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Daily Update
...while looking for family history
Sunday, March 13, 2022-Michael Doyle is the author of “The Ministers’ War: John W. Mears, the Oneida Community, and the Crusade for Public Morality.”
Unbridled passions threatened nineteenth-century America, a vulnerable young nation already feeling beset by foreigners, corruption, and disease. Purifying crusaders like Hamilton College philosophy professor and Presbyterian minister John W. Mears mobilized to fight every sin and carnal lure, from liquor to free love.
Today in The Daily Gazette https://dailygazette.com/
Film continues debate over Benedict Arnold’s legacy
SARATOGA COUNTY — Among history buffs, Benedict Arnold has been a source of debate and division for decades. The release of a…
Keep history alive at The Historians Podcast—where we’re working on Episode 417-Bryan Jackson’s book on why the Titanic was doomed. (A number of passengers did want to get into the life boats)
Thanks to generous donations from Tom Stewart, Jim Kaplan and James Kirby Martin the Historians Podcast 2022 fund drive now totals $1600. Please donate online here- https://www.gofundme.com/f/the-historians-podcast-2022 Or send a check made out to Bob Cudmore to the now not-so-lonely, but wind battered mailbox at 125 Horstman Drive, Scotia, NY 12302. Thank you and a reminder that The Historians Podcast is on Southern Tier Radio, WBDY 99.5FM this afternoon at 4:30 -A broadcast from Binghamton
Monday, March 14, 2022-The story behind the story-Collette’s made Mendets, paper clips, sporting goods and more
Tuesday, March 15, 2022- From the Archives of the Daily Gazette—Two lifetime pastors at St. Mary’s in Amsterdam
Reverend John McIncrow and Monsignor William Arthur Browne were both lifetime pastors at St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church in Amsterdam.
Wednesday, March 16, 2022-From the Archives- February 12, 2021-Episode 357-Lawyer and historian Jim Kaplan looks at the lives of financier Bruce Wasserstein and his sister, playwright Wendy Wasserstein, key figures in the revival of New York City in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Thursday, March 17, 2022- From the Archives of the Daily Gazette—Shawn Duffy’s Amsterdam memories
Shawn Kevin Duffy contributed stories to this column on many topics including his family’s East End tavern. Duffy, born in Amsterdam in 1949
Friday, March 18, 2022-Episode 414-Annette Libeskind Berkovits discusses her historical novel “The Corset Maker” which follows a courageous Orthodox Jewish teen, Rifka, who was living in Warsaw Poland in the late 1920s and early‘30s.
Collette Focus on History
by Bob Cudmore
Collette Manufacturing Company in Amsterdam was famous for making Mendets, paper clips and juvenile sporting goods. Mendets are bolt-like contraptions to plug holes in pots and pans.
Marjorie Eckler of Hagaman was 15 in 1925 when a girlfriend of hers was working at Collette’s, packaging Mendets.
Marjorie’s daughter, Arlyn (Lynn) Smith of West Galway, said, “My mother and her friend thought it would be fun to put their names and addresses in the boxes of Mendets, hoping someone would write to them.”
A year or two later, Marjorie received a letter from Maggie Arnold who worked at a hardware store in Wilmot, Tasmania, and found Marjorie’s name and address in a box of Mendets.
Marjorie and Maggie became lifelong pen pals. In the late 1970s, Maggie Arnold from Tasmania, a large island south of Australia, came to America and visited Marjorie and her family. By then Marjorie had married town of Amsterdam farmer Leland Johnson. In 1980 Marjorie and her family visited Maggie in Tasmania.
Cobleskill native Clarence C. Collette, born in 1876, moved to Amsterdam as a young man and began manufacturing Mendets on the third floor of the Recorder building on Railroad Street downtown.
Mendets illustrated the philosophy, “Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.”
Collette’s was incorporated in 1907 and in 1916 moved to the former Eighth Ward School on Clizbe Avenue near the Rockton Wye. It subsequently had other manufacturing sites in Amsterdam, Hagaman and other cities.
In 1921 Clarence Collette patented an improvement to the paper clip to make it hold papers more securely by notching ridges in the clip, which was then called a gripper clip.
Dave Gordon, who operated Collette’s before it closed, said the patent protected only small size of gripper clips. The patent did not prevent other manufacturers from making gripper clips of different sizes.
By the 1930s, Collette’s was making juvenile sporting goods—baseballs, footballs and basketballs. Many local women and men worked at Collette’s at some point in their lives.
The company was among the first to come up with a way to sew baseballs by machine to keep the cost down. According to a 1940 article by newspaperman Earl O. Stowitts, “The balls which the company sews by machine are not flat-stitched, but have a slightly raised seam.”
