The Historians

This Friday, January 26, 2024-Author John Gearing and editor Chris Leonard discuss their book Schenectady Genesis, Volume II: The Creation of an American City from an Anglo-Dutch Town, ca. 1760-1800.

Mohawk Valley Weather, Monday, Janaury 22, 2024-11 degrees in The City of Amsterdam at 6:52AM Increasing clouds, with a high near 33. Wind chill values as low as -1. West wind 6 to 8 mph. Tonight Mostly cloudy, with a low around 25. West wind 6 to 9 mph. Tuesday A chance of snow, mainly after noon. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 36. West wind 6 to 8 mph. Chance of precipitation is 50%. New snow accumulation of less than a half inch possible.

Tomorrow, Tuesday, January 23, 2024-A story about a man who was in The City of Amsterdam for only "One Day"

Free for all at the Ivy Leaf

By Bob Cudmore

   There was trouble at the Ivy Leaf the night of Friday, April 11, 1947.

   The Ivy Leaf was a tavern at Forbes and 42 Schuyler Streets in Amsterdam's East End operated by a woman named Smith.

   It was an after work stop in those days for my aunts, Vera Cudmore and Gladys Morrell. They lived together (with my grandfather Harry Cudmore) east of the Ivy Leaf on Forbes Street and worked west of the bar at the Fownes glove mill shipping room on Grove Street.

   Patrons called the Ivy Leaf the Kneepad Inn. It was in the basement of a building on a steep hill. Winter tipplers sometimes resorted to crawling out on their knees so they wouldn't tumble down the hill when they hit the icy sidewalk.

   Aunt Gladys and Aunt Vera frequently pointed out that they visited the Ivy Leaf for food and conviviality more than drink. In the 1940s, the tavern advertised a roast beef dinner with cabbage, mushrooms and all the trimmings for 25 cents.

   The Recorder account of the “grill rumpus” of 1947 was as follows, "The fracas was in full swing when law arrived and the participants who claimed to be separatists could not be distinguished from the belligerent group.

   “After affairs has been brought under control, information gathered showed that efforts of one of the brass rail habitués to demonstrate a trick of some kind had brought on the disturbance, the hocus pocus having failed to meet with approval of the spectators.

   "With more effective magic, the officers were made to disappear without arrests after a checkup showed there was no bloodshed."

   Three police officers in two squad cars responded. One was Sergeant Andrew Celmer, who went on to become police chief, another was Officer Adamski and the third was Officer Anthony J. Liberis.

   Liberis's son John said his father in later years would sometimes meet a man who had been involved in the 1947 brawl who would remark, "You threw me against a wall."

   Officer Liberis was an Amsterdam native of Lithuanian heritage, born on John Street in 1918. His parents were Joseph and Ursula Liberis.

   A strong man, Anthony Liberis lost out on a chance to take part in a major weightlifting championship when drafted in early 1941.

   He volunteered for the paratroops and served with the 82nd Airborne in the Aleutian Islands, Anzio in Italy and elsewhere. His feet were almost lost to frostbite, a problem that came back to trouble him at the end of his life.

   Right after the war, he joined the police department.  He married Helen Pawloski, who had grown up on Forbes Street, at St. Stanislaus Church on April 28, 1946.

   He played football for the Amsterdam Zephyrs, injuring his knee and causing the police chief to warn Liberis that he might have to choose between football and police work.

   By the 1950s, Liberis had switched to the Fire Department where he retired as a battalion chief in 1980.

   John, born in 1947, was Albert and Helen Liberis’s only child. The family lived on Glen Avenue.  John said his father sometimes would be tempted to leave the fire department to make more money at Amsterdam's carpet mills. But his wife convinced Liberis to stay in the fire service, as he was building a pension.

   John married an Amsterdam woman, Susan Senko, and moved to Schenectady.  Helen Liberis died in 2001. She had worked at General Electric in Schenectady and three Amsterdam businesses: Peoples Silk Store, Lurie's department store and Empire Devices. Anthony Liberis died in 2002. They were buried at Saratoga National Cemetery.

A Radio Note

WCSS Radio Amsterdam 106.9FM and 1490AM will preempt The Historians Podcast on two weekends.  Our podcast will not be heard this Saturday, January 27 or Saturday, February 3 as WCSS broadcasts college basketball.  The historians podcasts for those dates can be heard online hear on BobCudmore dot com and on our other podcast Websites. 

All in One Day

October 15, 1941

Friday, January 26, 2024-Author John Gearing and editor Chris Leonard discuss their book Schenectady Genesis, Volume II: The Creation of an American City from an Anglo-Dutch Town, ca. 1760-1800.

A Bob story to read while waiting for the Doctor

The undertaker and the telephone
By Bob Cudmore

Historian and undertaker W. Maxwell Reid was one of the first to install a telephone in the Amsterdam area.

Reid visited the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia and was impressed by a demonstration of Alexander Graham Bell's telephone.

