The Historians

Saturday, December 16, 2023

The Bob story posted today in The Gazette and Recorder https://www.dailygazette.com/

"Christmas through the years" 

Newspaper carrier boys were guests of the Recorder that Christmas, boisterously enjoying the melodrama “A Hidden Crime” at the East Main Street Opera House.  The Salvation Army fed 500 people

Episode 503- Jack D. Warren Jr. is author of FREEDOM: The Enduring Importance of the American Revolution. Freedom is a look into British America, the Revolutionary War, the birth of a new nation, what freedom means, and how the events of the past are important even today.

Published under the auspices of the American Revolution Institute of the Society of the Cincinnati, Freedom: The Enduring Importance of the American Revolution is a narrative history of the War for Independence. It tells the pivotal story of the courageous men and women who risked their lives to create a new nation based on the idea that government should serve people and protect their freedom.

We need to muster $225.00 this weekend On-line https://gofund.me/777777e9

$1695.00 to reach the goal post 

U.S. Mail send a check made out to Bob Cudmore, 125 Horstman Drive, Scotia, NY 12302. 

The Elk Street mill was taken over by Julius Kayser Company in 1906 and employed a thousand people at its peak. A year-long strike in 1920 was a factor in Kayser's decision to leave Amsterdam in 1924

Silk mills and a knitting mill explosion
By Bob Cudmore

Former employees of Starin Silk Mills in Fultonville started the earliest silk-making factory in Amsterdam on Elk Street in 1891, according to historian Hugh Donlon.

Natural silk comes from a fiber produced by caterpillars spinning cocoons. The threads are boiled and woven into textiles.

The Elk Street mill was taken over by Julius Kayser Company in 1906 and employed a thousand people at its peak. A year-long strike in 1920 was a factor in Kayser's decision to leave Amsterdam in 1924

Donlon said another company, Fownes Brothers, also wove silk at its plant on Amsterdam's Grove Street.

John and Thomas Fownes founded their glove-making company in Worcester, England, in 1777. Fownes established glove mills in Amsterdam and Gloversville in 1903.

My grandfather, Harry Cudmore, came from Torrington, England to Amsterdam in 1911 to weave silk at Fownes' mill on Grove Street. The Cudmores settled in a two family home on Eagle Street in the East End, three houses away from Harry and Bryna Demsky, whose son became the actor Kirk Douglas.

My grandfather's sister Beatrice, who had come from England years before, and her husband, painter Bob Brown, owned the house where the Cudmores lived and resided on the other side.

Donlon said that fabrics other than silk became more popular for gloves by the time Fownes was acquired by the Sherr Company in 1935.

Starting in the 1940s, two of my father's sisters, Gladys Cudmore Morrell and Vera Cudmore, worked in the shipping room at Fownes. We could always count on gloves for Christmas.

My grandfather, whose wife had died in 1934, lived with my aunts in a second floor flat on Forbes near the intersection with Dean Street.

As my grandfather had done, my aunts walked to work. Sometimes they stopped for refreshment at the Ivy Leaf, a basement tavern which also served hearty meals at Forbes and Schuyler Streets.

In his working days grandfather Harry frequently stopped at Shaughnessy's Tavern at East Main and Eagle Streets on his way home from Fownes' Grove Street mill.

In the late 1950's Fownes shifted manufacturing from the United States to the Far East. After Mohawk Carpet ceased manufacturing in Amsterdam, Fownes acquired Mohawk's multi-story mill on Elk Street for a glove distribution center, replacing a Mohawk sign with a Fownes sign (visible from the Thruway) on top of the building.

In 2010 Fownes moved its distribution center from Amsterdam to Mayfield. In 2016 three men were charged with creating a large marijuana growing operation on the top floor of the Elk Street building.

EXPLOSION AT A KNITTING MILL

A factory explosion in 1883 claimed one life and made news across New York State. Watchman Michael Keegan, 41, smelled gas while making his rounds at the Blaisdell knitting mill in Rock City.

Rock City, named for rock quarries there, was a village settled by the early 1800s. The name was changed to Rockton a few years after the explosion and the village was annexed by the city of Amsterdam in 1901.

The Fort Plain Register reported, "The mill was lighted with a gasoline machine and feeling convinced that the machine was leaking, (Keegan) took his lantern and started for the (basement) room in which it was kept. He had just entered the room when the escaping gas ignited from the lantern and exploded with a loud report."

