Monthly Archives: July 2020

Time-Traveling Through the 1920s — Part One!

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A few weeks ago we looked at things that were happening exactly a hundred years ago, in 1920. Today let’s take a time machine back, and tour our area to see what was new and fresh then, and old friends to us now.
To begin our trip, we can sit in on foundational meetings for the brand-new incorporated Village of South Corning – home to St. Mary’s Cemetery, St. Mary’s Orthodox Cemetery, most of Hope Cemetery, a massive memorial arch for glass workers killed in a train crash, and the Town of Corning offices.
We can start 1921 in Wayland, at the Bennett’s Motors building on Route 15. Sad to say the family business closed at the end of last year, but the building will now be used by the ambulance corps.
Since we have a time machine, zipping over to Painted Post takes no time at all. Here we can see the foursquare old Erwin Muncipal Building, “built like a fortress” according to new owners, which allowed it to survive floods in 1935 and 1972. Keep your eye on it – the owners have great plans.
Just a few blocks down, but a year forward, we enter Riverside, incorporated as a village in 1922. It was formerly named Centerville, and also got hammered by those floods.
Continue on down Pulteney Street, once again jogging a year ahead, and we can look at the still-impressive Hotel Stanton on Bridge Street. In Bath the municipal building (which looks a lot like the Erwin building) was dedicated as a Great War memorial in 1923. That same year the new K-12 Haverling School opened at Liberty and Washington… most people know it nowadays as the old Dana Lyon school.
Up in Prattsburgh the Air-Flo building has been substantially altered, but it also first saw the light of day in 1923. And back at Wayland we can admire the 1923 American Legion hall, which was built to include a movie theater, and operated as such for decades.
Head south on Route 21, smoothly transitioning to 1924 as we go, and we’ll arrive at the Village of North Hornell – the last municipality to be created in Steuben County, and home to the new St. James Mercy Center. Driving on into the City of Hornell we can admire the neoclassical Lincoln School, now on the National Register of Historic Places after providing a neighborhood school for generations of families.
Back in Prattsburgh we’re bound to be impressed by the Franklin Academy (Prattsbugh Central School) and the ornate Presbyterian Church. The side-by-side structures went up in 1924, after their historic side-by-side predecessors burned down together on a memorable winter’s night in 1923. (The school’s been added to considerably in the last century, of course.)
On a less-dramatic note we can stop at the Babcock building on Bath’s Liberty Street, opened as a new-fangled movie theater (silents only) in 1924. The auditorium itself is gone, but many, many folks still fondly remember Friday nights or Saturday afternoons at the Babcock. But the street level later become part of Bath National Bank, now Five Star Bank. Unfortunately that branch has just been closed, so who knows what the Babcock faces as its second century approaches?

“Hamilton” on Our Map

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Alexander Hamilton’s been having a good decade, thanks to a massive new biography by Ron Chernow, and an overwhelming new musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Aaron Burr, who killed Hamilton in a duel, is having a mini-revival too, but only as “the man who,” and only from the viewpoint of Hamilton enthusiasts.

Interestingly enough, at Steuben County Historical Society’s Magee House we exhibit a letter from Hamilton and one from Burr, each promoting investment out here in the “Pulteney Estate.”

Hamilton County and Hamilton College are each named for Alex, who also appears on the ten-dollar bill. But it’s interesting that a number of our local place names honor friends and associates of Hamilton – he was a very busy bee, and got around to a lot of people.

STEUBEN COUNTY is named for Baron Steuben, who served, like Hamilton, on George Washington’s staff during the Revolutionary War. Both of them were geniuses at organization, something that the Continental Army sadly lacked. Steuben, of course, also had deep military knowledge and experience, something that Hamilton and Washington both lacked. But all three were brilliant (Hamilton probably the most so), all three thought deeply, and all three recognized that they were building the future.

Hamilton helped Steuben, who was just learning English, to write his seminal manual of arms. At Yorktown Steuben commanded a division, and Hamilton a battalion. He stormed and captured a British fortification at the head of his men in a nighttime bayonet charge with no ammunition – a tactic Steuben had taught them.

Steuben and Hamilton were very different in age, background, and even language. But each thought very highly of the other, which actually tells us a great deal about each of them.

