Death rode the wings of the Wind

By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History, Daily Gazette

     Three pioneer aviators, including a Gloversville native, died when their plane crashed into a buckwheat field near Rural Grove in the Montgomery County town of Root on January 8, 1928.

The Gloversville native who perished in the accident was Edward M. Pauley. Born in 1895, Pauley served on the ground in World War I in the motor transport corps. After the war, he became a pilot as a civilian then rejoined the U.S. Army Flying Corps, earning the rank of captain. Captain Pauley married Marion Howarth of Johnstown. They had no children. He was in the Army reserves when he died.

Pauley headed a company called Flyers, Incorporated, the first commercial air service based in Albany. His firm, based at the Ten Eyck Hotel, carried passengers and freight and flew racing editions of the Albany Journal newspaper to Saratoga Springs for the 1927 horse racing meet. Albany Mayor John Boyd Thatcher mentioned Pauley’s name as the future superintendent of the almost-constructed Albany Airport.

On Sunday, January 8 veteran pilot Raymond Henries flew from Long Island to Albany on his way to Buffalo, delivering a new Fairchild monoplane. The large single engine plane was to be based in Buffalo for Colonial Western Airways. Henries had a passenger, former pilot George Benedict, then in his family’s clothing business in Illinois.

Pauley decided to fly with Henries and Benedict to Buffalo where two planes ordered by Flyers, Inc. were to be delivered. Pauley planned to make arrangements to have his new planes flown to Albany.

Despite thick fog, the Fairchild monoplane left Westerlo Island airfield south of Albany, piloted by Henries, around 2:00 p.m. Several hours later Colonial Western Airways reported the aircraft had not reached Buffalo.

WGY radio in Schenectady announced the plane was missing sometime after 6:00 p.m. Telephone reports poured in from listeners. Some heard what they thought was a crash about 3:00 p.m. near Rural Grove in the town of Root, on the south side of the Mohawk River between Fultonville and Canajoharie. A Mrs. Quackenbush of Rural Grove reported she heard a crash and was convinced the plane had fallen.

Early Monday morning Sheriff Seeley Hodge formed a posse of about 30 men who began a ground search. Searchers found the wreckage on Tuesday morning near a farm being worked by J.E. Bartlett off what is today Route 162, between Currytown and Middle Grove. A plane from Schenectady Airport doing an aerial search saw the activity on the ground and landed on a nearby field.

Pilot Henries’s body had been thrown about 75 feet from the main wreckage. The bodies of passengers Pauley and Benedict were found crushed inside the plane.

The Albany Evening News reported, “Death rode on the wings of the wind with the three missing aviators whose bodies were found on a farm hillside near Rural Grove today, strewn with wreckage of their big Fairchild monoplane.”

The crash investigation was hampered in the coming days by the arrival of what authorities estimated the arrival of thousands of souvenir hunters. Investigators could not find part of the instrument board of the plane. It was located in the possession of a Gloversville businessman.

The cause of the crash was never pinned down. The thick fog was likely a factor but there were reports from people on the ground who said they heard a plane’s engine overhead that seemed to be misfiring before the accident.

Captain Pauley was buried at Ferndale Cemetery in Johnstown. His story was researched by his niece, Frances N. Burnham of Scotia, with the assistance of town of Root historian Bill Maring.

Bob Cudmore is a freelance writer.

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Storming Fort Fisher in the Civil War

By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History, Daily Gazette and Amsterdam Recorder

     Bruce Anderson, an African American war hero buried in Amsterdam, fought alongside a Canajoharie white man, Zachariah Neahr, in a daring mission during the battle of Fort Fisher, North Carolina, near the end of the Civil War.

Anderson was born in 1845, then worked as a farmer in New York. He was among a small number of African Americans who enlisted in white Union regiments.

Neahr was born in Palatine in 1830 and lived most of his life in Canajoharie. Neahr married Sophia Martin in 1854.

Neahr and Anderson enlisted in Company K of the 142nd New York Infantry Regiment at Schenectady.

Fort Fisher protected the rebel port of Wilmington, North Carolina, where blockade runners brought in supplies for Confederate troops. The Union tried unsuccessfully to capture the fort in late 1864.

