The Historians

McClumpha’s at Market and Main

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

Sunday, November 9, 2025

Bob Cudmore adds #80 to his Birthday List.

     John McClumpha Sr. operated a flour, feed and grain store at 31 East Main Street and 52 Grove Street in Amsterdam in the 1800s.

His son, John H. McClumpha, Jr., took over a local grocery store in 1857 after first serving as a clerk there.

In 1883, William Kirwin’s Directory, reported that John McClumpha Junior’s grocery store occupied 2 to 4 East Main, on the corner of East Main and Market Streets.

McClumpha’s grocery would be a an iconic family business for 100 years. Old timers said that Amsterdam carpet maker Stephen Sanford would often stop after the store closed at night to play cards with McClumpha.

Both men were active in the community. For example Sanford was president and McClumpha secretary of the water commissioners in the 1880s which helped Amsterdam secure a stable water supply.

There was a cat on the store’s premises which kept rodents in check and sometimes slept in the front window. Every fall large pumpkins were displayed from a Perth farm operated by Squire McQueen.

Hugh Donlon, a Recorder reporter and columnist in the twentieth century, devoted almost a full page in his 1980 “Annals of a Mill Town” history of Amsterdam to McClumpha’s store.

Donlon wrote that McClumpha’s catered to the wealthy carriage trade, first of the village then the city of Amsterdam,

“There was a certain social distinction to trading at McClumpha’s.” Donlon wrote. “The clerks were genial and helpful, one particularly impressive when he carried on conversations in several languages.”

That clerk was Dr. Charles F. McClumpha, a Princeton graduate who became the English department chair at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

When he retired, Professor McClumpha came home to manage the family store. Donlon said the professor added prestige to the grocery and the Amsterdam community.

Professor McClumpha was one of the speakers during the annual meeting of Amsterdam’s Board of Trade in 1908. According to the minutes of that meeting, he said, “You will find no place in picturesque Europe or any other foreign country that satisfies the aesthetic sense in man as does this beautiful Mohawk Valley of ours.”

At that point McClumpha’s speech was interrupted by loud applause.

Another McClumpha, Alfred, had the sad duty of closing the grocery’s doors for the last time on August 9, 1957. He had worked 48 years in the family business but toward the end had been sidelined because of illness.

Donlon wrote that antique furnishings at McClumpha’s, such as coffee grinders, scales and even sulfur matches ended up at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. McClumpha’s had the last hand crank telephone in the city, still in use in 1957.

“The store itself disappeared before arrival of shopping carts and checkout era,” Donlon wrote. “These would have offered a space problem. There just wasn’t room for carts, sometimes not enough for the customers.”

In a newspaper eulogy written when McClumpha’s closed, Donlon remembered the store’s delivery men: Bert Wells and “Whistling Pete” Martuscello.

“Whistling Pete” was the father of Frank Martuscello, elected as Amsterdam’s first Italian-American mayor the year McClumpha’s closed in 1957.

During the 1960s and later the Market and Main building tenants included Mike’s Submarine, Trask's Cigars and Tony Brooks Music Nook. Sometimes Tony’s band would rehearse in the window.

You may contact Bob Cudmore at 518-346-6657 or at [email protected]

Aviation memories: pioneer Edward Heath; Carpet City Airport

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

Sunday, November 2, 2025

     Aviator Edward B. Heath tried to fly his first airplane at the Antlers golf course in Fort Johnson near Amsterdam in 1910 but the attempt ended in a crash. 

No one was hurt. The golf course is now called Rolling Hills.

Heath was born in Brooklyn in 1888. He lived in the Amsterdam area for a few months. His uncle and cousin, Chester and Frank Johnson, helped Heath build his first airplane at their Johnson Machine Shop on Cedar Street in Amsterdam.

Historian Hugh Donlon reported on the flight, "Twirling the propeller for the start was hazardous and when the plane's motor finally got the go-ahead spark, aviator Heath had to climb aboard while the ground crew temporarily restrained all 36 horsepower. Not far down the improvised runway and traveling at tremendous speed, the wheel post broke and a wing sagged. The pilot escaped and tow back to the machine shop was made.

"Similar disappointment came in later tests on the Mohawk River flats east of Fonda, but when the flying machine was exhibited at the Fonda Fair in October it attracted crowds."

