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HISTORY

Saranac Lake Church Passes the 100-Year Mark

The history of the Saranac Lake, NY, Seventh-day Adventist Church started during the early 1880's when the Seth Eells family (Seventh-day Adventists) began moving by stages from West Pierrepont (Southeast of Canton, NY on County Route 24 just North of the intersection with County Route 27) to Averyville (West of Lake Placid, NY on County Route 23). The Stevens family lived next door and Minnie Stevens made friends with the Eells girls. She liked to come over mornings and listen to their family worship.

Eventually, George Stevens married Emma Eells. He was baptized July 4, 1886 and she two years later. Some years later Elders F. H. DeVinney and Harry Bristol held an evangelistic effort in Saranac Lake where the Stevens and Alice Eells Wilcox and her husband Frank had gone to live. In 1899 George Stevens' mother, his two sisters, Minnie and Floy, his sister-in-law Louise, Flossie Wilcox, and Minnie Kelley were baptized. On June 10th, 1900, eleven more were baptized. On November 10th, 1902, all nineteen took their letters of membership from the Keene, NY, Seventh-day Adventist Church, and the Saranac Lake Church was officially organized. The little group built a small church at 177 Lake Flower Avenue, next to where the La Bella Restaurant now stands (as of 2003). It was a 2-room building heated by wood, and sat on a hill with a long stairway up to it and a parking lot on the street across the road.

In 1899 or 1900, the Saranac Lake Church opened a church school for the elementary grades, one of only six in the New York Conference at the time, with Teacher Isabelle Johnson, later known as Mrs. Bert Aldrich. She boarded around like teachers of that period, became ill in the winter of 1903, and Bessie Jackson (later known as Mrs. Rice) finished out the year for her. School was held in the church, but the children were not to play near it—so Miss Jackson double quicked her charges down to Turtle Pond for exercise. Flora Fitch taught the next year. The pupils were George and Mattie Stevens, Katie Stevens, Charles, Lyman, and Iva Collins, Ernest Moore, Charles and Isaac Cramer, and tiny Laverne who visited when he got lonesome.

Ministerial help was scarce and precious in those early years when Elders A. E. Place, G. B. Thompson and S. H. Lane were conference presidents. That changed for the better with easier transportation, resulting in the formation of the Saranac Lake District, which over time included the churches of West Bangor (organized 1861), Chataeugay (organized circa 1954), Keene (organized prior to Saranac Lake, date unknown, building now a private home), Highbanks (organized 1947), and Plattsburgh (organized circa 1967). Under the leadership of Pastor Myers the Highbanks Church was born out of the Saranac Lake Church when members who lived in the Town of Saranac (not Saranac Lake) decided to organize a church closer to home. The Plattsburgh Church was officially organized with help from Pastor Joseph Twing who was serving as pastor of the Saranac Lake District at the time.

Evangelistic meetings were occasionally held throughout the years; at least once they were held in the Saranac Lake Town Hall. In 1945 after attending the evangelistic campaign in the Town Hall, Edith Hugg joined the church; church meetings were held in her home during the 1980's when members were scarce. Around 1946, Mrs. LaGraves, the church clerk, moved away and left all church records up to that time with her daughter, Mrs. Beatrice Alford in Lake Placid. It was reported that Mrs. Alford then had a house fire; those records were never returned and are assumed lost.

Alterations and repairs were made from time to time on the little church on Lake Flower Avenue, including the digging of a basement for a children's Sabbath School room and a restroom under the direction of Bible Worker, Mabel Vreeland. Then, on April 25, 1959, it was voted to move to a place off the highway as crossing the street was dangerous, plus Victor Macy had built the Cedar Post (now the La Bella Restaurant), and he wanted the church property for additional parking space. Mr. Macy bought the property at 10 St. Bernard Street, and in September 1959, the Lake Flower property was exchanged for the more suitable location on St. Bernard Street in the church area of town. The little church was torn down soon after.

Miss Vreeland and Orville Gadway remodeled the house on Bernard Street to accommodate the church and the Pastor's family who lived in an apartment upstairs. Miss Vreeland then left prior to 1960, and Elder William and Delores Schlunt came to serve in that year. Pastor Schlunt invited George Vandeman in April 1962 to hold an evangelistic series in Plattsburgh that was televised locally and led to the establishment of a Branch Sabbath School in Plattsburgh, and the current Camp Cherokee property on Upper Saranac Lake was procured for a conference youth camp under his direction in the fall of 1963. In the summer of 1964 Pastor Schlunt was killed on his 30th birthday in a tragic water skiing accident on Upper Saranac Lake.

Elder Joseph Twing and his family came to the church in 1965. The Twings immediately set about opening the church school that had been planned by the Schlunts for the elementary grades with Mrs. Twing as teacher. During the first year school was held at the High Banks Church. The following year the school was moved to Saranac Lake with 17 students in a room on the second floor until they finished the classroom in the basement. The school closed in 1969 and the Twings were transferred a year later in 1970.