Union warships sailed to Fort Fisher again in January, 1865. Major General Alfred Terry's soldiers approached by land.

The Union armada shelled the fort. A landing party went ashore but the lightly armed force was decimated by Confederate fire. The 142nd New York was one of four regiments approaching Fort Fisher by land.

A wall made of wooden stakes was held by rebel sharpshooters, making the Union advance impossible. General Terry asked for volunteers to move forward with axes and chop a breach in the wall. Privates Anderson and Neahr were among the volunteers.

Neahr later said, "Right there I gave up my life for my country."

The small party cut an opening in the wall that other soldiers passed through. Most of the volunteers with axes, however, were killed.

Only Anderson, Neahr, Alaric Chapin, George Merrill and Dewitt Hotchkiss survived.

The Confederates surrendered that night. The next day the main powder magazine at the fort exploded, killing 200 men on both sides.

The survivors of the raid on the wooden wall or palisade were recommended for Congressional Medals of Honor after the battle but the paperwork was lost.

Neahr returned to Canajoharie later in 1865. He had a son Charles and a daughter who became Mrs. Albert Hatter. A prominent Democrat, Neahr held some government jobs--post inspector and overseer of the poor.

Neahr received his Medal of Honor in the 1890s after petitioning for it. He died from tuberculosis on July 21, 1903. He was living on Mill Street in Canajoharie and was buried at Canajoharie Falls Cemetery. His death and the Fort Fisher connection received newspaper coverage in New York City, Syracuse and Rochester.

Anderson then hired a lawyer and finally got his medal in 1914, as did two other Fort Fisher attack survivors, Alaric Chapin and George Merrill. Dewitt Hotchkiss never received his medal.

Anderson spent the last years of his life in Illinois and Amsterdam. He died in 1922 at St. Peter's Hospital in Albany and was buried at Green Hill Cemetery in Amsterdam.

According to an article by historian Daniel Weaver, Bruce Anderson's grandson, Ambrose "Cowboy" Anderson of Gloversville, learned of his grandfather's bravery a few years ago. Ambrose Anderson attended a cemetery tour that included a stop at his grandfather's grave conducted by Montgomery County historian Kelly Farquhar.

Ambrose Anderson was one of the first African American Montford Point Marines, who entered World War II in 1943.

Anderson survived Japanese kamikaze attacks getting to the island of Iwo Jima. He hauled ammunition and supplies to infantry units while under fire from the Japanese during the 1945 battle of Iwo Jima.

Anderson, a corporal, served in Japan during the U.S. occupation after the war. In 2012 he received the Congressional Gold medal, the nation's highest civilian award.

Bob Cudmore is a freelance writer.

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Amsterdam native survived submarine Disaster

By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History Daily Gazette 

     Donato "Danny" Persico entered the sunken submarine's escape hatch, crawling up a steel ladder as his hands were too chilled to grasp the ladder rungs.

Persico, who lived on Broad Street on Amsterdam's South Side, was one of the survivors from the submarine U.S.S. Squalus, which sank May 23, 1939 in the Atlantic Ocean off the Isles of Shoals, New Hampshire.

Valves malfunctioned during a test dive. The after compartments filled with water, drowning 26 men.  Persico was almost crushed by a torpedo.  Squalus settled on the ocean floor in 243 feet of water. 

 "This happened so fast, there was no chance for an alarm," Persico told Daily Gazette. "We lost power and lost lights."

In forward compartments, sealed by watertight doors, 33 men were still alive.

"I had goose bumps. I was scared," Persico said. At 20, he was the youngest man on board. Survivors donned woolen coats and stayed still, using as little air as possible.

Persico was among the last rescued on the fourth trip of a diving bell deployed from the rescue ship Falcon. Rescuers used the McCann Submarine Rescue Chamber, a diving bell that could withstand depths beyond lethal limits.

The first three trips went perfectly. Captain Oliver Naquin, Persico and six other sailors were in the diving bell for the last rescue. About halfway up, there were problems with the lifting cables.

Rescuers dropped the diving bell back to the bottom and pulled it in by hand with only one frayed strand of cable. The final rescue took many hours using the frayed cable.

