It Happened Here -- Addenda!

I knew it was bound to happen.  I knew as I continued my travels and my researches I was bound to see things and learn things I would have wanted to put into earlier posts or that changed my perspective or at least my understanding of topics I had already written about. 

Union Dutch Reformed Church and stable (1825, 1840)

Back in November 2013 I posted a set of "Marker Of the Week"s  I entitled "Remnants of the Horse-Powered Society"  I noted that given the length of time people spent in church in the 18th and 19th centuries on the Sabbath it is remarkable there were not more horse stables provided to shelter for their horses and carriages.

Since then I have come across a couple more, and I am sure there will be others.


                                                                                                      

                

                                                                                

  At the Friends Meeting House,  Rte 7 Quaker Street

At Christ Episcopal Church, Rte. 20 Duanesburg

As might be expected, the Episcopalians produced a shed with a little more ornamentation and style, but I wondered about its location, so close and in front of the church. Maybe it was built to accommodate those members who always seem to arrive late, or those that book out as soon as the last syllables of the benediction are spoken.




The next week I wrote about carriage steps, those wooden or stone steps placed along side of roadways and entrance ways to enable passengers (particularly women in long skirts) to get up into or depart from carriages.

                    Cut Stone carriage steps at the
                         Jacob Crounse inn, Altamont












This week at the Ticonderoga Reservation I saw something I never expected to see, but I immediately knew what it was--a  cast iron carriage step with a very ornate post to steady M'Lady and a ring, perhaps to hold reins while she prepared to alight or depart.  It was at the country home,  of William Ferris Pell who bought the Ticonderoga penninsula, including the ruins of the fort about 1826.  After Pell's death, "The Pavilion," as he named it, became a hotel from 1840 to 1900. During this time this step was installed at the edge of a large semicircular gravel driveway lined with cut stone blocks. The driveway has disappeared under the lawn but the stone blocks are clearly visible.

The Pell's  Pavilion

 

Following the Civil War, when the demand for cannon and cannonballs had evaporated, companies that worked in cast iron began to make all kinds of things from toys to parlor stoves, to ornate fences and architectual pieces. The Waterveliet Arsenal has an entire building of sheets and columns and supports made of cast iron, bolted together. This carriage step was patented in 1868, from the manufacturers inscription on it.



The rest of this summer I will be continuing  to go on road trips researching and photographing NYSHMs.  And I will post whenever something strikes my fancy.  On  Sept. 1 I will return to regular weekly posts--Tom

It Happened Here-- Checking Out Stories

My other quest this summer, besides finding and photographing more of New York's Historic Markers has been to find out about the stories that accompany them.  My road trips to Montgomery county have led me to several stories about eighteenth century women living in the Mohawk valley and their remarkable courage.While thinking about them I was reminded of Catherine Schuyler, and a story that allegedly occurred in Saratoga county.  When I was a child my parents took me to see the Saratoga Battlefield and to climb the Saratoga Monument. (Looking back, it seems like my parents always had me climbing--the Saratoga Monument, the Bennington Monument, the Pilgrim's Monument in Provincetown, and half a dozen fire towers on half a dozen Adirondack mountains. Perhaps that was their technique for managing a very active child.)

Bas Relief in the Saratoga Monument

The Saratoga Monument contains sixteen bronze  bas reliefs of events that took place at and around the Battle of Saratoga. The one that I was always taken with was the one of Catherine Schuyler setting fire to her family's wheat fields to deny them to the British. (Maybe I was drawn to it because it was the one tableau that prominently featured children--a little slave boy holding a lantern used to light the fire brand Catherine was using, and a young daughter, holding on to Catherine's skirt.)  Anyway its a compelling story, and one that makes historical sense.

