"The John McConnell Story" Adirondack Memories by Jon Kopp
John McConnell and his young bride Katherine were enjoying their honeymoon on the shores of the scenic St Lawrence, in Clayton, New York when a dreadful telegram was delivered into their hands. (Katherine, being the daughter of the well known, and wealthy Glens Falls lumberman, Patrick Moynehan and John, the first editor of the Tupper Lake Herald).
John was a Malone boy, graduated from the Franklin Academy and worked in the printing trade in Saranac Lake under the tutelage of Allen I. Vosburgh, who in 1895 established the community's first newspaper, “The Tupper Lake Herald”. With settlers swarming to Tupper Lake, John set up an office in the Thissell building that once stood where the Community Bank is today. Here he would edit the ever increasing news about Tupper Lake and send it to Saranac Lake to be printed. Tupper Lake was yet to have a printing press.
Within a few years after and we don’t know the exact date, he met and fell in love with Katherine and made plans for marriage.
Now, John was quite respected in the community and he must have made a good impression with Katherine’s father, for it wasn’t long that the two of them struck up a partnership. In 1898 they formed McConnell & Moynehan and soon opened a large general store at Piercefield.
About this time John resigned his job from the Herald and made plans, with his bride to be, to purchase the Commercial Hotel. (The Commercial Hotel was the forerunner to the Iroquois Hotel that once stood on the Stewarts Store lot.)
In 1899, by the end of July, the deal was finalized and John married Katherine. They were to be the sole proprietors of the hotel as of August 1. There was a lot to celebrate, a new marriage and a bright future in the Town that local newspapers were calling a metropolis, and then, …. there came the telegram.
The hotel was beyond any salvage, burnt in the August 4 conflagration that took the entire uptown area of the fledgling village.
It must have devastated the couple, for soon after they sold the property to Fred Laduke who was to go on and build the Iroquois Hotel many of us still remember today.
Life goes on and we all do the best we can. John & Katherine went on to have a long and prosperous life and had a fine son named Harold.
John ran the Piercefield store until he moved to Glens Falls in 1922, but still returned at frequent intervals to look after his interests. He was a former member of the Tupper Lake Rotary Club and was active in the Elks and Knights of Columbus at Glens Falls.