The Aviation Heritage Web site indicated that Heath's plane, patterned after a Bleriot monoplane, did have some successful flights in the Mohawk Valley.

After working for a time with pioneer aviator Glenn Curtiss in Hammondsport, N.Y., Heath moved to Chicago where he started a company that made airplane parts in World War I.

He won trophies in air races and manufactured the Heath Parasol, an ultralight airplane that he marketed as a kit. A 1928 ultralight built by Heath was called the Baby Bullet.

Heath died in a 1931 plane crash in Morton Grove, a Chicago suburb. He was testing a new low-wing aircraft design when the fatal accident occurred.

The company he founded’"Heathkit,"changed from making airplane kits to making kits for amateur radio gear, electronic test equipment and even television receivers. The firm filed for bankruptcy in 2012 and began restructuring in 2013. The company now has a live website at www.heathkit.com and sells electronic products.

CARPET CITY AIRPORT

On October 6, 1946, two men died when a two-seater Aeronca plane crashed during a demonstration flight twelve minutes after takeoff from Carpet City Airport at the intersection of Midline Road and Route 107 near Perth.

Willis E. "Slip" Slater, 33, 401 Locust Avenue in Amsterdam was demonstrating the plane to Edward Rytel, 20, of Perth. The Aeronca was owned by Ray A. Shaver of 88 Forest Street in Gloversville.

Slater, a longtime pilot and Army Air Corps veteran, was a relief flying instructor at the local airport. He died on impact. Rytel, a wounded veteran and student of aviation, survived three hours, dying at St. Mary's Hospital. It was not clear who was flying the plane when it crashed.

The late Dave Noyes wrote that he learned to fly at Carpet City Airport.

Noyes was in Boy Scouts of America's Air Scout program in 1947. The Air Scout curriculum officially included only pre-flight activities, but Noyes and his fellow Scouts actually flew planes with local World War II veterans as instructors. The leader of the group was a Navy veteran named Leon Smith from Hagaman.

The Scouts had powder blue uniforms and met in Amsterdam for classes at the Blood Building on Market Street. The Air Scouts had World War II surplus gear at the airport, a fighter plane engine they learned to take apart and put together, a flight simulator and a miniature jet engine.

"Firing it up was quite impressive," Noyes said. "Pleasant memories, great learning experience."

You may reach Bob Cudmore at 518-346-6657 or at [email protected] 

Future stars honed their craft at Adirondack Theater

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

Sunday, October 26, 2025

     Malcolm Atterbury, who later became a popular character actor in Hollywood, married an Amsterdam woman and built a summer theater in the Adirondacks in the 1930s.

Kirk Douglas came up with that stage name when, as Isadore Demsky, the Amsterdam native was a stage hand and actor at Atterbury’s Tamarack Playhouse in Lake Pleasant in 1939 and 1940.

Atterbury, known as Mac, was born in Philadelphia in 1907. He was the stepson of W.W. Atterbury, who became president of the Pennsylvania Railroad.

Mac Atterbury met Ellen Hardies of Amsterdam when both were attending Hilda Spong Theater School in New York City. Hardies had gone to Smith College, found it boring and transferred to the acting school. She was the daughter of prominent Amsterdam district attorney and judge Charles Hardies. Her brother, Charles Hardies, Jr., became Montgomery County district attorney in the 1970s.

Atterbury and Ellen Hardies married in 1937. Atterbury told an interviewer, “Ellen’s parents and some friends were going on a cruise to the West Indies. At ten o’clock in the morning we decided to get married and go with them for our honeymoon.”

Ellen had spent summers as a child at her family’s camp in Lake Pleasant. In 1937 she and Mac vacationed there and decided to build a summer theater, which opened in 1938. The theater was west of Lake Pleasant on the Piseco Road.

The next summer the Atterburys created the Tamarack Club, which offered dining and dancing, near the theater. Actor Karl Malden was one of the players at Tamarack then, in addition to Kirk Douglas.

Historian Jacqueline Murphy found that the Atterburys lived on McGibbon Avenue in Amsterdam in the cold weather months. In January 1941 Mac directed a production of “First Lady” by Katharine Dayton and George Kaufman for Amsterdam Little Theater.

