Assembly Point probably owes more to General Burgoyne's mistress, Fanny Loescher, and to the Tory, Phillip Skene than to any other heroine or hero of the American Revolution. The two, for different reasons, persuaded British General Burgoyne not to retreat to Lake George from Whitehall, but to rebuild the 30-mile road to Fort Edward which had just been destroyed by the American General, Phillip Schuyler. The several-thousand-man army under Burgoyne advanced scarcely a mile a day. Had the British army been ordered instead back to Ticonderoga at the northern end of Lake George and thence continued by water the 32 miles to Lake George Village, precious days would have been saved. In that case, the remaining ten miles to Fort Edward and the Hudson River was but a day's march over the unblockable terrain of the "carrying place."

Selfishly ill-advised by the Tory Phillip Skene who knew the area as his home, General Burgoyne's decision to march directly from Whitehall to Fort Edward seemed sensible. He had, however, failed to foresee either the Herculean task his troops would need to undertake to rebuild the bridges and clearing the hundreds of trees felled by the retreating General Schuyler to block this route, that his advance would be slowed to a mile a day. Phillip Skene, however, compensated for his bad advice and the long delay by offering his "Great Stone House" (now a museum at Whitehall) as headquarters for Burgoyne, his staff, and Fanny Loescher, while the army labored at clearing the route.

Burgoyne's procrastination was a godsend to New England farmers, allowing them to enlist in great numbers and rush to Saratoga to support General Gates and his ever growing force to oppose Burgoyne's advance and halt the three-fold campaign. Among the American volunteers was 16-year-old Jonathan Coolidge of Ashburnham, Massachusetts.

While young Coolidge was on duty in the Saratoga region in the days before the defeat of Burgoyne in October 1777, he fell in love with the area, especially the farmland and the sparkling waters of the Hudson River. Many years later, the memory of the area lured him back. He bought a farm in Easton on the east shore of the Hudson overlooking the site of the Americans' great victory over General Burgoyne.

Once more, Jonathan fell in love, but this time with a young neighbor, Anna Burdick, whom he married on April 15, 1797. The two set about developing their land and raising a family. On August 2, 1803, their third child and first boy named Jonathan II after his father, was born in Easton.

By this time, Jonathan had explored the winding Hudson River and followed its course to Glens Falls, then north on the ten-mile "carrying place" to the shores of the beautiful lake named "Lac du Saint Sacrament" by the first white man to discover it, Father Joques.

Traveling a few miles up the west side of Lake George, Jonathan came to a high hill north of today's Diamond Point in Bolton. It looked easterly over the widest expanse of the lake. Here he bought 250 wooded acres on which in 1804 he and his wife, Anna, built their family home.

From what is now called "Coolidge Hill," they could look two miles across crystal, clear water to see a mile-long island in the southern basin of the lake. Behind it and protected by it from the north winds was a long, beautiful peninsula, now known as Assembly Point.

In time, Jonathan Coolidge II grew up and married Mary Wright (c. 1830). He became a respected and responsible leader of the township of Bolton which includes Dr. Sanford’s Long Island, a stone's throw from the tip of Assembly Point. One of his early civic duties was that of "Overseer of the Poor" at the County Poor House at Warrensburg.

According to notes among my mother Ernestine Fowler Adamson’s papers, "he found there a young boy, George Lee, whose parents could not look after him properly. Jonathan became so attached to the boy that he took him to live with his own family in Bolton."

George Lee grew up as the oldest son of Jonathan Coolidge II and looked after and later joined corporate ventures with his two "brothers-to-be," Thomas S. and Jonathan M. Coolidge III. After the Civil War the "Coolidge boys" were engaged in business in Glens Falls where they continued with Warren Smith and his interest in developing the paper mill at Ticonderoga into a pulp mill for the International Paper Company.

In the mid 1870s George Lee, Thomas S. Coolidge and Jonathan M. Coolidge III on visiting their father exclaimed, "Father! See that meadow on the Point over there? Would you believe it belongs to Warren's father, Major F. Smith? He feels he is too old to bring his sheep each summer from Harrisena for grazing, and he wants to sell. What would you think of our buying the meadow as a place to grow cedar trees for Warren Smith's paper mill at Ticonderoga?"

Their father's response was more than positive. "Great!, and while you're about it, why not buy 20 more acres bringing it up to 40 acres? Coincidentally, I recently ran into James Harris, owner of the Point’s 100 acre farm and think he would like to sell the 20 acres north of the stone wall. They are not needed for the orchard he is developing south of it."

Greatly encouraged, the Coolidge boys and their associate, Warren Smith, negotiated the purchases of the forty acres. Warren’s father, Major F. Smith, reserved a little more than an acre on which he would soon build a summer cottage for himself, now the site of Lois Binley's summer home.

Before continuing with the history of "Forty Acres," let us turn to the story of Dr. Drurie Sanford’s picturesque development of Long Island and his vision of "A Great Escape."