The Fenners of Lake Ridge

Some families have been in Lansing long enough to have a road named after them — this is the first of a series of the stories behind them.

Hans Heinrich Fenner was 20 years old when he left Rotterdam, the Netherlands (then Holland), May 1, 1743, on the ship Robert and Alice. He was 21 years old when he arrived in Philadelphia on Sept. 20. He settled in Worchester, Pennsylvania, about 24 miles northwest of the port where he landed.

“They got their surname from their occupation,” Newell Fenner, Hans’ fifth-generation grandson, said. “Farmers ‘fan’ wheat to get the chaff out. There are tax records on the family in Germany from 1400.”

Hans married Margaretha, and they had four children. Margaretha died in 1760. Hans married Maria Catharine Schmahler soon thereafter, and they had four more children. The first child from the second marriage was Casper, who was born in 1762.

In 1782, 20-year-old Casper “substituted” for his half-brother Felix and joined Capt. John Gregory’s 3rd battalion of Northampton County in Pennsylvania. After two months, he was discharged to return to the life of a Pennsylvania farmer. Casper married Susanna sometime before 1787. Eventually, they had nine children and owned land in three townships.

And then, “there was a row about something,” Newell said. “One brother stayed there, and three brothers moved here. One went to Groton — there are a lot of us over there — Casper went to Lansing, and the third was somewhere in between.”

Casper, Susanna and their brood moved to Lake Ridge in 1817, buying a military lot a little more than 1 mile east of what was then called Himrod’s Point (where the power plant is now). Casper built a cabin to house his family while he got a farm started and a house built.

“The first place they settled was down old Milliken Station Road,” Newell said. “About an eighth of a mile down the road, I found the stone foundations of the first place. I found a pail-full of latches and nails. You could see where the kitchen was and where the smokehouse was.”

The family started work on the larger house that still stands as an apartment house on Ridge Road.

“They didn’t go to Ithaca to get the lumber,” Newell said with a laugh. “They cut logs and skidded them to the building site with a cow. One guy used her in the summer to haul logs, and the other guy got her in the winter to get milk and feed a calf.”

There was a steam sawmill to cut the timber to boards. Near the waterfall on the north side of the house, they created a pond to catch water for the sawmill and the house.

“They’d store it there in the attic,” Newell said. “When they needed water, they’d turn a valve and gravity fed it down to wash with. There was also a carriage house there, built with hardwood as beautiful, big and nice as the house.”

The children went to the one-room schoolhouse next to the Lake Ridge graveyard. Both facilities served a growing hamlet.
Lake Ridge was first settled in 1792. Himrod Point became Hedden’s Point after Aaron Hedden arrived in 1802. A stagecoach hotel was built in 1814 where Ridge Road and Lake Ridge Road diverge, but it burned in the late 1960s. A post office served the locals from 1829 to 1902, and a general store was in business by 1840. Eventually, a rail station was built on the point when the Lehigh Valley Railroad ran tracks up the lakeshore in 1888.

Casper and Susanna’s fifth child, John Adam, was born in 1798. He married Susan, and they had three children, including Joseph Henry born in 1826. Joseph married Sarah Jane, and they had two children. Newell Joseph was born second in 1865.

Newell Joseph married Emmaline, and they had five children. George was their fourth, born in 1904. George married Marion, and they had two children. Our correspondent, Newell Fenner, was the second, born in 1942.

Newell was born three houses up from the Lake Ridge Cemetery — he worked winters for Everett Rankin, a wealthy man retired from Shell Oil, who lived in the large Greek Revival house on the east side of the road just north of Lake Ridge.

“He came to see me one day. He wanted to hire me to do chores while his hired man went to Florida,” Newell said. “One winter, the snow drifted higher than the eaves of a two-story barn. I had a pail of milk in one hand and a pail of eggs in the other. I said to myself, ‘here we go,’ and I slid down.”

Newell married Elizabeth Boles, and they have five children: Glenn, Mark, Marion, Newell Jr. and George.

Lake Ridge Cemetery lies inside the corner where Ridge Road turns north and uphill just past Milliken Station Road.
Casper and Susanna of the nine children, the family fight, the log cabin, the steam sawmill and the big house died in 1839 and 1845; they lie there now along with 21 of their descendants.

And that’s why they named it Fenner Road.