As World War II raged on, Mac put the Tamarack Playhouse on hold and assembled a troupe of actors who performed for coastal defense forces in America. Ellen was having children: Malcolm Jr., Charles and Jill. The Atterburys reopened Tamarack Playhouse after the war.

In 1947 the Atterburys left Lake Pleasant and bought the Capitol Theater in Albany. They put on plays there from October through May each year and performed in summer stock in Brattleboro, Vermont.

In 1953 Knickerbocker News critic Robert Mack gave a rave review to Ellen and Mac for their 71st and last show, “Joan of Lorraine” by Maxwell Anderson. Ellen played Joan of Arc

That year the Atterburys moved to Beverly Hills, California and both began appearing on television and in the movies. In 1954 Kirk Douglas was surprised to find Atterbury playing a ranch hand as Douglas starred in the film “Man Without a Star.”

Ellen Atterbury, who performed as Ellen Hardies, was in the 1959 movie “High School Big Shot,” the 1965 movie “Joy in the Morning” and the television series “Wagon Train” in 1957. Both she and her husband acted in theaters on the West Coast.

Mac Atterbury appeared in 75 films and 300 television episodes. He is remembered for a small role in Alfred Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest.” Atterbury plays a weathered farmer who tells Cary Grant, "That plane's dusting crops where there ain't no crops.” The crop-dusting plane then mounts an assault on the Cary Grant character.

In television Atterbury performed in five Perry Mason episodes, playing the murderer in three of them. He guest-starred on “Gunsmoke,” “The Twilight Zone” and “The Odd Couple.”

Mac Atterbury died in 1992. Ellen Hardies Atterbury died in 1994. Their son Malcolm Jr., a director, teacher and composer, died in 2006.

You may contact Bob Cudmore at 518 346 6657 or at [email protected]

Night lunch wagons were popular over a century Ago

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

Sunday, October 19, 2025

     Amsterdam historian Hugh Donlon, born in 1896, was alive during the middle and end of the era of downtown night lunch wagons.

Two wagons were drawn by horses each afternoon, one to Church and East Main Streets and the other to the intersection of Market and West Main. These wagons were owned by the McNally family, who stored them in sheds near what is now the post office on Church Street.

Donlon wrote, “Wafted on the summer zephyr or swirled fiercely by the winter’s gale, the onionized fragrance of a McNally western egg sandwich could be sensed blocks away.” A western egg sandwich cost a dime; a piece of pie was a nickel.

Eat-in or take out night lunch wagons had first appeared in New York City in 1893, according to an article by Joyce K. Schiller of the Norman Rockwell Museum. The temperance movement sponsored these original eateries as a way to keep hungry working people out of saloons at night.

William McNally from Hudson, Massachusetts, established the first night lunch wagon in Amsterdam during the 1890s.

 “The business thrived from the outset,” according to McNally’s 1944 obituary, “Chiefly because of the industriousness of the originator and the sincere confidence of the public which he quickly gained.”

Early in the twentieth century William McNally turned the operation over to his relatives, mainly John McNally, who may have been William’s cousin. William continued as owner and frequently visited Amsterdam.

Some restaurant proprietors opposed the mobile eateries. An attempt to ban the two wagons operated by McNally and a third such eatery owned by a man named William Cooper failed to pass the Amsterdam common council in 1904. Cooper parked his wagon on East Main Street near the local trolley waiting room.

The newspaper reported that McNally paid twenty-five dollars in local taxes, said to be as much as was paid by businesses with brick and mortar locations.

William McNally was tapped to co-manage the restaurant at Amsterdam’s Central Hotel in 1906 and the Recorder reported he was picked for the job because his wagons “have come to be known all over the state for the quality of food they put out.”

On a frigid Valentine’s Day in 1916 this lunch wagon story was reported, “Traffic on the Main and Market Hill divisions of the trolley line was halted for half an hour due to difficulty experienced in getting one of John McNally’s night lunch wagon in its customary station at the corner of Market and West Main Streets.”

A worker’s lighted cigarette accidentally ignited gasoline being poured into a tank of one of McNally’s wagons in its Church Street shed on June 24, 1920. Both wagons, called beaneries in the story, were destroyed in the fire, the shed collapsed and damage was estimated at $6,000. A kitchen used to prepare food in the building was damaged.

