Rotterdam Sesquicentennial Parade

Rotterdam and Glenville have an almost 200 year old rivalry. This rivalry was based on which town was officially created first. Both towns broke off from Schenectady in 1820, but there is no official record as to the exact date. This rivalry was stoked during a match of tug of war over the Mohawk during the sesquicentennial (150 year) anniversary for both towns in 1970. Glenville won, but accusations of cheating have blemished their mighty feat of strength (read more about this match in a recent Gazette article by Stephen Williams: https://dailygazette.com/article/2018/05/21/glenville-and-rotterdam-to-tug-it-out).

While Rotterdam was left dripping and injured (2 Rotterdam residents were treated for rope burn and one for a broken wrist) we like to think that they had some other successes, such as their celebration of facial hair (read more in a previous blog post: http://gremsdoolittlelibrary.blogspot.com/2015/11/brothers-of-brush-and-sisters-of-belle.html) and their Sesquicentennial Parade).

The parade was assembled at Mohonasen High and went down a 2 mile stretch of Curry Road to Westcott Road and disassembled at the former Army Depot. The Gazette estimated that around 4,000 people lined up to participate in the parade, including bands, dancers, people on floats and others.  A wide variety of organizations throughout Schenectady County were represented such as the Rotterdam Blue Jays, Rotterdam Republican Club,  the Schenectady "Electric City" Chorus, General Electric, Freihofers, and more.

We recently received a donation of photos of the parade that show the parade in all it's glory with creative floats, sharp looking marching bands, and cool vintage cars. Check some of them out below:

The Rotterdam Republican Club won an award for "Most Beautiful Float".

The Legacy of the Mystic Order of the True Blues

Illustration of the Second Annual Carnival of the True Blues published in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper. This illustration features King Neptune's float, the human steam engine, a giraffe, along with other attractions in the parade. Image from the Grems-Doolittle Library photograph collection.

Schenectady has historically been the recipient of some less than favorable reviews. Dating back to 1810, Dewitt Clinton wrote in his diary that “Schenectady, although dignified with the name of a city, does little business…it does not appear pleasing.” While he was still a student at Union College, Jonathan Pearson wrote that Schenectady was a city “only fit for hogs and Dutchmen.” Apparently Pearson’s opinion on both Schenectady and the Dutch would soon change. He learned to read Dutch, wrote extensively about Schenectady’s history, and lived in Schenectady until his death in 1887, so he must have found something about Schenectady that he liked. Along with the disparaging of Schenectady comes a history of people willing promote the city. Similar to the website The Schenectady Project or @schenectadydoesn’tsuck on Instagram, The Mystic Order of the True Blues was established to promote business and civic pride in Schenectady.

Flier for the first chartered meeting of the True Blues. President William J. Van Horne would be elected mayor of Schenectady in 1871 and was the first person in Schenectady to own a telephone. Image from the Grems-Doolittle Library Collection.

Formed in 1867, the True Blues promoted Schenectady through grand, lavish parades. The second parade of the True Blues took place on September 3, 1868 and it attracted 20,000 visitors to Schenectady. Newspaper reports described knights in period garb, people dressed as King Lear, Hamlet and Ophelia, a division of Zouaves from the War of 1812 who “won continued applause by their precise military movements,” and an animal section which contained a baby elephant named Ho-Olah, bears and other beasts. The True Blues also lampooned many Schenectady institutions. There were caricatures of Postmaster John Veeder, and one of the Schenectady Daily Union Editor Welton Stanford who was caricatured as “one who tried to rid two horses at one time, - one horse marked ‘Republican’ and the other ‘Democrat’.” The music was a highlight of the parade, especially Sullivan’s marching band from Troy. According to former Schenectady County Historian Larry Hart, Sullivan’s band was “regally uniformed and led by a giant drum major, which got the greatest applause along the route.”

Model of King Neptune's float from the second True Blues parade. From the Schenectady History Museum. 

A fictitious history and an illustration of the True Blues was published in an issue of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper after the parade. It states that “Sixteen thousand years ago, according to the tradition of Munchausen, the valley of the Mohawk was an extensive and magnificent lake. The hills which enclose the vast level, now luxuriant with the toil of the honest husbandman, were dotted with castles, palaces, and prisons, the former inhabited by the founders of the True Blues and the latter by degenerate and unworthy Sons of Malta.” This account goes on to say that the lake dried up leaving nothing but a few seeds of broomcorn. The ancestors of the True Blues cultivated this crop in order to send brooms around the world, but an “unworthy scion of a noble sire” made whisky from the harvest and emigrated to Ireland to form the Free Masons while.

