The Historians

Thanks to your donations The Historians Podcast fund drive has exceeded our $6000 yearly goal!  The current total is $6375.  You may still donate online at https://www.gofundme.com/f/the-historians-podcast-2022  Or send a check made out to Bob Cudmore to 125 Horstman Drive, Scotia, NY 12302.  Our latest donation is from Joseph Collea.  Thank you for keeping Historians Podcast online and on radio!

Today in The Daily Gazette, The Paper-Paper, front page above the "fold"

Bob Cudmore "Amsterdam Christmas Memories"

Pick up a copy before they sell out!!

The Historians Podcast is heard on WCSS in Amsterdam, 106.9 FM and 1490AM following the Noon news on Saturday.  Note: Our broadcast today, Saturday, December 24th has been pre-empted by a Buffalo Bills NFL game.  Historians Podcast is also aired on WMHT89.1FM Albany Public Radio RISE their service for the blind and on WBDY 99.5 FM in Binghamton.

Bob Cudmore and Jim Kaplan talk about the day the British went home

Evacuation Day was November 25, 1783, the day the British left New York City finally ending the American Revolution.  Attorney and historian Jim Kaplan discusses the significance of Evacuation Day and how the day has been commemorated through the years.

Bob Cudmore "Focus on History" story tomorrow from The Schenectady Daily Gazette
and Amsterdam Recorder
Sunday, December 25, 2022

Christmas Column 1 

On Christmas day in 1902 the Salvation Army fed 500 people.  Amsterdam Recorder newspaper carrier boys were guests of the publisher Christmas afternoon, seeing the melodrama “A Hidden Crime” at the East Main Street opera house.

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

Mohawk Valley Weekend Weather, Saturday, December 24, 2022

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   In 1918 seventy soldiers from an Army truck train were entertained at Christmas dinner at the YMCA in Amsterdam by the Red Cross.  In 1920 Amsterdam Police enjoyed a Christmas tree and supper at police headquarters. 

Amsterdam Christmas memories

By Bob Cudmore

   Amsterdam retail sales records were broken in the 1902 Christmas shopping season.  Receipts were up for department stores, dry goods and clothing.  Merchants reported a week’s worth of banner shopping days leading up to Christmas. 

   So many packages and letters crowded the post office, then at East Main and Church Streets that employees had problems finding places to stand to do their jobs.

   On Christmas day in 1902 the Salvation Army fed 500 people.  Amsterdam Recorder newspaper carrier boys were guests of the publisher Christmas afternoon, seeing the melodrama “A Hidden Crime” at the East Main Street opera house.

   The boisterous boys aroused attention before the play started but the newspaper reported the lads settled down to watch the show, “The hearts of the  auditors kept going bumpety-bump through the nearly three hours of the play.”

   In 1918 seventy soldiers from an Army truck train were entertained at Christmas dinner at the YMCA in Amsterdam by the Red Cross.  In 1920 Amsterdam Police enjoyed a Christmas tree and supper at police headquarters. 

   The Sassafras Bird Sanctuary opened in 1931 and was a popular spot.  In winter, children of New East Main Street School prepared a Christmas tree for the Sassafras with food for the birds.

   One of the sights in Amsterdam during the heyday of carpet manufacturing was the lighted outline of a Christmas tree on the front of the Clock Building on Prospect Street, then headquarters of Bigelow-Sanford carpets.

   Amsterdam had a Christmas parade on November 22 1947 featuring a large balloon train.  The parade was covered in the Mohawk Carpets employees’ publication, Tomohawk.

   A picture shows a large crowd spilling onto East Main Street to get a view as the engine of the balloon train passed in front of Lindsay’s Shoes.  It looks as if the train barely cleared the Christmas decorations hung across the street.  The parade began at what was Coessens Park in the East End and traveled down East and West Main Streets.

   Santa arrived by helicopter at the parking lot behind Lurie's Department Store in downtown Amsterdam on December 6, 1958.

   Santa proceeded on an armored personnel carrier (on loan from the National Guard) to Coessens Park.

   A Christmas village had been built at the park and Santa took up residence for three weeks in his workshop as part of Amsterdam's Christmas Festival.

   Mayor Thomas F. Gregg said a Christmas Festival was one of his dreams to boost the reputation of Amsterdam.  Gregg operated a butcher shop on Railroad Street downtown.  A Democrat, he was mayor for one two year term, 1958 and 1959.

   Attractions in the festival included a life size 15 piece Nativity scene.  A miniature fire truck from Boston gave rides to children.  There was a cafeteria with refreshments and Santa's reindeer were on display.

