Archeology in the Adirondacks by David R. Starbuck

Author:David R. Starbuck
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University Press of New England

Archeology at the Starbuck Farm

One of the few Adirondack farms that actually has seen archeology is, in fact, my own family’s farm (Starbuck 2009). (I decided not to wait until my old age before beginning excavations at the farm.) Farming was the mainstay of the early Quaker families—the Starbucks, the Leggetts, and others—that founded Chestertown in the 1790s. The earliest settlers in this Warren County community raised wheat, corn, potatoes, sheep, pigs, and cows, and agriculture was soon accompanied by tanneries, sawmills, and various forest-related industries that lasted throughout the nineteenth and into the twentieth century. The tannery long owned by Charles Faxon became the business that Chestertown is best remembered for, and sole leather, cured leather, shoes, boots, and board lumber were some of the principal products of the town.

Chestertown has inevitably changed a great deal over the years since then, and it is now a scenic retirement community and the home of Lincoln Logs, the construction company Peckham Industries, a recently opened medical marijuana dispensary, and a variety of restaurants and small businesses. However, a part of Chestertown that has changed very little in more than two centuries is the Starbuck Farm, home to six generations of Starbucks who originally arrived from the town of Easton in Washington County. The family line dates back to whalers who lived on Nantucket, and a branch of the family briefly operated out of the whaling port of Hudson, New York, before pushing on to Easton. The end of hostilities after the American Revolution prompted the Starbucks and numerous others to move still farther north, thus becoming Adirondackers before the close of the eighteenth century. While most of the Starbucks had been mariners in the years leading up to their arrival in Chestertown, farming nevertheless became the livelihood for at least one member of every generation that followed.

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