BOUND VOLUMES

October 22, 2020

200 YEARS AGO

Dispatch From New Orleans – The fever raging here is equal to the plague of the Barbary States. Not more than one out of ten of the newcomers who have had the temerity to remain here this season, has escaped death and the disease has been uncommonly rapid. From four to six days have been the extent of life after the patient was attacked. The number of deaths for the last week were 146. They died with the black vomit generally, in possession of all their reasoning faculties. The letter gives a gloomy picture of the scenes of distress that have passed under the writer’s eye. What makes it worse is that every season it changes its character, so far as not to be subdued by the same treatment that was successful in a preceding one.

October 23, 1820

175 YEARS AGO

Excerpts from a dispatch from Greene, New York: “I learn that Mrs. Vars is a daughter of Bethel Gray, and been married but a year or two. She had been out near the creek for some purpose and sat down on a log to rest near the mill pond, when they came up behind her, blindfolded her, tied her hands, and then threw her into the pond. Every man, woman and boy has turned out to look for the villains. Such an excitement was never known in this town before. What we are coming to God only knows. This must have taken place about 12 o’clock today. Yours C.S.
P.S. The woman was got out alive, and who the perpetrators are is a mystery, as she did not see them. She says there were two of them, as they talked, and asked one to the other if they should take her and whether she would tell, and the other replied that she would – and let her alone, etc.”

October 25, 1845

150 YEARS AGO

Sad Accident – On Wednesday last, two boys of Mr. S.H. Chapins, aged 10 and 12 years old, and a boy of Peter Edgett, were playing together, having been left at home alone. The older Chapins boy, Charles, went into the house and got a shotgun that was loaded. The Edgett boy, aged 8 years, took the gun and said he took off the cap, and then snapped the gun, when it exploded, the whole charge taking effect in the neck of Harvey Chapins, on the left side, just below the angle of the lower jaw bone, severing the carotid artery on that side, causing almost instant death. A coroner’s inquest was held and a verdict rendered by the jury of “accidental death by a gun in the hands of James F. Edgett.

October 20, 1870

125 YEARS AGO

Local: The channel of Willow Brook has been deepened along its course through the lands of L. Averell Carter, from Lake Street to the lake. G.M. Jarvis and C.R. Burch are confined to their homes by temporary illness. Both have worked too hard for years. Everett T. Grout has entered the Western Union Telegraph Office here to learn telegraphy.
Charles Weeks of Toddsville and L.W. Ackley of Oneonta, under the firm name of Weeks and Ackley, are now bottling the Beaverwick Lager in Cooperstown.
The boatmen along the lake front are taking up their docks and preparing for winter.
The Chestnut Street greenhouse, owned by Mrs. W.H. Russell, has recently been enlarged and improved and is now very complete. A new greenhouse has been added where a large variety of flowers will be cultivated. There is room in Cooperstown for this enterprise to grow.

October 24, 1895

75 YEARS AGO

The following Otsego County men under the jurisdiction of Selective Service Board 403, Cooperstown, have been reported as honorably discharged: Phillip Petrie, Loren Weegar, Archangelo Mogavero, George C. Meade, Leon W. Jastremski, Richard Kraham, Arnold Vibbard, Amos Weaver, Salvatore Sapienza, Edward B. Scott, Gerald Wayne Butler, James Decker, James Derrick, Joseph J. Munford, Jr., Thomas J. Thompson, Frank Smith, Alexander Lee Cooper, Edward P. Gilbert, and Robert Curtis.

October 24, 1945

50 YEARS AGO

Frederick W. Loomis of Edmeston will retire on October 31 as Otsego County Judge and Judge of Family Court after nearly 19 years on the bench. His current 10-year term has a little over four years to run. Governor Rockefeller is expected to make an interim appointment to fill the vacancy. A recommendation for the post is expected to be made by the Otsego County Republican Party. Judge Loomis’s retirement had been rumored for some time, and speculation has been rife as to who his successor would be. Mentioned prominently as possible successors in the $26,000 a year full-time post have been County Attorney Robert A. Harlem of Oneonta, former District Attorney Joseph A. Mogavero of Unadilla and City Court Judge Albert A. Baldo of Oneonta.

October 21, 1970

25 YEARS AGO

Cooperstown Central School senior Jeff Dean was notified recently of his acceptance into the New York State Music Association’s All-State Jazz Ensemble, scheduled to perform at the Concord Hotel, Lake Kiamesha on November 28. The ensemble is an exclusive collection of 20 New York State students who began competition in the spring of this past school year by preparing a written jazz solo for adjudication before a NYSSMA judge. In addition to his solo performance, Dean was also asked to improvise a jazz number and perform a musical selection previously unseen – a process known as ”sight-reading.”

October 22, 1995

10 YEARS AGO

The Otsego Land Trust has announced members of a committee, chaired by Francis Nolan, Hartwick, to explore future public uses of Brookwood Gardens on Otsego Lake. The committee includes former Otsego 2000 Executive Director Martha Frey, Duey Townsend of the Lake & Valley Garden Club, John Davis of the Delaware-Otsego Audubon Society, Meg Kiernan, Otsego Town Supervisor, Otsego County Planner Karen Sullivan, Matt Albright of the SUNY Biological Field Station, Bill Oliver, Wayne Mellor, Doug Willis, and Amanda Savage Mahoney, a descendant of Albany financier James B. Jermaine who once owned the lakeside estate. The Cook Foundation, which owned Brookwood Garden, recently merged with the Land Trust, in part to chart a new course for the property.

October 21, 2010