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WINTER 2011 VOLUME 37 NUMBER 1

American

Journal of the American Museum of Fly Fishing

The

Fly Fisher

MOST OF US have systems in place tohelp us meet goals as efficiently aswe can. Within the world of fly

fishing and its many subcultures, systemsexist to help us conserve, cultivate, andeven catch fish. Everyone has a particularway of doing things—game wardens, fishculturists, and collectors, for example.

It was Michigan’s declining whitefishindustry in the 1870s that led to the first ofthat state’s game laws and establishment ofthe game warden system. But commercialfishing wasn’t the only threat to fish num-bers; sport fishing also played its role in thedays before size limitations and creel lim-its. Early game wardens were either locallyor privately financed, and the politics ofenforcement of new laws were complicatedand sometimes dangerous. Bryon Borgelt,in “River Police: Early Game Wardens onMichigan’s Au Sable River” (page 16),explores the early days of Michigan’s gameconservation laws, highlighting a few inter-esting characters.

Seth Green, Fred Mather, LivingstonStone: these are well-known names inAmerican fish culture. But John H. Slack?Although he was author of Practical TroutCulture (1872), a founder the American FishCulturists’ Association, a deputy U.S. fishcommissioner, and a key player in a nation-wide campaign to introduce nonnativespecies to new waters, few know muchabout him. J. I. Merritt became intrigued bySlack years ago when he learned aboutSlack’s attempts to establish a hatchery-based run of Oregon steelhead on NewJersey’s Raritan River and a salmon run onthe Delaware. When Merritt failed to findmuch in the record about Slack, he begandigging deeper. “Hunting Dr. Slack: Amer-ican Fish Culture’s Forgotten Man,” beginson page 2.

Austin S. Hogan became the museum’sfirst curator in 1970 and founding editor ofthe American Fly Fisher in 1974. During the1960s and 1970s, each time he saw his son,Austin W. Hogan, he passed things along tohim: copies of chapters he was writing,notes, and fly books and boxes. Austin S.also mailed flies to his son when Austin W.was working afield near good streams.Austin W. collected his father’s things in atrunk, the contents of which he is nowpreparing to donate to the museum. Thehandwritten and typed notes accompany-ing many of these items are helpful in

establishing origin and provenance. In “OnSome Philosophies of Collecting: Prove-nance of the Austin S. Hogan Collection”(page 8), Austin W. Hogan proposes a nine-tiered ladder of provenance for flies,nymphs, bucktails, and streamers to guidecollectors. He then highlights parts of hiscollection and discusses where these itemsfall on the ladder of provenance.

And speaking of collections, we like tohighlight our own in these pages. If youvisit the American Museum of Fly Fishingand happen to glance upward before youenter, you’ll see our salmon weather vane,crafted by Warren Gilker, atop the build-ing. In this issue’s Gallery piece, “Up on theRoof” (page 24), Sara Wilcox speaks to usof weather vanes, of Warren Gilker’s GrandCascapedia history, and of his weathervane’s history with us.

As always, Museum News (page 26) cov-ers the events we’ve been so busily hostingover the last few months. We’d like to drawspecial attention to one held in October forProject Healing Waters Fly Fishing, a groupdedicated to the physical and emotionalrehabilitation of disabled active militaryservice personnel and veterans through fly-fishing and fly-tying education and outings(page 28). Eight veterans learned to castfrom our wheelchair-accessible castingplatform. Executive Director Cathi Comartells the story of events leading up to thatday. We hope that many of you will visitour new bridge and platform come spring.

KATHLEEN ACHOREDITOR

Peter BakwinRobert BruckerC. Austin Buck

Jace DayRobert DiNozziDavid DiPiero

Domenic DiPieroHenry and Michelle Gasiorowski

Jon GibsonTom Gravina

Marc HembroughTim Hixon

Fred KambeitzPeter KelloggSteve Lampe

Anthony LombardoRussel LucasSteve Myers

Grant E. NelsonRobert O’Hara III

John OliverJoseph and Usha Robillard

Bob and Mary RussellGreg RussellEd ShugrueTim TigerPat Welsh

Catherine E. ComarExecutive Director

Yoshi AkiyamaDeputy Director

Sarah MooreProject & Administrative Coordinator

Kim MurphyEvents Coordinator

Patricia RussellAccount Manager

Sara WilcoxDirector of Visual Communication

denotes additional levels of giving

THE AMERICAN MUSEUMOF FLY FISHING

Preserving the Heritage of Fly Fishing

Kathleen AchorEditor

Sara WilcoxDesign & Production

Sarah May ClarksonCopy Editor

F R I E N D S O F T H E M U S E U M

S T A F F

THE AMERICAN FLY FISHER

Law, Culture,and Provenance

From Genio C. Scott, Fishing in AmericanWaters (New York: Harper & Brothers,

Publishers, 1869), 355.

W I N T E R 2 0 1 1 V O L U M E 3 7 N U M B E R 1

the American Museum of Fly FishingJournal of

Hunting Dr. Slack: American FishCulture’s Forgotten Man . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

J. I. Merritt

On Some Philosophies of Collecting:Provenance of the Austin S. Hogan Collection . . . . . . . . 8

Austin W. Hogan

River Police: Early Game Wardenson Michigan’s Au Sable River . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Bryon Borgelt

Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Gallery: Up on the Roof . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24Sara Wilcox

Museum News . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

ON THE COVER: Michigan Game Warden Rube Babbit on the Au Sable River,1930. Used with permission from the Fuller’s North Branch Outing Club.

The American Fly Fisher (ISSN 0884-3562) is published

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Michael BakwinFoster Bam

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Deborah Pratt DawsonE. Bruce DiDonato, MD

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George R. Gibson IIIJames Hardman

James Heckman, MDArthur Kaemmer, MD

Karen KaplanWoods King III

William P. Leary IIIDouglas F. MacKenzieChristopher P. Mahan

Walter T. MatiaJohn R. McMahon

William C. McMaster, MDBradford MillsDavid Nichols

E. Wayne NordbergErik R. Oken

Raymond C. PecorStephen M. PeetLeigh H. Perkins

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Roger RiccardiEric W. Roberts

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T R U S T E E S

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Chairman of the BoardPresident

Vice Presidents

SecretaryClerk

Treasurer

David H. WalshJames Heckman, MDStephen M. PeetRichard G. TischJames C. WoodsCharles R. EichelRobert G. Scott

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The American Fly Fisher (publication number 0084-3562) is published four times per year (Winter, Spring,Summer, Fall). Editor is Kathleen Achor. Complete address for both publisher and editor is The AmericanMuseum of Fly Fishing, P.O. Box 42, Manchester, VT 05254. The journal is wholly owned by the American

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2 THE AMERICAN FLY FISHER

ONE EVENING IN the spring of 1878,commercial fishermen working abank of the Delaware River a few

miles upstream from Trenton, NewJersey, hauled in their net and weregreeted by an amazing sight. Amid theflopping American shad, their targetspecies, was a fish of a kind they hadnever seen. Like the 3- to 6-pound shad,it was silver flanked, but sleeker and a lotbigger. It measured almost 42 inches andwhen weighed the next day tipped thescales at more than 23 pounds.

It was an Atlantic salmon, a cold-water species whose natural range, thenas now, did not extend south of NewEngland. The fishermen took their catchto Edward J. Anderson, a commissionerof New Jersey fisheries, who forwarded itto the Washington, D.C., office ofSpencer Fullerton Baird, then commis-sioner of U.S. fisheries. The politicallysavvy Baird lost no time showing it off toPresident Rutherford B. Hayes and influ-ential members of Congress in supportof his efforts to introduce salmon to theDelaware and other rivers.

The great fish was evidently a male onits spawning run; in a letter to Anderson,Baird noted that its lower jaw was devel-oping a hook. From its size he estimatedit was five years old, which meant itprobably started as a fry “hatched out atDr. Slack’s place” and released into theMusconetcong River, a Delaware tribu-tary, in the spring of 1873.1

“Dr. Slack’s place” was TroutdalePonds, a New Jersey hatchery owned byJohn H. Slack, a Philadelphia physicianturned fish culturist. Although nowmore or less forgotten, Slack was a keyplayer in a nationwide campaign led byBaird to introduce nonnative species tonew waters. It was a vast ecological exer-cise with profound consequences—mainly positive—for American fisheries.To cite just one example, today’sDelaware River supports a diverse mix ofnative and nonnative species: Americanshad, striped bass, shortnose sturgeon,and brook trout (all indigenous); andsmallmouth and largemouth bass, rockbass, walleye, bluegill, muskellunge,channel catfish, European carp, and

brown and rainbow trout (all intro-duced, mostly in the second half of thenineteenth century).

Between 1870 and 1875, Slack’s opera-tion raised more than 170,000 Atlanticsalmon fry and released them into theMusconetcong and other Delaware trib-utaries; this was in addition to 154,000released into the Raritan and two otherNew Jersey watersheds.2 During thissame period, Troutdale also hatched450,000 Pacific salmon fry from fertil-ized eggs shipped from California on thenew transcontinental railroad. Most ofthese (265,000) were deposited in theDelaware, with the rest going to othereastern rivers.3

Baird, Slack, and others in the van-guard of the fish-culture movementviewed the introduction of salmon aseminently worth trying, and for a time itlooked like their grand experimentmight succeed. In 1874, large numbers ofsmolts (young salmon on their way tothe ocean) were observed in the Del-aware, and a few were caught by anglers.A year later, shad fishermen near Bristol,

Hunting Dr. Slack: American FishCulture’s Forgotten Man

by J. I. Merritt

Troutdale Ponds, from John H. Slack, Practical Trout Culture (1872).

WINTER 2011 3

Pennsylvania, netted a grilse (a smallsalmon, usually between 5 and 7 pounds,returning to fresh water after one year atsea). The record is silent for 1876, but in1877 netters landed eight returningsalmon between 8 and 20 pounds; a con-temporary account relates how one ofthem wound up on the plate of a certain“Capt. Yard, of Trenton,” who pro-nounced it “as fine a salmon as he hadever tasted either in England, Scotland,or California.”4

In 1878, a year that would turn out tobe the project’s high-water mark,Delaware shad nets yielded an estimatedfifty to one hundred salmon rangingfrom 12 to 29 pounds. Many more wereobserved in the river after the close of theshad season on June 10, a few as farupstream as Port Jervis, New York, 85miles above the tide line at Trenton.5 Thepresence of mature salmon in theDelaware left Baird and the fish commis-sioners of New Jersey and Pennsylvaniacautiously optimistic about the possibil-ity of creating a self-sustaining run. ATrenton newspaper was less guarded inits assessment. The report of so manysalmon ascending the river, it declared,“warrants the belief that in a few yearswe shall have a supply of this noble fishat our very doors.”6

A PASSION FOR

NATURAL HISTORY

I’ve been intrigued by Slack since firstreading about him thirty years ago in amagazine article promoting an attempt(ultimately abandoned) to establish ahatchery-based run of Oregon steelheadon New Jersey’s Raritan River.7 The arti-cle cited as a precedent Slack’s attempt toestablish a salmon run on the Delaware.My curiosity was further piqued by learn-ing that Slack had raised his salmon fry ata hatchery on the Musconetcong, a river Iregularly fish, and that the steelheadstocked in the Raritan came from ahatchery built on Slack’s site. A decadelater, while doing research for an articleabout America’s pioneering fish cultur-ists, I found plenty of information aboutSlack’s peers—Seth Green, Fred Mather,and Livingston Stone—but almost noth-ing about him.8 Recently, I began to digdeeper into the record, and with helpfrom several Slack descendants, I’ve man-aged to flesh out a fuller picture of thisenergetic and multifaceted man.

Born and raised in Philadelphia, JohnHamilton Slack (1834–1874) graduatedfrom the University of Pennsylvania in1856 and three years later was awarded a

degree by its school of medicine.9 Hisfamily seems to have been reasonablyprosperous: one of his obituaries refers tohim as “a gentleman of liberal means,”and as a young man he had the where-withal to tour Europe and North Africa.The same obituary says he was “a painterof some ability”10 as well as a composerwhose published arrangement of “Home,Sweet Home” was a favorite in thousandsof Victorian parlors; he was also an ama-teur printer who, on a home press, pro-duced handmade volumes of prose andpoetry in a “sumptuous style.”11

Slack’s chief passion was natural his-tory. As a member of the Academy ofNatural Sciences of Philadelphia, hehelped excavate the nation’s first nearlycomplete dinosaur skeleton from a marlpit in Haddonfield, New Jersey; con-tributed articles on mammalogy to theacademy’s journal; and wrote a popularguide to its museum displays.12

Slack was a fisherman, and it’s reason-able to assume that he patronized thePhiladelphia tackle shop of rod makerand angling éminence grise ThaddeusNorris.13 “Uncle Thad,” also known as “theAmerican Walton,” was the author of TheAmerican Angler’s Book (1864) and a gen-eration older than Slack. The companion-able Norris enjoyed the company of

Left: Cover of sheet music to John H. Slack’sarrangement of “Home Sweet Home.”http://nla.gov.au/nla.mus-vn3073410.

