History of Kennebec #10641

I e-mailed the serial number to the Wooden Canoe Heritage Association and they sent me scans of the factory build record pages, provide by the Maine State Museum.  My canoe is on the last row.  The canoe was originally delivered to Jud Landon of Schenectady, New York in 1917.

I searched a little and found a lot of information about Jud.  He was the grandson of Judson S. Landon, a New York Supreme Court judge. He graduated from Yale in 1910 and went to Albany Law school, getting his license in 1915. He spent time as a guide in the Adirondacks and went into business making snowshoes with a friend. He eventually opened a sporting goods store in Schenectady, where my canoe was sold. I'm not sure he really spent much time practicing law.

Somehow the canoe found its way to Madison, Wisconsin.  In 1948 my father was attending medical school in Madison and came across this canoe for sale. He paid about $50 for it and sent it home to the farm in Shawano on the train. He took a wagon down to the station in Lyndhurst and picked it up.  Once he stripped the canvas off, it was apparent that it needed a lot of work to make it float again.

The canoe stayed in the barn on the farm for about 25 years.  I remember seeing it there when we went up to visit.  When my grandparents finally moved into town and sold the farm, we brought the canoe to our house in Waukesha.  I was a teenager at the time and started to scrape at the finish a bit, but never really got serious about fixing it.

Me and my siblings with the canoe (upper left) about to head to Kansas

Three moves later it's now in my garage.