The Historians

Next Sunday, July 24, 2022-Focus on History from Daily Gazette and Amsterdam Recorder-Last flight over Japan

Sunday, July 17, 2022

The Twilight League; Paging the Doctor

By Bob Cudmore

   After minor league baseball ended in Amsterdam in the 1950s, town resident Frederick J. Mitchell recalled that two Amsterdam teams participated in the Schenectady Twilight League, playing home games at what was still called Mohawk Mills Park.

   There were about eight teams in the Twilight League which Mitchell recollected existed from 1959 to 1967.  One Amsterdam squad was called the Rugmakers, the same name used by the former New York Yankees minor league franchise.   

   Mitchell said the Rugmakers were mainly college and high school students, in general younger than members of the other Amsterdam team, called the Textiles, many of whom had played minor league ball in the area.  The Textiles were sponsored by the carpet mill union, the Textile Workers Union of America.

   Mitchell wrote, “Both teams enjoyed very good fan support and the attendance in Amsterdam exceeded that of any club from Schenectady.  A rivalry developed here, needless to say, but never a bitter one.  In fact, most fans supported both entities.” 

BILL FENNHAHN 

   In 1961 Bill Fennhahn pitched for the Amsterdam Textiles.  The junior high textile shop instructor, Fennhahn was president of the city teachers’ union.

   Fennhahn was wounded several times in World War II.  His worst injuries were sustained when his legs were broken and nerve fibers severed by machine gun fire in Germany. 

   Fennhahn’s daughter, Patricia Fennhahn Dunn, said her dad became a teacher when his injuries prevented him from signing on with St. Louis to play baseball.

ALL STARS

   Mitchell said at least during one year, two all-star games were played in the Twilight League, one at Schenectady’s Central Park and the other in Amsterdam.

   Mitchell said, “At that late game I recall watching a walk off home run sail over the left field screen.  It was hit by Billy Connors, who later became a Yankee pitching coach.” 

   Mitchell is grateful to the Amsterdam Mohawks, who now play at the refurbished former Mohawk Mills Park. 

   The ball field was renamed Shuttleworth Park to honor the late Herbert Shuttleworth II, the carpet mill executive who at one time headed the Rugmakers in the Canadian-American League and who continued the Mohawk Carpet company practice of financially supporting the ballpark. 

   In the Twilight League era, Mitchell recalled that food and soft drinks were available, but no beer.  Mitchell said beer was not sold there during the Shuttleworth years, even when the team was the Yankee farm team in the Canadian American League.

   Mitchell said, “The Yankees (who played twice in Amsterdam in the 1940s) were not at all happy with that, so I’ve been told.”

PAGING THE DOCTOR

   A sign that could flash a number hung inside the Glove Theatre in downtown Gloversville sixty years ago, next to the clock that advertised WENT radio. 

   Bob Landrio of Johnstown wrote, “I was told doctors attending a movie would be issued a number and if they had an emergency call the number would illuminate to go to the office.”

   Landrio said that there frequently was a long line to get into the Glove Theatre, “And you learned quickly where and where not to sit.  Staying out of firing range of the balcony was a priority, especially with a date!” 

   Landrio and his wife Debbie have created the Town Line Museum on Route 29 that remembers the 1950s and early 1960s with memorabilia ranging from jukeboxes and arcade games to Pez dispensers. 

   They have turned a building on their family property into a replica of a 1962-era gas station, ice cream parlor, barbershop, grocery store and more.  The museum is open until Labor Day by appointment made by calling 762-5853.

Monday, July 18, 2022- The story behind the story podcast-Twilight League baseball, paging the doctor at the Glove Theatre

Tuesday, July 19, 2022- From the Archives of the Daily Gazette-The Tower Inn

My cousin, Betty Segen Pronk was a waitress at the Tower from her senior year in high school through her early years as a teacher.  Norma-Jean Qualls was the daughter of a woman who was also a Tower waitress and a teacher.  Pronk and Qualls provided the following information. 

Wednesday, July 20, 2022-From the Archives- December 3, 2021-Episode 399 Stephen Riegel is author of Finding Judge Crater: A Life and Phenomenal Disappearance in Jazz Age NY.

Thursday, July 21, 2022- From the Archives of the Daily Gazette-Mayor Theron Akin 

Personal attacks and viciousness dominated the four years that Theron “Doc” Akin was Amsterdam mayor in the 1920s. 