The British were approaching the Saratoga Patent, Phillip Schuyler's lands, in their drive to reach Albany and split the colonies in half.  General Schuyler was busy readying his troops and preparing his defenses just south of his lands at Bemis Heights. According to the story, he sends his wife, Catherine, north to burn his  ripe wheat fields, just ahead of the advancing British forces, risking capture or worse at the hands of forward British units or their screen of Indian allies. The story has a ring of truth because Catharine was very much a hands-on partner in the running of the estate, helping to keep the books and dealing with tenants on a regular basis. (This is very much in the Dutch tradition whereby wives were often co-equal partners in their husbands business affairs--see my previous post "The Tough Wiley Scotsman and his Diligent Vrouw" 6/30/13 )  Also by sending his wife, instead of just servants, Schuyler is sending a message to his tenant farmers how much he is personally involved in the decision to destroy his wheat crop, and how imperative it is for them to destroy theirs as well.

It is a great story, but there is just one problem--I probably didn't happen!

Describing this "event" as probably a "Victorian fiction", the National Park Service guide at the Saratoga Battlefield Monument explained that in all the archaeological digs around the Schuyler property no evidence of charred wheat has ever been found. Though it is possible that all remains of a fire,  nearly 240 years ago could have been destroyed through successive plowing and planting the charring of materials often helps preserve them. (Evidence of campfires and burned dwellings and even burned grain are commonly found in the most ancient neolithic sites. ) How unlikely is it that not one charred kernel, from the millions of heads of wheat that would have charred and burned from their stalks and fell to earth, would not end up in an archeologist's sieve?
 

Later that day, another National Park Service docent, at the Schuyler House, built after the battle, gave me some more evidence of the unlikelihood of the Catherine Schuyler story.

She asserted, that from an historian's perspective, no better army could have invaded the colonies, for the British Army, and to a lesser extent their German allies were an army of journal writers and diarists.  Nearly all the officers and many private soldiers kept daily records of their experiences.  Several of their journals mention marching past the Schuyler home, their out buildings and mills.  And they mention passing fields of ripe (not burned) fields of wheat, ready for harvesting.

In the coming weeks I will be returning to Montgomery County to learn more about the war widow who hides her thirteen children from the Indians, nearly suffocating the littlest to prevent her from crying out; about the widowed tavern keeper and miller who survives when raiders burn her tavern down around her and goes on to rebuild and mill 2200 bushels of wheat for the Continental Army; and the woman who follows the Indians into their winter encampment to reclaim her looted cooking utensils and secure the release of her livestock.  I'll resume regular posts on  Sept. 1st.

It Happened Here -- The Hunt

For me, personally, one of the most interesting aspects of writing this blog has been getting out on the road and hunting down and taking photos of NYSHM's.  

There are a number of websites that are very helpful in locating New York markers. The world wide Historic Marker Data Base has some of the best maps and direction to New York markers, listed by County, but its coverage is somewhat spotty and markers on town roads and county back-roads are often missed.  (http://www.hmdb.org/CountiesList.asp)

 The photo-sharing site Flickr has an interest group "New York State Historic Markers."

With 71 contributors and over 2600 marker photos it is an excellent resource but with no index or order to the submissions from contributors, and frequent duplications of signs it is difficult to use to find signs in a desired area, and often the locations of signs are omitted. I often publish pictures of signs I have rediscovered, on this site that haven't had pictures of them posted anywhere previously.  (https://www.flickr.com/groups/nyshistoricalmarkers/)

 Waymarking.com is a site for geocaching enthusiasts. One of its categories is "New York Historical Markers." They list a large number of markers as destinations for geocachers with GPS equipment.  They seem especially strong in the middle and western parts of the state and their group members continue to post signs to their site. The site frequently has good maps and it also has a search engine that allows for a location/proximity searches and searches by subject. The markers can also be arranged alphabetically to enable you to look up an individual marker if you know its first words.
(http://www.waymarking.com/cat/details.aspx?f=1&guid=fd2c1e1a-fbae-428a-b4a5-2b0053e55534)

Stopping Points is a site that has collected the New York historic markers listed in the State marker list (see below) along with sites on the National Register of Historic Places and attempted to locate them using computer generated mapping techniques. Unfortunately, because the addresses supplied to this site are often pretty imprecise, the maps generated from them are often pretty imprecise. From a list of markers around Ticonderoga, for example, a number of markers appear located on the Stopping Points map at a single spot on Ticonderoga's Montcalm Street, which happens to be the central location in the village. In other instances markers identified as being located on Broadway in some small upstate towns are represented on the map of Broadway in Manhattan! Nevertheless, occasionally there are markers listed there that are listed nowhere else.  (http://www.stoppingpoints.com/ny/)

