Monthly Archives: October 2023

MEMORIES OF A CAVE COUNTRY BOYHOOD

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Editor’s Note: Jim Muller spent his formative years in the heart of NY’s Cave Country. Born in 1953, he grew up on his family’s dairy farm adjacent to the Howe Caverns estate and its well-manicured quarter-mile drive up the hill to its picturesque lodge overlooking the valley to the west.

Like other kids in the Howes Cave area, the cave’s history and tales of the lost Garden of Eden cave became part of their school-age play. Jim knew there were plenty of other caves in the area as well and explored several while attending Schoharie Central High School.

Jim lived adjacent to Howe Caverns during its heyday as a tourist attraction, when more than 2,000 visitors (often more) came daily during the summer months. Then open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. a steady stream of vehicles wound along the two-lane road from the main highway, past the Muller farm and up the hill to the cave entrance.  (Jim wasn’t allowed to learn to ride a bike until into his late teens; his mother fearful of the out-of-town traffic.)

Dave Reynolds and Jim Muller riding “Nip” and “Tuck” in this slightly blurry photo from 1961. The photo at the top of the page is 13-year-old Jim atop “Duke,” at right. At left is an unidentified college friend of Jim’s older sister, seated on “Tuck” – during her first visit to a farm and to ride a horse. 

Fortunately for the reader, Underground Empires: Two Centuries of Exploration, Adventure, and Enterprise in NY’s Cave Country brought back many fond memories for Jim, and he shared them with the author.

By JIM MULLER (From jimmuller.com, Oct. 29, 2021)

I just finished reading Underground Empires about Howe Caverns and I have enjoyed it immensely.  I don’t know if the feeling of nostalgia is due to my recent 50th year Schoharie Central High School reunion or that I could relate to so many of the people and places described in the book.

It has been a splendid read and I wrote a letter to the author. Dana Cudmore, who was a year behind me at Schoharie Central and worked as a guide at Howe Caverns with my brother Robert.  I wrote a letter to Dana about all my memories which Dana labelled as a “Cave Country Boyhood.”

From the early 1950s until the mid-1960s my family owned a dairy farm which abutted Howe Caverns’ property. Surrounding our farm was land owned by the Nethaway, VanNatten and Sagendorf families. As a pre-teen I drove a team of horses for the Nethaways; I learned to ice skate on Jimmy VanNatten’s pond, My sister Barbara was (and still is) best friends with Hope Sagendorf, and my other sister Jeanne, attended school prom with John Sagendorf.

My dad used to cut hay from Howe Caverns’ land. Each Spring, when my father would till new fields, we would pick rock and joke that moving the really big ones would lead us to the lost Garden of Eden cave. In 1958, the Caverns made a promotional film which used some of our family farm and four cows.  [I have an old picture that] shows an actor and cameraman setting up along a stone fence line for some “farmer wisdom” describing the 1842 discovery of Howe’s Cave.

Locally, us kids had a horse posse that included Bobby Beavers, Joyce Nethaway, Hope Sagendorf and occasionally Carolyn Rehberg. When my ponies escaped, we would frequently find them at the Caverns. mooching treats and affection from the tourists. One of the reasons I didn’t learn to ride a bike until I was 18 was due to proximity to Howe Caverns. With no shoulders along the country roads, my parents were certain if I was riding a bike I would get hit by a tourist. So, from age 5 on they entrusted my fate to “Nip,” my pony. I guess they figured his sense of self-preservation would extend to me as well.

My parents played cards with ‘Bud’ Tillison, owner of the Luncheonette and Grocery Store in the Howes Cave hamlet.  I recall it only having three small tables. I remember Bud giving me ice cream while he and my dad visited and as a youngster, I felt it couldn’t get any better.  Carolyn (Rehberg) Schlegel says she could recall that Bud designated a spot to tie a horse while the kids went into the store to buy a treat.

I see Carolyn often, playing senior’s volleyball and was telling her of Dana’s Underground Empires.  The Rehberg family was active in Yo-Sco-Haro Riding Club and served as 4-H leaders, The Rehberg farm was located at (or near) the site of Lester Howe’s farm and the suspected Garden of Eden.  Carolyn relayed a story told by her father Albert (Al), that when blasting was done for I-88, one of the blasts sounded a different ‘thump’ associated with settling earth. [Could it have been collapsing into a large cave? – ed.]

When I was 13 my family sold the farm to Lester Hay and built a house across the Schoharie Creek from Terrace Mountain.  Bill Dodge, the Schoharie biology teacher, sponsored our informal outing club, –the Schoharie Pit-Plunging and Cliff-Climbing Club. We undertook activities on Terrace Mountain and Partridge Run and canoed Schoharie Creek and raced canoes on the Susquehanna.

Lester Hay later married my sister, Jeanne and fathered Mark and Matthew Hay who worked as tour guides at the caverns.  In fact, many of us worked at the cavern.  My sisters, Barbara and Jeanne worked at the snack bar.  My cousin Karen Muller worked there as well.  It was during my sophomore year in high school that I joined the largest guides’ class ever assembled at the caverns and was trained by Don Reynolds.

As a junior and senior (SCS Class of 1971) I went caving with Bill Dodge and other friends, exploring Ball’s, Knox, Veen Fliet’s, Spider, Benson, and Przysiecki caves.

Somewhere in the late 1970s my brother Robert, father Clifford and brother-in-law Lester Hay salvaged an engine and winch which was used to clear the sinkhole known as the “Sinks by the Sugarbush.” Fifty-gallon drums, punctured to allow water to drain, were lowered for men and gear as well as to pull out the collapsed rock as they tried to clean it out.   We were always told they found some of Lester Howe’s items in a grotto near or at the sink.  We believe the engine and winch that were there dated back to late 20s or early ’30s as the engine was a ’20s vintage.  It was a six horsepower “Novo” with a capstan for rope and drum for cable.