   Historian Hugh Donlon wrote that political pamphlets were full of “innuendos so gross and vicious that some of the campaign literature was later prized as collectors’ items.”

Friday, July 22, 2022-Episode 432-The third Highlights Edition of 2022 has excerpts from 12 podcasts including stolen Little League Dreams, an Erie Canal balladeer and a boy’s life in Ilion, New York.

Down the Page

Episode 431-Former New York Times investigative reporter Howard Blum exposes the danger posed by the suspected infiltration of America’s Central Intelligence Agency by Russian spy agency moles.  Blum’s new book is The Spy Who Knew Too Much

 Blum said, “Everything I uncovered suggests that there is a continuum of treason that stretches from the early days of the Cold War to the present day.”  While at the Times, Blum was twice nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting.

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Historian Hugh Donlon wrote, “By 1881, the Amsterdam Telegraph and Telephone Company, locally organized, was operating a switchboard of 50 lines from a central office at East Main and Church streets.”

Amsterdam historian was a telephone pioneer

By Bob Cudmore

   Mohawk Valley historian W. Max Reid made history by being one of the first to introduce the telephone to the area.

   Reid had visited the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876 and was impressed by a demonstration of Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone. 

   On his return home, Reid, an undertaker, strung wires between a casket plant in Amsterdam and a store in Broadalbin.

   Telephones at first were used by prearrangement.  According to a 1940s article by Earl Stowitts of the Amsterdam Chamber of Commerce, “Twice a day at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m., the persons at each end of the line, by a process of shouting into the telephones, and then moving the same instruments to their ears to hear what was shouted back, were able to carry on a conversation over the intervening ten miles.” 

   Other early phone lines were installed between Amsterdam’s New York Central Railroad freight office and the Sanford carpet mill plus Kelloggs & Miller’s linseed oil plant.  The homes of linseed oil magnates John, George and Lauren Kellogg also had telephones.   

   Historian Hugh Donlon wrote, “By 1881, the Amsterdam Telegraph and Telephone Company, locally organized, was operating a switchboard of 50 lines from a central office at East Main and Church streets.”

   Michael Cinquanti’s second book of Amsterdam birthdays reports that William Maxwell Reid was born in 1839 on his father’s farm, land which later became the Reid Hill neighborhood.  Reid’s father was a Scottish immigrant who was a school teacher, librarian and justice of the peace, in addition to being a farmer.

   W. Max Reid married Laura MacDonald in 1859.  Her father was a partner in the Shuler casket making company, started by woodworker Isaac Shuler.  Reid, who had been a clerk in a dry goods store, worked as a bookkeeper for the casket firm. 

   Ultimately Reid took over the company after his father-in-law died and the original partnership was dissolved.  Reid also operated his own undertaking business.

   In 1871 a local musical composer and poet, Emily Vandermeer Youngs Devendorf, wrote verses describing members of the St. Ann’s Episcopal Church choir.  Devendorf was in the choir as was her lawyer husband, doctors and other notables, including undertaker Reid. 

   “Next comes Max,” she wrote, “who though not dealing in pills, sells coffins for all that the doctor kills.” 

   Reid was a founder of the business-boosting Board of Trade in 1884 and president of the organization for seventeen years.  On his watch the board successfully petitioned the state to make the village of Amsterdam a city in 1885.

   Reid is well known as an historian for his 1901 book, “The Mohawk Valley: Its Legends and Its History.”  In the preface Reid wrote that the valley has been “neglected by historians and writers of fiction” even though events in the region helped decide the American Revolution.  Reid also wrote a history column for the Recorder newspaper using the byline “The Hollander Letters.”

      Reid died in 1911 at age 72.  He and his wife lived on Spring Street, what is now Guy Park Avenue and had three children. 

   The successor to Reid’s undertaking business is today’s Betz-Rossi-Bellinger-Stewart Funeral Homes.  The Historic Amsterdam League awards trophies to honor historical work which are called “Maxies” in Reid’s honor. 

Tomorrow, Friday, July 15, 2022

Episode 431

“The Spy Who Knew Too Much.”

Former New York Times investigative reporter Howard Blum exposes the danger posed by the suspected infiltration of America’s Central Intelligence Agency by a series of Russian spy agency moles through the years.

