Old News

[dgriffin]

www.windsweptpress.com/images/coal stealing.jpg[/img]

[dgriffin]

A few items of interest. "Gliding velocipedes" were evidently becoming a problem in Utica in 1873. By "gulf" I think may be meant the swampy area of the Mohawk River. What's the euphemism used today?


www.windsweptpress.com/images/observations 73.jpg[/img]

[dgriffin]

Cornhill For Sale. Or at least the Brinckerhoff Farm.


www.windsweptpress.com/images/lots sale.jpg[/img]

[dgriffin]

Only in the 19th century would 350 young women and a sprinkling of men go forth into the great outdoors to hear a speaker from Albany.

And then a "flat dinner."

[dgriffin]

The following moved here from "On Genesee Hill;Questions/Comments"
on October 24, 2009.





I came across the following clip while searching fultonhistory for "Rutger B. Miller."

Where was the "Dudley Triangle?" And I didn't know about a Munson Williams Memorial on the corner of John and Elizabeth. The article (obit) speaks of it as current, in 1915. I don't see it on the 1883 NYPL map. And I don't remember it when I walked by every day in the Fifties. Of course, I was a teenager. On some mornings a bomb could have detonated without my notice.







I'm finding references in the old newspapers that indicate the Dudley Triangle was a building at the corner of Genesee and Whitesboro, managed by Henry Miller. Have found a couple of stories regarding fires, etc. and "To Let" ads with Miller's name attached.




Turns out the first Munson Williams Memorial was indeed on the corner of John and Elizabeth, a fireproof building that Utica was quite proud of, and of which the Syracuse Herald pointed out was ahead of their own efforts in Onondaga County. I found parade directions for Memorial Day, 1899 that verify the address. At the time, T.R. Proctor was the vice president of the Oneida County Historical Society. The MW Memorial Building answered the need safe storage place for Utica's historical artifacts.





Interesting writeup of MWP history at:
www.mwpai.org/aboutmwpai/

Says MWP was instituted in 1919. Nowhere does it mention the prior Munson Williams Memorial Building. Assume it was written from a Proctor slant. The Proctor brothers, Thomas and Frederick, married the two Munson-Williams sisters, Maria and Rachel, daughter of Helen Munson Williams. But the page also calls Thomas a "Navy veteran," and as we know from our research, it took an act of Congress ... literally ... to militarize his war time desk job. So, don't believe everything you read about people with money.

[dgriffin]

The MWP writeup mentions that Alfred Munson came to Utica from Connecticut in 1823. The Mohawk Valley was then a frontier, ripe for development from the point of view of those who had the money to buy large tracts of land and carve out farms and industry.

Not too many years before, James Fenimore Cooper's father, William Cooper, settled the area around and in what is now called Cooperstown. He also came from New England, and bought land south of the Mohawk Valley with money earned from successful land development in Connecticut. I found a little book in the Farmers' Museum some years ago that gives a fascinating account of how "Doctor Cooper" as he was called went about settling the area. A British friend believed Cooper's methods unique and successful, and convinced him to write the book. My copy is a facsimile copy of the original, but quite readable, written by Cooper as he neared the end of a very successful life. I learned a bit about land development from Doctor Cooper that would be usable even today.

I always wondered how the heck our forefathers got all the tree stumps out when clearing property for corn and hay fields. Turns out they didn't. They planted around the stumps. Or at least Cooper did. Cooper said it was a mistake to try to remove them, because forest soil is so thin and gets taken away with the stumps. He gave examples of "englishmen" who came over here and bought property and cleared it completely so that it "looked like a London park." But they were seldom able to grow much on it after that. The stumps rotted after a few years. By that time they could be removed with ease and the roots left in the ground to help the soil.

Cooper was an apt student and had noted the mistakes of other landowners, such as Livingston over here on the Hudson. A key ingredient to Cooper's success was to sell, rather than rent, the land to farmers, and to them be a banker, confidant and agricultural expert, which he was. He planned everything in advance and set up markets. For example, since the first task a farmer had to accomplish was to clear the land, Cooper sold him axes and saws. Some of the good lumber was used to build the a house on the property, and to begin a barn. The rest was sold off along with charcoal made from forest debris to markets in Schenectady and Albany. That income sustained the farm family the first year or two before crops and animals could be grown. Cooper set up the markets and provided wagon services to those farmers who didn't want to haul their own. The next year brought a barn and animals on most farms, and Cooper participated in that economy also. But he never became a massive land owner, like Livingston. Instead, he sold the land to prospective farmers (or didn't; he was selective) and together they built a valley wide enterprise. He became quite rich doing so.

[jon hynes]

Oct 24, 2009 8:14:18 GMT -5 @dgriffin said:

Where was the "Dudley Triangle?"

Dudley Triangle

Genesee Street from bottom center to right center in blue

Whitesboro Street runs horizontal.

[dgriffin]

Thanks, Jon. Maybe the "Dudley Triangle" was the triangular building labeled "Miller Est." on the corner of Whitesboro St. and Genesee on the above map. As I mentioned above, Henry Miller was managing the building in 1895, as can be seen in the "To Let" ad, below. (Or at least his office was in the Triangle.)

