The Secret of Mirror Bay
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If you want to know the real secret of "Mirror Bay" aka Otsego Lake, it’s not about mysterious mountain sorcerers, fireflies, or poisonous centipedes. It is, however, about how Harriet Stratemeyer Adams came to visit Cooperstown in the summer of 1971. She was there to do research for book #49 in the classic Nancy Drew Mystery Stories Series, The Secret of Mirror Bay, which she wrote. It was published in 1972. Harriet was head of The Stratemeyer Syndicate, the company behind Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys among other popular series.
In Mirror Bay, as the book’s synopsis reads, “Aunt Eloise Drew invites Nancy and her friends to Mirror Bay Bide-A-Wee cabin near Cooperstown, New York, for a visit and a chance to solve the mystery of the woman who glides across the water. Upon their arrival Nancy becomes mixed up in a vacation hoax because she resembles the young woman involved, and is nearly arrested for fraud. On the wooded mountain near the cabin further exciting events await Nancy and the other girls. There, in the deep forest, a weird luminescent green sorcerer appears who threatens to cast an evil spell on anyone investigating his strange activities. In a dangerous twist of circumstances Nancy finds that solving one mystery helps to solve another. What happens when the young detective and her friends uncover a cleverly concealed criminal operation makes thrilling reading.” In the New York Public Library’s Stratemeyer Syndicate archives there are quite a few documents and letters back and forth between the Syndicate and Nancy Drew publisher Grosset & Dunlap on the creation of this published book synopsis.
Nancy brings along her pals Bess and George and they meet up with Aunt Eloise and the shenanigans start off right as they arrive in Cooperstown – two mysteries! Local characters Miss Armitage and Yo are introduced as well as the host of villains who try to thwart Nancy when she gets too close to their secret hideout on the mountain. Villain Sam the Green Man is the one who dresses up to scare people. One of these crooks is Doria Sampler Hornsby who happens to look similar to Nancy, except she has a harder looking face. However, people tend to mistake Nancy for her and think Nancy’s up to no good until corrected. Johann “Yo” Bradley is a local youth who knows the ins and outs of Cooperstown and is always ready to help Nancy with her mystery solving and even comes to her rescue several times. Yo likes to tell tall tales and refers to Cooperstown as “Ghost Country.” Miss Armitage has ancestors who buried a Russian child’s coach in Otsego Lake which she is trying to find using stilts in the water.
The book is similar to a 1970s style Scooby Doo mystery in part with the sorcerer and his costumes the villains “haunt” the mountain with, the strange vacation hoax, the poisonous centipedes, the luminescent mushrooms, the visits to all the area attractions, and the discovery of rogue scientists doing experiments in a secret underground lab in the mountain, which all work together to make this a rather interesting and zany Nancy Drew mystery. Mirror Bay does provide a great travelogue style story in that Nancy and her friends travel around to the local haunts and you get a real flair for the Village of Cooperstown.
As always, when I pick a real-life location where one of the Nancy Drew books is set so that fans can follow in Nancy Drew’s footsteps and bring the book to life at one of our Nancy Drew Conventions, I dive in and research and sleuth for clues. Basically, I get to play Nancy Drew, but it’s a much safer version of sleuthing without the chloroforming, head knockouts and villain foibles thrown my way that Nancy often experienced. No threats to stay off the case or else! No Cooperstown green sorcerer trying to steal our thunder. In planning these conventions for over twenty years, I often find some really neat real-life answers to the Nancy Drew book mysteries of our youth. Sometimes though, things remain the stuff of mystery, which may be fitting as this is Nancy Drew, after all.
I grab my magnifying glass, hop in my proverbial roadster, and delve into the mystery like Nancy. I re-read Mirror Bay, taking meticulous notes, made a list of real-life places in the book and other things that happened or were interesting clues or what seemed like possible real-life things and turned to Google. Looking up places on Google, terminology used in the book, and using Google Maps helped to build the logistics and lay the groundwork for our convention in Cooperstown. Then I reached out to various places and people to create a great itinerary for the fans to follow in Nancy and all her chums’ footsteps. Briefly, in this book Nancy and her friends mention or visit some neat local places in Cooperstown including 5-mile point, 3-mile point, Glimmerglass State Park, Hyde Bay on Otsego Lake, Shadow Brook, Mount Wellington, the Cooperstown docks, Kingfisher Tower, Council Rock, The Farmer’s Museum and the Cardiff Giant, the “Fenimore Museum” likely then “Fenimore House” home of the New York State Historical Association (NYSHA) now called the Fenimore Art Museum, Natty Bumppo’s Cave, a Toy Museum which is no longer open, Hyde Hall, the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, shopping in the Village of Cooperstown, the US Post Office, The Otesaga Resort Hotel, and Hyde Hall. Researching and reading about these places is one thing, experiencing them in real time is a whole different ballgame.
I traveled to Cooperstown with several close
chums in Nancy Drew Sleuths, Gina, Mary, and Kelly who are part of our fan
organization that puts on these conventions. We started out in Ohio and drove
up to Cooperstown over the course of two days doing research and book hunting.
The day we arrived in Cooperstown we could picture Nancy and her chums making
that same drive into Cooperstown. While we wound down the winding roads and
valleys, everything was green and lush. The distant woods in the spooky Cooperstown mountains were daring us to explore. Would there be a mysterious sorcerer
to tangle with or try and stop us from our sleuthing around Cooperstown? Time
would tell. As we drove into Cooperstown we were amazed with the picturesque
homes and buildings. It was like stepping back in time. Throughout downtown
Cooperstown, people were milling about and checking out the shops and
attractions, but we turned North heading toward the west side of the lake where
we were staying in a cottage for the duration of the convention. Our home base
was the Bayside Inn and Marina along the lakeshore. As we took the road on the
west side, I spotted Otsego Lake and everything fell into place – just as
described in the book and just as serene. As we wound around the lake, trees
densely populated the lake front in places and then views of the lake would quickly
come into focus as we whizzed by. The sun was starting to set and the colors and
reflections on the Glimmerglass were beautiful as we observed the lake from our
deck. I couldn’t wait to start out our adventure the next morning sleuthing out
the places from the book and real-life places from behind the scenes when
Harriet visited Cooperstown.
