The Historians

This evening at 7 in Hagaman, Bob Cudmore talks history

The Demskys of Amsterdam and a little about the Bob to-do list.

Passion: a strong liking or desire for or devotion to some activity, object, or concept, Thank You Webster

The Hagaman Historical Society meets at 6:30 pm at the Calvary Reformed Church, 15 Church.  Bob’s talk will be at 7 pm.  Please use the side entrance to the church.  Bob will be accepting donations for The Historians Podcast fund drive. 

Go Fund Me Goal in April $1,500.00

https://www.gofundme.com/f/the-historians-podcast

The Thursday Morning tally no change at $1,005.00, up $50.00 from Monday, Thank You. The need $350.00 by the close of the weekend.

U.S. Mail A check to Bob Cudmore to 125 Horstman Drive, Scotia, NY 12302.

“Mohawk Valley History with Bob Cudmore”

....from Gloversville

What’s it like to be the boss’s son? Rod Correll is author of the memoir “Learning to Be a Leatherman-A Rite of Passage.” Correll lived in the leather business for 50 years, from childhood up to when he left the business to return to Yale for an MBA.

An artistic gunsmith

By Bob Cudmore

A loom fixer for an Amsterdam carpet mill set up shop as a gunsmith in 1948 and then made his living building custom rifles and repairing firearms until his death in 1960.

Raymond Overbaugh, born in 1903 in the town of Florida, once told a reporter, "I always fooled around with guns in my spare time."  He worked 28 years fixing looms for Bigelow-Sanford’s Amsterdam carpet mills before opening his gun shop in a small building next to his home off Route 5 near Cranesville.  Later he moved his family and shop to Tribes Hill. 

Many American soldiers returning from World War II brought souvenir weapons home from the war, in particular Mauser rifles made for the German army.

According to a 1953 story by Truman Temple in the Daily Gazette, Overbaugh’s best selling items were deer hunting rifles converted from Mauser 8 millimeter rifles.  He turned out about 30 rifles a year plus doing repair work.

“The ‘Overbaugh Special’ is in demand all over the country by certain small arms fanatics who can pay the necessary $110 (and up) for a hand-crafted rifle that combines German precision with light handling qualities,” Temple wrote.

Overbaugh knew his hunting customers wanted a firearm much lighter than the one German soldiers carried.  He trimmed about a fourth of the weight off each Mauser and the finished product weighed seven pounds

“I just trim down the stock and take a bit of metal off here and there,” Overbaugh said.

Today, Overbaugh’s rifles are seen infrequently at gun shows and can go for $2,000 each, according to firearms fanciers.

John Del Savio, an official of the Pine Tree Rifle Club in Johnstown, said an Overbaugh rifle was known for having diamond shaped inlays, black and white.  The black inlays were made from ebony and the white inlays were ivory.  Overbaugh also put a tiny signature on the barrels of some of his guns

In the early 1950s Johnstown native David Acker and his father, gun collector Adolph Acker, used to visit Overbaugh’s shop.  It was a small space that could comfortably handle a half dozen people. 

During one visit by the Ackers a customer came in and inquired about a special firearm order.  After he left, the word was passed that the customer was Amsterdam native Kirk Douglas, home for a visit from Hollywood.

Overbaugh said in the 1953 interview that his oddest repair job was work done on two submachine guns for the Amsterdam police.  Local police carried the weapons on those days when the carpet mills paid workers in cash.  Overbaugh said police never had to fire them.

Overbaugh favored Colt automatic weapons.  He said that that the Germans made the best rifles, the British made the best shotguns and the best revolvers were made by Smith & Wesson in America. 

Reporter Temple said that Overbaugh’s shop was surrounded by tame squirrels and birds, “He walked to the door and coaxed chickadees down to feed from his hand. 

At the time of the interview, Overbaugh said he had 200 guns in his collection, including a German machine gun from World War I that he kept in the basement.  His shop was hard to find and he had toyed with the idea of painting the machine gun and putting it in front of his shop as an advertisement.  Overbaugh’s collection then also included a half dozen pistols dating from the American Revolution. 

Overbaugh’s 1960 obituary noted that he was known for artistic gun building.  His wife Olive and son George survived him.  George Overbaugh worked with his father for a number of years.  Raymond Overbaugh was buried at Amsterdam’s Fairview Cemetery.

Posted Early tomorrow, Friday, April 7, 2023 

Episode 469- Composer, choral director and pianist Maria Riccio Bryce, creator of a new work called Requiem: What Remains Is Love. 

CD recordings are available at Amsterdam Free Library.

On Friday May 26, the Requiem will be performed at St Paul’s Episcopal on Hackett Blvd in Albany

Saturday, May 27, at First Reformed on N. Church St in the Schenectady Stockade

Sunday at 3pm on May 28, at Trinity Lutheran on Guy Park Avenue in Amsterdam.