Knocked down by the blast, Keegan managed to crawl upstairs, open a window and tumble out into the snow. It was about 4:00 a.m. on February 12.

Keegan died two days after the explosion. He was 41, and left a wife and three children.

Mohawk Valley Weekend Weather, Saturday, December 16, 2023

44 degrees in The City of Amsterdam at 6:10AM

Wednesday, December 13, 2023 

The Bob story posted this weekend in The Gazette and Recorder(early Saturday)

"Christmas through the years"

$125.00 collected over the Weekend for Go Fund Me, Thank's to all.

This week we need to rally $225.00

 Please 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. $5305.00 the goal $7000.00 by the end of the merry month off December

from The Daily Gazette

Mary Zawacki

by Stan Hudy

https://www.dailygazette.com/life_and_arts/schenectady-historical-society/article_79c4ce7e-98fa-11ee-8887-87cb9265ce50.html

GETTING TO KNOW - A University of New Paltz graduate in 2009 with a bachelor of arts in history and French, Mary Zawacki is passionate about the past — especially Schenectady County’s history.

Zawacki is the executive director of the Schenectady County Historical Society at 32 Washington Ave. in the Stockade District of Schenectady, joining the organization in 2014 as its curator and becoming executive director in 2017.

Bob Cudmore conversation with Mary Zawacki

Episode 433-A history of the Mohawk River with Mary Zawacki, executive director of the Schenectady County Historical Society. When the last Ice Age began to melt 22,000 years ago, the Mohawk River flowed with more force than Niagara Falls.

An eye for a good story
By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History, Daily Gazette and Amsterdam Recorder. 

Amsterdam High School 1945 graduate Richard Ellers had a sharp eye for a good story.

Born in New Haven, Connecticut, Ellers and his family moved to Amsterdam and rented a flat or apartment on an upper floor of a commercial building on East Main Street.

There was only single pane glass on the windows and Ellers said, "I can still hear the clink-clink-clink of snow chains on cars driving below. Occasionally every third or fourth clink would be counterpointed with a double thunk, which was the sound of the ends of a broken chain slapping the underside of a fender."

The flat was a few doors west of Coogan's Grill, operated by local Democratic political leader William Coogan.

There was a side door to Coogan's in the hall, originally the lady's entrance. Ellers said, "I knew this door well because, before I was of age, my dad would send me to Coogan's to buy him a quart of beer. I would enter that side door, pay Mr. Coogan, who would then deliver the quart to me, in a bag, out in the hall.

When Mohawk and Bigelow-Sanford carpet mills in Amsterdam were producing canvas, not carpet, for the armed forces in World War II, high school boys became part of the work force.

The Board of Education changed the high school day to start and end early, so that male students could take part time jobs in the mills.

The students worked four hour shifts after school. Ellers worked at Bigelow-Sanford Carpet, helping make Army squad tents out of canvas woven in the factory.

Ellers wrote, "Our job was pulling large sections of canvas for women who sat at huge industrial sewing machines putting sections together.

"We helpers pulled the canvas as the women sewed. You wore your oldest clothes because the dark green sealant/fireproofing on the canvas came off on anything it touched.

"The sewing women wore really big aprons, plus long cuffs on their forearms. I think that when summer vacation came, they put us on full eight-hour shifts. I cannot remember if the high school girls took jobs, too."

Ellers paid tribute to a Market Street pool hall proprietor known as Reverend Louie Allen, "We called him Reverend, partly because he was strict about behavior."
Ellers said no cussing was allowed at Louie's, "But he was always ready to shake 'buck dice' for money or just for a soda pop and his back room was a haunt of poker players and some crap shooting."
Allen's first floor pool hall was on Market Street at an alley that led to the police station. The building was torn down for urban renewal in the 1970s.
Ellers was voted by his 1945 high school classmates as the wittiest and noisiest boy. He witnessed FDR's Presidential funeral and wrote a first person account for the school paper, The Item.
Ellers skipped his May 1945 high school graduation ceremony to enlist in the United States Navy, serving as a gunner's mate on minesweepers in the Pacific Theater, reaching the Philippines and Japan before the war ended.

