The Historians

McMartin, from Canada Lake, died September 27th 2005.  She was the author of 25 books about the Adirondacks, including her 11-book Discover series.  She and her husband, W. Alec Reid, also wrote a book in 1999 chronicling the glove industry in Johnstown and Gloversville, “The Glove Cities.”

Bob Cudmore, Author, Historian and Old Radio Guy compiles the history of Amsterdam and The Mohawk Valley. Thanks to all the donors so far.  We still have a long way to go. September bottom line $500. In the U.S. Mail a check made out to Bob Cudmore to 125 Horstman Drive, Scotia, NY 12302. Bob will check the mailbox  first thing tomorrow morning (Wednesday)

Click the link-online here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/the-historians-podcast 

McMartin had insight into glove industry

Amsterdam architect designed brick homes and schools

By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History

       The celebrated Adirondack author Barbara McMartin wrote at least one book that dealt with industry and not the outdoors.

       McMartin, from Canada Lake, died September 27th 2005.  She was the author of 25 books about the Adirondacks, including her 11-book Discover series.  She and her husband, W. Alec Reid, also wrote a book in 1999 chronicling the glove industry in Johnstown and Gloversville, “The Glove Cities.”

       McMartin’s father had been a physician but her great-grandfather, James I. McMartin, started a Johnstown glove shop in 1843.  Her grandfathers continued in the trade.

“Glovers were independent people,” McMartin said in an interview in 2001.  A strain of that independence can be found in McMartin’s own life as an advocate for the Adirondack Park.

       McMartin said, “A man who was working as a glove cutter who got angry with his boss could start a glove shop with a pair of scissors and a needle.”

       In their book, McMartin and Reid recorded the existence of an astounding 1,900 glove shops in the Johnstown and Gloversville area over the past two centuries.  Some shops employed as many as 500 workers, others were true mom and pop operations, with mom sewing gloves and pop cutting them.

       McMartin and Reid found that the glove industry actually peaked in 1890 and began its long, slow decline around 1905 in the Glove cities.  Cheaper labor offshore led to a precipitous decline in local glove making after World War II.

       McMartin wrote, “Every time the business looked up, something unfortunate happened, usually an outside event over which manufacturers and workers had no control: shortages of skins, lower tariffs, losing home workers, war, more attractive jobs elsewhere, and most important of all, the globalization of manufacturing and cheap overseas labor.”

ARCHITECT FOUND

       A Fort Johnson woman has answered a question raised in a column some months ago.

       Krishna and Sunita Singh wondered who designed their home at 230 Market Street in Amsterdam.  While many of the homes around them are made of wood, theirs is made of brick.  The house was built in 1918 for William H.  Cooper, who became first vice president of production at the Sanford carpet mills after John Sanford inherited the business from his father, Stephen Sanford, in 1913.  Cooper died in 1930 and the home was subsequently owned by Herbert Singer of Amsterdam Printing, Dr. Fred Pipito, then Jeannie Morris, whose father was affiliated with the Schine Theatres.

       The Singhs were told that Amsterdam builder John Turner, who remodeled the Sanford mansion on Church Street, now City Hall, might have designed 230 Market Street.

       Turner likely built the house but it was designed by Amsterdam architect Howard F. Daly.

       According to his daughter, Genevieve Golden of Fort Johnson, Daly was originally from Herkimer.  He moved to Allentown, Pennsylvania, where he met and married his wife, Rose.  They returned to the Mohawk Valley, settling in Amsterdam.  Daly’s office was at 13 East Main Street.

       Golden said her father designed a number of brick residences, a style that had been common in Allentown.  Daly frequently worked with builder John Turner and Turner’s sons, Richard and Thomas.

Daly designed Wilbur H. Lynch High School, now the middle school, which opened in 1931.  Golden was in the first class to enter the school her father designed.  Daly also designed Vrooman Avenue School, now an apartment complex, and the new East Main Street School, now the Assembly of God Church.  He also designed many homes on Market Hill, including his own house on Grant Avenue where he lived until his death.  He died in 1980 at the age of 92.

