Born: ~ 1820 in Vermont
Died: July 18, 1896, buried in Union Cemetery
Married: Eleanor Malony (~ 1829 - October 12, 1892) buried in Union Cemetery
Children: Charles Lyon, Martin D. Lyon, Ann Jane Lyon, b. June 2, 1848 died August 17, 1855, Emma J. Lyon, & Frederick Lyon (1867 - 1939)
Chiefly known for:
Adirondack Daily Enterprise Monday, January 9, 1956
This 'N' That by Mrs. Albert Tyler
...It was back in 1844 that Isaac Lyon came here with his family from Vermont and built a log house a few rods south of where Montgomery's Service Station now stands. Some few years later (no one today knows how many) he decided that he wanted to have running water in his home. He appears to have looked with desire at a spring pretty well up the western slope of Norman Ridge on property now owned by Hamilton Lamson, then owned by Hamilton's grandfather, Benjamin Lamson. The two men must have been friends for Ben allowed Isaac the use of the water in that spring. The problem was to get the water from the spring to the house, a distance of about a third of a mile. That may sound like a simple process today, but a hundred years or so ago it wasn't so simple. No metal pipe had yet been brought into this north country. Of course, water had been run short distances through hollow logs, but to run it a third of a mile was quite a problem.
But you know the old saying, "Where there's a will, there's a way." And I expect many of our "old settlers" solved their water problems in the same way. Anyhow the ditch was dug and the pipe was laid—or maybe the pipe was MADE, and then the ditch was dug. The Lyon family made their own pipe from cedar "pump-logs." There were cedar logs five or six inches in diameter, and about six feet long, through which a hole was bored with a long-stemmed auger, (Hamilton Lamson has one of those old augers and I looked at it today. It seems that an ordinary auger had been welded onto a long rod to give it sufficient length. This one measures forty-one inches in diameter.) 1 By boring the pump-logs from each end a six or seven foot log could be bored through.
These logs were joined together with cast-iron couplings, which it is supposed were made in the nearby foundry. These couplings were like a short piece of pipe, possibly three inches long. They were so made that a sort of collar set out a fourth-inch or so all around the center of the coupling, and each end was very slightly tapered. The couplings were made to fit very tighfty into the bored holes. The first one was driven into the log up to the collar, and the second log was driven onto the other end of the coupling until the two logs met and covered the collar. When wet the cedar would swell enough to shut out any possible leaks in the pipe.
And so the pipe was made, and the water was brought into the Lyon kitchen where it flowed continuously into a specially made large box. Of course there was a constant overflow from the box, and in order to utilize the surplus water and also to bring needed comfort to the horses and oxen then traveling the roads, a large watering-trough was built directly in front of the house and nearer the road. A pipe of some kind was arranged to carry the water from the house to the trough.
The Lamson home was supplied with water from wells near the house until thiry-six year ago or so when Hamilton's father, the late Silas Lamson, decided to pipe water to his home from this same spring. When digging his ditch to lay his "modern" pipe he dug up many links of the old "pump-log" pipe laid more than a half-century before, and found it in good condition.
I expect there are very few living today who can remember that old watering trough. In fact Mrs. Lillian Wilson, of Lake Clear Junction, formerly of Vermontville is the only one I have talked with who remembers it She is now eighty-eight years old, and says she can remember it as far back as she can recall, but that she wasn't very old when it was removed.
Adirondack Daily Enterprise Monday, November 14, 1955
This 'N' That by Mrs. Albert Tyler
...Way back in the early days of Vermontville's history Isaac Lyon and his family lived in a log cabin about half way between Montgomery's Service Station and Harry Montgomery's home. Through the years he had worn a well-defined path from his home, across the road, over the bank and down to the Lyon Brook, which crssed (crossed) on a small plank foot-bridge, and then up the farther bank to his shop, which stood close to the present site of Gene Magee's Summer camp.
One day, so the story goes, Isaac had been to Malone on business, and as he was traveling home in the good old pioneer manner (on foot), he had lots f (of) time to think, and think and think he did. Perhaps he was getting a bit tired from his long walk when his thoughts turned to the possibility of an easier and speedier way of traveling. Certain it is that about that time he began prophesying that some day there would be some kind of a something invented that would be able to ran without horses.
Mr. Lyon was an inventor—of sorts—and having had the vision of a "horseless carriage" he could not be content until he tried his hand at inventing it. So in his spare time from other more pressing jobs he worked on his idea. (I'm not sure whether this was before, or after, his perpetual motion invention which I told you about a few weeks ago.) After several months had gone by his "contraption" was finished, and he took it outside where he gave it a good tryout in the yard, and then in the road. No doubt he had plenty of audience as soon as the word got around, for there were some who even came over from Bloomingdale to see it.
There are not too many living today that ever saw it. Those who did were "just kids" then, and those I have talked with tell me that he called it a "horseless carriage". It had two buggy wheels in front and a smaller wheel in the back. Somewhere "amidship" there were two pedals, which were connected by a chain-drive to cogs, on one or both front wheels. It was steered by a lever which was hooked up somehow to the rear wheel. I'm afraid the driver had no such comfort as the drivers of the "horseless carriages" of today, for the inventor had placed no seat in his machine, but the driver stood on the pedals as he worked them to propel himself along.
I find no one who ever saw him use it much, and I think it is very safe to say that he never "drove" it over the road between here and Malone where the idea first occurred to him. Also no one seems to know whatever became of it — but anyhow he did prove that the idea was workable.
Mr. Lyon died in 1892 before he had ever seen a modern car.
Comments
Footnotes
1. It seems likely that the author means forty-one inches in length.