Taking advantage of the G.I. Bill, he studied at Kent State University's school of journalism, graduating in 1953. He worked as a reporter and photographer for the Warren Ohio Tribune Chronicle from 1954 to 1965 and then for the Cleveland Plain Dealer until his retirement in 1992. His reporting beats included presidential political campaigns, science and nature, industry, and human interest.

Ellers, 93, died in July 2021 at his home in Warren, Ohio. He had married Martha McLaughlin in 1956 who survives, as do two children.

Friday, December 15, 2023-Episode 503- Jack Warren is author of FREEDOM: The Enduring Importance of the American Revolution. Freedom is a look into British America, the Revolutionary War, the birth of a new nation, what freedom means, and how the events of the past are important even today.

Mohawk Valley Weather, Wednesday, December 13, 2023

33 degrees in The City of Amsterdam at 5:48AM

Tuesday, December 12, 2023 on The Historians with Bob Cudmore

Over 10 years Over 500 Interviews, many with Mohawk Valley people you know

In The Gazette and Amsterdam Recorder this weekend "Christmas through the years"

Thanks to Lori Williams for the latest Go und Me donation.

This week we need to muster $225.00

 Please 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. $5305.00 the goal $7000.00 by the end of the merry month off December

Wednesday on The Historians from New Amsterdam to Kingston

Stephen Blauweiss is co-author of the book “The Story of Historic Kingston: Featuring 950 Images and Connections to the Catskills and New York City.”

Mohawk Valley Went to War in 1941

By Bob Cudmore

    Alton R. Swann, born in Schenectady, moved to Gloversville, went to high school and business school there and became an accountant at Schenectady General Electric.

   Drafted by the Army in May 1941, Swann was serving at Clark Air Base in the Philippines with the 803rd Engineer Battalion.

   The day after the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, a Japanese bombing attack December 8 resulted in destruction of Clark Field.  Swann’s 803rd battalion was decimated in the battle for Bataan.  After being moved to the island fortress of Corregidor, Swann was captured.

   He survived a death march, three years of prison in the Philippines and Japan including a trip to Japan aboard a "hell" ship, the Noto Maru.

   In Japan he was used as slave labor.  Liberated after the Japanese surrender, he was aboard a hospital ship when he wrote his fiancé, Glendean Brooks in Gloversville, asking if she was still waiting for him.

   She was.  Swann married Brooks at the Gloversville Methodist Church parsonage Thanksgiving afternoon, 1945.  Swann went back to work at GE, was transferred to New England and lived many years in Monroe, Connecticut.

   James V. Hogg from Amsterdam was on a Navy ship somewhere in the Pacific when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

   His niece Karen terHaar said, “In the months after Pearl Harbor, many ships in the area were ordered to maintain radio silence. The families of crew members did not know if their fathers, sons or brothers were dead or alive.”

   Hogg’s parents, Frank and Mildred Hogg, were living on Grant Avenue in Amsterdam.

   TerHaar wrote, “About four months after Pearl Harbor, Mom was sitting on the front porch when she heard the postman’s voice. She looked up and saw him running down the sidewalk. He was waving a letter and yelling, ‘Jimmy’s alive! Jimmy’s alive!’”

   James Hogg became a Lieutenant Commander in the Navy and married a woman from Australia. He later lived in California.

   An Amsterdam soldier died in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor 82 years ago.  William E. Hasenfuss, Jr. came from a family of nine on Northampton Road.

   Hasenfuss had flown planes at an air field in Perth before enlisting in the Army in 1939.  He died when Japanese airplanes shot up the B-24 bomber Hasenfuss and his ground crew were working on at Hickam Air Field in Hawaii.

   His mother, Frieda, Amsterdam’s first World War II Gold Star Mother, christened the light cruiser U.S.S. Amsterdam in 1944 at Newport News, Virginia.

   “I was thinking of William when I smashed that bottle.” she said after the vessel slid into the James River.

   A model of USS Amsterdam was handmade by the late Albert M. Swager of Pennsylvania, a former crewman, who donated it to Amsterdam’s Walter Elwood Museum.  Volunteers are working on an exhibit.

   The movie “South of Tahiti,” playing at the Strand Theatre on East Main Street in Amsterdam, was interrupted Sunday afternoon December 7, 1941 when the news broke that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor.  Radio coverage was piped into the theater and dazed patrons left the building.