But McNally soldiered on. The wagons finally disappeared in July 1926 after the death of John McNally.

For many years Matty Curran was chef at the Church Street wagon location. Curran later opened Matty’s Lunch on West Main Street. In late 1936 he went missing from his Amsterdam rooming house and died three months later after being found wandering in Birmingham, Alabama, suffering from pneumonia. There was speculation that he was the victim of amnesia.

In 1951 another former lunch wagon chef named Charles Munsey died in Amsterdam at age 91. After the wagons closed, Munsey held other cooking jobs then worked for retailer Montgomery Ward. His nickname from his cooking days was Charley Beans.

You may reach Bob Cudmore at 518 346-6657 or at [email protected]

Boxing in Amsterdam

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

Sunday, October 12, 2025

     Bobby Stewart was featured speaker at a boxing club meeting last month at Gloversville’s  Eccentric Club.  Stewart, from Tribes Hill, won the National Golden Gloves Tournament as a light heavyweight in 1974, beating Mike Dokes in Denver, Colorado.  His amateur record was 45 wins and 5 losses.  Stewart turned professional after the 1974 Golden Gloves Tournament and won 13 of his 16 fights.

Some years later Stewart waa a counselor at what was then Tryon reform school in Perth.  Stewart introduced inmate Mike Tyson to boxing and also introduced Tyson to trainer Cus Damato in Catskill.  Tyson went on to a colorful and controversial career including a stint as heavyweight boxing champ.

Stewart was raised in Amsterdam which had a lively boxing scene years ago. His father was a New York State Police officer and his mother worked in local doctors’ offices.

Stewart said, “Tyson was a complete gentleman as he wanted to fight so bad.” Tyson was observed by Tryon staff practicing boxing routines in his room at 1:45 a.m.

Stewart and Tyson were boxing three rounds for Damato and Damato’s gym manager Teddy Atlas. Stewart hit Tyson in the nose toward the end of the match and the young man began bleeding although his nose was not broken.

Atlas wanted to stop the fight but Tyson said he wanted to finish it as he always did three rounds with Stewart. They finished the three rounds.

Damato pronounced that barring outside distractions Tyson, then twelve or thirteen, would become world heavyweight champion.

According to former Recorder columnist George Lazarou, Amsterdam was a boxing mecca in the late 1930s, a legacy of boxing matches arranged for soldiers at the South Side Armory. Lazarou himself was a fighter, trained by Buddy Benoit. Benoit once lost a close contest with the famous Jake Lamotta.

Another popular local fighter was Sailor Barron, who went on to head the usher corps at the old Rialto Theatre on Market Street, according to historian Hugh Donlon.

 “Barron’s ring expertise enabled him to administer fistic anesthesia to potential troublemakers so quietly that there was no awareness of the operation by most patrons,” Donlon wrote. Bothersome customers were removed to an alleyway outside.

Boxing was so popular in Amsterdam that 8,000 fans attended the city playground championship at Lynch School fields one year in the late 1930s. In a bout held behind Lanzi’s tavern on the South Side, the press of the crowd collapsed a wooden fence around the arena.

Many Amsterdam pugilists then were Italian-American. Sammy and Jimmy Pepe, who operated a popular West Main Street restaurant, trained fighters at the Mount Carmel Athletic Club in the basement of the former church building on the South Side. Jo Jo Zeno had training quarters at his Ringside Athletic Club on East Main Street.

Zeno trained John Duchessi, Senior, and his older brother Peter. John Duchessi, Senior, father of the former mayor, said boxers earned $2 a fight.

Peter had 57 victories in 71 fights and John, known as “Duke the Second” or “Duke the Dropper,” won 14 of 15 bouts in the 118 to 124- pound weight class.

Duchessi fought in one of the earliest televised bouts in 1942, broadcast by General Electric’s WRGB from the basement of the television station building in Schenectady. John Duchessi slugged his way to a decision over Don Trott of Saratoga Springs.

Many local fighters, including John Duchessi, went off to fight in World War II and the local boxing scene never recovered. Television also brought national fights into the homes of fight fans.