   The reindeer were eight English fallow deer rented from Catskill Game Farm. The game farm also provided six llamas, eight sheep and several donkeys. Closed in 2006, Catskill Game Farm was one of the biggest private zoos in America.

   A large organ operated by an animated Santa Claus played holiday music at the festival.

   The next year, 1959, Coessens Park apparently featured some holiday decorations installed by the Junior Chamber of Commerce.  But there was no Christmas Festival in 1959 nor in subsequent years.  Mayor Gregg died in 1960.

   A large lighted sign had proclaimed Seasons Greetings during the 1958 festival. Jerry Snyder of Historic Amsterdam League said the sign was found in the carriage house at City Hall on Church Street.

   The sign was refurbished and has been displayed outside City Hall in recent years.

Friday, December 23, 2022

Episode 454

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

Stephen Blauweiss and Karen Berelowitz

The book begins with a 120-page introduction to Ulster County followed by a wide-ranging look at the lesser-known and nostalgic aspects of Kingston's history. 

Mohawk Valley Weather, Thursday, December 22, 2022

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Wednesday, December 21, 2022

Steven Engelhart of Adirondack Architectural Heritage has fascinating comments on Adirondack structures--bridges, fire towers, great camps and even prisons.

“While I am proud of so many things that we have achieved during my tenure at AARCH – saving Camp Santanoni and the Bow Bridge and helping dozens of communities to undertake transformative preservation projects – I am proudest of the really exemplary public education programs that we have offered every year for nearly thirty years. These tours, workshops, lectures, print and online publications have all helped to create an historic preservation ethic in the region that is broad and deep, on top of which so many other successes will be built.”

Thursday, December 22, 2022- Christmas memories

          Christmas always has been hard for people separated by war, whether it is today’s war on terror or World War I, when my grandmother was alive.

Margaret Cook was a widow living with her three small children in Randall...

Friday, December 23, 2022

Episode 454

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

Stephen Blauweiss and Karen Berelowitz

The book begins with a 120-page introduction to Ulster County followed by a wide-ranging look at the lesser-known and nostalgic aspects of Kingston's history. 

Mohawk Valley Weather, Wednesday, December 21, 2022

...thru Christmas Day

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  Amsterdam native Hewson grew up across the street from the Gordons on Hayes Place,  “It was right after the war and children didn't have many toys as a lot of them were imported from Japan and Germany and of course, the imports stopped when the war started.  They also converted American toy factories into war product factories.  There wasn't a lot to choose from and we never missed them.

Toy Tent evokes warm memories

By Bob Cudmore   

            A recent obituary prompted Linda Hewson of San Diego and her friend, Norma Jean Qualls of Amsterdam, to remember the Toy Tent. 

 Toy Tent founder Hymen Gordon, 94, died in Florida on May 3.  Gordon came to Amsterdam from his native Rochester in 1941 as a manager for Schine Theatres.  He was a sign painter and started a sign business.  In 1946, Gordon and his wife Vera founded the Toy Tent.

            Amsterdam native Hewson grew up across the street from the Gordons on Hayes Place,  “It was right after the war and children didn't have many toys as a lot of them were imported from Japan and Germany and of course, the imports stopped when the war started.  They also converted American toy factories into war product factories.  There wasn't a lot to choose from and we never missed them. 

“We kids thought it was very exotic to have a real toy store owner across the street, a person who got to see and handle all this strange new stuff.  I remember that Hy Gordon donated very nice toys and games for our neighborhood Easter egg hunt.” 

Qualls said, “I remember going to the store each year a couple weeks before Christmas in order to select a doll.  Mom felt it better that I make the selection than have her try and read my mind as to what I wanted.  I recall the ‘doll room’ was magical!  Trying to find the perfect doll was a challenge, but I managed to do it until I was about eleven years old.

 “The dolls I viewed were in their boxes, propped up in a horseshoe pattern around a room that contained nothing else.” 

David Gordon, son of Hymen and Vera, started working at the Toy Tent when he was very young.  Gordon recalled the name of the store might have derived from a product that they sold, a tent made to go over a card table that children could use as a playhouse.  The Gordons had the toy tents made by Nelson Taylor and Company of Gloversville, an awning maker.  Today, Taylor makes marine products.

THE LOLLIPOP TREE

Gordon said the store had two locations.  First, it was on the north side of East Main Street between Slezak’s Men’s Store and Pakenas Cleaners.  When the store first opened, the Gordons also sold flowers for Memorial Day and other occasions.  After a few years, the store relocated to the south side of East Main between Frankel’s Jewelry and the Mohican Market.  The new store had a lollipop tree in the window and black and green tiles on the floor. 

