Local Abolitionist Isaac Groot Duryee

Isaac Groot Duryee in 1860. Image from Grems-Doolittle Library Photograph Collection. 

Isaac Groot Duryee (sometimes spelled Duryea) was born in Glenville in 1810 to William Duryee and Sarah Groot. As a young man, he first worked as a grocery clerk in Schenectady, then established his own grocery business. Duryee was attracted to religion during a revival held in the city in 1832. Following the revival, he became a member of the First Reformed Church.

As a young man, Duryee's devotion to the abolitionist cause became apparent. By the mid-1830s, he was contributing to the American Anti-Slavery Society. During his time as a student at Union College, from which he graduated in 1838, Duryee co-founded an Anti-Slavery Society at the college in 1836, and co-founded the Anti-Slavery Society of the City of Schenectady  in 1838. He also helped to found the first African-American church in Schenectady, known as the African Church (now the Duryee Memorial AME Zion Church), in 1837. As President of the Union College Anti-Slavery Society, Duryee wrote that the group would "cease not in every proper way to vindicate [slaves'] cause until their wrongs shall have been redressed and the last vestige of slavery be wiped from our beloved republic." In addition to his public agitation for the freedom of slaves and the rights of African-Americans, his granddaughter, Ruth M. Duryee, wrote in 1937 for a Union College alumni record that Duryee was active with the Underground Railroad, helping “many an escaping negro from Schenectady to the next stop, with the negro lying flat under hay in the back of the wagon.”

Present location of the Duryee Memorial A.M.E. Zion Church at 307 Hulett Street in Schenectady. The church is named on honor of Isaac Groot Duryee, who helped to establish the church's first building on Jay Street. August 2011 image obtained via Google Maps. 

In 1837, Duryee wrote to the Schenectady Cabinet about Schenectady's African-American community. He decried the racism that members of the community faced, writing that African-American Schenectadians were "represented as a mass of ignorant, slothful, miserable paupers - unable and unwilling to provide for themselves, and almost wholly incapable of moral and intellectual improvement." In contrast, Duryee wrote of the contributions that African-Americans made locally -- financially through their taxes to the public coffers, as well as in the works of African-American temperance and mutual relief societies, and in organizing ably to create a school and church. Duryee also noted that 13 of the 39 former slaves in the community had had to purchase their freedom. In comparison to these efforts, Duryee wrote, "we may safely challenge the [white] community to produce a like example of industry, perseverance, and generosity."

On the subject of education, Duryee remarked that "the cause of education among the people of colour has never received the least support from the school fund. They have paid their full proportion of taxes . .. but [those funds] have all been appropriated for the education of other children. Perhaps it will be said, that coloured children stand as good a chance as white children. It is not so. The doors of our public school are closed against the former, while they are open to the latter -- thereby excluding colored children even from the opportunity of receiving any advantage of the public fund." Duryee insisted that, barring integration of Schenectady's schools, African-Americans at the very least had a right to money from the public funds -- which they had contributed to -- to support a school their children could attend. "A greater outrage was never committed upon the rights of the poor," Duryee wrote in the conclusion of his letter.

Duryee left Schenectady for a period of fourteen years after graduating from Union College in 1838. He graduated from Andover Theological Seminary in 1841 and married Lydia Auger Budington in 1842, shortly before he became ordained as a minister. He served Reformed Church congregations in Fallsburg and Glenham before returning to Schenectady to serve as the first pastor of the Second Reformed Church, from 1852 to 1858. During his years in Schenectady, he continued to support rights and dignity for African-Americans in Schenectady. In 1854, he was selected as one of eight commissioners to serve of Schenectady's first Board of Education.

The Second Reformed Church was, during Duryee's tenure as pastor there, in this church building at the corner of Jay and Liberty Streets. Image from Grems-Doolittle Library Photograph Collection. 

Duryee also spoke up among his fellows in the Reformed Church to denounce the institution of slavery. In a meeting of the Reformed Church General Synod in 1855, ministers met to discuss whether to form an ecclesiastical relationship with a North Carolina Classis of the German Reformed Church. During discussion of the resolution, Isaac Duryee objected to receiving the North Carolina Classis because, in his view, owning slaves was a sin. "The question of slavery is the great question of this nation," Duryee said in remarks printed in the New York Daily Tribune, "and when the line is to be drawn I shall not be slow to show which side I am on. Sir, I am on the side of Liberty - Freedom . . . I can say that my inmost soul shrinks from extending the fellowship of our church to slaveholding churches as I shrink from the touch of the torpedo." The Tribune praised Duryee's courage in standing firmly against slavery, given, as they put it, that "the predominant feeling in the Church has been adverse to talking any stand with reference to the great reforms of the day."