Persico's father had died in 1929. The family, including Persico's mother, Carmela Pinto, were kept informed as the rescue unfolded by Amsterdam Police who stopped at the family home with updates

The family received two telegrams. The first said Persico was alive. The second said he had been rescued.

When his mother visited Persico at a hospital after the rescue, he told her he would continue in the submarine service, adding his shipmates felt the same.

The Navy was able to raise the Squalus. It was repaired and recommissioned as the Sailfish and was awarded nine battle stars in World War II.

Persico served aboard two other submarines. One of them, U.S.S. Batfish, sank three Japanese subs. He earned a Bronze Star. A stone marking his Navy service is at Fifth Ward Veterans Park.

His nephew Anthony Signoracci said Persico, "Always had a sly smile on his face. I think it was because he cheated certain death."

Persico retired from the Navy in 1956 as a chief torpedo man and recruiter and then had a career as a heavy equipment salesman in the Capital Region for L.B. Smith Company.

Amsterdam historian Hugh Donlon wrote the Recorder story in 1961 when Persico visited Portsmouth Naval Shipyard for the first time since 1939. He was there for the launch of the nuclear submarine Tinosa.

On hand for a picture were Persico, Congressman Sam Stratton and John Donlon, Hugh's son. John was executive officer of Tinosa and later commanded nuclear submarines.

Persico married Felicia Puglia of Amsterdam in 1973. They met at the bar of the former Peter Stuyvesant Hotel in Amsterdam. They married years later when Persico returned to Amsterdam after his mother died. They had no children. "He was my hero," Felicia said.

In 2000 Persico was one of the Squalus survivors at a ceremony naming a destroyer for the man who organized their rescue, Charles "Swede" Momsen.

Persico died in 2001. The intersection of Florida Avenue and Bridge Street was named Persico Square that year.

Bob Cudmore is a freelance writer.

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Lightning Claimed the Life of Famed Fort Johnson Speed Skater

By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History-Daily Gazette 

     Speed skating champion Ted Ellenwood, Jr., 27, died instantly on June 11, 1946 when struck by lightning while golfing.

A friend, Lee DeGroff, was ten feet away but not injured. The golf course then was called the Antlers, today it's called Rolling Hills.

Ellenwood had skated for the Fort Johnson Athletic Association, which produced several top speed skaters including George Hare, Hank Flesch, Don Talmadge and Gene Gage.

Born in Dunkirk, N.Y., in 1919, Ellenwood and his family moved to Fort Johnson when he was five. He started skating at age ten.

He won the Eastern States Speed Skating Championship in Fort Johnson in 1941. He tied for third at the North American races in Schenectady. He won the 220 and 440 yard races at the National Championships in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, just before entering the U.S. Navy in 1942.

Ellenwood served as a machinist's mate aboard the destroyer U.S.S. Cotton which took part in numerous actions in the South Pacific.

He, his wife Lucia (from Portland, Maine) and their five month old son Ted III had returned to the local area to settle down by purchasing a gas station in Fort Johnson.

MORE ON FORT JOHNSON

     Ellenwood never qualified for the U.S. Olympic speed skating teams because he was better at American style skating as opposed to European style used in the Olympics. American skaters raced in a group while European skaters went in pairs and a time clock was used.

George Hare of Fort Johnson was very good at European style racing and was on the U.S. Olympic team in 1939. Hare competed in events in the United States as an Olympian but there were no Olympic games in 1940 and 1944 because of the war.

Ellenwood was an inspiration to fellow speed skater Gene Gage and Ellenwood once gave him a fine pair of skates that Gage used in racing competitions until he was in his mid-30s.

Among Fort Johnson skating coaches in the 1930s and early 1940s were Leroy Eckerson and W.C. Snyder.

A top skater after the war for Fort Johnson was Raymond Knapik who won a gold medal in the 220-yard sprint at the national championships in Alpena, Michigan in 1948. Knapik, who grew up in Amsterdam, also skated at Hasenfuss Field in that city.

Amsterdam native and longtime Californian Fred Wojcicki and LaVerne Colts managed the Fort Johnson skating rink in the winters of 1949 and 1950. Wojcicki was president of the Northeastern Skating Association.

