29 Thursday Sep 2022
Posted in 19th Century, 20th Century, Genealogy
So, I’m still here, but I’ve been mostly enmired with book-related stuff. But! There are three new posts at the “book blog” with additional information and photos of people and things in the book contributed by folks I’ve met since publishing The 1903 Jackson Corners Signature Quilt.
Enjoy!
03 Saturday Jun 2017
Posted in 19th Century, Education
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Back in 2015 I published letters to my 2nd great-grandmother Mary Elizabeth Knickerbocker of Madalin (Tivoli), Dutchess County, NY from her classmates at the Poughkeepsie Female Academy sent between 1853 and 1855.
The first article about the school is here.
Recently, I found a brochure and a sort of program tucked in with things belonging to her (then future) husband Dr. John E Losee of Upper Red Hook. Below are the pages from the “program”, and below that are three pages from the “brochure” which is undated, but is definitely of the same period.
17 Thursday Nov 2011
Posted in 19th Century Photos, Genealogy
“A SHOW WEEK AFTER NEXT MARCH 11TH 1876 IT WILL BE AT HARVEY LOSEES. IT WILL PERFORM WITH MAGIC LANTERN. IT WILL BE SEVEN OCLOCK AT NIGHT. IT WILL BE A GOOD SHOW. AD MISSION ONLY 2 CENTS. DO. NOT. FAIL TO ATTEND”
This invitation is from my mother’s collection of family items. Harvey Losee was my great-grandfather. He was John Losee’s father (the gentleman who took the Kodachrome images I post here, remember him?) Harvey’s house was and still is located in Upper Red Hook on Spring Lake Road, click here for google maps to see exactly where. The home was called the Thomas House and has a history of its own that will be featured in our next post.
Harvey (on the right c. 1876) was born 30 Mar 1867 in Upper Red Hook to Dr. John Eckart Losee and Mary Elizabeth Knickerbocker. He attended Rutgers (class of 1889) and like his father before him took on the profession of country doctor. Raised with a bit of country wealth, Harvey thought very highly of himself as the essay I’ll post tomorrow will probably affirm.
I don’t know if the Losees owned a magic lantern or if it was borrowed or rented for the amusement of their friends for an evening. I imagine the one used on this March evening in the countryside in Dutchess County was a small device powered by a candle rather than the larger, multiple-lensed varieties used to put on shows for large public crowds. On researching what exactly a magic lantern is I learned something new. The larger, more complex lanterns used limelight for the light source. On googling further, I learned that “before the advent of electric lighting, white stage lighting was produced by heating lime in the flame of a torch, and this light was called limelight” (source: Chemical of the Week click the link for more science). The term “in the limelight” comes from this compound being used in theaters before electric lighting. Neat! Dangerous, but neat!
The Randall-Slater Collection website has great examples of Victorian magic lantern show material featuring what you could call the forerunner of the animated .gif – multiple glass slides moved through the lantern to produce a effect of motion. Sadly, my family has neither the lantern Harvey used nor any of the slides to show you what he might have shown his friends in Upper Red Hook.
21 Friday Oct 2011
Posted in 19th Century Photos
As a follow-up to the previous post, here is a selection from The Pine Plains Register of Friday April 11, 1902, a year before the date on the section of quilt. This post started as an attempt to find Ward Bathrick mentioned in the social column of local newspapers and has become a post about getting around in the early 20th century.
Although cars were just becoming popular in 1902, most folks still used horses to get around or the very popular bicycle, I learned something from this paper from 1902; people of that era referred to a bicycle as simply as “wheel”. See the entries below for three examples from the same article.
First, a fun post from a place south and west of our area about someone getting a new car:
“There were great doings in the village of Walton one day last week. One of its prominent citizens purchased a fifteen hundred dollar horseless carriage in Philadelphia, and after it reached its destination and was unloaded from the cars, because of some defect in the machinery it could not be put in motion and the disappointed owner finally hitched his horses to it and drove to his home. His admiring friends accompanied him with drums, flags, horns, etc., and made the town lively for a while.”
Elizaville (the bit I had been searching for initially)
“Ward Bathrick and wife spent Saturday and Sunday with her sister, who is quite ill at Staatsburgh.”
