Bound Volumes, Hometown History
September 18, 2025
110 YEARS AGO
The new processing creamery plant of the Sheffield Farms Slawson Decker company at Oneonta Plains is now practically completed. Though not as large as some of their many stations scattered throughout the rich farming sections of the state, none is more complete in detail or embodies more of the latest scientific principles in the handling of milk for the great cities of the east. The land of the Sheffield company comprises about seven acres lying contiguous to the Delaware & Hudson yards west of the lower River street bridge, this affording the best of switching facilities for outlet over the D & H lines. On the other side of the property is a spur track of the Otsego and Herkimer trolley company, giving easy access to the dairying section of the Otego Creek valley to the north. The main plant occupies a space of 100 by 60 feet and is of steel and reinforced concrete construction, two stories in height. The front of the building faces the highway between the Otego road and River Street and is composed largely of windows, giving the maximum amount of light for the operation of the plant. Many of the windows of which there are about 2,500 are double enclosed to deny entrance to dust or insects, thus affording the most sanitary conditions for handling of the product.
September 1915
70 YEARS AGO
On average, Oneonta residents are now spending $10.50 each per year in neighborhood drug stores for doctor’s prescriptions, medicines and other health aids. That’s the estimate of statisticians in the retail drug trade who set the city’s collective spending on medical items at slightly more than $150,000 annually. For the entire U.S. the total is $1,700,000,000. Expenditures for doctor’s prescriptions alone were six times more in the past year than they were 15 years ago. This is largely accounted for by the advent of the so-called “wonder drugs”—the antihistamines, the sulfas, the antibiotics, and the cortisone derivatives—in liquids and powders, pills, capsules, ointments and creams.
Today’s prescriptions average $2.19 each compared with 91 cents in 1940.
September 1955
50 YEARS AGO
International Women’s Year is being recognized next month at the State University College, Oneonta. The Fourth Annual Women’s Week will be held October 13 to 19. The SUCO program will feature workshops, lectures and entertainment. A presentation by Academy Award nominee Cicely Tyson, will highlight the program. Other speakers during the week will include Roxene Witke, SUNY Binghamton professor and China scholar, and State Senator Karen Burstein, sponsor of the Equal Rights Amendment in New York State. Dr. Paula Holleran, chairperson of the Educational Psychology Department, will present a slide and discussion program relating to sex stereotyping in elementary education. Women’s Week is sponsored by the President’s Advisory Committee on the Status of Women at the college.
September 1975
20 YEARS AGO
U.S. Chief Justice nominee John Roberts said Thursday there is no room for ideologues on the Supreme Court, declaring an “obligation to the Constitution” and to no other cause as he concluded three grueling days of confirmation testimony. “If the Constitution says that the little guy should win, the little guy’s going to win in court before me,” Roberts told the Senate Judiciary Committee. “But, if the Constitution says that the big guy should win, well then, the big guy’s going to win.” John Roberts’ views on abortion – and whether he would vote to overturn a landmark 1973 ruling on the issue—hung uncertainly over the hearings from beginning to end.
September 2005