Below: The Slack family home, and since 1941 theheadquarters of the Warren County Rod and Gun Club.

J. I. Merritt


younger anglers, and at some point it’slikely they struck up a friendship. At thevery least we know they were acquainted.14

Norris was interested in the develop-ing science of fish culture and lookingfor suitable property for building ahatchery. One of his angling pals was therod maker Samuel Phillippe, who helpedhim find just such a place near Blooms-bury, New Jersey, 9 miles across the Del-aware from Phillippe’s home in Easton,Pennsylvania. Norris later recorded thathe started the hatchery in May 1866 andsold it sixteen months later “in an uncom-pleted condition to Dr. J. H. Slack.”15

In the summer of 1867, Slack tookpossession of 169 acres bordering thelower Musconetcong, in a valley of gen-tly rolling farmland and neat stone hous-es. Troutdale Ponds, the hatchery itself,took up several acres adjacent to theriver. Its outstanding natural feature wasa limestone spring gushing a thousandgallons a minute of pure 50-degree water,winter and summer.16 The spring fedinto the single pond dug by Norris andstocked with a few hundred anemictrout. These “died by dozens,” wroteSlack in a recollection of his first year ofon-the-job training, while “our spawnfrom want of proper knowledge of thetheory of impregnation, and the sicklycondition of our parent fishes, perishedby thousands.” Thousands more washedaway in a flood, and thieves abscondedwith the few healthy adult fish.17

Slack persevered. Setting out immedi-ately to make improvements, he addedmore ponds, with raceways connectingthem, and a hatching-house for fertiliz-

ing and incubating eggs. On a rise over-looking the hatchery, he built a hand-some two-story frame house for himselfand his wife, Thirza, and their two smallchildren; two more children soon fol-lowed.18

In the spring of 1868, a Harper’s Weeklycorrespondent visiting Troutdale foundeverything in order. By now, three pondsnurtured a thriving population of troutsegregated by size. On some of the largerfish Slack had bestowed nicknames culledfrom the Bible, literature, and the era’spolitics: the “totally blind” Bartimeus, forexample, and the “long, lean, lantern-jawed” Don Quixote. A trout whose col-ors seemed to change from week to weekhe dubbed Horace Greeley, after the mer-curial editor of the New York Tribune ; theunfortunate fish disappeared down the“captious throat” of an aggressive canni-bal named General Grant.19

CONSERVATION AS

WELL AS COMMERCE

Slack’s decision to pursue the businessof farming fish, particularly trout, waspart of a larger movement sweeping thecountry. The artifical breeding of troutwas already well established in Europe,and Americans saw financial opportunityin raising native brook trout for sale tomarkets and restaurants and to sports-men eager to stock them in private waters.By 1870 several hundred hatcheries werein operation around the country.20

Conservation as well as commercemotivated men like Slack because stock-

ing was a way, seemingly, to restore fish-eries depleted by logging, pollution, andthe absence of effective game laws. In thewake of pell-mell commercial develop-ment following the Civil War, statesbegan creating fisheries commissions topromote conservation. New Jersey’s wasestablished in 1870, with Dr. John H.Slack and fellow physician Dr. BenjaminP. Howell of Woodbury, New Jersey, ascharter commissioners.21

Slack and Howell met with theircounterparts on Pennsylvania’s fisheriescommission, and together they draftedan ambitious joint agenda for theDelaware.22 It included a survey of allcommercial fishing operations, inspec-tion of eel weirs and other potential bar-riers to the river’s anadromous fish (shad,herring, sturgeon, and striped bass), andrecommendations for tougher conserva-tion laws and the hiring of wardens(“fish-police”) to enforce them. In theirfirst annual report, the New Jersey com-missioners noted that the river appearedto be “suitable habitat” for Atlanticsalmon and would be stocked with athousand fry “hatched by the artificialprocess.”23

The state legislature hadn’t authorizedfunds for stocking, and the commission-ers stated they would be doing this attheir own expense. Soon enough, how-ever, they found a reliable underwriter inthe federal government. Slack and sever-al other hatchery owners had recentlyfounded the American Fish Culturists’Association, which successfully lobbiedSpencer Fullerton Baird at the newlyestablished U.S. Commission of Fish andFisheries to sponsor a national stockingeffort, for which Congress appropriated$15,000.24

Among other activities, these fundspaid for the establishment of Baird Sta-tion, a hatchery on California’s McCloudRiver under the direction of LivingstonStone. The McCloud was an upper trib-utary of the Sacramento and the spawn-ing grounds of Quinnat or “Sacramento”salmon, now called chinook or kingsalmon, the largest of five species ofPacific salmon found in North America.Stone’s job was supplying eastern riverswith their impregnated ova, and his firstshipment went directly to Troutdale.Packed in wet moss for their transconti-nental journey, the 30,000 eggs arrived inNovember 1872. When Slack unpackedthem, he saw immediately that most hadspoiled, but he managed to salvage andhatch 7,000.25 At Baird’s direction, thefry from this initial batch went into theSusquehanna River at Harrisburg.

Earlier in 1872, Slack had receivedsixty boxes packed with Atlantic salmoneggs from a German hatchery on the

The spring that attracted Thaddeus Norris to the site for Troutdale Ponds.Today it supplies the water for the Musky Trout Hatchery.

J. I. Merritt

WINTER 2011 5

Rhine River; of 750,000 eggs, all but5,000 perished. Slack hatched them suc-cessfully and deposited the fry in theMusconetcong.26 In the spring of 1873,Troutdale received 40,000 Atlanticsalmon eggs from Maine’s PenobscotRiver; Slack hatched 33,000, of which18,000 went into the Musconetcong and15,000 into the Raritan.27

Spoilage was a problem with ovatransported long distances, but Slack,Stone, and the rest of Baird’s teamlearned from their mistakes, and survivalrates improved. Three shipments ofPacific salmon eggs arrived fromCalifornia in the fall of 1873. Slack savedjust 17 percent of the first lot (25,000 outof 150,000), but 74 percent of the second(130,000 out of 175,000) and 80 percentof the third (200,000 out of 250,000).28

Released into the Musconetcong andother rivers that winter, the young fishappeared to thrive. Reporting to Baird,Slack wrote that in the Musconetcong hefound “large numbers of salmon beneathprojecting roots and rocks.”29 He pro-nounced the commission’s efforts “a per-fect success.”30

Troutdale was a busy place. It hadbecome New Jersey’s de facto state“hatching house,” not only for Atlanticand Pacific salmon but for “salmon-trout” (sea-run brook trout) and land-locked salmon, two other species thefisheries commission introduced intostate waters. The hatchery was also rais-ing smallmouth bass and brook trout forprivate stockings, and watercress for salein urban markets.31

Despite the hectic pace, Slack foundtime to write a guide to fish farming. HisPractical Trout Culture appeared in 1872,the same year as Livingston Stone’sDomesticated Trout. These were the thirdand fourth American books on aquacul-ture published in four years, an indica-tion of the demand for informationabout this rapidly developing field; theywere preceded by Thaddeus Norris’sAmerican Fish Culture (1868) and SethGreen’s Trout Culture (1870). FredMather’s Modern Fishculture in Fresh andSalt Water would follow in 1900.

FROM SALMON TO SHAD

In the spring of 1873, Baird namedSlack a deputy U.S. fish commissioner,an appointment expanding his responsi-bilities beyond the borders of NewJersey. His immediate assignment wasassisting shad-hatching operations inNorth Carolina and Virginia and escort-ing a shipment of 15,000 shad fry towestern Pennsylvania for deposit intothe Monongahela River, a tributary ofthe Ohio. The Monongahela fry were

hatched at a seasonal station on theDelaware River at Lower Black Eddy, astretch of slack water near PointPleasant, Pennsylvania, about 30 milesfrom Troutdale. In honor of his boss,Slack named the station Camp Baird.32

Because shad are “broadcast spawn-ers” whose eggs incubate quickly in thewater column, they were hatched direct-ly in the river. This involved setting up abankside tent camp for several weeksduring the run. Shad were netted and theripe eggs and milt stripped and mixed ina pail of water. Once fertilized, the ovawent into “hatchers”—floating boxessuspended in the current for gentle agi-tation. Incubation took five days or less.A young shad absorbed its yolk sac inthree days. Although still “mere shred[s]of albumen,” in Fred Mather’s aptphrase, fry could now be released intothe river to augment natural spawningor placed in containers for shipping todistant waters. Camp Baird’s 1873 opera-tions lasted two weeks and hatched448,000 fry.33

The next year Slack and his shad teamset up camp on June 25. They had a goodrun of fish and by June 29 had hatched100,000 fry. Slack dashed off a note tocolleagues at the Academy of NaturalSciences urging anyone curious about“the modus operandi of impregnatingand hatching spawn” to join them.34

Whether anyone did isn’t known. Whatwe do know is that Slack departed campon July 2, leaving an assistant in charge,and went home to Troutdale. Probablyhe was sick, for on July 3, according to asubsequent account, he took to bed,“prostrated . . . by a violent attack ofPleurisy,”35 an inflammation of the lining

of the lungs often associated with pneu-monia. Presumably by telegraph, hestayed in touch with Camp Baird until itceased operations on July 13, havinghatched 530,000 fry.36 By then Slack wasgravely ill. He lingered another six weeksand died on 24 August 1874, a month shyof his fortieth birthday.37

THE TROUTDALE HATCHERY

AFTER SLACK

Slack’s widow, Thirza, was just thirtyyears old with four children between theages of five and twelve.38 She soldieredon, taking on responsibility for the workat Troutdale at least through 1878 andprobably for much longer. In 1875 thehatchery, which by now boasted an inter-national reputation, filled orders fromEngland and Scotland for nearly a mil-lion brook trout eggs.39

Meanwhile, the great Pacific salmonenterprise kept chugging along. Accordingto the New Jersey fisheries commission, in1877 more than 250,000 ova were “placedin charge of Mrs. J. H. Slack, at her hatch-ing establishment at Bloomsbury” andnursed to fry stage “with very small loss.”In 1878, arrangements were made “withMrs. J. H. Slack for use of her fish-breed-ing establishment” to process 500,000eggs, of which 450,000 hatched.40

Reviewing the program in their 1883report, New Jersey’s commissioners esti-mated that since the start of “the experi-ment” a decade earlier, 2,364,700 fry ofboth Pacific and Atlantic salmon hadbeen released in the state.41 Almost cer-tainly, all the Pacific fry were raised atTroutdale, as were all but a few of the

Interior of Troutdale’s hatching house,from John H. Slack, Practical Trout Culture (1872).


Atlantic fry. The vast majority went intothe Delaware, the only river to boast anydocumented returns. Mature salmonwere first observed in 1875. The numberssteadily increased through 1878; 1879 hada good run, but regrettably “the experi-ences of that year were not repeated.”42

In 1880 just a few adults were recorded,and in 1881 a few were reported but notconfirmed. As probable cause of theexperiment’s failure, the commissionersobserved “that in the late summer andearly autumn, the waters of the Delawareare usually very low, and of a higher tem-perature than that of rivers to which thesalmon is indigenous.”43

Thirza Slack lived for another fifty-sixyears; she died in 1930 at the age ofeighty-seven.44 She and her descendantscontinued the hatchery business into theearly twentieth century, but as a sidelineto farming, which by 1900 had becomethe family’s main livelihood.45 In 1912,when New Jersey officials were lookingfor a place to build a state hatchery, theyconsidered Troutdale but passed it up infavor of another Musconetcong site 20miles upriver, at Hackettstown.46

In 1941 the Slacks sold their entire prop-erty to the Warren County (New Jersey)Rod and Gun Club.47 The hatchery bynow was overgrown, and algae and mosschoked whatever remained of Dr. Slack’scarefully tended ponds. But the springthat had made the hatchery possible inthe first place still ran as clear and cold asever.48 In 1947 the club leased the hatch-ery site to a fish culturist named WilliamH. Stanley, and Troutdale—rechristenedas the Musky Trout Hatchery—wasreborn.49 Stanley sold out in 1958 to thecurrent owner, Vernon Mancini, who sig-nificantly expanded the operation. In areprise of Troutdale’s role in the Delawaresalmon stockings of the 1870s, it was theMusky Trout Hatchery that raised thesteelhead stocked in the Raritan River acentury later.50

A HERO OF AMERICAN

FISH CULTURE

In his time, John H. Slack was aprominent figure in what can rightfullybe called the heroic age of American fishculture. We can marvel at his efforts,however wrongheaded, to establishsalmon in rivers where nature neverintended them. He might have achievedthe stature of his contemporariesLivingston Stone, Seth Green, and FredMather if he hadn’t died young and beton the wrong fish. In 1875, a year afterSlack’s untimely death, Stone shippedthe first eggs of California rainbow troutto Green’s hatchery in Caledonia, New

York, with more following in 1878.51 Afew years later, Mather began raisingbrown trout imported from Germanyand Scotland at the New York Statehatchery in Cold Spring Harbor.52 By theearly twentieth century, rainbows andbrowns were thriving in much of theeastern United States.53 Had he lived,Slack would doubtless have been in-volved in the introduction of bothspecies, and we would recognize himtoday as a central player in the history ofAmerican fisheries. Instead he’s mainly afootnote, a man who pursued a quixoticquest that was bound to fail.

