Piney Rest Farm

Thanks to a group on Facebook (thank you Bethlehem Central Randomness!), this wonderful postcard sent me down a small research rabbit hole this afternoon. Procrastination at its finest if you ask me!

And since it is easier to write up said research here instead of on Facebook, and because typing in "Piney Rest Farm" into the Old Fulton newspaper website turned up exactly one lonely, but very informative article, I've got good stuff to share. So here goes...

Please meet Mrs. Milton Slingerland, the former Carrie Mae Wiltsie, age 88.  This profile appeared in the May 8, 1962 Albany Times Union.  

In this delightful and long article about Gram Slingerland we learn some interesting facts about the Piney Rest Farm.   

Carrie Mae Wiltsie was born in 1874 and raised on the Wiltsie farm in Bethlehem.  She married Milton Slingerland when she was 19 and went to live with Milton at his family homestead. The 32 acre farm, where Milton was a truck farmer, was located on River Road in the town of Coeymans. It sat high with the land sloping down to the Hudson River. Carrie Mae and Milton lived there their entire married life - Milton died in 1947 and Carrie in 1963.  Carrie was a busy member of the household - well let me just quote the article...

"She helped to garden, sold eggs and home-made cottage cheese from a Model-T Ford truck, provided breakfast and lodging for tourists and, in spare moments, knitted and crocheted, sewed, painted pictures and tended her flowers.   The tourist business was discontinued at "Piney Rest Farm" 15 years ago, when her son brought his wife and three daughters to join her in the big house."

So there you have it, Carrie Mae Wiltsie Slingerland ran Piney Rest Farm as a tourist rest stop from about the time she got married until 1947 - which was the time her husband passed - say about 50 years. Pretty cool.

I did take a quick look through the census. Piney Rest Farm was on River Road in North Coeymans, town of Coeymans, but did not have a street number, so I can't exactly place the homestead.  I did find Milton and Bessie's son Carmen's WWII draft card and that shed some light.  In the 1940 census he and his wife Ruth lived right next door to Milton and Bessie. (Remember the article says they moved into the "big house" in 1947.) His draft card says his address is "RFD Selkirk"  That's it.  No street name or number.  His phone number was Ravena 14f2.  And his draft registration was filed by the town of Coeymans.  

So, once again I am going to blame the post office delivery system for the above postcard labeled Selkirk, even though the building it shows is really in Coeymans.

Do any of you out there have more information on Piney Rest?  Let me know!

PS: Please search for the the exact phrase "Piney Rest Farm" on https://fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html and read the whole article about Bessie Mae - she was quite the gal!

UPDATE (7-27-2020)

Here she is - 42 Fox Street, Selkirk, Town of Coeymans.  Owned by Carmen Slingerland until 2004.

Thank you Facebook and Blog commentators for the helpful hints!

Another Update (8-11-2020)

I was at Schodack Island State Park over the weekend and lo and behold what do I see across the Hudson, but a distinctive roof line. Confirmed it is our very own Piney Rest by checking with Google maps.  I was wondering why that cupola was added, must be an amazing view!

Lantern Slides

Buried in the vault at town hall is small box of what I assumed were glass plate negatives. They were given to me for the town's archive ages ago and I haven't really thought about them since.  Well, BHA is doing a small exhibit on photography, and I remembered those interesting slides and dug them out for a closer look.  It turns out they are actually lantern slides. And what gems they are!

They were created by J. A. Glenn of Albany and look like a set for the First United Methodist Church of Delmar's 1928 Build or Bust campaign.  I think they were taken all about the same time.  I imagine a gathering at the church, perhaps with a potluck supper, a presentation of the slide show, and then the fundraising pitch.  The campaign, by the way, must have been successful.  It resulted in the construction of the Parish House, the Norman Gothic addition at the rear and west side of the main sanctuary. 

Below is the whole set of slides. Please note that these are digital snapshots of the slides resting on an LED light box.  The light box (yes it is a cheap one I ordered online) has a glare reducing mask on it that I had to cover with a sheet of paper.  Unfortunately, this makes the images muddy - like the pictures were shot on a cloudy day.  The actual slides are crisp and clear black and white images.  If anyone has a better light box or idea on how to digitize, please let me know!

Delmar Methodist Church

Poster for the Build or Bust Campaing

Delmar Fire Hall former Adams Hotel

District #10 - Delmar School 

The new Delmar School

The new new Delmar School

District # 15 -  Elsmere School

St. Stephen's Church on Elsmere Ave.

Unknown church, perhaps for architectural inspiration.

Another unknown church, architectural inspiration perhaps?

One of the actual slides. 
My supervisor in the back there was saying "get back to work and leave me alone!"

Our Towne Bethlehem July 2020: Of Railroads and White Elephants

While working on “Rivers, Roads and Rails” (an exhibit for the Bethlehem Historical Association’s Cedar Hill Schoolhouse Museum) I’ve been delving into the history of the West Shore Railroad and keep coming across the story of the Commodore’s White Elephant.

I have questions. Like who is this Commodore? And why do we use the phrase “white elephant” anyway? And is there a Bethlehem connection in there somewhere?