The W.G. Pomeroy foundation is an organization dedicated to promoting local history by underwriting the creation of new historic markers, across the state. Their website lists the markers they have created and features press releases of their latest markers. (http://www.wgpfoundation.org/index.cfm/nys-historic-grant-programs/historic-roadside-marker-program/current-historic-markers/)

Several counties and towns governments have lists, often with pictures of markers found in their jurisdictions on their websites or the websites of their county/town historians.

Finally, the New York State Museum, as a division of the Department of Education published, on its website, a list the Department compiled back in the mid-1960's. Though the State of New York had funded the creation of most New York State Historical Markers from 1926 until the mid 1960's the records of the applications for these state markers had not been kept, and the list appears to have been put together from partial records and perhaps a canvass of the counties. It is a curious document, though quite accessible with markers grouped by county and divided by township and city.  Oddly, it is a document rife with typographical errors, which in some cases have resulted in locations of markers being lost or obscured. The directions to the signs are also archaic, with few roads numbered, and most local roads identified only as "town road" or "county road" described by their general direction, with a rough estimate of distance from a town or city. (https://www.nysm.nysed.gov/historicmarkers/)
 

      " Location: ON COUNTY RD. ABOUT 4 MILES           SOUTHWEST OF CANAJOHARIE"

"Location:
ON TN. RD. NEAR BRIDGE OVER SO. CHUCTANUNDA CR. ABOUT 1 1/2 MIS. SOUTHWEST OF AMSTERDAM"

instead of "at the bridge, on Hartley Rd, west of NY 30, in the Town of Florida".  


Despite its shortcomings, the New York State Museum Historic Marker Site is perhaps the best source for markers before the mid-1960's.


                                                                         ******

 I have mentioned before the heavy toll automobiles have taken on NYSHM's. (On my last three road trips I took pictures of  60 markers.  Of these, 12 (20%) showed evidence of welding repairs  --most likely following  collisions from automobiles.)  I suspect, however, that a more serious threat to NYSHM's occur when roads are widened, corners straightened and potentially lethal objects are cleared from their shoulders, (like trees and three inch steel posts with cast iron signs affixed to them.) Many major roads like NY 5, NY 20 and NY5S that once had numerous NYSHM's were widened, straightened and graded and many of their signs have disappeared forever. Sometimes, however, old sections of the roads have been preserved as local roads, driveways etc. and I have found a few "lost" signs on these fragments of the former  state roads.

Fort Failing marker on "Old Ft.Plain Rd." Originally part of NY 5S

The Willis Store marker is located on a town road, the Warner-Hayden Rd, in Warner's Lake that was part of NY157A abandoned by the State when a local bridge was washed out and the DOT decided to redo the section of the curve with a raised road over a new large culvert.  I probably would not havelooked down this road except that on the corner of the street were a few sections of old concrete and cable guard rail once commonly used on all State roads.

It Happened Here -- Canajoharie, Montgomery Co. Road Trip

 In 1778 the British agreed to use Native Americans and Tory Rangers to terrorize the western frontiers to disrupt production of grain destined for the Continental Army and to tie down rebel forces in protecting those areas. Raids occurred all along the northern frontiers with major attacks occurring in Cobleskill, Cherry Valley and Wyoming Pennsylvania. The following year, 1779, Washington was determined to retaliate with a large Continental Army force to burn Iroquois towns, destroy their crops and take as many hostages as possible.

                                                   

 Two hundred and thirty five years ago this week General James Clinton and  2000 mostly Continental army regulars set out from Canajoharie, to march southward to join up with General Sullivan's forces in Tioga, Pennsylvania.  They would unite and march up through the Finger lakes region and on into the Genessee valley.  Some forty Indian towns would be destroyed along with the orchard and crops surrounding them.

                                                                                                                                                             

We followed Clinton's route down through Montgomery County along what became known as Clinton Road

                                                                    ******

Women's Rights advocate Susan B. Anthony began her career as a teacher in Canajoharie

 

School has been out for a long time at this building that occupies the Canajoharie Academy site, and pupils are now replaced by pigeons.

