Bound Volumes

October 19, 2023

185 YEARS AGO
An association of citizens for the improvement of Common Schools in this County was organized on the 14th of November last (1837) appropriating the title “Otsego County Education Society.” Its annual meeting is on Tuesday succeeding the third Monday in October each year at the Court House in Cooperstown. It will fall this year on Tuesday, the 16th of October. Of all enterprises claiming public attention, it is hoped there is none more interesting than that of making education universal, and a concern of the State as well as one of individual care. With us the rights of citizens are experienced by all, and the means, at least of knowledge, should be open to all. Without education and intellectual culture, general and diffusive, no reflecting man can hope that succeeding generations will be able to perpetuate the example of a nation of self-governing freemen.

October 15, 1838

135 YEARS AGO
Wedding bells—Again they are sounded for those in far off New Hampshire who have a host of friends in this village, the happy event being the marriage of Deputy County Clerk Louis E. Walrath of Cooperstown and Miss Edna C. Grace, formerly of this village. The wedding took place at the residence of Mr. Cedrick Laighton, at Portsmouth, where Miss Grace has resided for some time past, on the afternoon of Wednesday the 17th inst., and was made a quiet affair, the attendance being limited to the presence of a few relatives and friends. After a short wedding trip, Mr. and Mrs. Walrath will return to Cooperstown, where they will reside. The best of wishes are extended to them for a long and happy married life.

October 19, 1888

110 YEARS AGO
Adolphus Busch, aged 74, the St. Louis millionaire, brewer and philanthropist, and owner of In the Uncas Farm on Otsego Lake, died Friday, October 10, at his estate at Weisbaden, Prussia. His son, August A. Busch, was with him. Mr. Busch purchased Uncas Farm from Simon Uhlman of New York several years ago and since that time has spent portions of several summers here. Ill health recently caused him to spend more of his time in Germany where he underwent treatment for dropsy. Busch’s discovery of a bottling process that held beer “proof” against all climates carried his brewing company to phenomenal success.

October 15, 1913

60 YEARS AGO
Mary Imogene Bassett Hospital took delivery this Monday of a new Cadillac ambulance from Berry Motors of Cooperstown. The new vehicle replaces a 1956 ambulance of the same make. Charles A. Wick, Berry, salesman, turned the keys over to Earle Nicklas, Bassett’s assistant director. Bassett is the only one of 63 hospitals in the area served by the Albany and Utica Blue Cross to operate its own ambulance service and has done so continuously since 1927.

October 16, 1963

35 YEARS AGO
Shad Rathbone of Fly Creek recently acted in a commercial for the Washington County Vocational Technical Institute in Maine. The commercial advertises the institute’s wood harvesting program which Mr. Rathbone majors in at the college. For the commercial the camera crew filmed Rathbone felling a tree in the Maine woods. The commercial is being aired on television stations throughout Maine, according to Sherlee Rathbone, Shad’s mother. Wood harvesting students study chainsaw operation and maintenance, map and compass work, basic hydraulics and woodland road maintenance.

October 19, 1988