Our Towne Bethlehem July 2019: Wood Timber Lumber

So many things have lined up lately to get me thinking about trees.

The spring issue of New York State Archives magazine had an article called the "Battle for the Elms."  I happen to live in Elm Estates, where there are no more elms.

I was reading a book called The Overstory: A Novel by Richard Powers, a writer with a powerful way with words.  An early chapter introduces a character named Nicholas Hoel, but the true star of that chapter is the American Chestnut tree.  Powers goes on to weave people and trees and nature into an incredible story.  Sadly, the magnificent American chestnut tree is also no longer around either.

And lets not get into the ash trees and the emerald ash borer.  It is just too depressing.

Happily about this time the Town of Bethlehem introduced their street tree survey project, and continues their efforts to conserve open spaces in town.  Which I have to remind myself that open spaces include forests - not just fields.  Open and free from development is more the idea.

Anyway... here's the article, which opens with another inspiration - the beauty that can be created from the wood of all those trees.

Wood – Timber – Lumber

The inspiration for this article is a magnificent tool chest in the collection of the Bethlehem Historical Association. Plain painted gray on the outside, inside are exquisite wooden inlay designs that include a walking frog, a woman hanging laundry, and a compass rose. The chest was made by Richard Coleman for the practical purpose of holding his tools, but also to show off his skills as a cabinet maker. Born about 1860, he learned his carpentry and cabinet making skills from his father and uncle while growing up in Albany. Later in life, and certainly by the 1910 U.S. Census, he lived in the Normansville/Elsmere area of Bethlehem. His son donated the chest to BHA in 1971.

That beautiful wood came from trees of course. Trees are often romanticized, but there are more trees in Bethlehem now than when we were primarily a farming community. Fields for pastures and meadows, corn and oats, needed to be cleared of trees. However, most farms did set aside land for a wood lot. Trees, timber and lumber were important for building and heating.

Often logs from those wood lots were taken to the local mill to be cut length-wise into planks of various useful sizes. The rough boards could then be planed smooth. Charles Coonley’s Slingerlands operation is one local example of these steam powered mills. Another is Aussem’s Mill in South Bethlehem. In addition to sawing and planing wood, both used steam energy to grind grain for feed and flour, and to press apples for cider. Aussem’s also generated electricity for the hamlet.

Aussem's Mill burned to the ground in 1907 and was not rebuilt.

Charles Coonley opened his mill about 1899 just off of Kenwood Avenue then known as the Delmar and Slingerlands State Road. The steam boiler, fueled by scrap wood, was definitely a fire hazard. A 1912 newspaper article reports that Coonley’s saw and cider mill was destroyed by fire. The fire was generated when a spark from the engine room landed on some wood shavings. The village bucket brigade was able to save the nearby house and barn but not the mill. The article reports that this was the third fire at the location. Even Coonley’s 1932 obituary remarks about the danger of fire. “He was the owner and operator of the Slingerlands mill, which, until several years ago, had always been run by steam generated at the plant. Since then the installation of electricity has so revolutionized the business that all chances of the mill being regarded as a fire hazard were completely removed.”  It goes on to note that Coonley had a “very quiet and unassuming manner, and those who knew him always held him in the highest esteem.”

Coonley’s mill was in operation, in one form or another despite the many fires, from about 1899 to at least 1938. After Charles Coonley died in 1832, others continued on the Coonley name for a few years. The overhead bridge depicted on the postcard carried Kenwood over the railroad tracks where it connected with modern day Bridge Street.

Charles Coonley and the Aussem brothers ran small scale, local operations.  Bethlehem’s neighbor to the north, the City of Albany, was a major player in the lumber industry in the mid to late 19^th century. The Albany Lumber District was known far and wide, and was the largest lumber district by value in the United States in 1870. The industry was facilitated by Albany’s connections to the Erie Canal and Hudson River. Most dealers were wholesalers wheeling and dealing to make the most profit possible. The district was located between Broadway and the Hudson River close to where, today, Nipper looks out from his roof top perch. Did you know that Erie Blvd. (where Huck Finn’s is) was literally where the Erie Canal used to run?

Getting back to Bethlehem, and thinking about all those trees sawed into lumber, I wonder about today’s trees. How old is the oldest? How big is the biggest? How do you even tell how old a tree is without chopping it down to count the rings or invasively taking a core sample? Google helpfully supplied a link to various Tree Age Calculators. I used the one provided by CliftonParkOpenSpaces.org and estimated that the pin oak tree in my backyard, at 84 inches around, is about 80 years old. That puts its sapling days in the 1930s, right about the time the Van Allen family sold their farm. That farm eventually became my neighborhood of Elm Estates.