Tomorrow

...beer making starting in 1859  

Wednesday, September 13, 2023

Phillip Bowler has tales of Bowler’s Brewery in Amsterdam and his own world travels. 

Thursday, September 14, 2023-From the Archives of Focus on History from the Daily Gazette-A baseball oracle

Friday, September 15, 2023- Episode 493-Charles Yaple, Professor Emeritus at SUNY Cortland, has written Jacob’s Land, a history of an immigrant family and of the native tribes who populated the land in New York State in the 1700s. Yaple has also written The Tree of Us following the lives of three men, from Richford, New York, including John D. Rockefeller, once the world’s richest man, and Gurdon Wallace Wattle, a friend to five U.S. presidents.

Mohawk Valley Weather, Tuesday, September 12, 2023

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

Leader Herald Make Us A Part Of Your Day

https://www.leaderherald.com/

Bob Cudmore, Author, Historian and Old Radio Guy compiles the history of Amsterdam and The Mohawk Valley. Thanks to all the donors so far.  We still have a long way to go. September bottom line $500. In the U.S. Mail a check made out to Bob Cudmore to 125 Horstman Drive, Scotia, NY 12302. Bob will check the mailbox  first thing tomorrow morning (Tuesday)

Click the link-online here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/the-historians-podcast 

Monday, September 11, 2023-Story behind the story-Goldwyn and Gloversville

Tuesday, September 12, 2023

Focus on History from the Daily Gazette-The glove industry

The celebrated Adirondack author Barbara McMartin wrote at least one book that dealt with industry and not the outdoors. McMartin, from Canada Lake, died September 27th 2005.

...beer making starting in 1859  

Wednesday, September 13, 2023-From the Archives- Episode 100, February 28, 2016-Phillip Bowler has tales of Bowler’s Brewery in Amsterdam and his own world travels. 

Thursday, September 14, 2023-From the Archives of Focus on History from the Daily Gazette-A baseball oracle

Friday, September 15, 2023- Episode 493-Charles Yaple, Professor Emeritus at SUNY Cortland, has written Jacob’s Land, a history of an immigrant family and of the native tribes who populated the land in New York State in the 1700s. Yaple has also written The Tree of Us following the lives of three men, from Richford, New York, including John D. Rockefeller, once the world’s richest man, and Gurdon Wallace Wattle, a friend to five U.S. presidents.

Goldwyn and Gloversville

By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History from The Gazette and Recorder

   Samuel Goldwyn, one of the hard driving moguls who led the Hollywood movie industry in the 20th century, lived in Gloversville as a young man.

   Born Schmuel Gelbfish (aka Gelbfisz) in Warsaw Poland’s Jewish ghetto around 1879, Gelbfish came to the United States possibly by way of Canada in 1898. 

   Samuel Goldfish, as he was known by then, had learned the glove trade in Europe and heard Gloversville was a center of that business and home to many Jewish glove-cutters.

   Goldfish’s first Gloversville job was as a $3 a week sweeper at Louis Meyers and Son glove factory at West Pine and South Main Streets, according to historian Peter Betz.  Goldfish earned more money when he became a glove cutter at Joseph Moses Bacmo Gloves. 

   When Goldfish’s courting of a leather worker’s daughter was rebuffed because of his crude manners and speech, he enrolled in the Gloversville Business College to improve himself.

   He became a foreman for Elite Glove Company and then a salesman for Elite.  Before he was 30 he was earning $15,000 a year.  He sent money to his family in Europe and his two younger brothers came to America and also sold gloves.

   Goldfish became sales manager for Elite and transferred his office to New York City where he was exposed to the first productions of the movie industry.  He changed his name to Samuel Goldwyn and started Goldwyn Productions in 1917.