As I was working my way through the Syndicate letters, notes, and memos for more clues, I discovered a curious piece of ephemera that transcended way back before Harriet’s 1971 visit to nearly fifty years earlier. Specifically, to 1924 Cooperstown in the midst of the Roaring Twenties. Cooperstown was quite the enterprising village town. The historic Otesaga Resort Hotel had opened in 1909. And Cooperstown was a place of many lakeside camps for kids which were very rustic in nature, not for today’s glampers. Cooperstown has been described as literary, cultural, recreational, and of course naturally beautiful - and it has remained so for many years. As it turns out, the letter I discovered involved Harriet’s father, Edward Stratemeyer of The Stratemeyer Syndicate – inventor of Nancy Drew and other popular series including The Hardy Boys, Tom Swift, The Rover Boys and The Bobbsey Twins. Stratemeyer had been to Cooperstown in 1924. In a typed letter dated July 15, 1924, to “Camp Chenango, Cooperstown NY”, addressed to a “Mr. Fisher,” he wrote of his time spent in Cooperstown at the camp briefly. He was traveling with “Mr. Adams” – Harriet’s husband Russell. “I shall long remember my visit to your camp and how royally I was entertained there. It certainly is a beautiful spot and I do not wonder the boys are enjoying every minute of their vacation. Remember me to all of them and also to your wife and to the others.” He was sending Fisher a parcel of Stratemeyer Syndicate books including some that Stratemeyer himself wrote up to the camp for the boys to read, perhaps on rainy days.
Naturally I was curious about this camp! I
Googled “Camp Chenango” online to find a little bit of info, but not much, as this
was nearly 100 years ago that Stratemeyer visited and I wasn’t sure how long
the camp was in existence. I ran across something written about camps in the
area and it would appear that Camp Chenango was near the Pathfinder Lodge somewhere
on the east side of the lake described as a “woodsy maze.” In a June 1921 issue
of Scribner’s Magazine, an ad ran for Camp Chenango heralding “CAMP
CHENANGO ON OTSEGO LAKE, COOPERSTOWN, N. Y. For Boys 6 to 15. Give your boy a
vacation that counts. Self-Reliance, Happiness, Health. Wholesome Food,
Systematic Exercise, Mountain Air, Ideal Surroundings. Send for Illustrated
Booklet.” I also found a book –
“A Handbook of Summer Camps: An Annual Survey,” vol III by Porter Sargent, dated
1926, in which a description of Camp Chenango noted that the camp “is on the
east shore of the lake, four miles from Cooperstown and The Pathfinders’ Lodge
is a half mile beyond.” Camp Chenango was a boys’ camp, Pathfinders’ Lodge was
a girls’ camp. In Mirror Bay, Nancy stayed around 6 miles on the east
side out of Cooperstown, the Pathfinder Lodge is near there and of course Camp
Chenango. Located by Camp Chenango was Camp Otsego for girls also run by the Fishers
which opened in the 1940s. In Mirror Bay, Nancy and her friends walk
from their cottage toward Cooperstown and encounter a group of boy campers and
their counselor – no doubt likely from Camp Chenango, since it was a boys’
camp. They also run into a councilor named Karen who referred to her “little
girl campers” – likely from Camp Otsego. There were quite a few camps running
up and down the east side of the lake.
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Map of Otsego Lake from Ralph Birdsall's The Story of Cooperstown
Copy from Suzan Friedlander with notes on camp locations
I ran across an article in the Cooperstown Crier from 2013 with some information on a gathering of folks discussing the lake camps. Several people were listed who presented about Cooperstown area camps and I settled on one of them to contact - Suzan “Sue” Friedlander, Executive Director & Head Curator at the Arkell Museum & Canajoharie Library, who was happy to help share some information and I credit her immensely in helping me find more information on the camps and to figure out where the real-life location of the cabin in the book, Mirror Bay Bide-A-Wee, might have been when Harriet visited Cooperstown in 1971.
Sue was a fan of Nancy Drew and has her childhood books including some of the Stratemeyer Syndicate’s Bobbsey Twin books one of which is signed by the author through a colleague of her father’s. Sue shared a map from a book by Ralph Birdsall - The Story of Cooperstown, first published in 1917. You can get a reprint at Willis Monie Bookshop in downtown Cooperstown. Sue had written notes on a copy of the map as to where the camps were back in the day. Now I could get a sense of exactly where Camp Chenango and Camp Otsego were located along the east side of Otsego Lake. Past Natty Bumppo’s Cave and before Pathfinder Lodge.
So nearly 50 years later after her father vacationed through Cooperstown with her husband Russell, Harriet in the summer of 1971 ventures to Cooperstown to gather research for writing Mirror Bay. This is where the mystery deepens. How did she come to go to Cooperstown and more importantly, who drove her there? This could have been the stuff of Syndicate legends never solved, but I gave it the old college try. I started with Nancy Axelrad, the only surviving Stratemeyer Syndicate partner left who had told me several years ago that a Jane Sanderson who was working at the Syndicate went with Harriet to Cooperstown. Nancy noted that Jane had spent summers camping in Cooperstown as a child and knew all the ghost stories around there. So, my starting point to find out more info behind the scenes, was to locate Jane Sanderson if possible. When you’re living in the present day 2020s and you’re talking about people who were working at the Syndicate more than 50 years ago in the 1970s, sadly, many are not around today which throws a wrench into sleuthing for more clues.
Not so for Jane Sanderson. My one big clue was that she was, like Harriet, a Wellesley graduate. So, I reached out to the Wellesley Alumni Association and they sent Jane a message for me and I got a reply from Jane. Unfortunately, it was not the reply I expected. She was there working at the Syndicate in the 1960s, but not the 1970s and didn’t know about Cooperstown. So, dead end there, and then the plot thickened…
Going back to square one is a daunting place to be at first. However, I never give up that easily. So, I compiled a list of people I was aware of who were working at the Syndicate in the early 1970s to try and figure out which one of them could be our “culprit.” Nancy had been sure it was Jane, so she tried to think over who it could have and likely couldn’t have been. Many on the list have already passed on. There was Priscilla Baker-Carr, June Dunn, Ann Shultes, Mary Fisher, Julie Irish, Lorry Rickle, Lilo Wuenn, Grace Grote, and others Harriet sometimes took trips with from her own family including sister-in-law Jeannette Adams and granddaughter Dr. Margie McClave. There were others too that worked at the Syndicate like secretary Marjorie Flynn and Nancy reached out to Marjorie to see if she had a few clues.