When Reid returned home, he had wires strung between a casket plant in Amsterdam and a store in Broadalbin.
How this early telephone worked was described in a Chamber of Commerce publication, "Twice a day at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m., the persons at each end of the line, by a process of shouting into the telephones, and then moving the same instruments to their ears to hear what was shouted back, were able to carry on a conversation over the intervening ten miles."
William Maxwell Reid was born in 1839 on his father's farm, land which later became the Reid Hill neighborhood. Reid's father was from Scotland. He was also a school teacher, librarian and justice of the peace.

W. Max Reid married Laura MacDonald in 1859. Her father was a partner in the Shuler casket making company, started by woodworker Isaac Shuler. Reid, who had been a clerk in a dry goods store, worked as a bookkeeper for the casket firm.

Ultimately Reid took over the company after his father-in-law died. Reid also operated his own undertaking business.
Reid was a founder of the business-boosting Board of Trade in 1884 and president of the organization for seventeen years.

Reid is known as an historian for his 1901 book, "The Mohawk Valley: Its Legends and Its History." Reid also wrote a history column for the Recorder newspaper using the byline "The Hollander Letters."

Reid died in 1911 at age 72. He and his wife lived on Spring Street, what is now Guy Park Avenue and had three children.

Other 1870s phone lines connected Amsterdam's New York Central Railroad freight office with the Sanford carpet mill and Kelloggs & Miller's linseed oil plant. The homes of linseed oil magnates John, George and Lauren Kellogg had early telephones.

Another local telephone pioneer was William Charles, who operated a cotton and wool brokerage business. In 1940, Charles was still living in Amsterdam and had telephone number "1."
Historian Hugh Donlon wrote, "By 1881, the Amsterdam Telegraph and Telephone Company, locally organized, was operating a switchboard of 50 lines from a central office at East Main and Church streets."

Several companies competed for telephone customers in Amsterdam but after a time, competition cut the number of companies to two "the locally based Automatic Telephone Company and Hudson River Telephone, part of the growing Bell system's national network.

Hudson River opened a new central exchange at 40 Division Street and Automatic created a new facility at 19 Pearl Street. By 1910, though, the battle was over and New York Telephone "successor to Hudson River "took over phone service to some 1,500 Amsterdam customers.
To promote long distance calling a few years later the phone company invited 200 people to a public phone conversation at the Elks Lodge between Amsterdam Mayor James R. Cline and Mayor James Rolph of San Francisco. George Scott, exalted ruler of the Amsterdam Elks, conversed with the exalted ruler of a San Francisco lodge.

Donlon wrote, "Despite the ballyhoo, cross-country talk failed to gain immediate popularity with frugal townspeople. Rates were comparatively high and it was more economical to write a letter when speed was not particularly important."

A picture which accompanied a 1942 article about telephones showed a row of 15 seated female operators and two supervisors at the Amsterdam office of New York Telephone, then at 40 Division Street.

A Radio Note about this Weekend

WCSS Radio Amsterdam 106.9FM and 1490AM will preempt The Historians Podcast on two weekends.  Our podcast will not be heard this Saturday, January 27 or Saturday, February 3 as WCSS broadcasts college basketball.  The historians podcasts for those dates can be heard online hear on BobCudmore dot com and on our other podcast Websites. 

Mohawk Valley Weather, Tuesday, Janaury 23, 2024-35 degrees in The City of Amsterdam at 6:30AM 

There was trouble at the Ivy Leaf the night of Friday, April 11, 1947.

"Free-for-All at The Ivy Leaf by Bob Cudmore"

More Amsterdam Bar room History 

The Daily Gazette and Amsterdam Recorder 

https://www.dailygazette.com/

also in The Recorder- Loopie’s Irish Pub, located at 410 Mohawk Drive in Tribes Hill, is hosting its 17th annual soup and chili cook-off today, Sunday, January 21, 2024 from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.

Mohawk Valley Weekend Weather, Sunday, January 21, 2024-10 degrees in The City of Amsterdam at 5:19AM-Sunny, with a high near 20. Wind chill values as low as -10. West wind 10 to 15 mph, with gusts as high as 25 mph. Tonight Partly cloudy, with a low around 9. Wind chill values as low as -2. West wind 5 to 10 mph. Monday Mostly sunny, with a high near 34. West wind 5 to 7 mph

DeRose's greatest impact in the community probably stemmed from the years he spent directing high school plays and an annual summer musical he produced for 30 years for the city's recreation department.

Bob with a story for Sunday

Memories from Bert DeRose
By Bob Cudmore

Drama teacher and high school administrator Bert DeRose contributed many Amsterdam memories to this column over the past two decades. DeRose died November 28, Thanksgiving night, at 87. His wife Barbara died some 20 days later.

When DeRose was six, his family, living on River Street on Amsterdam's south side, had to flee their home in February 1938 during a Mohawk River flood. When the water subsided DeRose enjoyed playing on the chunks of ice left in his backyard. He said, "That was as close as I ever got to Alaska."