   Goldwyn did not produce films for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which bears his name, but did produce movies for Samuel Goldwyn Productions.  Among them were “Hans Christian Anderson,”  “Guys and Dolls,” “Porgy and Bess” and “The Best Years of Our Lives.”

   On October 30, 1945 Goldwyn came back to Gloversville and spoke at a dinner at the Kingsborough Hotel. 

   He told the Leader Herald, “I have a great affection for this town.  This is the place that gave me my first start in life.”  He had not been there, he said, since 1906

   Vern Steele, program chairman for the men’s club of Kingsborough Presbyterian Church, invited Goldwyn.  Steele sent the invitation to the movie mogul when Goldwyn was visiting Saratoga Springs. 

   Goldwyn originally came to Gloversville as a teen ager, “I not only got my first job here, but stayed long enough to get my citizenship papers which is perhaps the greatest gift to any man to become a citizen of this great country.”

   At the hotel, he met with Albert Aaron who provided Goldwyn his first job in Gloversville.

   Also on hand was hotel resident Jacob Liebglid, who taught Goldwyn the glove trade in Hamburg, Germany, after he had run away from his Warsaw home.  Liebglid raised enough money from the Jewish community in Hamburg to get Goldwyn a ticket to England, first stop on his passage to America.

   Goldwyn said, “When I was a boy my one outstanding ambition was to get enough money to have dinner in the Hotel Kingsborough.  And after that I wanted to stroll through the lobby, back and forth in front of the window and watch the pretty girls as they walked up and down the street.  I realized my ambition but couldn’t resist the impulse to do it again tonight when I was in the lobby.”

   Goldwyn died in 1974.  The Kingsborough Hotel closed years ago. 

   Biographer A. Scott Berg says his book ''Goldwyn'' is ''the story of survival.'' 

   He describes Goldwyn's life as a 94-year struggle to be somebody. ''I love the fact that Sam Goldwyn lived 40 years before he came to the movie business, and after all the others were dead and buried, there he still was.''

Mohawk Valley Weather, Monday, September 11, 2023

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

Leader Herald Make Us A Part Of Your Day

https://www.leaderherald.com/

Bob Cudmore, Author, Historian and Old Radio Guy compiles the history of Amsterdam and The Mohawk Valley. Thanks to all the donors so far.  We still have a long way to go. September bottom line $500. In the U.S. Mail a check made out to Bob Cudmore to 125 Horstman Drive, Scotia, NY 12302. Bob will check the mailbox  first thing tomorrow morning (Monday)

Please donate online here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/the-historians-podcast 

Goldwyn and Gloversville

By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History from The Gazette and Recorder

   Samuel Goldwyn, one of the hard driving moguls who led the Hollywood movie industry in the 20th century, lived in Gloversville as a young man.

   Born Schmuel Gelbfish (aka Gelbfisz) in Warsaw Poland’s Jewish ghetto around 1879, Gelbfish came to the United States possibly by way of Canada in 1898. 

   Samuel Goldfish, as he was known by then, had learned the glove trade in Europe and heard Gloversville was a center of that business and home to many Jewish glove-cutters.

   Goldfish’s first Gloversville job was as a $3 a week sweeper at Louis Meyers and Son glove factory at West Pine and South Main Streets, according to historian Peter Betz.  Goldfish earned more money when he became a glove cutter at Joseph Moses Bacmo Gloves. 

   When Goldfish’s courting of a leather worker’s daughter was rebuffed because of his crude manners and speech, he enrolled in the Gloversville Business College to improve himself.

   He became a foreman for Elite Glove Company and then a salesman for Elite.  Before he was 30 he was earning $15,000 a year.  He sent money to his family in Europe and his two younger brothers came to America and also sold gloves.

   Goldfish became sales manager for Elite and transferred his office to New York City where he was exposed to the first productions of the movie industry.  He changed his name to Samuel Goldwyn and started Goldwyn Productions in 1917.

