Monthly Archives: October 2019

1929 Was a Good Year — For Some!

We recently went to a birthday celebration! A NINETIETH birthday celebration for “the cemetery lady,” Helen Kelly Brink. (Her 99 year-old cousin was also there.)

Helen “wrote the book” on Steuben County cemeteries, driving 4000 miles within Steuben to document over 400 burying grounds… all laid out town by town, with location, history, and current status. She’s also been an advocate for the neglected cemeteries, inspiring neighbors, municipalities, and Scout groups to clean them up.

Before writing her cemetery book Helen compiled the letters of her great-grandparents from Fremont, John and Mariett Kelly, from when John was off with the army in the Civil War. Families preserving their soldier’s letters is not unusual. But it’s very uncommon to have BOTH sides of a correspondence, since soldiers normally carried as little with them as possible.

Helen also gives tours of the Tiffany sanctuary at Bath Presbyterian church, and volunteers every week at Steuben County Historical Society, where she also was president for several years.

As part of her celebration I decided to look into what was going on in Helen’s birth year of 1929… a fateful year for the world, but it had its good sides too.

There were 123 million people in the U.S. – about a third of what we have today. One out of every ten of those Americans lived in New York state, which was a third bigger than its closest rival. Less than 83,000 of those Yorkers lived in Steuben County.

Herbert Hoover became our president in 1929 (succeeding Calvin Coolidge), and Franklin D. Roosevelt became our governor (succeeding Al Smith). Hoover’s term started out well, with the stock market reaching the highest point it had ever hit in its history. But it wouldn’t get back to that level until 1954, as a calamitous September crash ruined millions, and helped usher in the Great Depression.

Prohibition was still on, and the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre rocked Chicago. Gangsters who wanted tidier conditions (and less public attention) met in Atlantic City to form the National Crime Syndicate.

On the other hand, color television had its first public demonstration, and Grand Teton became a national park. Wings won the first Academy Award for best picture – the only silent movie that ever did so. And the Museum of Modern Art (or MOMA) opened in New York City.

Stalin drove Trotsky out of Russia, and Mother Theresa arrived in India. German rigid dirigible Graf Zeppelin flew around the world in 21 days.

The Great War was still a bleeding sore in people’s memories. Hemingway published A Farewell to Arms, while Remarque published All Quiet on the Western Front.

Other famous people born that year included Martin Luther King, Max von Sydow, Audrey Hepburn, Anne Frank, Jackie Kennedy, Bob Newhart, Barbara Walters, Grace Kelly, Dick Clark, and Popeye the Sailor Man. Wyatt Earp died in 1929.

The Seeing Eye was established, bringing joy to the blind. A nine-day gusher at Spindletop proved the Texas had oil – LOTS of oil! A four-man team led by Balchen and Byrd made the first flight over the South Pole (and returned safely).

And, amidst all that other excitement, Helen Kelly Brink came into the world, making that world a much, much merrier place.

In the Days of the River Arks

In days gone by, the Conhocton and Canisteo Rivers were the heads of one of the nation’s great trade routes.

*Charles Williamson commissioned a study on clearing the rivers to make them navigable by arks of 75 by 16 feet. George McClure built the first ark, and made the first experimental voyage, loaded with lumber, staves, and wooden pipe. It took a half hour to get five miles from Bath, where they grounded… then about six days to get from there to Painted Post, where they waited another four or five days for the river to rise. “We made a fresh start, and in four days ran 200 miles.” Aiming for Baltimore he got grounded near Harrisburg and negotiated a decent deal for his cargo there, having established that the thing could be done.

*Doing business in Bath and Dansville with his brother Charles, McClure took in 4000 bushels of wheat and 200 barrels of pork. He built four arks at Arkport, and these were the first to navigate the Canisteo, running all the way down to Baltimore. One winter he built eight arks at Bath and four on the Canisteo, shipping flour to Baltimore and wheat to Columbia. “The river was in fine order and he made a prosperous voyage and a profitable sale.”

*He also bought fur, pelts, and deer hams, shipping them downriver. One year he boarded 40 head of “the best and largest cattle” onto arks, shipped them to Columbia, Pennsylvania, and drove them overland to Philadelphia, “where they sold to good advantage.”

