City Directories, Take a Closer Look

One of the amazing resources that we have here at the library is our collection of city directories, ranging from 1841-1968. In my opinion the directories are often under appreciated. Yes, they provide addresses for the residents and businesses of Schenectady, but if you take a closer look, they can tell us so much more about Schenectady than that.

The way I see it, the directories serve as a time capsule for a year of Schenectady history. They provide us with advertisements of local businesses, “The newest styles first, the best styles always, the Wallace Co.” in 1911 or “When you need protection go to Marcus Wing, Room 5 Ellis Building” in 1909 or “Subscribe for the Schenectady Gazette, Terms: $1.00 a Year” in 1885.

Each entry provides the full name of a resident and his/her occupation and place of employment. This means that the directories provide us with a great source of raw data, which can be used in a number of ways. We can look at last names in particular neighborhoods to determine ethnic majorities and how they change over time. We can also look at the kinds of occupations listed and how they change. We could also determine how many people employed in the city actually lived in the city itself. You can also use the directory to see how the city government was organized through the years, what departments it was divided into.

In a chat with Frank Taormina about the usefulness of the directories he pointed out that you can use the directories to establish connections between people. By seeing where people lived in relation to one another, and in a sense recreating the neighborhoods in which people lived, you can see how close people were. Often it is where people lived which lead to marriages and business partnerships.

So next time you are in the library doing some research, make sure you look in the city directories and they might give you some interesting pieces of information that you wouldn’t otherwise know.

When it is Spring in the Stockade, One Word Comes to Mind: Flooding

Spring may be just around the corner for us here in Schenectady, and in the Stockade that means one thing for sure, flooding. Every year, as the snow and ice melt on the Mohawk, the river levels rise and parts of the Stockade district are flooded. However, unlike the earthquakes that have just hit Japan and the tsunami in Hawaii, the flooding of the Mohawk is a predictable result to the end of winter.



The flood of 1914, location unknown

Here in the library the flooding of the Mohawk is well documented with newspaper clippings and photographs, including information that goes back as far as the 19^th century. In 1832 a man named Louis John Barhydt was caught unprepared by the rising river and was forced to climb a tree, from which he was later rescued. The newspapers reported the worst flood in Schenectady’s history with two killed, hundreds evacuated and bridges destroyed by the end of March, 1914. In March of 1936 the water level of the Mohawk rose 17 feet above normal. Even my mother has stories of her grandmother refusing to evacuate her house on North Street because she lived on the second floor. She wasn’t afraid of a little water, and she had plenty of food, so she was staying put! That would have been in the 1960s and 1970s.



The ice on the Binnekill,
from the Grems-Doolittle library



If you are interested in learning more about the history of flooding in the Stockade, or if you would like to share your stories and pictures with us, come down to the Grems-Doolittle library and have a look through our files and photos. But be warned, if you come in March, you might want to bring some waders!

Sorting through the collection, one box at a time

In past blogs I have been talking about interesting items that have been coming out of our collection. As much as I would like to say every day at the library is full of discovery and excitement, often days go by without too much excitement. That is not to say that our projects and work is not important. Today I found myself finishing up a project. I had been organizing a group of documents had been donated, having a connection to some Schenectady residents who were here in the 1860s. Organized is actually a dangerous word to be used in an archival situation because best practice argues that if a collection was compiled by one person, the papers should remain the order in which they were left. The idea is that the organization tells just as much about how the original owner was using and thinking about the papers as what is actually written on the papers themselves. However, in my case with this collection was not really compiled by one person, and I was not rearranging them.

What I was doing, and what is usually done with any archival collection donated to the society, was putting the documents into acid free folders, unfolding any sheets which were folded. At the same time, I was compiling a list of what the documents were about, their dates and who was mentioned. This information, along with quantities and folder numbers was then used to create a box list. Once the documents have been re-housed in acid free folders and those folders placed in an archival box it was time to create a finding aid, the stage I found myself at today.

Finding aids are an essential part of the archival system at Grems-Doolittle, for it is the finding aids that tell us what the collection is about. Finding aids are not a listing of what documents are in a collection, but rather a summary of the kinds of documents, the types of documents, the dates of these documents and their quantity. All of this information and more is contained in what is known as the scope note. Additionally, background information about the collection, including biographical information about the compiler or collector or subjects is also included in the finding aid. Once the finding aid is completed, it and a box list are filed upstairs and the collection can be returned to the basement. And now if someone wants to look at a particular part of that collection we are more prepared to help them access what they want and understand the greater context in which it sits.

A day in the life of a library volunteer: Carol Lewis

I mentioned in an earlier blog that the Grems-Doolittle library is bolstered by the efforts of our many dedicated volunteers. Carol is one such volunteer. Very knowledgeable about both the history of Schenectady and the library collections, she is one of the best people to talk to when you are doing research in the library or just had an obscure question you need answered. Having always enjoyed history and having been brought up in a historical area, she always wanted to spend time at the Historical Society, but only found the time after retiring in 2000. By 2003 she was serving on the Historical Society Board as a trustee and is currently in her third term.