The Toy Tent slogan was Amsterdam’s Happy Birthday Store but its big season was always Christmas.  Gordon recalls working to nine every night at Christmas time, then driving to toy wholesalers in Albany to replenish stock for the next day.  On weekends, a trip would be made to a Pittsfield, Massachusetts, toy wholesaler, the predecessor of Kay Bee Toys.

Like the cobbler’s children who had no shoes, David Gordon doesn’t remember having toys himself!  He does remember a late 1940s craze for a toy called Colorforms, pieces of plastic with which you made pictures.

His parents closed the store in the early 1960s, faced with increasing competition from chain retailers who began stocking toys at Christmas.   

After the Toy Tent closed, Hymen Gordon became property manager for the Amsterdam Urban Renewal Agency.  Vera Gordon died in 1981 and Hymen Gordon relocated to Florida in 1982. 

David Gordon went on to own Collette Manufacturing Company, formerly on Clizbe Avenue in Amsterdam.  Today, he lives in Jensen Beach, Florida and Lake George, New York.

The Wednesday conversation dates to "the early days of The Historians "2015"

Wednesday, December 21, 2022

Steven Engelhart of Adirondack Architectural Heritage has fascinating comments on Adirondack structures--bridges, fire towers, great camps and even prisons.

Main Street, Malone (credit: Christine Bush)

The National Park Service has awarded Adirondack Architectural Heritage a Paul Bruhn Historic Revitalization Grant for the Adirondack Rural Revitalization Program.

This $750,000 grant will fund capital rehabilitation grants for historic main street and agricultural buildings in and around the hamlets and villages of the Adirondack region.

Thursday, December 22, 2022- Christmas memories

Margaret Cook

She has mothered them all and the boys look to her for smiles and other necessities as well as for their meals...

Friday, December 23, 2022

Episode 454

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

With a background in filmmaking, graphic design, historical research, and writing, the creative team of Stephen Blauweiss and Karen Berelowitz bring you their second book that uniquely combines a stunning visual presentation with concise and informative text about the vibrant 400-year history of the mid-Hudson Valley region. 

Mohawk Valley Weather, Tuesday, December 20, 2022

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Monday "Pearl Harbor"

Tuesday, December 20, 2022-Toy Tent evokes warm memories

A recent obituary prompted Linda Hewson of San Diego and her friend, Norma Jean Qualls of Amsterdam, to remember the Toy Tent. Toy Tent founder Hymen Gordon, 94, died in Florida...

Wednesday, December 21, 2022-Steven Engelhart of Adirondack Architectural Heritage has fascinating comments on Adirondack structures--bridges, fire towers, great camps and even prisons.

Thursday, December 22, 2022- Christmas memories

Christmas always has been hard for people separated by war, whether it is today’s war on terror or World War I, when my grandmother was alive. Margaret Cook was a widow living with her three small children in Randall...

Kingston the capitol of New York State for "a very short time"

Friday, December 23, 2022- Episode 454- Stephen Blauweiss is co-author of the book “The Story of Historic Kingston: Featuring 950 Images and Connections to the Catskills and New York City.”

With a background in filmmaking, graphic design, historical research, and writing, the creative team of Stephen Blauweiss and Karen Berelowitz bring you their second book that uniquely combines a stunning visual presentation with concise and informative text about the vibrant 400-year history of the mid-Hudson Valley region. The full-color, hardcover book features 950 photographs, postcards, maps, art, and graphics, many never before published and all professionally restored.

A solemn moment in the drugstore

By Bob Cudmore

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

   The Amsterdam Clubs Association met that day at St. Michael’s Club on Reid Street.  Attorney Frederick Partyka urged “member groups to be devoted to true Americanism.”

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

   His parents, St. Stanislaus Church choir director Joseph and his wife Martha, went ahead with plans to go out that Sunday and to have George baby sit his younger sisters. 

   The next day Gorge Tralka delivered copies of the Schenectady Gazette on his paper route.  He heard President Roosevelt’s “day of infamy” speech on the radio when making his delivery to Reid Hill Pharmacy.

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

   According to Robert Going’s book, “Where Do We Find Such Men,” the first Amsterdam casualty of World War II was William E. Hasenfuss, Jr. from a family of nine children on Northampton Road.

   Hasenfuss had enlisted in the Army in 1939.  He died at Hickam Air Field in Hawaii.  Japanese airplanes shot up the B-24 bomber Hasenfuss was working on. 

   The idea of naming a naval warship after Amsterdam had been under consideration since 1938.  The Chamber of Commerce got behind the campaign as did Mayor Arthur Carter, who knew FDR from Roosevelt’s days as governor in Albany.  Construction began on the light cruiser U.S.S. Amsterdam in 1943. 

