Monthly Archives: January 2017

Hooray For Helen!

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Last weekend the Central Steuben Chamber of Commerce gave its annual Community Spirit award to Helen Kelly Brink. I’ve know Helen for quite a while, but I’ve been working with her two days a week for the past six and a-half years. We use desks right next to each other, though I will confess that a year or so back, Helen rearranged the office so that a four-drawer file cabinet blocked both my desk AND me. I don’t think there was any message or agenda in that, and I have to say that it was actually kind of peaceful back there. But in the end we agreed that it really wasn’t the best arrangement.

And that’s good, because even though I enjoy my work at the historical society every day, working with Helen definitely makes the day extra bright. Besides volunteering twice a week at Magee House, Helen has served multiple terms on the board, including several terms as president.

Helen has fans literally worldwide, thanks to her role on the Steuben County Tiffany Trail, giving tours at the First Presbyterian Church in Bath. You can get the tour yourself on a drop-in basis, Wednesdays during the summer. If you haven’t done so yet, I definitely recommend it.

Four times a year, Helen edits and lays out our quarterly magazine, the Steuben Echoes. She has just finished expanding and Joe Paddock’s History of Steuben County Historical Society, and bringing up to the current date.

IN ADDITION to that, she has written nine books and four pamphlets. I couldn’t get copies of two of them, but the others add up to some 3000 pages of print. Her publications are…

*I Thought It My Duty to Go the My Country’s Call: The Civil War Letters of John McIntosh Kelly & Maryett Babcock Kelly

*A Driving Tour to Historic Places & Areas of Interest Around the Village of Bath

*A Walking Tour Through Bath’s Downtown Historic District

*A Driving Tour to Mossy Bank and Lookout Including Historic Places & Areas of Interest

*A Driving Tour to the Veterans’ Administration Medical Center at Bath

*From the Pages of Our Church’s History: the First Presbyterian Church of Bath

*Our Miss Hille

*The Classons-Claysons of Cohocton, N.Y.

*The Saratoga, Schenectady, & Steuben County Descendants of John Calkins, Jr.

*Some of the Descendants of Asa Phillips

*The Jonathan Oxx Family of Steuben County

*The Descendants of William McClary

…and, maybe most notably, Steuben County Cemeteries: Good, Bad, and Gone! For this project, she and her little dog Cricket spent four summers driving 4000 miles within Steuben County, visiting virtually every one of 400 or so cemeteries. I think there were fewer than half a dozen that she didn’t get to, just because they were in inaccessible terrain. Bill Moore crawled into one spot for her to verify the cemetery’s existence, and in another case a state trooper stopped her as she was about to climb a steep hill, and went up to the top in her place.

AND… once the book was published, and more information started coming in, she brought out a revised, expanded, and updated edition. Helen was well established as “the cemetery lady.”

And as the Cemetery Lady she plans, maps, organizes, and leads the annual Columbus Day Leaf-Peeping Cemetery Tour. Some might find it hard to believe, but this event is wait-listed every year. It’s often suggested that we put on a second bus, but we’ve always pointed out that the best part of the tour is the stories that Helen tells ON the bus, traveling from cemetery to cemetery, and as we point out, we can’t duplicate Helen. Or in other words — nobody can match Helen Kelly Brink.

150 Years Ago — In 1867

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The Civil War had been over for two years, but conflict hadn’t ended. Parts of the south were still under military government, and the Ku Klux Klan had begun burning its murderous way through history, enraged and horrified by the new biracial governments that were forming. Their evil work still pollutes our nation to this day.

Slavery had been abolished the previous year, but not until the following year would it be clearly established that the freed slaves were citizens, and that all citizens had equal protection of the laws.

Bath entered the national debate in microcosm, voting after two public meetings to integrate the schools. The old “colored school” on Pine Street was given to the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. Bath Grange is there today.

