
Additionally, potato chips were not on the menu at his own restaurant. 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. Whether George was the actual inventor of the potato chip is debatable. His restaurant closed around 1890 and he died in 1914 at the age of 92. 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. 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. George also used the name Crum, as his father did while a jockey. George Speck and Kate Speck Wicks were born to Abraham and Catherine Speck. Crum apparently did not take criticism well and shave the potato paper thin, fried them, and the rest is history.Ī 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. Local legend has it that a disgruntled customer at Moon’s sent back his fried potatoes suggesting that they were not crisp enough. The identity of the individual posed out front is unknown but may be George’s son. Crum is credited with “inventing” the potato chip while a cook at Moon’s Lake House on Saratoga Lake in 1853.