TROUPSBURG takes its name from Robert Troup, who was the orphaned Hamilton’s roommate and best friend at King’s College (now Columbia University). They joined the militia together when the Revolution broke out, and together joined an eventually-successful abolition society. Troup took over from Charles Williamson as Agent for the Pulteney Estate, and did the job for 31 years. He tried to get Hamilton to invest, but Hamilton contented himself with taking a yearly retainer through his law practice. The Town of PULTENEY takes its name from those British investors for whom Hamilton sometimes worked, and who owned over a million acres out here.

LAFAYETTE PARK in Watkins Glen honors Marquis de Lafayette, who served on Washington’s staff along with Steuben and Hamilton – though in Lafayette’s case, at least at first, he was largely hanging around learning the language, and being a poster boy for a desired French alliance. He and Hamilton were of an age, dedicated to the Revolution, enthusiasts for Washington, and both hungry for military glory, valiant and energetic in combat and in command. Like Steuben, Lafayette was a commander at Yorktown where Hamilton served as a captain.

SCHUYLER COUNTY takes its name from General Philip Schuyler who was – Hamilton’s father-in-law! A veteran of the French and Indian War and a member of the Continental Congress, he became a major general during the Revolution and served with mixed success. Since he was mostly working from Albany, coping with threatened British invasions out of Canada, he and Hamilton never served together. But the general arranged Hamilton’s appointment as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention in 1787.

And since we’re talking’ family we should mention ANGELICA, in Allegany County, named for one of Schuyler’s daughters, who was thus Hamilton’s sister-in-law. Many moderns read their intense correspondence as evidence of an affair, or at least of powerful attraction, and the musical falls in with that view. But the correspondence may be intense just because they were both very intense people. She was also close with Jefferson, Lafayette, and the Prince of Wales, and for most of the acquaintanceship she and Hamilton were not even in the same hemisphere. Her son, who became a major landowner in the area, put her on the map.

Well, if we’ve got Steuben, Yates, and Schuyler, why not LIVINGSTON COUNTY? Livingston was involved in everything from the Declaration of Independence to the Louisiana Purchase and the first steamboat line. But he and Hamilton were two of a five-man team that successfully steered the U. S. Constitution to ratification at the New York state convention in 1787.

And we should take note of MONROE COUNTY, for James Monroe and Alexander Hamilton were brother veterans – in particular, they were both (along with Aaron Burr) in the ice-raining crossing of the Delaware, the long night march, and the storming of Trenton – perhaps the one indispensable moment of the Revolution. Despite this shared experience, though, they were bitter political foes, Monroe even helping leak (true) smears about Hamilton’s personal life. As we said, Alex got around to a lot of people. Not all those ties turned out well.

“To Demand Her Right”: Women’s Suffrage Activity in Our Area

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Steuben women started campaigning for the vote almost immediately after the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention. Here’s an overview of their actions and activities!

1852
Susan B. Anthony spoke in Corning (four years after the first Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls).

1855
Susan B. Anthony spoke in Bath on January 5 as part of a County Women’s Rights Convention — day one of a five-day visit that also included two speeches in Corning (1/7 and 1/9). The purpose of the meeting was to discuss “all the reasons that impel Woman to demand her right of Suffrage.” Miss Anthony is known to have spoken at some time in Caton and in Cohocton, but the dates are unknown.

1870
Susan B. Anthony spoke in Corning to an audience of 80.

1880
Partial voting rights! New York women could vote in school elections and serve as school trustees if they had children in school, or owned real property. Two women were immediately elected trustees in Cohocton Union Free School District.

1881
Suffrage leader Lillie Deveraux Blake spoke in Corning in November.

1894
On August 9 the W.C.T.U., or Women’s Christian Temperance Union, finished two nights of elaborately-staged performances at the Corning Opera House. Besides temperance, the W.C.T.U. also fought for social reform, protection for working girls, aid and Americanization for immigrants, world peace, and women’s suffrage.

1901
EXPANDED partial voting rights! New York women who owned property, and paid taxes on that property, could vote on village taxation issues. Hammondsport Herald publisher Lew Brown ran repeated pieces sympathetic to women’s suffrage. In one such piece, Ada Stoddard of M.I.T. predicted that once women had the vote, equal pay for equal work would quickly become a reality. Other voices claimed that women voters would end corruption and outlaw war.

1906
The Hornell directory showed an Equal Suffrage society.

1913
On the evening of June 19, two young New England women gave eloquent and persuasive speeches at the Corning clock tower square. They were campaigning on behalf of equal suffrage, or votes for women.