Next to the Dudley House, which I assume was a hotel, a triangular building could certainly have been dubbed "the Dudley Triangle."

[dgriffin]

Not a good year .....

[dgriffin]

[dgriffin]

From the Utica Herald, August 9,1909. Such open displays of German heritage would end in the next decade as the US prepared for war with Germany.

Of interest (to me, anyway) was the parade route. Damn, these folks didn't quail in the face of a long walk!


Parade Route:

"The formation of the parde was in front of the Maennerchor Hall and the adjacent streets. The line of march was as follows: From Maennerchor Hall up Columbia street over Varick to Court, Hopper, Rutger, John street to Bagg's Square, up Genesee street as far as South, then countermarch to the Butterfield, where it was dismissed."

[fiona]

Interesting, but too small to read, even enlarged.

[dgriffin]

Haha, yes, isn't it? I meant it only as visual support of the Utica German Days.

[dgriffin]

[dgriffin]

Utica Daily Press, Friday, May 3, 1918



MORE FAME FOR VILLAGE

Seal of Whitesboro May Adorn
Flier in France

Commandant of xxx White, Pioneer Settler of Town, May Use Seal Showing Hugh White Wrestling With Aindan on his Machine at War From Office is Now in This Country and May B.een Cr Over

Whitesboro, May 3 - Over the top for Whitesboro and over the top again in the work of the officials in charge of the campaign for securing a 200 percent subscription for bonds of the Liberty Loan.

The success with which the committee is meeting has been brought to the
attention of Edgar Greaves White, now a lieutenant, Aviation section, Signal Corps, who has been waiting since March 11 for the opportunity to go to England for additional training.

Edgar Greaves White is a graduate of the Syracuse High School, in which city his parents are living, and now 22 years of age, would have graduated from Cornell University in June of this year in the mechanical engineering course at Bibley College, but when the opportunity offered, he was chosen as one of the 100 out of a waiting list of 4,500 to be trained by the English Royal Flying Corps. At Toronto, his class was No. 17, where on
taking his examinations, having been in practice on the aviation fields of Fort Worth, Texas, he was one of the 54 who passed out of the 99 who were examined. Eighty second Aerial Squadron is a he now belongs to the One Hundred and Pilot and will compete his training in England before taking up active work in France, where he will fly his own machine and be entitled to put his own insignia upon the machine.

Learning these facts, the Liberty Loan Committee has, during the present week, come into communications with Lt. White to ask him if he would not use as his flying crest the picture on the seal of the old village of Whitesboro, which shows the pioneer, Hugh White, wrestling with the Indian, surrounded with the words, "Village of Whitesboro," because he is fifth in descent from Hugh White, the pioneer settler of Whitestown
and his great-great-grandfather was Daniel Clark White, whose homestead for many years occupied the identical corner opposite the westerly end of the village green which is now the home of Charles A. Fowell, and lkj;lkj great grandfather, Fortune C. White, was the first county judge of Oneida
County, while his immediate grandfather, Edgar White late of Port Huron, was the postmaster of that city.

In response to this inquiry telephone communication was received yesterday from his parents, Mrs. and Mrs. Edgar A. White of Syracuse, that their son, Lt. Edgar G. White, would be most pleased to use as his device on his flying machine the village seal of Whitesboro with his ancestor in the
act of tripping up the Indian in the wrestling match, the stoy of which is as follows.

In June of 1784, Hugh White, a veteran of the French and Indian war, and a captain in the revolutionary army, in which army three sons also served, set out with his five sons leading the migration of New England to the Mohawk Valley, and made the settlement at Whitesboro, NY. He found on his settlement that it was very necessary to be on friendly but positive terms of acquaintance with the Indians. On one occasion an Oneida of rather athletic form was one day present at his house with several of his companions, and at length for amusement, commenced wrestling.
After a number of trials had been made in which the chief came off conqueror, he came forward and challenged the settler to a clinch with him. This was done in a manner and with a degree of braggadocio that convinced the judge that if he refused the encounter, it would subject him to the constant inconvenience of being brow-beaten by the Indian and cost him the trouble of being believed a coward. In early manhood he had been a wrestler, but he had become quite corpulent, and for years unused to any athletic (activity). He felt conscious, however, of great personal strength, and he concluded that even should he be thrown, as a choice of evils the being thrown would be a lesser one that the acquiring of the character of cowardice by declining. He therefore accepted the challenge and took hold with the Indian, and by the fortunate trip succeeded almost instantly in throwing him. As he saw him falling, in order to prevent the necessity of ever making another trial of his powers and of receiving any new challenge, he contrived to fall with all his weight, by then constituting an avoirdupois of some 250 pounds, upon the Indian. The weight for an instant drove all the breath from the poor fellow's body and it was some moments before he could get up. At length, he slowly arose, shrugged his shoulders and with an emphatic sigh: you good fellow, too much. I need not add that he was never afterward challenged to wrestle with an Indian.

The wrestling match was shortly afterward incorporated in the village seal of Whitesboro, and it may not be many days before the picture of the pioneer will be flying above the Huns.

The chances of a WW I flier returning from France in other than a simple of box of pieces was about the same as for members of bomber crews over Europe in the Second World War. Maybe less.