The fourth of fourteen children born to Walter Ellsworth 'Payne' and his wife, Ella Ann (Thayer) Payne, of Indian Lake, Hattie grew up in the area of Indian Lake near what was then known as "Little Canada" because so many of the French settlers arriving from Canada had located there. Because she grew up among them, she was fluent in both her native English and in French.

Walter and Ella (Thayer) Payne kept all of their children at school until their majority, so Hattie graduated high school at Indian Lake. By 1910, she was listed as servant to a private family; by 1915, she and her sister Sadie were both employed for 'housework' (likely at the hotels, as Hattie is known to have worked at the Prospect House in Blue Mountain Lake).

With larger dreams and goals than that, she applied to and was accepted by the Chautauqua School of Nursing, which program she graduated in July of 1918. Working as a nurse, she was next employed by a doctor near New York city. Unfortunately, her mother became seriously ill and her family sent for Hattie to return to Indian Lake. Hattie came home to care for her mother, who not only recovered but lived another twenty-five years.

As the first World War was ending, and soldiers were returning from overseas, Hattie Payne and Henry Thibado reconnected. When he asked her to marry him, she agreed... but with one stipulation: she would NOT live at Raquette Lake (where Henry had been living, near his sister Delphine and her family). Raquette Lake, Hattie said, "was full of drunks and bums!" (She was, actually, related to many of them...) Apparently Henry agreed to her demand... they were married in November of 1920.

They settled at Inlet, where Henry purchased a number of plots of land. The Thibado Homestead, as it became known, was located at the edge of Sixth Lake; but Henry had other parcels of land as well ... some for pasture, some for farming, and others for wood lots. He was a very fine carpenter, but in addition to building many houses, seasonal camps and other buildings, he worked his draft horses in the woods, skidding logs for lumber at the local sawmills and for firewood which he sold to area hotels. He also purchased property in Herkimer county.

Hattie and Henry Thibado had six children: three sons and three daughters. Five of their six children (like their father) served in the US military... Henry served with the Lightning Brigade in WWI, Alfred, Betty and Ella all served during WWII, and Charlie and Bernard served during the Korean war.

Henry passed away in 1957, but Hattie lived nearly another twenty years. When you think of it, what amazing changes occurred in her lifetime. Thomas Edison, at the turn of the century, invented electricity ... right at Blue Mountain Lake, in a shed outside the Prospect House where Hattie had worked (making it the first hotel in the world to boast electric lights into every room).

As a young woman, Hattie walked from village to village in the Adirondack woods (working at the hotels in Blue Mountain then walking miles through the woods to a dance at Indian Lake ...then back again, to work the next day). She traveled, in one lifetime, from the days of horses and wagons... to watching Man land on the moon. Isn't that an amazing life?