Monthly Archives: June 2015

Hammondsport “Washing Machine” Spotlighs Women’s Health Hazards

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At the Curtiss Museum is an 1860s “Star Washer,” manufactured in Hammondsport. I’ve studied the thing, and as near as I can figure this is how you work it.
1)Haul water and fill up the tub.
2)Add soap.
3)Put in the dirty clothes.
4a)Rock one handle back and forth vertically, while simultaneously
4b)Working the other handle in and out horizontally… thus agitating the clothes and squeezing them between two big paddles on the ends of the handles. Do that until you figure the clothes are clean enough, or until you figure that you yourself are tired enough.
5)Pull the plug at the bottom of the tub, and drain the soapy dirty water.
6)Haul more water.
7)Mangle the clothes again to rinse them.
8)Drain the water.
9)Mangle the clothes again, to wring out what water you can.
10)Haul the clothes out.
11)Hang the clothes out to dry.
12)Start all over again for the second load.
And THIS is the way we wash our clothes, wash our clothes, wash our clothes, every Monday morning.
So imagine yourself as the housewife of those days, hauling all those buckets of water, and then wrestling all of that wet laundry. It’s a lot of lifting and lugging – hard labor and heavy carrying. THEN imagine doing it in the icy weather, getting some of it splashed on you and on your clothes. Imagine sinking your hands and arms into the almost-freezing water, and then getting soaked with it as you try to get things hung out to dry.

Then think of yourself trying to cook. Maybe you’ve got someone else to chop the wood, and bring it in to fill the woodbox. But you’re probably going to be laying and lighting the fire yourself. Then you’ll be tending both the fire and the food. With no reliable timers, and no way of checking temperature. Cookbooks will tell you to bake or roast things in a hot oven – or a warm oven – if that’s any help.
Imagine that you’re doing this in 90-degree weather – and you HAVE to use a fire, because that’s the ONLY way to cook food. Your kitchen temperature is going to be a lot more than 90.
You COULD throw doors and windows open. But since no one has yet invented screens, you’re inviting every fly for miles around to come feast on your meal.
So as a wife and mother, you’ve got a good chance of being felled by heat exhaustion, or worked up to a heart attack, just by cooking. And that’s assuming that you DON’T actually get burned in the process.

So just the routines of housekeeping threaten your life and health by heavy lifting (wood, water, soaking wet clothes); by cold, and by being soaking wet in the cold; and by burning and overheating. You also run the risk of blade injuries if you chop your own wood.
The sign of the middle class in the late 19th century was employing a full-time maid… not someone prancing around with a feather duster, but someone to cut wood and haul water.

As if all that weren’t enough, the very clothes that women wore sucked the life out of them. For men and women alike, clothing was heavy in terms of both weight and heat – it also hindered you if you fell or had to run, and especially if you fell into water.
Corsets, at least in the extreme positions, injured the spine and the internal organs.
Long skirts and furbelows could get caught in anything, leading to injury or death. And those floor-length skirts dragged along through everything, picking up dirt, ticks, and the effluvia of a thousand horses (plus a few oxen and mules).

All of which contributed to that horrifying truth about those “good old days”: that most women – MOST – over fifty per cent – died before their children were grown. And this would be true right up to and including the girls born in 1919.
And we haven’t even talked about childbirth. Which we will, in some unscheduled future blog, once I’ve done some very interesting, but horribly depressing, research.

Schuyler is Swell

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Schuyler is a county with a vexing geographic challenge – but also with terrific opportunities.

Schuyler County wraps up around Seneca Lake on the each side of the lake’s southern half, which means that two places within sight of each other, two miles apart as the goose flies, might take almost an hour by road to travel between. Emergency services, and the highway department, can find this frustrating.

On the other hand, it means that Schuyler County keeps a firm grip on that wonderful lake, the largest of the Finger Lakes by area, depth, and volume, though Cayuga Lake’s a little longer.

Apart from Nassau and the Bronx, Schuyler is New York’s youngest county, created in 1854. Chemung, Steuben, and Tompkins all gave up ground to make this possible.