“Nobody wanted to get punched for $2 after the war,” John Duchessi said.

You may reach Bob Cudmore at 518 346 6657 or [email protected]

Defense was key in 1961 Amsterdam softball Match

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

Sunday, October 5, 2025

     "Will it be a Highland Fling or an Hawaiian Hula that is danced tonight," wondered Recorder sportswriter Bob Wischmeyer.

Amsterdam's attention that August was focused on competition for the city men's softball league title between the Hawaiian Klub on Church Street on Reid Hill and Burza's Highland House on upper Locust Avenue.

Nationally in 1961 Roger Maris hit 61 home runs. Mickey Mantle was the highest paid baseball player, making $75,000 that season. The Yankees went on to win the World Series.

Sports teams based at the Hawaiian Klub had been covered on local sports pages since 1950. Earlier in 1961, Stanley Burza and his wife Irene purchased the Highland House on upper Locust Avenue.

The Hawaiian Klub won the first game 2-1. The Highlanders took the second contest 6-1. The games took place at one of the fields behind what was then Lynch High School on Brandt Place.

The deciding game was 6 p.m. sharp on a Monday.

Wischmeyer wrote, "Defense told the story last night. Burza's Highland House played without an error and turned in two double plays to defeat the Hawaiian Klub 5-1."

Burza played third base, was team manager and part of one of the double plays. He played softball for 50 years. New York State Assemblyman Donald Campbell was on the Highlander team along with other Amsterdam notables such as Bud Heck and Fred Sandy.

Among those on the Klub roster were Gene Bik, Fred Cerasaro, Chuck Pettengill and Dave Quick.

Stan Burza and Irene Drozd met at Mohawk Carpet Mills where they both worked. Stan also inflated footballs at Collette Manufacturing on Clizbe Avenue and drove a truck for Iroquois Chemical on Edward Street.

During World War II, he served in the U.S. Navy in the Pacific including the liberation of the Philippine Islands.

Stan tended bar at the Highland House. He made a ritual of saying good night to you by name when you left the tavern, with a friendly but cautionary formula that went something like this, "Good night, Bob. Don't slip on the ice. Don't step on Irene's tulips."

Irene recalled in a 1986 newspaper article that she once asked a young man to take his feet off the furniture in the tavern. When he replied she sounded like his mother, her response was, "When you're here, I am your mother."

Reader Ron Johnson recalled that if you asked Stan for a match, his response was, "I have matches to burn." Johnson said Irene brought out plates of kielbasa after midnight on Friday nights since Catholics could not eat meat on Fridays.

The tavern had a Wall of Honor where clippings were posted when patrons rolled a 300 game in bowling, got a hole in one in golf or did something outstanding in scholastics or community life. The clippings have been donated to the Walter Elwood Museum.

The Burzas closed the tavern in 1986. Irene died in 1990. Six years later Stan married Rita Loughrey, a woman he had met through one of his two daughters.

Rita said Stan enjoyed being useful. He took up skiing in his seventies and went with Rita on a ski trip to France for their honeymoon.

A frequent golf partner in later years was Charles Brown of Hagaman. Brown came to the area in 1965 and started going to Burza's. Brown was a faithful visitor when Stan spent his last days at River Ridge Living Center.

Stan died November 2, 2010 at 92. He was buried with military honors at St. Stanislaus Cemetery. He was a member of the Good Shepherd Polish National Church

You may reach Bob Cudmore at 518-346-6657 or [email protected] 

Textile teacher was War Hero

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

Sunday, September 28, 2025

     William P. “Bill” Fennhahn taught Amsterdam junior high school boys the skills used in carpet-making and other textile trades.

His daughter, Patricia Fennhahn Dunn, sometimes visited her father at the end of the school day, “While everyone was busy cleaning up the shop, he would entertain with war stories. He had a great way of telling a story, using humor to entertain everyone while they worked.

“My Dad was wounded during the war and was disabled, but you would never know it unless he told you. He became a teacher when his injuries prevented him from signing on with St. Louis to play baseball.”

Born in Mannheim, Germany, in 1924, Fennhahn and his family came to America when he was young. He was a standout baseball pitcher at Hillsdale High School in New York’s Columbia County. Enlisting in the U.S. Army after graduation in 1943, Fennhahn became a platoon sergeant in the Fifth Ranger Battalion of the 35th Infantry Division.