Here’s the story:

The Commodore is Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794-1877), shipping magnet, railroad tycoon, wily businessman, self-made billionaire. Husband of Sophia for 55years, and then Frank for 8. Father of 12 (including William, who met cute with his future wife Maria Louisa Kissam near her home in Bethlehem in 1841). The Commodore made his initial millions with water transportation. By the 1840s, his fleet of steamships served routes in the waterways around and between New York City, Long Island, and Albany, including areas of New Jersey, Connecticut and Rhode Island. During the gold rush of 1849, he expanded his steamship service to San Francisco.

In the 1860s, sensing that the future of transportation was on land, he began buying up controlling interests in existing railroads like the Long Island Railroad, the New York and Harlen Railroad, and the Hudson River Railroad, eventually merging his holdings into the New York Central. It’s said that he made $25 million in the first five years of his railroad ventures.

Of note for our story is the Hudson River Railroad. In the early 1860s, the Hudson River Railroad did not have a bridge connection to Albany from its terminal across the river in Rensselaer. In 1864, the Commodore and investor Daniel Drew conceived the Saratoga and Hudson River Railroad, a 27-mile line that bypassed Albany. Westbound passengers and freight disembarked at the City of Hudson and then crossed the river via ferry and barge to arrive at Athens where they connected with the new line. The line connected with the New York Central near Schenectady passing through South Bethlehem and Feura Bush.

In 1867, the Saratoga and Hudson was leased by the New York Central and merged into their system as the Athens Branch. The busy junction at Athens met a spectacular end in June 1876 when it was destroyed by a huge fire. The steamboat John Taylor, the barge Hercules, the canal boat Stephen Van Warren, the entire depot with its sheds and office buildings, hundreds of cars in the yard, and all the freight (sugar, corn, oats, tobacco) in these various stages of transport, went up in flames.

Not too long after the fire, the Athens Branch became known as a white elephant because it had outlived its usefulness, plus it was never very profitable. It didn’t help that a RR bridge across the Hudson at Albany was opened in 1866. In 1881, the line was purchased by the New York, West Shore and Buffalo, and the section from Coxsackie to Schenectady became part of the mainline. The part between Coxsackie and Athens limped along for a few years before the rails were completely removed in 1888.

The Commodore’s white elephant was really only a white elephant for a short time. Then it passed into legend. Several secondary sources say Vanderbilt long regretted the investment and said it was “the most foolish thing of my life.”

And what exactly is a white elephant? Dictionary.com says it is a “possession entailing great expense out of proportion to its usefulness or value to its owner” and that the phrase was first recorded in the early 1850s. The story is said to go back to Siam (modern day Thailand) where a literal white elephant was a highly prized, sacred animal. Let me just quote historyextra.com – they tell it so well:

“The term “white elephant” denotes any burdensome, expensive and useless possession that is much more trouble than it is worth. White or very pale elephants were so highly prized that when one was discovered, it immediately became the possession of the King. White elephants, however, were practically useless. As they were deemed to be sacred, they weren’t allowed to be worked and required special, expensive food and housing – making them particularly pricey pachyderms.

So the cunning kings of Siam, as the story goes, used to give white elephants away to anyone who displeased them or had fallen out of favour so that they would be forced to spend a fortune keeping the precious animals. The unfortunate recipient of a white elephant would be unable to get rid of it so the upkeep could ruin them financially.”

There you have it, the white elephant line that used to run through Bethlehem. The section in Bethlehem merged with the West Shore and provided passenger and freight service in the hamlet of South Bethlehem until about 1959.

 

Flashes and Dashes

CORRECTION: In June’s article, Cemetery Walks and Veterans Stories, I mistakenly referred to the Piers as a Gold Star Family. That is incorrect. Gold Star families are those who have had a family member die in service to our country. All of the Pier children survived their service.

If you haven’t heard already, the Bethlehem Public Library is collecting your stories about the current pandemic. Please visit their website for more info: http://www.bethlehempubliclibrary.org/quarantine-memories-archive/

The Bethlehem Historical Association hopes to open their museum as soon as it is safe to do so.  Visit their website for details: https://bethlehemhistorical.org/    

And finally, visit my blog for the Kissam-Vanderbilt meet cute story: 

https://bethlehemnyhistory.blogspot.com/2017/01/maria-louisa-kissam-and-william-henry.html 

and

https://bethlehemnyhistory.blogspot.com/2018/03/maria-louisa-kissam-vanderbilt-revisited.html

 

Both of the above pictures are the South Bethlehem station during the West Shore Railroad era. I was unable to determine whether there was a station here on the White Elephant line.  (Town of Bethlehem)

 

The Commodore, Cornelius Vanderbilt, in an image taken by Mathew Brady sometime between 1844 and 1860. (Library of Congress)

Sophia Johnson Vanderbilt (FindAGrave.com)

This print humorously portrays the fight over New York railroads between Vanderbilt (on the left) and James Fisk.  The story of Vanderbilt’s railroad wheeling and dealing has been extremely simplified for this article.  (Library of Congress)