Born: 1876
Died: 1961
Married: Elizabeth Dupuis
Children:
According to the obituary for Arthur Daigneau's brother, Edward, their father was apparently also Arthur Daigneau, as his brother was named as "Arthur, Jr." Edward's wife was also named Elizabeth.
The late Addie Shields, Clinton County Historian, was a niece of the D'Aigneaus; she stayed with them in the Daigneau Cottage Annex from January through March 1937 while student teaching in Saranac Lake. She described her Uncle Arthur Daigneau as a "cherub," about 5' 6" tall, who worked for the Loon Lake House. Her Aunt Elizabeth Dupuis, who was "proud and tall and French," was born in West Chazy. She met Arthur at the Loon Lake House while working as a seamstress for Mrs. Chase there. The year Addie lived with the Daigneaus, Arthur's sister, Ann Daniels, had lost her house.
Arthur and Elizabeth Daigneau are buried in St. Paul's Cemetery on the Fletcher Farm Road in Bloomingdale.
Adirondack Daily Enterprise, August 2, 1958
THIS 'N' THAT
Arthur Daigneau, who is now 82 years old, lives at 48 Helen Street in Saranac Lake. He was born and brought up in Merrillsville, about twenty miles from where he now lives. His people were farmers and Arthur was taught to share in the work as he came along up through boyhood to young manhood. He must have learned those work-lessons well for the fall that he was 17 Sim Washburn asked Arthur to work in the woods with him during the winter.
Sim was one of the old guides and also lived in Merrillsville, not far from Arthur, and he was then 65. He had the reputation of being very hard to get along with, and when he approached young Arthur with his proposition that young man hardly knew what he wanted to do. Sim said, "Let's you and me go to Wolf Pond and cut wood this winter. We can go early so we'll be there through hunting season. I've got a couple of city guys. Mr. Hyde and his friend that want to hunt. They'll pay me for guiding 'em, and they'll pay us for boarding 'em, and for putting 'em up in camp. You can do the cooking and the camp chores. I've got a tent that'll do us to live in through hunting, and after the hunting season is over we'll build us a camp for winter to live in while we're cutting the wood, and we'll share alike on expenses and on what we can make."
Arthur says, "I thought it over awhile and decided if I tried hard enough I could probably get along with him. It sounded like a good proposition, so I said, 'all right, I'll do it'."
So they began to gather up the things they would need: tent, cooking utensils, dishes, food, bedding, axes, saws, guns, ammunition etc. and then went into the woods to get ready for their hunters. A day or two later Mr. Hyde and his friend joined them and Sim hunted with them every day. Arthur was kept pretty busy around camp. There was wood to cut and it takes a lot to keep warm in a tent in cold weather. And there was the cooking to do. He and Sim felt they should feed the hunters pretty good, and Arthur knew very little about that line of work. However, he was determined to have some variety in his meals and to make them palatable if possible and he did his best.. Anyhow, he kept them from going hungry.
The two hunters stayed about two weeks, and left without "getting their deer." But that time it was getting cold enough so that Sim and Arthur felt they must start their camp, so they began cutting poplar trees and worked them up into logs for their cabin. Poplar logs are not usually used for such cabins, but they are softer and easier to work with than spruce, and such wood, and as they planned to need the camp only the one winter they didn't care about the difference in the lasting quality. For the same reason they weren't too fussy with the joints, etc.
They gathered a lot of moss and stuffed the cracks between the logs to keep out the cold. For the roof they split smaller poplars, laid them bark down, and the flat, or split, side up, and then nailed a good covering of tar paper over them. When complete the cabin was about 12 by 20 feet in size.
During the time they were building the cabin they occasionally took time out to hunt, and it was on one of those days that Sim set out to teach Arthur to still hunt as he had promised him he would do when he asked him to go into the woods with him. By then there was quite a lot of snow on the ground, and they wandered around until they came upon a "nice, big deer track." Sim said,
"That's a nice deer. Looks like he went through here late last night. You follow this track, and I'll circle around and get ahead of him, and when you jump him up from where he bedded down last night, I'll shoot him."