Meanwhile, I started trying to find out more about Julie Irish. Curiously, Julie was from New Paltz, NY – just a couple of hours from Cooperstown. That seemed promising. However, a letter in the NYPL files from Julie to Harriet stated that Julie was moving to Tucson, AZ in the summer of 1970, so she wouldn’t have likely been around to go with Harriet and she didn’t work in the office, she worked from New Paltz. I surmised that whoever went with Harriet was likely someone working regularly in the office or living around that area in New Jersey. There was a woman on the list – a Mary Fisher – who I was curious about as one of the letters on Mirror Bay back and forth from the Syndicate to Grosset & Dunlap included a secretary’s initials “mdf” (turns out this is Marjorie Flynn) and another Syndicate letter of the time period included initials with just “mf” – could that be Mary Fisher? Alas, no it was also Marjorie Flynn. And then of course, there’s Camp Chenango that Edward visited run by a family named Fisher. Coincidence? Possibly. But another piece to the puzzle I needed to shake down.
Grace Grote worked for the Syndicate during the time period of Mirror Bay having been written, she’d been there over 10
years at this point and had written quite a few Bobbsey Twins books plus helped
revised some Nancy Drew books including The Secret of Shadow Ranch and The
Message in the Hollow Oak. She also helped with general research and had done
research on the two Nancy Drew books published before Mirror Bay. Her
husband Donald Grote, was an advisor on science related subjects, mainly for
the Tom Swift series. As of 2020, Grace had turned 100 and there’s a news piece
online about her church celebrating that milestone. Would I be able to get in
touch with her in 2023? Might she have the missing piece of the puzzle? I
reached out to her church to see if they could get me in touch with her.
Then there was the eureka discovery in going manually through the PDF files of the Grace and Donald Grote letters in the Stratemeyer Syndicate archives at NYPL that James shared. It seemed there were little to no hints there, nothing about Mirror Bay from the 1970s letters and as I scrolled upward back through time, I got into the 1950s when I spied it. And I can see why the “Cooperstown” search James ran didn’t find it originally as Cooperstown was misspelled in the letter – it was spelled “Cooperstorn,” a harmless typo at the time, but not so harmless in that it was nearly overlooked 70 years after the fact when trying to solve this mystery!
Screen capture from The Oneonta Star - July 5, 1957
I figured it was worth a try to search out 1957 obituaries for early July. I searched online for a Cooperstown area newspaper – The Oneonta Star – to see if I could find an obituary for early July that matched the date. In a matter of minutes, I’d found a “smoking gun” of sorts. There was a clipping of a July 5, 1957 entry about E. Lynn Fisher who had died on July 4 at his camp on Otsego Lake. What are the odds that a Fisher – associated in some way with Harriet’s father before her and his visit to Camp Chenango in 1924 with her husband, passed away at around the same time Harriet was going to Cooperstown for a funeral?
The obituary mentioned that Fisher had established Camp Chenango. Undoubtedly the same “Mr. Fisher” that Edward Stratemeyer was writing to in 1924. The funeral was in the afternoon that same day Harriet and her husband had hurriedly drove up to Cooperstown. Fisher was living in NJ and was an English teacher in Newark, NJ. That sealed the deal for me. The Stratemeyer family likely knew the Fisher family well based on not only being based in NJ where the Stratemeyers had lived for years, but the 1924 visit by Edward and Russell Adams and Harriet traveling to Cooperstown for the funeral in 1957, and so that explains the travels to Cooperstown and likely the connection to traveling there in 1971. I would soon come full circle with more news about this connection between the two families.
Now the real question became what inspired Harriet to return for researching Mirror Bay in 1971 and was Syndicate employee, Mary Fisher, the connection to the Fisher family in NJ and Cooperstown and did she drive Harriet to Cooperstown in 1971?
In order to solve that mystery, I needed to see about connecting with Grace Grote and running all these new developments by Nancy Axelrad to see if that seemed plausible.
Nancy revealed a connection between E. Lynn Fisher and a Lynn Ealer who worked at the Syndicate during the 1970s and it was a further eureka moment! Lynn Ealer Ritchkoff was a granddaughter of E. Lynn Fisher. I recalled that in the obit of Fisher, one of his daughters listed was Mrs. George J. Ealer. Nancy revealed that Harriet, her husband Russell, and some couples including the Fishers formed a group called The Whirling Dirvishes and would get together and ball room dance. I think like a graceful waltz we’ve now come full circle. I suspected that Lynn might have driven Harriet or perhaps suggested the setting of the book. But, was she the “culprit” who went with Harriet? As for Mary Fisher, not a relation, just a red herring!
I needed to see if I could find Lynn to get answers to my questions. I found her daughter through social media and messaged her hoping she could get me in touch with Lynn. Meanwhile, in doing a Google search, I found an obituary for a woman that Lynn had left a condolence on at legacy website where she reminisced about “beautiful Otsego Lake and Hyde Bay” and “camping days on Otsego.” She fondly remembered camp reunions. This was definitely the right Lynn.
I heard back from Lynn’s daughter, and she was
able to put me in touch with Lynn. Her daughter recounted the family trips to
Cooperstown and how cousins of theirs still live in the area. She related how Camps
Chenango and Otsego closed in 1976 and at one point the local family took over
running the camp from the Fishers before that after E. Lynn “Pop” Fisher passed
away. She related that Camp Chenango was located near Pathfinder Lodge. As for
the Stratemeyer Syndicate, her daughter told me how she spent “sick days”
sometimes from school curled up on a couch at the offices of The Stratemeyer
Syndicate reading the books when her mom Lynn was working there.