His uncle Ralph Pagliaro was the last Amsterdam soldier to die in World War I. Pagliaro, a native of Italy, was killed by a German sniper in Belgium five days before the Armistice. The body was returned to Amsterdam for burial. DeRose said, "My Grandmother wore black for over 30 years."

A friend of south side alderman Angelo "Susie" Sardonia, who died in 1987, DeRose recalled that in one election campaign Sardonia organized a Kettle Band. The band featured young people banging on tin cans and buckets drumming up votes for Sardonia.

DeRose's greatest impact in the community probably stemmed from the years he spent directing high school plays and an annual summer musical he produced for 30 years for the city's recreation department.

"I always tried to instill with the kids that no matter what they did for the theater, they were part of it," DeRose said in an interview in the year 2000. "Forget about the star. Forget about the lead. There is no lead if the kid who is pulling the curtain pulls at the wrong time."

Watching video of DeRose's productions, his actors convey emotional intensity.

"What we did was study the script," DeRose said. "I went deep into the inner character of the character - the meaning of it all, the feeling at that moment. If you get the teenager, teenagers can do tremendous things."

The community was involved in the spirit of the plays, "Seeing their young people produce something, something for the kids to do in those days."

He said Amsterdam had more than an average interest in show business, "I remember my grandfather telling me, and he was an immigrant from Italy, they would bring in operas, Italian operas here. Polish groups, Irish, so I think it was that type of tradition."

Future Amsterdam Oratorio composer Maria Riccio Bryce accompanied other high school actors on the piano and also acted in DeRose's high school plays. She won the Amsterdam Thespian Society's Kirk Douglas Award for her role in West Side Story. Kirk Douglas, an Amsterdam native and friend of Maria's father Peter Riccio, called to congratulate her.

When DeRose staged West Side Story he said some people felt it was a bit tough for a high school to do. DeRose said, "We had a lot of fun with it and it came across very, very well. At times we had to be very careful during the rumble scene and we had to cool them down a little bit."

DeRose and his daughter Michele DeRose MacShane acted together shortly before his death in video segments used on Roku television episodes of a show called "Kelly James and the Folk Review." MacShane has followed in her father's dramatic footsteps and is also co-writer of a western series being pitched to TV networks.

In the Roku show, MacShane played Raven Rainbow, a middle-aged hippie, and DeRose played her father Umberto. Umberto was his given name.

You can watch several of these episodes on Facebook and you haven't lived until you see Umberto do the tarantella.

Free for all at the Ivy Leaf

By Bob Cudmore

   There was trouble at the Ivy Leaf the night of Friday, April 11, 1947.

   The Ivy Leaf was a tavern at Forbes and 42 Schuyler Streets in Amsterdam's East End operated by a woman named Smith.

   It was an after work stop in those days for my aunts, Vera Cudmore and Gladys Morrell. They lived together (with my grandfather Harry Cudmore) east of the Ivy Leaf on Forbes Street and worked west of the bar at the Fownes glove mill shipping room on Grove Street.

   Patrons called the Ivy Leaf the Kneepad Inn. It was in the basement of a building on a steep hill. Winter tipplers sometimes resorted to crawling out on their knees so they wouldn't tumble down the hill when they hit the icy sidewalk.

   Aunt Gladys and Aunt Vera frequently pointed out that they visited the Ivy Leaf for food and conviviality more than drink. In the 1940s, the tavern advertised a roast beef dinner with cabbage, mushrooms and all the trimmings for 25 cents.

   The Recorder account of the “grill rumpus” of 1947 was as follows, "The fracas was in full swing when law arrived and the participants who claimed to be separatists could not be distinguished from the belligerent group.

   “After affairs has been brought under control, information gathered showed that efforts of one of the brass rail habitués to demonstrate a trick of some kind had brought on the disturbance, the hocus pocus having failed to meet with approval of the spectators.

   "With more effective magic, the officers were made to disappear without arrests after a checkup showed there was no bloodshed."

   Three police officers in two squad cars responded. One was Sergeant Andrew Celmer, who went on to become police chief, another was Officer Adamski and the third was Officer Anthony J. Liberis.

   Liberis's son John said his father in later years would sometimes meet a man who had been involved in the 1947 brawl who would remark, "You threw me against a wall."

   Officer Liberis was an Amsterdam native of Lithuanian heritage, born on John Street in 1918. His parents were Joseph and Ursula Liberis.

   A strong man, Anthony Liberis lost out on a chance to take part in a major weightlifting championship when drafted in early 1941.

   He volunteered for the paratroops and served with the 82nd Airborne in the Aleutian Islands, Anzio in Italy and elsewhere. His feet were almost lost to frostbite, a problem that came back to trouble him at the end of his life.

   Right after the war, he joined the police department.  He married Helen Pawloski, who had grown up on Forbes Street, at St. Stanislaus Church on April 28, 1946.