Why don’t you measure a tree in your yard and send me the results? I’m sure we have 100+ year old trees in town. How about 200 or more? I’m sure there is a tree out there that can beat my oak’s 84-inch circumference. Please get measuring and email me the results at sleath@townofbethlehem.org.   Use the calculator below to figure out how old your tree is.

http://www.cliftonparkopenspaces.org/treecalculator/

If you would like to see Richard Coleman’s tool chest in person, the Bethlehem Historical Association’s Cedar Hill Schoolhouse Museum, 1003 River Road, Selkirk, is open Sunday afternoons from 2 to 4pm. Free. Stop by and take in the exhibit All in a Day’s Work.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

PS I have no idea why the font changes. Not being all that tech savvy, I am not going to spend all morning attempting to figure it out.  Sorry.

Local Brevities: Slingerlands Underground Crossing

While looking for information on Charles Coonley, I came across these "Local Brevities" in the Altamont Enterprise's Slingerlands Bulletin.  It touched on so many interesting aspects of building the "Underground Crossing" that I just had to share.

August 2, 1912, Altamont Enterprise

The Underground Crossing about the time it was completed.

One item that really stood out for me is this one: The work of cutting off one corner of the Frazier house, next to the post office was commenced this week.

Last year I was able to take a walk through this house - not knowing anything about it except that it was now owned by Albany County.  It is very strangely laid out inside with very few architectural details remaining.  It also looks odd from the outside and has no access from New Scotland Road, only from Kenwood and across the railroad tracks - now the rail trail. Based on the snippet above, I bet some of those oddities are explained by the house having a corner cut off and being so near to the digging out of the underpass.  Just look at the picture below - that fancy second story window certainly looks pasted on the front of a nondescript house.

Of course I did some research.  Here's what I wrote last year:

From 1954 through 2005, the property was owned by members of the Flansburg family.  Luther and his wife Ruth lived there for many years.  They first show up in the Tri Village directory in 1945 at 1538 New Scotland Road. A deed recorded in 1993 (when Ruth transferred the property to Gary Flansburg) notes that this is the same premises that was conveyed to Luther Flansburg and Ruth Flansburg by Odd Fellows Home Association of Eastern New York by a deed dated March 11, 1954.

This mention of the Odd Fellows was intriguing because I have long been curious about the location of the Odd Fellows hall in Slingerlands.  Such a hall is mentioned often in the Altamont Enterprise Newspaper, for example the November 16, 1917 issue reports a Boy Scout meeting at the Odd Fellows and the January 4, 1929 issue reports it is a polling place. Could the house be the former Odd Fellows hall?

Further research turned up the connection to the Odd Fellows runs though Jesse Guernsey.  Jesse and Hattie Guernsey, along with son Louis, moved to Slingerlands as early as 1902 and Jesse seems to have joined the Odd Fellows shortly thereafter.  He appears regularly in the Altamont Enterprise under a report on the installation of officers from 1904 right on up to when he moved to the Odd Fellows Home in Stuyvesant, NY in 1933. His obituary (he died December 28, 1952) notes that he was a “past grand of Friendly Union Lodge, I.O.O.F. of Slingerlands and took a deep interest in the affairs of the organization.”  (IOOF = Independent Order of Odd Fellows)

Regarding the house, this snippet also turns up in the newspaper April 22, 1924, Jesse Guernsey has purchased… the Frazier cottage on the New Scotland Road in this village.”  This is reflected in the deeds to the property.

In 1924 various heirs of Catherine Frazier sold the property to Jesse Guernsey.  Associated with that deed, is another (dated 1926) in which Leah Haswell releases any rights or interest in the property.   Both Leah Haswell and Catherine Frazier are daughters of Albert and Katherine Slingerland, whose names turn up in many, many deeds to property in Slingerlands including this one.  

Things get a little fuzzy before that for the property.  It appears to me that this little triangular piece of property was part of land owned by the Slingerlands in 1878 when they transferred to Albert T. Eaton, after that, in 1908, is a transfer to Catherine Frazier from Edward Van Slyke.  How Eaton and Van Slyke fit in is unclear to me.  

After I wrote the above, it did become clear that the Odd Fellows met in the brick building next door - modern day Village Pizza.  Not the house. There is a great article in the January 15, 1976 Spotlight about it - page 14  http://www.bethlehempubliclibrary.org/webapps/spotlight/years/1976/1976-01-15.pdf   I'm thinking Jesse Guernsey willed the house to the Odd Fellows who promptly sold it to the Flansburgs.

And after the Brevity above, I can confirm that it was Catherine Frazier's cottage, at least in 1912.

And finally here is a nice then and now of the area I'm talking about in Slingerlands.

Post Office on left, Frazier Cottage on right.

Street view from Google.

