(11 Jan. 1865-30 June 1934), businessman, author. (A. Paul Gardiner, A. P. Gardiner) Born in Dundee Township, Huntingdon County, Que., across the St. Lawrence from Summerstown in GC. Parents: Paul Gardiner (name Peter Gardiner also found) and his wife Amelia Leishman. Young Gardiner attended the Franklin Institute, Franklin, N. Y. He went to New York City about 1885, and there operated his own publishing firm. One of his publications was Modes and Fabrics, a trade journal. On 6 Nov. 1901, he married Miss Adele Troup, niece of Dr John Radway, the inventor of Radway’s Relief Pills. Gardiner was president of the New York City patent medicine manufacturing firm of Radway & Co. from 1901 till his retirement in 1928. In retirement, he pursued a second or hobby career as a painter, even to the point of holding exhibitions. His “imposing country estate,” called Hessian Hill, at Croton-on-Hudson, N. Y., was sold “at a reported price of $800,000” in 1926 to be developed as a country club resort. He also had a home at Hurricane, N. Y., in the Adirondacks, which he later operated as a hotel. In his earlier years he was much interested in hunting, “especially in the Canadian wilds.” In 1907 he was described as having “extensive real estate holdings” and as maintaining a “string of high-acting horses.” He died at his home at Tarrytown, N.Y., four children surviving him. He was described as a Presbyterian in 1907; however, he was buried with Episcopal services.
He was the author of The House of Cariboo and Other Tales from Arcadia (New York, A.P. Gardiner, Publisher, 1900), an attractively-printed, well-bound 218-page volume. The author’s name is given as A. Paul Gardiner on the title page and the illustrations are by Robert A. Graef. The illustrations are in black and white except for the cover. The cover, in black, green and gold or yellow, shows Scotch thistles, Fairfield house and Lake St. Francis.The setting for the volume is the islands of Lake St. Francis, “called by the writer the Arcadian Archipelago,” and Glengarry County proper (i.e., the mainland GC). The volume contains three short sketches (two of local description, and one a short story), together with a novel in 26 chapters called “The House of Cariboo” which retells, with many fictional liberties, the story of John A. (“Cariboo”) Cameron and the building of his great house of Fairfield at Summerstown. The coffin-opening episode in the Cariboo Cameron story is omitted. Patrick Purcell is perhaps intended in the character of Cariboo’s enemy Nick Perkins.
A. Paul Gardiner was the author also of several other books, which seem to be very rare. It is difficult now to determine how well the House of Cariboo was known to contemporary Glengarrians. Published immediately before The Man from Glengarry and Glengarry School Days (C. W. Gordon), it has been decidely a star of a lesser magnitude. However, some degree of public familiarity may be argued from the fact that an advertisement of 1909 in the Cornwall Standard for Fairfield house, which was then for sale, mentions Gardiner’s House of Cariboo.
For patent medicine manufacturers, see also A. F. Rogers.
New York Times 2 July 1934 * “Hessian Hill Sold for Development,” New York Times 22 Sept. 1926 p. 43 * J. W. Leonard, Who’s Who in New York City and State, 3rd edn. (1907) * information kindly supplied by Library of Congress, 1997 * his publications: NUC (Pre-1956): s.v. * Fraser (1959) 146 (family only, no mention of him specifically) * Cornwall Standard 2 July 1909ff; also, a Summerstown garden party is described as being “at Fairfield (The House of Cariboo),” Cornwall Freeholder 12 & 26 Aug. 1910