   He played football for the Amsterdam Zephyrs, injuring his knee and causing the police chief to warn Liberis that he might have to choose between football and police work.

   By the 1950s, Liberis had switched to the Fire Department where he retired as a battalion chief in 1980.

   John, born in 1947, was Albert and Helen Liberis’s only child. The family lived on Glen Avenue.  John said his father sometimes would be tempted to leave the fire department to make more money at Amsterdam's carpet mills. But his wife convinced Liberis to stay in the fire service, as he was building a pension.

   John married an Amsterdam woman, Susan Senko, and moved to Schenectady.  Helen Liberis died in 2001. She had worked at General Electric in Schenectady and three Amsterdam businesses: Peoples Silk Store, Lurie's department store and Empire Devices. Anthony Liberis died in 2002. They were buried at Saratoga National Cemetery.

also in The Recorder- Loopie’s Irish Pub, located at 410 Mohawk Drive in Tribes Hill, is hosting its 17th annual soup and chili cook-off today, Sunday, January 21, 2024 from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.

Mohawk Valley Weekend Weather, Sunday, January 21, 2024-10 degrees in The City of Amsterdam at 5:19AM-Sunny, with a high near 20. Wind chill values as low as -10. West wind 10 to 15 mph, with gusts as high as 25 mph. Tonight Partly cloudy, with a low around 9. Wind chill values as low as -2. West wind 5 to 10 mph. Monday Mostly sunny, with a high near 34. West wind 5 to 7 mph

"Free-for-All at The Ivy Leaf by Bob Cudmore"

There was trouble at the Ivy Leaf the night of Friday, April 11, 1947.

More Amsterdam Bar room History today in The Paper-Paper and on-line

The Daily Gazette Amsterdam Recorder The Historians

https://www.dailygazette.com/

also in The Recorder- Loopie’s Irish Pub, located at 410 Mohawk Drive in Tribes Hill, is hosting its 17th annual soup and chili cook-off Sunday from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.

Mohawk Valley Weekend Weather, Saturday, January 20, 2024-6 degrees in The City of Amsterdam at 6:20AM A chance of snow showers, mainly after 3pm. Cloudy, with a high near 14. Wind chill values as low as -9. West wind 10 to 16 mph. Tonight A slight chance of snow showers before 9pm. Cloudy, then gradually becoming partly cloudy, with a low around 6. Wind chill values as low as -8. West wind 11 to 15 mph. Sunday Sunny, with a high near 22. Wind chill values as low as -10. West wind 11 to 15 mph.

More Amsterdam Bar room History

Saturday in The Daily Gazette and Amsterdam Recorder and on-line Sunday here on The Historians

"Free-for-All at The Ivy Leaf by Bob Cudmore"

Thursday, Janaury 18, 2024

Shakespeare at the golf course
By Bob Cudmore

The Phil Kilfoil Company's Woodland Players from New York City performed Shakespeare's comedy "As You Like It" on the grounds of the Antlers Club in Fort Johnson the night of July 13. 1904.

The private golf course, today known as Rolling Hills, had opened in 1901 on a 90 acre site. The original clubhouse was built that year with a spectacular view of the Mohawk Valley from its veranda.

The play was performed atop a hill overlooking the clubhouse with the woods forming what the Amsterdam Recorder reviewer called "an ideal background" to a grassy stage.
Japanese lanterns lighted the audience "with a soft flickering light" and Minch's orchestra, a local favorite, played popular songs before the show, keeping the crowd entertained while they waited.

When the play began, "powerful calcium lights" illuminated the stage and trees with what the newspaper called "a bright but weird glow, which might be well described as exaggerated moonlight."

It was chilly for July. The performance was originally scheduled the night before but had been rained out.

An estimated 350 people sat on camp chairs to watch Shakespeare's pastoral comedy. Many in the patrons arrived on crowded electric trolley cars from nearby Amsterdam. The audience loved the play, according to a rave review the next day in the Amsterdam Recorder.

"Now that the affair is over," wrote the reviewer, "And has proved an unqualified success, it may not be amiss to state that previously there was just a slight undercurrent of doubt as to the ability of any company traveling as does Kilfoll's at present, to properly present a play of such caliber.

"But the first lines were scarcely uttered when all questions along this score were obliterated, and the audience settled itself for what would have been a theatrical treat under any circumstances, but was doubly so amid scenes so absolutely fitting."

There was apprehension at show time among the actors about the financial solvency of their employer, Woodland Players, owned by the Phil Kilfoil Company of New York City.
The reviewer said the entire company was good but gave special praise to Ivah M. Wills who played Rosalind, F.J. McCarthy as Touchstone and James A. Young as Jacques de Boys.
Two weeks after leaving Amsterdam, theatrical producer Kilfoil was charged with passing bogus checks in Oswego, another stop on the tour.

Kilfoil told reporters, "We have been victims of circumstances and there was no intention of defrauding any persons in Oswego. We have met with poor business and benefit performances have so far proved a failure."