He was in the Normandy invasion in 1944, telling the Recorder, "The most harrowing part was getting to the top of the first hill.” His unit's assignment was to link up with another unit about one half mile off the beach. “It took a day to reach that point,” he said.

Fennhahn was wounded several times and earned two Purple Hearts plus Bronze and Silver Stars. Fluent in German, he was wounded once while interrogating a German civilian. Another American soldier heard the two speaking German and opened fire.

Fennhahn’s worst injuries were sustained when his legs were broken and nerve fibers severed by machine gun fire in Germany. He was hospitalized for sixteen months.

Still eager to be a baseball player, he secured slots with minor league teams after the war, the Quebec Alouettes and the Peekskill, N.Y., Highlanders. His injuries made it difficult to pitch a full game, according to Gary Bedingfield in the Baseball in Wartime Web site.

Fennhahn married Theresa E. Gonyea of Dalton, Massachusetts, in 1950. He went to SUNY Oswego, played collegiate baseball and earned his bachelor’s degree.

In 1954 he was appointed textile instructor at Amsterdam’s Theodore Roosevelt Junior High on Guy Park Avenue. The school had 950 students then.

Fennhahn secured a sock-making machine for his students, according to a 1957 Recorder story. Carpet-maker Mohasco donated scrap chenille for making rugs. The boys were taught designing, stenciling and sewing.

In 1960 Fennhahn became president of the Amsterdam teachers union. In 1961 he was pitching for the Amsterdam Textiles in the local Twilight League. He also was an excellent bowler, rolling a 670 triple one night in 1961.

A German-speaking cousin from Dusseldorf, Germany, Helmut Hessman, once visited the Fennhahns at their Guy Park Avenue home. Theresa and Bill were raising six children, four girls and two boys.

The Recorder wrote that Fennhahn’s students were “becoming well prepared for work in a city which has been known for years as the Carpet City.”  Unfortunately, the rug industry was moving out.

Fennhahn left Amsterdam junior high after fourteen years for an industrial arts teaching job in St. Johnsville, where he taught for fifteen years. In 1975 he was named St. Johnsville’s baseball coach.

He visited Normandy on the invasion’s fiftieth anniversary in 1994. He told the Stars and Stripes newspaper he couldn’t find the exact spot where he landed but added, "In your mind you visualize everything you did before you hit the beach."

Fennhahn died in 1997 at age 73 following a long illness. His wife Theresa died in 2009. They are buried at Pine Grove Cemetery in Tribes Hill.

You may reach Bob Cudmore at 518 346-6657 or at [email protected]

Amsterdam’s Monsignor Browne

By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History, Daily Gazette, Amsterdan Recorder 

Sunday, September 21, 2025

     William Arthur Browne, who became one of Amsterdam’s most important religious leaders, was born in Watervliet on April 9, 1858.

His older brother Daniel had become a priest but died in 1872, which led to William joining the priesthood. Ordained in 1882, Father Browne served a parish in Catskill for two years where his cousin was pastor. He did a stint at a private girls school in Albany and was pastor of a church in Castleton.

After the unexpected death of the formidable Reverend John P. McIncrow, pastor at St. Mary’s on East Main Street in Amsterdam, Browne was picked to succeed him.

McIncrow had been designated pastor for life at St. Mary’s. Browne also was named pastor for life and served thirty-three years, from 1897 until his death at age seventy-five in August of 1933.

McIncrow had taken steps to make St. Mary’s the center of Catholic life in Amsterdam by creating a church school, St. Mary’s Institute, and inviting the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet to teach there.

He bought land in Fort Johnson for the parish cemetery. There is a statue of Father McIncrow in the cemetery, dedicated during a crowded ceremony on Father Browne’s watch in 1902. Many attendees arrived by trolley car.

That same year Father Browne purchased the Abram Marcellus home on Guy Park Avenue. It opened as St. Mary’s Hospital in 1903. Like the parish school, many hospital staff members were drawn from the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet.