Underground Empires has been a real joy to read. I feel blessed that I was able to grow up in the prosperous heydays of Howe Caverns and the book enabled many pleasant memories for me.

Jim Muller retired in 2021 after careers in GIS management and in information technology systems and management. He holds a bachelor’s degree in geography from SUNY Oneonta and a master’s degree in planning from the University of Washington in Seattle.

He and his wife, Kathryn, raised three children and reside in Holland Patent, New York, just outside the boundaries of the Adirondack Park. They have three grandchildren.

Jim has several lifelong interests and now shares them with his family. They include “back country” canoeing, winter camping, and raising Quarter horses.  He also enjoys basketball, volleyball, and pickleball.

THE FINAL YEARS OF LESTER & LUCINDA HOWE

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Until the late Spring of 1888, an aging Lester Howe and wife Lucinda lived on his beloved “Garden of Eden” property across the valley of the Cobleskill Creek from the cave he made famous. Their children, all of whom had been married in the family’s cave, had moved on.

Huldah Ann, the oldest, became Mrs. Henry Northrup, and Harriet Elgiva married a surveyor for the railroad, Hiram Dewey.  Both daughters moved to Jefferson City in central Missouri and raised families there. The Howes’ son, Halsey John, married Julia Redfield, and moved to Dunkirk in western New York, where he practiced dentistry.

The date Howe sold his interest in the cave is uncertain; it may have been as early as April 1869.

Howe would have been 59 at the time—a suitable age for retirement in that era—and he and Lucinda settled into the lush Garden of Eden property1 to spend their final years together. Now retired, he assumed the role of a “gentleman farmer,” raising a few Jersey cows and experimenting with the types of fruits (some exotic to the area) that he could raise on the hillside.

Another view of the Howe Family plot in the Cobleskill Rural Cemetery. The marker front right, is Lester’s, next is Lucinda’s.

It may have been an idyllic lifestyle for several years, but maintaining a farm, even a gentleman’s farm, is a challenge for men and women in their 60s and 70s.  In early 1888, the Howes sold property after about 15 years there and moved to Florence Street in the Village of Cobleskill in mid-May 1888. Lester was 78; his wife was two years older. (Their Florence Street home is today the southwestern-most parcel on the block.)

Lester Howe died there on Wednesday July 18, 1888. According to his obituary in the July 19 Cobleskill Index, he suffered “five weeks of paralysis,” apparently the result of a stroke.

Howe’s obituary was succinct. After all, it was nearly a half-century since his famous discovery and his years of some celebrity and news-making were long past.

The Cobleskill paper’s obituary, in part, reads: “Lester Howe is widely known as the person who discovered Howe’s Cave. A strong current of air was known to issue from the mountainside where in 1840, Lester Howe moved to the vicinity of the cave.

Lester Howe
Jan. 10, 1810 – July 18, 1888

“Alone, he made investigations and with patient toil—prompted by courage—he affected an entrance into the bowels of the earth and penetrated a great distance or until he reached the lake.

“The [now] deceased erected a hotel at the mouth of the cave and opened the underground cavern to the world. . .

“The discovery of the cave which bears his name fixes Mr. Howe’s name indelibly in our local history,” the writer predicted, accurately.

The funeral service was “solemnized” at the Florence Street home, two days after Howe’s death, on Friday July 20, with a Rev. Buckelew officiating.

Lester Howe’s moment in the spotlight had passed, but his death still made the news. Small notices appeared in many newspapers across the country, including even those on the West Coast. His obituary has been found in papers in both Sacramento, Calif., and in Oregon.

About two months after Lester’s death, his widow Lucinda transferred three pieces of property from her husband’s estate to their son, Halsey.  Legally, she may have had to transfer them first through an attorney; a “property transfers” section in the Aug. 8, 1888, Cobleskill Index, gives some details.

For “a nominal consideration,” Mrs. Howe transferred to John H. Shultes 45 acres in the Town of Cobleskill, likely the East Cobleskill/Garden of Eden property; one acre in Cobleskill, possibly the Florence Street home; and two acres in Howes Cave.  Shultes then transferred the property to Halsey John Howe.

Lucinda Howe died a little more than a year later at a daughter’s home in Jefferson City, on Dec 18, 1889. She was 81.

The Fredonia Censor, a Chautauqua County newspaper in western New York, carried a small notice, probably placed by her son.

The Christmas Day, 1889 paper carried this: “Mrs. Lucinda Howe, mother of Dr. H. J. Howe of Dunkirk, who recently died in Jefferson [City], Mo2., was the wife of the discoverer of the wonderful Howe’s cave in Schoharie County, and her daughters were married in a part of the cave called the chapel. Her remains will be taken to Cobleskill for interment.”

Lester and Lucinda were married for 60 years. She was born April 28, 1808, in Albany, to Elijah Rowley, 32, and Sally Morgan Rowley, 33. She and Lester were married on Nov. 10, 1828, in Cherry Valley, Otsego County.  

Lester and Lucinda, along with Halsey John Howe and his wife, Julia, are buried in the Cobleskill Rural Cemetery.  Huldah Howe Northrup is buried in Pittsfield, IL; Harriet Howe Dewey is buried in Jefferson City.

PHOTO of the Howe monument in the Cobleskill Rural Cemetery by Bob Holt

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1The address would have been considered East Cobleskill.

2 Halsey John Howe also moved to Jefferson City after retiring.  He apparently suffered from Alzheimer’s—unrecognized at that time—and in late June 1913, Halsey walked away from his nephew’s house where he’d been staying. He was found drowned a few days later in the Missouri River there.

Posted: Oct. 10, 2023