Bound Volumes, Hometown History

February 20, 2025

110 YEARS AGO

Trainmen on a Delaware & Hudson freight train early yesterday morning found the mangled remains of a man lying beside the tracks about a mile north of the station at Cooperstown Junction. Company officials were immediately notified and a special train was made up to go to the spot where the body was found, carrying along Coroner E.J. Parish and the representative of a local undertaking firm. The remains were brought to Oneonta. From papers found in the pockets of the dead man his identity was established as that of John F. Hoffman of 9 Miller Street. He is survived by a widow and six children, all being less than eleven years of age. Hoffman left his house early in the evening Tuesday to come uptown and procure some groceries purchased earlier in the day by Mrs. Hoffman. That was the last time he was ever seen alive. It is supposed that he caught a ride on a northbound freight train, and was unable to jump off when the D & H passenger station was reached and was carried on to Cooperstown Junction. Numbed by the cold, it is supposed he may have fallen from the train.

February 1915

70 YEARS AGO

A $20,000 annual pay raise plus approximately $6,000 year-end bonus dividends for its 150 employees in Oneonta and Cooperstown was announced last night by the Oneonta Plains Manufacturing Co. Murray Grossman, company president, made the announcement at the firm’s sixth annual birthday dinner in the Oneonta Elks Club. Approximately 200 officials, employees and members of their families attended. The company manufactures “Jerry Gilden” dresses for women. Mr. Grossman cited progress and expansion as keystones of Oneonta Plains and said the pay increase would be five cents an hour for each worker to go into effect with the next payroll period. The company began in Oneonta in 1949 with a staff of several employees. As the company grew, a Cooperstown plant was opened in 1954. Today, both plants have steady year-round work, with employees averaging from $1,800 to $2,000 a year in earnings. The occasion was also a celebration of Mr. Grossman’s 44th birthday.

February 1955

50 YEARS AGO

The Oneonta public schools will be open today for the first of three make-up days for three days of classes missed during the teachers’ strike in October. At least one mother has encouraged her daughter to stay out of school, but rumors that the boycott has been encouraged by teachers at the high school have not been verified. “It’s a vicious rumor,” school superintendent Frederick Bardsley said. The make-up days are being provided so that students will not be deprived of their “educational opportunities.” Previously Bardsley had reported receiving calls from parents who had protested that the children were being punished for the actions of the teachers by being deprived of a holiday.

February 1975

30 YEARS AGO

Using a grant from the Catskill Regional Teacher Center, Riverside Elementary School fourth-grade teachers Sherry Miller and Allan Bowers created a unit on the Iroquois Indians that entailed a little bit of every school subject. There were storytelling lessons with the school librarian, arts and crafts workshops, trips to Hartwick College’s Yager Museum and the Otego Archaeological Museum, a lacrosse demonstration by Hartwick’s lacrosse coach and a classroom visit from an Iroquois Indian. As part of an Iroquois Festival event, students worked with Oneonta High School industrial arts teacher Dennis Carr’s wood-working class to build an Iroquois long-house frame in the school gym.

February 1995