Friends and Neighbors: The Sketchbook of Grace Buck

Drawings of Eugenie Des Jardins and Mrs. Mabel T. Buck. Eugenie Des Jardins was a classmate of Grace's who lived nearby on Oakwood Avenue. Mabel T. Buck was Grace's grandmother; she came to live in the home with Grace and her parents in the mid-1930s. Image from Grace Buck Sketchbook, collections of the Grems-Doolittle Library.

The library recently received a compelling sketchbook created by a local young woman, Grace Buck, in the early 1930s, when the artist was 13 and 14 years old. Among the drawings of cartoon characters and film stars from magazines are several pencil drawings of Grace's family members, friends, and neighbors. Grace Buck's sketchbook is interesting not only because it captures the work of a young woman in our area, but because she depicts in her drawings a number of people who lived around her. Images taken from her sketchbook are included here.

Photograph of Grace Buck from 1937 Mont Pleasant High School yearbook. As a young person, Grace was active in the A Capella Choir and the Art Club at Mont Pleasant. Image from the collections of the Grems-Doolittle Library. 

Grace Augusta Buck was born in Schenectady in 1918 to Daisy (Gilbert) and William Buck. She attended Pleasant Valley School, then went on to Mont Pleasant High School, where she graduated in 1937. In the 1937 Mont Pleasant High School yearbook, she is listed as being involved in Art Club and the A Capella Choir. While it is unknown as to whether she continued to draw, she continued to sing for decades, as a soloist and in choirs. After she graduated from high school, Grace began to work for the General Electric Company. She was active in the First Methodist Church, Rotterdam Homeowners Association, the Schenectady Choral Society, Schenectady Floricultural Society, and in alumni activities for Mont Pleasant High School. She married Willard Roy Hunt in 1956; the couple resided at the same home on Flower Road in Rotterdam where Grace grew up. Grace Buck Hunt died in 2012. She is buried at Schenectady Memorial Park in Rotterdam.

Drawings of Virginia and Beatrice Rolfe, daughters of Floyd and Bertha Rolfe, who lived nearby on Lakeview Avenue. Image from Grace Buck Sketchbook, collections of the Grems-Doolittle Library.

Drawing of Grace's mother, Daisy (Gilbert) Buck. Image from Grace Buck Sketchbook, collections of the Grems-Doolittle Library. 

Several of the drawings in the sketchbook, like this image, depict actresses and models that Grace had drawn from photographs. Image from Grace Buck Sketchbook, collections of the Grems-Doolittle Library. 

"A Street With a Past:" Images of Broadway

Aerial view showing a portion of Broadway near the railroad tracks. The large white building was the Schenectady Paint and Varnish Company. Image from Grems-Doolittle library Photograph Collection. 

Present-day Broadway begins just north of Union Street and extends to the Five Corners intersection in the town of Rotterdam. The street was originally known as Maiden Lane, before being renamed Centre/Center Street during the 1850s and finally named Broadway. In 1930, the different parts of Broadway were known by three different names: it was North Center Street from the short stretch of road between Warren Street and Pine Street down to Union Street, South Center Street from south of Union Street to State Street, and Broadway south of State Street. Industries lined up along Broadway, as did businesses and residences.

1914 image of Broadway looking north from the corner of Edison Avenue. Image from Grems-Doolittle Library Photograph Collection. 

The Broadway streetcar, 1903. Image from Grems-Doolittle Library Photograph Collection. 

European settlers lived along what is now Broadway during the community's earliest settlement; some of the people killed in the Schenectady Massacre of 1690 lived near the intersection of present-day Broadway and State Street. By the mid-nineteenth century, Broadway both north and south of State Street served as a busy commercial district as well as a residential area, and activity intensified as Schenectady's downtown developed through the turn of the 20th century as the General Electric Company drew thousands of people to Schenectady. Through the early decades of the 20th century, immigrants from Lithuania, Poland, Russia, and Italy as well as African-Americans coming to Schenectady from the southern states settled along Broadway near the G.E. plant. Past the railroad underpass, the community of Bellevue developed. Included here are just a few images from days gone by from Broadway, particularly south of State Street.