Email [email protected]

Mohawk Valley Weather, Thursday, April 6, 2023

A chance of showers, mainly between 10am and 5pm. Patchy fog before 9am. Otherwise, mostly cloudy, with a high near 60. Light southwest wind becoming west 9 to 14 mph in the morning. Chance of precipitation is 40%. New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible.

Leader Herald Make Us A Part Of Your Day

https://www.leaderherald.com/

Tomorrow evening at 7 on the 6th of April in Hagaman.

Bob Cudmore History Talk, you are invited

Let Bob Cudmore aquaint you with the history of your ancestors in The Mohawk Valley 

The Hagaman Historical Society meets at 6:30 pm Thursday at the Calvary Reformed Church, 15 Church.  Bob’s talk will be at 7 pm.  Please use the side entrance to the church.  Bob will be accepting donations for The Historians Podcast fund drive.   

Go Fund Me Goal in April $1,500.00

Link: The Historians Go Fund Me  https://www.gofundme.com/f/the-historians-podcast

The Wednesday Morning tally steady-going at $1,005.00, up $50.00 from Monday, Thank You. Need to raise $350.00 by Sunday Night.

U.S. Mail A check to Bob Cudmore to 125 Horstman Drive, Scotia, NY 12302. (Bob checks the mail twice a day)

“Mohawk Valley History with Bob Cudmore”

David Pietrusza is author of “Roosevelt Sweeps Nation: FDR’s 1936 Landslide and the Triumph of the Liberal Ideal.”

Wednesday, April 5, 2023-Michael Doyle is author of “The Ministers’ War

Thursday, April 6, 2023-The Artistic Gunsmith

A loom fixer for an Amsterdam carpet mill set up shop as a gunsmith in 1948 and then made his living building custom rifles and repairing firearms until his death in 1960.

Friday, April 7, 2023 (Edit is complete, total time 29 minutes)

Episode 469- Composer, choral director and pianist Maria Riccio Bryce, creator of a new work called Requiem: What Remains Is Love.  CD recordings are available at Amsterdam Free Library. On Friday May 26, the Requiem will be performed at St Paul’s Episcopal on Hackett Blvd in Albany; Saturday, May 27, at First Reformed on N. Church St in the Schenectady Stockade; and Sunday at 3pm on May 28, at Trinity Lutheran on Guy Park Avenue in Amsterdam.

Email [email protected]

Mohawk Valley Weather, Wednesday, April 5, 2023

Leader Herald Make Us A Part Of Your Day

https://www.leaderherald.com/

Historians information from over the weekend...

Bob Cudmore is helping Jay Towne and the Foothills Arts Council produce a documentary on December holiday traditions featuring Mohawk Valley people.  Interviews are being recorded starting today at the Amsterdam Free Library. We will keep you up to date.

$1,500.00 is the goal in the month of April

The Historians Go Fund Me  https://www.gofundme.com/f/the-historians-podcast

The Monday Morning tally $955.00 (Webster-A tally is a continuous count of something)

U.S. Mail A check to Bob Cudmore to 125 Horstman Drive, Scotia, NY 12302.

Tuesday, April 4, 2023 Fooling the Ragman (and they did it with a smile)

According to Kirk Douglas’s book, his father was born Herschel Danielovitch in Russia and came to America in 1908.  His wife Bryna or Bertha Sanglel followed two years later.  Their six daughters and one son all were born in America.

Wednesday, April 5, 2023-Michael Doyle is author of “The Ministers’ War: John W. Mears, the Oneida Community, and the Crusade for Public Morality.”  The book describes a 19th century utopian community in upstate New York.

Thursday, April 6, 2023-The Artistic Gunsmith

Friday, April 7, 2023-Episode 469- Composer, choral director and pianist Maria Riccio Bryce, creator of a new work called Requiem: What Remains Is Love.  CD recordings are available at Amsterdam Free Library. On Friday May 26, the Requiem will be performed at St Paul’s Episcopal on Hackett Blvd in Albany; Saturday, May 27, at First Reformed on N. Church St in the Schenectady Stockade; and Sunday at 3pm on May 28, at Trinity Lutheran on Guy Park Avenue in Amsterdam.

“Inside the Amsterdam City Limits, History with Bob Cudmore”

Jerry Snyder was one of the founders of Historic Amsterdam League, which focuses on the history of Amsterdam, N.Y.

Edmund Wilson and the Mohawk encampment

By Bob Cudmore

   Edmund Wilson, a famous journalist and man of letters, visited Chief Standing Arrow at the 1957 Mohawk Indian encampment on farmland adjacent to the Schoharie Creek in Fort Hunter.  Wilson wrote about the encounter in his book, “Apologies to the Iroquois.

   Standing Arrow put a sign on Route 5-S that said Indian Village.  During the previous summer, the Mohawks sold souvenirs to tourists.