The Oswego and Amsterdam papers reported July 30 that charges were dropped when Kilfoil's business partner, Charles Wiegand, provided funds to cover the checks. Wiegand was described as a supervisor of the New York Central Railroad in New York City.

The Recorder said the actors apparently were among those not getting paid, "The company has been receiving money and one by one the members are leaving Oswego as fast as their remittances arrive. There will be no more Woodland Players, it is said, and both Wiegand and Kilfoil have expressed their intention of abandoning the dramatic field as a non-paying venture."

I have secured funds, said Kilfoil, to meet every obligation incurred by the company.
As for the Fort Johnson outdoor venue, the Antlers golf course prospered for many years but its elegant clubhouse burned to the ground in a 1965 fire. A new clubhouse was built.
Historian Hugh Donlon wrote the replacement clubhouse is smaller and lacked the "spacious veranda that had contributed so much to summer social life of affluent Amsterdamians for 60 years."

Friday, January 19, 2024

Jennet Conant discusses her book The Great Secret: The Classified World War II Disaster That Launched the War on Cancer.  Also heard is film maker Nick Spark who lobbied for U.S. government recognition of medical doctor Stewart Alexander whose work chronicling the Bari disaster in southern Italy was the impetus to developing chemotherapy.

Mohawk Valley Weather, Thursday, Janaury 18, 2024

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

This weekend in The Daily Gazette and Amsterdam Recorder, another Bob story about Amsterdam Bar room History 

"Free-for-All at The Ivy Leaf"

Wednesday, Janaury 17, 2023

Over a thousand passengers had paid $37.95 each for the round trip from New York City to Niagara Falls on the Mohawk Valley Limited.

The Mohawk Valley Limited of 1968
By Bob Cudmore

In 1968 a steam locomotive-hauled passenger train had not passed through the Mohawk Valley for seventeen years.

Railfans were ecstatic and the general public became interested Saturday morning, October 12, when a 19-car excursion train was first pulled by an electric locomotive from Grand Central Station in New York City north to the railyards at Croton-Harmon.

Waiting there was a Berkshire-class steam locomotive, number 759, which had hauled freight for the Nickel Plate Road in its prime. Coupled to the excursion’s passenger cars, number 759 soon was chugging north toward Albany’s Union Station, slated for closure in a couple of months.

The Berkshire class of steam engines were named for the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts where they were used on the hilly Boston to Albany run. Berkshire locomotives had two forward wheels, eight driver wheels and four trailing wheels.

Berkshire engines were at first manufactured by American Locomotive (ALCO) in Schenectady. Later models, including 759 built in 1944, were made at the Lima Locomotive Works in Lima, Ohio.

Ross Rowland, a commodities broker in New York, was at the throttle of 759 when it arrived in Albany in 1968. Rowland had founded the High Iron Company to organize a series of steam-powered passenger train excursions with the goal of maintaining steam on the main lines of the railroads in the eastern United States.

Over a thousand passengers had paid $37.95 each for the round trip from New York City to Niagara Falls on the Mohawk Valley Limited.

The train’s arrival in Albany was covered in the Sunday Times Union of October 13. The father of young Amsterdam railfan Emil Suda saw the story. They had missed the train going west but decided to watch it Sunday on the return trip.

“What a fine autumn day it was, sunny and warm,” wrote Emil Suda. “As the hour came and went, it appeared the train was running late!”

Slowdowns for passing trains and unscheduled stops for water and coal slowed the excursion train.

Suda said there were a few others on hand as dusk was coming in at the old downtown Amsterdam train station, “The Mohawk Valley Limited appeared and rumbled down the track—not even slowing down for the onlookers who gathered!

“Regardless it was a sight, seeing those four main drivers of the engine roll along, and the coaches going by, and of course seeing some cinders fall to the ground from the smokestack.”

Some of the passenger cars were modern and some old style. At the rear was an open platform observation car from the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad. There was a dining car, a restored Jersey Central baggage passenger car, and a Pullman lounge from Pennsylvania Railroad’s Broadway Limited.

A private car up front carried Penn Central and Norfolk & Western Railroad executives. The Pennsylvania Railroad and New York Central had merged earlier in 1968 and faced considerable financial problems.

U.S. Senator Frank Moss, a Democrat from Utah, was one of the private car passengers. Moss was a member of a Senate committee looking into the decline of passenger rail service in America.

In an article on the Mohawk Valley Limited’s visit to Rochester, reporter John McLoughlin in the Democrat and Chronicle wrote that “grown men and women” stuck their heads out of open windows on the train with goggles on so they could smell the smoke. The goggles protected against cinders causing eye injuries.

Locomotive 759 today is a static display at the Steamtown National Historic Site in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Suda, a model train enthusiast, has an O gauge model of a Berkshire locomotive like 759.

Friday, January 19, 2024

Jennet Conant discusses her book The Great Secret: The Classified World War II Disaster That Launched the War on Cancer.  Also heard is film maker Nick Spark who lobbied for U.S. government recognition of medical doctor Stewart Alexander whose work chronicling the Bari disaster in southern Italy was the impetus to developing chemotherapy.