!

ENDNOTES

1. Report of the Commissioners of Fisheriesof the State of New Jersey (hereafter N.J.Fisheries Report; Trenton), 1878, 15–16; TrentonGazette, 8 April 1878, as quoted in “A DelawareRiver Salmon,” New York Times, 11 April 1878.http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9D0DE4DA143EE73BBC4952DFB2668383669FDE, accessed 8 June 2010.

2. Compiled from data in N.J. FisheriesReports, 1871–1875. The Passaic received63,000 fry and the Hackensack 45,000. Thetotals should be viewed as approximatebecause the figures for 1875 aren’t specific,stating that “nearly all” of 80,000 fry weredeposited in the Delaware, with the rest goinginto the Raritan and Hackensack; I have arbi-trarily assigned 70,000 fry to the Delawaretotals and 5,000 each to those of the other

two rivers. The first documented stocking ofthe Delaware with Atlantic salmon occurredin 1870, when Slack planted 200 fry raisedfrom eggs originating with Miramichi Riverfish. N.J. Fisheries Reports, 1871, 21, and 1874,19. In 1871, there were separate plantings ofAtlantic salmon raised at hatcheries otherthan Troutdale, one of 12,000 fry and anotherof 1,000. United States Commission of Fish andFisheries, Reports of the Commissioner (here-after U.S. Fisheries Report), 1872–1873, 768,and 1877, 36.

3. The rest were stocked in the Susque-hanna (61,000); two other New Jersey rivers, theRaritan (52,000) and Passaic (2,000); thePotomac (40,000); and Long Island’s Connet-quot (30,000). U.S. Fisheries Reports, 1873–1875,432–33. Baird thought chinook salmon mighthabituate more easily than Atlantic salmon tosouthern waters, and, in addition to thePotomac, they were planted in the Rappa-hannock (Virginia), the Roanoke (North Car-olina), and the Mississippi.

4. N.J. Fisheries Report, 1877, 40.5. Ibid., 1878, 17. The report states that

“one large fish” was also taken on the Raritanbut none on the Passaic or Hackensack.

6. Trenton Gazette, 8 April 1878.7. Roland Van Arsdale and Pat Moffitt,

“100,000 Steelhead on a One-Way Ticket toNew Jersey,” Trout (Fall 1980), 33–36.

8. Jim Merritt,“Planting Fish and PlayingGod,” Field & Stream (June 1997), 127–29.

9. Proceedings of the Academy of NaturalSciences (1 September 1874), 141 (hereafterProceedings, ANS). Slack’s date of birth was23 September 1834.

10. The Medical and Surgical Reporter(Philadelphia) (1874, vol. 31), 220.

11. Ibid.12. Proceedings, ANS; Fran Capo, It

Happened in New Jersey (Guilford, Conn.:

The Musky Trout Hatchery, established in 1947on the same location as Slack’s Troutdale Ponds.

J. I. Merritt

WINTER 2011 7

Twodot Press, 2004), 2.13. Slack (U.S. Fisheries Report, 1873, 459)

states that he “fished much in the Delaware,”and two N.J. Fisheries Reports (1875, 20, and1874, 22) refer to his having “caught” and“taken” young salmon on the Musconetcong.

14. J. Robert Norris Jr., “Visiting withUncle Thad: Thaddeus Norris, 1811–1877,” TheAmerican Fly Fisher (Winter 1995, vol. 21, no.1), 14–20; Fred Mather, My Angling Friends(New York: Forest and Stream, 1901), 41.

15. Thaddeus Norris, American Fish Cul-ture (Philadelphia: Porter & Coates, 1868),287.

16. Harper’s Weekly, 13 June 1868, 381.17. J. H. Slack, Practical Trout Culture

(New York: George E. Woodward, 1872), vi.18. 1870 U.S. Census, Franklin Township,

New Jersey.19. Harper’s Weekly, 13 June 1868, 381.

There was also a female trout named LadyDouglas; one side of her head was light andthe other dark. Her name may allude to (thetwo-faced?) Lady Douglas Sheffield, a cousinof Elizabeth I who had a celebrated affairwith the queen’s favorite courtier and would-be lover, Robert Dudley.

20. Anders Halverson, An Entirely Syn-thetic Fish (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univer-sity Press, 2010), 12–13.

21. Ibid.; N.J. Fisheries Report, 1871, 3.Here and in subsequent reports, Slack’s fellowcommissioner is almost always listed as B. P.Howell, but the name Benjamin crops up hereand there. References to “Howell’s” fisheries(N.J. Fisheries Report, 1872, 14–15) suggest hemay have operated a commercial shad net.

22. They had three joint meetings (two in1870 and one in 1871): 17 May 1870, Wood-bury; 15 November 1870, Troutdale; and 12January 1871, Philadelphia (N.J. FisheriesReport, 1871, 3).

23. N.J. Fisheries Report, 1871, 3–5, 21. Theactual number of Atlantic salmon fry initiallyplaced in the Delaware in 1870 was 200 (N.J.Fisheries Report, 1874, 19). Hatched fromimpregnated ova at Troutdale, they were thespawn of Canadian fish taken in the fall of1869 from the Miramichi River in NewBrunswick (N.J. Fisheries Report, 1874, 19,33–34). The term “fish-police” appears in U.S.Fisheries Report, 1874, 458.

24. Livingston Stone, “Organization ofAmerican Fish Culturists’ Association,” inDomesticated Trout (Boston: James R. Os-good, 1872), 319–21. Halverson, Entirely Syn-thetic, 15–16. Fisheries Historical Timeline,http://www.nefsc.noaa.go/history/timeline/1870.html, accessed 29 April 2010. FredMather, Modern Fishculture in Fresh and SaltWater (New York: Forest and Stream, 1900),9–10. Mather’s account of the founding of theAmerican Fish Culturists’ Association (whicheventually became the American FisheriesSociety, as it is known today) was writtenthirty years after the fact and is at odds in sev-eral particulars with Stone’s, written just twoyears after. Mather states that he, J. H. Collins(Seth Green’s business partner), and Slackmet in New York City in 1870 to agree on “ascale of prices” (Mather, Modern Fishculture,p. 9) for eggs and fry; an expanded group met

in Albany the following year “and organizedthe American Fish Culturists’ Association”(Mather, p. 9); Stone’s account is clear that theorganization dated from the 1870 meeting.Mather goes on to say that the associationsent a representative to Washington, D.C., tomeet with Baird, “then Assistant Secretary ofthe Smithsonian” (Mather, p. 10; he was, infact, the secretary), and Congress to press forthe creation of a federal fisheries commissionsimilar to the state commissions. In reality,the federal commission, founded for the nar-rower purpose of investigating decliningcoastal fisheries in New England, was alreadyin place, with Baird at its head; the associa-tion did, however, send a representative toargue successfully for federal stocking of pub-lic waters. See Halverson for details.

25. U.S. Fisheries Report, 1873, xxiv–xxv;N.J. Fisheries Report, 1872, 5. The first sourcesays 7,000 ova survived, the second 6,000.

26. U.S. Fisheries Report, 1873, xxii. Morespecifically, the report states that “only fouror five thousand were sound.”

27. N.J. Fisheries Report, 1873, 23.28. U.S. Fisheries Reports, 1874–1875,

431–32.29. Ibid., 433.30. Ibid., 434. Totals for Pacific fry place-

ments from the 1873 shipment: Delaware,138,000; Susquehanna, 50,000; Raritan, 47,000;Potomac, 40,000; Connetquot, 30,000. Some50,000 fry were still in Troutdale’s ponds at thetime of the report.

31. N.J. Fisheries Report, 1874, 21–23.Slack, Practical Trout Culture, 33.

32. U.S. Fisheries Report, 1873, 409–11. TheMonongahela plantings were unsuccessful, aswere attempts to introduce shad to other inte-rior rivers. Shad as well as striped bass weresuccessfully introduced in California.

33. Mather, Modern Fishculture, 195–97.U.S. Fisheries Report, 1873, 412.

34. Archives, ANS, Collection no. 567.35. N.J. Fisheries Report, 1874, 11.36. Ibid., 11–12.37. Proceedings, ANS, 1 September 1874,

141. Slack was buried in a local cemetery. In1894 his remains were moved to WoodlandsCemetery in Philadelphia. His widow, Thirza,was buried next to him in 1930 (WoodlandsCemetery, telephone communication, 12 July2010).

38. U.S. Census, 1870. I’ve extrapolatedthe children’s ages, which should be regardedas approximate.

39. N.J. Fisheries Report, 1875, 21.40. Of the 450,000 fry, the Delaware

received 150,000. The balance were placed inthe Maurice, Mullica, Great Egg Harbor,Raritan, Hackensack, and Passaic rivers;Alloways and Raccoon creeks; and Greenwoodand Shepherds lakes (N.J. Fisheries Report,1878, 18 and 19). The N.J. Fisheries Reports for1874, 1875, 1877, and 1878 refer specifically toTroutdale as the recipient of Stone’s ship-ments. The 1883 report (page 10) says theDelaware was stocked with Pacific salmonevery year from 1879 through 1882 but is silenton where these fry were hatched.

41. N.J. Fisheries Report, 1883, 10.42. Ibid.

43. N.J. Fisheries Report, 1883, 10–11. Thecommissioners’ totals are for the nine-yearperiod from 1873, when New Jersey beganpartnering with the U.S. Fish Commission,through 1882 and don’t include earlier, pri-vately funded stockings by Slack and severalothers. A few fish returning to the Delawarewere clearly identified as Atlantic salmon, butthe record is mute on whether any runsincluded chinooks. Sporadic stocking of chi-nooks continued after 1882. In 1884, the U.S.Fish Commission planted 100,000 fry in threeDelaware tributaries: the Musconetcong,Pequest, and Paulinskill (N.J. FisheriesReport, 1885, 20–21). The Pennsylvania fish-eries commission did occasional stockingsinto the early 1900s, and some returning fishwere observed (Van Arsdale and Moffitt,“100,000 Steelhead,” 33). In a telephone con-versation, Moffitt told me he obtained thisinformation from Pennsylvania fisheriescommission reports.

44. Thirza Anderson Slack, born 27 Au-gust 1843, died 23 November 1930 (e-mailcommunication from Dr. Slack’s great-great-great grandson John Hamilton Slack, 7September 2009; he is the sixth, and youngest,consecutive person so named in the familyline).

45. U.S. Census, Franklin Township, N.J.,1900. Dr. Slack’s great-grandson, also namedJohn Hamilton Slack, still lives and farms inthe area. As a boy he resided in the ancestralhome, moving out in 1941 at age eleven. Herecalls hearing that as a young man his father(yet another John Hamilton Slack, who wentby his middle name) and widowed grand-mother (Nettie, a daughter of Dr. Slack’s sonJohn) were still in the hatchery business, per-haps as late as 1920.

46. R. E. Stahlnecker, “Warren CountySportsmen Buy Slack Farm,” Morning FreePress (Easton, Pennsylvania), 2 April 1941.

47. Ibid. The club still owns the propertyand uses the house Slack built as its head-quarters.

48. Ibid.49. “W. H. Stanley, Sr., built trout hatch-

ery”; obituary, Easton, Pennsylvania Express,16 July 1985, B6.

50. The hatchery’s website, http://www.muskytrouthatchery.com, includes the textof the 1868 Harper’s Weekly article.

51. Robert Behnke,“Livingston Stone, J. B.Campbell, and the Origins of Hatchery Rain-bow Trout,” The American Fly Fisher (Fall 1990,vol. 16, no. 3), 21.

52. Robert J. Behnke, “Brown Trout,”Trout (Winter 1986), 46–47.

53. Robert J. Behnke, Trout and Salmon ofNorth America (New York: The Free Press,2002), 256; Behnke states that “through manysubsequent stockings” after 1883, “brown troutrapidly became established in most of the larg-er trout streams of North America” (256). Ac-cording to Hugh R. MacCrimmon, as a resultof stockings in the 1870s and 1880s, at least tenU.S. states now have self-sustaining rainbowpopulations (Hugh R. MacCrimmon, “WorldDistribution of Rainbow Trout [Salmo gaird-neri],” Journal of the Fisheries Research Board ofCanada [1971, vol. 28, no. 5], 666–67.


AUSTIN S. HOGAN, my father, main-tained notes recording his pro-gress as a fly tier. He mounted flies

for displays, organized flies into periodcollections, and prepared what he called“chapters” of his research notes. Most ofthese notes fell under the broad title ofAn Angler’s American History, and sever-al were published by the American Mu-seum of Fly Fishing in this journal. Myfather passed things to me—copies of hischapters, fly books filled with his recenttying, and small boxes filled with flies—each time we saw each other during the1960s and 1970s. He also mailed flies tome when I worked afield at places withgood streams. Included with the flies werehis suggestions on how to fish them and,sometimes, tying materials. At the time ofhis death in 1985, I held twenty-six foldersenclosing his notes, which he titled aschapter drafts of his An Angler’s AmericanHistory. Some of these were published asportions of articles in the American FlyFisher, but he never assembled a complet-ed draft of the book. Besides these boundnotes, I have a notebook containing dated

mounts of his early tying, two boundscrapbooks of some classic articles ontying, hundreds of his sketches and water-colors, a ring binder containing corre-spondence and flies from some distin-guished tiers, and a footlocker filled withflies collected or tied by him.