There were 31 states back, California having been admitted in 1850. The Republican party (then a party of big government and human rights) came into existence in 1854. Abraham Lincoln came out of political retirement to re-enter the arena that same year. Franklin Pierce was president. Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt were not yet born. John F. Kennedy’s great-grandparents were only just arriving in America. The Light Brigade made their fateful charge. Thoreau published Walden. Four million Americans were slaves.

Schuyler has three tremendous tourist attractions: the lake, the Glen, and Watkins Glen International raceway. If you count all the wineries together, then that makes a fourth.

The best-known village used to be called just Watkins, but mail kept coming in addressed by its best-known feature: Watkins Glen. Eventually the name was officially changed to reflect reality.

The Glen was a private tourist attraction in the 19th century, and later became a state park. The attraction was a clever way to get some return from an otherwise harshly unproductive piece of real estate. The C.C.C. (Civilian Conservation Corps) upgraded the facilities in the 1930s.

Making your way through the gorge takes you by rushing water, roaring reverberations, falls, whirlpools, overhanging cliffs… it’s really quite an experience. I stopped on a trail once to help some visitors with their map, and the woman said, “You people should advertise this place more. I’ve been to Hawaii, and I’ve been in their gorges, and they’re nothing like this.”

The Finger Lakes Trail slices right through the park, and then the village, on is way across Schuyler County. It’s fun to wander the village shopping district, with its antique stores, restaurants, and old-time downtown walk-in movie theater… love that place.

Outdoor murals spotlight auto racing. The sidewalks are inset with blocks honoring notable drivers. You can drive the route of the original grand prix (at a suitable speed), and see which vehicle’s on exhibit at the International Motor Racing Research Center.

The Catharine Marsh Trail circles through that vast lovely marsh. The Catharine Valley Trail (on the old canal/trolley line) heads down toward Horseheads via Montour Falls, where you can walk the Queen Catharine Historic Loop.

In Montour Falls the main shopping/business street makes a T right at the famous falls, which are a breathtaking sight in times of high water. Historic buildings include what’s perhaps the loveliest library in the region, and the Brick Tavern, home to Schuyler County Historical Society.

Legends abound about Seneca Lake, including the story about mysterious guns or cannon heard from time to time. It’s said that old-timers used to fill their car radiators with Seneca water, because “Seneca Lake never freezes.” Actually it does, and so did the radiators. And you’ll still hear the laughable story that Seneca Lake is so deep that the navy used to use it to test submarines.

Geographically and by population, Watkins Glen stands between those other head-of-the-lake towns, Ithaca and Hammondsport. We first encountered Watkins (and Schuyler) stopping for lunch after a few stress-lowering days in Ithaca, lovingly provided by my parents prior to my wife’s (highly successful!) open-heart surgery. We liked it, and we said we’d have to come back. And we often do.

Cruisin’ to Penn Yan

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Friday night (June 19) is Cruisin’ Night in Penn Yan. They close off Main Street – roughly from the post office down to the bridge – and they PACK the street with vintage cars. It is seriously cool! Crowds wander up and down, admiring the vehicles and visiting with the proud owners. People find cars they remember excitedly from their youths… and cars they WISH they remembered from their youths. The stores and shops and restaurants are open, and all you need is adequate weather (forecast looks good!) to have a terrific time.

What will you find besides cars? Well, there are three bookshops in Penn Yan. Long’s Cards and Books is a delightful independent bookseller – the only one I know of in a three- or four-county area. Books’ Landing (used books) has recently moved from the corner by the bridge to more spacious quarters farther up Main Street. Belknap Books, almost across from Long’s, is also for collectors and used book enthusiasts. I once found (and bought) a volume from the Tom Corbett, Space Cadet series, complete with dust jacket.

Farther up Main Street, outside of the Cruisin’ Night space, is the Penn Yan Public Library, which has recently been going through renovations. I hope that those renovations preserve the dedicated parking for buggies, which is the only one I know of in the area. The original portion of the library was donated by Andrew Carnegie, and you can borrow books with a card from most of the Southern Tier System libraries.

Next door to the library is the Yates County courthouse (Penn Yan is the county seat), with its green space of war memorials.