Ticket to the Grand Carnival of the Mysterious True Blues. Image from the Grems-Doolittle Library Collection.

 In 1869 the True Blues decided to hold a carnival at the Schenectady’s first armory. The armory had been completed in 1868 and the True Blues organized the “Grand Carnival and Bazaar” in order to celebrate its opening. To promote the week-long bazaar, the True Blues circulated a newsletter called The True Blue Bazaar. The newsletter contained humorous poems, jokes, cartoons, lists of contributors to the bazaar and advertisements for local businesses. One of my favorite jokes comes from the January 30^th issue, “When are skipping lambs like library volumes? When they are boundin’ sheep.”

Advertisements of attractions at the
Grand Carnival and Bazaar
from the February 8, 1869 issue
 of the "True Blue Bazaar."
Image from the Grems-Doolittle
Library Collection. 

 

The list of contributors in these newsletters feature some prominent residents of New York and Schenectady including, former New York State Governor John T. Hoffman, several members of the 83^rd Regiment of Volunteers, H.S. Barney of Barney’s department store fame and former Albany Mayor Michael Nolan. The bazaar boasted a wide variety of activities, music, portraits, poultry shows, a five foot cucumber and a velocipede. I could list more, but as the Albany Express newspaper wrote, “no description could do it justice.” The carnival cost $4,000 to run, a considerable amount in 1869, but the True Blues managed to raise $1,000 for charity.

A final parade took place on September 8, 1870 and according to the Daily Star it drew 30,000 visitors to Schenectady from. Special trains ran from major cities in New York and thirteen coaches ran from Albany loaded with people wanting to see the parade. Bands from Schenectady, New York, Troy and Poughkeepsie were invited to march alongside horse-drawn floats, armored knights and a model of the Cardiff Giant.

The last meeting of the True Blues occurred on October 2^nd 1871 and King’s Cornet Band played “lively music to salute a job well done.” In addition to promoting the city, the parades and bazaars of the True Blues provided a much needed distraction from the horrors of the  Civil War and  Lincoln's assassination for the residents of Schenectady.

Labor Day in Schenectady

A man lifts a banner championing the eight-hour movement in this drawing from the Salt Lake Herald dated September 3, 1906. A caption below the drawing simply reads, "His Day and His Flag." Image from www.loc.gov. 

"Labor Day is about the most correctly named holiday we have, as most people work harder when taking a holiday than they do at their every day occupations."
- Quaker Street Review, Thursday, September 16, 1897.

The residents of Schenectady County have celebrated Labor Day for more than 125 years. Although the holiday has its origin in the struggles that labor unions undertook on behalf of American workers, for many of us, it's simply a nice long weekend -- a last chance to enjoy the summer before fall settles in. Such a conception of Labor Day is certainly not new; it seems to have been a part of the holiday's celebrations from the beginning.

The first Labor Day holiday was celebrated on September 5, 1882, in New York City, and was planned by the city's Central Labor Union. In 1884, the Central Labor Union urged unions in other locales to celebrate a "workingmen's holiday" on the first Monday in September. New York was among the first few states to adopt Labor Day as an official state holiday in 1887. Many states followed suit over the course of the next few years, and in 1894, the United States designated Labor Day a national holiday.

Newspaper rendering of first Labor Day parade in New York City in 1882. Image from www.wikipedia.org. 

Another labor holiday that has largely failed to take hold in the United States -- although the origins of the holiday are American -- is May Day (now also known as International Workers' Day), celebrated on May 1. In October 1884, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions unanimously decided at a convention to set May 1, 1886, as the date by which an eight-hour work day would become standard. On May 1, 1886, a general strike and demonstrations were held in support of the eight-hour day movement, which championed eight hours for work, eight hours for sleep, and eight hours for recreation for workers. An international meeting of Socialists in 1889 decided to encourage solidarity with the struggle for the eight-hour day by making May 1 an international labor day. As May Day developed as a holiday associated with radical labor unions, anarchists, and socialists -- as well as with the commemoration of the 1886 Haymarket Tragedy in Chicago -- trade unions advocated the September date for Labor Day perhaps in part to distance themselves from the radical political associations of May Day.

On New York State's first official Labor Day in 1887, the Albany Evening Journal reported, "the celebration has been taken in charge by the various labor organizations of respective localities and while the primary ideas of the day, recreation and rest, are emphasized, at the same time the occasion will be taken to show the numerical strength of organized labor throughout the state."

The organizers of the 1911 Labor Day celebration in Schenectady, as they appeared in the Schenectady Gazette. Left to right: J.T. McConville, Alexander Golden, E. Dwelly, P.J. Hemmerling, Fred LaCrosse, A.W. Slover, L.J. Humpf, Michael Kennedy.  All were members of the Schenectady Labor Temple Association. Image from www.fultonhistory.com. 