In 1859, Duryee again left Schenectady to serve a congregation in Montgomery County. From 1862 to 1865, he served as a chaplain to the 81st New York State Volunteers during the Civil War. Duryee served with that regiment through the war, but became sick during the war and never fully recovered after his return to Schenectady. He died on February 8, 1866, at age 55, leaving his wife and eight children. He is buried in Vale Cemetery. An obituary published in the Schenectady Republican praised his "large experience," his "warm heart," and his "unselfish and elevated purposes." Duryee "was a great friend of the colored race," wrote Edward Corwin in A Manual of the Reformed Church in America in 1902. "He was an Abolitionist and not afraid to speak when it was yet unpopular to advocate the rights of a common humanity for all."

"First in Schenectady to Serve You Hot Dogs:" The New Way Lunch

Local photographer John Papp captured this image of the New Way Lunch in October 1966, soon before the building was demolished and a new building was constructed. Image from John Papp Photograph Collection. 

For over half a century, a lunch spot on Albany Street operated by the Stathis family served up hot dogs to Schenectady's residents and visitors. According to John E. Stathis, son of the founder of New Way Lunch and the business' proprietor from the late 1940s through the mid-1970s, the New Way Lunch was established in 1919 by his father, Evangel Stathis, who immigrated to Schenectady from Greece.

This photograph shows the process of constructing the new New Way Lunch building at 705 Albany Street in Schenectady in December 1966. Image from John Papp Photograph Collection. 

The younger Stathis claimed that the New Way Lunch was the first business to serve hot dogs in the city of Schenectady, and the first to serve them with a special secret sauce. "My father-in-law glorified the hot dog," said Irene Stathis, wife of John E. Stathis, in a 1967 newspaper interview. "He became famous for his sauce. It was his own recipe and he handed it down to John. John is the only one who makes the sauce. He puts the ingredients in a bag and shakes them up. It's all very secret. But the one thing that is not secret is that the hot dog is king here."

Portion of an advertisement for the New Way Lunch in a 1957 Schenectady Gazette. The advertisement touts the business' hot dogs, meat sauce, and coffee. To promote their anniversary, New Way Lunch offered hot dogs for sale at their 1919 price of 5 cents each. Image obtained via www.fultonhistory.com. 

The New Way Lunch first appears in the 1920 city directory, at 704 Albany Street, with Evangel Stathis listed as the proprietor. The business soon moved to 710 Albany Street, where it remained for a number of years until relocating to 705 Albany Street around 1942. The New Way Lunch is not be be confused with Newest Lunch, which operated nearby on the same block of Albany Street; the Newest Lunch opened just a few years after the New Way Lunch went into business.

These two images show the interior of the rebuilt New Way Lunch building soon after in opened in 1967. The seating capacity of the new building was nearly double of their prior building. Image from John Papp Photograph Collection.  

During the 1920s and 1930s, New Way Lunch had two locations in Schenectady. New Way Lunch, the Albany Street business, was operated by Evangel Stathis, while New Way Lunch #2, at 3 South Centre Street (now Broadway), was operated by his brother, Charles Stathis, and Charles' son Peter. In 1947, Evangel's son John assumed ownership of the business, and continued to run it until 1973. In 1973, the business was sold to Henry McCadden, Sr., who advertised the business as Hank's New Way Lunch. McCadden operated the New Way Lunch for several years before changing the business to the New Way Grocery and Deli in the early 1980s.

"Beat Inflation ... Eat at ... Hank's New Way Lunch," reads this 1974 advertisement that appeared in the Schenectady Gazette. After running the New Way Lunch as a family business for over 50 years, the Stathis family sold the business to Henry McCadden in 1973. Image obtained via www.fultonhistory.com. 

In addition to selling hot dogs in the restaurant, the New Way Lunch also catered parties and took orders for special events, providing hundreds of hot dogs and gallons of their secret sauce. At least once, the business conducted a hot dog eating contest. "One man ate 28 and we almost carried him out," Irene Stathis remembered. From time to time, John Stathis would celebrate anniversaries of the New Way Lunch by offering hot dogs for sale at their 1919 price - only 5 cents each.