I hope the village will someday find a use for this impressive building.

                                                                         *****


 Learning to take pictures with a small camera through the bars of a fence.

                 no

no

Better

Almost

                                         ( I'll save the "good one" for when I 
                                          resume regular posts starting
                                           on Sept. 1st)

It Happened Here --Road Trip to Northern Washington Co.

As I mentioned about a week and a half ago,  I was planning to take the summer off from regular weekly posts to read and reflect and take some road trips to snap more pictures of NYSHMs for future posts.  I mentioned I might, from time to time post some of my discoveries and then on September 1st return to regular weekly posts.

I just returned from a road trip to northern Washington County.  As usual, there were many NYSHMs that were missing, or that I was unable to find. I was particularly disappointed in being unable to locate one in Ash Grove, east of Cambridge. According to the State Ed. list it said --

SITE OF
ASH GROVE CEMETERY
AND
2D M.E. CHURCH
IN U.S. ORGANIZED 1770 BY
IRISH METHODISTS UNDER THOMAS
ASHTON AND PHILIP EMBURY
Location: ON TN. RD. AT ASH GROVE

I caught a glimpse of a very old cemetery along a narrow driveway festooned with signs that said "keep out" "no trespassing" "police take notice".  I decided not to tarry.

And there were some NYSHMs, where the subject was missing. 

 I hope the "Early British Cannon" are on display in some museum, or at least in safe storage. They obviously aren't in the stone cribs now filled with yellow marigolds outside the Whitehall Armory!
(Rt. 4, Whitehall)

 I saw some handsome buildings that were old, but I am not sure why they are historically significant. (Rt 40,  Hartford)

 












I saw a cemetery with graves of about one hundred revolutionary war veterans in it. (Salem)

                         I saw Sasquatch, (Public park, Whitehall)

 and, a colonial blockhouse restoration with an automated   teller machine, and a night depository. (It's a bank--Rt. 4,      Ft. Ann)

I saw a tin roofed shed, protected by chicken wire, containing the bones of, arguably, the most important ship in the War of 1812--that includes the U.S.S. Constitution. (I'll explain in the fall.)




And I discovered the site of a colonial home that
featured "slave pens" to contain black bondsmen on a farm, in the early days, before slavery was abolished in New York.

In a few weeks I will be traveling to the Finger Lakes region.  I am looking forward to getting many pictures of NYSHMs in that area.

It Happened Here -- "The War of the Currents"

                       

Main Gate, Auburn Prison  Auburn Prison NYSHM is on the Left Tower


AUBURN PRISON
ERECTION COMMENCED 1816
FIRST PRISONERS 1817
ASSISTED IN CONSTRUCTION
FIRST ELECTROCUTION
IN THE WORLD 1890
 

Events moved rapidly after the New York State "Death Commission" made its report in the summer of 1888. The New York Legislature declared that electrocution by AC, alternating current would henceforth be the mode of execution for convicted criminals in New York.  The Commission had been formed to study alternative methods of execution after several horribly bungled hangings had outraged public sensibilities. (In one, the victim had slowly strangled to death; in another, the noose had literally ripped off the victim's head!) The crusade for electrocution and  to get AC current designated as New York's "executioner's current" was largely the inspiration of one man, a rather obscure independent engineer, and electrical consultant, Harold Brown, as part of his efforts to discredit AC. He would also advocate for legislation that would limit the voltages that could be produced with AC.  Along the way, Brown attracted powerful friends, including Thomas Edison, and his organization.  Edison would allow Brown to use his West Orange laboratories for research and eventually it would be revealed he provided Brown with regular financial support.  Brown would also attract powerful enemies, in the person of George Westinghouse and his Westinghouse Electric Company who fumed at having one of his dynamos used for the purpose of killing a man and attempted to get an injunction against its "misuse".  Westinghouse Electric would also appeal the electrocution of William Kemmler  through the New York courts up to the U.S. Supreme Court on the grounds of "cruel and unusual punishment," which ultimately refused to hear the case.

