What we locally call "North Mountain is home to black bear, white-tailed deer, several handfuls of coyotes, a bob cat or two and from time to time someone claims to see a long tail on some kind of a cat, and another critter rumor circulates. What we don't have much of on North Mountain these days are debutantes. That wasn't always the case. The twin daughters of Mr. and Mrs. William R. Ricketts--Elizabeth Reynolds Ricketts and Esther Bennett Ricketts--were presented to society in June, 1936, at their North Mountain summer home. Attending were many classmates from the Ethel Walker School, an all-girls independent middle school in the Hartford, Connecticut, area, and members of The Society of Mayflower Descendants in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, a group long enjoyed by the women in the Ricketts family.Debutante balls at that time were often charity occasions, in which the parents of the young ladies as well as all attending contributed a sum of money. We did not determine how this affair was financed. The attire for the debutantes was not standard issue for the red clay of North Mountain. The girls wore white "embroidered organza and clusters of orchids," according to a Wilkes-Barre newspaper.
Four-hundred guests were received in the drawing room of the home and were later served in the gardens of the estate. The gardens were decorated with Japanese lanterns and "Ralph Paul's orchestra played for dancing." The estate was playfully described in local newspapers as "the last baronial estate." The estate was built in the middle of the nineteenth century by the girl's great grandfather and "beautified" by the girl's grandparents, Colonel Robert Bruce Ricketts and his wife Elizabeth (Reynolds) Ricketts when they purchased the property in 1867, adding to it until it reached a size often estimated to be over 60,000 acres.
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An early picture of the hotel with the wooden frame building in the rear. |
The stone house was built in 1852 and became a summer resort in 1870. At the time of the girls "coming out," the property was owned by their father, William R. Ricketts. Virgin forest still surrounded the home that had provided food and shelter to travelers on the Susquehanna and Tioga Turnpike following their climb of Red Rock Mountain to the relaxed atmosphere of the 2,266 foot-high Lake Ganoga. A large wooden building was built to accommodate the large number who came to the resort each summer. By 1883, the property consisted of a "clearing, on which there is a large and substantial two-story house, a three-story frame boarding house, barns and other buildings." The hotel was said to accommodate 200 to 250 guests.
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The office in the hotel. Room keys can be seen just over the roll-top desk. |
At the time of the "coming out," the mansion was one of three inhabited houses on the mountain--all buildings used originally as a depot or in connection with the summer operation of the hotel. The three buildings included a caretaker's cabin and the home of Judge William S. McLean, the uncle of the debutantes, a man who stood in the receiving line for the girls. McLean was a Democrat, a common pleas court judge in Pennsylvania's 11th District from 1921-29. McLean lived at 88 River Street in a stately mansion built in 1875 and acquired from Colonel Robert Bruce Ricketts during his coal-baron days. The building is now known as Rifkin Hall, part of Wilkes University.
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The out-of-town guests, many of whom were from Wyoming Valley's first families, were said to be impressed by the stone Ricketts estate with the ivy reaching to the roof line on the third floor. |
The formal garden on the right of the house was rapidly approaching its summer finest and the view down to Lake Ganoga past the huge trees was breathtaking.The ladies were described as "prominent, aristocratic and elderly." An article we read was apparently written by a news reporter who became royally confused at the people he saw. He simply wrote, "There were socially prominent matrons, too numerous to mention, too uniformly well dressed to differentiate." Some guests who were recognized were Dr. Ned Williams, a dentist, Dr. L. T. Buckman and Major E. N. Carpenter, the Wilkes-Barre ex-soldier who gained prominence by mushing 600 miles behind a dog team from Alaska in order to beat the cold and get back to warmer climate before winter began in earnest in Alaska.
The mansion was furnished in what in 1936 was described as "antiques." |
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The living room contained about a hundred pieces of furniture, according to an account that we found, and in the exact center of the room were two old-fashioned sofas. Behind each one was a table with a brass and yellow oil lamp reminiscent of the days 30 years prior when the house was used as a summer hotel. The room was still virtually the same as when it was used as a hotel. Chintz-covered chairs beside the tables were covered with books. On the mantle was a photograph of the late Colonel Ricketts wearing his Union officer's double-breasted coat standing outside of the house with his wife. The trees seen in the picture were still standing, thanks to an order issued by Colonel Ricketts that stipulated that lumbermen could not cut trees around the lake. Many of the trees were thought to be over 300 years old at the time, old enough to have been around when Columbus landed on this continent.
Col. And Mrs. Ricketts had three children: William Reynolds (1869-1956); Jean Holbeton, born in 1873; and Frances Leigh, born in 1881. Lake Jean and Leigh were named in tribute to the two daughters. William Reynolds Ricketts, a Yale University graduate, eventually found taxes oppressive and eventually his estate started donating and selling off the land: 13,050 acres to the state for Ricketts Glen State Park, a large tract to the Game Commission and a large piece of land to nine men who were instrumental in forming the Ganoga Lake Association.
We suspect that North Mountain will never again be the setting for a "coming-Out" party like the one for Elizabeth and Esther Ricketts on June 21, 1936.
