This chapter concerns the transition of 1,000 shares of stock from four families to two families and from these two families to the two dozen or so owners of shore front acreage on the tip of Assembly Point (Lots 2-37 on Myers map). It is the story of defeat in preventing a paved road encircling 17 acres of today's Otyokwa property, not insignificantly influenced by the shock of Hitler's September 1939 invasion of Poland. The shock also ended my rich experience with the art of selling real estate.

The Lake George Assembly assets remaining at the death of Harold Adamson on February 21, 1933, nine days before Hitler took power and 46 days before FDR became president were 1,000 shares of stock controlling the following assets: first, a mile of dirt road surrounding an unspoiled 17 acres of "forever wild" land; five alleys or accesses to the lake of about 16 feet each, totaling 70 feet of shorefront; 500 feet of shorefront at the very tip of the point, from which extended a 200 foot steamboat pier to a ramp in the channel between South, Island and the Point. On this property were a small post office and a country store which would burn of unknown causes within three years. In addition to this there was an interesting farm house -- the caretaker's house -- and a barn on 150 feet of frontage on the old crossroads which is now Crossover Road.

In order to deal equitably with the stockholders and complete the task of the Lake George Assembly to liquidate its property I was encouraged to take an the responsibility by Coolidge Sherman, future father-in-law of my sister Emily. He suggested I start buying stock wherever I could from members of the families who owned it. All the original founders were dead. Coolidge himself had inherited about 250 shares which he said he would sell to me for $4.50 a share. I was to pay him $10.00 on the first of every month while I was in college and if I failed to pay him the $10.00 he, as a teacher, would require me to forfeit all my equity. Needless to say, I was very worried and tried to raise $10.00 every month but by the time I had finished college bought other shares of stock f rom other members of the founding fathers' families, I owed the bank $2500.00.

My mother and sisters and brother were supportive of this effort. Emily's encouragement came in the form of a joint effort to think about what we would like for our families in the future.

In 1936, my father's sister, Ethelwyn, who lived in Vancouver wanted Emily and me to come visit her and said she would partially subsidize the trip. So Emily and I decided to go West but needed more money. At- this time my mother had about five houses which, because of the Depression she couldn't sell but she could rent them. We made a deal with my mother to paint one of her houses for $250.00 instead of the $350.00 the contractor wanted. I got out of college in June and Emily and I began to paint 10-12 hours a day. We finished by the 4th of July and went to Cambridge, Massachusetts to collect the pay from my mother who was living there and also to collect the funds that our Aunt Ethelwyn had deposited in the Harvard bank.

We bought a car from Matt Whinnev for $75.00 -- a Ford with a rumble seat. My mother, on seeing the car, said it would never make the several thousand miles to Vancouver and back, so offered us her new Pontiac. We accepted it, much to the chagrin of my older sister who was left with the Ford for the summer.

It was the beginning of a great adventure as we started for our first destination in Wyoming. We made the first 2, 000 miles and met one of my Andover classmates, Frank Bosler, at noon on a Friday in time to go to the rodeo in Cheyenne. After the rodeo, Frank drove us to his mother's ranch outside of Cheyenne. We were cordially welcomed by Mrs. Bosler and then saw their fabulous ranch house on one of the more modest Wyoming ranches that took only 180 miles to drive around. Emily fell in love with the ranch house. That's when she suggested if I were buying stock, why didn't we think of our futures -- of buying the point if I could get it with my share of the stock and building a ranch house like the Bosler's on it. Although we had to give up the idea of building the log cabin ourselves, we had shown the eventual owners a photograph of the Bosler house. I'm quite convinced that the log cabin, now owned by the Stewarts, is a fairly close replica of what Emily and I had in mind.

In order to have the point with the ranch house on it and horses, it became imperative, Emily and I thought, for the road to go down the middle. We worked towards this end in cooperation with the other owners of the land from the isthmus north. After the steamboats stopped delivering mail and the post office burned down, it was necessary for a road to be open for mail delivery. We were required to deed to the town of Queensbury the mile-long looped dirt road with the tacit understanding that if we ever did put the road down the middle and the town were to pave it they would return the loop road to property owners.

We still held the five alleys or rights-of-way to the lake for people building on the back property but since my mother and I controlled the corporation with her stock and the stock I'd already purchased, it was a fixed conclusion that we would not sell any of that property for residential building or camping use. We did decide, however, to sell it to any shore resident who would buy back to the center and attach this land to his shorefront deed. The first obstacle we met in suggesting this to the 20 odd owners of the shorefront property was how would they be certain we didn't end up building houses back there and using the five alleys? We decided this was a valid concern so we approached the property owners on either side of the alleys and either split them or sold them. Once we had done this we approached the owners again, offering them the land in back for $200.00 a lot. Thinking this was a sensible and fair arrangement, we ourselves began to build a tennis court in back of my mother's property.

