Born: 1889
Died: 1938
Married: Otto B. Knabe, a patient; William J. Cardy
Children: Possibly Jessie Knabe (Morton)
Estella W. Knabe "came to Saranac Lake, probably late in 1914, with her husband Otto, who was tubercular," wrote Phil Gallos. "The Knabes wasted little time falling into the pattern that was so common to the health seekers' Saranac Lake experience: to support the patient of the family, the wife or mother or husband turned to the care of patients outside the family." Before June 1915, Mrs. Knabe, a nurse, operated 67 Park Avenue as a boarding cottage.
(Correction: the 1910 federal census shows that Estella Howe Savage came to Saranac Lake in 1910 (she is also listed on the 1910 census living with her parents in Moira) to work as a nurse. She probably met her husband Otto Knabe, a patient from New York City, in Saranac Lake.)
But the cottage with which she was most prominently associated was 86 Riverside Drive. With its neighbors, the Lynch Cottage at 88 Riverside Drive and the Spear Cottage at 90 Riverside Drive, the Knabe Cottage was one of "the best known names in the business." 1
Pine Ridge Cemetery records imply that after Otto Knabe's death in 1925, Estella married William J. Cardy. She died in 1938. William Cardy was buried in the Knabe lot in 1969. A fourth lot in the Knabe section of Pine Ridge Cemetery is held in the name of Jessie Knabe, or Jessie D. Morton, but no burial was recorded there.
Two cottages which were known in 1928 as the Knabe Cottage (86 Riverside Drive) and the Knabe Cottage Annex (84-86 Riverside Drive) were both called the Cardy Cottages in 1945. It seems that Mrs. Knabe changed their names as well as her own when she married William Cardy.
Comments
Footnotes
1. Philip L. Gallos, Cure Cottages of Saranac Lake, pages 19, 64 & 74.