   George A. Tralka, 15, was at his family’s James Street home in Amsterdam when he heard about the attack on the radio.  At first Tralka thought Pearl Harbor was in Alaska.

      The next day as Tralka delivered the Schenectady Gazette he heard President Roosevelt’s “day of infamy” speech on the radio when at Reid Hill Pharmacy.

“It was a solemn moment in the drug store,” Tralka wrote in his memoir, “Diary of a Replacement Soldier.”  Tralka survived the war and became a physician in the Washington, D.C. area.

Friday, December 15, 2023-Episode 503- Jack Warren is author of FREEDOM: The Enduring Importance of the American Revolution. Freedom is a look into British America, the Revolutionary War, the birth of a new nation, what freedom means, and how the events of the past are important even today.

Mohawk Valley Weather, Tuesday, December 12, 2023

35 degrees in The City of Amsterdam at 5:24AM

Monday, December 11, 2023

Bob Cudmore Over 10 years Over 500 Interviews

Thanks to Andrew Heck for the latest $100.00 donation over this past weekend.

This week we need to gather $250.00

 Please 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. $5280.00 the goal $7000.00 by the end of the year.

Mohawk Valley Went to War in 1941

By Bob Cudmore

    Alton R. Swann, born in Schenectady, moved to Gloversville, went to high school and business school there and became an accountant at Schenectady General Electric.

   Drafted by the Army in May 1941, Swann was serving at Clark Air Base in the Philippines with the 803rd Engineer Battalion.

   The day after the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, a Japanese bombing attack December 8 resulted in destruction of Clark Field.  Swann’s 803rd battalion was decimated in the battle for Bataan.  After being moved to the island fortress of Corregidor, Swann was captured.

   He survived a death march, three years of prison in the Philippines and Japan including a trip to Japan aboard a "hell" ship, the Noto Maru.

   In Japan he was used as slave labor.  Liberated after the Japanese surrender, he was aboard a hospital ship when he wrote his fiancé, Glendean Brooks in Gloversville, asking if she was still waiting for him.

   She was.  Swann married Brooks at the Gloversville Methodist Church parsonage Thanksgiving afternoon, 1945.  Swann went back to work at GE, was transferred to New England and lived many years in Monroe, Connecticut.

   James V. Hogg from Amsterdam was on a Navy ship somewhere in the Pacific when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

   His niece Karen terHaar said, “In the months after Pearl Harbor, many ships in the area were ordered to maintain radio silence. The families of crew members did not know if their fathers, sons or brothers were dead or alive.”

   Hogg’s parents, Frank and Mildred Hogg, were living on Grant Avenue in Amsterdam.

   TerHaar wrote, “About four months after Pearl Harbor, Mom was sitting on the front porch when she heard the postman’s voice. She looked up and saw him running down the sidewalk. He was waving a letter and yelling, ‘Jimmy’s alive! Jimmy’s alive!’”

   James Hogg became a Lieutenant Commander in the Navy and married a woman from Australia. He later lived in California.

   An Amsterdam soldier died in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor 82 years ago.  William E. Hasenfuss, Jr. came from a family of nine on Northampton Road.

   Hasenfuss had flown planes at an air field in Perth before enlisting in the Army in 1939.  He died when Japanese airplanes shot up the B-24 bomber Hasenfuss and his ground crew were working on at Hickam Air Field in Hawaii.

   His mother, Frieda, Amsterdam’s first World War II Gold Star Mother, christened the light cruiser U.S.S. Amsterdam in 1944 at Newport News, Virginia.

   “I was thinking of William when I smashed that bottle.” she said after the vessel slid into the James River.

   A model of USS Amsterdam was handmade by the late Albert M. Swager of Pennsylvania, a former crewman, who donated it to Amsterdam’s Walter Elwood Museum.  Volunteers are working on an exhibit.

   The movie “South of Tahiti,” playing at the Strand Theatre on East Main Street in Amsterdam, was interrupted Sunday afternoon December 7, 1941 when the news broke that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor.  Radio coverage was piped into the theater and dazed patrons left the building.

   George A. Tralka, 15, was at his family’s James Street home in Amsterdam when he heard about the attack on the radio.  At first Tralka thought Pearl Harbor was in Alaska.

