Monthly Archives: December 2017

Keep Warm, at the Public Library

Leave a reply

Baby, it’s cold outside! So cold that you just want to stay put. But eventually you just NEED to get out of the house for a spell. Where can you go that you’ll be welcome, and still stay warm?

*I thoroughly recommend – the public library. Libraries are warm (or at least, as warm as anyplace else). You can just sit quietly in the library, and read a book, or a magazine, or a newspaper, and nobody bothers you, or asks what your business is, or criticizes what you’ve chosen to read, or tells you to move along. Most of them have tables and chairs, (like in study hall) but most of them also have comfortable armchairs.

*Most of them have computers available, and/or have wifi if you bring your own laptop.

*I think that all of them have spaces for kids, along with vast collections of books for kids down to baby age. Check the schedule, then take in story hour or other children’s activities. Some libraries also have grown-up book discussions, knitting classes – you name it.

*Libraries even have rest rooms. And you can walk into any public library in America, plonk yourself down, and enjoy the amenities.

*Just about any library is a really cool place, but some have a little something extra.

*Dormann Library in Bath has its own cafe. Enjoy a coffee, chai, or hot chocolate while you’re visiting. Do your reading at a cafe table, or chat with another patron. Get a smoothie, or even a light sandwich.

*Check the schedule, and bring the kids to meet the tail-wagging tutors… dogs who come in to encourage reading. Dormann also has artwork both historical and contemporary.

*Steele Memorial Library in Elmira has ongoing exhibits, and a giant chess set you can use.

*Modeste Bedient Library in Branchport looks out onto a nature preserve, and the West Branch of Keuka Lake.

*Penn Yan Public Library has hot water, tea bags, and instant coffee.

*The Central Library of Rochester and Monroe County has a secret room (honest!) for children, along with a remarkable doll collection.

*The libraries in Hammondsport and Henrietta have regularly-open book-sale rooms (check for hours).

*Upstairs over the Southeast Steuben Library in Corning is the Nonnie Hood Parent Resource Center, which “helps families with young children play, learn, and connect with others in a welcoming and encouraging environment.”

*At Corning you can even go out and skate, THEN come in and get warm.

*Even the smallest and simplest library can be a really cool place. With a warm welcome.

A Heavy Toll: Steuben County in the Civil War (Part I)

Leave a reply

The Civil War killed as many Americans as all our other wars combined. The “official” Civil War toll is about 625,000, but my research suggests that that’s bogus, because it doesn’t count men who were so sick or so badly wounded that they were discharged, and died soon afterward. By way of comparison, all other war deaths total 695,000.

*Of course the Civil War toll includes both sides, and to balance things we should include American Indian deaths in the “all other wars” total.

*Anyhow the Civil War killed maybe 700,000 out of a population of 28 million (2.5% of the total, or 5% of American males). World War II killed 406,000 out of 132 million (three-tenths of one percent, again overwhelmingly male).

*I wanted to look at how the Civil War affected us locally, and I’ve been using W. W. Clayton’s 1879 “History of Steuben County” to see what the local death toll was, and whether there were any particular battles or prisons that accounted for large numbers of Steuben men. (Clayton gives a town-by-town list of names, usually with detail on each man’s service.)

*So far I’ve been through nine of 32 towns (Addison through Cohocton, in alphabetical order). Bath had the highest number of soldiers (455) and the highest number of deaths (43, or 9%). But Avoca, with 175 men and 39 deaths, had the highest loss rate (22%).

*Interestingly the next highest enlistment number came from tiny Caton (226 soldiers and one sailor) – ahead of Canisteo (197), Cohocton (196), Addison (193), Avoca (175), Campbell (173), Bradford (125), and Cameron (96). Caton and Cameron were tied at 7% with the lowest death rates so far.

*Besides looking at total death rates, I wanted to see whether particular battles, prisons, or causes took heavy tolls… since men generally served alongside their neighbors, one fierce battle could devastate the whole community.

*Unsurprisingly the highest deaths were from illness (56) and unspecified (85). Illness was the big killer of the war, and I suspect that nearly all of the unspecified deaths are actually due to illness. A startling number died at their mustering point of Elmira, before they even left the Southern Tier. No doubt all those men packing together created problems with sewage and with drinking water. But on top of that, many men had never strayed far from their farm or their hamlet. Packed together with thousands of others, they suddenly encountered illnesses they had never faced before, reacted to them severely, and died accordingly.

*What about more direct military causes? Ten men died as prisoners – seven of them at Andersonville, whose commandant was hanged after the Civil War’s only war crimes trial. (Most of these deaths are probably from illness or starvation, rather than from direct attack by guards.)

*What about more direct battle causes? Eight were listed as killed, but without particular battles being identified, and one was described as having been killed “by guerrillas.”

*The big battles took their big tolls: four men in the disaster at Chancellorsville, three in the famous victory at Gettysburg, three in the flawed victory at Antietam… still the bloodiest day in American military history, even after the giant wars of the 20th century.

*But five died in the little-regarded Battle of Dallas… not the city in Texas but a much smaller place in Georgia… plus three at the related Battle of New Hope Church. Sherman’s army was driving on Atlanta, and from May 26 to June 8 both armies sparred and probed, each trying to dislodge or bypass the other or, in the Confederate case, trying to get away. So far, then, the Dallas/New Hope Church Battles are the largest military killers of Steuben men in the Civil War, just edging out Andersonville… but there are still 23 towns to go, including Corning and Hornellsvile, with populations to rival Bath’s. It will only get grimmer as we go.

Remembering Marcus Whitman

Leave a reply

For pretty much the past century, we have lived in a world where Glenn Curtiss was the most famous Steuben County person… though there were spells in there where Margaret Sanger gave him a run for his money.