Lynn Ealer Ritchkoff (far right) as a camp counselor, photo from a Facebook
reunion group for Cooperstown camps - copyright held by owner of photo
Lynn and I had a wonderful time chatting - just the stories and memories she could recount about her time at the Syndicate and knowing Harriet. The memories spent in Cooperstown at the camps were lovely to hear about. Her grandmother, Jane Carr Fisher, was really good friends with Harriet, the wife of E. Lynn Fisher of Camp Chenango. In fact, Lynn told me how the Fishers lived just a few houses down from Harriet in Maplewood, NJ. She spoke of Camp Chenango and Camp Otsego and how they were very rustic camps, mostly tents and a few cabins. There was a bridge between the two camps and the girls and boys would get together some for meals, beach cookouts, square dancing, church on Sundays, but they also did a lot of activities on their own. She reminisced about all the camaraderie among the campers and counselors who came back for many years each year. So here it was, the connection complete between how Harriet and her family came to travel and visit Cooperstown – she was good friends and Maplewood neighbors with Jane and Pop Fisher. And the association ran deep - back at least as far as 1924 when Edward and Harriet’s husband visited the Fishers at Camp Chenango. What a really neat and exceptionally quaint back story, one I never expected to uncover when I began looking into the background of Harriet researching for this book. I have no doubt that visits to the Fishers and the camps was an inspiration and perhaps this was a touching way to commemorate the long-lasting friendship among the families.
After graduating from her grandmother Jane’s Alma Mater, Elmira College, Jane suggested that Lynn work for Harriet and after the interview, she was hired and worked at the Syndicate for a few years. Her position was secretarial and she did a lot of typing. She recalled a small staff in the office, the line of typewriters everyone worked on, how Harriet was most pleasant, generous, and always had a smile. Parties in Maplewood and Harriet’s Bird Haven Farm were a treat. Lynn recounted once they moved the Syndicate offices from East Orange to Maplewood, how they had a wonderful library in the office of all the books the Syndicate had produced.
My first question, after pleasantries, was to ask if Lynn drove Harriet up to Cooperstown. Was she THE one I’d been searching for? The answer was “no” – Lynn was not the one who traveled with Harriet. Lynn wasn’t sure if she had been in Cooperstown when Harriet visited in 1971, but she remembers Harriet saying she was going to go there and of course about her having traveled up there and then writing the book. Lynn had a thought that it might have been June Dunn, who Nancy Axelrad had told me often went on trips with Harriet. So, perhaps it was June, similar in name to Jane, who went with Harriet to Cooperstown. Perhaps Jane Sanderson was being remembered instead of Jane Fisher, Harriet’s friend. Two Janes and one June and I think we’re on the right track. The one person left who might know, of course, was Grace Grote.
From Lynn I learned a little more about Cooperstown and Otsego Lake. Harriet visited Hyde Bay, located near the north part of the lake, named after the Hyde family. Located in Hyde Bay is Glimmerglass State Park with the Hyde’s mansion, Hyde Hall. There is a river called Shadow Brook, a tributary which flows into Otsego Lake at the north end near Glimmerglass Park that Harriet investigated. In fact, it’s the largest watershed in the Otsego Lake basin. In the book, when the sailboat Nancy and her chums are using is stolen, Yo suggests it might be found around Shadow Brook and they immediately go there and find the sailboat half sunken in the Shadow Brook inlet. Shadow Brook also flows under the historic Hyde Hall Bridge.
When I mentioned some of the details from Mirror Bay to Lynn, including the sunken chest with the old child’s coach, she wondered if some of the sunken cultural artifacts from the lake could have inspired Harriet. Lynn recalled a particular sunken boat that is in the lake. I did some research online and found there were several wrecks in the lake and an aircraft that crashed in 1948. In August of 1940, there was a wooden boat, The Leatherstocking, that caught fire and sank. There is also Sunken Island in the north part of the lake that Lynn mentioned. These cultural artifacts and the idea of something being sunken – like the island – all could have been inspiration to Harriet.
Other things that clearly inspired Harriet were the history and tales written by James Fenimore Cooper which Harriet mentions in the beginning of Mirror Bay and in various places throughout the story. Cooper’s 1830 novel, The Water-Witch, featuring a ship named “Water-Witch,” likely inspired the name of the speedboat that capsizes Nancy’s sailboat, named “The Water Witch.” Sleuth Gina found this gem in searching about Cooperstown. Cooperstown was also called “The Haunted Lake” by Cooper’s grandniece Constance Fenimore. In Harper’s New Monthly Magazine in a volume from 1871 to 1872, there’s an article called “The Haunted Lake” which discusses Cooper and the lake. Constance speaks of Cooper no longer being with us but that the magic of his characters lingers on all around the area that he “lovingly described.” She writes of the lake, “It’s points and bays are haunted, and it’s forests are peopled with wraiths and shades.” There couldn’t have been a better place to set Mirror Bay.
Lynn and I discussed where Harriet might have stayed when she visited Cooperstown in 1971. She mentioned a place I hadn’t heard of called Rathbun’s. In doing some research I zeroed in on the fact that it was located nearly 7 miles on the east side of the lake near Hyde Bay in very close proximity to the place in the book that everyone stays at. I discovered that it was sold in 1985 and is now the Hyde Bay Colony. Online you can look up Hyde Bay Colony and learn more about these cabins that 13 families collectively own and rent out. The colony is located near Glimmerglass State Park. It’s also just south of the Shadow Brook River and tributary to Otsego Lake.
Sharing the description of Mirror Bay Bide-A-Wee in the book with Sue Friedlander, she agreed that it was likely the current Hyde Bay Colony. A major clue in the book that didn’t seem like something that would have been made up, was that Nancy’s cabin was a “cola stop” for hikers so there was a coke machine on the porch. There’s a cottage today in the colony that advertises that they keep a copy of Mirror Bay displayed in the cottage. Looking online at photos of the cottages in the colony, the descriptions, the lake being right there, a dock, the views north across Hyde Bay and west across Lake Otsego, just south of Shadow Brook, it would appear to be THE location. Whether Harriet stayed there or not while doing research for the book, she certainly made that the location for Mirror Bay Bide-A-Wee when writing the story.