Mohawk Valley Weather, Wednesday, Janaury 17, 2023

16 degrees in The City of Amsterdam at 6:23AM

Arnold was a cavalry officer in the war of 1812, later attaining the rank of captain. He was supervisor of the town of Amsterdam from 1813 to 1816 when he was elected to the New York State Assembly

Benedict Arnold of Amsterdam
By Bob Cudmore

Amsterdam's Benedict Arnold died on March 3, 1849 and likely was buried at a cemetery on Market Hill, according to research done by historian Christopher Philippo. The growing village encroached on that burial ground. Arnold's remains and others were moved to Green Hill Cemetery on Church Street after it was created in 1858.

Arnold's grandson was also buried at Green Hill. Lieutenant Benedict Arnold Leonard was killed in 1864 in his twelfth Civil War battle.
Arnold Avenue and the former Arnold Avenue School were named in honor of the good Benedict Arnold and his family.

NOT THE TRAITOR
Amsterdam's Benedict Arnold was not the Revolutionary War hero of the battle of Saratoga who later became a turncoat. General Arnold was regarded as a hero until his plans to betray the fort at West Point were found out on September 23, 1780.

The man who became Amsterdam's Benedict Arnold was born less than two weeks later, October 5 of that year. It seems that Benedict was a traditional name in the family.
One source reports the younger Arnold was born in Schaghticoke, Rennselaer County while others list his birthplace as Florida, just south of Amsterdam, or Amsterdam itself.
Arnold married Mary Bovee in 1806 and by 1808 was operating a store at Main and Bridge Streets in Amsterdam.

Arnold was a cavalry officer in the war of 1812, later attaining the rank of captain. He was supervisor of the town of Amsterdam from 1813 to 1816 when he was elected to the New York State Assembly. He was a member of Congress from 1829 to 1831 during the administration of President Andrew Jackson, although he was politically opposed to Jackson.

Arnold was one of the founders of the Amsterdam Aqueduct Company in 1829. The company laid pipes to bring water to thirsty citizens.

He was among those who campaigned to incorporate Amsterdam as a village and was the second president of the village board in 1832. He served again as town of Amsterdam supervisor and, in 1844, was one of the organizers of the Fonda Fair. He owned a distillery whose vats were purchased the year he died for what became Kelloggs and Miller, a linseed oil manufacturer.

Arnold's two story Market Street home was a landmark later torn down for construction of the Blood Building. Today the site is occupied by the downtown hotel.

WHAT'S WRONG WITH AMSTERDAM

In 1946, the Chamber of Commerce sponsored a contest called. What I Don't Like About Amsterdam.
The city's carpet mill economy was still thriving. However, the Chamber wanted to identify problems. The 850 entries were submitted anonymously. A numbering system enabled the Chamber to award cash prizes to anonymous winners.

Charles H. Schenck, Chamber Executive Secretary, said lack of recreation facilities, conditions of the streets, garbage collection, hotel accommodations, transportation, theatrical facilities and sale of alcoholic beverages were the most frequent complaints.
We are quick to criticize those who make an honest effort to do something, wrote the first prize winner. Misguided leadership has done a lot to put nationalism above civic responsibility and has tended to build up group interest with selfish motives. We are all Americans and we should work together.

The second place essay called for Sunday evening services in the churches and an end to competition among veterans groups. The writer proposed the city buy sidewalk snow plows and dedicate the planned athletic fields near the Lynch School as a World War II memorial.
The third place finisher suggested a waste disposal system so that sewage would no longer be dumped into the Mohawk River. The writer also called for beautification of the riverfront.

The Friday Conversation on The Historians

Jennet Conant discusses her book The Great Secret: The Classified World War II Disaster That Launched the War on Cancer.

On the night of December 2, 1943, the Luftwaffe bombed a critical Allied port in Bari, Italy, sinking 17 ships and killing more than a thousand servicemen and hundreds of civilians. Caught in the surprise air raid was the John Harvey, an American Liberty ship carrying a top-secret cargo of 2,000 mustard bombs to be used in retaliation if the Germans resorted to gas warfare. 

When one young sailor after another began suddenly dying of mysterious symptoms, Lieutenant Colonel Stewart Alexander, a doctor and chemical weapons expert, was dispatched to investigate. He quickly diagnosed mustard gas exposure, but was overruled by British officials determined to cover up the presence of poison gas in the devastating naval disaster, which the press dubbed "little Pearl Harbor". Prime Minister Winston Churchill and General Dwight D. Eisenhower acted in concert to suppress the truth, insisting the censorship was necessitated by military security. 