The sum of all this is a very interestingand enjoyable collection of terminaltackle. The material part of the collec-tion is greatly enhanced by Austin S.’shandwritten and typed notes indicatingthe origin of many items.

In January 1966, I did some fieldresearch in cloud physics and snowfall inthe Rocky Mountains near SteamboatSprings, Colorado. I purchased a trunk—similar to a GI footlocker, but with ametal exterior and reinforced corners—to carry my scientific instruments. Onmy return, I put a package of moth flakesin the trunk and began storing in it theflies and materials sent me by Austin S. Iwon’t take credit for expert archivalselection; I used items that were availablethat turned out to give optimum perfor-mance. Forty-two years, many moves,

and many openings later, all of the itemsstored in this trunk seem to retain nearpristine condition (Figure 1, page 10).

A LADDER OF PROVENANCE

The collecting of sporting arms andfishing tackle is still in its infancy. Thereare increasing numbers of rod, reel, cast-ing-plug, and spoon collectors, and theyhave numerous books and reprints ofold tackle catalogs to guide them. Thesecollectors have adopted the standards ofmilitary arms collectors; they seekmaker’s marks and model identificationon the item, and they value “factory orig-inality.” A few historic flies, plus thosemade by distinguished tiers, are soughtby museums and serious collectors.These are really works of art, and “facto-ry originality” cannot be a factor in es-tablishing the desirability of them.Collectability of individually tied flies re-quires some form of provenance con-necting the fly with its tier, an era, andperhaps to the original angler who castor trolled it as well.

On Some Philosophies of Collecting:Provenance of the

Austin S. Hogan Collectionby Austin W. Hogan

A pencil sketch on 3 x 5–inch notepad by Austin S. Hogan, done as an eyeexercise while recovering from cataract surgery in 1971.

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I would like to propose a nine-tieredladder of provenance for flies, nymphs,bucktails, and streamers to guide the col-lector. The term fly will be used to in-clude wet and dry flies, nymphs, stream-ers, and bucktails; the holder is usually,but not always, the owner.

1. A fly tied, then mounted or carded inthe presence of the holder, with the datenoted. This primary provenance can beextended to another holder if the trans-fer is noted or is done publicly.

Or a mounted, carded, or packaged flycontained in a postmarked and un-opened envelope or package bearing theaddress of the recipient and the returnaddress of the tier. Unopened cor-respondence containing the tier’s workwould be equivalent to this. Such a findcould be opened before the directors ofthe museum and might be considereddefining examples of a tier’s work.

2. A fly (or several) attached to a letter ormount signed by the tier and still inpossession of the recipient. A chain ofprovenance to later holders can be ex-tended as in number 1.

3. An example of the tiers’ work, carded,mounted, or packaged with identifica-tion of the work by the tier, or an exam-ple of a tier’s work packaged with iden-tification of the tier by the person whoreceived the work from the original tier.

4. Custom or commercial examples ofthe tiers’ work attached to a card ormount annotated by the tier.

5. Custom or commercial examples ofthe tier’s work attached to a printedcard; the original wrap or packageenhances this if done by the tier.

6. Custom or commercial examples of atier’s work accompanied by its origi-nal card and packaging.

7. Examples of a tier’s work accompa-nied with identification by anothertier of the era.

8. Examples of a tier’s work accompaniedby an established chain of holders.

9. Attributions of a tier’s identity, ac-companied by a many-year but incom-plete history of holders.

Figures 2 through 9 illustrate examplesof this proposed ladder of provenance.

It has been very enjoyable to study theAustin S. Hogan collection and attemptto place the flies, nymphs, streamers, andbucktails from several periods and bymany tiers into these provenance cate-gories. There are packages that appear tobe experiments with a full spectrum ofnymphs or streamers on one hundredhooks of the same size. There are otherexperiments in which Austin S. ex-changed colors within a pattern.

PROVENANCE MYSTERIES

Two important mounted collectionsare not, thus far, identifiable with respectto time and tier(s).

There are several pages of masterfullytied salmon flies, streamers, and wet fliesheaded by a page titled “The Dan BrenanCollection of Trout and Salmon Flies c.1903” (Figure 10). The Brenan collectionwas removed from a fly book labeledwith Brenan’s name and address, butwith no indication of the origin of theflies found in the book. Some may havebeen tied by a young Brenan; most of thelarge salmon flies appear to be the workof a skilled commercial tier. The sourceremains unknown, but the date of 1903appears to be established.

Dan Brenan was the biographer ofGeorge Washington Sears (a Forest andStream contributor who wrote under thepen name of Nessmuk). Brenan com-piled the Adirondack letters of GeorgeWashington Sears in Canoeing the Adi-rondacks with Nessmuk, which was pub-lished by the Adirondack Museum short-ly after Brenan’s death in 1962. A verybrief biography of Brenan (1885–1962)appears in the book; Brenan identifieshimself as a writer of angling literature. Ihave not yet found other work written byBrenan or found a pseudonym for him inany of Austin S.’s notes.

Small in the Eye of a River by FrankMele (The Lyons Press, 1996) providessome biographical information on Brenan,

who was Mele’s fishing companion andsupplier of rods and flies. Brenan ran atackle shop and made fly rods in Syracuse,New York. He appears to have been a veryearly collector of tackle and flies. Aninquiry to the Adirondack Museum indi-cates that Brenan donated many itemswhile he was preparing the book onNessmuk. He frequently correspondedwith Austin S. and gave or sold the c. 1903collection to him in about 1959, judging byits placement in the Frigidaire file (AustinS.’s chronological ring binder; see Figure 3on page 11 for further description).

The second collection that has stumpedme with respect to provenance consists ofeleven Halfords. These have been cardedand identified by Austin S. and the card-ed flies mounted on black backgroundwith an acetate overlay in the file (Figure11). They are labeled and numbered inAustin S.’s hand on the card in an“antique” brown ink that he may havemixed himself. I originally thought thathe had tied these as replicas, but myrecent study of them with magnificationindicates they are probably of pre–WorldWar II English origin.

The letter, flies, sketch, and watercolor(Figure 12) that accompany this articlerepresent a sample of Austin S. Hogan’swork before the formation of theAmerican Museum of Fly Fishing. I con-tinue to research the provenance of thecollection as I prepare to donate it to themuseum.

Austin S. Hogan (left) and David Ledlie, both former editors of thisjournal, examine one of the museum’s reels in this undated photo.


Figure 1. A view of one side of the toptray of the trunk that has held a largecollection of flies, nymphs, and stream-ers given to me by my father betweenabout 1962 and his death in 1985. Twonotebooks in the case contain mounteddisplays of his flies, nymphs, and stream-ers with his annotations from 1950 to1965. These displays show his early workand the work of several renowned tiers ofthat time.

The top tray of the trunk shows manysmall boxes labeled with tiers’ names.Note the small white box in the lowerleft corner labeled “Tied by Harold NGibbs, 71 Sowams Rd Barrington R IGibbs Striper No 2 Jassid # 24,” writtenin Austin S. Hogan’s hand. We have herethe beginning of some good provenance:a Gibbs Striper identified by hook sizewith identification on the box that it wastied by the originator.

I have a strong bias toward Austin S.’stying, but after examining the collectionas passed to me over these forty-plusyears, I look on Harold Gibbs’s work assome of the finest of the twentieth cen-tury. The provenance on these examplesof Gibbs’s work is the result of personalcontact between Austin S. and Harold N.and the former’s obvious admiration ofthe latter’s work.

Figure 2. Hallie Galaise was one of the ladies trained to tieby Mary Orvis Marbury, and she was the last one stillactive with the Orvis Company when Austin S. Hoganrequested her to tie these in 1954. Galaise is pictured tying,without a vise, in The Orvis Story (Austin Hogan and PaulSchullery, 1981). Austin S. Hogan noted Galaise’s name onthe package at the time and labeled the package as shownwhen he passed this part of his collection on to me. Thisis not quite a perfect example of primary provenance asthe full date is not entered.

Photos by Austin W. Hogan

WINTER 2011 1 1

Figure 3. A dated and signed letter from Charles M.Wetzel with a fly of his tying attached. Wetzel is knownfor his writing but tied for his own fishing. The letter andfly have been enclosed in the transparent folder for fiftyyears. The letter and fly were not commercially ex-changed, but have been passed from the recipient (AustinS.) to the present holder (Austin W.).

The letter and fly from Wetzel are mounted in a firmacetate pocket file jacket and filed in approximatechronological order in a leatherette bound ring binder.This ring binder was originally a Frigidaire salesman’sproduct file, and we refer to it frequently as “the Frigidairefile.” It provided fifty years of excellent protection to theletters, photos, and mounted fly collections that arestored in it. The attachment of the fly to the signed anddated letter identifies the work of the tier; a positive eval-uation of the chain of custody from recipient (Austin S.)to current holder (Austin W.) should provide provenanceat the second level described above.

Figure 4. A Rangeley Smelt tied, carded,and dated by Austin S. Hogan, 1958. ThisRangeley Smelt is in the binder contain-ing many of Austin S. Hogan’s early tyingexperiments; it is a bit unusual because itis named. The streamer is mounted on acard with Scotch tape and has been pro-tected with a transparent overlay asnoted in the description of the Wetzelletter. The card is annotated and dated inAustin S.’s hand and contains a materiallist for the pattern. This is a clear andunique example of the third provenancecategory: it is carded, annotated, anddated by the tier and remains in the pos-session of the person (the author) whooriginally received it from the tier.


Figure 5. A Warden’s Worry, tied, carded, and annotatedby H. Wendell Folkins. It is attached to an unsigned letterfrom Folkins. This is an example of commercial work. Heannotated the card with pattern and size in his own hand-writing, making it an example of provenance category 4proposed above. He frequently entered the size and pat-terns on his cards by hand, as shown on several examplesin the Fridgidaire file.

Figure 6. A. I. “Pal” Alexander was amember and officer of the United FlyTyers (UFT). The UFT met in a tyingroom rented at Mechanics Hall in Boston.Alexander was an accomplished tier whoprovided examples for displays and pub-lished illustrations. Pal Alexander andAustin S. Hogan met frequently at theUFT. This original Gray Ghost, tied byMrs. Carrie G. Stevens, came from PalAlexander’s collection and was mailed tome in March 1966.

The Gray Ghost streamer is removedfrom its original transparent wrapperand pattern identification card andplaced beside it in a transparent coin col-lector’s plastic case. This was a frequentpreservation and display technique usedto present high-quality flies for exhibi-tion in the 1960s and 1970s. The spongerubber matting in these cases oxidizedwith the passage of time. This photo wasmade through the case, which had re-mained stored in the original mailing envelope until 2007. The rubber matting is well decomposed, but it contaminated only thehook point and head winding in this instance.

This Gray Ghost would be considered provenance category 6, as it has been removed from its original card and wrapper but isaccompanied by these items. The Gray Ghost’s provenance is enhanced a bit as it was identified by a contemporary tier (PalAlexander) and proceeded from that collection to that of the author, where it has remained for forty-four years. It can neverreach provenance level 5, as it is detached from its card, but it should be considered the highest provenance level of flies detachedfrom the original card.

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Figure 7. A Gibbs Striper and a size 24Jassid, given by Harold Gibbs to AustinS. Hogan at a United Fly Tyers (UFT)meeting in 1965. Harold Gibbs andAustin S. Hogan frequently met at UFTmeetings. Gibbs gave these two flies toAustin S. but did not annotate them.Austin S. noted Gibbs as the tier, as wellas the patterns and sizes on the box; thisestablishes the proposed provenancelevel 7 for the pair.

Figure 8. Harold Gibbs identified thispair as tied by Rube Cross in his ownhandwriting. Austin S. Hogan identifiedthem as a gift from Gibbs and noted thedate; he further established the chain ofownership by identifying Gibbs and thedate of succession. This is an example ofproposed provenance category 8; itremains as part of this collection intactsince 1965.


Figure 9. Four flies to gut attributed toElizabeth Benjamin of Lycoming Creek,Pennsylvania. The origin and the tier ofthese was attributed by Austin S. Hoganin 1960. The specimens were mounted,labeled, and filed with some prints andarticles about fishing in Pennsylvania atthat time. I have found no additionalsource for the attribution. Fifty yearshave passed without challenge to thatattribution, but this does not establishprovenance beyond the lowest level.

Figure 10. Six salmon flies from the DanBrenan c. 1903 collection photographedagainst a red Bristol board background.Austin S. Hogan may have touched upthe heads on the lower left and lowerright. Dan passed these flies to Austin S.in the fly book that remains in the col-lection. Austin S. carded some of these,mounted the others on typewriter paper,and inserted them in acetate covers inthe loose-leaf notebook. There was noattribution other than the heading onthe initial page of the collection, butmost of the mounts were organized bysize and whether eyed or fly-to-gut.There are about one hundred wet fliesand streamers in this collection.