      The next day as Tralka delivered the Schenectady Gazette he heard President Roosevelt’s “day of infamy” speech on the radio when at Reid Hill Pharmacy.

“It was a solemn moment in the drug store,” Tralka wrote in his memoir, “Diary of a Replacement Soldier.”  Tralka survived the war and became a physician in the Washington, D.C. area. 

Mohawk Valley Weather, Monday, December 11, 2023

34 degrees in The City of Amsterdam at 6:17AM

Bob Cudmore Over 10 years Over 500 Interviews

A little weather in the weather this week, scroll down for The Mohawk Valley forecast

Thanks to Andrew Heck for the latest $100.00 donation

 Please 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. $5280.00 the goal $7000.00 the next three weeks.

Sunday, December 10, 2023

Mohawk Valley Went to War in 1941

By Bob Cudmore

    Alton R. Swann, born in Schenectady, moved to Gloversville, went to high school and business school there and became an accountant at Schenectady General Electric.

   Drafted by the Army in May 1941, Swann was serving at Clark Air Base in the Philippines with the 803rd Engineer Battalion.

   The day after the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, a Japanese bombing attack December 8 resulted in destruction of Clark Field.  Swann’s 803rd battalion was decimated in the battle for Bataan.  After being moved to the island fortress of Corregidor, Swann was captured.

   He survived a death march, three years of prison in the Philippines and Japan including a trip to Japan aboard a "hell" ship, the Noto Maru.

   In Japan he was used as slave labor.  Liberated after the Japanese surrender, he was aboard a hospital ship when he wrote his fiancé, Glendean Brooks in Gloversville, asking if she was still waiting for him.

   She was.  Swann married Brooks at the Gloversville Methodist Church parsonage Thanksgiving afternoon, 1945.  Swann went back to work at GE, was transferred to New England and lived many years in Monroe, Connecticut.

   James V. Hogg from Amsterdam was on a Navy ship somewhere in the Pacific when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

   His niece Karen terHaar said, “In the months after Pearl Harbor, many ships in the area were ordered to maintain radio silence. The families of crew members did not know if their fathers, sons or brothers were dead or alive.”

   Hogg’s parents, Frank and Mildred Hogg, were living on Grant Avenue in Amsterdam.

   TerHaar wrote, “About four months after Pearl Harbor, Mom was sitting on the front porch when she heard the postman’s voice. She looked up and saw him running down the sidewalk. He was waving a letter and yelling, ‘Jimmy’s alive! Jimmy’s alive!’”

   James Hogg became a Lieutenant Commander in the Navy and married a woman from Australia. He later lived in California.

   An Amsterdam soldier died in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor 82 years ago.  William E. Hasenfuss, Jr. came from a family of nine on Northampton Road.

   Hasenfuss had flown planes at an air field in Perth before enlisting in the Army in 1939.  He died when Japanese airplanes shot up the B-24 bomber Hasenfuss and his ground crew were working on at Hickam Air Field in Hawaii.

Tomorrow, Monday, December 11, 2023-Story behind the story-Some of Pearl Harbor attack’s local effects (Podcast 5 Minutes)

   His mother, Frieda, Amsterdam’s first World War II Gold Star Mother, christened the light cruiser U.S.S. Amsterdam in 1944 at Newport News, Virginia.

   “I was thinking of William when I smashed that bottle.” she said after the vessel slid into the James River.

   A model of USS Amsterdam was handmade by the late Albert M. Swager of Pennsylvania, a former crewman, who donated it to Amsterdam’s Walter Elwood Museum.  Volunteers are working on an exhibit.

   The movie “South of Tahiti,” playing at the Strand Theatre on East Main Street in Amsterdam, was interrupted Sunday afternoon December 7, 1941 when the news broke that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor.  Radio coverage was piped into the theater and dazed patrons left the building.

   George A. Tralka, 15, was at his family’s James Street home in Amsterdam when he heard about the attack on the radio.  At first Tralka thought Pearl Harbor was in Alaska.

      The next day as Tralka delivered the Schenectady Gazette he heard President Roosevelt’s “day of infamy” speech on the radio when at Reid Hill Pharmacy.

“It was a solemn moment in the drug store,” Tralka wrote in his memoir, “Diary of a Replacement Soldier.”  Tralka survived the war and became a physician in the Washington, D.C. area. 