*But for the PREVIOUS century, the winner hands-downs would have been Marcus Whitman.

*After practicing medicine in Wheeler from 1828 to 1835, Whitman traveled out as far as today’s Idaho as a medical missionary. Such a journey was extremely unusual… very few white Americans had been out that far west since Lewis and Clark… but Whitman would soon top that.

*Returning home he married Narcissa Prentiss of Prattsburgh, and with another local couple the two set off for Oregon, where they made homes and began missionary work, along with medical practice and business ventures.

*Whitman went to St. Louis on mission business in 1843, and when he headed back he guided the first large wagon train of settlers, establishing the Oregon Trail as a viable route. His cross-country journeys were remarkable, but he and his wife had their fame solidified when they and 12 others were killed by Cayuse Indians in 1847. (While we can regret the atrocity, we need to also remember that the Cayuse themselves had been VICTIMS of atrocities, and that the region was teeming with conflict between Indian and European, British and American, Catholic and Protestant… not to mention the Mexican War and fierce conflicts over Mormonism.)

*Besides being remembered in the name of the “Whitman Massacre,” Marcus Whitman has numerous memorials across the country.

*The Whitman Mission National Historic Site was established (under different nomenclature) in 1936.

*Whitman College in Walla Walla was established in 1859, and now has some 1500 undergrads. Alumni include “Batman” actor Adam West and Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas.

*Marcus Whitman Central School District and Marcus Whitman High are in Rushville; Whitman once lived nearby.

*Wallowa-Whitman National Forest straddles the Idaho-Oregon state line. Theodore Roosevelt established it, under different nomenclature, in 1908.

*Whitman Glacier, and the Whitman Crest, are on Mount Rainier.

*A bronze tablet in Wheeler commemorates his service as a doctor.

*A plaque at Franklin Academy in Prattsburgh honors alumna Narcissa Prentiss, and also mentions Marcus. A historical marker at the Narcissa Prentiss House also mentions him.

*A plaque at DeWitt Park in Ithaca memorializes the commissioning of the Whitman-Spalding mission party.

*Whitman’s birthplace in Rushville has a New York State Historic marker.

*In Washington state, September 4 is Marcus Whitman Day.

*In 1977, Marcus Whitman was named to the Steuben County Hall of Fame.

*Each state gets to donate two statues to the National Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol, and Washington donated a statue of Marcus Whitman. (There’s a duplicate at Whitman College.) His “colleague” from Washington is Mother Joseph, a Roman Catholic nun who established schools, orphanages, hospitals, and shelters throughout the region. Given the attitudes of their own day, probably they would each be horrified, if not enraged, to be paired with a “heretic.” But the times, and the mores, both march on.

Christmas Long Ago

Leave a reply

Back in the 1790s, when European people were just muscling into our area in large numbers, Christmas doesn’t seem to have been a very big deal. To the extent that America had a Puritan conscience, it disdained the holiday as an unbiblical, semi-pagan Catholic superstition. (When the Puritans disliked something, they got their money’s worth out of the emotion.)

*It wasn’t until well after the Civil War that many employers in Corning started giving their workers a day off for Christmas. There’s a Hammondsport photo from around 1901, showing a full shift at the grape-packing house on December 25. A post card mailed around 1910 was postmarked in both Corning and Dundee on December 25, meaning that both offices were open and working, and someone was working to move the mail between the two communities.

*I recently had to go through the December 1872 issues of The Steuben Farmer’s Advocate, published weekly in Bath. I was researching one particular item, and so didn’t have time to really study the papers page by page, but as far as I saw, they didn’t even mention Christmas.

*Where Americans DID celebrate Christmas in the early days, it was often next thing to a riot (which is another reason that the Puritans criminalized the holiday.) In New York City gangs of youths forced their way into people’s homes, singing loudly and lewdly until bribed with enough food and drink to go on to the next house. Down south men celebrated Christmas with heavy drinking, enlivened by sneaking up on each other to shoot off firearms, with results just about as you might expect.

*Two Germans went a long way toward taming Christmas, not to mention popularizing it. Immigrant cartoonist Thomas Nast standardized the shadowy figure of Santa Claus, elaborating on his sleigh, his bag, and his vast North Pole complex, not to mention excited children and indulgent parents. (Nast’s Santa seems to rest firmly on the poem, “A Visit From Saint Nicholas.”)

*Christmas was big in Germany, and the German Prince Albert energetically brought trees and gifts and candles and other accouterments to his large brood at Buckingham Palace with the excited approval of Queen Victoria, who adored anything Albert did. Then as now London and “the royals” were style-setters in the English-speaking world, and Christmas became a fad, then a tradition.

*Nast and Albert were spreading their cheer right around the time of the American Civil War, and the new family-centered domesticated Christmas struck a chord with families sundered by the great conflict. Maryett Kelly wrote husband John in the Union army from their farm in Fremont, describing how their little son Scotty had received some candies in his stocking, along with a toy horse. John celebrated by doing absolutely nothing in camp at Savannah (which they were about to capture), and each of the men was issued a small drink of whiskey.

*By the late 1800s stores were garishly decorated and sales were abundant. In 1901 Christmas ads started running the day before Thanksgiving in the weekly Hammondsport Herald, breathlessly proclaiming how many shopping days were left. Santa Claus, one ad noted, is a common-sense old fellow, meaning that ANYTHING could be marketed as a Christmas gift – “just think of a better gift than shoes.” Or boots, or rubbers, or a cast-iron stove!

*Just before World War I Frank Burnside flew Santa Claus by biplane from Bath to Corning, where spectators lined the rooftops and crowded the landing ground in Denison Park, all courtesy of the Board of Trade. After the war, I suppose, Christmas became more the holiday that we know. Hope you enjoy it – whatever way you like!