Our Towne Bethlehem June 2019: Ice Cream

This was the hardest article to write.  I was constantly craving ice cream!  Plus, as noted in the previous blog post, would someone please open an Ice Cream Saloon at the Four Corners.
→→→→→→→→

One of the best things about living in Upstate New York is the many soft serve ice cream stands that open up come the spring. A delicious reward for withstanding our awful winters.  The history of ice cream, however, is surrounded by myths and marketing. 

Did the ancient Romans really have ice cream? Probably not.  They are known to have brought ice and snow down from the mountains for their drinks.  But that is flavored ice, not ice cream.  Slushee anyone?

Did Marco Polo really eat ice cream during his Silk Road travels, and bring that idea back to Italy in the 1300s?  History.org makes the convincing argument that if he experienced ice cream in China, he certainly would have written about the novelty.  But he did not.  The website goes on to theorize that what really came out of China in those early days was the knowledge of how to freeze things using salt and ice – the endothermic effect.  As the article says, “Ice alone only makes things cold.”  You need the endothermic effect to get ingredients cold enough to actually freeze and make ice cream.

How about Thomas Jefferson? Did he introduce ice cream to America? He enjoyed it enough during his 1784 trip to France to jot down a recipe (2 bottles of good cream, 6 yolks of eggs, 1/ lb. sugar to be flavored with vanilla).  How about Martha Washington? She didn’t invent it, but she did serve it at Mt. Vernon.  Martha and George acquired a “cream machine for ice” in 1784, and built an ice house on the estate that year.  Keep in mind, during those Colonial and early National years, sugar was expensive and only the wealthy could access ice year-round.

When the ice industry kicked into high gear in the mid-1850s, ice started to become more readily available. Sugar prices came down and inventors patented hand-cranked ice cream freezers. Delicious ice cream was coming for the masses.

It is no surprise that ice cream was popular locally. In the 1840s Charles Anderson was advertising his Ice Cream Saloon and Confectionary on Broadway in Albany.   In the 1870’s, you could travel down to Coeymans and visit J. Wiggins’ Ice Cream Saloon on South Main Street. Wiggins promised to keep a choice selection of flavors constantly on hand. Strawberry and ice cream festivals were very common. One page of the June 21, 1893 Altamont Enterprise lists seven different ones happening including the ladies of the M.E. church in Clarksville whose literary entertainment included an ice cream social with “patriotic songs and appropriate speaking.”  Nor did they limit their ice cream to summer time.  New Year’s Night 1893, the M.E. ladies served a chicken supper and ice cream encouraging anyone who “favors their appetite” to attend. In the 1930’s Wager’s Ice Cream, Helderberg Creamery’s Ho-Maid Ice Cream and Fro-Joy Ice Cream were all popular brands.

Getting back to the present day and delicious soft serve, Bethlehem boasts several establishments. Ross’s over on New Scotland Road has been in existence as early as 1954 when Ross’ Picnic Stand advertised in the Spotlight.  In the late 50s and 60s it was known as Ross’ Road Stand.  The website for Jim’s Tastee Freez on Delaware Avenue says it started out in 1963 as Bill’s Tastee Freez and became Jim’s in 1980.  Intriguingly, there is an ad in the 1954 Tri-Village Directory for “Tastee Freez – America’s Soft Ice Cream, Delaware & Grant, Elsmere 9-3912.”  That is the same location and telephone number for Jim’s. (By the way, Tastee Freez the brand got its start in 1950 when Leo Moranz invented a new soft-serve pump and freezer. He partnered with marketer Harry Axene in a system where franchisees could use the name Taste Freez in exchange for renting the equipment.)  Over at Jericho Drive In on 9W, Twist Ice Cream Shoppe opened in 2007.

When I moved here in 1995, we were urged to go over to Houghtaling’s Market in Feura Bush for soft serve ice cream.  While not in Bethlehem, it is just over the town line, now serving under the Mauro’s Menu name. There are of course many other summer time ice cream stands in our area.  What is your favorite place?

Be sure to stop by the Bethlehem Historical Association’s Cedar Hill Schoolhouse for their annual Ice Cream Social – a traditional that has been going on for at least 25 years. The date is Sunday, June 9 from 1 to 4 P.M. The location is 1003 River Road, Selkirk.  Enjoy free ice cream courtesy of Stewart’s Shops and the latest local history exhibits.

A vintage view of Jim’s Tastee Freez courtesy of their website. 

An article about ice cream wouldn’t be complete without mention of the Toll Gate Ice Cream and Coffee Shop in Slingerlands.  Established by the Zautner family in 1949, the shop continued in business producing delicious ice cream in house until just a few years ago. 

This tin ice cream scoop with its heart shaped finial is found in the collection of the 

Bethlehem Historical Association. 

It helped inspire this article. 

This undated photo of Ross’s Ice Cream and Hamburger probably dates to the 1970s.