In 1909 Father Browne awarded a contract to J.J. Turner Construction of Amsterdam to build a new school building on Forbes and Maple Streets near the church to accommodate an enrollment of over seven hundred students. The building, now demolished, cost $200,000 and was state of the art for its time with slate stair treads and terrazzo floors.

It was named Dugan Hall for its chief financial benefactor, Patrick Dugan. Dugan was an Irish immigrant whose East Main Street grocery business prospered as did his real estate purchases. Dugan died in 1906 and left his estate to the church through Father Browne as Dugan’s wife and children had predeceased him.

In 1921 St. Mary’s Hospital Auxiliary was formed and the first nursing school students graduated in 1923. Father Browne spearheaded construction of a hospital building which opened in 1927 with four operating rooms, an x-ray department and laboratory.

Amsterdam town supervisor Thomas DiMezza has a photograph of the crowd outside St. Mary’s Church for the funeral of the man who had become Monsignor Browne by the end of his life.

DiMezza, a former Amsterdam city police detective lieutenant, said he had never seen a funeral that large, “The funeral home was McNamara Funeral Home. My father was working with McNamara at the time and was at the head of the casket going into church.” His father, Emilio DiMezza, later operated his own funeral home.

Thousands paid their respects the night before the funeral by filing past Monsignor Browne’s casket inside the church. Over 200 priests, headed by Bishop Edward Gibbons, attended the funeral. The late monsignor’s nephew, Reverend William Browne of St. Joseph’s Church in Albany, celebrated Mass.

All downtown businesses were closed as the funeral procession made its way to the cemetery. There Monsignor Joseph A. Delaney, vicar general of the diocese, blessed the grave. Delaney had spent his childhood in Amsterdam where his father was a plumber. He became the next pastor of St. Mary’s and served three years until his death in 1936.

Much information for this story came from Jacqueline Daly Murphy’s book, “St. Mary’s Parish: A History.”

Bob Cudmore can be reached at 518-346-6657 or [email protected]

School Names in Amsterdam

By Bob Cudmore

Gazette and Recorder

Sunday, September 14, 2025

    Reader Sharon Carlisle wrote, “Today I'm an old lady who lives in Pennsylvania, but once upon a time I lived in Amsterdam, where I attended elementary school from approximately 1945 through 1951.

“I remember attending Chestnut Street School and Guy Park Avenue School -- and possibly one other. We lived on Lincoln Avenue, Division Street and Henrietta Boulevard before my father took a job elsewhere, causing us to relocate.

“Do you by any chance have an inventory of Amsterdam's schools during those years, and/or could you give me any information on what happened to my schools? Guy Park is now a museum?”

My reply: “Hi Sharon, I’m pretty old too but I grew up in Amsterdam on Reid Hill where our school was Vrooman Ave now apartments. Guy Park school did become the Elwood museum for awhile and is now converted into apartments. I don’t remember Chestnut School. Sending a copy to Amsterdam native, retired Fulton-Montgomery professor and historian Peter Betz who may know.”

Peter wrote. “Hi Bob. There was no "Chestnut Street School” as such, even though the school did occupy a whole block of Chestnut Street just above Arnold Ave. It was always called Arnold Avenue School although I have no idea why. I think it opened circa 1893. It was one of those old 3 floor monsters with a bell and tower and every time the bell was pulled the bats all flew out of it. I went there for kindergarten. It remained open until circa 1954. There's a playground now on part of the space. The 3rd floor had a basketball court and around the upper half was a bicycle track, not surprising since that was the era of bicycle fame. Even when I went there it was deemed unsafe so they didn't use the 3rd floor except to store stuff, but that didn't keep them from using the school part. I saw the third floor once. Several of the 1890's era schools had that recreation area top floor design.

“Amsterdam at one point had 10 grade schools. Best way to see photos of them is get one of the old Board of Trade books that show them. Hope this helps.”

Sharon replied, “You are absolutely right: It was indeed Arnold Avenue. I can still remember my first grade teacher there. “Just anecdotally, my dad was manager of the Beneficial Finance office in Amsterdam and active in Kiwanis, I believe.”

BROADCAST PIONEERS

    Edythe Meserand, born in Philadelphia in 1908, began her broadcast career in 1926 in the press office of the National Broadcasting Company in New York City. By 1931 she was in promotions and on the air. She became assistant news director of New York’s WOR in 1937 and during World War II headed the station’s news department. She later produced television programs at WOR.