1914
A Corning appearance by Mrs. Harriot Stanton Blatch (daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton) led to a formal organization. On April 6 a meeting in the interest of woman suffrage was held in the assembly hall at the Odd Fellows’ Temple. Mrs. Frank C. Payne of Corning presided. Speakers (all women) came from Syracuse, New York City, and Hornell. A suffrage tent was erected in Dickinson Square, open air meetings were held, and the Torch of Liberty was carried into Corning. Susan B. Anthony, who died in 1906, had predicted that New York women would vote by 1914, but her hopes were disappointed.

1915
Steuben voted 9740 to 7226 against the New York voter suffrage amendment. Chemung was the only local county that approved.

1917
On November 6, Corning voters (all men) cast 947 ballots to approve the women’s suffrage amendment to the state constitution, and 660 against. Steuben as a whole voted it down, 6866 to 6760. Allegany was the only neighboring county to approve, but the amendment passed statewide.

1918
FULL VOTES AT LAST! Women could finally vote in New York, on exactly the same basis as men. Susannah Thompson of Erwin ran for Steuben County treasurer and came in third.

1920
FULL VOTES DOUBLY GUARANTEED! Women could vote nationwide, by U.S. constitutional amendment ratified the same year. Rather than just going out of business, women’s suffrage groups became the League of Women Voters.

Meet the Neighbors: Snapping Turtles

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Last week in this space we looked at our neighbors the bald eagles, one of which, as I mentioned, I had watched circling above the pond at Birdseye Hollow County Park.

As I strolled back toward the bridge, I encountered another of our neighbors, but instead of lifting my eyes high, I had to drop them down low. I wasn’t sure what I was seeing, at first. Was that a large moss-covered rock? A closer look was met by a disgusted glare. Here was a creature that special effects movie genius Ray Harryhausen might have dreamed up, if he had been as imaginative as Mother Nature.

I speak, of course, of the snapping turtle.

They look like prehistoric monsters, and there’s a reason for that. They’ve been so successful that they’ve scarcely changed in 90 million years. Dinosaurs watched the snapper arise, and the snapper watched the dinosaurs disappear… assuming they deigned to pay attention. That asteroid crash may have killed off the dinos, but the snappers came through fine.

Snapping turtles were on hand when the Rocky Mountains pushed up toward the sky, and as ice ages came and went. They were here when the first human beings set their feet on our continent. When the first paleoindian tramped along Mud Creek through Birdseye Hollow, the snapping turtle wached with a jaundiced eye.

My first exerience with the snapper came when I was a small boy, playing at the pond near our home in Rhode Island. In a little sandy eddy, a tiny turtle slowly spun in the slow currents. It didn’t move – was it an iron turtle, floating just under the surface? I lifted it by the tail, and it DID in fact move. I had met my first snapping turtle, and gently, happily, set it back in the pond.

It’s just as well I didn’t meet a fullsized snapper, as an 18-inch carapace (shell) is not uncommon, along with a weight in the teens (a few get MUCH bigger), and their jaw is fierce (hence their name)… though not as powerful as legends have it. Still, had I been fool enough to tangle with one, an adult could have inflicted some memorable damage on a small boy.

In our neck of the woods, just about any pond of any size has a snapping turtle (or several snapping turtles). They’re mostly aquatic, and rarely leave the water – they hardly ever even sun themselves like many smaller turtles do. A mile upstream on that Rhode Island pond, a decade later, I would sometimes find a snapper basking on the bottom, a couple of feet below the surface, and thunk its carapace with my oar. It would ignore me, and rarely budge from its chosen location.

If you DO meet a snapping turtle on land, it’s probably on a mission – either laying eggs, or moving to a new pond, for reasons best known to itself. Since they’re good-sized predators they’re potentially dangerous, but my observation is that any injuries they cause are vanishingly rare. They’re also unlikely to kill all the fish in a pond, though they might, over a little time, snatch an entire flock of ducklings or goslings paddling along.

Here in New York, the snapping turtle is our state reptile, despite the fact that it’s seldom seen, and has just about no economic value. On the other hand, they’re marvelously impressive creatures. Snappers can live for decades, and individuals have been reliably dated at a hundred years of age. They’re 90 million years older than we are, and could still be here that long after we’re gone.