Describing himself as one of the "run of the mill" skaters in Fort Johnson, the late Dave Noyes said he picked up a few medals along the way. He kept skating until knee and hip replacement surgeries in 2000.

Noyes worked at Johns Manville Corporation as a research engineer at their world headquarters in Denver.

Dave was the second of four brothers. His brother Dan drowned in the Mohawk River in 1947; his brother Randy died in an accident while serving the U.S. Air Force.

Dave Noyes said when he was a child, adults in the village provided children lifetime values and maintained an active community.

Noyes, who lived his last years in Colorado, recalled commercial institutions in Fort Johnson such as Whalen's grocery, Huen's gas station, Sweet's furniture and Tollner's ice cream.

The village of Fort Johnson formally dissolved on the last day of 2023, becoming a hamlet in the town of Amsterdam.

Bob Cudmore is a freelance writer.

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Rockton Wye; Another Amsterdam World War II casualty

By Bob Cudmore, Focus on Histoy

     A column about the Rockton Wye section of Amsterdam prompted this response from Paul Larner, an Amtrak engineer and railroad historian, “Are you aware of the origin of the name Rockton Wye?”

A native of Gloversville, Larner has written about the Fonda, Johnstown & Gloversville Railroad (F.J. & G.).

The Rockton Wye in Ansterdam was the intersection of Clizbe Avenue, Lyon Street, Hewitt Street and Northern Boulevard.  A “wye” in railroad terms is a track configuration resembling a triangle with each point leading to a different route.

The F.J. & G. was a railroad linking the cities in its name along with branch lines to Broadalbin, Schenectady and Northville. In the 1890s, the railroad established electric trolley lines in Johnstown and Gloversville.

The electric trolley car came to the Carpet City with the Amsterdam Street Railway Company in 1890. By 1901, the line expanded to Rockton and some pictures show trolleys with the name Amsterdam & Rockton Street Railway. In 1902, the line was extended to Hagaman. Also in 1902, the Amsterdam trolley company was acquired by the F.J. & G.

Starting in 1911, the three way intersection known as the Rockton Wye was built to connect the F.J. & G. trolley lines that went from the Rockton Wye to Hagaman, plus to Vrooman Avenue and Market Street in the city.

Larner wrote, “The track configuration at that point permitted the trolleys to run direct to and from Hagaman via either the original line up Market Street Hill or via Vrooman Avenue and also, by a connecting track, directly around the city, hence the term "belt" line.”

Stockholders of the railroad had interests in electric power, real estate and industry besides providing transportation. Trolleys ran both directions around the "belt" offering the residents of that area a convenient means of getting to Main Street, their employment, local recreation areas and the world via the New York Central Railroad.

Larner said there were problems with trolleys that had to climb the severe grade on Vrooman Avenue.

“One was never quite sure when the car wouldn't be able to make the turn at East Main Street descending, or, equally as dangerous, when the car wouldn't be able to get up Vrooman hill, sliding back to East Main, “ Larner said.  

Men were employed to place sand on the rails when conditions required additional traction.

By relocating the junction with East Main Street west to Lark Street and using Forbes Street to avoid part of Vrooman hill, much of the danger was eliminated..

The Vrooman Avenue line was abandoned in 1928. All F.J. & G. trolley service ended in 1938, supplanted by bus transportation.

NOSTALGIA NEIGHBORHOOD

     Thanks to reader Kelly Durocher for providing information on another World War II casualty with ties to Amsterdam.

Charles Chu Sun was drafted while living with his parents where they operated a laundry on Market Street in Amsterdam. According to a newspaper account, Chu Sun may have been the first Chinese American in the area to be drafted.

Chu Sun told the Albany Knickerbocker News  he hoped to continue his education after the war. He said he was patient and determined.

To pay for his education Chu Sun had waited on tables, did window washing and even snow shoveling.  “All I care for is my education,” he said.

He died after being wounded in September 1944 when his unit assaulted the Siegfried Line in Germany. He was 28 when he died, an Army technical sergeant.

Durocher volunteers for the Glenville War Memorial and has found 3500 World War II casualties in the Capital District.