Mohawk Valley Weekend Weather, Sunday, December 10, 2023

49 degrees in The City of Amsterdam at 5:54AM

Bob Cudmore The Historians 500 episodes since the podcast started in 2014.  Please 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. $5180.00 the goal $7000.00 over the next three weeks. Thanks

Bob Cudmore this weekend The Daily Gazette and Amsterdam Recorder The Historians on Sunday

https://www.dailygazette.com/

Focus on History-Some of Pearl Harbor attack’s local effects

Alton R. Swann, born in Schenectady, moved to Gloversville, went to high school and business school there and became an accountant at Schenectady General Electric.

   Drafted by the Army in May 1941, Swann was serving at Clark Air Base in the Philippines with the 803rd Engineer Battalion.

Bob Cudmore on "the radio" today at noon

WCSS Amsterdam 106.9FM and WKAJ St. Johnsville 97.9FM

Noon

Saturday, December 9, 2023-Episode 502-Jack Kelly is author of God Save Benedict Arnold. Arnold committed treason. Yet he was more than a turncoat—Kelly argues Arnold’s achievements during the early years of the Revolutionary War defined him as the most successful soldier of the era.

12:30

Saturday, December 9, 2023-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.

Saturday, December 9, 2023

Bob Cudmores conversation with Steve Haggerty

Steve Haggerty is author of Norman Rockwell’s Models: In and Out of the Studio. In 1940, illustrator Norman Rockwell, his wife Mary and their three sons moved to West Arlington, Vermont. The artist discovered a treasure trove of models. Haggerty’s book‘details these models’ lives, friendships with the artist and experiences in his studio.

Amsterdam changes after Pearl Harbor attack

By Bob Cudmore

   The movie “South of Tahiti” playing at the Strand Theatre on East Main Street in Amsterdam was interrupted Sunday afternoon December 7, 1941 when the news broke that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor.  Radio coverage was piped into the theater and dazed patrons left the building.

   The Amsterdam Clubs Association met later that day at St. Michael’s Club on Reid Street.  According to the late Robert Going’s book on World War II, “Where Do We Find Such Men,” attorney Frederick Partyka urged “member groups to be devoted to true Americanism.”

   George A. Tralka, 15, was at his family’s James Street home in Amsterdam when he heard about the attack on the radio.  Tralka at first thought Pearl Harbor was in Alaska.

   Tralka’s parents, Joseph and Martha, went ahead with their plans to go out that Sunday and to have George watch his younger sisters. 

   The next day as young Tralka delivered the Schenectady Gazette he heard President Roosevelt’s “day of infamy” speech on the radio when making his delivery to Reid Hill Pharmacy.

   “It was a solemn moment in the drug store,” Tralka wrote in his memoir, “Diary of a Replacement Soldier.”  Tralka survived the war and became a physician in the Washington, D.C. area.   

   An Amsterdam soldier died in the Japanese attack.  William E. Hasenfuss, Jr. came from a family of nine children who lived on Northampton Road.

   Hasenfuss had flown planes at an air field in Perth before enlisting in the Army in 1939.  He died at Hickam Air Field in Hawaii.  Japanese airplanes shot up the B-24 bomber Hasenfuss and his ground crew were working on.  Every member of the crew was hit.  News of Hasenfuss’s death reached Amsterdam December 10.

   His mother, Frieda, Amsterdam’s first World War II Gold Star Mother, christened the light cruiser U.S.S. Amsterdam on April 25, 1944 at Newport News, Virginia.

   “I was thinking of William when I smashed that bottle.” she said as the vessel slid into the James River.

   The Amsterdam was one of the ships in Tokyo Bay when the Japanese surrendered.  Serving onboard was Steve Fitz of Schenectady who became a popular radio talk show host back home.

   Two days after the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor the sports pages of the Amsterdam Recorder ran a column which wondered how long local basketball would last as the war went on.

   Bowling was still going strong in December 1941.  My uncle Percy Cudmore was leading the City League with a 192 bowling average. 

   Cudmore enlisted in the Army, overcoming initial objections to his age, he was 36, and blood pressure.  During his time overseas, he was able to visit family members then living in Pontypridd, Wales.  When he saw his Aunt Emma Copp Vodden, he said she looked like Cudmore’s mother Elizabeth who had died in 1934.  While visiting the Voddens he played ball with his cousin Ethel.