Back a little toward the shopping district is the Yates County History Center with its twin facilities, the Oliver House Museum and the Underwood Museum. Also on site is the carriage house with pioneer prophetess Jemima Wilkinson’s coachee, the 1790s version of a really hot ride.

There are several eating places down in the Cruisin’ Night area, from sit-down dining to pizza and lunch counters. The Pinwheel Market & Cafe by Milly’s Pantry (typically open until 4) serves sandwiches, desserts, and such, in the process raising funds “so children won’t go hungry.” President Obama honored founder Milly Bloomquist with the Presidential Citizens Medal for her decades of labor on behalf of children.

A few steps off Main Street, the Penn Yan Diner is a vintage manufactured diner, in keeping with the cruisin’ theme. There are other eateries, including fast food chains, a few blocks away.

Formerly down by the diner, and now up on Main Street, is the Arts Center of Yates County, with changing exhibits and other activities all year long in its gallery. Main Street also has retailers from hardware to drug store to antiques to electronics.

Since 1990 or so the Penn Yan area has been home to increasing numbers of conservative “horse and buggy” anabaptists, especially Groffdale Mennonites. Some of them operate Main Street farm stands on summer Saturdays, plus an annual relief sale at Penn Yan’s Yates County Fairgrounds.

Of course, Penn Yan is also noted for the lake, and for the Keuka Outlet Trail. I can’t make any promises as to what will be open during Cruisin’ Night, but I can promise that Penn Yan is a great place to visit. Maybe we’ll see you there.

Slavery Days in the Southern Tier

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When our region was opened to white settlement in the 1780s, it was opened to black settlement as well, because the early white settlers brought along their slaves.
Slavery was forbidden in the Northwest Territory, bounded by the Ohio and Mississippi, and Massachusetts abolished slavery by court order in 17??. But apart from that, slavery was legal everywhere in U.S. Territory, including New York.
Since our area had direct connections with Chesapeake Bay and the Maryland-Virginia Tidewater (via the Conhocton-Chemung-Susquehanna River route), this became a “natural” area for slavery to extend. Indeed, land agent Charles Williamson, who had 1.2 million acres to dispose of, marketed this region to southerners as a place to buy huge estates, bring your slaves, and live like a king. This never came to pass, but Steuben County and its neighbors did become home to a noticeable slave population.
A hundred years ago you could still see buildings in Canisteo and in Bath that were reported to have been slave dwellings, and you could also find slave cemeteries that have since disappeared.
By and large, white men didn’t record much about the lives of slaves, just as they didn’t record much about the lives of women and poor people (of any race). We do have record of Colonel L. A. Jones in Addison, who won a woman and two sons in a game of cards (!) around 1820. According to a town history he passed the woman on to his brother, but recognizing the impending end of slavery enrolled the sons in school. “They were refused admission on account of color. He called a meeting of the citizens at the school house…. He said, ‘Gentlemen, the law will soon free these boys, they will have no master to look after them. They must earn their living as white men do, they must have a chance, they must have some education. They are going to attend this school and by the great Jehovah I will mop the ground with the man who refuses them admission and throw this building in the river stick by stick.’”
While this is stirring, the story also suggests the horror of casual, offhand transfers and the breakup of families as slaves (even children!) were routinely sold for payment of debts or taxes, or in liquidation of assets to settle estates.
Austin Steward left a remarkable slave narrative in which he described being brought to Bath from Virginia and hired out along with other slaves, including his sister. “One pleasant Sabbath morning, as I was passing the house where she lived, on my way to the Presbyterian church, where I was sent to ring the bell as usual, I heard the most piteous cries and earnest pleadings issuing from the dwelling. To my horror and the astonishment of those with me, my poor sister made her appearance, weeping bitterly, and followed by her inhuman master… flourishing a large raw-hide. Very soon his bottled wrath burst forth, and the blows, aimed with all his strength, descended upon the unprotected head, shoulders and back of the helpless woman, until she was literally cut to pieces. She writhed in his powerful grasp, while shriek after shriek died away in heart-rending moanings; and yet the inhuman demon continued to beat her, though her pleading cries had ceased, until obliged to desist from the exhaustion of his own strength…. The kind reader may imagine my feelings when I saw the smooth-faced hypocrite, the inhuman slave-whipper, enter the church, pass quietly on to his accustomed seat, and then meekly bow his hypocritical face….”
Steward describes being hired out to a man who clubbed and beat him frequently, not on any grounds, but simply because he could. Encountering attorney Daniel Cruger as both men crossed a bridge, Steward asked whether he shouldn’t in fact be free under New York law. Cruger loudly stated that of course Steward was NOT free, but the two men later held a private consultation (“you didn’t hear this from me”) in Cruger’s office.
A New York law for gradual emancipation had gone into effect in 1799, and court rulings since then had held that importing a slave, then hiring that slave out, was an evasion of the law’s provision against slave sales, and that the act ipso facto emancipated the slave. Cruger helped Steward get in touch with anti-slavery activists; at the age of 22 he walked away from Bath to settle in Manchester, where the activists helped him maintain his legal freedom when his owner later found him and tried to reclaim him. Facing the legal reality, the owner tried to lure Steward back “with honeyed words.” Unsurprisingly, this didn’t work.