Jackson Corners
“A few days ago Silas Lawrence lost a bag of corn between Nelson Bathrick’s and Pine Plains. Mr. Lawrence would be greatly pleased if the finder would notify him. His initials were on the bag.
The boys in this place have been getting their wheels out and are taking some lively spins.
James R. Wilbur went to Pine Plains one day last week on his wheel.
Harry H. Bathrick has a new wheel.”
The Pine Plains Register and countless other newspapers from NY State can be searched and viewed at Old Fulton Post Card.
Click to Enlarge
Red Hook children, c. 1890: Unknown girl on left, Leland 1874 – 1918 and Minnie Curtis 1880 – 1967 with their cousin Martha Fraleigh b. 1887. This image is part of my collection.
20 Thursday Oct 2011
Posted in Fiber Arts
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A 70″x80″ piece of family and local history was recently passed down to me from a great-aunt who had it passed down to her from her mother. It doesn’t have a name, thought had been calling it “the textile”. On doing some initial research, it appears to be a sort of “signature” quilt. Other names for such a piece are “album” or “autograph” quilt. Names I recognized from my family tree appear on it as well as those of a great many other local folks. I do not know how or why it was created, or even if it was made all at once or over time.
Signature (or Autograph) Quilt: a quilt made from blocks which have been signed on individual blocks. May be made as a friendship quilt by friends and family of the owner, or as a fund raiser. Signature quilts were a popular fund raiser by the Red Cross and some church groups in the early part of the 20th century.
It’s constructed of muslin and embroidery thread and is unfinished–both in the sense that it has not been made into a quilt and that the edges are raw. The work is simple and in some squares rahter crude, but it is still something I treasure. Before stowing it carefully in an acid-free archive box, I photographed each of the 42 panels and transcribed the names that appear on each. Almost all of the panels are different, though most of the handwriting is in the same two or three hands, so I’m not sure it qualifies as a “signature” quilt by strict definition of the word.
The area in which the textile was made was surely around where my family lived in the Town of Milan, NY. Some names on it appear to be from the towns of Red Hook, Rhinebeck, Pine Plains, and Milan, in Dutchess County, NY and Gallatin and Livingston in Columbia County, NY. Below is panel #33 which is the only panel to have something other than a name written on it: the year 1903. On looking through the census for 1900 and 1910 I have found many of the same names right where they should be. I am currently researching all of the names on the quilt and plan to publish a book or booklet about the piece in the future.
At left, click to enlarge, is Panel 6 – 3 (#33 of 42)
Text: 1903, Herald Coons, Willis Bathrick, Harm Bathrick, Ward Bathrick, Mrs. Ward Bathrick, Willie Baker, Lulu Bathrick. Red, pink, yellow, grey and white embroidery: child, Greek helmet, heart-shap
19 Wednesday Oct 2011
Posted in 19th Century Photos
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This little guy is the size of a standard old-style stamp, scanned here quite large so you don’t need to squint. You can click to enlarge it, as well.
It’s from a late 19th/early 20th century photo album owned by my family. Only some of the images were labeled, and though we have Smiths in the family and in this album, I’m not sure where H. W. Smith fits in. He may have been a distant cousin of that family. The photo gallery which made the print is C. H. Gallup in Poughkeepsie. It’s a strange little thing, like a 19th century version of NeoPrint, traded with friends and pasted into albums and on business cards etc.
“…in 1887, two patents were issued for “stamp portrait apparatus,” first to Henry Kuhn, later to Genelli, both of St. Louis, Mo. They both copied a previously taken image into multiple stamp-sized reproductions on perforated, gummed photo paper. These are the earliest true photo stamps. Their popularity persisted until the early 20th century. Little is known about the makers of photo stamps in the U.S., even less for those overseas. Unless the maker is identified on the stamp, it is hard to determine even in what country the stamp was made.”
– Arthur H. Groten, M.D
Mr. Groten’s full article, linked to in this post, also has a page of examples of various stamp-type photos and a good, brief run-down of the history of photographic printing processes leading up to stamp portraits. It also mentions photos with stamps on the back from the Civil War era which I believe I have one or two in my collections somewhere, but never knew what the stamp meant! Neat. I’ll have to go through and see if I can find one again.