When I asked Carol what volunteer projects she enjoys working on the most, she explained that there are aspects of each project which she finds fun and interesting. One of Carol’s particular interests is the Erie Canal, a topic which is widely covered in the library’s collections. Besides researching the Canal, Carol is also involved in many ongoing projects with the library, including organizing the ever growing photograph collection. This often entails identifying buildings and people, and sometimes even photographers. Carol is also largely involved in the cataloguing of new books and other library materials as they come to us. She sits at her typewriter creating cards for our card catalogue, and inputting catalogue information into our digital database. Carol was one of the few volunteers involved in an inventory of the library conducted in 2009, a task I am sure she hopes never to have to repeat.

Rediscovering our own collections, a box at a time

Ideas of archival best practice have changed quite a bit in the last fifteen years or so and occasionally as we are trying to keep our records up to date we find things that have been forgotten for a while. Just a few weeks ago, while looking for something in our basement, several shoeboxes of documents were found, which are from the early 18^th century. Many of these documents are linked to Reyer Schermerhorn and quite a few of them are in Dutch. While it is unfortunate that we were unaware of these documents existence, the good news is that they are being looked at in more detail now, re-boxed and listed.  Then they will be available for interested researchers.

There are some challenges to such a find though, for example where did these documents come from and what is their story. Luckily for this discovery we were able to trace the documents back to their donation and Katherine was able to contact the donor and gain more information about how they came to us.

Of course there are other challenges to the collection. Old documents that have been folded for a few hundred years don’t always appreciate being unfolded. The fact that so many of the documents are not in a language that any of us can actually read is yet another challenge. But don’t think we will let that stop us, it may take us a while, but we will get a better understanding of these documents in time.

John and Jane Doe- unidentified citizens of Schenectady's past

Recently in the mail the library received the donation of two portraits of ladies, from the middle to late 19^th century. The donor did not know who the women were and the only way she linked them to Schenectady was through their frames, which were from Walter E. and Talbot Studio, 505 State St. Schenectady NY. After we had accessioned the photos to our collection, I was instructed to add them to our unidentified person photo file.

In many ways the whole idea of an unidentified people file intrigued me. I guess part of me finds in a bit romantic to see old black and white photographs of people I don’t know, from a time long past. Part of me still wants to invent stories about who they were and what kind of lives they led.  And on another level, I was also sad that we do not have any idea who these women are. Not too long ago I was collecting and scanning old family photos that my grandparents had, in an attempt to preserve the pictures and remember who they were of. From that perspective it made me sad to think that these two women may never be united with members of their family, and there might be someone wondering what great-great-aunt Joyce looked like, who will never know that they have her nose.

However, as the member of archival staff, unidentified people create a problem. Who is going to be able to identify these people if family and friends are long gone? And in the case that they can’t be identified, should we just give them up as lost members of our heritage and forget about them or can we still learn something about them without knowing who they were?

My answer to that question, given my anthropological and archaeological background is yes, we can still learn from John and Jane Doe. In some ways, being focused on history and genealogy at the library, I think we often forget how much about the past and about people can be learned without ever knowing who the person was. We can interpret their poses, hair and clothing styles, and learn about the culture from which they came. Photographs are particularly interesting because they show how a person wanted to be represented. The person being photographed may be in his or her best clothes. Are they trying to impress those who will be seeing the picture with their elegance and poise? Or maybe he is wearing his work clothes and not treating the picture as anything particularly special, in which case, why not? Are people pictured alone or together?  Are they together because an image of the family unit was more important or simply because they could not afford for everyone to have individual photos taken? If we look at a larger picture of the past we can still learn a lot more about people, instead of focusing on finding their identity and leaving it at that.

An Exciting Upcoming Event

At the Grems-Doolittle we like to keep things fresh and exciting. And that is why we have planned a book discussion for My name is Mary Sutter, this year’s one county one book selection. I haven’t started reading it yet myself, but the novel focuses on a female doctor in Albany New York at the beginning of the Civil War. As the story moves,  Mary ends up in Washington D.C. and we encounter the realities of the war through her eyes as a physician and as a woman.

Several copies of this book are available through the Schenectady County Library so start reading! The discussion will be held at the Grems-Doolittle library, on 32 Washington Ave, Schenectady on Saturday March 26^th. We are scheduled to begin at 1pm and will probably wrap things up around 3pm. If you are interested in attending please contact us at the library, either by calling us at 374-0263 or emailing the librarian at librarian@schist.org.

We look forward to seeing you then and hearing your perspective on the book!

And also, just as an announcement: If you didn’t already know, we have extended our hours on Thursday nights until 8pm. So if you are free on a Thursday night, stop by the historical society for a tour of the museum or a look through the library.