In the book, once everyone gets to Cooperstown, Nancy notes they will drive along the water to Hyde Bay and then walk down to “Bide-A-Wee cabin.” It’s located “some six miles” from Cooperstown. The drive to the cabin involves sites along the lake of various camps and campers - likely Camp Chenango and Camp Otsego among others. They come to a parking area on the left and park. They take their bags and head down a path toward the waterfront. Though the cabin was on the bay, it was at the point where the “inlet joined the lake proper.” The cabin was described as rustic and had a large front porch with a view west across the lake and north across the bay. It had a living room with a large fireplace, a well-furnished kitchen and three good sized bedrooms.
Former Entrance to Camps Chenango/Otsego
After we arrived in Cooperstown the next morning
we set off on a sleuthing adventure around the east side of the lake. Our goal
was to find the location of the former Camp Chenango and Camp Otsego and also
to check out the Hyde Bay Colony to see if in fact this could be where the
fictional Mirror Bay Bide-A-Wee cabin was located. I had a rather vague address
for Camp Chenango and a notation of someone mentioning a chain across an old
entrance. We watched our car’s mileage and drove about 4 miles until we soon
spotted a chain draped lazily across what was formerly a driveway. Overgrown
with greenery and vines, Gina and I traipsed down through the path, picking our
way as rain threatened to start pouring. There was an overgrown clearing and
then a “woodsy maze” as described in researching the camp. Nothing remained of
the camp, but you could picture the kids having a grand old time back in the
day with so much to explore and probably daring each other to run across on the
right side of the road up the spooky old “haunted” mountain.
We also doubled back to check out the hiking
entrance to the trail going up to Natty Bumppo’s cave – considered a rather
steep hike and by then the rain was coming. I walked a pathway among the trees
which provided some shelter and even checked the stumps of trees for mushrooms
as I went. Would they be luminescent? While we didn’t try to hike up to the cave,
Sleuth LuAnn and her husband Jim did – they didn’t spot any real sorcerers or
mushrooms, but they did discover the cave entrance. LuAnn noted that the path
up gets steeper as you climb up. She said “the cave is vertical and a small
person could probably squeeze in. Maybe
it has a lower opening, but it was too steep for us to check out.” It was
different as described in the book and of course Nancy and her pals had an easy
time getting to it for the sake of the mystery and convenience in Mirror Bay.
Hyde Bridge, Shadow Brook runs underneath
Next, we headed to Glimmerglass State Park and
stopped at the Hyde Bridge, one of the oldest covered bridges and it was a
beauty. What a sight to stand there and watch Shadow Brook flow under the
bridge toward Otsego Lake. We continued into the park and walked to the beachfront.
I took a trail left down towards the lake edge where Shadow Brook empties into
it. There was a lot of areas you couldn’t get to, without getting into the
muddy shallows and brush, but I got close enough to get some nice pictures of
the inlet where in the book, Nancy’s stolen sailboat is found half buried in
mud. From the park we traveled to Hyde Hall, the mansion in the book where some
of the crooks try to conceal a stolen chest of papers. You could see across
Hyde Bay back over to Hyde Bay Colony and a small dotting of the cabins. The
views were stunning. Our sleuthing out the real-life places was a very
successful and rewarding part of our day.
Hyde Hall
Before arriving in Cooperstown, I had continued to try and solve the mystery of who Harriet went with to Cooperstown. Would I ever solve that? I had to find a way to get in touch with Grace Grote. What might she have to say about it all? And did she or her husband Donald have anything to do with Mirror Bay behind the scenes? Mirror Bay with its inclusion of the theory of Cold Light, the Fireflies, and the science laboratory in the mountains, would have been right up Donald’s alley.
The church contacted me back and called Grace to see if they could give me her phone number so I could call her. She wasn’t on social media and didn’t have e-mail, so it would be regular mail or the phone which suited me just fine. In the nick of time, I rang her the day before I embarked on my trip to Cooperstown and I was thrilled to get to chat with Grace, nearly 50 years after she had worked at the Stratemeyer Syndicate, having left in 1974.
Grace was so interesting to talk with. She mainly worked on the Bobbsey Twins series, but did do research for Harriet on other things, however she didn’t remember whether she or Donald might have worked on the Mirror Bay book. After so many years, it wasn’t familiar to her. She was always pretty caught up in the Bobbsey Twins series at the Syndicate. She spoke fondly of her husband Donald who was a science teacher. She said when he worked on Tom Swift, he could come up with fantastic inventions but Harriet’s one caveat was that they must be scientifically possible. It’s possible he could have given some info to Harriet on some of the science in Mirror Bay regarding Cold Light and fireflies. Grace wasn’t sure who Harriet would have traveled with. So, outside of the possibility of it being June Dunn, I was resigned to the fact that this piece of the puzzle might remain a mystery. Grace did fondly remember reading Nancy Drew during the Great Depression. She was around 9 years old and emphatically stated that “Nancy Drew was a great splash of light in a very dark time.” Grace, very proud of her work at the Stratemeyer Syndicate, gives talks about Edward Stratemeyer, Harriet, Nancy Drew, the Bobbsey Twins, and other topics related to the Syndicate. I think this is incredibly inspirational.
There was a February 2011 article in the now
defunct Whispered Watchword by Jack French about Grace Grote who he’d
spoken with to write the article around 2010. He wrote of Harriet and her
research trips and Grace had mentioned that June Dunn frequently went with
Harriet on trips for research. French wrote, “When Harriet needed some outside
research to be done regarding a geographical region or a certain industry for
use in an upcoming series book, Harriet would take another staffer, June M.
Dunn, with her on these trips.” I think therefore, since June and “Jane” are
similar, that it’s highly likely given this information about June, that she
was probably the person who went with Harriet to Cooperstown. A letter soon to
arrive from Lynn also referred to the likelihood that it had to be June Dunn.
Back to Cooperstown, I was speaking at the
Village of Cooperstown Library on Saturday, July 15 during our convention and I
was very excited to tell everyone about my sleuthing adventures in ferreting
out all the clues behind the mystery and how Harriet came to visit Cooperstown.