   Goldwyn did not produce films for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which bears his name, but did produce movies for Samuel Goldwyn Productions.  Among them were “Hans Christian Anderson,”  “Guys and Dolls,” “Porgy and Bess” and “The Best Years of Our Lives.”

   On October 30, 1945 Goldwyn came back to Gloversville and spoke at a dinner at the Kingsborough Hotel. 

   He told the Leader Herald, “I have a great affection for this town.  This is the place that gave me my first start in life.”  He had not been there, he said, since 1906

   Vern Steele, program chairman for the men’s club of Kingsborough Presbyterian Church, invited Goldwyn.  Steele sent the invitation to the movie mogul when Goldwyn was visiting Saratoga Springs. 

   Goldwyn originally came to Gloversville as a teen ager, “I not only got my first job here, but stayed long enough to get my citizenship papers which is perhaps the greatest gift to any man to become a citizen of this great country.”

   At the hotel, he met with Albert Aaron who provided Goldwyn his first job in Gloversville.

   Also on hand was hotel resident Jacob Liebglid, who taught Goldwyn the glove trade in Hamburg, Germany, after he had run away from his Warsaw home.  Liebglid raised enough money from the Jewish community in Hamburg to get Goldwyn a ticket to England, first stop on his passage to America.

   Goldwyn said, “When I was a boy my one outstanding ambition was to get enough money to have dinner in the Hotel Kingsborough.  And after that I wanted to stroll through the lobby, back and forth in front of the window and watch the pretty girls as they walked up and down the street.  I realized my ambition but couldn’t resist the impulse to do it again tonight when I was in the lobby.”

   Goldwyn died in 1974.  The Kingsborough Hotel closed years ago. 

   Biographer A. Scott Berg says his book ''Goldwyn'' is ''the story of survival.'' 

   He describes Goldwyn's life as a 94-year struggle to be somebody. ''I love the fact that Sam Goldwyn lived 40 years before he came to the movie business, and after all the others were dead and buried, there he still was.''

Monday, September 11, 2023-Story behind the story-Goldwyn and Gloversville

Tuesday, September 12, 2023-From the Archives of Focus on History from the Daily Gazette-The glove industry

Wednesday, September 13, 2023-From the Archives- Episode 100, February 28, 2016-Phillip Bowler has tales of Bowler’s Brewery in Amsterdam and his own world travels. 

Thursday, September 14, 2023-From the Archives of Focus on History from the Daily Gazette-A baseball oracle

Friday, September 15, 2023-Episode 492-Scott Shane, author of Flee North- A forgotten hero and the fight for freedom in slavery’s borderland.  The book traces the life of Thomas Smallwood, an African American who named the Underground Railroad..

A riveting account of the extraordinary abolitionist, liberator, and writer Thomas Smallwood, who bought his own freedom, led hundreds out of slavery, and named the underground railroad, from Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist, Scott Shane. Flee North tells the story for the first time of an American hero all but lost to history.

Episode 491-The origin story of American football. Gregg Ficery traces what became the NFL back to teams which played in Ohio and Pennsylvania in 1892.  Ficery is author of Gridiron Legacy.

Mohawk Valley Weekend Weather, Sunday, September 10, 2023

67 degrees in The City of Amsterdam at 6:18AM 

Leader Herald Make Us A Part Of Your Day

https://www.leaderherald.com/

Bob Cudmore(only one "e") compiles the history of Amsterdam and The Mohawk Valley. Thanks to all the donors so far.  We still have a long way to go. September goal line $500. --nounSports. the line that bounds a goal, especially the front line..  Please donate online here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/the-historians-podcast  In the U.S. Mail a check made out to Bob Cudmore to 125 Horstman Drive, Scotia, NY 12302. Bob will check the mailbox  first thing, Monday Morning

Episode 491-The origin story of American football. Gregg Ficery traces what became the NFL back to teams which played in Ohio and Pennsylvania in 1892.  Ficery is author of Gridiron Legacy.