“Howard Blum writes history books that read like thrillers.”—New York Times

A retired spy gets back into the game to solve a perplexing case—and reconcile with his daughter, a CIA officer who married into the very family that derailed his own CIA career—in this compulsive true-life tale of vindication and redemption, filled with drama, intrigue, and mystery from the New York Times bestselling author of The Last Goodnight, It’s a real-life thriller whose stunning conclusion will make headline news. 

Tonight at 7

The Schoharie County Historical Society 2022 Summer Lecture Series lineup. The lectures, led by a full slate of local historians, authors, and artists, will be held at historically significant locations along the Schoharie Valley, including Lasell Hall, the Dr. Best House Museum, and the Schoharie Colonial Heritage Association on Depot Lane.

https://theoldstonefort.org/2022/06/2022-summer-lecture-series-lineup/

The Summer Lecture Series will kick off this evening, Thursday, July 14, 2022 at 7 p.m. at Lasell Hall, on Main Street in Schoharie with host historian Jeff O’Connor, author of the first installment of a three-volume series “Skohere and the Birth of New York’s Western Frontier 1609-1731”.

Mohawk Valley Weather, Thursday, July 14, 2022

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Wednesday, July 13, 2022

From the Archives-July 10, 2020-Episode 326-A look at the history of the Albany County town of New Scotland with Alan Kowlowitz, president of the New Scotland Historical Association, and town historian Bob Parmenter.

Thursday, July 14, 2022

From the Archives of the Daily Gazette-A telephone pioneer 

   Telephones at first were used by prearrangement.  According to a 1940s article by Earl Stowitts of the Amsterdam Chamber of Commerce, “Twice a day at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m., the persons at each end of the line, by a process of shouting into the telephones, and then moving the same instruments to their ears to hear what was shouted back, were able to carry on a conversation over the intervening ten miles.”

Friday, July 15, 2022

Episode 431-Former New York Times investigative reporter Howard Blum exposes the danger posed by the suspected infiltration of America’s Central Intelligence Agency by a series of Russian spy agency moles through the years.  Blum’s new book is “The Spy Who Knew Too Much.”

The Schoharie County Historical Society 2022 Summer Lecture Series lineup. The lectures, led by a full slate of local historians, authors, and artists, will be held at historically significant locations along the Schoharie Valley, including Lasell Hall, the Dr. Best House Museum, and the Schoharie Colonial Heritage Association on Depot Lane.

https://theoldstonefort.org/2022/06/2022-summer-lecture-series-lineup/

The Summer Lecture Series will kick off tomorrow, Thursday, July 14, 2022 at 7 p.m. at Lasell Hall, on Main Street in Schoharie with host historian Jeff O’Connor, author of the first installment of a three-volume series “Skohere and the Birth of New York’s Western Frontier 1609-1731”.

Mohawk Valley Weather, Wednesday, July 13, 2022

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Amsterdam market relived in memories

By Bob Cudmore

An Amsterdam native who went on to be a patent attorney has contributed recollections of the former Castler’s Market from the days when the store was at 113 East Main Street.

Henry S. Miller, Jr., who lives now in Massachusetts, worked at Castler’s starting in 1948.  Miller’s father, Henry S. Miller, was a salesman for H.J. Heinz and was known to grocers as “the pickle man.”  The father became friends with Charles Castler.  Eventually, the elder Miller worked weekends at the market and helped his son get a job delivering groceries on the weekend with Jack Davis in old-fashioned bushel baskets. 

The Historians Podcast fund drive is stalled at $3050.  To stay on track to reach our $6,000 goal by year’s end we need to raise $125 this week.  Please help.  Please donate online here- 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.  You may give anonymously and no donation is too small.

“Typically, I would knock on the customer’s door and be invited into the kitchen, empty the contents of the basket on the table, and collect the fee,” Miller wrote. “Charlie was generous.  Every week, I would deliver several baskets to poor families and was instructed not to collect the fee.  When I came in from the run on Saturday afternoon, I would help my father make the hamburger.”

Miller said that Castler had a “magic potion” to add to hamburger so it would stay red all week.  Their motto was “not the cheapest, but the best.” 