Bob Cudmore is a freelance writer.

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Remembering Fred Wojcicki; Inman Senior Center Anniversay

By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History, Daily Gazette

     Fred Wojcicki was a source of information for this column for many years. He died in 2017 in Hacienda Heights, California at age 91.

He lived his last 54 years in the Golden State but vividly remembered his first 37 years in the Amsterdam area.

Fred was born in 1926, the son of John and Mary Wojcicki. His family lived in a flat on Hibbard Street in the Polish neighborhood of Reid Hill.

The Wojcickis moved to Mathias Avenue when Fred was one year old. Neighbors included John Gomulka, who became mayor, and Andrew Celmer, who became police chief.

Wojcicki played baseball for St. Stanislaus Roman Catholic Church. When the team won, Reverend Francis Drzewiecki, their coach, treated the boys to sundaes at Krupczak’s Pharmacy on Hibbard Street, operated by the parents of Mary Anne Krupsak, who was elected New York lieutenant governor in the 1970s.

Only one of Wojcicki’s childhood chums had a bicycle but he let the other kids “ride around the block for five cents a trip.”

“Feeding Harry Demsky’s horse with carrots was a treat, too,” Wojcicki said.

Ragman Demsky was the father of actor Kirk Douglas.  Like Wojcicki, Douglas moved to California.

Private First Class Joseph Wojcicki, Fred’s older brother, went ashore during the Normandy invasion and died July 18 1944 after being wounded in St. Lo. He was 31 and had been a weaver at Mohawk Carpet.

Fred’s brother also worked at the Italian Gardens in Broadalbin, created by summer resident Katherine Husted but owned in the 1930s by Amsterdam button maker Arthur Chalmers. Fred sometimes visited his brother at work and saw Arthur Chalmers go by in his chauffeured limousine.

Fred served with the U.S. Navy Seabees in Guam and other locations in World War II. “We grew up fast in a few years during that war.”

He came back to Amsterdam after the war. His father died in 1949. Fred ran the Fort Johnson skating rink in the winters of 1949 and 1950.

When he worked for an insurance firm in Amsterdam, Fred got to know Sister William Aloysius Fitzpatrick, the long-time maternity department administrator at St. Mary's Hospital. “She was always fair and honest, great to patients and parents alike,” Wojcicki said.

Fred moved to California in 1963. He married Phyllis Wood Gibbons in 1967. Fred’s mother died that year. Fred worked at Standard Brands Paint Company in California until he retired in 1989. Phyllis died in 2005.

He typed letters frequently to my wife Audrey and me. His last letter acknowledged health problems and the Gazette column about him published the year before  “I have received ten letters from friends, including clippings from the column.”

His obituary ran in the Los Angeles Times, a newspaper he favored as he often sent clippings of stories from that West Coast media giant,

Fred was survived by a daughter, son, stepdaughter, stepson and extended family. He was predeceased by a son, brother and two sisters.

NOSTALGIA NEIGHBORHOOD

     The 40th anniversary of Amsterdam’s Inman Senior Services Center on Guy Psrk Avenue will be celebrated with a gala at the Center on June 21st.  Hope to see you there. 

The Center was named for Horace J. Inman. Inman created a paper box making company on what was called Spring Street in 1877.

He realized it was more profitable to make the machines to make boxes instead of making the boxes themselves, Inman’s eventually was owned by Thomas Leavenworth and Wallace Lindsay, The factory became the Inman Senior Services Center.

Over the years the Center has offered classes, trips and many other activities for seniors.

Bob Cudmore is a freelance writer.

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Last flight over Japan

By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History, Daily Gazette and Amsterdam Recorder

     Amsterdam attorney Robert N. Going, who died in 2019, wrote "Honor Roll: The World War II Dead of Amsterdam, N.Y." in 2010.

Using Recorder clippings, museum collections and personal diaries, Going compiled information on 176 men from the Amsterdam area who died in the war.

The first was William E. Hasenfuss, Jr. from a family of nine children on Northampton Road. Hasenfuss had flown planes at an air field in Perth before enlisting in 1939. He died at Hickham Air Field in Hawaii during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

The last Amsterdam casualty was listed in the book as Seaman Orlie Charles Thomas, who died in Brooklyn Naval Hospital on November 23, 1945. He had served aboard the battleship Mississippi in the Pacific.