   The encampment was an attempt to repossess part of an 8,000 acre tract the Mohawks said was not included in land ceded to the U.S. government by the Iroquois Confederacy in the Fort Stanwix Treaty of 1784.  According to historian and newspaper reporter Hugh Donlon, there was talk of 3,000 Mohawks coming to the settlement from the reservation on the Canadian border with northern New York.

   When Wilson arrived, the Chief, also known as Frank Johnson, was away and his family not too willing to communicate.  On a second visit, Wilson knocked at the door and no one came to answer it.  When Wilson was getting back in his car, Standing Arrow appeared in the doorway and waved to him.

   Wilson said, “It was a characteristic of an Indian that, not being up and dressed, he should not shout that he would be out in a minute but should wait until he could present himself with dignity.”

Please contribute to the 2023 Historians Podcast fund drive.  We had no donations during the past week and we are way behind last year. Online at https://www.gofundme.com/f/the-historians-podcast  or send a check made out to Bob Cudmore to 125 Horstman Drive, Scotia, NY 12302. Thank you as we work to Historians Episode #500 later this year.

   Descended from an upstate New York family named Talcott, Wilson maintained a summer home at Talcottville, north of Utica in Lewis County between the Adirondacks and Tug Hill Plateau. 

   Wilson found that Standing Arrow was part of an Iroquois nationalist movement with adherents at the Onondaga reservation in the Syracuse area and at reservations in northern New York and Canada. 

   Inside, Standing Arrow’s hut was “small but not ill-kept.”  There was a landscape of a lake hanging on the wall, along with a feathered headdress and a rattle made from the shell of a snapping turtle.  Wilson said Standing Arrow, a chief from the St. Regis Reservation, was a charismatic figure.   

   Although he had heard unfavorable things about Standing Arrow, Wilson was “won over” by the Chief saying, “He appealed to the imagination.”  Standing Arrow’s features reminded Wilson of the young Napoleon, even though he had “a slight cast in one eye.”

   “He had also, as I could see, some of the qualities of the Mussolinian spellbinder,” wrote Wilson.

   Wilson added, “A Mohawk who disapproved of Standing Arrow told me that his eloquence in English – of which his command was imperfect – was nothing to his eloquence in Mohawk.”

   Standing Arrow produced a document from attorney E.A. Everett from 1924 backing the Chief’s claim that the Mohawks still owned the land around the Schoharie Creek.  Everett credited the Iroquois Confederacy with creating the only pre-European government in America.

   Wilson learned that some of the men in the settlement were high steel workers who had labored that year on the nearby Thruway Bridge over Schoharie Creek.  That bridge collapsed during flooding 30 years later killing 10 people. 

   Mohawks are excellent working on tall construction projects--walking on a narrow beam is not difficult for them.  Wilson’s book includes “A Study of the Mohawks in High Steel” written by Joseph Mitchell, describing the lives led by Mohawks living in New York City.

   After a harsh winter, the Schoharie Creek encampment was gone by the summer of 1958.  Eviction orders were served by Sheriff Alton Dingman following court action in March.  Some of the Mohawk huts were burned.   The Mohawks were offered land in the town of Fulton in Schoharie County but if there was a settlement in Fulton, apparently it was short lived.

Email [email protected]

Mohawk Valley Weather, Monday, April 3, 2023

Leader Herald Make Us A Part Of Your Day

https://www.leaderherald.com/

April Go Fund Me Goal $1,500.00

Today, April 2- $955.00

Use this link https://www.gofundme.com/f/the-historians-podcast

U.S. Mail

A check to Bob Cudmore to 125 Horstman Drive, Scotia, NY 12302.

When Wilson arrived, the Chief, also known as Frank Johnson, was away and his family not too willing to communicate.  On a second visit, Wilson knocked at the door and no one came to answer it.  When Wilson was getting back in his car, Standing Arrow appeared in the doorway and waved to him.

Edmund Wilson and the Mohawk encampment

By Bob Cudmore

Bob will have more information tomorrow. The Story Behind the Story Monday Podcast

   Edmund Wilson, a famous journalist and man of letters, visited Chief Standing Arrow at the 1957 Mohawk Indian encampment on farmland adjacent to the Schoharie Creek in Fort Hunter.  Wilson wrote about the encounter in his book, “Apologies to the Iroquois.

   Standing Arrow put a sign on Route 5-S that said Indian Village.  During the previous summer, the Mohawks sold souvenirs to tourists.

   The encampment was an attempt to repossess part of an 8,000 acre tract the Mohawks said was not included in land ceded to the U.S. government by the Iroquois Confederacy in the Fort Stanwix Treaty of 1784.  According to historian and newspaper reporter Hugh Donlon, there was talk of 3,000 Mohawks coming to the settlement from the reservation on the Canadian border with northern New York.