Hitler began to emerge and I believe his presence influenced everybody's belief in the future with fear pervading. Much as we tried in the summers of 1937 and 1938 to sell the interior property, only one of the property owners showed any interest in purchasing land for himself (thereby also increasing his taxes). We felt the property owners knew they had us over a barrel. Things got very bad but we were not totally discouraged because we still felt the town of Queensbury would help out by agreeing to extend the road they had already started down Burnt Ridge. It was extended already to the isthmus and we thought they would extend it through the Knox and Harris farmland and down the center of our land to the point. This would be an incentive for the landowners to buy in the back and enjoy an extension of their shorefront resource. Certainly it would prevent the dirt road from being paved and encouraging cars to speed by so close to their houses.

It was a great disappointment, then, that after a year of believing that the residents of the three sections of the point wanted the road to go in back of their houses instead of separating them from the lake, we found out they did not care where the road went. A meeting in Rockhurst, at which maybe 80 people attended, surprised everyone by finding the residents following thoughtless leadership by voting to pave the shorefront road in the mile strip from the isthmus to Frommels rather than putting the road back 200 feet from the lake through the farmland. This unsuspected decision negated the possibility of a central road through the 17 acres of Lake George Assembly property: the loop road would remain and eventually be paved.

Still, the Lake George Association property owners refused, for their own interest to buy property in the back at $200.00 each. After Hitler's invasion of Poland it became a certainty that none of the property owners, except Dr. Lucas, was to count enough in the future to invest even $200.00 in adding real estate to their property, ending the possibility of my getting $2,500.00 towards help to pay off my loan.

At this juncture, a very fine new resident of the point, Dr. Gilbert Pasquera, highly placed in the hierarchy of Mt. McGregor Hospital, showed an awareness of the art of real estate and leadership. He developed a plan which he then presented to several other men on the point, unsuspected by me. Instead of $200.00, each would pay $115.00 and form a corporation very similar to the Lake George Assembly. It stipulated that each of the 30 odd shares would never go with the sale of individual shore property, but would be in the name of the resident of that property until he sold. The property owners were encouraged and the $3,000.00 for the sale of shares in this company was enough to buy the land from the Lake George Assembly and for me to receive a large part of the $2,500.00 I needed to pay the bank.

This new corporation was named "Otyokwa". The name was submitted by my mother who loved words. She had discovered the Mohawk term which means "an assembly or gathering of people."

With the decision made for no road down the center of the point and with the 17 acres inside the loop to become the community center and possibly used for recreation or just kept forever wild, and the alleys sold there was only one major asset that had to be dealt with. This was the point itself. The main problem was the price and one executive of the insurance company, Mr. Buddy, who had lived on the point, offered us $5,000.00. But there was a problem. For years, Dr. Sanford and Dr. Sanford's son-in-law, Mr. Dube, had been using the point for a parking place and a point of access by boat to the island. This was a serious problem. If the property was sold, how was he going to get to the island? Mr. Dube threatened a lawsuit because he felt he had to have a right of way.

With Dr. Pasquera’s help as a member of the Board of Directors, we devised a satisfactory plan and offered Dube a right of way of 25 feet in the back and 75 feet in the front with a clause in the agreement stating that if the island were ever sold and got out of the Sanford family this right of way agreement would not be attached to the sale of the island. This was very wise and foresighted because if, for instance, the island had gone as was threatened, to General Electric where they would make summer homes for their management staff, they could use the parking space. The traffic would have been horrendous!

So having dealt with the potential threat of the parking space at the end of the point and the agreement that the right of way would not run with the island should it be sold, we approached Mr. Buddy again to buy the property. By this time he had lost interest. Whereupon, we divided it into two areas and took a lot with 100 feet north of the Lester property, now owned by Mr. Bill Ross and then offered the remaining part to two very interested persons -- Mr. Pert and Mr. Yaffee. They agreed to buy the dock, the assets and the point (except for the 100 feet which was a reserved lot) for $7,500.00 and we completed the sale of the land. We traded two lots, Lots 10 and 11, needing a great deal of fill on the bay on the east side, to the Sanford interest because they had 1/5 of the stock and we took this other lot which ultimately went to the Caffrey and the Rosses.