This 1956 photograph of Broadway between Millard and Hamilton Streets shows buildings that were demolished as part of an urban renewal project in the late 1950s. The second building from the right was Detroy's Chicken Shack, a former jazz landmark. Image from Grems-Doolittle Library Photograph Collection. 

The illuminated window display at Star Furniture, 115 South Centre Street, in 1933. Image from Grems-Doolittle Library Photograph Collection. 

Broadway looking south at Campbell Avenue in Bellevue. Image from Grems-Doolittle Library Photograph Collection. 

1895 image of businesses at 334 South Centre Street. Image from Grems-Doolittle Library Photograph Collection. 

Broadway just south of State Street, looking south. This photograph was taken in 1966. Image from Grems-Doolittle Library Photograph Collection. 

Undated photograph of the public market bounded by Broadway, Hamilton Street, and Van Guysling Avenue. The public market space was established in the mid-1910s. The large white building at left is the Schenectady County Coal Company. Image from Grems-Doolittle Library Photograph Collection. 

Blacksmith shop of Julius Zemke at 402 Broadway in 1918. Image from Grems-Doolittle Library Photograph Collection. 

"If This Paper Trembles When You Read It:" A Mysterious Love Letter

Incomplete love letter written by unknown woman, ca. 1790 (M-Letters-4).  Image from Mabee Family Papers, Grems-Doolittle Library. 

There are very few love letters in the collections of our library; one of the few in our collections is a very interesting one from the Mabee Family Papers. It is not clear whether this letter was ever sent; it may possibly be an incomplete draft. We do not know the identities of the letter writer or the intended recipient. This letter was written from a woman to a man, and may have been written in the late 1700s (a clue given by the use of the long s). The letter includes a rare glimpse into how the woman regards herself, saying she is neither a "tawdy gay thing" useful only for making bone lace nor "bed [lain] old," but, rather, what the world calls "a good agreeable woman."

The woman who wrote the letter was very frank in expressing her desire for her beloved, telling him that his form "strikes the eyes of your beholders with ideas more moving and forcible than ever were inspired by music, painting, or eloquence." Having not heard from the man for some time, she reaches out to him overcome with emotion and pleading for him to reply. "Pray, Sir, speak peace to a troubled heart," she writes. "Be pleased to excuse my blushes, for if this paper trembles when you read it, it then best expresses its author." In closing, she reveals "at this rate I am panting" and hopes to hear from him, "otherwise I am inevitably lost."

The original letter is fully transcribed below, with the line breaks, punctuation, and underlining of the original maintained.


Sir
it is now along time as I account it Since you and I have had any
mututal Converse by letters or any other way. which to me is a great
uneasyness but possybell you might not no where I am for to direct
any letter or wrighting and on that account I Shall not insist
on your infringment of frind Ship. Sir I formerly had avery
good Opinion of my Self but it is now withdrawn and plased on
you for whom I am not ashamed to declare and I am not without
hopes be Caus I am not like the tawdy gay thing that are fit only
to make bone Lace I am nither bed lani old nor yet yong and
Childish, but as the world Says a good agreable woman
pray Sir speak peace to a troubled heart. troubled only for you
be pleas'd to Ex Cuse my blushes for if this paper trembles when
you read it. it then best expresses its author for a Smile Set on
your lips prefaces your expressions before you utter them and
your aspect prevented you all you Can say tho you have an infinant
deal of wit is but a repitition of what is expressed by your form
which Strikes the eyes of your beholders with ideas more moveing
and forcable than ever were inspird by musick painting or eloquince
at this Rate I am panting who expeels Som Sivil thing
in retirn otherwise I am inevitably lost

Remembering the Schenectady Massacre

Schenectady Massacre by Samuel Sexton. Sexton focused primarily on portraiture, but this painting depicts the Massacre.  It portrays the atrocities committed against the people of Schenectady (such as the child's head being dashed against a wall), but also takes a number of inaccurate artistic liberties. In Sexton’s rendition, “Indians,” not French soldiers, attacked Schenectady. He also depicts a Schenectady that he was familiar with during his lifetime; brick, step-gabled homes insinuate a well-established community. The painting is part of Schenectady’s history as a fabricated romantic image of the past from the nineteenth century and as an artistic work by one of Schenectady’s most well-known artists. Image from collections of Schenectady County Historical Society.

