In addition to creating the entire field of court stenography and trying to invent a noiseless typewriter, Philander Deming was a writer of some renown. He wrote a number of stories involving Adirondack adventures, at a time when the northern wilderness was truly wild and the Adirondacks held a very special place in the American imagination. Published in the Atlantic Monthly starting in 1873, his first collection, “Adirondack Stories,” came out in 1880 (available here). It was followed by “Lost” in 1885, “Tomkins and Other Folks,” and “The Story of a Pathfinder” in 1907, which can be found online. Deming died in 1915, at the age of 85.
In 1997, the Syracuse University Press, which once kept a trove of upstate-related books in print, issued a collection of Deming’s stories.
Deming must have truly loved the Adirondacks. Although born in Schoharie County, and having made a career in Albany, he is buried in the remote Adirondack town of Burke in Franklin County.