This Friday

Friday, March 22, 2024-From the archives--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.

A week from Friday

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.

Bob with all the radio switches that he knew nothing about...

I remember a little about that day in 1965 when I worked at WAFS but recalled that Tom Stewart remembered more.

Summer stories from the Mohawk Valley
By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History

Fans of local history attended gatherings late this summer, a few for the first time since the pandemic started.

At a Sixties Forever Amsterdam reunion for several graduating years in the 1960s, one participant had a blunt remark for me about radio. I was invited to the gathering at a new banquet hall on the South Side although my graduating class was older than the classes invited.

The man told me he had gone to the 1965 Dave Clark Five movie at the Mohawk Theatre sponsored by WAFS radio in Amsterdam. Only a handful of people joined him.

I remember a little about that day in 1965 when I worked at WAFS but recalled that Tom Stewart remembered more.

Stewart was a 1965 graduate of Amsterdam High who worked at WAFS that summer. He may be best remembered in Amsterdam for playing King Arthur in Camelot, a production staged by the late drama director Bert DeRose. Stewart lives in New York City and for many years has been the announcer on public television raising funds for the PBS station there.

Stewart wrote, "Yes, the movie was "Catch Us If You Can" and I think it was actually at the Tryon. Don't know how the station got involved but am thinking that that some advance person enlisted our help.

"My strongest memory is traveling to the Dave Clark Five's hotel in Albany and wangling my way in to meet them; used a very primitive tape recorder and they kindly recorded a few promos for our air. We promoted the movie premiere incessantly which led to the big event.

"As whoever you spoke to recalled, it was a major bust! The numbers were few and we were shocked at the lack of turnout; so much for the power of media!"

THE MOHAWK ENCAMPMENT
An event held August 27 at the Old Courthouse in Fonda marked the 250th anniversary of the creation of Tryon County, the British colonial name for what became Montgomery County.

There were historical bus tours, artisan and militia reenactors, tables staffed by Historic Amsterdam League and Nellis Tavern in St. Johnsville. Plus there were cannon shots and a new promotional video for the Department of History and Archives narrated by Montgomery County Historian Kelly Yacobucci Farquhar.

What got one Canajoharie couple talking at my table though was a story I displayed on the Mohawk Encampment.

In June, 1957 a group of Mohawk Indians occupied land near the Schoharie Creek on the south side of the Mohawk River and remained there until evicted by court order in the spring of 1958.

The settlers were led by Chief Standing Arrow, also known as Frank Johnson. The encampment was to repossess part of a tract the Mohawks said was not included in land ceded to the U.S. government by the Iroquois Confederacy in the Fort Stanwix Treaty of 1784.
In October 1957, world-renowned man of letters, Edmund Wilson, visited the encampment and Chief Standing Arrow.

Wilson described the encounter in his 1959 book, "Apologies to the Iroquois." Wilson found that Standing Arrow was part of an Iroquois nationalist movement.

Montgomery County Sheriff Alton Dingman served the first eviction notices on the Mohawk settlement along the Schoharie Creek in January 1958.

In March 1958, 25 people were reported still living at the Schoharie Creek site. A court hearing that month resulted in another eviction order. Some of the Mohawk huts were burned.

The Mohawks were offered land in the town of Fulton in Schoharie County as an alternative site in the area but if there was a settlement there, it was short lived.

Markers kept prisoners from straying
By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History. First published 09-03-2022 in Daily Gazette and Amsterdam Recorder

Back in 1840, jail limit markers were established in Montgomery County and throughout the state after a ruling from the Court of Common Pleas.

"They were introduced to provide a person who was in jail for a civil action the ability to leave the jail to work, visit family or to carry on other business," said former Montgomery County Sheriff Michael J. Amato.

Individuals locked up for bad debts, for example, could get a job close to the jail, as long they stayed within the limits of the stone markers. The prisoners left the lockup at sunrise and had to return by sunset. It was a 19th century voluntary version of electronic bracelets for non-violent prisoners.

Amato said that county supervisors set the boundaries of the markers, which could not exceed one mile in each direction from the jail. Montgomery County had eight markers. Amato had one of the markers installed near the entrance of the current jail on Route 5S in Fultonville.

"The last time the markers were used was about 1913," Amato said. "I think that we might be one of the only counties with jail limit markers left."

Amato has done research on the history of local jails. In 1772, Tryon County was created during the British colonial era. Johnstown became the county seat of the sprawling jurisdiction that covered much of Upstate New York west of Albany County. A jail was built in Johnstown that year and the building still stands, although no longer used as a jail.

At the end of the Revolution in 1784, Tryon County was renamed for patriot General Richard Montgomery and in 1836, the county seat was moved to Fonda. There was such an outcry from the people of Johnstown that they were granted their own county, Fulton County, split off from northern Montgomery County in 1837.

By 1838, a jail and courthouse had been built in Fonda at a cost of $30,500. The jail was located where the Department of Public Works facility is today, behind the Old Courthouse.

In 1881, that jail was destroyed by fire. According to a newspaper account, the fire was started at 3 a.m. by inmate Patrick Claffey, described as a "desperate character," jailed for breaking into a store in St. Johnsville. Sheriff William Scharff was awakened and found it impossible to put out the blaze. The 22 prisoners were removed safely to the courthouse where they were "strongly guarded" until they could be taken to the jail in Johnstown.

A new jail was built in Fonda and occupied in late 1882 at a cost of $40,000. "Although secure, the jail is free from dampness and has plenty of light," stated an article in the Mohawk Valley Democrat. The state closed that jail because of poor conditions in 1911 and again inmates were sent to Fulton County. In 1913, a jail was built adjacent to the Old Courthouse at a cost of $55,000.

This building still stands and was used as a jail until 1997 when it was shut down because of state requirements. Amato recalled a flood in 1996 in Fonda helped convince county officials of the wisdom of relocating the county jail from its location near the river in Fonda to the present facility on higher ground on Route 5S in Fultonville. The current jail was built at a cost of $14 million.

Among artifacts Amato displayed during a talk years ago was an old set of jail keys and a sharp wooden letter opener carved by an inmate in the 1920s, a recreational pastime for prisoners that would be frowned upon today.

Historians "tune in again" 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