The Knoxville-Corning bridge washed out in February, and was replaced later in the year. A Sons of Temperance Lodge was organized in Corning, along with a St. Mary‘s Temperance Society. Baseball was already popular, but the game was a little bit different back then. Corning Monitors traveled to Addison and beat the home team Meteors 61-29. In July Corning beat Elmira 65-34. On November 7, a fire burned eight two-story buildings on the north side of Market Street.

Steuben County Fair opened in Bath on September 25, with cattle, sheep, swine, and poultry on show. New at the fair that year were the driving park, or race track, and a floral hall. October saw two days of harness racing at the grounds. There were best-of-five one-mile heats with purses totaling $125, and best-of-three one-mile heats with purses totaling 100. Contestants paid an entry fee equaling ten per cent of the purse. Admission was a quarter, and so was parking, but your ladies got in for free.

Captain R. C. Phillips of Prattsburgh took his company of the “U.S. Colored Troops” to the southwest as Andrew Johnson and William Seward pressured the French out of Mexico. They also bought the Russians out of Alaska — imagine what the Cold War would have been like otherwise. Also up north, Canadian Confederation became a reality (without Newfoundland, which wouldn’t join until after World War II).

Francis McDowell of Wayne joined seven other men and women to form the National Grange. Binghamton became a city. In Angola, New York, a train derailment killed 49 people — the Angola Horror. Steuben County had its current 32 towns, but its two cities were still to come.

Looking farther afield, the first ship passed through the Suez Canal. Lister described antiseptic surgery. The Vienna Men’s Choral Association made the first public performance of Strauss’s Blue Danube Waltz, quickly followed by orchestral premieres at London, New York, and the Paris World’s Fair. Best Western champagne from Hammondsport stunned the Europeans by winning a gold medal in Vienna.

Cy Young was born in 1867… So were Wilbur Wright, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Marie Curie. Jules Verne published his fifth novel in 1867, but Mark Twain was still mostly unknown. Twenty year-old Alexander Graham Bell collapsed after overworking himself on his experiments. Theodore Roosevelt was nine years old, and Woodrow Wilson was eleven, and had just learned to read – the future scholar and president was apparently dyslexic. When he retired from the White House in 1921, Wilson would be the last President who had grown up with slaves in his household.

Across our region, veterans tried to adjust to their new lives. R. C. Philips, whom we mentioned had gone to New Mexico, had lost the use of one arm at Gettysburg. Monroe Brundage of Hammondsport had lost an arm completely at Antietam. Diaries and memoirs reveal men struggling with what we now know to be Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Hundreds of local women had been widowed, and Ira Davenport’s splendid “female asylum” in Bath was three years old – the late Mr. Davenport having correctly discerned that the terrible war would mean thousands of orphans.

Good Memories at Strong Museum, and the National Toy Hall of Fame

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What toys do you like best? What toys do you remember best? What toys do your kids spend most of their time with?

*Every couple of years we visit the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, and on any given visit, it seems like we get through about half of the place. (It’s big!)

*Earlier this month, I committed to spend some time on the upper level, in the Toy Hall of Fame, which showcases 62 toys (so far) that have been selected for the honor.

*One of the great things about the Toy Hall of Fame is that it takes a very broad view of toys and playthings. So honored inductees include the stick (inducted 2008), the blanket (2011), and the cardboard box (2005).

*There were three inductions last year: Dungeons & Dragons, the swing, and Fisher-Price Little People. That makes a good picture of the breadth. The granddaddy of modern role-playing games, an ancient low-tech plaything, and an enduring, well-loved proprietary set of toys.

*When you wander the Toy Hall of Fame, you wander through a memory gallery that ranges from A (alphabet blocks, 2003) to almost-Z (View-Master, 1999).

*I have to say that I no longer remember any specific story on my View-Master. But I certainly remember pressing down that little button on the right, the satisfying “clunk” as the disc advanced, and the exciting 3-D effect, which I now know mimicked the old-time stereopticon.