In August 1890, at Auburn Prison convicted axe-murder William Klemmer was strapped into a specially constructed wooden chair and received 1000 volts through his body which stiffened and appeared dead after seventeen seconds but then, to the horror of the assembled witnesses,  continued to breath. The voltage was stepped up to more than 2000 volts and reapplied. Again Klemmer's body stiffened as the repugnant smell of burned flesh filled the chamber.  After eight minutes the horror- strickened witnesses poured out of the room. Almost immediately the debate began. Was Klemmer's death, for all its ghastliness, relatively painless?--as proponents maintained, or was the whole procedure from the shaving of the condemned man's head, through the attaching of wires, to strapping him in, itself, emotionally cruel?--as opponents maintained.  Harold Brown, for his part, deeply affected, dropped from public view,  while some engineers in the Edison camp congratulated each other and publicly suggested execution by electric current be called "Westinghousing."  New York State's official mode of execution continued to be electrocution.

Thomas Edison began work as a telegraph operator during the Civil War.  He produced several improvements to telegraph technologies including the stock ticker and a quadruplex system that allowed for four signals to be sent over a single wire simultaneously. Selling this invention to Western Union, he was able to establish his laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey where he would direct a large group of craftsmen and engineers to work on various projects. Edison gained world renown  for his invention of the phonograph in 1877 and two years later began research into creating a practical incandescent light that could be used to illuminate indoor spaces, and replace gas lighting.

With the creation of a practical incandescent lamp, Edison needed to build facilities to generate and distribute electric power.  Moving into an old boat-building plant in Manhattan, he constructed the Pearl Street Power Station which generated D.C., direct current and served 59 customers. Edison believed Direct Current was safer than Alternating Current,  and at the time was the only type of power which could be used in electric motors. But there were problems with D.C.  The main problem was that Direct Current could only be transmitted about a mile without a disastrous drop in voltage.  Edison imagined an electric system made up of multiple independent steam powered power plants in cities across the United States, with larger cities having perhaps several power plants, and wealthy individuals, perhaps installing their own steam powered dynamos.  And with these parameters he began marketing his power systems, presenting proposals to half a dozen cities and offering to illuminate the houses of banker J. Pierpoint Morgan and William Vanderbilt. (Mrs. Vanderbilt put her foot down when she discovered her husband was preparing to allow workman to build a steam engine in the basement of her house!)

George Westinghouse was born in Central Bridge, New York and during the Civil War enlisted the Union calvary and then in the Union navy, serving aboard the gunboat USS Muscoota.  After the war, he worked in his father's machine shop in Schenectady where his father built farm reapers.

The young Westinghouse built a rotary steam engine, before designing a device to run derailed railroad cars  back onto the tracks and a switching device known as a reversible frog, his first commercially successful inventions.  Because the frog required extremely hard, high quality steel, Westinghouse moved to Pittsburgh in 1867, where he could obtain such steel, and where he sensed there were better opportunities for young inventors, such as himself.

 In Pittsburgh he witnessed a train collision that both engineers saw coming but could not avoid because the brakemen who hopped from car to car, manually setting all the car brakes had insufficient time to set enough brakes to stop the trains. Westinghouse devised a system in which springs automatically pushed brakes against train car wheels unless held back by pistons supplied by air pressure generated by an air compressor at the engine.  When an engineer wanted to stop his train he simply reduced the air pressure in the system allowing the spring powered brakes to come in contact with all the car wheels, at once. In the burgeoning railroad industry of the post civil war era, Westinghouse became an instant success. His interest in railroad safety soon led him to his invention of new signaling devices and the creation of his Union Switch and Signal Company which built and marketed them.

 Westinghouse's work in railroad switches and signals introduced him into the broader fields of electric power and lighting and soon he was looking into developments in electrical engineering in both the United States and Europe. He instantly recognized the shortcomings of Edison's D.C. systems and at the same time was intrigued by the European's development of A.C. generators used in arc lighting and the work of Gaulard-Gibbs in producing transformers to step down the hi-voltage A.C. to voltages that could be used in residential incandescent lighting. Obtaining samples of Siemen's generators and Gaulard-Gibbs transformers in the fall of 1885, with his team of engineers, Westinghouse began examining them, re-engineering them, and working out their bugs. In January 1886 Westinghouse Electric Company was incorporated.  In a short time Westinghouse Electric had twenty seven orders from municipal customers!