A Waterway Gone Underground: Schenectady's Cowhorn Creek

Local youths gather to watch workers pipe Cowhorn Creek, southeast of the present-day intersection of State Street and Broadway, in this photograph circa 1896. Photograph from Grems-Doolittle Library Photograph Collection.

When we speak of Schenectady County waterways, the first that spring to mind are the Mohawk River and the Erie Canal. But there are also a number of streams that flow -- and sometimes trickle -- throughout Schenectady County. In the city itself, a number of creeks were piped during the period of Schenectady's industrialization and large-scale expansion at the turn of the twentieth century. This is the case with Schenectady's Cowhorn Creek, which flowed out of Iroquois Lake in Central Park, through downtown Schenectady, and into Mill Creek, before emptying into the Mohawk River.

In this 1698 map of Schenectady by Wolfgang Roemer, reprinted and annotated in Susan Staffa's Colonial Maps of Schenectady, shows Mill Creek/Cowhorn Creek flowing off of the Binnekill south of present-day State Street.

The earliest European settlers used the area's creeks to power mills. A 1698 map of the settlement at Schenectady shows a mill on the creek, very near a brewhouse constructed on the north side of the creek. As Schenectady expanded and its population grew, creeks that ran through the city became increasingly polluted by garbage and waste and presented a public health concern. Robert V. Wells, in his book Facing the "King of Terrors:" Death and Society in An American Community, 1750-1990, refers to the creeks that ran through the city as being "little better than open sewers" at the close of the nineteenth century. Initially, the city tried to make property owners along Cowhorn Creek responsible for keeping the creek clean, before taking responsibility for piping and covering Cowhorn Creek in 1896.

Cowhorn Creek comes to the surface inside scenic Vale Cemetery, as seen in this photograph by Paula Lemire in 2013. A portion of Cowhorn Creek was dammed to create a pond in the cemetery. Image obtained from http://gardenalley.net/vale.html.

Today, the Cowhorn Creek still flows, but it flows in pipes underground, beneath businesses on State Street. Cowhorn Creek does make an above-ground appearance in Vale Cemetery, where it enhances the beauty of this historic cemetery. Visit our Library or send an email to our Librarian to find other resources to explore the history of Schenectady County's waterways.

The Radical Life and Tragic Decline of Warren Starr Van Valkenburgh

Image of front page of the anarchist newspaper Road to Freedom while under the editorship of Warren Starr Van Valkenburgh. 

Schenectady’s association with radical politics in the first quarter of the twentieth century is perhaps most associated with George Lunn, Schenectady’s first and only Socialist mayor. Another of Schenectady’s radicals of the period, Warren Starr Van Valkenburgh, is much less well known. A Socialist-turned-anarchist, critic of Lunn, and friend of the famous anarchist Emma Goldman, Van Valkenburgh experienced his political awakening in Schenectady and brought his perspective about local events to a broader audience through articles in Goldman’s magazine, Mother Earth. After relocating to the New York City area, Van Valkenburgh achieved some prominence as the editor of Road to Freedom, the most prominent anarchist periodical of the 1920s. However, the last ten years of Van Valkenburgh’s life were a struggle, marred by spotty employment and heavy drinking. This article serves as but a scant sketch of the life of a man whose personal history intersected with the history of Schenectady for about a decade.

Warren Starr Van Valkenburgh was born in 1884 in Albany. Van Valkenburgh first appears in the 1909 city directory, living at 10 Duane Avenue and working for General Electric as a bookkeeper. By 1914 he and his wife had moved to Scotia, where the couple and their two children would live until the family relocated to Staten Island around 1918.

The 1910s were a dynamic time in Schenectady. Between 1900 and 1920, the city’s population nearly tripled, as workers flocked to Schenectady to work at G.E. and the American Locomotive Company. The voices of reformers, suffragists, labor organizers, and Socialists were growing in volume and in number throughout the decade. Van Valkenburgh became involved with the Socialist Party soon after moving to the city. On September 19, 1912, he wrote a letter officially resigning from the party in favor of anarchism. He served as secretary of the Economic Club (soon renamed the Sociology Club), a group organized to study and debate social problems, from 1914 to 1918. One of his associates in the Sociology Club, Shankar Gokhale, was also active with Van Valkenburgh in co-founding the Schenectady Free Thought Society, an organization formed for the study and discussion of religious thought, in 1915.