“Jack Davis is a story in itself,” Miller said.  “He was much more comfortable driving a team of horses than driving a panel truck delivering groceries. He never understood the gearshift selection and would start up in the middle of Bell Hill in second gear, slipping the clutch until the vehicle finally moved.  I was about 14 at the time and I would have to remind him to shift in first gear. In the wintertime when it snowed, we put chains on and he would simply spin the wheels until the chains broke or the truck moved.

“Jack lived up on Perth Road near the intersection of Log City Road. Another thing about Jack, he smoked a pipe and used Blue Boy tobacco.  Blue Boy was only sold in two places in town; one was Whelan’s Drug at the corner of Chuctanunda and Main Street.  The tobacco looked like some of the shavings my daughter uses in her hamster cage and smelled about the same.  Jack would spill more than he got into his pipe.  It was all over the inside of the truck.  Incidentally, the truck had only one seat and I sat on a wooden milk carton next to Jack, long before seatbelts.

“There was another meat cutter, Bill Barbuto. After he left, a meat cutter by the name of Fox worked there for a while, but he would slip out the back door several times a day and go over to the hotel on Washington Street for a pack of cigarettes. 

The problem was, he was a good meat cutter. I also remember Floyd Castler as Uncle Floyd and a small fellow named Les.  Les lived with his family on Market Street over a pool hall, if I recall.  Sadly enough, Les and his family lost all their worldly goods one night in a fire. 

“I remember Mike Sagarese had a vegetable concession in the front of the store and on the sidewalk in the summer.  He had a young fellow working for him, my age, named Herb Elliott. Herb and I had a friendly rivalry going because he played basketball for Amsterdam High School and I played for St. Mary's.”

Tuesday, July 12, 2022

From the Archives of the Daily Gazette-Castler’s Market 

Wednesday, July 13, 2022

From the Archives-July 10, 2020-Episode 326-A look at the history of the Albany County town of New Scotland with Alan Kowlowitz, president of the New Scotland Historical Association, and town historian Bob Parmenter.

Thursday, July 14, 2022

From the Archives of the Daily Gazette-A telephone pioneer 

   Mohawk Valley historian W. Max Reid made history by being one of the first to introduce the telephone to the area.

   Reid had visited the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876

Old and Current during the week, new Episode every Friday

July 15, 2022

Episode 431-Former New York Times investigative reporter Howard Blum exposes the danger posed by the suspected infiltration of America’s Central Intelligence Agency by a series of Russian spy agency moles through the years.  Blum’s new book is “The Spy Who Knew Too Much.”

Mohawk Valley Weather, Tuesday, July 12, 2022

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“The Spy Who Knew Too Much.”

Debuting on Historians Podcast this Friday, July 15, 2022-Episode 431-Former New York Times investigative reporter Howard Blum exposes the danger posed by the suspected infiltration of America’s Central Intelligence Agency by a series of Russian moles through the years.

Tuesday, July 12, 2022- From the Archives of the Daily Gazette-Castler’s Market 

Wednesday, July 13, 2022-From the Archives-July 10, 2020-Episode 326-A look at the history of the Albany County town of New Scotland with Alan Kowlowitz, president of the New Scotland Historical Association, and town historian Bob Parmenter.

Thursday, July 14, 2022- From the Archives of the Daily Gazette-A telephone pioneer 

This coming Sunday, July 17, 2022-Focus on History from Daily Gazette and Amsterdam Recorder- Twilight League baseball, paging the doctor at the Glove Theatre

Summer stories through the years

By Bob Cudmore

   A steep grade, human error and a wet night contributed to an appalling accident on the Mountain Lake Electric Railroad near Gloversville on July 4, 1902. 

   Fourteen died and sixty were injured.  Most victims were Gloversville excursionists who had traveled up Bleecker Mountain to Mountain Lake and its resort hotel for a day of fun capped by fireworks.

   The brakes failed on one trolley coming down the mountain.  That car struck the rear of another trolley and both cars hurtled down the tracks.  As a last resort one trolley was thrown into reverse.  That blew circuit breakers plunging both cars into darkness as both derailed.

   The Mountain Lake Electric Railroad had opened in 1901.  Lawsuits bankrupted the company after the accident.  It was reorganized as Adirondack Lakes Traction but people were wary.  The hotel at the lake was destroyed by fire in 1908.  The trolley line closed in 1918.   

HORSE RACING IN AMSTERDAM

   In the 1890s and early 1900s, there was horse racing during the summer meet of the Amsterdam Fair and Driving Association.

