The Historians by Bob Cudmore

May 21, 2023 to tout the city of Amsterdam

The Historians Sunday Update at 8:52AM

make (something) more modern or up to date.

The Progress Exposition was organized by the Board of Trade, predecessor of the Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce. The event was held from September 11th through the 19th, 1925 at Ross’ Flats in the East End, next to the railroad tracks. Admission was 25 cents for adults and 10 cents for children.

Bustling Amsterdam

Bustling Amsterdam sparkled in 1925 expo

By Bob Cudmore

America was prospering in 1925 and local businesses staged Amsterdam’s Progress Exposition and Auto Show that year to show off that prosperity.

“In the twenties, that was the heyday here,” said anthropologist Susan Dauria. “The population was about 35,000, the biggest it’s ever been.” Dauria wrote her doctoral dissertation on the rise and decline of manufacturing in Amsterdam.

According to the Schenectady Gazette of that day, a windmill was erected as the entrance to a series of huge tents that contained more than a hundred booths where manufacturers and businessmen showed their wares. One “mammoth tent” was dedicated to the display of automobiles. Socony (Standard Oil of New York) displayed a gasoline pump.

A Main Street parade preceded opening night. The Gazette reported: “All the industrial concerns and stores in this city have been invited to have their old employees in point of service participate in the parade, as the parade will feature those who have had part in the building up of Amsterdam.”

Schenectady General Electric furnished floodlights. “The whole city is in gala attire, with the merchants making displays of their flags on the poles along the curbs,” reported the Gazette.

State Senator William T. Byrne of Albany gave a speech. There was a fashion show, baby contest and a pet show. A billboard advertised music and entertainment daily.

The Walter Elwood Museum in Amsterdam has a book of pictures of the Progress Exposition taken by photographer Emil Zillgitt for the Board of Trade. The Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce donated the book to the museum in 1982. Museum director Ann Thane would like to know more about Zillgitt. His photography studio was at 13-15 East Main Street and he is listed in city directories through the early 1950s when he died. He and his wife Eunice lived at 118 Grand Street.

One picture shows the booth of real estate agent Monroe Gray who is selling suburban lots at Tribes Hill Heights. “A lot means a home and a home means a lot,” states a poster. Gray is seated at his booth, which is next to Quist Lumber, smartly dressed in a three-piece suit with well-shined shoes, holding what may be a rolled up blueprint. Another poster promises: “Invest now and double your money at Tribes Hill Heights.” Gray has blueprints of the lots and pictures of homes stacked on a table underneath an American flag. He has a promotional item: a calendar depicting an elegant woman.

The carpet mills—Mohawk and Stephen Sanford & Sons--had booths in the Exposition, as did other manufacturers.

Main Street merchant Holzheimer & Shaul occupied several booths that look like store window displays. A cardboard cutout of a young girl is behind a new Hoover vacuum cleaner, offered with “unusually easy terms.” A female mannequin wearing an apron sits amid a display of Glenwood gas and wood stoves. One of the firm’s principals, P. Dater Shaul, is pictured at a planning session for the Exposition. To tout the city’s role in making rugs, Holzheimer’s put a Sanford carpet on the sidewalk in front of its East Main Street store during the Exposition.

In Amsterdam since 1882, Fitzgerald’s Bottling Works offered ginger ale for five cents a bottle at its booth. “The safest drinks--kills disease germs,” states an advertising poster.

Monday, May 22, 2023-The story behind the story-Amsterdam’s 1925 Progress Exposition(Podcast 6 minutes)

Tuesday, May 23, 2023-Fort Plain’s Luxuray made women’s panties.

Wednesday, May 24, 2023- Episode 95, January 24, 2016- Jewelry designer and historian Aja Raden with an account of how jewels have affected the course of history. Raden is author of “Stoned: Jewelry, Obsession and How Desire Shapes the World.”

Thursday, May 25, 2023-Route 5-History on the highway.

Friday, May 26, 2023-Episode 476-Journalist Paul Kix documents how the 1963 desegregation campaign in Birmingham Alabama changed race relations in America. Martin Luther King, Jr., was imprisoned and wrote his Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Kix’s book is titled You Have to Be Prepared to Die before You Can Begin to Live.