*And how I loved my Lincoln Logs (1999), building anything imaginable, often in combination with my plastic dinosaurs or my little green army men (2014). Each Christmas, I used Lincoln Logs to make up a Nativity scene.

*My grandfather taught me checkers (2003), but my father taught me chess (2013). My mother taught me to ride a bicycle (2000). We bought our kids G.I. Joe toys (2004), and Star Wars action figures (2012). When I was at a very low time in my life, shortly before we came to Bath, our younger son bought me a jar of bubble water (2014), and I spent many calming hours on the steps, making bubbles and watching them float on the breeze, and thinking about what an insightful guy he was.

*Nowadays at our house we don’t go in much for Atari (2007), Barbie (1998), skateboards (2008), Easy-Bake Ovens (2006), or Rubik’s Cube (2014). But we DO spend time with Scrabble (2004), and with jigsaw puzzles (2002).

*Besides the main Toy Hall of Fame, the Strong is also home to the Toy Industry Hall of Fame (honoring people), the World Video Game Hall of Fame, and the D.I.C.E. Awards from the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences.

*Near the Toy Halls of Fame is the America at Play gallery, a chronological look at three centuries of play and recreation. I was thrilled to find a full-size fishing diorama here, complete with a Penn Yan Boats “Cartop” boat from the 1950s. I was intrigued to see one of the early circular Monopoly boards, hand-drawn by Charles Darrow.

*Since I’m a big fan of comics and cartoons, I enjoyed spotting playthings of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Popeye, Barney Google, Spark Plug, Peanuts, and Dick Tracy.

*We also took in Reading Adventureland; American Comic Book Heroes; and the Berenstain Bears “Down a Sunny Dirt Road” space, besides catching the last day of a dinosaur exhibit, and poking around the Field of Play room. And that still left almost half the museum untouched. Which just means we have to go back! And we will. You might like it, too.

200 Years Ago — The Way We Were, in 1817

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In 1817, folks in Steuben and around the Northern Hemisphere were overjoyed to learn that the disastrous 1816 “Year Without a Summer” had been an aberration.

There were 11 towns within today’s boundaries of Steuben County — Addison, Bath, Canisteo, Cohocton, Corning (then called Painted Post), Dansville, Howard, Prattsburgh, Pulteney, Troupsburg, and Wayne. But in 1817 Steuben County stretched all the way to Seneca Lake, and further up Keuka Lake, so there were towns (Barrington, Reading, Tyrone) that are now in Yates or Schuyler Counties.

Steuben County had 21,989 people in the 1820 census, and 179 of them were nonwhite. Of them, 46 were slaves.

John Magee, who had only recently arrived in Bath, was farming for Adam Haverling at eight dollars a month. He would parley this into a banking, mining, and transportation empire, several fine mansions, and two terms in Congress. Ira Davenport, a pioneer merchant in what’s now Hornellsville, was laying the foundation of his own fortune. Joel Pratt was 73 years old, and Silas Wheeler was 67. Both men had fought in the Revolution, as had James Monroe, who became our fifth president on March 4th.

Up in Rome, work got going on the Erie Canal. Although a great thing in general, the canal, once opened, collapsed the economy of the Southern Tier, which depended on the Conhocton-Canisteo-Chemung-Susquehanna River chain. That would also kill Bath’s prospects for becoming the great metropolis of western New York. But Bath already had its beautiful boulevards and its open squares, and keeps them to this day.

In Hartford, Connecticut, the American School for the Deaf opened. Henry David Thoreau was born, and Jane Austen died. Robert E. Lee was about 10 years old, and Abraham Lincoln a year or two younger. The Lincolns had just moved from slaveholding Kentucky to the free territory of Indiana. Ulysses S. Grant was not yet born. John Brown was at a co-educational college preparatory school in Connecticut. Twelve-year-old Joseph Smith had just arrived in the Finger Lakes.