   When Wilson arrived, the Chief, also known as Frank Johnson, was away and his family not too willing to communicate.  On a second visit, Wilson knocked at the door and no one came to answer it.  When Wilson was getting back in his car, Standing Arrow appeared in the doorway and waved to him.

   Wilson said, “It was a characteristic of an Indian that, not being up and dressed, he should not shout that he would be out in a minute but should wait until he could present himself with dignity.”

Please contribute to the 2023 Historians Podcast fund drive.  We had no donations during the past week and we are way behind last year.    PLEASE DONATE online at https://www.gofundme.com/f/the-historians-podcast  or send a check made out to Bob Cudmore to 125 Horstman Drive, Scotia, NY 12302. Thank you-every contribution helps.

   Descended from an upstate New York family named Talcott, Wilson maintained a summer home at Talcottville, north of Utica in Lewis County between the Adirondacks and Tug Hill Plateau. 

   Wilson found that Standing Arrow was part of an Iroquois nationalist movement with adherents at the Onondaga reservation in the Syracuse area and at reservations in northern New York and Canada. 

   Inside, Standing Arrow’s hut was “small but not ill-kept.”  There was a landscape of a lake hanging on the wall, along with a feathered headdress and a rattle made from the shell of a snapping turtle.  Wilson said Standing Arrow, a chief from the St. Regis Reservation, was a charismatic figure.   

   Although he had heard unfavorable things about Standing Arrow, Wilson was “won over” by the Chief saying, “He appealed to the imagination.”  Standing Arrow’s features reminded Wilson of the young Napoleon, even though he had “a slight cast in one eye.”

   “He had also, as I could see, some of the qualities of the Mussolinian spellbinder,” wrote Wilson.

   Wilson added, “A Mohawk who disapproved of Standing Arrow told me that his eloquence in English – of which his command was imperfect – was nothing to his eloquence in Mohawk.”

   Standing Arrow produced a document from attorney E.A. Everett from 1924 backing the Chief’s claim that the Mohawks still owned the land around the Schoharie Creek.  Everett credited the Iroquois Confederacy with creating the only pre-European government in America.

   Wilson learned that some of the men in the settlement were high steel workers who had labored that year on the nearby Thruway Bridge over Schoharie Creek.  That bridge collapsed during flooding 30 years later killing 10 people. 

   Mohawks are excellent working on tall construction projects--walking on a narrow beam is not difficult for them.  Wilson’s book includes “A Study of the Mohawks in High Steel” written by Joseph Mitchell, describing the lives led by Mohawks living in New York City.

   After a harsh winter, the Schoharie Creek encampment was gone by the summer of 1958.  Eviction orders were served by Sheriff Alton Dingman following court action in March.  Some of the Mohawk huts were burned.   The Mohawks were offered land in the town of Fulton in Schoharie County but if there was a settlement in Fulton, apparently it was short lived.

Email [email protected]

“Inside the Amsterdam City Limits, History with Bob Cudmore”

A look at Guy Park Manor, arguably Amsterdam’s oldest house.

Tuesday, April 4, 2023

Fooling the Ragman

According to Douglas’s book, his father was born Herschel Danielovitch in Russia and came to America in 1908.  His wife Bryna or Bertha Sanglel followed two years later.  Their six daughters and one son all were born in America.

Wednesday, April 5, 2023-

Michael Doyle is author of “The Ministers’ War: John W. Mears, the Oneida Community, and the Crusade for Public Morality.”  The book describes a 19th century utopian community in upstate New York.

Thursday, April 6, 2023-The artistic gunsmith

Maria Riccio Bryce

Friday, April 7, 2023

Episode 469- Composer, choral director and pianist Maria Riccio Bryce, creator of a new work called Requiem: What Remains Is Love.  CD recordings are available at Amsterdam Free Library. On Friday May 26, the Requiem will be performed at St Paul’s Episcopal on Hackett Blvd in Albany; Saturday, May 27, at First Reformed on N. Church St in the Schenectady Stockade; and Sunday at 3pm on May 28, at Trinity Lutheran on Guy Park Avenue in Amsterdam.

Mohawk Valley Weather, Sunday, April 2, 2023

Leader Herald Make Us A Part Of Your Day

https://www.leaderherald.com/

Important Information about The Historians

The Historians Podcast is supported by people like you.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/the-historians-podcast 

We need your donations to keep going.  Donations have been few this year. 

  Or send a check made out to Bob Cudmore, 125 Horstman Drive, Scotia, N.Y. 12302.  You may contribute anonymously and a contribution of any size large or small is appreciated.  Thanking you in advance for your support.

The Historians with Bob Cudmore

Conversations and Interviews

Coming in April

Friday, April 7, 2023-Episode 469- Composer, choral director and pianist Maria Riccio Bryce, creator of a new work called Requiem: What Remains Is Love.  CD recordings are available at Amsterdam Free Library. On Friday May 26, the Requiem will be performed at St Paul’s Episcopal on Hackett Blvd in Albany; Saturday, May 27, at First Reformed on N. Church St in the Schenectady Stockade; and Sunday, May 28 at 3pm at Trinity Lutheran on Guy Park Avenue in Amsterdam.

