Saturday, November 25, 2023

#500

Dana Cudmore, author of Farming with Dynamite.  Before the introduction of concrete in the early 1900s, cut stones were used to build impressive structures such as churches, public buildings and homes.  Cudmore documents more than 30 stone quarries across Schoharie County where dynamite was used to get large stones from the land.

Sunday, November 26, 2023- Focus on History-Amsterdam’s good Benedict Arnold

Jack Kelly, author of a new book titled “God Save Benedict Arnold,” says it seems like a “dirty trick” if during the American Revolution “your parents named you Benedict if your last name happened to be Arnold.”

The Historians Podcast fund drive has a long way to go to reach our $7000 goal by year’s end.  We’re asking for your help.

2014-2023

This year Historians Podcast featured 50 episodes.  Topics included the story of an African American who named the Underground Railroad; songs of the American Revolution with Cosby Gibson and Tom Staudle; the 1963 desegregation campaign in Birmingham, Alabama and the story of a pioneer female photojournalist and war correspondent who was killed during the Vietnam War.

Featured guests include New York State Historian Devin Lander, Jerry Snyder of Historic Amsterdam League, Denise Doring VanBuren of the Beacon New York Historical Society, sports reporter Kate Fagan, composer Maria Riccio Bryce, Holocaust researcher Meryl Frank, New York City correspondent Jim Kaplan and Gregg Ficery on the history of American football.

You may donate anonymously.  No donation is too small. Your support is much appreciated. 

You may donate online here: The Historians Podcast, organized by Bob Cudmore

Historians Episode #500 on SoundCloud and across the Internet

Available on Google, I Tunes, Audacy

Work clothes in the factory age

By Bob Cudmore

Amsterdam history fan Emil Suda was so interested in the detailed information found in a 1949 Mohawk Carpet publication on one day in the life of factory worker George Rink, Junior that Suda visited the street where Rink lived.

The article in Tomohawk reported that Mohawk electrician Rink lived with his family at 50 McCleary Avenue, four blocks from the now demolished factory entrance. 

Suda said the home and garage are well maintained and look basically the same as they did in 1949.

“I was indeed impressed that this property has historic meaning and has been kept alive,” Suda wrote.

WORK CLOTHES

In the 1949 magazine spread, Rink is pictured wearing a shirt and pants, carrying a light jacket and fedora on his way to work.  At the mill, Rink put on overalls before reporting to his job. 

Hagaman native Elizabeth Russo wrote that her dad, Merrill Dye, wore a sports jacket, slacks and fedora hat when he went to work at Iroquois Chemical Company on Amsterdam’s Edward Street from the late 1940s into the 1970s.

Dye had taken a correspondence course in chemistry and worked at a Gloversville chemical plant that made products for the tanning industry before World War II.  His knowledge of chemistry was put in the service of his nation when he served as a Navy pharmacist’s mate in the Pacific during the war.  After the war, Dye went to work for Iroquois Chemical.  That firm also served the leather tanning industry.

Russo wrote,  “At work he changed into blue shirt and pants, his work clothes, as my mom called them.  When the work clothes came home to be laundered they smelled of "the plant" and my mom hated to put them in the washing machine. Dad always showered and changed at work so I never actually saw him wear those "smelly blue clothes.”  In later years, "the plant" had a laundry service and uniforms so my mom no longer had to subject her Maytag to the chemicals used in the business that inevitably got onto his clothes.”

BEECH-NUT AND EARHART

Although the latest movie about aviatrix Amelia Earhart had trouble getting off the ground, it is worth noting that Beech-Nut Packing Company, then based in Canajoharie, was one of the sponsors of Earhart’s ill-fated trip around the world in 1937.  Beech-Nut is relocating its baby food factory to the town of Florida.

Earhart is pictured in the cockpit of the Pitcairn Auto Gyro bearing a Beech-Nut logo in a picture at the Fulton-Montgomery Community College digital photo archives.  The original photo is in the collection of the Arkell Museum in Canajoharie.  Earhart had been hired by Beech-Nut to fly the Auto-Gyro from Newark, New Jersey, to Oakland, California in 1931.

Mohawk Valley Weekend Weather, Friday, November 24, 2023

42 degrees in The City of Amsterdam at 6:36AM

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