This Weekend in The Gazette and Recorder

1888 blizzard impacted living and dead

By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History

 The blizzard of March 1888 disrupted the lives of people in Montgomery County along with the rest of the northeastern United States.

Tomorrow

Friday, March 22, 2024-Episode 430-Kevin Hall, author of a memoir on growing up in Ilion, New York-Ilion, My Childhood, My Memories Growing Up in a Bygone Era.

Kevin is a young boy curious with the life around him and enjoying the many moments with his family and friends in his hometown of Ilion, New York.Follow Kevin from his ages of 6 through 13 and enjoy the many adventures as he explores his hometown. However, as he is to find out, sometimes there are consequences for this active boy’s actions, unexpected consequences not always anticipated by the young boy.

Then as the boy grew into a teenager he would leave Ilion, moving to another state and leaving behind all that was familiar – his home, his friends, his school and his young life. All that he has known, soon to be but a memory.

As an added bonus, learn about the history of the area he lived, worked and played in – Ilion and the Mohawk Valley of New York. This substantiated history is included within his stories and within their own sections of the book, complete with several photos from the time-period.

Later this Month

Friday, March 29, 2024

Episode 418-Bruce Dearstyne is encouraging New Yorkers to celebrate April 20 as the birthday of the Empire State.  The first New York State constitution was adopted April 20, 1777 during the Revolutionary War.  Bruce Dearstyne was formerly on the staff of the Office of State History and the State Archives.  He has written extrnsively on New York State history.

Weather prophet George Casabonne
By Bob Cudmore

In a newspaper story about his weather forecasts, Cousin George Henry Casabonne was described as cocky as a blue jay and scrappy as a bantam rooster.

Casabonne, who was five foot two, worked as a stonemason, farmer and factory hand. His 1974 obituary stated he was born in Northville in 1886.

In 1959, though, he told the Gazette he was born in Tribes Hill. He said it was so stormy when his mother was in labor that the doctor had to crawl across the bridge from Fort Hunter on his hands and knees as the bridge swayed in the wind.

Casabonne said the family later moved to Fort Hunter and then Northville. He attributed his vitality in old age to love of living and bacon and eggs that kept him young.

As a stone cutter he worked with his father Germaine. Cousin George cut stone from the Erie Canal in Fort Hunter for the Montgomery County Courthouse in Fonda. He dowsed for water with a divining rod.

He was married to Lydia Kruger and they had four children. Starting in 1917 the family maintained a farm home on West Line Road in the town of Charlton in Saratoga County.

Casabonne started regaling the local media with weather forecasts in the 1930s after the death of a similar homespun weather prognosticator called Uncle George Van Derveer.

Van Derveer was from a farm family in the town of Florida but lived on Wall Street in Amsterdam in his later years. He was a popular comic speaker at local functions.

Amsterdam Recorder managing editor Bill Maroney is credited with being the first to call the new weather prophet Cousin George.

Cousin George used lunar phases, the size and prevalence of woolly bear caterpillars and his own weather records to create his seasonal forecasts. He based his predictions on the sign of the moon like the Indians did.

Historian Hugh Donlon wrote, Like Houdini and other professional escapists, weather prophets always had a way of getting out of tight places.

Cousin George believed that weather conditions had never been quite the same since calendar makers crowded thirteen lunar phases into twelve months. He maintained that satellites and Sputniks zooming through space led to unexpected wind currents and rain here below.

He lived long enough to be featured on television news, also performing on the Pete Williams country and western television show on WRGB. Cousin George was in demand as a fiddler and caller at square dances, although he took some ribbing because of the squeaky sound of his violin.

He appeared as Santa Claus at Christmas parties. He played the harmonica and Jew's harp and could clog dance and tap dance. As a show stopper he could do a high kick.

He worked at General Electric in Schenectady until 1951 driving a battery operated forklift. He was a regular at the former A. Lenczewski's Bar and Grill at the corner of Amsterdam's Reid and Church Streets. He had a dog named Tootie and a dog named Skippy.

Toward the end of his life Cousin George moved to his daughter Georgianna Chirickio's home on Lyon Street in Amsterdam.

On March 16, 1974 he sent his granddaughter to the Recorder with his spring forecast the day before he was admitted to Amsterdam Memorial Hospital.

The newspaper reported, Cousin George's last forecast was among his best, and right on the button." That phrase was one of his favorites. He died March 21, 1974 the first day of spring.

Snow turned to rain as the forecaster had predicted. He was buried at St. Mary's Cemetery in Fort Johnson.

The answer to the question: The Historians Podcast returns Saturday, April 6, 2024

The Historians Podcast is heard at Noon Saturday on WCSS, 1490 AM, 106.9 FM in Amsterdam and WKAJ, 1120 AM, 97.9 FM in St. Johnsville.  Note: WCSS preempts Historians Podcast when the station broadcasts college basketball games.

The Historians Podcast is also a part of WMHT89.1FM Albany Public Radio RISE