Downtown Schenectady in 1910. This view shows State Street from Centre Street (now Broadway) looking toward Jay Street. Image from Grems-Doolittle Library Photograph Collection. 

Although Van Valkenburgh was somewhat politically active locally, his connections outside of Schenectady proved to be of more consequence in his life. Around 1912, he began corresponding with Emma Goldman, the anarchist orator who was branded “the most hated woman in America” after being accused of complicity in the assassination of President McKinley in 1901. Van Valkenburgh would become one of Goldman’s lifelong friends and correspondents and, in later years, helped to raise funds to support her financially while she wrote her memoirs. He also organized three speaking engagements for her in Schenectady in the early part of 1915.

Goldman’s local lectures provided a focus for Van Valkenburgh’s criticisms of Mayor George Lunn in what would be his first article for Mother Earth. In addition to anarchist luminaries such as Peter Kropotkin and Lucy Parsons, Mother Earth featured articles by Margaret Sanger, Leo Tolstoy, Margaret Anderson, and Helen Keller, and featured cover art by Man Ray and Robert Minor. Its subscribers numbered about 10,000. Van Valkenburgh’s article, “Schenectady Socialism,” appeared in the May 1915 issue. In it, he charged that The Citizen’s refusal to accept a paid advertisement for one of Goldman’s lectures, the paper’s insinuation that Goldman’s lectures were organized by the Democrats, and Lunn’s refusal to debate Goldman on the grounds that “debates settle nothing” -- while he engaged in a series of debates with other politicians -- amounted to hypocrisy on Lunn’s part. “There was a time when I believed Dr. Lunn as a sincere man,” he wrote. “Now I know he is an unscrupulous charlatan ... As a politician he can operate the steam roller with the dexterity of Elihu Root ... If he believes in a free press, as he says he does, it is in the other fellow’s paper, not his own. It would be a treat to hear him wax warm in his verbosity if only he could be induced to take as his theme some Sunday night, ‘Why I preach one thing and practice another.’” Van Valkenburgh closed by stating his hope that Schenectadians would soon realize that the city was the victim of “too much Socialist politics and too little social conscience.”

Another of Van Valkenburgh’s articles, in the November 1915 issue of Mother Earth, discussed a strike at General Electric for an eight-hour workday. By the evening of the second day of the strike, 12,000 workers were participating. “The most illustrious feature, aside from the unity of the strikers, was the total absence of violence,” wrote Van Valkenburgh. “The parade of more than twelve thousand men, women and girls, peacefully walking into a struck factory for their pay without a policeman in sight was a wonderfully majestic spectacle.”  The latter half of the article stressed the importance of including office workers in the future of labor organizing, a view perhaps influenced by Van Valkenburgh’s own position as a bookkeeper. In the end, the workers returned to their jobs after five weeks, not having won their demands. Despite this loss, Van Valkenburgh stated that the result of the strike should not discourage the workers, citing their courage in taking on G.E. as “ample proof that they will not long remain in servitude without protest.” Alongside this championing of the striking workers, Van Valkenburgh could not resist taking some digs at Lunn, implying that the support voiced for the strike in the pages of The Citizen was a cynical ploy to secure votes for Lunn that fall: “for his paper to do anything else,” he wrote, “would eventuate in political suicide, and the crafty Dr. Lunn has no such good intentions.”

Aside from the articles written with a local focus, Van Valkenburgh wrote many other short pieces on a variety of topics during his time in Schenectady, including militarism, the execution of labor activist Joseph Hillstrom, and a championing of the birth control movement as led by Margaret Sanger. In addition to writing articles for Mother Earth, he also contributed to The Blast, edited by Alexander Berkman, Revolt and Road to Freedom, both edited by Hippolyte Havel, and Instead of a Magazine, edited by Herman Kuehn.