Amsterdam remembers Teddy Roosevelt

By Bob Cudmore

               Memories of Amsterdam’s Theodore Roosevelt Junior High on Guy Park Avenue where a senior housing project exists today continue to come in.

               Evelyn Riccio, retired schoolteacher and librarian, said that the song about junior high quoted in a previous column had a verse, which indicates the song was written specifically for the Amsterdam school.  Otherwise, the words—to the tune of “Stars and Stripes Forever”—could be applied to any junior high.

               Riccio said the verse went like this:

Other students may think their school’s the best

And serve it with loyal devotion.

But the school that is dear to you and me

Is this school of ours with colors blue and silver.

               Riccio said that longtime Roosevelt principal Fritz Heil compiled the lyrics, although another alumna recalled that a student named Barbara Casey wrote the words as part of a school contest.

TEDDY REMEMBERED

`             Former student Paul Russo remembered that Heil addressed students on the first day of school in the auditorium, “He said that when he was a kid, Teddy Roosevelt came to town and Heil jumped up on the running board of Roosevelt’s car and shock hands with him.”

               There are 20 references to Theodore Roosevelt in Frank Yunker’s online database of newspaper headlines from the early twentieth century in Amsterdam (www.mohawkvalleyweb.com).  Roosevelt spoke in Amsterdam in 1898, 1900, 1910 and 1914.  When he died in 1919, the city held a Roosevelt Day in which clergymen paid tribute to “the great statesman.”

               The junior high was dedicated to the former President on October 2, 1925 with the main address given by state education commissioner Dr. Frank P. Graves.

               At Roosevelt Junior High in the late 1950s, student reporter Elizabeth Dye Russo found a ladder sticking up into the attic of the building and covered the story for The Broadcaster, the school newspaper.

               “We got permission to go up in the attic and see all the old stuff and I wrote an article about it. I can't remember, however what was up there!”

               Several people informed me that the name of my eighth grade homeroom and art teacher was Marian Gode Carnwright, married to John Carnwright, the printing shop teacher.

               As Amsterdam was the carpet city, a shop course was taught in textiles, first by a Mr. Noble and then by Bill Fennhahn.  My mother was a sewing teacher and my father a carpet weaver so I felt pressure to excel in Fennhahn’s course.  I did all right on the sewing machine but, alas, my partner Tom Christman and I messed up the threading of our loom so much that it was beyond help.

               Another alumnus recalled that physical education teacher Richard Ruback, who passed away recently, coached a seventh grade basketball team sponsored by a private sports club, the Hurricana Club.  Some of the outstanding players in Amsterdam High basketball received a solid foundation in the sport by participating in that club.

               A popular student stop near the junior high was Eddie Doyle’s confectionery store, where Eileen Macvean of Amsterdam recalled the big item in her day was the Jo-Jo Pop.

`             Students bought school supplies at Sam Soula’s card and magazine store.

Former student Peter Betz said, “We also bought the little glass bottles of colored ink there which in the spring we loaded in our water pistols to shoot at each other as the class lines moved from room to room.  That brought a lot of parent complaints so there was a crackdown---locker inspections, confiscation of weapons, etc.

“Sometimes we put cheap perfume in them too but that was a give away as to who was 'armed' so we didn't do that much.” 

Tomorrow, Friday, March 31, 2023

#468

Alan Maddaus is author of The Prestons of East Street, the Story of a 19th century American Family.  The lives of seven Preston family members from Galway, N.Y., were impacted by events including Civil War, the Second Great Awakening and the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, the natural disaster claiming the most lives on US soil.

The Glove Theatre 

Mohawk Valley Weather, Thursday, March 30, 2023

Leader Herald Make Us A Part Of Your Day

https://www.leaderherald.com/

The Historians with Bob Cudmore

Conversations and Interviews

Coming in April

Friday, April 14, 2023-Episode 470-Patrick Chaisson has written a multi-media presentation Wings of Victory: Aircraft Production in New York State during WW II.  Chaisson is a retired (26 year) US Army Lieutenant Colonel now an author/historian from Scotia.

Go Fund Me Link The Historians Podcast, organized by Bob Cudmore

U.S. Mail. Bob Cudmore 125 Horstman Drive, Scotia, NY 12302. Thank You

Wednesday, March 29, 2023-Mark Sullivan discusses his historical novel, The Last Green Valley

Caught between two warring forces and overcoming horrific trials to pursue their hope of immigrating to the West, the Martels’ story is a brutal, complex, and ultimately triumphant tale that illuminates the extraordinary power of love, faith, and one family’s incredible will to survive and see their dreams realized

Bob Cudmore Print Story tomorrow, Thursday

Remembering Teddy Roosevelt

At Roosevelt Junior High in the late 1950s, student reporter Elizabeth Dye Russo found a ladder sticking up into the attic of the building and covered the story for The Broadcaster, the school newspaper.