A Parade of Counties

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A few weeks ago we looked at county and local governments in this blog, and that got me to thinking about our local counties themselves.

Counties are created, altered, and abolished by the state legislatures, contrary to the bizarre theory that counties are somehow the only legitimate unit of government.

On paper our area after 1691 was part of Albany County. In 1772 part of Albany became Tryon County… named to honor a British aristocrat, then changed to Montgomery for a hero of the Revolution. The Iroquois would have found all this hilarious, given that they still ruled almost a century after New York colony drew those Albany County lines on the map.

What was Montgomery County back then comprised all or parts of some thirty counties today, and all those arrangements actually started to mean something about 1789, when Ontario County was erected from Montgomery. Ontario ran from the state line to Lake Ontario, and roughly from the Genesee River to Seneca Lake, which pretty much matched the “Pulteney Purchase” by British investors. Steuben County was separated out in 1796. As new counties were created Ontario became progressively smaller until it reached its current boundaries in 1828 – which explains why a county with that name comes nowhere near the lake.

Allegany County was created (from Genesee) in 1806, later gaining land from Steuben but losing to Livingston, Wyoming, and even back to Genesee. Parts of Genesee and Ontario formed Livingston County in 1821, and boundary adjustments went on as late as 1922.

Yates County came out of Ontario in 1823 and added part of Steuben three years later. As years went on it gave up land to Tompkins and Seneca Counties, but added space (all under water) from Schuyler and Seneca in 1946.

A very large Tioga County came to be in 1791, and Chemung was created from Tioga in 1836.

And to complete our local (Corning-area) county map, and looking only in New York state, in 1854 Chemung, Steuben, and Tompkins all gave up land to make Schuyler County, the baby of the family. This is when Steuben finally lost its shoreline on Seneca Lake, having already given up some of Keuka for Yates County.

That lays out the boundaries. Where did all these county names come from?

ALBANY was named after the city, which took its name from one of the Duke of York’s subsidiary titles. TRYON was a colonial governor, and General Richard MONTGOMERY was killed in the Revolution, leading an attack on Quebec.

ONTARIO is of course the lowest and smallest of the Great Lakes, its name reportedly meaning Lake of Shining Waters in the Huron or Wyandotte tongue. ALLEGANY honors the memory of an early people driven out by the invading Iroquois. The name CHEMUNG reportedly derives from a Delaware word meaning “big horn,” referring to a mammoth tusk found nearby.

Baron STEUBEN was the man, more than any other, who trained and disciplined the Revolutionary troops into a true fighting army. Robert LIVINGSTON was also (reluctantly) a hero of the Revolution. He later swore in George Washington as President, and helped arrange the Louisiana Purchase. Philip SCHUYLER was a Revolutionary general, though not one whose career has impressed historians, and Governor Joseph YATES signed the law creating Yates County. From time to time in the future we’ll look at some swell stuff in each county, one by one.