Lobdell Family Reunites in North Salem

NORTH SALEM, N.Y. – Four generations of the Gregory-Lobdell family gathered in June for a photograph on the steps of North Salem’s Lobdell House, the very same spot where Leander Gregory and Louise Emerson Lobdell posed for their wedding photographs in 1915.

The Gregory-Lobdell family posed on the steps of North Salem's Lobdell House to kick off off its 2013 reunion.
Photo Credit: *Susan Thompson*

by Katherine Pacchiana

07/04/2013 5:00 a.m.

The 2013 occasion was the kick-off of an extended-family reunion weekend. The patriarch of the group was 89-year-old Albert Lobdell Gregory, the son of Leander and Louise Lobdell Gregory.

Albert Gregory was named for his uncle, Albert Jenkins Lobdell, Jr., who was killed in action during World War I. Gregory’s grandfather, Albert Jenkins Lobdell, was North Salem town supervisor from 1916 to 1929, and ran the Lobdell store and the post office (now the North Salem courthouse). He built the Lobdell house in 1883.

When New York City took possession of the site to construct the Titicus Reservoir, the Lobdell house was moved several hundred yards east to its present location. Albert III remembers playing there as a child.

After grandfather Lobdell and his wife, Mary Braden Lobdell, died, their two unmarried daughters continued to live in the house. Albert III recalls that the house was one of the first in town to have electricity, generated by an exide storage battery system.

Eventually, the Lobdell family sold the complex of buildings to the Town of North Salem, and it became the seat of town government.

Update: An earlier version of this article misstated that the Lobdell House was moved west. It was moved east.

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