Mohawk Valley Weather, Tuesday, January 16, 2023

21 degrees in The City of Amsterdam at 7:20AM

Help us continue The Historians Podcast by making a donation.  Please contribute at https://gofund.me/777777e9  or send a check made out to Bob Cudmore, 125 Horstman Drive, Scotia, NY 12302. Thank You very much

Tomorrow on The Historians the Bob conversation with Samantha Hall-Saladino

The role of the glove industry in Fulton County is being explored in a series of displays and programs called the Year of the Glove.  Fulton County historian Samantha Hall-Saladino, a Gloversville native, discusses this project.

Two smart men from the Mohawk Valley

By Bob Cudmore

   Amsterdam’s Bill Hojohn was very smart, according to his longtime friends. 

   Local history fan Emil Suda said William Walter Hojohn was born in Amsterdam in 1906 and died at age 80 in 1987.  He was survived by two sons, William, Jr. and Richard.

   Suda said, “A tall thin lanky man with glasses, Bill

had a fantastic career in electronics as he was a genius in the field--working for the General Electric in Schenectady, then the federal government at White Sands Proving Grounds.

   “He then came closer to home at the Rome Air Force Base (now Griffiss) doing radar work.  He ended his career working in Amsterdam at Electro Metrics Corporation.

   “All these places of employment were ongoing while maintaining a radio repair shop here in Amsterdam on weekends. First out of his home, followed by opening an actual shop at 222 East Main Street in 1941. 

   “By the 1950s television was coming into demand and Bill expanded into the market, not just repairing sets, but even installing antennas on roofs!”

   Hojohn also had a passion for model trains.  Suda continued, “The electric train hobby was very popular and this is where Bill’s passion went, not with the tinplate models of Lionel or Gilbert American Flyer but with the scale HO lines. 

   “This is where Bill reached out to service the needs of those who purchased (model) trains.  He aligned himself as an authorized repair center for the Lionel and American Flyer brands.

   “In Amsterdam a few stores sold electric trains at the Christmas time but none compared to what the John E. Larrabee Hardware Store could offer and those repairs kept Bill busy.”

   There was a special shop that Bill Hojohn maintained according to Suda, “Bill’s most remembered and iconic location was his move to 9 Grove Street in 1955 directly behind the Niagara Mohawk building on Market Street. 

  “Over the wooden door with a glass window hung a painted yellow metal sign reading The Radio Workshop dressed off with two lightning bolts.  Up on the second floor one was greeted by a fairly large “L” shaped model train empire about 20 feet in length, in scale HO that sadly never got completed.

   “Urban renewal in Amsterdam in the early 70s forced (Bill Hojohn) to move and retire.”

   Suda thanks Jerry Snyder of Historic Amsterdam League for providing information for this article from microfilm copies of the Amsterdam Recorder.

EMAIL MAN

   When computer programmer Raymond Samuel Tomlinson, 74, died in 2016 in Lincoln, Massachusetts, news stories around the world noted his roots in Amsterdam, Vail Mills and Broadalbin.

   At his death from a suspected heart attack Tomlinson was a principal engineer for Raytheon.  He is credited with sending the first email messages between separate computers in 1971 and making the decision to use the “at” sign-@-to separate the sender’s name from the sender’s Internet address. 

   Born in Amsterdam in 1941, Ray was the son of Raymond and Dorothy Tomlinson who lived near the village of Broadalbin in Vail Mills, a hamlet in the town of Mayfield. 

   “We knew he was smart but had no idea how smart,” said Samuel “Tom” Tomlinson one of Ray’s cousins.  “Tom” said that for Ray, “School was a breeze.”

   Ray was valedictorian of the class of 1959 at Broadalbin.  The class had forty-five students. 

   Ray’s girlfriend in high school was Barbara Andersen.  Andersen told the Daily Gazette the young man came up with a “concoction of wires and things” that enabled her to talk with him while not interfering with her family’s business phone at the White Holland House restaurant on Route 29.

The Friday Conversation on The Historians

Jennet Conant discusses her book The Great Secret: The Classified World War II Disaster That Launched the War on Cancer.

On the night of December 2, 1943, the Luftwaffe bombed a critical Allied port in Bari, Italy, sinking 17 ships and killing more than a thousand servicemen and hundreds of civilians. Caught in the surprise air raid was the John Harvey, an American Liberty ship carrying a top-secret cargo of 2,000 mustard bombs to be used in retaliation if the Germans resorted to gas warfare. 

When one young sailor after another began suddenly dying of mysterious symptoms, Lieutenant Colonel Stewart Alexander, a doctor and chemical weapons expert, was dispatched to investigate. He quickly diagnosed mustard gas exposure, but was overruled by British officials determined to cover up the presence of poison gas in the devastating naval disaster, which the press dubbed "little Pearl Harbor". Prime Minister Winston Churchill and General Dwight D. Eisenhower acted in concert to suppress the truth, insisting the censorship was necessitated by military security. 

