As the story goes…

A Seneca man watched helpless and horrified as a freak storm sprang up on Keuka Lake, capsizing a canoe and killing his enture family. Filled with anger he cursed the lake, saying that though it might take people’s lives, it would never take their bodies. And from that day to this, those who are lost always rise before long to the surface of Keuka.

So the old tale goes, anyway. All communities have myths and legends that have grown up over the years… some amusing, some inspiring, some a little frightening. On Keuka Lake, legends abound.

One is the story that Red Jacket, the Seneca leader and orator, was born on Keuka Lake. There was certainly a Keuka connection – Red Jacket’s mother lived in the Branchport area, at least in her later years, and he used to visit her there. Red Jacket Park in Penn Yan honors his memory.

I checked four sources, and found three birthplaces. We understand that Red Jacket said he’d been born on Keuka — but at other times, he said he’d been born in other places. He was a supreme politician, of course; perhaps at times he tailored his tale to fit his audience.

This leads to a similar legend that Henry Flagler was born, or at least lived, in Hammondsport. Flagler was the driving force behind the development of Florida – notably the Florida East Coast Railroad, Miami, and Miami Beach. Flagler’s father was a Presbyterian minister, and Hammondsport Presbyterian Church had a Flagler as minister in the mid-1800s. But it was a different Flagler, not Henry’s father.

Then there’s the tale of Viking fortifications. A line of large stones stretches along one section of Keuka Bluff. An old local story is that they’re ruins of a fort, built by exploring Vikings.

This always seemed a little unlikely to me. But just for fun, I asked regional historian J. Sheldon Fisher (then in his nineties, but still as busy as I was, half a century younger) for his opinion. Shel was never shy about interpretations that other people considered a stretch, but his take on the Viking ruins was swift and sure: “It looked to me like somebody rolled the big rocks down the slope to get rid of them.”

Jerusalem’s pioneer prophetess Jemima Wilkinson supposedly once told her flock that she would demonstrate miraculous powers by walking on the water of Keuka Lake. At the appointed time and place she asked the gathered enthusiasts if they had faith that she could do as she proposed. When they shouted that they did, she said that since they had faith, they didn’t need proof, and went on home dry-shod.

So the story goes, anyhow. But other versions place the event on half a dozen other bodies of water, including Waneta Lake and Seneca Lake. So it’s probably a fairy tale told by unbelievers to poke fun at Jemima and her followers.

Another legend concerns the old Hammondsport Academy building, currently apartments. On the lower level along the Main Street side a set of built-in bleacher-like seats leads down toward a high-sided rectangular “well.” The legend is that this space was a swimming pool. The reality is that it was an awkwardly-placed gym and basketball court.

A set of linked stories claims that young Glenn Curtiss, overexcited on creating his first motorcycle, ran out of gas far from town and had to push the machine back (having forgotten fuel consumption), or that he had to stop by driving it into the lake (alternatively, a tree), having forgotten brakes.
These stories are told affectionately, but they royally annoyed Curtiss, who firmly, if not forcefully, denied them. Curtiss even as a child was famed for meticulous planning — they said he’d think for half an hour before doing fifteen minutes of work — so it seems pretty unlikely that he would be so spectacularly dense. But those stories are now on their second century of making their rounds, and they’ll probably continue to be told. It’s Keuka Lake, after all. Legends abound.