*On April 4, 1800, Friedrich Barthles sent out two arks from the outlet of Mud Lake (Bradford): one built by Colonel Williamson, 72’ x 15’; the other by Nathan Harvey, 71’ x 15’. When he needed water, Mr. Barthles opened a gate at the mill pond. “Thus it was ascertained to a certainty, that, by improving those streams, we could transport our produce to Baltimore – a distance of 300 miles – in the spring of the year, for a mere trifle.”

*Christopher Hurlbut built an ark in Arkport in 1800, sending it to Baltimore laden with wheat. He built a storehouse on the east bank of the Canisteo, to which came farmers from Genesee Valley with butter, cheese, wheat, corn, etc., “waiting only for the ‘Moving of the Waters.’” Thousands of bushels were shipped annually, as many as 11 arks a year.

*Hurlbut also “Obtained the passage of an act by the Legislature of this State making the Canisteo river a ‘public highway,’ and made it a channel of commerce down whose waters were borne much of the products of the ‘Genesee Country.’”

*Storehouses went up in Bath, including three at the foot of Ark Street. Sleighs crowded in from Geneva and the Genesee. In spring arks were floated to the storehouses, grain was poured into them in bulk, and the pilots, “with their jolly helpers,” began their returnless journey. About 1 in 10 “emptied its contents into the river.” “When Bath was on the eve of realizing Williamson’s expectations, the canals were constructed; and lo! its glory departed. The ark of the Conhocton passed into history; the rats took possession of the storehouses; the roofs caved in; the beams rotted away, and what was left of them tumbled into ruins.” And so an age came to an end.

*At 7:00 on Thursday, October 17 I’ll be at Finger Lakes Boating Museum, giving a talk on the arks and the arkers from those early days of our region’s history. We hope you’ll join us.

A Good Year for Monarch Butterflies — at Last!

From all I can tell, and from what others tell me, it looks as though the monarch butterflies are having a very good year this year.

*GOOD! The monarchs are long overdue for a little good news.

*We’re just starting the second week in October, and today I saw a monarch flittering through Bath’s Pulteney Square, bound for the south’ard and the monarchs’ winter home. Frost kills the ones that are left behind when it strikes, but no frost is due soon. Perhaps this one will make it yet to its ancestral home in Mexico.

*Leading a walking tour in Bath last month… and one in July… and one in Wayland in June… I joyfully pointed out numerous monarchs along the way. I’m seeing them in Pleasant Valley, in Corning, in Penn Yan. When I’m at the lookout in Mossy Bank Park, monarchs rise up the face of the cliff and pass over my head. This year the atmosphere seems to be filled with them.

*What could be better? Who can breathe a word against monarchs? They might be the most beautiful of creatures, but I suppose that’s matter of of opinion. But surely no creature on earth compounds beauty and inoffensiveness to greater effect.

*What harm does a monarch ever do to anyone? It even lays its eggs on, and its caterpilars feed on, milkweed leaves… and on the milkweed alone. And as most of us observe, even with all that monarch munching, we face no danger of a milkweed shortage.

*Richard Gast, from Franklin County Cornell Cooperative Extension, reports that he and others have observed the same thing in the Adirondacks… more monarchs this year!

*Anurag Agrawal, Professor of Environmental Studies at Cornell, writes, “this year’s estimate [at the wintering ground in the Sierra Madre] is well over double compared to last year”… after thirty years of decline.

*A quick check on line finds similar reports from Wisconsin, Nebraska, Ontario, and Utah, and I hear it informally from Rhode Island, too.

*It MAY be that we are seeing benefits from the increasing number of migration pathways, monarch waystations, and plantings of late-blooming nectar producers… Seneca Park Zoo in Rochester sponsors a “Butterfly Beltway.” Even if so, they are still terrifyingly vulnerable, with their entire population concentrating from their breeding space of several millioins square miles down to a dozen mountaintops for winter.

*I loved betterflies when I was a little boy in Rhode Island, and I love them now. I can’t say this for sure, but I imagine that monarchs were the first butterflies my mother taught me to identify… I suspect that that’s true for most kids. I am now far, far closer to seeing my LAST butterfly than I am to the day when I saw my FIRST. When that last butterfly flits before my delighted eyes, I hope it’s a monarch.