Around 1918, Van Valkenburgh moved to the New York City area, where he would live for the remainder of his life. He was hired to work in advertising for the Elliott-Fisher Company, a manufacturer of typewriters. In 1927 he was fired from his position following his active and public involvement on behalf of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian immigrant anarchists accused of murder in one of America’s most notorious trials. Van Valkenburgh’s statements about the case made the New York papers, and he was convinced that this was the reason for his termination. Following his dismissal, he found it very difficult to find lasting employment and was convinced that he had been blacklisted. In late 1934, he wrote to anarchist printer Joseph Ishill: “Since that fateful year [1927] I have held about six jobs at different times, from each of which I was removed either because of some indescretion [sic] regarding my opinions ... or because of some reason which the boss was ‘not at liberty to divulge.’ That infamous black-list ... does, in fact, exist ... In the last 7 years, I have possibly worked three.” He had tried to salvage his professional career by assuming a pseudonym, Walter Starrett, for his political writing and activity after he was fired.

Van Valkenburgh’s compatriots in New York City remembered him as a fiery speaker with a sharp tongue. Jack Frager recalled him as “an acid critic of his opponents [who] refused to show tact or pull punches.” Franz Fleigler characterized Van Valkenburgh as having “the native flavor of American sharpness and a good manner of talking and making sense at the same time.” Louis Slater recalled him being knocked off of the speaker’s platform in Union Square by his Communist opponents. A 1931 New York Times article describes a rally where Van Valkenburgh drew boos for comparing the United States favorably to the Soviet Union, saying that politicians “are all alike, whether in New York, Centralia, or Moscow, and you can’t hold a protest meeting in Moscow, but in capitalist America you can at least speak.” When booed, he retorted, “The truth hurts, doesn’t it?” and characterized those heckling him as “the children of Jesuits in Moscow.”

Along with his speeches, Van Valkenburgh’s friends in New York also remembered his heavy drinking following his dismissal from Elliott-Fisher. “He drank very heavily,” Sarah Taback remembered. “One day while walking to a meeting I saw him lying in the gutter on 14th Street, drunk and dirty and mumbling to himself.” Arnold Leonard Ross recalled that Van Valkenburgh “never got over” his firing. “He took to drink and fell heavily into debt and finally separated from his wife.” After Road to Freedom ceased publication in 1932, Van Valkenburgh became less prominent in anarchist circles, although during the last years of his life he remained active, bringing speakers to New York City and editing the periodical Spanish Revolution in support of the anarchists during the Spanish Civil War. He died on May 22, 1938, at the age of 53. Following his death, Challenge: A Libertarian Weekly remembered him as “a man who willingly gave up position, career and personal security out of devotion to an Ideal.”

"A Gateway to Better Things:" The Opening of the Original Great Western Gateway Bridge

Rendering of proposed Great Western Gateway Bridge. Image from Grems-Doolittle Library Documents Collection.

"East side, west side,
From city to the town.
Now at last we have a bridge,
We know it won't fall down.
An aid to bigger business,
Our enterprise will pay;
Our gift to all posterity,
The Great Western Gateway."
 - Excerpt from song "The Great Western Gateway," words by Scotia High School student Joseph Foley, from Great Western Gateway Bridge opening brochure, 1925.


On December 19, 1925, the original Great Western Gateway Bridge was opened to traffic. After four long years of construction, the bridge was finally complete. The bridge, which comprised 24 spans and measured 4420 feet in length, cost about $2,500,000 to construct.

Original Great Western Gateway Bridge under construction, 1925. Image from Grems-Doolittle Library Photograph Collection. 

New York State officials, local leaders, and members of the general public participated in a celebratory lunch, held at the Hotel Van Curler the day of the bridge's opening. Following the luncheon, an estimated 2,500 cars lined up in Scotia in anticipation of participating in an "automobile parade" to open the bridge at 1:15 p.m. Curtains of American flags hung at the Scotia end of the bridge, and fireworks were exploded to mark the parting of the curtains and the bridge's unveiling. The bridge's first moments of being used included both ceremonial and regular traffic. "A parade . . . had hardly started from from the Scotia to the Schenectady end of the bridge, when an actual traffic stream, made up of cars and tourists, commercial travelers and business trucks, began flowing in the opposite direction -- an immediate utilization of the new transportation lane."

Photographs of opening ceremonies for the Great Western Gateway Bridge on December 19, 1925 from Knickerbocker News. Image from clipping file.  

The village of Scotia was the focal point of the celebration, where in addition to a parade, the Scotia Methodist Church sponsored a dinner and a reception was held at Scotia High School. In the local press, village President Alvin Spitzer "expressed his hope that Schenectadians generally will visit Scotia for the afternoon and note the improvement throughout the community." Every household and business along Mohawk Avenue between the new bridge and Reynolds Street was encouraged to decorate their business or home.