   The Association had a half mile track at McClary Park on the south side of the city. 

   In 1896 the opening of the Amsterdam racing season took place Saturday, May 30th.

   The afternoon began with three trotting races.  There was then a men’s running race followed by something called a "peg race.”  The last event was a one-mile bicycle race for the Montgomery County championship. 

   In the 1930s the neighborhood where McClary Park used to be off Race Course Street and Grieme Avenue became known as Califano Heights. 

   From 1903 through 1907, carpet tycoon Stephen Sanford invited the people of Amsterdam to the Sanford Matinee Races at his huge Hurricana thoroughbred horse farm on the Sunday closest to Fourth of July. 

   Trolleys ran up Meadow and Market Streets.  From there, horse drawn wagons took people to the farm.  Automobiles went to the farm as well but were not admitted to the grounds.  Some 15,000 attended the event’s last year.

   Remnants of the farm, later called Sanford Stud Farm, still can be seen amid today’s extensive commercial development on Route 30 north of Amsterdam city.

CIVIL WAR REUNION, SUMMER PILGRIMS, VACANT STREETS

   Amsterdam hosted a reunion of Civil War veterans in the summer of 1886. Company C of the 115th New York Regiment gathered on Brookside Avenue. Also that summer the Clerical Wheelmen reached the city, pastors who had taken up bicycle riding.  

   The West Shore Railroad did a thriving business in the early 1900s transporting pilgrims to the Roman Catholic Shrine of the North American Martyrs in Auriesville.  The shrine marks the spot where three Jesuit missionaries were martyred and where Saint Kateri Tekakwitha was born in the 1600s. 

   So many people came to the Auriesville station in the 1930s that rail sidings were occupied for miles with passenger trains waiting to take the pilgrims home. 

   Ten thousand pilgrims were at Auriesville Shrine in August 1925.  Hundreds of Amsterdam residents were among those making pilgrimages.  Every Sunday, two big washtubs at the Shrine were filled with coins by the faithful.  

   On warm summer evenings in the 1940s, the streets of Amsterdam’s West End were sometimes deserted.

   To supplement food available under wartime rationing, the mainly Italian-American residents were tending vegetable gardens on the fertile flat land south of their homes between the railroad tracks and Mohawk River/Erie Canal.

   They built poles for pole beans and lattices to keep tomatoes off the ground. They grew lettuce, zucchini and dandelions, much as their ancestors had done in southern Italian communities such as Pisciotta in the province of Campania.

Mohawk Valley Weather, Monday, July 11, 2022

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Leader Herald

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Debuting on Historians Podcast this Friday, July 15, 2022-Episode 431-Former New York Times investigative reporter Howard Blum exposes the danger posed by the suspected infiltration of America’s Central Intelligence Agency by a series of Russian moles through the years.  Blum’s new book is “The Spy Who Knew Too Much.”

Summer stories through the years

By Bob Cudmore

   A steep grade, human error and a wet night contributed to an appalling accident on the Mountain Lake Electric Railroad near Gloversville on July 4, 1902. 

   Fourteen died and sixty were injured.  Most victims were Gloversville excursionists who had traveled up Bleecker Mountain to Mountain Lake and its resort hotel for a day of fun capped by fireworks.

   The brakes failed on one trolley coming down the mountain.  That car struck the rear of another trolley and both cars hurtled down the tracks.  As a last resort one trolley was thrown into reverse.  That blew circuit breakers plunging both cars into darkness as both derailed.

   The Mountain Lake Electric Railroad had opened in 1901.  Lawsuits bankrupted the company after the accident.  It was reorganized as Adirondack Lakes Traction but people were wary.  The hotel at the lake was destroyed by fire in 1908.  The trolley line closed in 1918.   

HORSE RACING IN AMSTERDAM

   In the 1890s and early 1900s, there was horse racing during the summer meet of the Amsterdam Fair and Driving Association.

   The Association had a half mile track at McClary Park on the south side of the city. 

   In 1896 the opening of the Amsterdam racing season took place Saturday, May 30th.

   The afternoon began with three trotting races.  There was then a men’s running race followed by something called a "peg race.”  The last event was a one-mile bicycle race for the Montgomery County championship. 