From 1960-1964, 1970-1982 and 1993-1997 the church operated a Dorcas Center (community services) in the basement when it wasn't a school classroom.

In April 1982, the property at 10 St. Bernard Street was sold and the little congregation continued to meet at member's homes until they began to rent the Saranac Lake Adult Center. In 1989 Evangelist Mike Sady held a campaign which grew the church. Then, in April 1992, the property was repurchased, and in 1999 sufficient funds were donated to help build a new church on the same location. Today the property has been reassigned from 10 to 44 St. Bernard Street, in preparation for 911 Emergency Services.

Currently, the church is reaching out to the Tri-Lakes Community through its annual pancake breakfasts and spaghetti dinners, vegetarian cooking classes, Signs of the Times newspaper boxes, Florida fruit shipment during the winter season, church website at www.TSTL4SDA.net/saranaclake, Amazing Facts videos on local cable TV, and Discover Bible School. A Disaster Relief Center (community services) is in development. There is also a desire to establish a radio translator (satellator) for religious programming in the community in the near future pending the availability of funds.

If anyone has corrections, additional information, photos, or other memorabilia that they feel would be pertinent to the history of the Saranac Lake Seventh-day Adventist Church, please contact Jim Dwyer at 518-891-8855, or email JimDwyer@juno.com

The church held its 100th anniversary commemoration on Nov. 14 and 15 of 2003. The weekend began with an Organ Concert Vespers on Friday night at 7 P.M., featuring guest organist Carl Hackert on the new Allen organ. Mr. Hackert is the Music Director at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Chapel and Cultural Center in Troy, NY, and is a graduate of the Crane School of Music. Activities continued Saturday morning with Adult/Children's Sabbath School at 10 A.M. and Worship at 11:30 A.M., followed by Vegetarian Fellowship Dinner, the Union Springs Academy Chamber Choir, Sundown Worship, and more continuing throughout the day. The featured speaker was Elder William Fagal, influential Adventist theologian from Andrews University, whose father and mother pioneered television ministry in New York with Faith for Today on May 21, 1950, the longest continuously produced television ministry in the Christian community around the world to this day.

As we move forward into our second century of being a “light upon the hill” we ask for your prayers and hope you enjoy the weekend so much that you decide to make your earthly home here with us in the heart of the beautiful Adirondack Mountains and lakes—a little taste of heaven! Praise God from Whom all blessings flow! Saranac Lake Pastors

Pastors prior to 1945 are currently unknown due to apparent loss of church clerk's records up to that time. No other records are known to exist at New York Conference or General Conference Headquarters at this time. In addition, the following dates are approximate—we would appreciate verification if possible:



RESEARCH BY GALICIA EUCARIS, GENERAL CONFERENCE ARCHIVES:

Wrigley, Edgar G., who passed away Sept. 2, was born June 8, 1900, in Barnsboro, N.J. On July 20, 1932, he married Lillie Stuart. His work took them to Ohio, Northern New England, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, New Jersey, and New York. He was a departmental director, principal of several schools, academy Bible teacher, and later a district pastor until well into his 77th year. He is mourned by his wife Lillie, and his sister, Mrs. Herman Widner, of Paterson, N.J.

Johnson, David, M.D., medical director at Fuller Memorial Sanitarium in South Attleboro, MA, died suddenly of a heart attack in his home on November 17, 1970. He was born October 11, 1916, in Plainfield, New Jersey. His early years were spent on Staten Island, New York. He graduated from Greater New York Academy in 1935 and went on to Atlantic Union College in South Lancaster, Massachusetts, where he received his Bachelor of Theology degree in 1940. He was president of his class. He was married in Staten Island to Anna Torkelson on June 20, 1937. To this union were born three children. He served in a pastoral capacity in Jamestown, Syracuse, Elmira, Saranac Lake, and Buffalo, all in New York. He was called to serve as pastor of the church in Taunton, MA, and it was while there that he made the decision to take medicine.

Finishing the pre-medical course at La Sierra College in CA in 1948, he went on to Loma Linda University, where he earned his Doctor of Medicine degree in 1952. Dr. Johnson interned at Memorial Hospital in Pawtucket, RI, for a year and then entered general practice in Greenville, RI, where he practiced for the next seven years. He was in general practice in Corona, CA, from 1960 to 1964. Entering the field of psychiatry, he served a residency in psychiatry at Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago, and then served as staff psychiatrist at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Downey, IL, from 1967 to 1969. He came to Fuller Memorial Sanitarium in South Attleboro, MA, in August of 1969, where he served as medical director.

He is survived by his wife; two sons, David Lloyd, a dentist and naval lieutenant stationed at Adak Island, Alaska; Wayne Carl, at home; a daughter, Mrs. Carol Marie Beck, of Jacksonville, IL; a brother, Carl A. Johnson, of Staten Island, New York; two cousins, and three grandchildren.

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