"So", Arthur says, "I followed the track for a long ways. I didnt see any deer, nor I didn't hear any shot, so I kept following the track, on and on."
Sim circled around and waited awhile and when the deer didn't come through he knew he wasn't in the right place. He went back to the deer track and found Arthur's tracks there too, so he set out to catch up with him if he could. Sim had asthma and when he hurried he could hardly breathe, so it wasn't long before he was "puffing and wheezing", but he kept on going. After awhile Arthur heard his labored breathing and waited for him. When Sim got sight of him he didn't say a word, (he couldn't), but he sat down on a log and struggled for breath until it came easier.
When he could speak he fairly exploded. "You know — you don't know ANYTHING; you never DID know anything; and you never WILL know anything."
And Arthur replied, "I know that, or I wouldn't be in here working with you.
Sim said, "Didn't you know you'd never see a deer again after you jumped him up?"
And Arthur said, "No how WOULD I know?"
So that ended the hunting lesson for that day.
Adirondack Daily Enterprise, August 13, 1958
THIS 'N' THAT
It is somewhat unusual for a man of 63, as Sam Washburn was, to ask a boy of 17, as Arthur Daigneau was, to go into partnership with him in a wood-cutting venture, but that is just what Sim did 63 years ago this fall.
Sim had the name of being 'hard to get along, with', as Arthur well knew, but he needed the money and so he said he would do it. Arthur grew up a little when he made that decision for he knew it wasn't a matter of trying it for a week or two and then quitting it if he didn't like it. When he said, "Yes", he knew that it meant he must find the strength within himself; to carry him through the winter however hard things might become; that every day he must do his share of the work; and that somehow, boy though he was, he must manage to get along with Sim.
John Bailey, Field Superintendent for the Iron and Ore Company of Lyon Mountain had contracted Sim about cutting kiln wood for them. He wanted two hundred cords of four-foot wood cut, for which he would pay 60 cents a cord for cutting, skidding and piling, and another 60 cents a cord for hauling it to Wolfe Pond where it would be burned into charcoal. Each partner was to furnish a horse. Arthur had none of his own but he got one from his brother, Ed, with whom he lived.
The partners went into the woods just before hunting season, lived in a tent for awhile, then built themselves a log cabin about 12 by 20 feet, and a much smaller one to stable the horses. The work went along well and they hired Herb Abbott who was about Arthur's age, and John Gill, a couple of years younger to work for them. Sim seemed to have no complaint about Arthur's work in the woods, but he was very 'quick to fly off the handle' when anything went wrong about the cooking or the hunting, which they did for a few hours nearly every Sunday.
Sim felt somewhat abused after the experience I wrote about last week and as he was still hungry for venison he determined to have some. So a week or so later when another deer-hunting dog, came by where they were working they caught it and again shut it up until Saturday.
When the time for the hunt came Sim was "in a threatening mood" and Arthur says, " I felt afraid of him. In fact I always was a little..." But he and San and Herb started out with their guns and with the dog on leash. Sim said, "I'LL put the dog out today, and it'll be a good big deer this time. and no mistake. You go over on that run-way near the pond and when he comes through you shoot him."
In those days many hunters, and especially the boys, like Arthur, saved exploded shells and reloaded them, as a means of saving a few pennies. They pried the primer or cap, out and replaced it with new one and wedged small circular pieces of cardboard into the shells to hold the gun powder and then the shot in place.
Arthur had never hunted much but he had a 16 guage shot gun, and a supply of re-loaded shells he had taken into the woods with him. He went down to the shore of elbow Pond, to the place designated by Sim, and waited there for some time. Finally he saw a deer step into the water and swim almost directly toward him.
Arthur was well hidden behind behind some brush and he waited quietly [illegible section] …deer stood there for a few minutes, and then turned and swam back across the pond, and was gone before I could get another shell into the gun. So I lost that deer, and when Sim got close enough to me I got another awful call down." (To be finished next week.)