Friday, March 31, 2023

#468

Alan Maddaus is author of The Prestons of East Street, the Story of a 19th century American Family.  The lives of seven Preston family members from Galway, N.Y., were impacted by events including Civil War, the Second Great Awakening and the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, the natural disaster claiming the most lives on US soil. 

Mohawk Valley Weather, Wednesday, March 29, 2023

Leader Herald Make Us A Part Of Your Day

https://www.leaderherald.com/

Many readers like to use the U.S. Mail. Bob Cudmore 125 Horstman Drive, Scotia, NY 12302. Thank You

..or click the Go Fund Me Link The Historians Podcast, organized by Bob Cudmore

Pastries helped with popularity

By Bob Cudmore

When Virginia Vidulich O’Brien was attending high school at St. Mary’s Institute in Amsterdam during the Great Depression, she had an in with the basketball team.

Her father John operated Vidulich’s Bakery at 63 Guy Park Avenue and would give his youngest daughter the key to the shop when St. Mary’s played at home.

After each game, “Vidge” led a parade of ball players and girl friends to the bakeshop where they enjoyed the many treats inside.

“It helped with my popularity,” said O’Brien, who now lives in Saratoga Springs.

Her father was a native of Austria who came to America with his parents at age 14 in 1898.  Born into a family of seven, he and his wife Josephine Guiffre Vidulich also had seven children.  Josephine was a native of Genoa, Italy. 

According to his obituary, Vidulich was baking in Amsterdam by 1919.  In 1930 John and his brother Anthony opened the bakery at 63 Guy Park Avenue.  Eventually John became sole proprietor.

O’Brien recalled that Izzy Demsky, who became the actor Kirk Douglas, came in all the time for his favorite doughnuts.  Doughnuts were cream filled, jelly filled or plain—plain doughnuts were three for a nickel.  Vidulich’s also featured charlotte russe, pumpernickel and other breads, sticky buns, coffee cake or kuchen, plus special kuchen for Christmas and Easter.

In addition to Vidulich’s shop on Guy Park Avenue, near the former junior high, John Vidulich operated a second bakery for some years on Market Street.  His brother Nicholas was proprietor of a bakery at 300 Locust Avenue.

In 1953 John Vidulich’s health declined and the bakery was taken over by his son John, Jr.  The father died that year.  John Jr. relocated Vidulich’s Bakery to the corner of Glen and Lincoln Avenues on Market Hill, also in 1953.  A popular item in newspaper ads from the 1960s were Vidulich’s chocolate doughnuts.

The bakery closed March 6, 1971 and John Jr. went to work at Dan Dee Donuts at 169 Market St.  The matriarch of the family, Josephine Giuffre Vidulich, died that year.

In addition to his baking skills, John Jr. was a well-known local golfer.  His brother Larry Vidulich was golf pro at the Antlers in Fort Johnson, Amsterdam Muni and ultimately at the North Shore Country Club in the Chicago area.

Virginia Vidulich O’Brien, now 91, married her late husband Richard when he was a student at Dartmouth College.  Virginia worked for many years in press relations and other jobs for the Saratoga Harness Track.  She conducted tours for school children in the morning hours.  She received kudos from Amsterdam sports columnist Art Hoefs in 1968 for her role in Howard Tupper’s television coverage of the harness track on WRGB.  She is the only woman inducted into the National Harness Racing Hall of Fame.

Amsterdam resident Diane Hale Smith recently visited O’Brien and took her sticky buns from Amsterdam’s newest bakery, Dolci on Bridge Street.

“They got her personal seal of approval,” Smith said.

O’Brien recalled Smith’s mother—Dorothy Bennett Hale—who used to work at Morrison Putman’s Music Store on Market Street and oversaw listening booths where O’Brien and others could enjoy music of the day for free.

Tomorrow

Wednesday, March 29, 2023-Mark Sullivan discusses his historical novel, The Last Green Valley that chronicles how members of a German family living in Ukraine were able to escape clashing armies in World War II and find a new life in America.

Thursday, March 30, 2023

Remembering Teddy Roosevelt

The junior high was dedicated to the former President on October 2, 1925 with the main address given by state education commissioner Dr. Frank P. Graves.

Friday, March 31, 2023-Episode 468-Alan Maddaus is author of The Prestons of East Street, the Story of a 19th century American Family.  The lives of seven Preston family members from Galway, N.Y., were impacted by events including Civil War, the Second Great Awakening and the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, the natural disaster claiming the most lives on US soil. 