The balls were covered with inexpensive leather and the cores were made from cotton or felt scraps.
Collette’s turned from making a million baseballs a year to products that helped the Allied cause during World War II such as canteen covers, cot covers and foul weather clothing. Mendets continued to be made to preserve cooking utensils in the face of wartime metal shortages.
Collette’s received government contracts for some years after the war for canteen covers and the like. In the 1950s, employment ranged from 150 to 300 people.
Clarence and his wife Edna Collette had two daughters, Edna and Shirley. They owned a house on Locust Avenue and later built a home on Golf Course Road.
Clarence Collette was still president of the company when he died in 1965 at the age of 88 at his winter home in St. Petersburg, Florida. Executive vice president Eli Robinson became head of the firm.
Collette’s moved to a former Mohasco carpet mill on De Graff Street in Amsterdam’s East End in 1976.
Dave Gordon, whose parents had operated the Toy Tent store in downtown Amsterdam, bought Collette’s in 1978. Gordon sold it to a Boston investment group in 1983 and left the company in 1984. The investment firm operated Collette’s until the business closed in 1989.
New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has released of the Mohawk River Basin Action Agenda 2021-2026, a five-year plan to advance efforts to conserve, preserve, and restore the Mohawk River and its watershed.
https://www.dec.ny.gov/docs/water_pdf/mohawkrbaa2021.pdf
Mohawk Valley Weather, Sunday, March 13, 2022
Partly sunny, with a high near 31. Wind chill values as low as -3. West wind 15 to 18 mph, with gusts as high as 34 mph.
Tonight
Mostly cloudy, with a low around 23. Southwest wind 6 to 8 mph.
Monday
Mostly cloudy, with a high near 48. West wind 6 to 10 mph.
Mohawk Valley News Headlines, Sunday, March 13, 2022
Daily Gazette
Union’s hockey season ends in heartbreaking fashion with 4-3 overtime loss to Clarkson in ECAC Hockey tournament quarterfinals
POTSDAM — Union senior captain Josh Kosack was still in his uniform when he came out of the locker room…
https://dailygazette.com/
Amsterdam Recorder
https://www.recordernews.com/
Leader Herald
Make Us Part of your Day
https://www.leaderherald.com/
View all episodes
By Bob Cudmore...while looking for family history
Sunday, March 13, 2022-Michael Doyle is the author of “The Ministers’ War: John W. Mears, the Oneida Community, and the Crusade for Public Morality.”
Unbridled passions threatened nineteenth-century America, a vulnerable young nation already feeling beset by foreigners, corruption, and disease. Purifying crusaders like Hamilton College philosophy professor and Presbyterian minister John W. Mears mobilized to fight every sin and carnal lure, from liquor to free love.
Today in The Daily Gazette https://dailygazette.com/
Film continues debate over Benedict Arnold’s legacy
SARATOGA COUNTY — Among history buffs, Benedict Arnold has been a source of debate and division for decades. The release of a…
Keep history alive at The Historians Podcast—where we’re working on Episode 417-Bryan Jackson’s book on why the Titanic was doomed. (A number of passengers did want to get into the life boats)
Thanks to generous donations from Tom Stewart, Jim Kaplan and James Kirby Martin the Historians Podcast 2022 fund drive now totals $1600. Please donate online here- https://www.gofundme.com/f/the-historians-podcast-2022 Or send a check made out to Bob Cudmore to the now not-so-lonely, but wind battered mailbox at 125 Horstman Drive, Scotia, NY 12302. Thank you and a reminder that The Historians Podcast is on Southern Tier Radio, WBDY 99.5FM this afternoon at 4:30 -A broadcast from Binghamton
Monday, March 14, 2022-The story behind the story-Collette’s made Mendets, paper clips, sporting goods and more
Tuesday, March 15, 2022- From the Archives of the Daily Gazette—Two lifetime pastors at St. Mary’s in Amsterdam
Reverend John McIncrow and Monsignor William Arthur Browne were both lifetime pastors at St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church in Amsterdam.
Wednesday, March 16, 2022-From the Archives- February 12, 2021-Episode 357-Lawyer and historian Jim Kaplan looks at the lives of financier Bruce Wasserstein and his sister, playwright Wendy Wasserstein, key figures in the revival of New York City in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Thursday, March 17, 2022- From the Archives of the Daily Gazette—Shawn Duffy’s Amsterdam memories
Shawn Kevin Duffy contributed stories to this column on many topics including his family’s East End tavern. Duffy, born in Amsterdam in 1949
Friday, March 18, 2022-Episode 414-Annette Libeskind Berkovits discusses her historical novel “The Corset Maker” which follows a courageous Orthodox Jewish teen, Rifka, who was living in Warsaw Poland in the late 1920s and early‘30s.