Mohawk Valley Weather, Monday, January 15, 2024

16 degrees in The City of Amsterdam at 6:28AM

   “All these places of employment were ongoing while maintaining a radio repair shop here in Amsterdam on weekends. First out of his home, followed by opening an actual shop at 222 East Main Street in 1941"

Two smart men from the Mohawk Valley

By Bob Cudmore

   Amsterdam’s Bill Hojohn was very smart, according to his longtime friends.  .

   Local history fan Emil Suda said William Walter Hojohn was born in Amsterdam in 1906 and died at age 80 in 1987.  He was survived by two sons, William, Jr. and Richard.

   Suda said, “A tall thin lanky man with glasses, Bill

had a fantastic career in electronics as he was a genius in the field--working for the General Electric in Schenectady, then the federal government at White Sands Proving Grounds.

   “He then came closer to home at the Rome Air Force Base (now Griffiss) doing radar work.  He ended his career working in Amsterdam at Electro Metrics Corporation.

   “All these places of employment were ongoing while maintaining a radio repair shop here in Amsterdam on weekends. First out of his home, followed by opening an actual shop at 222 East Main Street in 1941. 

   “By the 1950s television was coming into demand and Bill expanded into the market, not just repairing sets, but even installing antennas on roofs!”

   Hojohn also had a passion for model trains.  Suda continued, “The electric train hobby was very popular and this is where Bill’s passion went, not with the tinplate models of Lionel or Gilbert American Flyer but with the scale HO lines. 

   “This is where Bill reached out to service the needs of those who purchased (model) trains.  He aligned himself as an authorized repair center for the Lionel and American Flyer brands.

   “In Amsterdam a few stores sold electric trains at the Christmas time but none compared to what the John E. Larrabee Hardware Store could offer and those repairs kept Bill busy.”

   There was a special shop that Bill Hojohn maintained according to Suda, “Bill’s most remembered and iconic location was his move to 9 Grove Street in 1955 directly behind the Niagara Mohawk building on Market Street. 

  “Over the wooden door with a glass window hung a painted yellow metal sign reading The Radio Workshop dressed off with two lightning bolts.  Up on the second floor one was greeted by a fairly large “L” shaped model train empire about 20 feet in length, in scale HO that sadly never got completed.

   “Urban renewal in Amsterdam in the early 70s forced (Bill Hojohn) to move and retire.”

   Suda thanks Jerry Snyder of Historic Amsterdam League for providing information for this article from microfilm copies of the Amsterdam Recorder.

Tomorrow, Monday, January 15, 2024, Bob has the story behind the story "All about two smart Men" 

EMAIL MAN

   When computer programmer Raymond Samuel Tomlinson, 74, died in 2016 in Lincoln, Massachusetts, news stories around the world noted his roots in Amsterdam, Vail Mills and Broadalbin.

   At his death from a suspected heart attack Tomlinson was a principal engineer for Raytheon.  He is credited with sending the first email messages between separate computers in 1971 and making the decision to use the “at” sign-@-to separate the sender’s name from the sender’s Internet address. 

   Born in Amsterdam in 1941, Ray was the son of Raymond and Dorothy Tomlinson who lived near the village of Broadalbin in Vail Mills, a hamlet in the town of Mayfield. 

   “We knew he was smart but had no idea how smart,” said Samuel “Tom” Tomlinson one of Ray’s cousins.  “Tom” said that for Ray, “School was a breeze.”

   Ray was valedictorian of the class of 1959 at Broadalbin.  The class had forty-five students. 

   Ray’s girlfriend in high school was Barbara Andersen.  Andersen told the Daily Gazette the young man came up with a “concoction of wires and things” that enabled her to talk with him while not interfering with her family’s business phone at the White Holland House restaurant on Route 29.

Bob Cudmores conversation with Bruce Luyendyk "The cold Southland"

Bruce Luyendyk is a geologist and author of Mighty Bad Land, the story of his explorations of Marie Byrd Land in Antarctica in the 1990s, These explorations led to the discovery of a new continent, named Zealandia.

The Friday Conversation on The Historians

Jennet Conant discusses her book The Great Secret: The Classified World War II Disaster That Launched the War on Cancer.

On the night of December 2, 1943, the Luftwaffe bombed a critical Allied port in Bari, Italy, sinking 17 ships and killing more than a thousand servicemen and hundreds of civilians. Caught in the surprise air raid was the John Harvey, an American Liberty ship carrying a top-secret cargo of 2,000 mustard bombs to be used in retaliation if the Germans resorted to gas warfare. 

When one young sailor after another began suddenly dying of mysterious symptoms, Lieutenant Colonel Stewart Alexander, a doctor and chemical weapons expert, was dispatched to investigate. He quickly diagnosed mustard gas exposure, but was overruled by British officials determined to cover up the presence of poison gas in the devastating naval disaster, which the press dubbed "little Pearl Harbor". Prime Minister Winston Churchill and General Dwight D. Eisenhower acted in concert to suppress the truth, insisting the censorship was necessitated by military security. 

Mohawk Valley Weekend Weather, Sunday, Janaury 14, 2024

34 degrees in The City of Amsterdam at 6:03AM