Mohawk Valley Weather, Tuesday, March 28, 2023

Leader Herald Make Us A Part Of Your Day

https://www.leaderherald.com/

The Historians Interviews and Conversations. Go Fund Me 2023 needs your partnership in History. April on The Historians-Composer, choral director and pianist Maria Riccio Bryce, creator of a new work called Requiem: What Remains Is Love. Coming in November Episode #500

Many readers like to use the U.S. Mail. (You need a pen, check, envelope and stamp) Bob Cudmore 125 Horstman Drive, Scotia, NY 12302. Thank You

..or click the Go Fund Me Link The Historians Podcast, organized by Bob Cudmore

Monday, March 27, 2023-Story behind the story. We’ll call the baby Harry

Tuesday, March 28, 2023-Pastries produced popularity

“It helped with my popularity,” said O’Brien, who now lives in Saratoga Springs.

Wednesday, March 29, 2023-Mark Sullivan discusses his historical novel, The Last Green Valley that chronicles how members of a German family living in Ukraine were able to escape clashing armies in World War II and find a new life in America.

Caught between two warring forces and overcoming horrific trials to pursue their hope of immigrating to the West, the Martels’ story is a brutal, complex, and ultimately triumphant tale that illuminates the extraordinary power of love, faith, and one family’s incredible will to survive and see their dreams realized.

Thursday, March 30, 2023

Remembering Teddy Roosevelt

Some say he had a "cowboy" persona defined by robust masculinity.

Friday, March 31, 2023-Episode 468-Alan Maddaus is author of The Prestons of East Street, the Story of a 19th century American Family.  The lives of seven Preston family members from Galway, N.Y., were impacted by events including Civil War, the Second Great Awakening and the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, the natural disaster claiming the most lives on US soil. 

We’ll call the baby Henry

By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History 

   Descendants of Albert and Katie Sikora have preserved fascinating accounts of daily life during the 1920s and 1930s in Amsterdam. 

   The nine-member Polish American family lived on Clark Avenue, which runs between Forest and Sloane avenues.  In 1931 Albert Sikora is described in a City Directory as a spinner at Mohawk Carpet Mills.

   One of Albert and Katie’s daughters, Paula Sikora Martin, wrote down memories of the birth of her youngest brother in 1928.  The pregnancy was not discussed with the children and a “birthing lady” attended their mother.  

   At first shooed out of the house into the rain by their father, the children eventually were brought inside and told to get sheets for the birthing lady to use.

   “(Sister) Kay and I ran through the house and started pulling the sheets off the bed,” Paula wrote.  “We tried to give them to the birthing lady but she hollered at us--she wanted unused sheets.  

   “Then all of a sudden we were allowed to go to Mom’s room and she introduced us to our new little fat wrinkled baby brother.  I had a new doll to play with!   He was so cute.  Mom was back.  All was well again.”

   The baby’s father wanted to name him Alexander, after a Polish prince.  Paula’s name, for example, was in reality Pelagia Julianna, the name of a Polish princess.  However, his mother prevailed and the baby was named Henry, after the American auto maker Henry Ford. 

   The family always called him.  Harry though and he legally changed his name to Harry when he came of age. 

       Harry Sikora, who died in 2008, served in the U.S. Army, went to Union College and Syracuse University and became an industrial engineer at IBM.  His later years were spent at a farm in Bradford, Pennsylvania and a winter home in Clearwater, Florida.

   “Was four years old when I started school in the first grade,” Harry wrote.  “Mom lied about my age to get me into school early.  Believe she had enough of children by the time I arrived.”

   The school was about seven blocks from their home and his mother told Harry to follow the other children to get there.

   Paula recalled when the family had no refrigerator, no washing machine and no radio.  Eventually, a windup Victrola came their way. 

   Their father finished building a home in 1923 on a Clark Avenue lot across from the flat they were renting in a four family house.  The Sikoras rented out an upstairs flat in their new home.

   “Our renter had a radio—wow,” Paula wrote.  The tenant played the radio loudly and the Sikora children would gather on the hall steps to hear Fibber McGee and Molly.

   Paula married in 1937 but Harry did not want to attend the wedding, saying he would break his six-year perfect school attendance record. 

   Harry wrote, “Heat came from a wood/coal stove, which heated the kitchen and living room area.  Bedrooms were cold during the winter and hot during the summer.  Coal bin was located in the basement.  Had to be carried upstairs and ashes emptied daily.

   “We had two sour cherry trees.  One year, dad made cherry wine in the basement.   When he wasn't looking, I tasted some of it.”

   Ray Knapik and his Mom rented the upstairs flat in Sikoras’ home from 1943 to 1950.

   Knapik wrote, “In the back of the house was the community playground known as the Rockton Diamonds. Had a lot of good friends in Rockton and that was our hangout place.  Learned how to ice-skate on the sidewalk in front of the house.”