Sue Friedlander attended the event and other local Cooperstonians were present
including Pam Larbig whose grandparents were Pop and Jane Fisher. Lynn, her
cousin, had called to chat with her about my visit and research. I was so
thrilled to be able to meet one of the family and chat about Harriet’s visit.
Several exciting things came from the library event. Pam told me about
remembering Harriet’s visit in 1971. She was just a kid then and busy with camp
activities, but she recalled Harriet coming to visit. She remembered a coke
machine at the camp too that may have figured into the coke machine on the
Mirror Bay Bide-A-Wee porch. She also remembered Harriet sending up books to
the camps and still has her vintage series books including her Nancy Drews.
Several locals and some of the Sleuths in the audience noted during our Q’
& A’ after the talk, that the 1970s were a period of Sci-Fi themes in pop
culture, so that also could have influenced Harriet’s choice of the science
elements of this book. Sue brought up the Carriage and Harness Museum when I wondered
about the coach. When I referred to the character Yo in the book as being
called a “folklore joker” behind the scenes by Harriet, Sue and the woman
sitting next to her both said immediately that was a local man named Louis “Lou”
Jones. And then and there I had more rabbit holes to sleuth down when I
returned and wrapped up this adventure. What an exciting day!
First let’s talk about the Carriage and Harness Museum
and the child’s Russian coach plot elements. Back in the 1970s when Cooperstown
was full of museums, some no longer here today, there was a carriage museum called
the Carriage and Harness Museum. There had been around three dozen carriages
owned by millionaire F. Ambrose Clark that had been on display among other
relics. In an article in the New York Times about the museum from 1978, it was
disclosed that the museum would be closing and the collection would be dispersed
at public auction. The carriage and harness collection was considered the
finest in the country. Clark was an internationally known sportsman and one of
the last sporting carriage drivers. The museum was located two blocks from main
street in the former stable of Clark’s at Elk and Fair streets. A 1975 New York
Times article, “A Large Slice of Americana, Served up in Cooperstown” described
the vehicles as "buggies, runabouts, buckboards, carts, phaetons, shays,
sleighs, Bronson wagon, road coach and other horsedrawn vehicles." Could there
have been a child’s coach in the collection? Did visiting this museum inspire
Harriet to look into coaches in a Russian Palace, “now a museum,” as she
noted in the set of writing hints, which then led her to create the Russian child’s
coach backstory?
There was the “Toy Museum” that Nancy and her
friends visited in Mirror Bay. Long closed, it was located on the west
side of the lake toward Springfield Center located on the northwest part of the
lake and the buildings are still there though it’s a private residence now. I
found a reference online in an old issue – May 30, 1977 – of New York
Magazine via Google Books. It was called Denny’s Toy Museum when Harriet
visited. Harriet was an avid doll collector and the now-closed toy museum housed
quite a few dolls and children’s toys. In the book the description of the dolls
included this information, “Also on display were many kinds of buggies and
other vehicles in which children had given their dolls rides.” Perhaps between
the toy museum and the Carriage and Harness Museum, and Harriet’s love of
Russian antiquities, the child’s Russian coach plot was born.
Louis C. Jones aka "Yo" from Mirror Bay
Next, we’ll focus on the “folklore joker,” Louis C. Jones. What a character he must have been! After the library event and a special early 50th surprise birthday party that was thrown for Kelly and I, we headed to Hyde Hall for the house tour which didn’t disappoint, Hyde Hall was a fabulous vintage Cooperstown showpiece. Before the tour, in the gift shop, I purchased one of Jones’s books, Things That Go Bump in the Night, which is a neat book, a 1983 reprint published by Syracuse University Press. The back of the book notes that Jones was “an authority on regional folklore and on ghost stories in particular. He was director of the New York State Historical Association in Cooperstown, New York.” His New York Times obituary from November 28, 1990 noted that he had retired from NYSHA the year Mirror Bay was published. His collection that he assembled of “primitives” has been said to be one of the most important of its type in the country, according to art historians. He was a founder of the New York Folklore Society. In the preface to the book I purchased, Jones stated about the supernatural, “I was not, am not, a believer in the supernatural; if I had had a motto it would probably have been, Dubito Ergo Sum.” This translates to “I doubt, therefore I think, I think therefore I am.” Of Cooperstown he stated, “It is a great privilege to live in a town which the dead have not deserted.”
Harriet had to have met Jones in researching the area and with his being head of NYSHA and the associated Fenimore House and the Farmer’s Museum, he would have been a great resource for her on local Cooperstown lore. She clearly used his books for research in Mirror Bay. In reading Things that Go Bump in the Night, two stories that Yo had talked about in Mirror Bay, included a “folk classic” and a “ghostly hitchhiker” tale that Jones expanded on in his book. A classic example of urban ghost lore is “The Ghostly Hitchhiker” and Jones devotes an entire chapter to this folklore. There are similar versions all over but the basics include a rainy day, someone riding by a cemetery, seeing a girl, and picking her up to take her to an address. She disappears once there, the woman inside the home was her mother, the girl had died and was buried in that cemetery. On page 137 of Mirror Bay, Yo tells this story to Nancy and her friends. Another tale from Jones’s book, the folk classic ranking up there with the ghostly hitchhiker was a story about a couple stopping for the night and an elderly couple giving them a room. They left early so as not to disturb the couple, leaving a 50-cent piece on a table. In town, they’re told the place had burned down some time ago, and a trip back to investigate finds the remains of the building but on part of a table still standing is the 50-cent piece. Yo tells this story on page 105 of Mirror Bay.
