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 Photo of the Month

September 2002

Object ID:  1991.118.0001

Photographer:  Unknown

Date:  Unknown

Photo of George Crum (a.k.a. "Speck") in front of his restaurant on Saratoga Lake.  Crum is credited with "inventing" the potato chip while a cook at Moon's Lake House on Saratoga Lake in 1853.  

Local legend has it that a disgruntled customer at Moon's sent back his fried potatoes suggesting that they were not crisp enough.  Crum apparently did not take criticism well and shave the potato paper thin, fried them, and the rest is history.  

A similar story explains that Kate Wicks, who also worked at Moon's, accidentally dropped a chip of potato into the hot fat, and Crum fished it out and tasted it.  

George Speck and Kate Speck Wicks were born to Abraham and Catherine Speck.  George also used the name Crum, as his father did while a jockey.  Most stories say that George spent his youth as a guide in the Adirondacks, but by 1953 was working for Cary Moon at Moon's Lake House.  In 1860 George purchased a building on Malta Avenue near Saratoga Lake, and within a few years was catering to wealthy clients including William Vanderbilt, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, and Henry Hilton.  His restaurant closed around 1890 and he died in 1914 at the age of 92.

Whether George was the actual inventor of the potato chip is debatable.  He never took credit for the invention of the potato chip, and as he was hardly a humble man, he undoubtedly would have claimed it as his own if it were so.  Additionally, potato chips were not on the menu at his own restaurant.  Further research indicated that George's sister, Kate Speck Wicks, has the stronger claim.  

An interesting variant of the dissatisfied customer story seems to have been created in the 1970s by a potato chip industry support organization, which claimed the dissatisfied customer was none other than Cornelius Vanderbilt.  This claim has been widely disproved.

Sources consulted:

William S. Fox and Mae G. Banner.  "Social and Economic Contexts of Folklore Variants:  The Case of Potato Chip Legends."  Western Folklore May 1983:  42:114-126.

Text of presentation by David Mitchell, Executive Director of Brookside Museum, 1992.  Full text available in Brookside's vertical files.  

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