Detail of the 1900 "Map of the Adirondack Forest" by the Forest Fish and Game Commission.
Courtesy of the Adirondack Research Room of the Saranac Lake Free Library. The Forest Home tract was a small settlement between Saranac Lake and Saranac Inn on the Forest Home Road, where it joins McMaster Road.
Adirondack Daily Enterprise, January 7, 2000
Lake Clear News
By Deborah J. Donaldson
Enterprise Correspondent
...A minute for some history in Lake Clear. There is one more one-room schoolhouse that I am going to tell you about. At the end of the McMaster Road where it meets with Forest Home Road, there was a one-room schoolhouse. This schoolhouse was built around 1900 by William McMaster on land that had been donated by William Proctor. Proctor owned property near the schoolhouse and McMaster lived a short distance from the Proctors on the Forest Home Road This schoolhouse was called Forest Home School.
There were usually between 15 and 16 children in the school most of the time. Of course they all had to walk to school, unless they were fortunate enough to have a parent bring them in a horse and buggy. At the front of the school there was a coat room where everyone left their coats. There was also a water bucket there with drinking water for everyone. The water was brought from the Proctor home which was nearby. At the back, of the school there was a wood stove to heat the schoolhouse. Built onto the backside of the schoolhouse there was a woodshed and at one end of the shed was a toilet for the school.
Some of the children that attended this school were: Jim, Viola, Marielle Ducatt, Laura Pratt, Winifred Manning, Tom McDonald, Helen and James McMaster, Jack and Esther McMaster, Nina Proctor and two brothers, some Swinyer children, two of the Sutton children, two Miller children, and one girl and three boys from the Trombley family.
Teachers that taught at the Forest Home Schoolhouse were, Mrs Sutton, who lived near the school, Miss Etta Mathews, Ethel Dyer, Margaret McKillip, and Agnes (Finnegan) Swinyer was the last teacher there. Margaret McKillip came each Monday from the Franklin Falls area via her brother in a horse and buggy. She would board with the Swinyer family for the weeks and go back to Franklin Falls on Friday.
The Forest Home School was closed either in the very late 1930 or very early 1940s. In the early 1940s the building burned down. The property was later purchased by Orville Paye who still owns it,
A very special thank you goes to Jack McMaster and his sister Esther (McMaster) McDonald for their help with this article.