Saturday, September 9, 2023-From the archives- Episode 200, February 2, 2018, Carol Kammen from Ithaca talks about her experiences as Tompkins County historian.  Kammen is well-known in the New York State history community and also has done work on the history of Cornell University.

Sunday, September 10, 2023-Focus on History-Sam Goldwyn and Gloversville

Samuel Goldwyn, one of the hard driving moguls who led the Hollywood movie industry in the 20th century, lived in Gloversville as a young man.

Bob Cudmore Stories from The Gazette and Recorder

Below is the story of The 115th

By Bob Cudmore

Many of them died, all of them suffered and they were called the Union Army’s  “Iron Hearted Regiment.”

Recruited from Fulton, Hamilton, Montgomery and Saratoga counties in fewer than 40 days, the 115th Regiment of the New York Volunteers trained at Camp Fonda, near the village.  About a thousand men left Fonda for the Civil War on August 29, 1862 amid a glorious sendoff.

“Reader, do you know the suffering of a day's march through the hot sun?” asked Lieutenant James H. Clark, author of a regimental history published in 1865 and transcribed on the web site of the New York State Military Museum by Nick Niemczyk.  Clark was a native of Fonda who was a farmer in Clifton Park when he enlisted.

By September 2, 1862 the men were on patrol in Maryland and the region’s planters refused to feed them.  The regiment contracted with local blacks who baked the soldiers 100 hot cakes. 

When the 115th Regiment finally came home, it left behind hundreds of men buried on “southern soil,” according to Lieutenant Clark.

In 1865, the Schenectady Daily Evening Star gave this account of the 115th: “Their first experience was at Harper’s Ferry, which place they reached (four days after leaving home) just in time to take part in the fight which resulted in the loss of the place, they among others, being taken prisoners. From there they were sent to Chicago, under rebel parole, which they remained some months awaiting the proper exchange.  While there with other regiments, a portion of the barracks burned, and this regiment was wrongfully charged with the deed. They were immediately sent, under sealed orders, to Hilton Head, where they remained several months as prisoners. The representations of their colonel, Simeon Sammons, obtained their release, and they immediately entered again upon active service, since which time they have made their mark as among the bravest of our brave soldiers.”

Colonel Sammons was from Fonda and commanded the regiment until he was discharged because of wounds suffered in 1864 in Cemetery Hill, Virginia.   The regiment fought in 30 battles, some of the bloodiest being in Florida, including the battle of Olustee.  The Upstate soldiers helped capture Fort Fisher, North Carolina in early 1865.   

“They were really steadfast, especially toward the end,” said Gloversville author Marcia Buffett.  A genealogist with ancestors who served in both the Revolutionary and Civil wars, Buffett began writing while recuperating from a serious illness.  Encouraged by members of the writers’ circle at the Gloversville Senior Center, she now has published “From the Mountains,” a work of historical fiction about the men of the 115th and the families they left behind.

In the book, Buffett tells a fictionalized version of the experiences of her ancestor Dwella Groff, who was wounded, captured and sent to a Confederate prison at the battle of Deep Bottom, Virginia in 1864.  Groff survived prison and later worked in the family lumber business in Hope and Northville.  He died in 1923 and is buried at Prospect Hill Cemetery in Northville.

Groff passed down the story of the blue ghost or man in blue--a Confederate spy who wore chain mail beneath a blue uniform.  When shot by Union soldiers, the man in blue would fall but then his body would be gone when soldiers went to pick up his corpse.  Eventually, the spy was captured and his body armor discovered. 

In her novel, Buffett also focuses on family stories passed down of the hardships that women endured back home during the war—blizzards, financial hardship and childbirth with no help. 