Collette Focus on History
by Bob Cudmore
Collette Manufacturing Company in Amsterdam was famous for making Mendets, paper clips and juvenile sporting goods. Mendets are bolt-like contraptions to plug holes in pots and pans.
Marjorie Eckler of Hagaman was 15 in 1925 when a girlfriend of hers was working at Collette’s, packaging Mendets.
Marjorie’s daughter, Arlyn (Lynn) Smith of West Galway, said, “My mother and her friend thought it would be fun to put their names and addresses in the boxes of Mendets, hoping someone would write to them.”
A year or two later, Marjorie received a letter from Maggie Arnold who worked at a hardware store in Wilmot, Tasmania, and found Marjorie’s name and address in a box of Mendets.
Marjorie and Maggie became lifelong pen pals. In the late 1970s, Maggie Arnold from Tasmania, a large island south of Australia, came to America and visited Marjorie and her family. By then Marjorie had married town of Amsterdam farmer Leland Johnson. In 1980 Marjorie and her family visited Maggie in Tasmania.
Cobleskill native Clarence C. Collette, born in 1876, moved to Amsterdam as a young man and began manufacturing Mendets on the third floor of the Recorder building on Railroad Street downtown.
Mendets illustrated the philosophy, “Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.”
Collette’s was incorporated in 1907 and in 1916 moved to the former Eighth Ward School on Clizbe Avenue near the Rockton Wye. It subsequently had other manufacturing sites in Amsterdam, Hagaman and other cities.
In 1921 Clarence Collette patented an improvement to the paper clip to make it hold papers more securely by notching ridges in the clip, which was then called a gripper clip.
Dave Gordon, who operated Collette’s before it closed, said the patent protected only small size of gripper clips. The patent did not prevent other manufacturers from making gripper clips of different sizes.
By the 1930s, Collette’s was making juvenile sporting goods—baseballs, footballs and basketballs. Many local women and men worked at Collette’s at some point in their lives.
The company was among the first to come up with a way to sew baseballs by machine to keep the cost down. According to a 1940 article by newspaperman Earl O. Stowitts, “The balls which the company sews by machine are not flat-stitched, but have a slightly raised seam.”
The balls were covered with inexpensive leather and the cores were made from cotton or felt scraps.
Collette’s turned from making a million baseballs a year to products that helped the Allied cause during World War II such as canteen covers, cot covers and foul weather clothing. Mendets continued to be made to preserve cooking utensils in the face of wartime metal shortages.
Collette’s received government contracts for some years after the war for canteen covers and the like. In the 1950s, employment ranged from 150 to 300 people.
Clarence and his wife Edna Collette had two daughters, Edna and Shirley. They owned a house on Locust Avenue and later built a home on Golf Course Road.
Clarence Collette was still president of the company when he died in 1965 at the age of 88 at his winter home in St. Petersburg, Florida. Executive vice president Eli Robinson became head of the firm.
Collette’s moved to a former Mohasco carpet mill on De Graff Street in Amsterdam’s East End in 1976.
Dave Gordon, whose parents had operated the Toy Tent store in downtown Amsterdam, bought Collette’s in 1978. Gordon sold it to a Boston investment group in 1983 and left the company in 1984. The investment firm operated Collette’s until the business closed in 1989.
New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has released of the Mohawk River Basin Action Agenda 2021-2026, a five-year plan to advance efforts to conserve, preserve, and restore the Mohawk River and its watershed.
https://www.dec.ny.gov/docs/water_pdf/mohawkrbaa2021.pdf
Mohawk Valley Weather, Sunday, March 13, 2022
Partly sunny, with a high near 31. Wind chill values as low as -3. West wind 15 to 18 mph, with gusts as high as 34 mph.
Tonight
Mostly cloudy, with a low around 23. Southwest wind 6 to 8 mph.
Monday
Mostly cloudy, with a high near 48. West wind 6 to 10 mph.
Mohawk Valley News Headlines, Sunday, March 13, 2022
Daily Gazette
Union’s hockey season ends in heartbreaking fashion with 4-3 overtime loss to Clarkson in ECAC Hockey tournament quarterfinals
POTSDAM — Union senior captain Josh Kosack was still in his uniform when he came out of the locker room…
https://dailygazette.com/
Amsterdam Recorder
https://www.recordernews.com/
Leader Herald
Make Us Part of your Day
https://www.leaderherald.com/