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Figure 12. This watercolor sketch wasfound between the pages of Austin S.Hogan’s copy of The Modern Devel-opment of the Dry Fly. It is representativeof many pencil and watercolor sketchesdone by Austin S. to illustrate his ideas ina letter or to make a note to himself inextracting written information.

Austin S. apparently studied Halford’sbook quite carefully. The little 6 x 8–inchpainted sketch was found between thepages. Unexpected findings like this hasmade searching for his forms of prove-nance—which he used in replicatingearly tiers’ work without support ofcolor photographic records—very re-warding to me.

Figure 11. A Halford Iron Blue No 7(male) tied on a Hardy Alnwick hook, asidentified and labeled by Austin S.Hogan. The identification of HalfordIron Blue No. 7 (male) by Austin S. is innear agreement with the Halford illus-trations in the 1937 Hardy catalog andthe illustration in Plate VI of the 1923edition of Halford’s Modern Develop-ment of the Dry Fly (Houghton, Mifflinand Co., 1923). The illustration in Hal-ford notes “Flies Dressed by C Farlowand Co, London” (facing page 39, plateVI). The Iron Blue Male is cataloged asNo. 18 and has a few red turns behind theeye of the hook in both the Hardy andFarlow prints. Halford’s instructions(page 39) indicate that this should be“three close turns of horsehair dyed darkVan Dyke brown,” which is a brick ratherthan bright red. Several other Halfordsmounted by Austin S. also vary in notednumber. Halford cites other sellers of hispatterns in Modern Development of theDry Fly, but I have yet to find Austin S.’ssource of the numbers.

!


IN 1878, THE MICHIGAN Sportsmen’sAssociation called the Michigan FishCommission’s attention to declining

numbers of grayling in the Au SableRiver.1 In the four short years sinceThaddeus Norris announced the bountyof Michigan’s indigenous cold-watergame fish to America’s angling public,overfishing, logging, and nonnative com-petition from brook trout threatened thefragile fishery. The association’s callprompted the commission to expand itsregulation beyond the commercial white-fish industry to the growing sportfishingindustry, centered on Michigan’s gray-ling, brook trout, and bass. New legisla-tion, along with game wardens’ increasedpolice powers, sought to prevent theannihilation of one of America’s greatestgame fish, the Michigan grayling, Thy-mallus tricolor.

Michigan’s game laws and game war-den system found their origins in thedeclining whitefish industry of the 1870s.The population’s decline was traced tooverfishing and urban growth. Artificialfish propagation was the conservation

method of the day, and a private effortdeveloped among the Detroit whitefishfleet.2 It became apparent that the envi-ronmental dilemma facing the fishingindustry could not be solved through pri-vate efforts alone. Instead, the state gov-ernment legislated conservation effortsand collaborated with private hatcheriesto broaden its efforts in fish conservation.

The Michigan state legislature hadconvened in 1873 and had immediatelyaddressed the commercial-fishing issue.That same year, with the support ofGovernor John Bagley, the MichiganFish Commission was formed. The firstboard consisted of Governor Bagley,George Clark, and George Jerome Niles.The primary focus of the group was toimmediately address the whitefish stocksin the form of artificial propagation.Soon, however, prodded by private con-servation organizations that sprung upout of concern for the endangeredgrayling, the commission redefined thestatus of commercial and recreationalfish. In doing so, Michigan criminalizedprevious customary fishing practices.

Conservation among sportsmen has amixed past. Historian John F. Reiger’sAmerican Sportsmen and the Origins ofConservation (1975) stated that sports-men were dedicated to protecting nature.He wrote:

Farmers and ranchers made poornature lovers, seeing wildlife only ascompetitors or sources of profit.Sportsmen, on the other hand, regardedmost animals and birds with nonutili-tarian motives. Not depending onnature for a livelihood, sportsmen werethe only large group of Americans whocame to woods and fields for mainlyrecreational and aesthetic reasons. It isno wonder, then, that they would takethe initiative in preserving nonsportingspecies as well as those traditionallypursued as game.3

Game conservation laws were rela-tively new to Michigan and America atthe turn of the twentieth century. Beforethe mid-1800s, few states had game andfish laws. Most human populations wereused to hunting and fishing unfettered

River Police: Early Game Wardenson Michigan’s Au Sable River

by Bryon Borgelt

On the Au Sable River in Grayling.Used with permission from the Crawford County Library System.

WINTER 2011 17

by state and local restrictions. Fishing forlocal inhabitants not only provided a lit-tle rest and relaxation, but also food forthe table. Market hunters and fishershunted and fished for pay. Not all localinhabitants were interested in the joyouspleasures of casting a fly rod for smalltrout; instead, they looked for more reli-able angling methods. In 1873, Michiganclosed inland waterways to netting dur-ing the months of March, April, andMay.4 This was one of the earliest statefish and game regulations. In 1891, theuse of spears, dynamite, explosives, andartificial lights was prohibited.5

THREATS TO MICHIGAN’S

GAME FISH

A tradition of angling and hunting,regulated by custom and guided by nat-ural observation, had kept game and fishpopulations in check. The onset of mod-ern technology, combined with a surgein population growth and expandingmarkets, necessitated the creation ofstate fish and game laws. Hunters andfishers serving the urban markets ofChicago, Detroit, and Toledo deployedthe newest technology in order to capi-talize on growing demand. Pothunters,as they were called, played their role inthe grayling and passenger pigeon’sextinction. New technology in the formof guns and nets allowed for larger killsin the fields and streams. In 1875, lawsaimed at market fishermen banned theselling and buying of fish during closedseasons.6 Just two years before this lawwas passed, the fishing for brook troutand grayling was restricted to a seasonbetween June 1 and October 1.7 Also in1875, the sale of brook trout and graylingto out-of-state parties was outlawed.

Michigan reiterated the ban on out-of-state sales of brook trout and whatevergrayling one could find in 1907, and alsoadded bass to the regulation.8 The marketand local subsistence fishermen certainlytook a toll on the state’s resources.

Just as responsible for the destructionof Michigan fish and game was the rushof adventurous sporting men. Railroadsand a changing economy of the industri-al late 1800s allowed both the conve-nience and time to take to the woods andstreams of northern Michigan. Theirdestruction of fish and game in the nameof sport caused widespread damage, per-haps more so than the pothunter. Every

week during the season, fishermendeparted from cities throughout theMidwest on trains to Grayling. There,scores of fishers set out with their partiesand their guides to take part in an anglingtradition. Every fish of legal size was keptin the era before size restrictions andcreel limits. Some fish were fried in bacongrease over campfires, but most werepacked in salt, or worse, buried in thesand along the banks. Sportfishermen ofthe time often blamed the pothuntersand the local subsistence fishers butneglected to look in the mirror and takeresponsibility for their own actions.

According to Reiger, sportsmen fol-lowed an unwritten moral code for theirstreamside conduct. He suggested thatleaders such as George Bird Grinnell(1849–1938) and Charles Hallock (1834–1917)promoted the English fishing and hunt-ing practices that emphasized sports-manship and not the harvest of meat forthe home or the market. Three classes ofAu Sable anglers emerged as the riverreached national prominence in the lastquarter of the nineteenth century. Thefirst contained local farmers and laborerswho mostly fished for subsistence anddid not adhere to the new laws comingout of Lansing. The second group wassemilocal; the majority were nouveauriche industrialists who owned propertyin the form of a vacation home or lodge.They followed and helped to direct manyof the state’s conservation laws. Finally,the third group was made up of middle-class fishing tourists. Some fished for

A better-than-typical 1912 day: fishing demonstrates the benefits of the state’shatchery. Used with permission from the Crawford County Library System.

Private parties started planting rainbow trout in the Au Sable in 1874.Ten years later, after it was determined that a viable grayling population nolonger existed in the system, the state began yearling brook trout plantings.

Used with permission from the Lovells Township Historical Society.


sport and others for the table; they werea mixed group. Some supported conser-vation, others did not. Like so manyspawning trout trying to protect theirredds, the competition created turf wars.

In the battle for control of the localwaters, sportsmen had the upper hand.Personal, business, and political connec-tions and influence allowed them todirect conservation measures aimed attreating fish and game as commoditiesrather than sustenance. Efforts along theAu Sable combined three stages of gameconservation. Stage one sought to reducethe level of killing to protect game for thespecific special interest group. Sportsmenanglers achieved this by banning meansother than hook and line for fishing.Stage two involved the sentimental pro-tection of game. This called for the pro-tection of game for their aesthetic plea-sure. Bag limits first went into effect in1903 with a creel limit of fifty game fish.At that time food fish, such as walleye orperch, were unregulated. The third stagefocused on economic protection. Gray-ling and trout were viewed as resourcesfor tourism. Money spent on the resourcewas viewed as an insurance policy on theasset for its future existence.9 The AuSable, Michigan’s most popular trouttourist destination, was the only stream inMichigan to carry an 8-inch limit on rain-bow, brown, and brook trout in 1901.10

William Butts Mershon, northernMichigan’s leading conservationist andone of the larger trout-water propertyowners on the Au Sable system, favoredthe final stage of game conservation. Hedisagreed with locals, farmers, and eventhe Michigan Fish Commission for theirview that fish served as a food source. Inhis mind, the brook trout had a higher

calling as a sport fish and as “. . . thelargest interest the public has in thesenatural resources that are so attractive tonon-residents who come to Michigan tospend their money because of the fish-ing, boating, sailing and outing in theforest and stream.”11 The fish were aresource that brought anglers and theirmoney to the towns and villages alongthe Au Sable. In order to keep that rev-enue flowing, measures for the protec-tion of the resource needed to be passedand enforced.

FOREST AND STREAM

WATCHMEN

Enforcement of the state laws proveddifficult. Game wardens were on thefront line of state conservation. The pro-tection of game and fish and the preven-tion of forest fires were the main dutiesof these wardens. Wardens were firstappointed by the governor in 1873 andwere paid an annual salary of $1,200.Representing the people of Michigan,wardens could bring any violator of stategame laws to court in any county withthe same power as an attorney general.To conduct their investigations, wardenswere allowed to:

Search any person and examine anyboat, conveyance, vehicle, fish box, fishbasket, game bag or game coat, or anyother receptacle for game or fish, whenhe has good reason to believe that hewill thereby secure evidence of the vio-lation of the law; and any hindrance orinterference or attempt at hindrance orinterference with such search andexamination, shall be prima facie evi-dence of a violation of the law. . .12

Wardens were given the same power aspolice and could arrest without warrantany person deemed to be in violation ofstate game and fish laws.

The new warden system furnishedprivate fish and game clubs with theirown deputized managers. The law stated,“The said game and fish wardens may beemployed by individuals, clubs, and cor-porations interested in the enforcementof the fish and game laws . . .”13 Whereasin other states, clubs hired individuals tomanage private waters, in Michigan theyemployed and deputized individuals oftheir choice to police private waters. Anytransgressions against the law or anyinterference with the duties of the war-den could result in a minimum $10 fineand a court hearing. Those who couldnot pay the fine were to be held in jailuntil the fine was paid.14 This also meantthat private citizens and organizationshad the ability to make sure that statelaws were carried out on public and pri-vate waters of their concern, all financedthrough private money. Wardens wereeither privately or locally financed until1913 when Michigan started its out-of-state fishing license and began paying forthem through these fees.15

Game wardens loyal to state laws werethe surest method of conservation.Without game wardens, locals werereluctant to turn their neighbors in. Areport to the state mentioned that retali-ation was a problem on the NorthBranch. Mershon wrote about out-of-season fishing:

A gentleman from Grayling told meyesterday that within a week he hadseen three trout in the possession of aman on the North Branch that weighed4 lbs. in all and these three trout weretaken out of the North Branch near thebridge at Lovells; that they were fishingright along; and that he had not daredto make a complaint for fear they wouldburn up his mill.16

Additional complaints indicated thatindividuals still used dynamite to fish.Dynamiting had long been outlawed.Fear of retaliation no doubt had animpact on those who wished to enforcethe laws.

While retaliation was one factor thatworked against the game-warden systemand state laws, the reluctance of localcourts to hold game violators account-able also limited the scope of the conser-vation laws. One group of Au Sable deerpoachers benefited from the local judi-ciary. Although fines could have totaled$50 per offender, the local “weak-kneedjustice” fined the poachers $10.17 Thejudge kept the fine to the minimumamount allowed by law, suggesting that

William Mershon’s High Banks Lodge on his 1,520-acreproperty on the North Branch of the Au Sable, purchased in 1905.

Used with permission from the Lovells Township Historical Society.

WINTER 2011 19

such infractions were of relatively minorconcern.

