrival in Johnsburg
"My father liked doing different things," Glenn says. "When he got out of the service for World War II, he was in construction for a few years. My mother's father co-founded a bank in New York as a federal savings and loan. Because of his construction background, my father became a mortgage officer."
"When he was forced out of the bank in a political upheaval, my father sold electronics for a few years, then started a sporting goods store, where I started working at age 11. We had 150 guns and shotguns. On Fridays, my father would go out for dinner Fridays and I would be the only one running the store.
"In the summer of 1963, my father said, 'Enough. I'm tired of the rat race on Long Island. I want to move to the Adirondacks.'
"It took us a year to sell the house and store. The dude ranch he bought had been vacant for three years and it took eleven days to get running water in the place. All the fields were overgrown. There were all sorts of fence posts and barbed wire that had to be taken down."
"Prior to the closing of the property, my parents came up for Easter to show us kids what we were moving to. The driveway is a quarter-mile long and there were two feet of snow on it because it had not been plowed all winter. We had come up in a station wagon with my three younger brothers and two dogs. I got out of that station wagon and -- I can't explain it -- I felt I had come home."
"I'm not a spiritual person by nature. I just felt completely at ease with the place, with my identity there. I subsequently bought 27 acres from my father, and built a house with Carol, which we completed ourselves in 1980. We've lived there for the past 42 years within 100 feet of where I got out of that station wagon."
It was to this dude ranch at the base of Crane Mountain that Glenn's father brought the family in 1964. They called this the Buckskin Valley Lodge. Glenn and his wife Carol built their home on part of this property in 1980.
First Edition
The family ran the ranch as a lodge for vacationers, then his father got into construction and real estate. When Glenn got out of the service in 1975, he and his father established Pearsall Realty in what was a general store when it was built in 1865 at the intersection of the roads we know today as Route 8, which runs from Wells northeast to Lake George, and Route 28, the straight shot from Warrensburg to North River and beyond.
"Our neighbor was Ernie Noxon, who was kind of a legend in this area, having made it into the Guiness Book of World Records for being reelected town clerk 30 times and spending 60 years in that position. Ernie befriended me and would come over and we would start talking and he would share with me the history of the area because he'd grown up here.
"Soon thereafter, Lewis Waddell, who was the town historian, also would come and visit me. I would share those stories when I was showing real estate to people, telling them a little more about the area. And one day we were coming back from attending a music concert down at the Troy Music Hall and my friend [who?] said, 'You have to write this stuff down.'"
"I knew I was in trouble when my first draft was a hundred pages," he says.
"I don't remember where the title came from, but Echoes in These Mountains had a ring to it," he says. "As I walk through the woods and find old foundations, they kind of speak to me. You walk through the woods and suddenly you come across an old abandoned road. You can see it was a road. But it's no longer on any maps. Along that road, you might find a foundation. You find the root cellar. You find apple trees. Look more closely, and you may find an old lilac bush. Why a lilac bush? The explanation that makes the most sense to me is that they hoped the sweet smell of the followers would disguise the smell of the outhouse."
If you walk through the woods, you pay attention. You come across these things and they speak to you, like an echo."
The book ultimately came in just over 400 pages. Glenn published 1,500 copies and gave them to the Johnsburg Historical Society to sell as a fund-raiser. A decade later, he saw that the price asked on eBay for a signed copy was listed at $143.
"That's when I decided it was time to produce a new edition."
Glenn started researching "Echoes" in the 1970s. In the second edition, he has added more than 100 pages and boosted photos to more than 400. He also added an index.
Glenn has contributed "Echoes" to the First Wilderness Story Collaboration. We'll upload to the Gore Region Story Cloud audio narratives for as many of the 55 sites he describes as we can.
Second Edition
Among the 55 sites Glenn spotlights in "Echoes" is Matthew Brady's childhood home, in which we learn that it was Samuel B. Morse, a portrait painter and inventor of the single wire telegraph system, who introduced Brady to the new art of capturing images through daguerreotype.
Glenn initially thought figured he'd just fix a few typos and add a few photos, but it became a much bigger two-year research project as he explored the roots of famed photojournalist Matthew Brady, who unquestionably grew up in Johnsburg and may or may not have been born there, and peered more deeply into the histories of such places an Indian settlement near Thirteenth Lake marked on an 1855 map and the slopes of Gore Mountain, where skiing began in the 1920s.
"I also researched 175 soldiers from the Civil War from Johnsburg, which is a surprisingly large number for a small town. And I added an index."
This time he published 800 copies, again to benefit the Johnsburg Historical Society.
Glenn says that will be the last printing -- which is another reason we want to upload as much of Echoes as possible in text and photos in ArcGIS StoryMaps and in audio into the STQRY App that will support the Gore Region Story Cloud. In so doing, we aim to make the years of meticulous research and writing that Glenn has put into this work widely available to Warren County residents and visitors.
Glenn's intensive research of Mathew Brady's led to him to the foundation of what he believes was Brady's childhood home.
Story Cloud Edition
Built in 1870 by lumber baron Robert Waddell, this 14-room house was Ernie Noxon's home for many years and will soon open as the Johnsburg Historical Society's new museum, thanks to Glenn's $132,000 donation.
These are the stairs where, as Glenn recalls, Ernie Noxon piled his National Geographic magazines in stacks three feet high.
Assuming all goes well, we expect to be able to make an introductory version of the Gore Region Story Cloud available for downloading this summer when the Johnsburg Historical Society opens its new museum in the Robert and Electa Waddell House, which happens to sit directly across the road from the site of the former general store in which Glenn and his father established Pearsall Realty.
Built in 1870 by lumber baron Robert Waddell, "it's an architectural gem," says Glenn. Ernie Noxon lived here for many years, and it was from here that he would cross Route 28 to join Glenn on Sundays when business was slow in the summer and share his stories.
"At one point he said, 'Glenn, the house is not for sale, but we need a physician in this area and that this would make a nice physician's house. I'd like to show it to you.'"
"So I was one of the very few people, to my knowledge, that ever got a personal tour of the house by Ernie Noxon. I was impressed by its black and pink marble fireplace and the plaster cornices, which were done by superb Italian craftsmen who were brought into the area. It has a great curved railing that goes up the stairs. But what I remember most are the three-foot high stacks of National Geographic magazines we had to wind our way through to get to the second floor."
After ten years in real estate, Glenn would enter E.F. Hutton's training program and go on to become a successful wealth manager, accumulating sufficient assets to establish the Glenn and Carol Pearsall Foundation, dedicated to improving the quality of life for year-round residents of the Adirondack Park.
"I like to focus on organizations that have reached an inflection point at which, with just the right amount of help, they can attain a whole new level. That's where the Historical Society was a few years ago. It was floundering. They had trouble putting a board together. They never had public space to display their exhibits and so they were never eligible for a permanent charter from the State Education Department. When we heard the house was for sale, we saw an opportunity to reinvigorate the Historical Society."
Glenn contacted Sterling Goodspeed, who was president of the society at that time and still is.
"You never know how a five-year plan is going to work out, but Sterling and his board put tother a good proposal and, through the foundation, I gave them $132,000 to buy this 14-room gem of a house, which they're now working very hard to restore and open this summer."
Sterling is offering the First Wilderness Story Collaboration space to host a display at the museum's grand opening. Meanwhile, we're pulling out the stops to introduce at this event an audio GPS-triggered tour of the Gore Region in which we'll hear Glenn share the stories that Ernie Noxon told to him a half-century ago on those summer afternoons.