This weekend marks the anniversary of the Schenectady Massacre. Late at night on February 8, 1690, a group of French and their Native American allies attacked the small Dutch and English settlement at Schenectady. The raiders silently entered the gates while many were sleeping, and at a signal, began to sack and burn the town. The attack came in retaliation for a series of Iroquois raids on Canada, including the Lachine Massacre. The original objective of the raiders was to attack Albany; however, an attack Schenectady offered a more feasible and easy means to "punish the English" and strike fear into the hearts of those in the frontier communities.

Nineteenth-century illustration depicting people fleeing Schenectady as it burns. Image from Schenectady Massacre clipping file. 

A document written by Robert Livingston recounts the horrors of the attack:

"They divided themselves into three troops and after they had everything well spied out and found that the gates were open and that nowhere there was any sentinel on duty and that on account of the heavy snow which had fallen the day before no one had been in the woods by whom they could have been detected, the full wrath of God was poured out over us. Having posted three or four men before every house, they attacked simultaneously at the signal of a gun. They first set fire to the house of Adam Vroman, who when he offered resistance was shot through the hand. After several shots had been fired, his wife, hoping to find an opportunity to get away, opened the back door, whereupon she was immediately shot dead and devoured by the flames.... His eldest daughter...had her mother's child on her arm.... Asked...whether the child was heavy...she said yes, whereupon [one of the invaders]...took the child form her and taking it by the legs dashed its head against the sill of the house, so that the brains scattered over the bystanders....

"The women and children fled mostly into the woods, almost naked and there many froze to death.... Oh, we poor, miserable people, how we were scattered during that dreadful night, the husband being separated from his wife and the children from both, one hiding for 2 or 3 days in the woods and in swampy and marshy land, where God in His mercy nevertheless did not forget them....

"The rest, then, who escaped the bloody sword, were condemned to be prisoners, but here again God's guiding hand clearly appears, for many sorrowful women and children and some old men, seeing this dreadful journey ahead of them, which meant practically death, doubtless offered up their prayers to God, who from the depths of their woe granted them delivery.... Considering that the old men and children and also the women would be a hindrance to them in their flight, they [the French and their allies] discharged them from their place of confinement to the great joy of all...." (Source: Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. More excerpts from this document can be read by visiting Digital History).

List of people killed in the Schenectady Massacre, from Documentary History of the State of New York by E.B. O'Callaghan. 

The men who invaded Schenectady burned nearly all the homes and barns in the community, and killed 60 people -- 38 men, 10 women and 12 children. 27 men and boys were taken prisoner to Canada, along with 50 horses. By morning (February 9), the settlement was in ruins. Many who were not killed or taken prisoner fled as refugees to Albany. Symon Schermerhorn famously rode while wounded to Albany to warn that community's denizens of possible attack. Following the Massacre, some fled the community never to return. Others remained at Schenectady to slowly rebuild the town.

This Dutch-language document was penned on behalf of the inhabitants of Schenectady following the Schenectady Massacre. Many of the survivors of the Massacre fled the settlement, but a small group of survivors began to rebuild the town, and in this document they offer a plan of attack, advising a “march to Canada with six hundred or more christians and as many savages as may be obtained” to bring ammunition and provisions “in order to do as much damage to the enemy as possible.” By May 1690, a Colonial Congress met at New York City to organize an attack on Canada, and the survivors at Schenectady had constructed a fort at the intersection of Washington Avenue and State Street for protection. Image from Historic Manuscripts Collection, Grems-Doolittle Library. 

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.