Historian Karl Jacoby detailed thework of game wardens working in NewYork’s Adirondack Park. He describedthe relationship as it developed betweengame wardens and the local populationthey were supposed to police. TheAdirondacks were surprisingly similar tothe Au Sable region. Both had witnessedthe quick and transient economy ofunregulated logging in the nineteenthcentury. Outdoor recreation tourismsprung up in the wake of the lumberindustry. Wealthy urban industrialistspurchased lands, lakes, and stream-frontproperty. Private clubs and lodgesappeared to serve the sportsmen andtheir desire for productive hunting andfishing. The local population was depen-dent on the new industry, but also usedthe traditional methods of a subsistenceeconomy. Rivers provided fresh fish, andthe forest provided wild meat, berries,and nuts. In 1872, as a response to envi-ronmental threats, conservation fromthe outside in the form of state lawssought to regulate Adirondack land andwater usage. “Law and its antithesis—lawlessness—are therefore the twin axesaround which the history of conserva-tion revolves,” wrote Jacoby. “To achieveits vision of a rational, state-managedlandscape, conservation erected a com-prehensive new body of rules governingthe use of the environment. But to createnew laws also meant to create newcrimes.”18 Dynamiting and fishing out ofseason had been accepted practices inboth New York and Michigan before thestates outlawed such practices. Some

locals followed the new laws, but otherscontinued their traditions by defying thelaws and an institutionalized concept ofconservation.

Both conservationists and localsagreed on one thing: the best game war-dens were local game wardens because,according to Jacoby, they knew the land-scape and the people. They were familiarwith the habits of the local fish and gameas well as those who hunted and fishedthem. They also knew the likely viola-tors. The need to find a local man tocarry out the warden job was evident inMershon’s desire for someone who knewthe area and who would not have a prob-lem enforcing the law. The two men

whom Mershon advocated for the most,E. Purchase and Rube Babbitt, were bothnatives of the area and knew every bendand twist in the Au Sable and its branch-es. Local fishers and hunters also wantedone of their own to carry out the wardenjob because, in their minds, the best war-dens were those who were reluctant toenforce the state laws or to prosecuteoffenders. The best wardens might offera warning or suggest that someone notbe caught fishing out of season. Localsoften sought methods to control gamewardens who would not cooperate ontheir terms. Jacoby wrote that local talesof accommodating game wardens were“an expression of how locals thought therelationship between foresters [i.e., gamewardens] and local people should func-tion—[tales] were likely employed as away to reinforce community solidaritywhile also nudging present foresters[game wardens] toward more accommo-dating modes of behavior.”19

One method of control on the AuSable was for local government to refuseto reimburse the game warden forexpenses incurred during the enforce-ment of his job. According to state law,counties or private organizations wereresponsible for the county warden’ssalary, but the county had to reimbursethe local warden for expenses.20 InJanuary 1906, the Crawford CountyBoard of Supervisors refused to reim-burse Warden Purchase the $11 for previ-ously performed game warden services.The same request had been refused forthe previous three years. Any number offactors could explain the specific reasonthat Crawford County failed to reim-burse its game warden. The end resultwas that the county did not see the merit

By the late 1890s, Au Sable logging scoured the streambed andsilted the water, weakening the threatened grayling’s existence.

Used with permission from the Fuller’s North Branch Outing Club.

Game Warden E. Purchase, the Au Sable’s first warden, holding the North Branch’sfirst brown trout. Used with permission from the Lovells Township Historical Society.


in taking care of its game warden or theecosystem he was appointed to protect.Purchase was known to rule the riverwith an iron fist, taking in anyone whofished out of season, kept short fish, orfished by illegal means. He closelyadhered to the game laws. Warningsseemed infrequent and court appear-ances often. While the local governmentfailed to reimburse the local warden, con-cerned conservation anglers took notice.

PRIVATIZED GAME WARDEN

CONSERVATION

Disappointed with the lack of en-forcement on the Au Sable’s NorthBranch, Mershon wrote to the staterequesting the private hiring of Mr.Purchase in 1906:

I have a letter from T. E. Douglas,Grayling, Michigan this morning inrelation to the fishing of the NorthBranch of the Au Sable. He says, “We are

sadly in need of a game warden. It is toobad to have so many small fish taken. Iwas talking with Rube Babbitt to-day;he runs the Club House on the mainstream at Stevens Bridge and he saysthey are taking everything from 4" up.”

There is a man there named Purchasewho was Game Warden once and he wasthe only good one I know of in the Stateof Michigan. He was not afraid of a souland would stop everyone and searchtheir baskets and boats; but on accountof no salary allowances, he resigned. Ifhe could be reappointed I would guar-antee to pay $100.00 towards his yearlysalary, for one year at least & run thechance of getting my friends here inSaginaw to chip in this amount.

Violations of the fishing laws havebeen very open this year. Mr Callan ofSaginaw told me, a week ago, before theseason opened, he was at Clare and sawa man catching trout, he actually sawthe trout taken out of the water. GeorgeMorley of this city told me that oneither April 28th or 29th he was told byan acquaintance in Saginaw that he hadthat day received a fine mess of troutfrom some up country friend of his.

The limit as to length has very littleattention paid to it on the NorthBranch of the Au Sable. A game wardenwould make an example of these lawbreakers with the greatest ease if he hadany disposition to do so.”21

Soon Mershon’s personal friends weresending their payments to Douglas, aformer lumberman and successful fish-erman’s lodge owner, for the NorthBranch Protection Fund. Within amonth Douglas collected a total of $191,$10 to $15 at a time.

From whom did the streams needguarding? Purchase’s benefactors believedthe greatest threats came from the localpopulation and the uninformed travelingtrout tourists. One of his first jobs was topost signs informing anglers of the AuSable’s special 8-inch limit, 1 inch longerthan streams in the rest of the state. Healso wasted no time in taking in fish-lawviolators. Douglas wrote to Mershon toinform him of Purchase’s effectiveness:“He has convicted nine and got them allscared. One man would not allow him to

Left: Lovells’s leading citizen, T. E. Douglas, one of the NorthBranch’s earliest lodge owners and conservationists. Used with per-mission from the Fuller’s North Branch Outing Club.

Below: In 1916, Douglas established the North Branch Outing Clubas the final days of his logging business came to an end. Used with

permission from the Fuller’s North Branch Outing Club.

WINTER 2011 21

examine his creel and it cost him $14 justthe same.”22 Douglas had the greateststake in Purchase’s work. As an outfitter,Douglas was a local who served out-of-town fishermen. Some of these fishermenwere an early breed of angling conserva-tionists. Others were merely tourists,hoping to have a weekend of angling funand arrive home with a full creel.

Douglas could not afford to alienatehis clientele. At the same time, he neededto protect the resource that broughtanglers to his establishment. The 8-inch-limit law helped to ensure that some nat-ural reproduction took place, which bol-stered the stream population.

In Warden Purchase, Mershon andDouglas found the perfect solution togame violations along the Au Sable.Mershon was happy to hear that gamelaws were enforced and prosecuted, evenif local economic support was lacking,and Douglas could promise his anglersthe opportunity to fish a stream that washeld to the highest conservation stan-dards. Personally, Mershon could nothave been happier—that is, until one ofhis close friends found himself on thewrong side of the law.

MERSHON’S CONSERVATION

CONTRADICTION

W. J. Hunsaker was a prominentSaginaw newspaperman and personalfriend of Mershon. Hunsaker made sev-eral hunting and fishing trips withMershon, but in July 1906, he fished theNorth Branch while Mershon was awayfishing for salmon in Canada. WardenPurchase stopped Hunsaker, as he tend-ed to do with everyone, and inspectedhis creel. In measuring out all of thefish—which may have been manybecause the creel limit for the Au Sableand all of Michigan streams was thirty-five fish a day, with a total limit of 100fish in possession—Purchase found onethat did not measure the full 8 inchesrequired for possession of an Au Sabletrout. He arrested Hunsaker and chargedhim with violating the state fish law.

Mershon was outraged that Purchasewould find a personal friend of his—someone he knew to be supportive ofgame conservation—to be in violationof the law. He wrote to Michigan StateGame Warden C. H. Chapman:

Now I think that it would be a goodplan to caution Purchase not to be tootechnical; where the intent of the law isnot violated, he should not split hairs.Almost everyone will sometimes get atrout in his basket that, after it hasshrunk a few hours, will be 1⁄8" scant.Technical inforcement [sic] of this kind

in a case like this only puts both the lawand the inforcement [sic] in disrepute.23

Douglas entered into the argument bysiding with Purchase. He wrote toMershon stating, “. . . Mr. Hunsaker gotcaught but if he takes his chances of keep-ing short fish and gets caught he is . . . tostand the consequences than a man thatcounts in the mill.”24 Mr. Hunsakeradmitted guilt when he swore in his trialthat the fish was short at 73⁄4 inches.Douglas felt that even among the richand influential guests who visited hisriver, the rules were the same, and allshould be subjected to the consequencesif they chose to violate them.

Mershon was not of the same opin-ion. Suddenly the warden whom he hadchampioned for his reputation of stop-ping everyone on the stream had target-ed the very men who paid his salary.Mershon hated it when a warden servedthe interest of the guides, market hunters,and the local population, as was the casewith his disdain for the failed Saginaw

warden system, but he expected prefer-ential treatment when it applied to thosewho were supposedly on the right side ofconservation. Eventually Mershon gotover the Hunsaker issue and supportedPurchase’s work. The following summerPurchase fell victim to personal healthissues and died in a sanitarium inDetroit. Other state game wardens tookhis place, but none gained as great a rep-utation as Reuben S. Babbitt of Grayling.Babbitt guided on the local Au Sablewaters, was a caretaker at one of the mainbranch clubs, and went on to become themost famous of the Au Sable game war-dens.25

THE GAME WARDEN LEGACY

The county warden system highlight-ed the division between the differentangler factions. Douglas needed to makesure that his guests were able to enjoy thequality fly-fishing experience that theyhad paid for. Mershon wanted someonewho would follow the state conservation

William B. Mershon and Rube Babbitt prepare to stockthe Au Sable with fingerling trout. Used with permission

from the Lovells Township Historical Society.


laws to the letter but extend leniency tohis fellow upper-class friends. Purchasedid not seem to indicate that he owed hisallegiance to anyone other than the stateconservation laws, as was demonstratedby his refusal to back down with theHunsacker situation. Local authoritiesopposed the outside influence by refus-ing to reimburse Purchase for his work-related expenses.

Michigan’s local-warden system wasabout control and access to state re-sources. Over the decades, the state ap-propriated the power to regulate resourcemanagement with local oversight. Leg-islation followed a top-down path. Gamewardens split the difference between statemandates and local adherence. Mershonand Douglas represented the growinginfluence of special interest groups whohad a role in directing the state’s conser-vation agenda.

The duality of cooperation and ten-sion between the different classes of AuSable anglers was highlighted by Pur-chase’s efforts. As a fellow native, perhapsother local anglers felt Purchase wouldturn a blind eye to their occasional dyna-miting of the stream or out-of-seasonfishing. Douglas put his faith in Pur-chase’s ability to protect the resourcethat his lodge depended on: a steady sup-ply of trout for the angling tourists.Mershon saw Purchase as an extension ofhis own personal conservation agendaagainst local and transient anglers. In theend, despite the various economic, polit-ical, and personal influences, Purchase’s

actions seemed devoted to a moral ecol-ogy based on what was good for the riverand its trout. These same principleswould later guide a group of anglers toestablish Trout Unlimited on the banksof the Au Sable in 1959.

!

ENDNOTES

1. L. D. Norris, “The Michigan Grayling.What Must Be Done to Prevent the Annihi-lation of this Excellent Food and Game Fish.”Address to the Michigan Sportsmen’s Asso-ciation, 5 February 1878. Box 1, Folder William B.Mershon Early Family Papers of Augustus H.Mershon. The Mershon Collection in the Mich-igan Historical Collections, Bentley HistoricalLibrary, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor,Michigan (Mershon Collection hereafter).

2. Russell Robertson, “A Review ofFishing and Fish Culture during Michigan’sEarly Years,” 3. PhD diss., University of Mich-igan, 1990. Devereaux Memorial Library,Grayling, Michigan.

3. John F. Reiger, American Sportsmenand the Origins of Conservation (New York:Winchester Press, 1975), 60.

4. Ibid., 20.5. Eugene T. Peterson, “The History of

Wildlife Conservation in Michigan, 1859–1921”(Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1952), 21.

6. Ibid., 22.7. Ibid., 21.8. Ibid., 179.9. George Bird Grinnell,“American Game

Protection.” In David Stradling, ed., Con-servation in the Progressive Era (Seattle: Uni-versity of Washington Press, 2004), 45–48, 48.

10. Peterson, 178.

11. Letter from William B. Mershon to J. T.Winship, 11 January 1905. Box 29, Folder Nov.16 1904–Aug. 7 1905, Mershon Collection.

12. State of Michigan Game and FishLaws and Laws Reflective to Destruction ofNoxious Animals (1909), Act 28, P.A. 1887, 6.

13. Ibid.14. Ibid.15. Peterson, 180.16. Letter from W. B. Mershon to C. H.

Chapman, 19 January 1906. Box 29, FolderAug. 8 1905–Feb. 26 1906. Mershon Collection.

