Bound Volumes,
Hometown History

August 28, 2025

135 YEARS AGO

Excerpts from a letter responding to quote taken from the New York Tribune: “The hop crop has left New York millions of dollars worse off; that hop culture has been the means of causing several counties of the state to pass twice over through bankruptcy; that farms prostituted to this delusive product have already been, on the average, twice under the hammer, or are mortgaged so deeply that they will take their second leap very soon. So, it appears that, leaving the moral of the matter entirely out of consideration, it doesn’t pay, even from the pecuniary point of view, to misuse good soil, of which the occupant is only steward by devoting it to brewers’ uses.” I believe the above to be true, and it will continue to be true until the hop growers of New York are organized and able to have something to say about what the price of hops shall be. Most growers can tell you what it costs to raise a pound of hops. Yet, the majority of hops in New York State have passed into brewers’ hands at prices which left the grower no profit. I can name you a list of growers whose hop crop was sold for less than it cost to produce.

August 1890

90 YEARS AGO

August 1935

30 YEARS AGO

More than 1,000 State University College at Oneonta faculty, students and family members filled the Hunt Union Sunday for a convocation ceremony that emphasized teaching, learning and scholarship. “It is so important,” SUCO Provost Anne Cairns Federlein said after the ceremony. “It goes along with President Alan Donovan and my theme of academic excellence and quality. In his welcome message, President Donovan said: “As an institution dedicated to the teaching-learning process, it is fitting that we gather in formal assembly to affirm our common citizenship in our academic community. Central to that citizenship is the need for mutual respect, tolerance and understanding our differences.”

August 1995

20 YEARS AGO

Willard Yager’s collection of Indian artifacts are part of a student designed and mounted exhibition at Hartwick College. Willard Yager, onetime owner and editor of the Oneonta Herald newspaper was 32-years-old in 1887 when floodwaters revealed thousands of artifacts and the remains of an ancient Indian village in a field near Oneonta. Yager obtained many of the objects from the site, and three years later, he resigned from the Herald and devoted the rest of his life to studying American Indians and their artifacts. The Yager artifacts were part of an exhibition titled: “Collections, Intentions & Controversies.”

August 2005