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Historians Weekend Extra "The Cannon at Fairview Cemetery"

By Bob Cudmore

A cannon that marks the veterans’ plot at Amsterdam’s Fairview Cemetery was forged during the Civil War.

City historian Robert H. von Hasseln researched the gun’s history, “It was born in 1864 in the fires of the cast iron forges of Builders Foundry in Providence, Rhode Island.”

It was the 183rd eleven inch Dahlgren Shell Gun manufactured for the United States Navy. These guns were named for their inventor, Rear Admiral John Dahlgren.

Shell guns were developed just before the Civil War. They fired spherical shells filled with explosives that could tear “jagged holes” in wooden ships as well as igniting “powder, shells, combustibles, and the like.”

Gun number 183 appeared in federal records at the Mare Island Naval Yard near San Francisco in 1866. It is not known if the gun had been mounted on any ship prior to 1877 when number 183 was among about fifty Dahlgren guns converted into eight inch rifles.

Von Hasseln wrote, “It became clear the best way to defeat armored vessels was a pointed rifled projectile (think giant rifle bullet): spinning on its longitudinal axis like a well-thrown football.” The conversion of number 183 was probably done at the West Point Foundry in Cold Spring, New York.

Visible on the gun is this notation “P; EJH: 1877” which Von Hasseln said meant the gun was proved (test fired), with initials of the federal inspector and date. Also on the piece you can read: “8 Inch Rifle; 17,240 lbs; No. 13.” This indicates caliber and type, weight of tube alone and a new registry number.

The cannonballs stacked next to the Fairview gun are eleven inch spherical shells that the piece originally fired, not the conical rifle shells it fired after conversion.

Gun 183-13 saw service around the world on the USS Monongahela, Pensacola and Essex. It was later used for training and tests, then stored at the Washington Navy Yard. Some converted eleven inch shell guns were used on ships guarding the East Coast in the Spanish American War.

Click here for The Story Behind the Story with more information about "The Cannon"

Von Hasseln wrote that most of the original eleven inch shell guns were scrapped, “Others became pier-side and traffic bollards, a few museum displays, and one – an everlasting memorial to Amsterdam veterans.”

Fairview Cemetery was established off Steadwell Avenue in Amsterdam’s west end in 1899. Members of the E. S. Young Post 33 of the Grand Army of the Republic, an association of Union Civil War veterans, decided to create a veterans’ plot at Fairview as they had at Green Hill Cemetery.

The Reverend Putnam Cady of Emmanuel Presbyterian Church on Guy Park Avenue gave a talk about his world travels to raise funds to ship and mount the gun. The cannon was delivered and installed in July 1906.

At the dedication, Reverend Cady said: “It was ever ready to obey the gunner’s will, and with its brazen throat commands respect for the stars and stripes that floated above it. Now that its active usefulness is past what better place could it occupy than this where sleep the men who have fought and stacked their arms for the last time?”

The first piece of property in the New World purchased by the Cudmore family, immigrants from the United Kingdom, was a cemetery plot at Fairview.

My grandmother Elizabeth Copp Cudmore, 56, was buried there at Christmas time in 1934. Her husband Harry lived another 22 years and also was buried at Fairview, as were other family members including my aunts, one uncle, my parents and sister. When I was a child we visited the cemetery in the summer and had picnics among the tombstones.

Schedule the Date for A Walking Tour, Friends of North Chuctanunda Incorporated

Saturday, June 3, 2023 at 9:30 am

"Clock Tower Building" Amsterdam. An elevator to top floor to enjoy the view. Down to third floor reception Room for coffee & a treat. We are celebrating National Trails Day. We have invited trail spokespeople from around the area to tell about their pathways. The Friends will display maps showing where trails are complete and others future construction.(Bob will have more information over the next few days)

Mohawk Valley Weekend Weather, Sunday, May 21, 2023

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

Mostly cloudy, then gradually becoming sunny, with a high near 69. West wind around 15 mph.

Tonight

Mostly clear, with a low around 47. West wind 5 to 7 mph becoming light and variable in the evening.

Monday

Sunny, with a high near 70. East wind around 6 mph.

Mohawk Valley News Headlines, Sunday, May 21, 2023

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