In Mirror Bay, Harriet brings the folklore into the plot
with Yo referring to Cooperstown as “Ghost Country.” The name Jones appears in
several places in the book – a botany student, Karen Jones, is a camp counselor
at a girls’ camp and tells Nancy about Yo, “People around there laugh at him
and say he’s full of tall tales…” He’s noted as being “kind of a town
character.” George refers to him as the “tall-story boy.” Nancy’s boyfriend Ned
Nickerson conveniently is taking a psychology course at Emerson College and as
part of that course he’s been studying folklore and ghosts. Ned tells the
reader that “Scholars of this subject declare that all these stories are merely
folklore.” Ned ends up spoiling Yo’s attempt to put one over the girls with
these ghost stories, for Ned already knows the stories and their endings. One
of the villains, Sam Hornsby, is revealed to be named Sam H. Jones. Curiously,
in Jones’s book, a man named Michael Welch is mentioned in connection with a
ghostly tale. In Mirror Bay, Sam’s partner is named Michael Welch, who rented along with Doria,
the Water Witch speedboat. His full name is Michael W.
Brink. Finally, Yo refers to Nancy as “Mrs. Sherlock Holmes.” As a teenage
sleuth, calling Nancy a “Mrs.” is odd. I have to wonder if Jones called
Harriet, a Mrs., by that moniker due to her mystery writing and sleuthing
around Cooperstown. I’m sure that would have delighted Harriet enough to use it
in the book.
Bruce Markeson telling tales about Pomeroy Place
Cooperstown Candlelight Ghost Tours
The night before the
library event, our group had taken a ghost tour of Cooperstown haunts by Bruce
Markeson – Cooperstown Candlelight Ghost Tours – which was wonderful and is highly
recommended. He and his wife attended the library event. When Sue Friedlander
mentioned Lou Jones, I was reminded of a stop on the ghost tour to Pomeroy
Place. A gray stone house, Pomeroy Place was built in 1804 located on the
corner of Main and River Streets near Otsego Lake. It was a wedding gift from
William Cooper, founder of Cooperstown, to his daughter Ann and her husband
George Pomeroy. Ann’s ghost is said to haunt Pomeroy Place. Markeson related
the tale and said she’s sometimes seen reading through a window. Jones lived
for a time in Pomeroy Place. In fact, in a new introduction dated 31 December
1982 to the reprint of Things That Go Bump in the Night, he writes on page vii, “We moved next door to live in Ann Cooper
Pomeroy’s herringbone house, and while we have never seen her, my wife thinks
our old Sheltie, Fido, watched her come down the stairs and go out the front
door one summer’s evening.” Our tour ended as we wrapped things up at Otsego Lake near the infamous Council Rock.
When I returned home from Cooperstown to continue sleuthing for more information about clues that I was given at the library event, there were letters waiting for me from Lynn Ealer Ritchkof. I was excited to see them. One was a promised article on Cooperstown by Nicole Pensiero in the NJ Star-Ledger – I had found a link to it online to check out while traveling there and it was a nice write up with neat things to do in Cooperstown. Lynn mentioned in her letter several things that were interesting to note. One exiting clue was that Lynn and a friend had researched mushroom caves for Harriet in Newburgh, NY. She also reminisced about the camp days and Harriet’s generous donation of books to the camps over the years. She reiterated that she felt that June Dunn was the likely one to have gone with Harriet to Cooperstown.
The research into mushroom caves was intriguing.
Especially since luminescent mushrooms play a role in Mirror Bay as do
caves. Nancy finds a luminescent mushroom growing a cave in a scene in the
book. I didn’t find much online about any mushroom caves, but while we were
there in Cooperstown, I kept my eye out for any growing around tree stumps and
on the ground. I had looked up luminescent mushrooms online and had some idea
what they might look like. We did find an abundance of mushrooms in two
locations. The first was south of Cooperstown near Milford where we went on a
rail biking adventure. The other was when we visited Mirror Bay Bide-A-Wee the
second time when it wasn’t raining after the library event and everyone got to
see that amazing view. There were mushrooms growing all over of various types.
I don’t think any were luminescent though. In a humid lake environment such as
what exists in Cooperstown, I’m sure that mushrooms are prevalent and would
have been back at the time of Harriet’s visit. Perhaps they piqued her interest
enough to turn them into something more intriguing in Mirror Bay.
Baseball Hall of Fame
What of the Key to Cooperstown that museum officials were going to have made for Nancy? After the mystery involving the Russian child’s coach is solved and the relic is brought up from the lake bottom, officials from the “Fenimore Museum” come to collect it – a Mr. Hill and a Mr. Clark. The Clark name was famous in Cooperstown – the family had many roots in this area – F. Ambrose Clark’s carriages and harnesses making up the museum previously mentioned, the family built the Otesaga Hotel and Resort. Stephen Carlton Clark was a philanthropist and art collector among other pursuits. He founded the Baseball Hall of Fame. He gave his late brother, Edward’s home, to NYSHA which became the Fenimore Art Museum. He is the founder of the Farmer’s Museum. His son Stephen Carlton Clark, Jr. would have been around continuing his father’s legacy when Harriet visited in 1971. So, there is little doubt that either the senior or the junior is the inspiration for the museum official, “Mr. Clark,” that arrives to assist Nancy and Miss Armitage with the donation of the Russian child’s coach.
I reached out to the Deputy Mayor of Cooperstown, Cynthia “Cindy” Falk, and Mayor Ellen R. Tillapaugh for a few clues. Was there a real-life Key to Cooperstown, or perhaps back in the day? Or was it the stuff of fiction, as is often the case? I found out from them that there is no real-life Key to Cooperstown, now or back when Harriet was writing this book, just an invention and a way to reward Nancy for a job well done for solving the mystery. Deputy Mayor Cindy sent me a 1928 article that had the line, “if there was a key to the village…,” showing that there was historically no key at that time. Mayor Ellen gave me a little info on Denny’s Toy Museum and noted that it was a popular place for birthday parties with a tour, lantern slides and then cake and ice cream on the porch. It was closed sometime after Harriet’s visit in the 1970s and the collection dispersed. She noted that she had purchased Mirror Bay for her kids and nieces and she even came to the library event. It was a pleasure to meet her and I thank both her and Cindy for the information they provided.