Program for the opening of the Great Western Gateway Bridge in Scotia. From Grems-Doolittle Library Documents Collection. 

Local press hailed the opening of the new bridge. An editorial in Albany's Knickerbocker Press touted the new bridge as being "a gateway to better things," praised the beauty of the structure, and claimed that "nothing to equal this restoration of the earliest commercial center of Schenectady has occurred in three centuries." It was hailed as a safer and more efficient means of traveling between Schenectady and Scotia than the old toll bridge that extended from the foot of Washington Avenue.

Image of the completed Great Western Gateway Bridge, ca. 1930. Photograph from Grems-Doolittle Library Photograph Collection. 

Although the opening of the bridge to traffic was certainly a significant event for the denizens of Schenectady and Scotia, it was dwarfed by an even larger public celebration for the bridge was held several months later, when the bridge was celebrated with a nine-day exposition from June 11-19, 1926, and dedicated on June 26. Decades later, the bridge was considered to be structurally unsound, and the curve of the bridge was sometimes referred to as "Dead Man's Curve," due to the accidents which frequently occurred there. A new Western Gateway Bridge was constructed to replace the original, and the original Great Western Gateway Bridge was demolished in 1974.

Aloha Schenectady: Local Hawaiian Connections

North shore beach, Hawaii, photographed in 2005 by Carol Highsmith. Image from Library of Congress (www.loc.gov), reproduction number LC-DIG-highsm-04487. 

During the cold winter months, when Schenectadians must sidestep slush and shovel out snow-buried cars, it's nice to daydream about spending time in a warm and sunny tropical paradise. Take a brief respite from the realities of winter in the northeast to explore the lives of a people that share a connection with Schenectady and with our fiftieth state, Hawaii.

One fascinating figure whose personal history touches Schenectady and Hawaii is Anthony D. Allen (1775-1835). Allen was born as a slave to a man named Dougal/McDougall in Schenectady. Following Dougal's death, Allen was sold to a Mr. Kelly of Schenectady. Allen escaped slavery in May 1800, and made his way to the Atlantic coast, where he found work on ships. He traveled to France, China, India, the Caribbean, and the Pacific Northwest, earning enough money to purchase his freedom before finding his home in Hawaii in 1810. He was granted a six-acre parcel of land in Waikiki from Hawaiian royalty. Allen soon became a prosperous and prominent entrepreneur and farmer. He also opened a boarding house, bowling alley, a small hospital, and is credited with building one of the first schools in Hawaii. Allen was also known to be very generous to the missionaries who came to the islands. "There are many white residents here -- the most pay an outward respect, sending us little present of fresh pork, corn, beans, and the like," wrote missionary Sybil Bingham in 1820. "There is one black man, Anthony Allen, brought up in Schenectady, New York, who I believe lives the most comfortably of any on the island . . . He has been very kind to us, sending us potatoes, squashes, etc. As often as once in two weeks, a goat or kid neatly dressed, -- every morning, two bottles of goat's milk, and many things I cannot mention." Allen's connection to Schenectady was renewed in 1822 when, following an article about Allen that appeared in the June 23, 1821 issue of the Missionary Herald, Daniel Dougal, the son of the man who had once held Allen as a slave, wrote to Allen and asked about his life in Hawaii. Allen did reply, dictating a lengthy and detailed letter about his life. He also sent gifts and money to a sister, Diana, who remained in Schenectady. The Reverend Charles S. Stewart also remembered a few prominent Schenectady men meeting with Allen during their travels to Hawaii following the Missionary Herald article. Allen died in 1835.

Image of the front page of an 1822 letter dictated from Anthony D. Allen to a Dr. Dougal of Schenectady, son of his former slave owner. The letter was sold at auction in 2009; this image comes from the British auction house Bonhams. 