17. Letter from W. B. Mershon to C. H.Chapman, 22 November 1905. Box 29, FolderAug. 8 1905–Feb. 26 1906. Mershon Collection.

18. Karl Jacoby, Crimes against Nature:Squatters, Poachers, Thieves, and the HiddenHistory of American Conservation (Berkeley:University of California Press, 2001), 2.

19. Ibid., 37.20. State of Michigan Game and Fish

Laws and Laws Reflective to Destruction ofNoxious Animals (1909), Act 28, P.A. 1887, 7.

21. Letter from W. B. Mershon to C. H.Chapman, 5 May 1905. Box 29, Folder Nov. 161904–Aug. 7 1905. Mershon Collection.

22. Letter from T. E. Douglas to W. B.Mershon, 18 June 1905. Box 2, Folder WilliamB. Mershon Personal Papers June 1904–Jan.1907. Mershon Collection.

23. Letter from W. B. Mershon to C. H.Chapman, 12 July 1906. Box 29, Folder Feb. 261906–July 26 1907. Mershon Collection.

24. Letter from T. E. Douglas to W. B.Mershon, 25 July 1906. Box 2, Folder WilliamB. Mershon Personal Papers Jun 1904–Jan.1907. Mershon Collection.

25. Letter from C. S. Pierce to W. B.Mershon, 16 August 1907. Box 3, FolderWilliam B. Mershon Personal Papers August1907. Mershon Collection.

A later photo (1930) of Game Warden Rube Babbit on his favorite river.Used with permission from the Fuller’s North Branch Outing Club.

WINTER 2011 23

C O N T R I B U T O R S

Bryon Borgelt, PhD, is a lifelong angler and student of his-tory. He has been able to combine both of these passions withhis dissertation in history for the University of Toledo, “FliesOnly: Early Sport Fishing Conservation on Michigan’s AuSable River.” As a teacher and administrator at St. John’s JesuitHigh School in Toledo, Ohio, Dr. Borgelt created the Titan FlyFishers. This student group ties flies, volunteers, takes its driftboat to Michigan for salmon and steelhead, travels to Grayling,Michigan, for trout, and visits eastern Pennsylvania for brooktrout. He, his wife Jenny, his golden retriever Bear, and his cal-ico cat Snickers live in Maumee, Ohio.

J. I. (Jim) Merritt, a longtime member of the AmericanMuseum of Fly Fishing, pictured here with a New York Statesteelhead on Cattaraugus Creek, lives in Pennington, NewJersey. He is the author of Trout Dreams: A Gallery of Fly-Fishing Profiles (Derrydale Press, 2000), and a former editor ofPrinceton University’s alumni magazine and of We ProceededOn, the quarterly journal of the Lewis and Clark Trail HeritageFoundation. He wrote about Ernie Schwiebert in the Spring2006 of this journal.

Austin W. Hogan’s schooling, army years, and career as anaerosol physicist have kept him close to rivers throughout hislife. As part of the State University at Albany’s AtmosphericSciences Department, he joined the Atmospheric SciencesResearch Center and began fieldwork at the WhitefaceMountain Observatory above the West Branch of the Ausablein May 1964. Field research in later years took him to the Siletzand Alsea rivers in Oregon, the Snake River in Wyoming, theupper Rapid Creek in South Dakota, the Yampa River inColorado, nameless ponds in Newfoundland, and theYellowstone River below the falls. He was also able to fish theSpruce, East Canada, and West Canada creeks many morningsor evenings when teaching the spring semester at Albany.Hogan now lives in Piermont, New Hampshire, 200 yards froma dandy little stream. He’s shown here at the South Pole in 1976.

Austin W. Hogan

Jenny Borgelt Derek Sater, Reel Action Fly Fishing

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ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, the weather vane would seemdestined for obsolescence in our digital age. We haveweather stations in our homes that not only tell us

which way the wind is blowing and how fast, but provide thetemperature, barometric pressure, and humidity level, andeven sync up with the atomic clock in Boulder, Colorado. Wecan turn on the TV or go online to get detailed forecasts in amatter of minutes, and wind speed and direction are amongthe many factors that forecasters have already consideredbefore making their predictions. Unless you live in an areathat’s at least partially rural, I’d wager you probably don’tremember the last time you even saw a weather vane.

Weather vanes, which indicate wind direction, have beenaround in one form or another since ancient times; the oldestknown example honored the Greek god Triton and was affixedto the Tower of Winds in Athens, built by Andronicus in 48 B.C.Vikings used weather vanes on the masts of their ships duringtheir exploratory voyages in the ninth century, the same periodin which a papal decree required that the figure of a rooster bemounted on top of every Christian church to remind people ofSt. Peter’s three denials, thus (presumably) inspiring both sin-ners and the faithful alike to attend regular services. The termweather vane is partially derived from fane, an Anglo-Saxonword meaning flag or banner, particularly the standards com-monly seen on castle turrets, which both indicated the owner’srank and family name and gave the castle’s archers a quick visu-al to determine how to adjust their aim in windy conditions.

However, despite its roots in various traditions and coun-tries, the weather vane as we think of it today is primarily anAmerican creation. It was a very popular item among the ear-liest colonists, who saw its use as symbolic of their desire for acountry based on political and social equality: instead of itbeing a privilege of the wealthy, as was the case in Europe, any-one in the New World had the right to raise a banner above hisor her home or barn.1 As a result, American tin- and copper-smiths became increasingly creative and intricate with theirdesigns. By the late 1700s, they were crafting weather vanesvastly superior to those made by European metalworkers.Animals such as cows, horses, pigs, and, yes, roosters werecommon figures in agrarian areas, whereas whales, swordfish,ships, dolphins, and even the occasional mermaid graced theroofs of homes in coastal villages. Today, those early weathervanes are widely considered to be among the first examples ofAmerican folk art.

Long after our daily lives stopped requiring their use aswind indicators, weather vanes still remain a way to add a per-sonal touch to one’s home or place of business or to pay trib-ute to a particular building’s history. The museum’s office, forexample, sports a horse weather vane, which I suspect has beenthere since the building’s days as a carriage house in the late1800s. The stable on the grounds of Steven Spielberg’s home inthe Hamptons has a 4-foot velociraptor showing you whichway the wind is blowing, and one of the shopping centers herein Manchester has a skier weather vane, reflecting the many

G A L L E R Y

The salmon weather vane, crafted by Warren Gilker,that sits atop the American Museum of Fly Fishing.

Photos by Sara Wilcox

Up on the Roof

WINTER 2011 25

years the town was primarily known as a ski destina-tion. And if a person lived or fished near Canada’sGrand Cascapedia in the last half of the twentieth cen-tury, there’s an excellent chance his or her greatest catchwas immortalized by one of the area’s most famous res-idents: Warren Gilker.

Warren Gilker (1922–1998) learned the blacksmithtrade from his father and grandfather, both blacksmithsthemselves. However, advances in technology meant asteady decline in the need for a smith’s services, forcingGilker to get a job in a lumber mill shortly after he gotmarried. An avid angler, he took leave from his mill jobevery summer to work at Camp Chaleur, a well-knownlodge on the Grand Cascapedia. In 1957, the lodge’s newowner, Charles Engelhard, offered Gilker a full-time jobas manager of Camp Chaleur, a position he held forthirty-six years. At Engelhard’s request, Gilker alsoserved as the Grand Cascapedia’s head warden begin-ning in 1963, and he quickly became known for his fierceantipoaching crusade. In 1968 his stint as head wardenended, after a car crash during a high-speed pursuit of agang of poachers nearly cost him his life. After his recov-ery, he returned to work full-time for the Engelhards atthe Lorne Cottage camp. His work in conservation,though, was far from over. In the late 1970s, he helpednegotiate a complex accord between the Micmac tribe,the private lodges, and the Québec government, anachievement that helped earn him the Atlantic SalmonFederation’s Happy Fraser Award—given to those whohave made outstanding long-term contributions to wildAtlantic salmon conservation at a regional or nationallevel—in 1988.

By that point, however, Gilker had reinvented him-self yet again. Throughout his years as camp managerand head warden, Gilker continued with his work as ablacksmith both as a hobby and as a side business, most-ly crafting items like door hinges and andirons for vari-ous friends and family. Then, in 1980, Jane Engelhard,widow of Gilker’s friend and former employer CharlesEngelhard, asked Gilker to make a weather vane in theshape of a 45-pound salmon once caught by her latehusband. She placed it on the roof of Lorne Cottage,and other requests for commemorative weather vanes soonfollowed. Over the ensuing years, Gilker made hundreds ofweather vanes, and although the majority were crafted foranglers, Gilker also fashioned weather vanes in the shapes of,among other things, horses, deer, Canada geese, loons, grouse,an elephant, a bagpiper, a Mountie, and even one of himselfworking as a blacksmith to go on his workshop.

To make his weather vanes, Gilker first made a sketch of hissubject on a piece of cardboard, then traced this shape onto a4-foot-square piece of aluminum and cut out the form with apower saw. Usually he cut out six metal forms or so at a timeand then began the painting process. Because one side of theweather vane needed to be painted and dried before he couldmove on to the other, it usually took about three days for eachone to be finished. If it was one of his salmon weather vanes,he would also craft a base featuring a pair of salmon flies,which would be painted to replicate some of his favorite pat-terns.2

As I write this in the autumn of 2010, it is one of Gilker’sweather vanes that sits atop the museum gallery building. It is,as far as my research can determine, the largest of Gilker’sreproductions, a replica of a 53-pound salmon caught byFrederick Stanley, the 16th Earl of Derby and the 6th GovernorGeneral of Canada, in 1892. In that same year, Lord Stanleydonated a trophy to be given annually to the top amateur

hockey team in Canada—a trophy that eventually becameknown simply as the Stanley Cup. Stanley caught the fish onthe Grand Cascapedia River in the Big Camp Pool, and Gilkerfashioned his recreation from a cutout that hung on the wall atthe nearby Middle Camp lodge. The weather vane was donat-ed to the museum by Ron Swanson in 1994 and was transferredfrom the roof of the Seminary Avenue offices to the currentbuilding when the museum moved in 2004.

So, the next time you visit the museum, be sure to take alook skyward. There’s a wealth of history there, just blowing inthe wind.

—SARA WILCOX

ENDNOTES

1. Maureen Timm, “Weathervanes: American Folk Art,” TheAntique Shoppe Newspaper (February 2006). http://antiqueshoppefl.com/archives/mtimm/weathervanes.htm; accessed 28 September2010.

2. Charlotte Phillips, “Salmon on the Wind,” Atlantic SalmonJournal (Autumn 1988), 21.

The weather vane in its place of pride atop the gallery building.


Gathering with Russell ChathamThe nearly one hundred guests present at our September 30

dinner at the Saint Francis Yacht Club were not only treated tosome of San Francisco’s best views, but also enthralled andentertained by fishing stories told by artist and author RussellChatham. “No one ever shot himself in the middle of anevening hatch,” said Chatham, who stood at the podium witha wide smile that seemed to infect the listeners. After a fewanecdotes, questions were taken from the audience, whoengaged him on everything from his “antique” tackle to hispainting style and techniques.

A modern renaissance man, Chatham was introduced byJeffrey M. Pill of Miracle Productions, who described him bestby saying: “He is not only creative, but also multitalented.Russell is world famous as a fine artist and he is world famousas a writer. Ironically, there are some admirers of his paintingsand lithographs who don’t even know he is a writer, just asthere are people who love his books and articles but who don’tknow he is a fine artist.”

The museum would like to thank Russell Chatham, whoflew from his current home in Livingston, Montana, to his

birthplace of San Francisco, where he still has many friends.His generous donations of signed copies of some of his books,a number of personally tied flies, and four different litho-graphs were the highlights of the evening’s auction.

We’d also like to thank Trustees Roger Riccardi, PhilipSawyer, and Erik Oken, who worked to make the dinner andauction a success; William Meyer for hosting the event at theSaint Francis Yacht Club; George Noceti of Your CharityAuctioneer for his auctioneering services; and all of our manydonors, without whom we would not have had an auction:Kathryn Asahino Tait, Val Atkinson, Doug Biederbeck, NancyBundschu, Gundlach Bundschu, Jay Burgin and Mary Jacquesof Five Rivers Lodge, Mary Kay Callaghan, Russell Chatham,Todd France of Blast & Cast Outfitters, Austin Francis, E. & J.Gallo Family Vineyards, Joseph Gennaro Jr., Hi-Tec, JudiKannon, Paula Kornell, Fanny Krieger, Louis M. MartiniWinery, Janice Mondavi, Joan and Jerry Murphy, Oakley, Inc.,the Orvis Company, Lisa Pavageau, Thomas Pero of Wild RiverPress, Claudia Sansone, Vicki Sebastiani, Robert Selb of theClassic Fly Fisherman, Ann and Thayer Talcott, and TempleFork Outfitters.

Kim Murphy

Kim

Murphy

Russell Chatham speaking at the museum’sSeptember 30 dinner in San Francisco.