There was one final curiosity I had in checking
out the book and real-life people and places. The Baseball Hall of Fame is more
of a tourist-type stop in the book rather than a part of the mystery. But Nancy
and a few of the others check it out one evening. Nancy states that she’s
partial to baseball player Leroy Satchel Paige for a quote of his, “Don’t look
back—something might be gaining on you.” I had wondered if that quote might be prominent
at the museum, assuming that Harriet had visited it. But when I did a search on
Paige, I found that he had come to Cooperstown in 1971 after it was announced
in February of that year he would be inducted in the Hall of Fame. In August
1971, he was inducted. There would have been a lot of local fanfare in July
leading up to the induction, when Harriet had visited. So, that was big news,
and likely played a role in Harriet focusing on Paige in some of the baseball information used in the book.
The Farmer's Museum
Hating to say goodbye to a great adventure, the day we left Cooperstown we stopped into the Farmer’s Museum to see the Cardiff Giant that Nancy and her friends visit in the book. An old archaeology hoax, a man named George Hull decided to see how easily he could fool people with a fake giant and for a time it worked. It was sold to the Farmer’s Museum in the 1940s. We also briefly visited the Fenimore Art Museum.
Now that we’ve wrapped up the real secret – or many secrets - behind Mirror Bay and how Harriet had an association to the town, via the Fisher family, that none of us ever had a clue about, there must be something magical about the month of July in Cooperstown. Edward Stratemeyer visited Camp Chenango in July of 1924. Harriet and her husband went to Fisher’s funeral in July 1957 and likely Harriet visited Cooperstown in July of 1971 to do research for her book, having written to Grosset & Dunlap mid-July noting she’d just got back from her visit. And of course, here we were, the NancyDrewSleuths hosting our convention in Cooperstown in July of 2023, 99 years after Stratemeyer’s visit. And if you want to get even more conspiratorial, my last name is Fisher. All just fun coincidences, but intriguing nonetheless. But if you don’t believe in coincidences, next thing you know, Doria or Sam the Green Man sorcerer will suddenly appear to scare us away from finding out even more amazing historic behind the scenes information.
One rewarding consequence of my research into Mirror
Bay is that Lynn and Grace have reunited and are catching up after quite a
few years of losing touch with each other. I think that’s so charming and sweet
and I’m happy I could get them back in touch with each other. As I close
out this “novelette” about my research into the history behind Harriet’s
writing Mirror Bay, I must say, playing Nancy Drew and following in her
footsteps as well as Harriet’s was as thrilling as the prospect of doing it all
again at the next travelogue-style convention. Until then, Happy Sleuthing
Campers!
BIBLIOGRAPHY – SOURCES USED IN RESEARCHING THIS ARTICLE:
Carolyn Keene, The Secret of Mirror Bay. Nancy Drew series, volume 49. Grosset & Dunlap, 1972.
Stratemeyer Syndicate Records, 1832-1984, New York Public Library, various letters and documents from various boxes – research gathered by James Keeline, Stratemeyer expert, research notes by Jennifer Fisher; from various library research trips over the years.
Phone calls and letters from Lynn Ealer Ritchkoff, former Stratemeyer Syndicate employee and granddaughter of E. Lynn “Pop” Fisher and Jane Carr Fisher discussing Camp Chenango, Camp Otsego, and Harriet Stratemeyer Adams’s visit to Cooperstown to research Mirror Bay.
“E. Lynn Fisher, 77, Organizer of Cooperstown Camps, Dies.” The Oneonta Star, July 5, 1957.
July 2023 phone calls with Grace Grote, former employee and ghostwriter of the Stratmeyer Syndicate, on her experience at the Syndicate and with Harriet Adams.
Previous e-mail correspondence plus July 2023 e-mails with Nancy S. Axelrad, former Stratemeyer Syndicate partner on Harriet Stratemeyer Adams’s travels to Cooperstown
July 2023 e-mails with Suzan Friedlander, Executive Director & Head Curator at the Arkell Museum & Canajoharie Library, whose research on the camps and Camp Chenango and knowledge of Cooperstown history were a huge help in locating and learning about the camps as well as learning more about Louis C. Jones. Her reading of Mirror Bay helped to point out real-life connections and she was quick to point me toward articles for further research.
In-person chat with Pam Larbig in Cooperstown, NY about her grandparents Pop Fisher and Jane Carr Fisher and Harriet Stratemeyer Adams’s 1971 visit to Cooperstown.
July 2023 e-mails with Cooperstown Deputy Mayor Cynthia Falk and Cooperstown Mayor Ellen R. Tillapaugh regarding an old Toy Museum and the Key to Cooperstown.
The Freeman’s Journal, Cooperstown NY, October 24, 1928. Reference to there being no key to the Village of Cooperstown.
Wikipedia – Cooperstown information, Cooperstown being the “Village of Museums.”
ThisisCooperstown.com – Cooperstown visitor’s information and lore
A Large Slice of Americana, Served up in Cooperstown. New York Times, July 27, 1975.
“Denny’s Toy Museum” ad. New York Magazine, May 30, 1977.
Louis C. Jones, Things That Go Bump in the Night. Syracuse University Press reprint, 1959, 1983.
Glenn Fowler, “L.C. Jones, 82, Dies; A Writer and Expert on Folklore in U.S.” New York Times, Nov. 28, 1990.
Shirley O’Shea, The Time of Year for Ghost Stories. Cooperstown Crier, October 6, 2011. Features Cooperstown Candlelight Ghost Tour guide Bruce Markeson.
Constance Fenimore, The Haunted Lake. Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, volume 1871-1872.
“Museum is Going Way of Horse and Buggy.” New York Times, July 6, 1978. References to the old Carriage and Harness Museum
July 2023 E-mail with owner of a cottage at Hyde Bay Colony, Jo Grice-Barrows about Hyde Bay Colony having formerly been Rathbun’s.
Jack French, Fourteen Years Working for the Syndicate. The Whispered Watchword, February 2011 issue, #11-1.
“CAMP CHENANGO ON OTSEGO LAKE, COOPERSTOWN, NY” ad. Scribner’s Magazine, June 1921.
Porter Sargent, “A Handbook of Summer Camps: An Annual Survey,” vol III by Porter Sargent Publishers, 1926. Information on Camp Chenango.
Ralph Birdsall, The Story of Cooperstown. The Arthur H Crist
Co, Cooperstown, NY, 1917.