No one had ever heard of Charles Darwin, James Fenimore Cooper, Davy Crockett, or Edgar Allen Poe. A trip from Bath to Dansville would cost you a couple of days. Husbands had complete control over their wives’ income and assets. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was two years old.

Mississippi became the 20th state in 1817. Louisiana was the only state west of the Mississippi River. America did not yet include Texas, the southwest, or the Pacific coast. No steam ship had ever crossed the Atlantic. Telegraphs and cameras wouldn’t exist for another 20 years.

Here in New York, Allegany County already existed, but Schuyler, Livingston, Yates, and Chemung did not. DeWitt Clinton became governor, and George McClure was sheriff of Steuben County. The 1824 gazetteer reported that Steuben had 18 post offices, 156 school districts, 40 grist mills, 102 sawmills, two oil mills, an iron works, two textile mills, 30 distilleries, 30 asheries, and 22,600 “neat cattle” — just about one per resident!

“Our Gem — Stony Brook State Park”

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By many reckonings Niagara Falls is the first state park in America, although quite a few people assume that it’s a National Park. The huge Adirondack State Park is protected, along with much of the Catskills, by our state constitution. And what would Manhattan be like without that vast and aptly-named Central Park, which is a city park?

Watkins Glen State Park is a money magnet for our region, bringing in visitors from around the world. (“I’ve been to Hawaii,” one lady told me on the trail one day. “I’ve been in their gorges, and they’re nothing like this.”) Bath and Hammondsport each have a Pulteney Park, and each one focuses and defines its community.

Parks are vital aspects of our lives. Watkins Glen State Park preserves the gorge. The state recently preserved the shorelines of Hemlock and Canadice Lakes, in the most significant park acquisition of almost a century.

Besides their preservation purpose, parks also serve recreational purposes – hunting, fishing, hiking, boating, birding, swimming, picknicking, just plain getting outdoors. In the 1920s many people still thought of cities as an aberration, and worried about the people who were forced to live there. Surely they needed life-giving infusions of countryside, lest they turn into Morlocks or something?

Such thinking in the 1920s helped drive creation of our modern state park system, ironically under the leadership of two quintessential city boys, Al Smith and Robert Moses.

It was Moses himself who selected the site for Stony Brook Park, and Governor Smith bought the original 250 acres for a dollar. One of the reasons for the selection was that it was, like Letchworth, an easy drive from Rochester. (Besides providing an outlet for city folks, the new system was also designed to stimulate better roads.) Another reason for selection, of course, was that marvelous gorge.

Situated about midway between Letchworth and Watkins Glen, Stony Brook often gets overlooked. It shouldn’t. It was a significant picnic and party destination at least as far back as the 1880s. Most people couldn’t swim back then, but as the 20th century advanced, Stony Brook swimming lessons… in COLD water… became a staple of life for many area kids.

Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt visited the park… still largely undeveloped… as part of celebrations for Clara Barton, who had founded the first American Red Cross chapter in the nearby Village of Dansville, in Livingston County. (The park itself is in the TOWN of Dansville in STEUBEN County.) F.D.R. and President Hoover spoke via telephone as part of the ceremony.

Much of the park, though, was still undeveloped once Roosevelt replaced Hoover in the White House. C.C.C. ( Civilian Conservation Corps) youngsters created much of the park infrastructure as New Deal work projects during the Great Depression. In those ugly years Steuben County also operated a transient camp in the park, providing temporary shelter for hundreds of homeless people.

Acquired in 1928, the park today has 577 acres, with facilities for camping, swimming, bowhunting, hiking, nature study, cross-country skiing, and more. On Friday, January 6 we’ll kick off our Steuben County Historical Society Winter Lecture Series with “Our Gem: Stony Brook Park,” an illustrated presentation by Jane Schryver and Paul Hoffman. The 4 PM event in Bath Fire Hall is free and open to the public – we hope we’ll see you there!