   William Hasenfuss Jr.’s mother, Frieda, christened the ship April 25, 1944 at Newport News, Virginia.  “I was thinking of William when I smashed that bottle.” Mrs. Hasenfuss said as the vessel slid into the James River.

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

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

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

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

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

   Cudmore was back in Amsterdam in 1945.  He started bowling again, rolling a 269 single in November, near the date when he and Pansy Keller married. 

   Her father August Keller headed Keller Plumbing and Heating on Shuler Street.  A teacher at Snooks Corners School in the town of Florida, Pansy too was a good bowler.

Mohawk Valley Weather, Monday, December 19, 2022

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More episodes coming in January 2023. Including Daily Gazette reporter Bill Buell on Schenectady in the 1920s. Go Fund Me keeps Local History on The WWW and Radio

https://www.gofundme.com/f/the-historians-podcast-2022   

WCSS 106.9FM Amsterdam today at 12:05PM-Two episodes "HighLights 2022 and The Trinkaus Manor Utica now apartments

In late 2023 Bob will record Historians Episode #500

History "You never run out of things to talk about"

Saturday, December 17, 2022

Chris Leonard, the Schenectady City Historian, talks about the many facets of history in the Electric City

Sunday, December 18, 2022

Pearl Harbor column-solemn moment in the drug store.

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

Last HighLights episode for 2022

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Keeping Italian Gardens’ memories alive

By Bob Cudmore

          Amsterdam transplant Fred Wojcicki from California has contributed a memory of the Italian Gardens of Broadalbin.

          “My brother Joe, who lost his life in St. Lo, France on August 18, 1944, worked for Arthur Chalmers who owned the gardens in Broadalbin during the Depression years,” Wojcicki wrote.  “I had been on the grounds of the gardens a few times with my brother and can still remember Mr. Chalmers going by in his chauffeured limousine.”

          According to Russell Dunn, author of “Adventures Around the Great Sacandaga Lake,” Brooklyn socialite Katherine Husted, a summer resident of Broadalbin, created the Italian Gardens.

          A postcard view shows the gardens in their prime in 1907 with what Dunn described as “fantastic sculptures, sundials, magnificent flowers and columns.”  There was a windmill to bring water to the gardens and a swinging bridge over Kenyetto Creek.  The socialite built a dam on the creek to create a body of water called Lake Husted that she navigated in swan boats.

          Husted, who died in 1921, apparently wanted the gardens to duplicate formal gardens in Italy.  Exotic plants grown in her greenhouses were donated to Cornell University after her death.          

Friday, December 16, 2022

Episode 453

2022 Highlights Edition with excerpts from the secret role of Japanese Americans who fought in the Pacific in World War II; Bob Gumson’s memoir In Blind Sight; Amsterdam’s Guy Park Manor; Anita Sanchez on the history of glaciers and Jim Kaplan on the life of of Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette.

Saturday, December 17, 2022-Chris Leonard, the Schenectady City Historian, talks about the many facets of history in the Electric City from General Electric to baseball and even food.

Sunday, December 18, 2022- Pearl Harbor column-solemn moment in the drug store.

Mohawk Valley Weather, Thursday, December 15, 2022

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Historians Go Fund Me Link updated Wednesday, December 14, 2022. Your assist keeps The Historians on The World Wide Web and Radio

  On-line https://www.gofundme.com/f/the-historians-podcast-2022  U.S. Mail Send a check to Bob Cudmore to 125 Horstman Drive, Scotia, NY 12302.

Wednesday, December 14, 2022-Episode 346-Christopher Philippo is editor of “The Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories Volume Four.”  Stories include The Green Huntsman and The Christmas Ghost.

The Christmas ghost story tradition is usually associated with Charles Dickens and Victorian England, but -- apparently unknown to historians and scholars -- Christmas ghost stories were extremely widespread and popular in 19th-century America as well, frequently appearing in newspapers and magazines during the holiday season.

Thursday, December 15, 2022

The Italian Gardens in Broadalbin

" Husted, who died in 1921, apparently wanted the gardens to duplicate formal gardens in Italy."  

Friday, December 16, 2022

Episode 453

2022 Highlights Edition with excerpts from the secret role of Japanese Americans who fought in the Pacific in World War II; Bob Gumson’s memoir In Blind Sight; Amsterdam’s Guy Park Manor; Anita Sanchez on the history of glaciers and Jim Kaplan on the life of of Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette.

Mohawk Valley Weather, Wednesday, December 14, 2022

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