This saltwater reel was just one of the many great finds fromour Appraisal Day on October 16. Jim Schottenham (above)

of Lang’s Auction, who is also president of the Old ReelCollectors Association, explained that this late 1930s reel wasmade by Fin-Mor. It’s a 15/0 two-handed big-game reel withthe original line and backing. It was valued between $3,500

and $4,500. Thanks to Jim and to Fred Polhemus of theJ. Russell Jinishian Gallery of Fairfield, Connecticut, forhelping us discover angling collectibles and sporting art.

WINTER 2011 27

Friends of Corbin ShootThanks to our event hosts, Hudson Farm and Griffin &

Howe of Andover, New Jersey, the ninth Friends of CorbinShoot was a great success. Twenty-one shooters participated inthe sporting clays, flurries, and two pheasant shoots, includingthirteen returning and eight new participants. The event cul-minated with the presentation of the oil painting PrairieCanadas by nationally acclaimed sporting artist Peter Corbin.This year’s lucky winner was Russell Lucas.

The museum wishes to thank Peter Kellogg and TrusteesPeter Corbin and George Gibson for all their efforts. Fundsgenerated at this important event go toward our public pro-gramming, such as exhibitions, gallery programs, family events,and the publication of our journal.

Recent DonationsJim Heckman of Manchester, Vermont, donated three books:

E. Marston’s Fishing for Pleasure and Catching It (Charles Whit-tingham and Co., 1906, 1st ed.), A. D. Livingston’s Fly-Roddingfor Bass (Lippincott, 1976, 1st ed.), and Douglas Sutherland’sThe English Gentleman’s Good Fishing Guide (Michael JosephLtd., 1990). Charles B. Barnes Jr. of Medfield, Massachusetts,gave us a copy of Phoebe Barnes Driver’s A Salmon FishingJourney (William L. Bauhan, 2002).

Several people donated collections of books. Jim Gerweckof Pittsford, Vermont, donated sixty-six; Shelly Weining ofNew York City gave us thirty-three; Michael K. McCaffery ofCulpeper, Virginia, sent nine; and Jeannine Dickey of Rangeley,Maine, donated four. For a detailed list of these donations,please contact the museum.

Albord Clements of Chatham, New York, sent us a fly tiedby Helen Shaw in 1981, the Parachute Albord. Scott Cesari ofBangor, Pennsylvania, gave us flies he tied in 2010: a RealisticButterfly Pattern and a Realistic Stonefly. And Richard F. Kressof Rahway, New Jersey, donated a fourteen-item collection thatincludes flies tied by Lee Wulff, Warren Duncan, Joe Bates,Harold Gibbs, and Al Brewster (for a detailed list of this dona-tion, please contact the museum).

Artist Matt Patterson of New Ipswich, New Hampshire, gaveus Kokanoe Salmon, an original watercolor featured in his book,Freshwater Fish of the Northeast (UPNE, 2010). Charles R.Eichel of Manchester, Vermont, gave us a c. 1820 journal of theJ. M. Ogden Pleissner family and a photo album of the OgdenPleissner family vacation in Wyoming.

John E. Reynolds of New Britain, Connecticut, sent usDVDs containing short films of fishing by Irving C. Jerolmantitled “Sainte Marguerite Salmon Club in 1930,” “Trout Fishingin Massachusetts in 1930,” “Walton Club in Connecticut 1930,”and “Pototuck Club in Newton Connecticut 1950.” And DonnJohnson of North Haven, Connecticut, donated two video-tapes: Lee Richardson’s A World of Fishing and Mike Gurnett’sThree Men, Three Rivers.

Thanks, George, for helping to make our art auction such a greatsuccess! Above, George Van Hook puts the final touches on one ofthe thirteen paintings offered at our Art and Angling benefit auc-

tion held in the museum library on July 31. This year’s auctionfocused not on one particular river or region, but on one artist.George Van Hook is a plein-air painter from Cambridge, NewYork, who is known for his iconic scenes of pastoral life in andaround the Battenkill region. The museum would also like to

thank Clarke Comollo of Comollo Antiques and Fine Wines ofManchester, Vermont, for donating his auctioneering services.

Kim

Mur ph y

Upcoming EventsJanuary 15Fit to Be “Tyed”Fly tying for all ages in the museum galleryAmerican Museum of Fly FishingManchester, Vermont

February 12Vermont MemoriesHear stories of Vermont’s fishing pastAmerican Museum of Fly FishingManchester, Vermont

March 10Annual Dinner and AuctionAnglers’ Club of New YorkNew York City

April 2Spring TrainingHone your fishing skills just in time foropening of the seasonAmerican Museum of Fly FishingManchester, Vermont

Always check our website (www.amff.com) for additions,updates, and more information or contact Kim Murphyat (802) 362-3300 or [email protected]. “CastingAbout,” the museum’s new e-mail newsletter, offers up-to-date news and event information. To subscribe, lookfor the link on our website or contact the museum.

Peter Corbin and this year’s painting winner Russell Lucas.

Yosh

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THE COMMUNITY THAT surrounds the American Museumof Fly Fishing is vast. Our patrons come from near andfar, and although most have a strong passion for fly fish-

ing, some enjoy the educational opportunities of our publicprograms and our esteemed journal. We are fortunate that oursupporters step forward when they see a good cause. Recently,several steps led to the support of a particularly good causeand its inaugural event on museum grounds.

Step 1: Someone had an idea. One of our volunteers, EdgarAuchincloss, visited the museum on a gray winter Saturdayafternoon with a newspaper clipping. Nearby StrattonMountain was hosting a group of veterans from the nationalorganization Wounded Warriors. Edgar thought it would begood for the museum to host a group like this.

Step 2: An introduction was made. One of our trustees,William McMaster, called the office to make sure we knewabout the national veterans’ organization called Project HealingWaters Fly Fishing. This organization encourages the use of flyfishing to assist with rehabilitation of American veterans. Dr.McMaster works with California veterans and put us in touchwith the western coordinator for Project Healing Waters(PHW). We were then directed to the New England coordina-tor and continued to stay in touch with him for many months.

Step 3: We had to begin somewhere. Thanks to the generos-ity of Trustees Gardner Grant and Gary Sherman, contribu-tions were made to repair the long-neglected bridge on ourpond. With a repaired bridge as the background, we could sud-

denly see the potential of our casting pond: Wouldn’t thismake a fine venue for PHW?

Step 4: We discovered Fund-a-Need. We appreciate the edu-cation we received from Cleveland-based auctioneer Bob Halewhen he explained the concept of a Fund-a-Need auction pro-gram. At that Cleveland event, we raised more than $3,000 toconstruct a wheelchair-accessible casting platform at the pond.Over the next sixteen months, we continued with this fundingmodel at our Anglers’ All event, the Heritage Award event, theSan Francisco Dinner, and again in Cleveland.

Step 5: We created a design and found a craftsman. Ofcourse, we did not have to look far to find someone to designthe bridge and casting platform. Our own deputy director,Yoshi Akiyama, has been designing our exhibitions for morethan ten years and contributed to the overall design of ourbeautiful museum building. We knew he could bring that samesophisticated yet functional design to our backyard. Jim Becker,along with assistance from Tom Becker and Brad Knipef, ranwith the design and began the construction.

Step 6: We decided that sometimes it’s okay to be a pest.After many months of sending project updates to MarcusCohn of PHW, Marcus was able to share some wonderfulnews. Project Healing Waters had just formalized an agree-ment to participate in the state of Vermont. Marcus gave us thenew contact name. Tim Stauder received a phone call that veryhour (and chuckled when he heard who was calling . . . hmm,Tim may have been alerted to all our e-mails!). Tim works for

It Takes a Community


Clockwise from top left: When we beganthe casting-pond project, the bridge wasdesperately in need of repair.

Yoshi Akiyama directs repairs to the bridge.

The bridge repair work is completed, andthe bridge is dedicated as the Sherman

Brothers Bridge.

The platform mirrors thedesign of the bridge.

The summer of 2010 was dry formany weeks and offered idealconditions for the pathwayinstallation.

Jim Becker carefully measuresand plots the bridge-ramp incline.

Photos by Sara Wilcox

We are proud to present our accomplishmentsthanks to your tremendous support.

the White River Junction Veterans Administration Hospitaland is a member of the Greater Upper Valley Chapter of TroutUnlimited. Indeed, Tim and his TU chapter were volunteeringto work with a group of veterans through PHW. To see whatthe PHW program was all about, the museum was invited toattend the first Vermont-held PHW program at the home ofTom and Diana Hayes. Tom and Diana volunteered their time,home, and pond for an afternoon of instruction and fishing,followed by a scrumptious meal.

Step 7: We looked to the regional high school. We had thebridge, we had the casting platform, and we had the pathway; wejust didn’t have a place for people to sit. We contacted our region-al high school, Burr and Burton Academy, and explained thepond project to Cliff Hay, the much-loved wood-shop teacher.Mr. Hay found the perfect garden-bench pattern, lowered theheight to meet the Americans with Disabilities Act requirements,and called upon three juniors to construct the two benches.Thanks to the talents of Trevor Parker, Cruz Cornell, and NelsonPike, our pond seating is also truly accessible to all.

Step 8: We decided that if we build it, they will come. Aftermeeting with Tim Stauder and the other TU volunteers, it wasagreed that the museum would serve as the second PHWvenue in Vermont. We made last-minute preparations andswept the bridge, ramps, platform, and benches to warmly wel-come eight veterans for the afternoon. Thanks to PHW andTU volunteers Susan Balch, Seth Dunn, Ed Finley, BillGoldsworthy, Al Karg, Jenny McLaughlin, and Tim Stauder,these veterans learned the art of casting. We then toured theexhibition gallery and library. Everyone enjoyed the day.

The great success of this project was due to the kindness ofthe following contributors:

We welcome you all to our wonderfully caring community!

CATHI COMAREXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Michael BakwinFoster Bam andSallie Baldwin

Richard BambergerMarilyn BestJim Biggar

David and Kathy BrownBrent and Barbara Buckley

Daniel CarterBruce Eckstein

Mike FarrellRobert Fitch

George and Beth GibsonGardner and Ellen Grant

Jonathan GrimmStephen Gunther

Bill and Phyllis HerrickWilliam Jordan

Amy KelloggKirk and Megan KelloggWoods and Wendy King

George KleinGeorge McCabe

William and Lynn McMasterBradford MillsJohn Mueller

Latham Murfey IIIDavid and Meg Nichols

Den NicholsLeigh and Anne Perkins

A. William ReynoldsRoger Riccardi

Jim and Donna SanfilippoBob Searles

Hewitt and Paula ShawGary and Lyn Sherman

Todd ShigekaneRonald and Joan StuckeyRichard and Wendy TischJerome and Elizabeth Tone

Alan VidinskyThomas Whitlock

Left, top to bottom: Students from Burr and BurtonAcademy (Manchester, Vermont) work on the gardenbenches as teacher Cliff Hay supervises.

Restocking the pond with brown trout was a must!

Project Healing Waters participants and volunteers fromTrout Unlimited Greater Upper Valley Chapter are the firstto enjoy our new, fully accessible casting pond.

The American Museumof Fly Fishing

4070 Main Street • PO Box 42Manchester,Vermont 05254

Tel: (802) 362-3300 • Fax: (802) 362-3308E-MAIL: [email protected]: www.amff.com

THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF FLY FISHING, anationally accredited, nonprofit, education-al institution dedicated to preserving therich heritage of fly fishing, was founded inManchester, Vermont, in 1968. The museumserves as a repository for and conservator tothe world’s largest collection of angling andangling-related objects. The museum’s col-lections, exhibitions, and public programsprovide documentation of the evolution offly fishing as a sport, art form, craft, andindustry in the United States and abroadfrom its origins to the present. Rods, reels,flies, tackle, art, books, manuscripts, andphotographs form the basis of the muse-um’s collections.

The museum provides public programsto fulfill its educational mission, includingexhibitions, publications, gallery programs,and special events. Research services areavailable for members, visiting scholars, stu-dents, educational organizations, and writ-ers. Contact Yoshi Akiyama at [email protected] to schedule a visit.

VOLUNTEER !Throughout the year, the museum needs vol-unteers to help with programs, special pro-jects, events, and administrative tasks. You donot have to be an angler to enjoy working withus! Contact Sarah Moore at [email protected] tell us how we would benefit from yourskills and talents.

JOIN!Membership Dues (per annum)

Friend $10,000$5,000$1,000

Sponsor $500Business $250Benefactor $100Associate $50

The museum is an active, member-ori-ented nonprofit institution. Membershipdues include four issues of the American FlyFisher; unlimited visits for your entire fami-ly to museum exhibitions, gallery programs,and special events; access to our 7,000-vol-ume angling reference library; and a dis-count on all items sold by the museum onits website and inside the museum store, theBrookside Angler. To join, please contactSarah Moore at [email protected].

SUPPORT !The American Museum of Fly Fishing relieson the generosity of public-spirited individu-als for substantial support. Please contact us ifyou wish to contribute funding to a specificprogram, donate an item for fund-raising pur-poses, or place an advertisement in this jour-nal. We encourage you to give the museumconsideration when planning for gifts, be-quests, and memorials.

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