Another notable person in Hawaii's history with a connection to Schenectady is John Owen Dominis (1832–1891), a statesman and the husband of Queen Lili'uokalani, the last reigning monarch of Hawaii. Dominis, the son of Captain John Dominis and Mary Lambert Jones, was born in Schenectady and spent his earliest years living on Front Street in the Stockade. The Dominis family was close to the family of Dr. Andrew Yates and lived in his home. When Dominis was five years old, he arrived in Hawaii with his parents. His sisters, Mary and Frances, stayed behind in Schenectady to complete their educations; unfortunately, both died very young, in 1838 and 1842, respectively. Around 1853, Dominis was appointed the private secretary to Prince Lot, who would later become King Kamehameha V. In 1862, Dominis married Lili'uokalani (also known as Lydia Paki). The marriage was, unfortunately, not a happy one. Dominis had many affairs and chose to socialize without his wife. In her memoirs, Lili'uokalani also notes that Dominis' mother disliked her and initially saw her as an "intruder," but warmed to her a bit more in later years. Dominis' connection to Hawaiian royalty afforded him a number of honors and responsibilities. Dominis served as Governor of Oahu and Maui, served in the House of Nobles, on the Board of Health, Board of Education, and Bureau of Immigration. He also served as Lieutenant General and Commander in Chief of the Hawaiian Army. When Lili'uokalani became Queen in January 1891, Dominis became Prince Consort. He died later that year in Hawaii and is buried in the Royal Mausoleum. Dominis fathered one son with Mary Purdy Lamiki Aimoku, a servant of Lili'uokalani.

This 1870s image shows Schenectady native John Dominis with his wife Liliuokalani, Hawaii's last reigning monarch. Seated, left to right: Queen Liliuokalani, Miriam Likelike (Princess of Hawaii), and Elizabeth Sumner. Standing, left to right: John Dominis and Archibald Cleghorn, respectively the husbands of Liliuokalani and Likelike. Image from the collections of the Hawaii State Archives, call no. PP-98-9-014 (http://archives1.dags.hawaii.gov/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=3551). 

Last but not least is Emma Theodora Paty Yates (1850-1933). She was born in 1850 in Honolulu to John Paty and Mary Ann Jefferson. She married Isaac I. Yates in San Francisco in 1873, and the couple moved to Schenectady, where Emma Yates would live for over 60 years. Yates was active in the local chapter of the YWCA, serving as the organization's first treasurer. At the time of her death in 1933, she was one of the YWCA's oldest members. Yates was also active in Christ Episcopal Church in Duanesburg. She had five children: Jennie Ormsby Yates, Emma Theodora Yates, William C. Yates, Isaac I. Yates, and John Henry Yates. Emma Yates died in 1933 and is buried in Vale Cemetery. The Grems-Doolittle Library holds a collection of her personal papers. Yates also penned a document entitled Reminiscences of Honolulu, which is in the holdings of the Hamilton Library, University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Schenectady in the 1970s and 1980s through the Eyes of John Papp

An undated wintertime view of State Street through the railroad overpass, circa 1970s. Image from John Papp Photograph Collection.  

The Library recently received a significant addition of material to our John Papp Photograph Collection. John Papp, who has been referred to as "a photographer by trade but a history buff by desire and avocation," was very interested not only in collecting and reprinting historic photographs, but also in documenting Schenectady in his time. He photographed numerous street scenes, construction and demolition projects, aerial views, and local events from the 1960s through the 1980s. He took a number of photographs of the city of Schenectady, as well as many photographs of Rotterdam. Papp lived many years in Rotterdam and served as the town's historian for a number of years. Here we have included just a few images that show Papp's documentation of downtown Schenectady from the 1970s and 1980s.

One of two featured views of Jay Street between State Street and Franklin Street as it was transformed into a pedestrian-only block. This photograph, taken from State Street in March 1984, illustrates this process. Image from John Papp Photograph Collection. 

This view of Jay Street, taken from Franklin Street in July 1984, shows the transition to a pedestrian-only block near completion. Image from John Papp Photograph Collection. 

Once processed, this recently-acquired addition to the Papp collection will add approximately 3-4 cubic feet of materials to the existing collection. An updated finding aid will be featured in an upcoming Grems-Doolittle Library Blog entry and be made available on our website. If you are interested in viewing photographs in this collection, please visit us or contact our Librarian.

Exterior view of Peggy's Restaurant at 426 State Street, ca. 1980. The collection includes a number of photographs of local businesses in downtown Schenectady as well as in Rotterdam. Image from John Papp Photograph Collection. 

Aerial view of downtown Schenectady, taken April 1981. State Street runs down the center of the photograph, from Erie Boulevard near the top of the image to Nott Terrace just past Veterans Park near the bottom. Image from John Papp Photograph Collection.

Corner of State Street and Clinton Street. This photograph was taken in February 1984. Image from John Papp Photograph Collection.