   Cudmore’s eldest son, Roger, said his father was in the artillery and blamed that for hearing problems later in life.  He fought in North Africa against German General Erwin Rommel’s forces and possibly in Italy.

   An Amsterdam newspaper article from 1943 quoted Corporal Cudmore expressing concern for a lackluster performance by his old bowling team.   The sports reporter wrote, “As for Cudmore himself, you can bet all the family heirlooms that he will be bowling as soon as he gets back to the good old USA.”

   Cudmore was back in Amsterdam in 1945.  He started bowling again, rolling a 269 single in November, near the date that he and school teacher Pansy Keller married.  She too was a good bowler.

Mohawk Valley Weekend Weather, Saturday, December 9, 2023

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

Bob Cudmore in print This Weekend and The Historians this Sunday

The Daily Gazette and Amsterdam Recorder-Focus on History-Some of Pearl Harbor attack’s local effects

Thursday

Amsterdam changes after Pearl Harbor attack

By Bob Cudmore

   The movie “South of Tahiti” playing at the Strand Theatre on East Main Street in Amsterdam was interrupted Sunday afternoon December 7, 1941 when the news broke that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor.  Radio coverage was piped into the theater and dazed patrons left the building.

   The Amsterdam Clubs Association met later that day at St. Michael’s Club on Reid Street.  According to the late Robert Going’s book on World War II, “Where Do We Find Such Men,” attorney Frederick Partyka urged “member groups to be devoted to true Americanism.”

   George A. Tralka, 15, was at his family’s James Street home in Amsterdam when he heard about the attack on the radio.  Tralka at first thought Pearl Harbor was in Alaska.

   Tralka’s parents, Joseph and Martha, went ahead with their plans to go out that Sunday and to have George watch his younger sisters. 

   The next day as young Tralka delivered the Schenectady Gazette he heard President Roosevelt’s “day of infamy” speech on the radio when making his delivery to Reid Hill Pharmacy.

   “It was a solemn moment in the drug store,” Tralka wrote in his memoir, “Diary of a Replacement Soldier.”  Tralka survived the war and became a physician in the Washington, D.C. area.   

   An Amsterdam soldier died in the Japanese attack.  William E. Hasenfuss, Jr. came from a family of nine children who lived on Northampton Road.

   Hasenfuss had flown planes at an air field in Perth before enlisting in the Army in 1939.  He died at Hickam Air Field in Hawaii.  Japanese airplanes shot up the B-24 bomber Hasenfuss and his ground crew were working on.  Every member of the crew was hit.  News of Hasenfuss’s death reached Amsterdam December 10.

   His mother, Frieda, Amsterdam’s first World War II Gold Star Mother, christened the light cruiser U.S.S. Amsterdam on April 25, 1944 at Newport News, Virginia.

   “I was thinking of William when I smashed that bottle.” she said as the vessel slid into the James River.

   The Amsterdam was one of the ships in Tokyo Bay when the Japanese surrendered.  Serving onboard was Steve Fitz of Schenectady who became a popular radio talk show host back home.

   Two days after the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor the sports pages of the Amsterdam Recorder ran a column which wondered how long local basketball would last as the war went on.

   Bowling was still going strong in December 1941.  My uncle Percy Cudmore was leading the City League with a 192 bowling average. 

   Cudmore enlisted in the Army, overcoming initial objections to his age, he was 36, and blood pressure.  During his time overseas, he was able to visit family members then living in Pontypridd, Wales.  When he saw his Aunt Emma Copp Vodden, he said she looked like Cudmore’s mother Elizabeth who had died in 1934.  While visiting the Voddens he played ball with his cousin Ethel.

   Cudmore’s eldest son, Roger, said his father was in the artillery and blamed that for hearing problems later in life.  He fought in North Africa against German General Erwin Rommel’s forces and possibly in Italy.

   An Amsterdam newspaper article from 1943 quoted Corporal Cudmore expressing concern for a lackluster performance by his old bowling team.   The sports reporter wrote, “As for Cudmore himself, you can bet all the family heirlooms that he will be bowling as soon as he gets back to the good old USA.”

   Cudmore was back in Amsterdam in 1945.  He started bowling again, rolling a 269 single in November, near the date that he and school teacher Pansy Keller married.  She too was a good bowler.