Mohawk Valley Weekend Weather, Saturday, September 9, 2023

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

Leader Herald Make Us A Part Of Your Day

https://www.leaderherald.com/

Bob Cudmore(only one "e") compiles the history of Amsterdam and The Mohawk Valley. Thanks to all the donors so far.  We still have a long way to go. September goal line $500. --nounSports. the line that bounds a goal, especially the front line..  Please donate online here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/the-historians-podcast  In the U.S. Mail a check made out to Bob Cudmore to 125 Horstman Drive, Scotia, NY 12302. Bob will check the mailbox in the morning.

Civil War regiment saw plenty of action

‘Iron Hearted’ 115th were sent off from Fonda

By Bob Cudmore

Many of them died, all of them suffered and they were called the Union Army’s  “Iron Hearted Regiment.”

Recruited from Fulton, Hamilton, Montgomery and Saratoga counties in fewer than 40 days, the 115th Regiment of the New York Volunteers trained at Camp Fonda, near the village.  About a thousand men left Fonda for the Civil War on August 29, 1862 amid a glorious sendoff.

“Reader, do you know the suffering of a day's march through the hot sun?” asked Lieutenant James H. Clark, author of a regimental history published in 1865 and transcribed on the web site of the New York State Military Museum by Nick Niemczyk.  Clark was a native of Fonda who was a farmer in Clifton Park when he enlisted.

By September 2, 1862 the men were on patrol in Maryland and the region’s planters refused to feed them.  The regiment contracted with local blacks who baked the soldiers 100 hot cakes. 

When the 115th Regiment finally came home, it left behind hundreds of men buried on “southern soil,” according to Lieutenant Clark.

In 1865, the Schenectady Daily Evening Star gave this account of the 115th: “Their first experience was at Harper’s Ferry, which place they reached (four days after leaving home) just in time to take part in the fight which resulted in the loss of the place, they among others, being taken prisoners. From there they were sent to Chicago, under rebel parole, which they remained some months awaiting the proper exchange.  While there with other regiments, a portion of the barracks burned, and this regiment was wrongfully charged with the deed. They were immediately sent, under sealed orders, to Hilton Head, where they remained several months as prisoners. The representations of their colonel, Simeon Sammons, obtained their release, and they immediately entered again upon active service, since which time they have made their mark as among the bravest of our brave soldiers.”

Colonel Sammons was from Fonda and commanded the regiment until he was discharged because of wounds suffered in 1864 in Cemetery Hill, Virginia.   The regiment fought in 30 battles, some of the bloodiest being in Florida, including the battle of Olustee.  The Upstate soldiers helped capture Fort Fisher, North Carolina in early 1865.   

“They were really steadfast, especially toward the end,” said Gloversville author Marcia Buffett.  A genealogist with ancestors who served in both the Revolutionary and Civil wars, Buffett began writing while recuperating from a serious illness.  Encouraged by members of the writers’ circle at the Gloversville Senior Center, she now has published “From the Mountains,” a work of historical fiction about the men of the 115th and the families they left behind.

In the book, Buffett tells a fictionalized version of the experiences of her ancestor Dwella Groff, who was wounded, captured and sent to a Confederate prison at the battle of Deep Bottom, Virginia in 1864.  Groff survived prison and later worked in the family lumber business in Hope and Northville.  He died in 1923 and is buried at Prospect Hill Cemetery in Northville.

Groff passed down the story of the blue ghost or man in blue--a Confederate spy who wore chain mail beneath a blue uniform.  When shot by Union soldiers, the man in blue would fall but then his body would be gone when soldiers went to pick up his corpse.  Eventually, the spy was captured and his body armor discovered. 

In her novel, Buffett also focuses on family stories passed down of the hardships that women endured back home during the war—blizzards, financial hardship and childbirth with no help. 

Friday, September 8- Episode 491-The origin story of American football. Gregg Ficery traces what became the National Football League back to teams which played in Ohio and Pennsylvania in 1892.  Ficery is author of Gridiron Legacy.