However in his blog called the Judge Report issued some time after "Honor Roll" was published, Going wrote, "In researching old newspapers for the Amsterdam war dead of World War II, I stopped on June 30, 1946. I should have kept going, as I now learn that yet another Amsterdam hero has gone unrecognized, and his may, in fact, be Amsterdam's last combat death of World War II, bringing the total up to about 180."

The Recorder reported on July 8, 1946, "Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Gawron, 7 Catherine Street, have been notified by the War Department that their son, Technical Sergeant Edward F. Gawron, previously reported missing in action July 3, 1945 over Japan, has now been officially declared dead. He was killed in action over Japan on the same date that he had been reported missing."

Born in Amsterdam in 1925, Edward Gawron graduated from Wilbur H. Lynch High School in 1942. His family called him Patch. He was 20 years old when he died.

He worked at Mohawk Carpet Mills while attending high school and after graduation was employed at the Naval Supply Depot in Scotia. Inducted into military service April 10, 1943, he spent two months with the Medical Corps. He requested and received a transfer to the Army Air Forces to become an air cadet. He attended gunnery school then went to Fort Myers, Florida to take training flights.

Gawron came home on a 15-day furlough before going to the Mariana Islands with the 20th Air Force as a B-29 gunner. He was flying his 35th mission when his B-29 was shot down on Honshu Island by anti-aircraft fire.

The crew was on its last bombing mission which would have completed their tour of duty. The war ended September 2, 1945.

According to Find A Grave Web site, Gawron's plane was called Miss Hap. The Web site reported that Gawron was buried at a military cemetery in Missouri.

The condolences letter from Adjutant General Edward Witsell continued, "I realize the anguish you have suffered since he was first reported missing in action and I deeply regret the sorrow this later report brings you. May the knowledge that he has made the supreme sacrifice for his home and country be a source of sustaining comfort."

T/Sergeant Gawron was survived by his parents, Stephen and Julia Zintack Gawron; four brothers. Peter, Leonard, Joseph and Richard; six sisters, Connie, Sally, Veronica, Irene, Dolores and Mary.

Richard Gawron provided information for this column. Richard and his wife Frances recently lived in Niskayuna.

Richard's parents were born in Poland. Richard said his father built their house on Catherine Street off upper Church Street. The family raised chickens.

A 1932 City Directory listed Stephen Gawron's job as a driver. He held jobs at M.J. Wytrwal Coal and Oil in Amsterdam and American Locomotive in Schenectady.

Bob Cudmore is a freelance writer.

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     Jacob Snell was "unceasing and unrelenting" on behalf of the Republican Party.

By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History, Daily Gazette and Amsterdam Recorder

     The Canajoharie Courier wrote, "A campaign once begun was waged until the polls were closed on Election Day, so in case of a narrow defeat he never felt the chagrin that he had not made his best and most ardent fight."

Snell was born in Stone Arabia in the Town of Palatine in 1847 and lived on a farm with his parents. While in Palatine, he was elected supervisor and town clerk, running as a Republican in a Democratic town.

Snell married Nancy Nellis of Palatine in 1867.   They had two sons and three daughters.

A popular and powerful leader, the Amsterdam Recorder reported "prolonged cheering and hand-clapping" when "Uncle Jake" entered a 1903 Republican county convention.

Boss Snell's large girth made him a target for political cartoonists. The New York Journal in 1901 showed a seated Snell with a diamond stickpin on his tie, which was lying atop his stomach.

The caption said, "Jacob Snell, whose diamond looks him square in the face."

About 1870 he moved to Fonda. Two of his ancestors "an earlier Jacob and Alexander Snell" had been elected Montgomery County sheriff. Jacob Snell ran for sheriff in 1884 and lost. He was elected two years later, serving three years as sheriff. He became chairman of the Republican county committee, was a state committeeman and president of the village of Fonda.

Snell owned a company that did roadwork and he was president of Mohawk Valley Broom of Fonda. He owned a downtown Fonda hotel, later known as the Hotel Roy. He was president of the County Agricultural Society, which stages the Fonda Fair, for two years. He was superintendent of a section of the Erie Canal for a time.

