It's all in the details! Check out Curator Matt Keagle unfold the history of this Spanish 12-pounder bronze cannon using largely overlooked clues. Scroll down for Matthew Keagle on YouTube

On The Historians this Friday

June 2, 2023-Episode 477- Curator Matthew Keagle discusses Fort Ticonderoga historic site this season.  Visitors will experience 1760 at the fort and see how British soldiers and American provincials ensure military dominance on Lake Champlain and deep into the heart of French Canada. 

The Historians Podcast fund drive has raised $1610 toward our $7000 goal for 2023.  Thanks to Bob Burns for our most recent contribution.  Please donate online at https://www.gofundme.com/f/the-historians-podcast  or send a check made out to Bob Cudmore to 125 Horstman Drive, Scotia, NY 12302. Thank you-every contribution is appreciated.

Love letters from the Depression

By Bob Cudmore

   In the summer of 1931, my parents both were working and lived on what my father called “long distance love.”

   Born in Torrington, England in 1909, Clarence Cudmore came to America with his mother Elizabeth and siblings in 1912.

   My grandfather Harry Cudmore had emigrated to Amsterdam the year before to weave silk at Fownes Brothers glove mill on Grove Street.  The family settled in a duplex at 36 Eagle Street, three houses away from Harry and Bryna Demsky, whose son became the actor Kirk Douglas. 

   The home owner where my grandparents lived was Robert Brown.  Brown and his wife Beatrice lived in half of the house.  Beatrice was my grandfather’s sister who had come to Amsterdam years before.

   Julia Cook, my mother, was born in Randall in 1913.  Her father Yates was a storekeeper who died unexpectedly at age 63 in 1915.  My grandmother and her three children moved to Amsterdam after World War I.  Grandmother Margaret operated a boarding house at 107 1/2 Forbes Street. 

   Both my parents grew up in the city’s East End and met at the East Main Street Methodist Episcopal Church, which is now a community center.

   Clarence left school to work in Mohawk Carpet Mills near his Eagle Street home.  Julia skipped two grades and graduated from high school at age 16 in 1930. 

   She went off to Albany Normal School, the predecessor of SUNY Albany, but left school because of emotional and money problems.

   Julia and her older sister Jane spent the summer of 1931 working as maids at a Catskill resort, the Terrace Farm Inn in Phoenicia.  Their mother had grown up in Chichester near Phoenicia and relatives kept their eyes on the girls. 

   That summer Julia, 17, and Clarence, 22, exchanged 24 letters.

   “It seemed awfully queer and funny to me Sunday not having you come after me and loving me too,” Julia wrote in June.

   Clarence responded with a story about a rain-soaked church picnic in Tribes Hill where the minister’s car got stuck on wet grass and Clarence helped put chains on the tires, “I had my new suit on, so you could imagine how mad I was.”

   “Oh, by the way, I have an appointment with my cousin on Thursday to go to see (the movie) ‘Dracula’ at Fleischmanns,” Julia wrote.  “You don’t mind, do you?  He’s my cousin and we’ll be chaperoned thank God.”

   The carpet mill where Clarence worked closed for inventory the last week in June.  Julia responded, perhaps sarcastically, that it was good of the mill owners to give her beau a vacation.

   In July Julia had an “attack of hysterics.”  Clarence told her of a wedding at their Amsterdam church where the 100 guests were served sandwiches left over from a church picnic. 

   Julia refused two dates and said business was brisk at the inn.  Clarence hitched a ride with Julia’s sister’s fiancé Peter Segen for a visit in Phoenicia.

   Julia came down with stomach ulcers.  A doctor prescribed medicine and put her on a bland diet.  Clarence replied, “If I was the doctor, I wouldn’t give you anything but love and kisses.”

   Clarence wrote in August, “I don’t like the idea of living on long distance love.”

   Julia and Clarence were married by the Reverend Frank T. Love at the East Main Street Methodist Church parsonage in Amsterdam in April 1934, the day after my father’s 25th birthday.  Their first child, Arlene, was born in August 1935.  I came along ten years later. 

   Clarence and Julia had been married 60 years when Clarence died in 1994.  Julia died two years later.

Last day of May

Historians Episode 213-Tim Wendel is author of a family memoir about the 1960s medical team at Roswell Park in Buffalo who made great strides in treating cancer: “Cancer Crossings: A Brother, His Doctors and the Quest for a Cure to Childhood Leukemia.”

First day of June

Weston the pedestrian

When marathon walker Edward Payson Weston strode into Amsterdam in 1910, the New York Times reported that Weston received “the merriest reception which has been accorded him at any place during his walk across the continent.”

It's all in the details! Check out Curator Matt Keagle unfold the history of this Spanish 12-pounder bronze cannon using largely overlooked clues.

Friday, June 2, 2023-Episode 477- Curator Matthew Keagle discusses Fort Ticonderoga historic site this season.  Visitors will experience 1760 at the fort and see how British soldiers and American provincials ensure military dominance on Lake Champlain and deep into the heart of French Canada. 

North Chuctanunda Creek Friends to Meet this Saturday

   Friends of North Chuctanunda Creek Incorporated will celebrate National Trails Day at their first public meeting Saturday June 3, 9:30 am at the Clock Tower Building, 37 Prospect Street in Amsterdam. 

   Maps will show completed trails and future construction.  There will be refreshments.

   An elevator to the top floor of the Clock Building will enable attendees to enjoy the view from the historic structure that once was part of Bigelow Sanford Carpet and later toymaker Coleco.

  Outdoors on June 3, John Naple will lead an optional mile-long walk along the North Chuctanunda Creek.  The walk will go through the former Sanford Mill Complex from Locust Avenue to Church Street, stop at the creek overlook in back of Kelloggs and Miller’s former linseed oil plant, and go down Church Street to opposite City Hall.

   The North Chuctanunda Creek provided water power to many of Amsterdam’s 19th century mills.

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Mohawk Valley Weather, Tuesday, May 30, 2023

56 degrees in The City of Amsterdam at 6:14AM

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