Wednesday, January 16, 2019

Parcella Post by Bill Ketzer

Another great post by Delmartian Bill Ketzer.  Enjoy!
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Parcella Post. Who knows the story?
Located in the Town of Bethlehem until annexed by Albany in 1870, Graceland Cemetery on Delaware Avenue offers more land than meets the eye when driving by. Its manicured grounds wander far south of what can be seen from the road, its bordering woodlots rising high above the banks of Normanskill Creek and Bethlehem’s quiet hamlet of Normansville beyond. In one of the farthest lots down that expanse is a handsome, unassuming little headstone with a carved lamb adorning its top. In its remoteness, it is rarely visited by anyone, but the tranquility of the space is almost indescribable despite the perpetual swoosh of automobile traffic nearby, like waves crashing on a nearby shore. There, the calm presence one feels is almost like carefully holding a baby bird in your palm for the first time.
On November 20, 1922 – a Monday afternoon – a mailman came to the front door of the A. B. Kiernan Funeral Home at 38 Grand Street in Albany’s South End (now where South Mall Towers apartments stand across the street from CafĂ© Capriccio) and delivered a package, as he did every day. The parcel was 20 inches long and seven inches square at the sides, and he handed it to Thomas Kiernan, the proprietor’s uncle, who in turn asked an employee to open it, thinking it was probably a delayed doll prize he'd won at a club carnival the week before.
However, the employee drew back abruptly after opening on end, then ripped its dirty white string and the rest of the wrapping away to reveal the nude body of a tiny baby girl. On her body lay a $5 bill. The funeral home immediately called the police and Dr. Morris Bellin (who was summoned by Albany County Coroner John E. Mullin) reported the child had been born alive, in perfect health, but had been smothered a day or two later by an adult given the telltale marks on the child's face. “It was the first Instance in the history of Albany that parcel post been used for such a macabre purpose,” the Times Union reported in 1946. The only mark on the outside of the package was the almost Illegibly-scrawled Grand street address in blue pencil.
Police began an intensive search to discover who sent the parcel – to this day one of the strangest and most heartbreaking objects ever sent through the U. S. mail. Early evidence indicated that the package couldn’t have travelled very far, judging by the date used on the newspaper used to wrap the infant and that it had the brown mark of a flat iron on it, indicating it had been used around the house for a day before it was used as wrapping. The cancellation on the postage stamps was a smudge of concentric rings of ink, revealing that it was sent from a small post office (by that time larger POs were already sending larger circle stamps with the date and time included). Detectives interviewed postal clerks, hospital staff, doctors’ offices and midwives in the city to no avail.
Then, on the third day of the investigation, they learned the parcel had been sent from PO Substation 23 at 119 Madison Avenue – just three blocks away from Kiernan’s funeral parlor (now the vacant lot next to Lombardo’s Restaurant). Unfortunately, 74-year-old Postmaster Gennaro Pisarri was unable to identify the girl who posted the package, other than that she was a “neatly-dressed, typically American 16-year-old girl.”
The aged postmaster recalled asking the girl why she didn't deliver the package herself instead of mailing it, but she responded that it was laundry and she didn't have to take it over. This account was verified by a co-worker, Maria Tarezzi, and also by G. P. Baccelli, Albany’s Italian consul in Albany who had offices located just above the substation. According to Baccelli, the girl gave the parcel to the postmaster on Saturday, November 18, between 4 and 4:30 PM and he overheard Pisarri asking her why she wouldn’t just carry the package to the funeral home, since it was a short walk away. “No, I want to mail it,” he reported her as saying. “It is a package of Laundry.”
Ultimately – for reasons never explained fully in news reports – the police believed this young woman was an unwitting accomplice in the crime and not the perpetrator. Pondering the societal conditions of the South End in that era (my Irish and German ancestors lived there, as did many immigrants from those countries at the time) it seems very strange that the police so quickly dismissed the possibility of the girl being the killer (or the daughter of the killer), as she was a teenager, almost certainly Catholic, and did not want to risk being identified by the funeral director.
But the newspapers did announce, rather bluntly, that the infant would be buried in Potter's Field (there were several near New Scotland Avenue and Hackett Boulevard) unless someone came forward to help the nameless babe. By then however the story had caught the interest of many Albanians, who began to take personal interest in the tale and demand that the infant be given services and buried with “all proper reverence.” By the weekend following the awful discovery, more than 200 women had filed into the funeral parlor to view the tiny child.
Mr. Kiernan subsequently announced he would hold “simple, but impressive” funeral services for the baby, but those plans soon became more elaborate. Instead of a cardboard coffin, the funeral home provided a little, white, glass-covered casket, with silver handles and nameplate. Instead of discarded newspapers, the undertaker’s wife sewed a tiny white satin burial dress. Two men offered to loan large cars to carry the mourners to graveside, and Stephen O’Hagan of Black Taxi Company loaned a hearse to lead the procession. Neighborhood women collected donations for sprays of flowers, and the plot where the baby girl rests today was purchased at Graceland Cemetery. The superintendent of Graceland provided the plot in a far corner of its infant's section. A volunteer subscription was started to raise money for the tiny headstone in this picture, which carries the name Parcella Post – her namesake given by either Dr. Bellin or the coroner (news accounts conflict here) since the way she was sent to the undertaker was the only clue to her origins… and the only clue there would ever be.
On Monday, November 27, 1922 – just a few days before Thanksgiving – three carloads of mourners went to the graveside to say a final goodbye to Parcella, whose gravesite was overrun with beautiful scores of cut-flower blossoms. It was indeed quite a different funeral than had been anticipated by the person who placed the little dead girl in the mail with $5 for burial expenses! At the grave, city detectives hovered in the background, keeping close watch on all visitors with the hope that some small act would provide more information as to the mother’s identity, but the watch proved futile. Soon after, the little girl was left to rest in peace, and no superintendent or groundskeeper moving forward indicated that anyone ever visited the grave.
So that was the lore until 1960, when a single pink flower was left on Parcella’s stone sometime around Memorial Day. This was huge news even 38 years after her death. It was an artificial blossom, designed to last a long time in outdoor weather, and the Knickerbocker News felt that “it seemed to give warmth with its glow.” This week in September 2018 – approaching 100 years since Parcella’s journey into eternal mystery – a pink flower still adorns the stone.