Mohawk Valley Weather, Thursday, September 7, 2023

72 degrees in The City of Amsterdam at 6:02AM 

Leader Herald Make Us A Part Of Your Day

https://www.leaderherald.com/

Historians Go Fund Me needs some cash as Episode #500 takes shape for this November.

produce (something, especially a list, report, or book) by assembling information collected from other sources.

Bob Cudmorre compiles the history of Amsterdam and The Mohawk Valley

Thanks to all the donors so far.  We still have a long way to go. September bottom line $500 needed.  Please donate online here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/the-historians-podcast  Or send a check made out to Bob Cudmore to 125 Horstman Drive, Scotia, NY 12302. 

Wednesday, September 6 , 2023-From the Archives- Episode 72, August 2, 2015- David Jennings is author of the historical novel After Bondage and War. The novel tells of people impacted by slavery through the Civil War and Reconstruction.

Thursday, September 7, 2023-From the Archives of Focus on History from the Daily Gazette-Local soldiers in the Civil War

Friday, September 8- Episode 491-The origin story of American football. Gregg Ficery traces what became the National Football League back to teams which played in Ohio and Pennsylvania in 1892.  Ficery is author of Gridiron Legacy.

Mohawk Valley Weather, Wednesday, September 6, 2023

72 degrees in The City of Amsterdam at 5:14AM 

Leader Herald Make Us A Part Of Your Day

https://www.leaderherald.com/

Historians Go Fund Me needs some cash as Episode #500 takes shape for this November.

produce (something, especially a list, report, or book) by assembling information collected from other sources.

Bob Cudmorre compiles the history of Amsterdam and The Mohawk Valley

Thanks to all the donors so far.  We still have a long way to go. September bottom line $500 needed.  Please donate online here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/the-historians-podcast  Or send a check made out to Bob Cudmore to 125 Horstman Drive, Scotia, NY 12302. 

Wednesday, September 6 , 2023-From the Archives- Episode 72, August 2, 2015- David Jennings is author of the historical novel After Bondage and War. The novel tells of people impacted by slavery through the Civil War and Reconstruction.

Thursday, September 7, 2023-From the Archives of Focus on History from the Daily Gazette-Local soldiers in the Civil War

Many of them died, all of them suffered and they were called the Union Army’s  “Iron Hearted Regiment.”

Recruited from Fulton, Hamilton, Montgomery and Saratoga counties in fewer than 40 days, the 115th Regiment of the New York Volunteers trained at Camp Fonda, near the village.

Gregg Ficery

Friday, September 8- Episode 491-The origin story of American football. Gregg Ficery traces what became the National Football League back to teams which played in Ohio and Pennsylvania in 1892.  Ficery is author of Gridiron Legacy.

Mohawk Valley Weather, Wednesday, September 6, 2023

72 degrees in The City of Amsterdam at 5:14AM 

Leader Herald Make Us A Part Of Your Day

https://www.leaderherald.com/

Elizabeth Smith was our most recent Historians Podcast contributor.  Thanks to all the donors.  We still have a long way to go.  Please donate online here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/the-historians-podcast  Or send a check made out to Bob Cudmore to 125 Horstman Drive, Scotia, NY 12302. 

Monday, September 4, 2023-Story behind the story-Leonora Barry.

Tuesday, September 5, 2023-From the Archives of Focus on History from the Daily Gazette-Parade sends wedding party outside

When did people start taking wedding pictures outdoors as opposed to a photographer’s studio?

Wednesday, September 6 , 2023-From the Archives- Episode 72, August 2, 2015- David Jennings is author of the historical novel After Bondage and War. The novel tells of people impacted by slavery through the Civil War and Reconstruction.