   In the 1930s the neighborhood where McClary Park used to be off Race Course Street and Grieme Avenue became known as Califano Heights. 

   From 1903 through 1907, carpet tycoon Stephen Sanford invited the people of Amsterdam to the Sanford Matinee Races at his huge Hurricana thoroughbred horse farm on the Sunday closest to Fourth of July. 

   Trolleys ran up Meadow and Market Streets.  From there, horse drawn wagons took people to the farm.  Automobiles went to the farm as well but were not admitted to the grounds.  Some 15,000 attended the event’s last year.

   Remnants of the farm, later called Sanford Stud Farm, still can be seen amid today’s extensive commercial development on Route 30 north of Amsterdam city.

Tomorrow, Monday, July 11, 2022- the story behind the story podcast-Summer stories through the years

CIVIL WAR REUNION, SUMMER PILGRIMS, VACANT STREETS

   Amsterdam hosted a reunion of Civil War veterans in the summer of 1886. Company C of the 115th New York Regiment gathered on Brookside Avenue. Also that summer the Clerical Wheelmen reached the city, pastors who had taken up bicycle riding.  

   The West Shore Railroad did a thriving business in the early 1900s transporting pilgrims to the Roman Catholic Shrine of the North American Martyrs in Auriesville.  The shrine marks the spot where three Jesuit missionaries were martyred and where Saint Kateri Tekakwitha was born in the 1600s. 

   So many people came to the Auriesville station in the 1930s that rail sidings were occupied for miles with passenger trains waiting to take the pilgrims home. 

   Ten thousand pilgrims were at Auriesville Shrine in August 1925.  Hundreds of Amsterdam residents were among those making pilgrimages.  Every Sunday, two big washtubs at the Shrine were filled with coins by the faithful.  

   On warm summer evenings in the 1940s, the streets of Amsterdam’s West End were sometimes deserted.

   To supplement food available under wartime rationing, the mainly Italian-American residents were tending vegetable gardens on the fertile flat land south of their homes between the railroad tracks and Mohawk River/Erie Canal.

   They built poles for pole beans and lattices to keep tomatoes off the ground. They grew lettuce, zucchini and dandelions, much as their ancestors had done in southern Italian communities such as Pisciotta in the province of Campania.

Tuesday, July 12, 2022- From the Archives of the Daily Gazette-Castler’s Market 

Wednesday, July 13, 2022-From the Archives-July 10, 2020-Episode 326-A look at the history of the Albany County town of New Scotland with Alan Kowlowitz, president of the New Scotland Historical Association, and town historian Bob Parmenter.

Thursday, July 14, 2022- From the Archives of the Daily Gazette-A telephone pioneer 

The Historians Podcast 2022 fund drive...

To stay on track and reach the $6,000 goal by year’s end we need to raise $100 by Wednesday, July 13.  On-line https://www.gofundme.com/f/the-historians-podcast-2022  Or drop a check in the United States Mail made out to Bob Cudmore to 125 Horstman Drive, Scotia, NY 12302. Thank You

Mohawk Valley Weather, Sunday, July 10, 2022

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The Historians Podcast 2022 fund drive is a bit protracted "so far this year"

To stay on track and reach the $6,000 goal by year’s end we need to raise $100 by Wednesday, July 13.  On-line https://www.gofundme.com/f/the-historians-podcast-2022  Or drop a check in the United States Mail made out to Bob Cudmore to 125 Horstman Drive, Scotia, NY 12302.  You may give anonymously.

This weekend in The Daily Gazette and Amsterdam Recorder

https://dailygazette.com/

Twilight League baseball, paging the doctor at the Glove Theatre

https://www.recordernews.com/

Saturday, July 9 2022-From the Archives- Episode 175, August 4, 2017, Baltimore sports writer John Eisenberg discusses his book “The Streak: Lou Gehrig, Cal Ripken Jr., and Baseball’s Most Historic Record.”  Eisenberg tells the story of baseball’s legendary Iron Men, Cal Ripken Jr. and Lou Gehrig, who each achieved the record of most consecutive games played.

Sunday, July 10, 2022-Focus on History-Summer stories through the years.

The brakes failed on one trolley coming down the mountain.  That car struck the rear of another trolley and both cars hurtled down the tracks. 