Monday, January 14, 2019

The Old Wemple Place and Louise Barkhoff



Below is an article you might enjoy by my friend Bill Ketzer.  He often posts well researched local history  to his Facebook page, and he gave me permission to share them with you.  Enjoy!
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Entrance to Gilbert Wemple’s Mid-1800s farmhouse, Glenmont, NY. 
On a high, and long-abandoned hill along Wemple Road sits this resilient Greek Revival home on 112 acres of overgrown pasture and wetlands. This land recently sold for just $250,000, so I expect that soon this majestic ruin is not long for this world.

In the 1860’s, son William worked the farm with him, while his other son John (who served as Bethlehem supervisor from 1875-1876) lived just down the hill toward River Road. By the time John took office, William and his family left his father’s home and started farming elsewhere in the town, and hired a 24-year old servant named Jane Louisa Barkhoff. Louisa never married but at just 17 had a young daughter named Leila, who vanishes from the public record after 1875.
In 1917, Barkhoff bought a large parcel of sandy farmland along Shunpike Road (now Elsmere Avenue) from her aging aunt Emma Bender, whose husband Cyrus was the grandson of Revolutionary War sergeant Christian Bender. It is here the modern history of our home at 116 Elsmere began.
It appears as if Louisa never actively managed our property; she lived in Albany and subdivided a large portion of the parcel just two years later, conveying it to her brother William Barkhuff (he preferred the more Teutonic spelling of their last name, apparently). He and his wife would farm the property and lease portions of it to Albany Sand and Supply Company for molding sand until the onset of the Great Depression. As a young man he worked in the icehouses on the Hudson River and later in life as a florist and caretaker for Bethlehem Cemetery, where he would return to rest forever in 1944. His family home remains intact today at 110 Elsmere, exactly how it looked in his era.
Shortly before her death in 1935, Louisa also conveyed the deed to a smaller parcel of her Bender property to William Gall and his wife. Gall, right off the boat from Germany, ran an auto garage at 124 Elsmere, which no longer exists… but it’s foundation and numerous artifacts are still there in our woodlot.
Interestingly, Louisa retained title to both properties pursuant to a curious stipulation in the 1919 deed, so these lands returned to her estate for probate when she died. She left no will, but another Wemple – Helen Kipp Wemple – was named as her executor CTA to the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church of Albany. It was the trustees of this parish that sold these lands together to Elsmere Fire Commissioner Carl L. Wehrle, and it was this man that would commission his brother-in-law to clear the merged lot and build the home we live in today.

In Defiance: Runaway Slave Notices

Recently a friend recommended the book In Defiance: Runaways from Slavery in New York's Hudson River Valley 1735-1831.  I have written about slavery in Bethlehem here before.  That blog post ended with an "I wonder" about the 254 people who were listed as slaves in the 1800 census. In Defiance, provides plenty of food for thought.

The vast number of runaway slave notices during this period is indicative not only of how widespread the institution of slavery was in the Hudson Valley...but also speaks of the magnitude of the struggle for freedom being fought by an oppressed and enslaved people.  The dangers of running and the consequences if caught were dire and had to have struck abject fear into the hearts of those contemplating such a feat.  Yet, for many, the opportunity to live as a human being, out of bondage, able to breath the air in freedom, was worth the dangers. It was  a courageous choice.  (From the Forward by A. J. Williams-Myers)

Below are two notices from Bethlehem (there are 7 in the book with Bethlehem connections) which hint at the stories of Will and Anthony, both of whom took away with them a wide assortment of clothing.  You also might recognize the slave holders' names.




The notice below, while not from Bethlehem, captured my imagination.  Jacob, age 24, ran away on Friday afternoon, February 20, 1764 from Albany. 


I imagine him walking down a snow covered forest path, his gait painful, wary, yet bold, courageous to run into the wilderness surrounding Albany, his red woolen hat bouncing on his head, and his faithful dog Venture at his side. I imagine him able to talk himself out of dangerous situations and asserting his right to freedom.  What adventures will Jacob and Venture have as they travel north towards Canada on the eve of the American Revolution? The optimist in me wants them to have a happy ending, the pessimist notes that the ad was placed just 2 days after he left.  Some other person might embark on their own adventure for the sake of the five dollar reward.  OK, at this point I really am just writing fiction.  What can I say, the pairing of Jacob and Venture would make an excellent novel! 


Thursday, January 10, 2019

Bethlehem People and Places





The cover of my new book!  I am working with Troy Book Makers this time around and am still sorting out the all the buying options.  You will certainly be able to get it from I Love Books and here at Town Hall.  Right now it is looking like I will have the books in hand in February.  So exciting!