Born: 1823, Danville Pennsylvania
Died:
Married:
Children:
The Reverend John Patterson Lundy came to Saranac Lake for his health from Philadelphia, spending the winter of 1877-78. He held services in the Berkeley Hotel that filled the parlor to overflowing. He returned briefly in 1879 for the opening of the new Church of St. Luke, the Beloved Physician.
He was graduated from Princeton in 1846 and then studied for the ministry. He was ordained in the Presbyterian Church in 1849 but went over to the Episcopal Church two years later. He was chaplain for a time at Sing Sing State Prison. In 1855, he became the rector of All Saints Church in Philadelphia. Two years later he went to the Emmanuel Church of Holmesburg, Pennsylvania, and then became rector of the Church of the Holy Apostles in New York, which he was forced to abandon by a breakdown in his health which led him to Saranac Lake.
He wrote, and privately published, The Saranac Exiles, which Adirondack historian Alfred L. Donaldson describes as "conceived in spite and written in malice." 1 In it, he described the population of the village as "almost lawless and savage, well-nigh bestial and depraved...of meager ideas, narrow intelligence, rude manners, and bad morals." 2 However, he admired Dr. Trudeau.
Footnotes
1. Donaldson, Alfred L. A History of the Adirondacks, New York: The Century Co., 1921, p. 227 (reprinted by Purple Mountain Press, Fleischmanns, NY, 1992)
2. "St. Luke's Church link to early time", Adirondack Daily Enterprise", July 10, 1979.