In 1951 she was one of the founders of American Women in Radio and Television. She retired from broadcasting in the 1950s and moved with her companion, Jane Barton, to Windy Hill, a Christmas tree farm on Esperance Road in the town of Charleston, where Meserand started an advertising agency.

Barton, born Jane Greenberg in New York City in 1918, was a journalist and public relations professional. She became an officer in the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service), the women's branch of the U.S. Navy in World War II. After retirement, Barton wrote for area newspapers and was upstate New York correspondent for Variety, the show business newspaper.

In the 1970s Meserand was town historian and founding chairman of the Charleston Historical Society.

Edythe Meserand died in1997. Jane Barton died in 2005.

You may reach Bob Cudmore at 518-346-6657 or [email protected]

 Florence Collins, Reid Hill’s Favorite Teacher

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

Sunday, September 7, 2025

     Florence Collins lived most of her life in the house where she grew up on Amsterdam’s Pulaski Street in the then predominately Polish enclave called Reid Hill.

Born in 1911, her parents were Anthony and Pelagia Lulkowska Dabrowski. They had come to America from Torun, Poland, birthplace of Copernicus. Her given first name was long and according to her son’s eulogy, she decided to call herself Florence because of a neighbor woman who had that name.

A graduate of Amsterdam High, Florence earned her teaching certificate at Oneonta Normal School.

She served forty years as a fourth and fifth grade teacher in her Amsterdam neighborhood’s public school, Vrooman Avenue Elementary.

In 1935 the Recorder reported that Florence and her colleague Imogene Cook directed students in a play called “A Better Plan.” Instead of playing Halloween pranks on people, the characters in the play gave a sick child a grand surprise on Halloween.

Florence’s father died in 1937. In 1939 she married Henry Paierski of Schenectady, who changed his last name to Page. Henry took ill and died in 1943. He had been in the engineering department at the Alco locomotive plant in Schenectady.

Florence married her second husband, postal worker Andrew Collins, in 1951. Their son David became a pediatric anesthesiologist.

Florence Collins was an inspiring teacher according to students and fellow educators.

Teaching reading was one of her specialties. Collins excelled at helping young students learn to read and also volunteered to help immigrants learn to speak and read English.

Sometimes when she walked home from school, she was accompanied by an honor guard of neighborhood students.

One high point in her career was in 1955 when she and her class of fifth graders produced two programs on the Eskimos of Alaska that aired live on WRGB television.

Sheldon Jackson, a native of Minaville south of Amsterdam, was a missionary who had a major impact on Alaska, so the television project had a local history aspect. As one of her students that year, I wore a parka and carried a small harpoon on television.

Legendary Amsterdam High basketball coach John A. Varsoke was principal at Vrooman Avenue in 1968 and spoke approvingly of Collins’s work.

”She never hesitates to cooperate and lend herself to difficult situations,” Varsoke wrote in a performance appraisal. “Her patience and concern for individual differences are a few of her attributes.”

For her part she was proud that Tim Kolojay and Tom Urbelis, members of Varsoke’s Fabulous Five high school basketball team in the 1962-63 season, were her students.

Collins retired in 1976. Her mother died in 1984. Her husband died in 1999.

When Collins moved into the Sarah Jane Sanford Home on Guy Park Avenue in 2004, administrator Jeanne So remembered “an agile 92-year old” who was “twirling in the hallway outside her bedroom door, wearing a flowing floor-length skirt.”

“I have never forgotten the way you had of instilling into young minds that we were all special,” wrote her 1934 fourth grade student Stanley Goscinski (Gordon) in a letter to Collins in 2011.

“My goal was to teach with enthusiasm and compassion,” Collins replied. “After this letter I feel my goal was achieved. Stanley you have given me everlasting youth through these memories.”

Before her death Collins moved to a facility in Quincy, Pennsylvania near her son and daughter-in-law. She died April 8 at age 105. After services in Amsterdam she was buried at St. Mary’s Cemetery in Fort Johnson. She is also survived by three grandchildren, two of them became medical doctors and the third became a teacher.

Bob Cudmore can be reached at 518 346 6657 or [email protected]