Friday, December 8, 2023-Episode 502-Jack Kelly is author of God Save Benedict Arnold.  Arnold committed treason.  Yet he was more than a turncoat—Kelly argues Arnold’s achievements during the early years of the Revolutionary War defined him as the most successful soldier of the era.

Mohawk Valley Weather, Thursday, December 7, 2023

18 degrees in The City of Amsterdam at 4:49AM

Bob Cudmore in print This Weekend

The Daily Gazette and Amsterdam Recorder-Focus on History-Some of Pearl Harbor attack’s local effects

Go Fund Me

$1820 needed by Sunday, December 31, 2023 Bob Cudmore to 125 Horstman Drive, Scotia, NY 12302. Down to 25 Days and counting. On-line Go Fund Me https://gofund.me/777777e9

Wednesday 

T Martin Bennett, author of “Wounded Tiger”: The story of the Japanese pilot who led the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Wounded Tiger is the true story of the pilot who led the Pearl Harbor Attack, whose life was changed by an American prisoner and by a girl he never met. Three incredibly different people have their paths cross in ways so remarkable as to almost be unbelievable if it weren't so well documented.

Thursday, December 7 2023-From the Archives of Focus on History from the Daily Gazette-Amsterdam and Pearl Harbor

The movie “South of Tahiti” playing at the Strand Theatre on East Main Street in Amsterdam was interrupted Sunday afternoon December 7, 1941 when the news broke that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor.  Radio coverage was piped into the theater and dazed patrons left the building.

Friday, December 8, 2023-Episode 502-Jack Kelly is author of God Save Benedict Arnold.  Arnold committed treason.  Yet he was more than a turncoat—Kelly argues Arnold’s achievements during the early years of the Revolutionary War defined him as the most successful soldier of the era.

Amsterdam rugs go down in history

By Bob Cudmore

Two articles found on a floor covering news Website, www.rugnews.com, tell stories about commemorative rugs with connections to Amsterdam.

One article describes how Costikyan, a rug and tapestry-cleaning firm founded in 1886, restored the Liberty Rug, woven in Amsterdam’s East End in 1916 by the Shuttleworth Brothers factory.

In 1920, Shuttleworth merged with McCleary, Wallin and Crouse to form Mohawk Carpets in Amsterdam. The company reorganized as Mohasco in 1955 when it merged with Alexander Smith carpets of Yonkers. Production and offices ultimately left Amsterdam for Georgia and elsewhere.

The Liberty Rug was one of 20 Axminster carpets woven in Amsterdam to mark the initial floodlighting ceremony at the Statue of Liberty in New York on December 2, 1916. The rug recently restored was presented to President Woodrow Wilson. It originally was installed in President Wilson’s bedroom at the White House. The restored rug is now on display at Woodrow Wilson House, the late President’s library in Washington, D.C.

According to www.rugnews.com, an image of the Statue of Liberty is in the center of the rug, surrounded by depictions of Niagara Falls, the Mayflower, Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, Washington Monument, the Capitol, and Native American teepees. Also shown is aviatrix Ruth Law flying over the Statue of Liberty in a biplane during the floodlighting ceremony.

In a separate opinion piece, Lissa Wyman of www.rugnews.com weighs in on commemorative rugs made in the Mohasco days. Wyman reported she was presented a 1776 Rug during the 1976 bicentennial by the Alexander Smith division of Mohasco. Several thousand of these five by eight foot rugs were woven and presented to political leaders and other dignitaries. Wyman at the time was editor of the trade magazine, Floor Covering News.

Wyman wrote that even though she hung the rug for many years in her New York City apartment, she was no fan of the design, calling it “the ugliest piece of textiles it has ever been my misfortune to view.”

But Wyman told her readers that now that her own 1776 Rug has been misplaced, she would like to find an image of it.

The background of the rug was an unfurled American flag, Wyman wrote. Landing on the flag was a really eagle-eyed American Eagle, wings spread and clutching a mean-looking bunch of arrows. It had to be hung, of course. Walking on it risked being charged with Desecration of The Flag.

Thanks to reader and Amsterdam native Larry Baldine for finding these articles. 

Mohawk Valley Weather, Wednesday, December 6, 2023

29 degrees in The City of Amsterdam at 5:58AM