The years 1886 and 1887 were  difficult years for Edison and his company.  Westinghouse provided Edison with his first serious challenger.  Though he had had other competitors, mostly small arc-lighting companies using imported dynamos, and patent-infringing incandescent lamp "pirates," Westinghouse was his first major competitor with the resources and engineering talent and products to create municipal power systems that could rival Edison.

Secondly, 1886 was a year of intense labor activity.  Edison won a strike in his New Jersey lamp manufacturing plant by designing new equipment that automated some of the most labor intensive parts of the process, effectively eliminating many strikers jobs. That year he moved his machine works for building power systems to Schenectady, (ironically, the town his competitor, George Westinghouse, had left, a decade before.)

Near the Amtrak station, State St., Schenectady

Schenectady was well situated on a railroad hub and the Erie Canal which effective connected Schenectady to U.S. and world markets, but it was also a quiet little town of one and two family homes. Edison fervently hoped he would find or create a labor pool there more resistant to labor organizing.

Main Campus, G.E., Schenectady

And thirdly, 1886 saw a sharp rise in the price of copper. In Europe, speculators attempted to organize a world-wide copper trust. (The effort only narrowly failed, in part,  because there was enough scrap copper that could be recycled, which the trust could not control.)  Though the whole electrical industry was effected, Edison's DC  based power systems were more adversely effected because they used more copper.  The only way to extend the range of DC systems was to substantially increase the diameter of wire to customers. DC systems could use as much as two thirds more copper, than AC!

It is not surprising, then, that when Harold Brown began his campaign against AC current he would find a ready ally in Thomas Edison.

Bldg. 32 (1892) The Lighting Lab, Erie Blvd.. Schenectady

George Westinghouse went on to achieve other signature successes. In 1892 Westinghouse won the contract to electrify the Chicago Colombian Exposition. When the fair opened, a year later, 180,000 incandescent lamps lit up the nighttime sky. Westinghouse Electric  built the first power generators at Niagara Falls beginning operation three years later,           using clean hydro-power and sending the electric some twenty six miles to illuminate the city of Buffalo.  (In the future, Mrs Vanderbilt could illuminate her house, without having a steam engine in her basement.)

At the Chicago Exposition Nikola  Tesla's AC motors were prominently featured.  The brilliant Serb had conceived their design more than a decade before, but only gradually worked out their problems and convinced a skeptical electrical community of the necessity of creating generators that would produce A.C. power at 30 and 60 cycles/sec needed for their operation,  instead of 133 cycles/sec that was typically used.

Another obstacle was overcome when Westinghouse engineers developed a device to convert A.C. to D.C.  With cities all over the world becoming electrified, the dominant form of municipal transportation had become streetcars and streetcar manufacturers had followed Edison's early successes by equipping them with D.C. motors.

In the "War of Currents" A.C. was plainly winning in the marketplace. By 1891 Westinghouse Electric and the smaller firm of Thomson-Huston had produced almost 1000 electrical power systems for municipal customers and large companies; General Electric had installed only 202 D.C. local central power stations.  When the bids were opened for the Niagara Falls power project, Westinghouse won with a two phase Alternating Current system. G.E finished a close second with a three phase system A. C. system.  Clearly the engineers at G.E. had seen the light.



Time for A Break!  My regular readers know it has been a full three weeks since my last post. (Thank you for your loyalty in checking back, perhaps, several times.) This summer has been a lot busier than I expected, and I admit after some 60+ weeks of weekly posts I am suffering from a bit of writer's fatigue. So I am taking the summer off.  I will be doing some traveling, and of course, taking pictures of NYSHMs. From time to time I may write a post about some of my discoveries. I will return to regular weekly posts on September 1st. I will be sending out an Email reminder with a list of upcoming posts at the end of the summer. If you would like to receive it email me at 
tba998@gmail.com  Have a great summer!