The early days of telephone and ADK communications

KEESEVILLE | In 1946, just out of high school, Catherine Murray took a telephone operator's job with the AuSable Valley Telephone Company. To get to work, she walked from her childhood home on Route 9 to the company's office on Front Street above what was once Riani's Store, a well-known fruit and vegetable market. "You'd go up the stairs, to the right were apartments, to the left was a lawyer's office. We were in the back part of the second floor," Mrs. Murray said. "I was right out of school and I didn't drive," she said of her commute by foot. Now age 94, Mrs. Murray lifted a switchboard cord from an old panel kept on display at the Anderson Falls Historical Association museum on Vine Street. The switchboard in the exhibit dates to an era after hers, but the early equipment was similar. "When I first saw this, I asked myself 'What am I getting into?'" she smiled, showing how the cord connected parties. "It falls right into place. It's very simple, you just have to pay attention. There were two of us sitting at one board, like this," she said indicating two positions on the switchboard maybe 4-feet long. "I loved what I did. I worked 10 years off-and-on between children." Her first year on the job, 1946, was a pivotal year for the AuSable Valley Telephone Co., which grew out of the Adirondack Telephone Company founded in 1885 with six telephones in all of Keeseville. Norman R. Harned was superintendent when the company was purchased by George R. Beckwith and associates on June 28, 1946. Beckwith was elected president. "Mr. Beckwith had just taken over when I started," Mrs. Murray said. The company was positioned to grow into the dial pulse era with Beckwith, who brought 25 years experience from the New York Telephone Company to the region. According to the Essex County Republican (July 5, 1946) "during the period from 1904 to 1946 the number of subscribers of the company's system increased from 40 or 50 to nearly 1,000 with lines extending from Keeseville to Ports Kent and Douglass on the east and westward up the Ausable valley to Clintonville, Au Sable Forks, Upper Jay, Wilmington, Haselton, Black Brook and Franklin Falls." "You had a lot of responsibility then," Mrs. Murray explained of a job held primarily by women. "Actually, when there was a fire, you rang two long rings and three afterward. The rings after that told them what street it was on. Then you'd call the police and the ambulance. We had one fire, I remember the fireman called back and said they couldn't get it under control, they couldn't get the woman out of the house and she died in the fire. The second call went out to state police." With a second call, the entire community knew something was very wrong. Mrs. Murray worked some mornings and sometimes all day through all kinds of weather. Sometimes she would be driven by company owners to work at the Au Sable Forks switchboard. "And sometimes I worked all night. A few operators took a little nap at night, but I didn't," she allowed. "One man, he was the Poke-O-Moonshine fire tower watchman, would call late at night. He was up there alone on the mountain all day and stayed nights. It was Russell Smith, from Clinton, and he'd call his family, too. But when he'd call the operators he'd say: 'What's the news?'" Sitting at the hub of a burgeoning communications system put telephone operators right in the middle of every day and every night and everybody. "There were three besides me: Ethel Clark, Rose Cummings and Frances White. We had a box about this big," she indicated with her hands a shape about the size of a shoebox. "That's where we kept records of the calls. I would go to Beckwith's house to do the billing, which we did on the 22nd of each month. I got paid 25-cents an hour." A lot of homes in Keeseville did have telephones, she said. And there were pay phones in the village. "The telephone number in my house was 1L," she laughed. On Oct. 20, 1947, the Wilmington Chamber of Commerce called a meeting with Beckwith to discuss expanding telephone services in their town. The lines were full with none at the east and north ends of town. "The 17 line has 17 subscribers or more," the meeting report said. "The 19 line, over which come the telegrams, has such business places on it as the Wilmington Inn and Whiteface Mountain House and the post office." Arthur J. Draper, director (and founder) of ski development on Whiteface at the time, "pointed out there is nothing private about a telegram in Wilmington since they come in over an over-loaded party line. The ski development already needs telephone service and tollhouse, also." Beckwith advised the business group that the situation would be difficult to remedy due to the shortage of steel wire required "in country where there is so much stormy weather." The group agreed to bring their query to the New York Telephone Co. and petition the public service commission to add telephone service for the ski project. A new "no crank" telephone system was added to Wilmington by the summer of 1948. Notice of rate changes were published in the newspapers. And a significant increase came in 1954. The rate hike was approved by the New York State Public Service Commission "for the purpose of raising the rates from an abnormally low level to the level of service in other communities of like size," the public notice said. Investment in the telephone infrastructure increased from $71,236 at the beginning of 1946 to $172,232 at the end of 1953, the notice said. "It is estimated that it will increase to $269,000 by the end of 1954." That amount corrected for inflation today would be about $3,052,575. Rates for business telephone service in Keeseville went from $1.25 to $3 per month, depending on line load. Rates for residence phones in Keeseville went from 50 cents to $2. Mrs. Murray (nee Catherine Thompson) married Bill Murray, a young man she first met on the school bus. Mr. Murray is now 95 and on September 21 this year, they will celebrate a 75th wedding anniversary. Mrs. Murray ended her tenure as a telephone operator to help run Wm. Murray and Son's pulpwood business, which they expanded when they bought Stannard Pulpwood Sales in 1973. The couple worked together for over 60 years. Mrs. Murray wasn't entirely sure why a telephone operator's job was primarily handled by women during the switchboard era. But with quick wit and a straight face, Mr. Murray had an idea. "Well, you just needed to be able to talk a lot," he said.

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The early days of telephone and ADK communications

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