Thursday, September 7, 2023-From the Archives of Focus on History from the Daily Gazette-Local soldiers in the Civil War

Friday, September 8- Episode 491-The origin story of American football. Gregg Ficery traces what became the National Football League back to teams which played in Ohio and Pennsylvania in 1892.  Ficery is author of Gridiron Legacy.

Amsterdam woman was pioneer union leader

By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History

   An Irish immigrant woman who lived and worked in Amsterdam became a national union leader in the nineteenth century.

   Leonora Kearney Barry wrote. “Day after day, I sat sewing men’s trousers for five cents a dozen.”

   Leonora was born in 1849 in Cork.  Her parents, John and Honor Kearney, fled the Irish potato famine and settled in Pierrepont in northern New York where her father worked a farm.

   When Leonora was in her early teens, her mother died.  Her father married a woman five years older than his daughter and the two women did not get along.  Leonora took lessons from the head of the Colton Girls School and earned a teaching certificate at age sixteen.

   Leonora taught school for seven years.   In 1871 she married a house painter and musician from Potsdam, William Barry.  William, too, was from Ireland and came to Canada when young.  He served nine years in the British army.

   The Barrys moved from town to town seeking work.  They settled on Amsterdam’s Voorhees Street with their three children.

   William Barry died in April 1881.  The obituary of the 38-year old said he had suffered lung ailments. 

   He was a “well-known musician” and composer who led the Amsterdam Cornet Band and played in the Thirteenth Brigade Band.  The Barrys’ three-year-old daughter also died that year.

   Now a widow with two young sons, Leonora could not return to teaching because only single women were acceptable candidates for teaching positions.

   She went to work in Amsterdam’s booming factories including Pioneer Hosiery, a knitting mill.  It was located on the south side of 31 Main Street, between Market and Church Streets.

   In 1884 Barry joined the women’s branch of the Knights of Labor in Amsterdam.  There was a knitting mill strike and management lockout of the union in 1886.  Mill owners eventually prevailed in ousting the Knights, at least temporarily.

   In 1886 Barry attended a Knights of Labor convention in Richmond, Virginia, and was named to the new department of women’s work.  Leaving her children with relatives, she traveled the country.

   There was criticism of her “high moral tone” from some union leaders and opposition to her idea that women should be full-fledged union members.

   The Biographical Dictionary of Notable American Women described her as tall with a commanding presence, contagious smile, gifted with Irish humor, blue eyes and spontaneity. 

   Barry advocated for equal pay for women and fought against child labor. She spoke against sexual harassment, saying men used the power of their positions to “debauch women and boys.” 

   In 1888, at Susan B. Anthony’s invitation, Barry spoke to the 40th anniversary of the Seneca Falls Convention for women.

   In 1890 Leonora married Obediah Read Lake, a printer from St. Louis.  Leonora didn’t think married women should work outside the home unless there was economic necessity.  She resigned from the union.

   Known as Mother Lake at the end of her life, she lived until 1923 and was popular on the lecture circuit as an advocate for temperance and women’s rights.

   She took part in a successful women’s suffrage campaign in Colorado in 1893; that year she delivered her popular speech called “The Dignity of Labor” to the Columbian Exhibition in Chicago.

   After marrying Lake, Leonora lived in St. Louis until 1916 when she moved to Minooka, Illinois, to live with her husband’s sister.  A baseball fan, she visited Chicago to see ball games.  She died of cancer in 1923. 

   Retired Montgomery County historian Jacqueline Daly Murphy was instrumental in getting an historical marker honoring Barry placed at the east end of the mall in downtown Amsterdam in 1998.

The Greater Amsterdam School District Hall of Fame induction is coming soon.  The dinner and ceremony will take place at 6 pm Friday, September 15, 2023 at the Perthshire on Route 30 north of Amsterdam. The cost is $50 per person.  For more information email [email protected] or call or text Rich Allen at 518-878-6374

Mohawk Valley Weather, Monday, Labor Day, September 4, 2023

68 degrees in The City of Amsterdam at 6:09AM 

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