In Schenectady, during the late 1800s and early 1900s, many Labor Day celebrations were organized by the Schenectady Labor Temple Association and the Schenectady Trades Assembly. These celebrations often featured a parade, followed by picnics and other festivities. A number of groups marched in the 1900 parade, including the Schenectady Police, the Citizens Corps Band, and numerous trade unions such as the Blacksmith Helpers, the Iron and Brass Moulders, the Journeyman Tailors, the Musicians Protective Union, and the Tip and Sheet Metal Workers. In 1911, the Labor Temple Association organized a parade that marched from the Trades Assembly Hall on State Street, up State Street, around Crescent Park (now Veterans Park), to Washington Avenue and across the dike to Glenotia Park in Scotia for a general celebration, picnic, and field day.

Other organizations, including fraternal organizations and churches, also sponsored Labor Day commemorations or celebrations in Schenectady. Some were explicitly connected with the concept of labor, such as a special sermon on "The Dignity of Labor" delivered at the Second Reformed Church in 1911. Others celebrated with relaxation, sports, and coming together as a community. In Schenectady during the late 19th and early 20 century, Labor Day celebrations included baseball, basketball, and croquet games, picnics, hot-air balloon rides, wrestling matches, track meets and field days, golf and bowling tournaments, clambakes, fireworks, concerts and dances, and other amusements. Newspaper notices on the society pages of area newspapers show that many Schenectadians used the Labor Day holiday as an opportunity to visit family and friends, go on camping trips or pleasure trips, or to host visiting relatives.

In the early years of the twentieth century, as now, businesses used the Labor Day holiday as a focus for advertisements, sales, and promotions. This 1911 advertisement for the New York Central railroad promoted Labor Day excursions to Niagara Falls, and appeared in the Schenectady Gazette. Image from www.fultonhistory.com.

For some local people, Labor Day remains a celebration of the laborer and the contributions of labor unions. Louis Altieri of Schenectady was quoted in a 2001 Daily Gazette article as saying, "Labor Day is very important to me. It gives me a chance to reflect on all the sacrifices people had to go through in the labor movement to achieve benefits. I hope people look at Labor Day as a day of thanksgiving for what people have done."

Celebrating the End of World War II: V-J Day in Schenectady

GE workers piled onto the back of a company truck to join a parade down State Street on the evening of August 14, 1945. The banner behind the workers reads "Ring the victory bell! Three down and none to go." Photograph from Grems-Doolittle Library Photograph Collection.

On the evening of Tuesday, August 14, at 7:00 p.m., the news of Japan's surrender and the end of World War II hit Schenectady. Immediately following the announcement, the General Electric plant was closed. Schenectadians flooded into the streets, cheering, laughing, crying, and celebrating the end of the war. That evening, and the following day on August 15, would later be known as Victory Over Japan Day (or V-J Day). Local residents commemorated the end of the war in many ways -- from solemn prayer in local religious institutions to swinging from light poles to kissing in the streets. Below are a few photographs that illustrate the city's celebration of the end of the war.

Servicemen scoop up young women on the streets in celebration of the end of the war. Photograph from Grems-Doolittle Library Photograph Collection.

When informed of the end of the war, GE worker A.W. Kernaghan let out a celebratory shout while sitting astride a turbine component. Photograph from Grems-Doolittle Library Photograph Collection.

Local residents thronged to State Street for a parade on the evening of August 14, 1945. Photograph from Grems-Doolittle Library Photograph Collection.

Schenectadians at the First Methodist Church's service of thanks. These services began the evening of August 14, 1945, and were held the following day on the hour every hour from 10:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Thanksgiving services in honor of the war's end were held at a number of local religious institutions, including St. John the Evangelist Church, St. George's Church, All Souls Unitarian Church, Congregation Agudat Achim, and Cavalry Bapist Church. Photograph from Grems-Doolittle Library Photograph Collection.

Three Chinese-born residents of Schenectady, (left to right) Hong Chang, Fred Wong, and Paul Wong, smile and give the Victory salute. One of the men was quoted by the Gazette as saying, "We feel very happy, for this means so much to the Chinese people." Both Hong Chang and Fred Wong had wives and children in occupied China during the war. Photograph from Grems-Doolittle Library Photograph Collection. 

"We Too Have Served," reads the banner on the Army Depot float in the State Street parade on August 14, 1945. Photograph from Grems-Doolittle Library Photograph Collection. 

Celebrating servicemen participate in an impromptu parade on State Street on the evening of August 14, 1945. Photograph from Grems-Doolittle Library Photograph Collection.