Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 105, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 May 1914 — FAMOUS FEUD ENDS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

FAMOUS FEUD ENDS

Trapper's Son, Who Fought for Land, Gives Up. Old Man Battled Rockefeller for Twen-ty-Two Yean to Retain Cabin and Grounds Near the Adirondack Preserves. Malone, N. Y. —Word has boen received here that the celebrated Rocke-feller-Lamora feud has been ended by the action of William Lamora in selling the cabin and grounds left him by his father, a hunter and trapper, who refused to sell his property to make up a section of William Rockefeller’s vast Adirondack game preserve. It was in 1892 that William Rockefeller set out to acquire the game preserve. He bought 59,000 acres around the town of Brandon, but could not obtain. Oliver Lamora’s cabin and clearing, which stood in the way. Out of this arose a legal battle between the oil magnate’s agents and the old trapper, it wae expensive work for Lamora, but the old trapper’s friends and neighbors sympathized with him and came to his aid financially. Lamora was arrested for trespassing, having ignored the 3,000 signs posted on the preserve. But twice he defeated the Rockefeller agents in the courts by showing that the fish in the Rockefeller streams were supplied by the state hatchery, and that the state law forbids the setting aside of such waters as part of any private estate. On the third occasion, when the agents got Lamora into court, it was a civil suit for damages. It went through several tribunals, finally reaching the

court of appeals, which found in Rockefeller’s favor. The damages awarded were only eighteen cents, but SBOO in costs was assessed against the old trapper. This was a staggering blow and the loss of the cabin was threatened for a time. Lamora’s friends, however, proved loyal, and clubbed together and raised the sum. For the rest of the old man’s life the Rockefeller agents recognized as useless any attempt to get him to eelL After he died, his son, to whom the property fell, assumed the same attitude as his father for a time, but he finally has been induced to sell.

William Rockefeller.