Although both were Republicans, Snell and Gloversville Congressman and glove industry mogul Lucius Littauer were at odds over the years. Snell had threatened to run against Littauer for Congress in 1902 but dropped out of the race, reportedly to improve his chances of getting an appointment to be a prison warden.

It took a while but Snell got what he wanted. He sought the job of warden at Clinton Correctional Facility, also known as Dannemora state prison in northern New York. Snell didn't get the job.

Finally, in 1904 Governor Benjamin Odell named Snell the warden of the four-year-old Napanoch Reformatory in Ulster County.

Snell died at the reformatory on December 22nd, 1905 at age 58. "An abdominal abscess and acute kidney disease, surgical treatment of which was not practicable because of his immense girth, were the primary causes of his death," wrote the Schenectady Union.

There is an often repeated story that when Snell died, the door of the room where he perished at the reformatory had to be enlarged to get his body out.

The Little Falls Times reported that Snell weighed 500 pounds and that twelve men were needed to carry his casket.

Amsterdam's Democratic paper, the Morning Sentinel, actually came to Republican Snell's defense on the subject of his size. The Sentinel scoffed at the Little Falls Times report, saying Snell did not even weigh 400 pounds and that "six small men" had no trouble handling the casket.

When he died, newspapers called him "one of the best known Republicans in the state."

At the funeral in Fonda, popular Reverend Washington Frothingham, a Mohawk Valley historian, paid tribute to Snell's Revolutionary War ancestors, saying seven of them had given their lives for their country.

After the funeral, Snell's body was taken by train for burial in the Canajoharie Falls Cemetery.

Bob Cudmore is a freelance writer.

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An Amsterdam tavern, a paint brush factory and a pool Hall

By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History, Daily Gazette and Amsterdam Recorder

     The late Shawn Kevin Duffy contributed stories to this column on many topics including O’Shaughnessy’s, his family's East End tavern. 

O'Shaughnessy's Tavern was once owned by Duffy's grandfather Martin J. O'Shaughnessy.  Located at East Main and Eagle Streets in a building no longer there, O'Shaughnessy's regulars included movie actor Kirk Douglas's father, Harry Demsky. The Demskys lived at 46 Eagle Street at the end of the dead end street.

The Historic Amsterdam League marker for Kirk Douglas’s boyhood neighborhood was placed where the tavern used to be on East Main at Eagle.

Duffy wrote, "The bar survived Prohibition as so many did not. My mom, Mary O'Shaughnessy Duffy, told me that she used to help make bathtub gin when she was around ten, actually in the bathtub. Her brother Martin Junior (who had polio) sold the moonshine off the back porch to make ends meet during these hard times."

Eventually the “O” was dropped from the tavern’s name and it became known as Shaughnessy’s.

Duffy also had memories of working at Edy Brush Company on Brookside Avenue in Amsterdam, a firm that made paint brushes out of hog bristles imported from Poland in the late 1960s.  Edy Brush closed in the 1980s and the building, originally the Wasserman broom factory, was destroyed by fire in 2010. 

Duffy’s job was to dye the hog bristles black in a large vat of boiling dye.  He also cut long tubes of synthetic bristles with a hand chopper.  He sometimes thought his arm was going to fall off.

“I broke the elevator by loading boxes of bristle almost up to the limit of the elevator,” Duffy wrote.  “A co-worker and I were also told to stack boxes of bristle in a large storage room as high as we could.  The ceiling was probably 30 to 40 feet.  We made stairs out of the boxes as we stacked and therefore got right up to the ceiling.  I don't think the foreman really expected this and we were in trouble again for doing what we were asked.”

Duffy used to visit his aunt, Loretta on the grounds of Amsterdam City Hall on Church Street, the former Sanford mansion.

Duffy wrote, “At that time, the landscaping at City Hall was outstanding, with three levels of gardens and hedge bordered walkways.”

Duffy also spent some time at Louie Allen’s pool hall on Market Street near the old Rialto Theatre.