Mohawk Valley Weather, Monday, March 27, 2023

Leader Herald Make Us A Part Of Your Day

https://www.leaderherald.com/

The Historians Interviews and Conversations. Go Fund Me 2023 needs your partnership in History. Later this year Episode #500

Many fans like to use the U.S. Mail. Bob Cudmore 125 Horstman Drive, Scotia, NY 12302.

..or click the Go Fund Me Link The Historians Podcast, organized by Bob Cudmore

We’ll call the baby Henry

By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History 

   Descendants of Albert and Katie Sikora have preserved fascinating accounts of daily life during the 1920s and 1930s in Amsterdam. 

   The nine-member Polish American family lived on Clark Avenue, which runs between Forest and Sloane avenues.  In 1931 Albert Sikora is described in a City Directory as a spinner at Mohawk Carpet Mills.

   One of Albert and Katie’s daughters, Paula Sikora Martin, wrote down memories of the birth of her youngest brother in 1928.  The pregnancy was not discussed with the children and a “birthing lady” attended their mother.  

   At first shooed out of the house into the rain by their father, the children eventually were brought inside and told to get sheets for the birthing lady to use.

   “(Sister) Kay and I ran through the house and started pulling the sheets off the bed,” Paula wrote.  “We tried to give them to the birthing lady but she hollered at us--she wanted unused sheets.  

   “Then all of a sudden we were allowed to go to Mom’s room and she introduced us to our new little fat wrinkled baby brother.  I had a new doll to play with!   He was so cute.  Mom was back.  All was well again.”

   The baby’s father wanted to name him Alexander, after a Polish prince.  Paula’s name, for example, was in reality Pelagia Julianna, the name of a Polish princess.  However, his mother prevailed and the baby was named Henry, after the American auto maker Henry Ford. 

   The family always called him.  Harry though and he legally changed his name to Harry when he came of age. 

       Harry Sikora, who died in 2008, served in the U.S. Army, went to Union College and Syracuse University and became an industrial engineer at IBM.  His later years were spent at a farm in Bradford, Pennsylvania and a winter home in Clearwater, Florida.

   “Was four years old when I started school in the first grade,” Harry wrote.  “Mom lied about my age to get me into school early.  Believe she had enough of children by the time I arrived.”

   The school was about seven blocks from their home and his mother told Harry to follow the other children to get there.

   Paula recalled when the family had no refrigerator, no washing machine and no radio.  Eventually, a windup Victrola came their way. 

   Their father finished building a home in 1923 on a Clark Avenue lot across from the flat they were renting in a four family house.  The Sikoras rented out an upstairs flat in their new home.

   “Our renter had a radio—wow,” Paula wrote.  The tenant played the radio loudly and the Sikora children would gather on the hall steps to hear Fibber McGee and Molly.

   Paula married in 1937 but Harry did not want to attend the wedding, saying he would break his six-year perfect school attendance record. 

   Harry wrote, “Heat came from a wood/coal stove, which heated the kitchen and living room area.  Bedrooms were cold during the winter and hot during the summer.  Coal bin was located in the basement.  Had to be carried upstairs and ashes emptied daily.

   “We had two sour cherry trees.  One year, dad made cherry wine in the basement.   When he wasn't looking, I tasted some of it.”

   Ray Knapik and his Mom rented the upstairs flat in Sikoras’ home from 1943 to 1950.

   Knapik wrote, “In the back of the house was the community playground known as the Rockton Diamonds. Had a lot of good friends in Rockton and that was our hangout place.  Learned how to ice-skate on the sidewalk in front of the house.”

Monday, March 27, 2023-Story behind the story. We’ll call the baby Harry

Tuesday, March 28, 2023-Pastries produced popularity

After each game, “Vidge” led a parade of ball players and girl friends to the bakeshop where they enjoyed the many treats inside.

Wednesday, March 29, 2023-Mark Sullivan discusses his historical novel, The Last Green Valley that chronicles how members of a German family living in Ukraine were able to escape clashing armies in World War II and find a new life in America.

The Martels are one of many families of German heritage whose ancestors have farmed in Ukraine for more than a century. But after already living under Stalin’s horrifying regime, Emil and Adeline decide they must run in retreat from their land with the wolves they despise to escape the Soviets and go in search of freedom.

Thursday, March 30, 2023

Remembering Teddy Roosevelt

Memories of Amsterdam’s Theodore Roosevelt Junior High on Guy Park Avenue where a senior housing project exists today continue to come in.

Friday, March 31, 2023-Episode 468-Alan Maddaus is author of The Prestons of East Street, the Story of a 19th century American Family.  The lives of seven Preston family members from Galway, N.Y., were impacted by events including Civil War, the Second Great Awakening and the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, the natural disaster claiming the most lives on US soil. 

Mohawk Valley Weekend Weather, Sunday, March 26, 2023

Leader Herald Make Us A Part Of Your Day

https://www.leaderherald.com/