Episode 430-Kevin Hall, author of a memoir on growing up in Ilion, New York

New from Kevin Hall on Amazon

MY ROSEMOUNT MN. MEMORIES: Teenage Years in My Shoes

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B5TM7FKP/ref=sr_1_1?crid=28PU209DLE1YI&keywords=rosemount+kevin+hall&qid=1657285366&sprefix=%2Caps%2C81&sr=8-1

Kevin Hall writes: "[...] a high school friend of mine from Minnesota and her daughter, are hiking the full 2200 miles of the Appalachian trail and doing so starting next week up in Maine and then ending in November/December in Georgia."

https://charitymiles.org/blog/mother-and-daughter-hike-the-appalachian-trail-for-parkinsons-research/?fbclid=IwAR0HU9n_oUtXV9OHJvGN__IGqWknffqnMFO0HzsgHcyBcZmSLMuIbay76UsTh

They are doing this to raise awareness, and funds, for Parkinsons, as their husband/father has been diagnosed with the disease.

Mohawk Valley Weekend Weather, Saturday, July 9, 2022

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Exhibit tells of disaster, gallows, justice

By Bob Cudmore

More than 2,000 people died on May 31, 1889, when the South Fork Dam collapsed at Lake Conemaugh sending a wall of water and debris into Johnstown, Pennsylvania, already experiencing flooding from the Little Conemaugh and Stony Creek rivers. 

Six weeks later, a flood struck Johnstown, New York along the Cayadutta Creek.  The story of the local Johnstown flood is part of the exhibit “Once Upon a Time in Johnstown” at the Fulton County Museum to mark the 250th anniversary of Johnstown’s founding.

Joan Loveday, Fulton County Historical Society president, said in early July of 1889,  “After heavy rains, the Cayadutta Creek raised eight feet in 30 minutes and the creek banks and foundations were rapidly inundated as hundreds of people gathered along the creek and bridges to watch the flood.

“Police tried in vain to move sightseers from the water's edge, when many people were dumped into the raging current. Five men died.  Four dams and seven bridges were destroyed.  Factories and skin mills along the creek were severely damaged.”

The New York Times printed this account on July 11, “This city is slowly relieving itself of the terror which came down upon it with the flood yesterday, and…wonders at the strange coincidence of name and tragedy with that of the unhappy town in Pennsylvania.” 

ORGINAL GALLOWS  

Also a part of the Johnstown exhibit at the museum is the original gallows used for hangings at the old Fulton County jail.

Loveday said, “When the Johnstown jail was renovated, I believe then Fulton County Historian Lou Decker brought the gallows to the museum and it has been in the basement.  I am told it was on display once before.  The gallows is a huge wooden beam with a hook on it.  Due to the weight of it, we have it suspended on two old glove machines covered with fabric.”

Another exhibit, featuring famous Johnstown women, tells the story of Elizabeth Van Valkenburg, born in 1799, the only woman to be hanged on the gallows on display at the museum.

Loveday said, “A very poor judge of husbands, Elizabeth chose drunkards who were child and wife beaters and non-supporters, who made her and her children's lives miserable.  After the death of her first husband who died of stomach problems, she was remarried in six months to John Van Valkenburg in 1834.

“To remedy the abuse of this husband, Elizabeth laced John's brandy with arsenic, which of course made him ill.  Suspicions were raised and when Elizabeth heard she was wanted for questioning she was found hiding in the foundation of a Kingsboro home.  She was escorted home for the night.  She ran off again with the sheriff in hot pursuit and hid in the loft of a barn.  Unfortunately, Elizabeth fell through the hay hole in the loft and broke her hip.

“When John died, Elizabeth was incarcerated in the old Johnstown jail for almost a year.  At her trial she was found guilty and sentenced to be hanged.  When she signed a full confession, she confessed to killing her first husband as well. Since Elizabeth was unable to stand, the gallows had to be modified to hang her in a chair. This hanging took place January 24, 1846.  Elizabeth is buried without a headstone in the Colonial Cemetery in Johnstown.

“Sympathy ran high for poor Elizabeth, who in 1845 would have had no rights to her children or possessions, had she left her husband.  It is a sad story, but part of Johnstown's history.”

Tomorrow, Kevin Hall

Friday, July 8, 2022-Episode 430-Kevin Hall, author of a memoir on growing up in Ilion, New York

Mohawk Valley Weather, Thursday, July 7, 2022

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