Duffy wrote, “Louie Allen would occasionally play the good players that would sometimes come around as he was a very good player himself.  The strange thing was that Louie had one crippled arm and played with only his good arm, using the rail as a bridge.  The story was that in his younger years Louie once hustled the wrong person at the wrong time, and they made sure he would never do that again by taking him out back and giving him a non-pool lesson, (not sure if this story was true or just hype). Louie also had an assistant by the name of Joe Corrigan who was close to a world-class player while still in his teens.” 

Corrigan joined the Navy and Duffy was informed that Corrigan was killed in an auto accident in about 1970 while still in the Navy.

Duffy, born in Amsterdam in 1949, died in 2019 at his home in Lake St. Louis, Missouri, at age 69. He was a Navy veteran and worked for General Electric and other firms in the turbine generator business.  When he retired he was part owner of Turbine Generator Technical Services.

Bob Cudmore is a freelance writer.

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Amsterdam Native was Theater, TV and Nightclub Star

By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History, Daily Gazette and Amsterdam Recorder

     Arlene Fontana, an Amsterdam native, appeared almost two thousand times in the national company of Flower Drum Song. In a show business career spanning four decades, Fontana sang on many TV programs including Ed Sullivan and played nightclubs in New York, Chicago, London and Miami.

"Her greatest appeal was her energy and her appearance on stage," said Fontana's husband and theatrical agent Carmen LaVia.

Born in 1936, Arlene was the only child of Marty and Palmera Masson Fontana. Marty Fontana came to Amsterdam as a young child from Genoa, Italy. A salesman for WCSS radio and other companies, Marty played trombone and violin in his own band, the Knights of Rhythm.

Arlene began taking tap, toe and ballet lessons at age ten. She studied piano. When she was 14, she did song and dance numbers in variety shows directed by drama coach and later high school principal Bert DeRose.

In 1949, she attracted a regional following by appearing on the WRGB television program Teenage Barn. At the time, television was a rapidly growing medium and there were several local music shows. Fontana sang with WRGB performers Gary Stevens and Earle Pudney, toured New York, Massachusetts and Vermont with Teenage Barn and did summer stock at the Malden Bridge Playhouse.

In high school, she won an essay contest on the dangers of Communism and worked on a WCSS radio theater series directed by speech teacher Grace Rutherford.

When Fontana graduated from Wilbur H. Lynch High School in 1954, former Amsterdamian and family friend Joe Miller offered her a contract to sing at Miller's Shell Room Lounge in Miami. Fontana and her parents moved to Miami.

For a year, she sang in Miami nightclubs then secured bookings in Pittsburgh, Washington, Detroit, Cleveland, Dallas, Houston and Las Vegas. She was a favorite on Television Nacional in pre-Castro Cuba. Her recording of Easy backed with I'm In Love on a 45 record in the late 1950s did well in England, getting her club dates in London.

In the early sixties she was auditioned by Richard Rodgers for the part of Linda Low in the national touring company of Flower Drum Song. She played that role 1,972 times.

Over one thousand of those shows were done at the Thunderbird in Las Vegas where Fontana met her future husband. She and Carmen LaVia married at St. Michael's Church in Amsterdam in 1965. The couple lived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, where LaVia worked for the Fifi Oscard Agency. He became Fontana's agent in 1972.

On television, she appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show, Merv Griffin, Tonight Show and the Mike Douglas Show.

As a birthday present for her father, Fontana played a concert in 1971 at the then Coliseum Theatre in Latham. Marty Fontana died in 1974.

In 1984, Arlene Fontana was diagnosed with breast cancer.  “She was in her last stage show -- This Joint Is Jumpin' -- in 1988.

Cancer returned and she died of a stroke at New York's Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital in May of 1990. Her mother, Palmera, survived her daughter by more than a decade. Palmera died in Amsterdam in 2001. Fontana's husband Carmen LaVia died in 2017 in New York City.

NOSTALGIA NEIGHBORHOOD

John Angerosa, an eye, ear, nose and throat physician and accompliahed jazz pianist, passed away on April 24. His love of music carried over to his medical practice, treating many musicians with special awareness of the importance of their ability to continue to perform.

Bob Cudmore is a freelance writer.

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