Spooky Schenectady: Halloween Images from the Grems-Doolittle Library

We wish everyone a safe, fun, and happy Halloween! In celebration, here's a look at some tricks and treats of times past in Schenectady.

1969 Halloween parade at Euclid Elementary School. Photo from Eleanor Jaeger School Photograph Collection.



Notice regarding Halloween from an 1863 issue of the Schenectady Evening Star and Times newspaper. Image obtained via www.fultonhistory.com.






1903 newspaper clipping from the Utica Globe depicting a "wheel puzzle" assembled by Halloween-inspired vandals in front of Samuel Hillis's grocery on Mohawk Avenue in Scotia. The Globe reported that the store "was blocked on both sides by 23 wagons, carriages, busses, and carryalls, so closely packed together with wheels locked that the work of removing them was something like the famous '15' puzzle of a few years ago. It remains somewhat of a mystery because the thing was done by 11:00 p.m. The majority of people look upon it as a good joke, remembering their own youthful days and pranks, but there are one or two who have lived long long beyond their 'happy days' and forget that they were many, many years ago young too." James Ransom of Scotia, who spoke with Larry Hart about the prank at the age of 81 in 1972, recalls that "it was done just about every year from about the turn of the century until maybe about 1910 or so . . . Of course the boys had to pick different places each year, but it was always done. I guess it was kind of expected, like a sort of Halloween ritual." Photo of image from Larry Hart Collection.






1927 newspaper advertisement for Halloween masquerade party at the Cains Castle "College of Dancing" at 164 Barrett Street in Schenectady. Image obtained via www.fultonhistory.com.





Costumed children take part in a sidewalk parade down Union Street in 1950. Photograph from Larry Hart Collection.



1937 advertisement for Halloween costumes for children and adults at Kresge's, 271 State Street, Schenectady. Image obtained via www.fultonhistory.com.



Boys march in the 1967 Halloween parade at Euclid Elementary School. Photograph from Eleanor Jaeger School Photograph Collection.



Exploring Schenectady Homes with Vault Book 79

Many of the entries in VB 79 utilize a form, such as this entry, number 226, for 81 Lafayette Street.

Researchers investigating house histories use a variety of sources, such as deeds, maps and city directories. Another helpful resource -- although less commonly found -- are descriptions of properties compiled for real estate sale listings. In our collection of Vault Books, a term used to refer to a variety of account ledgers, letter books, meeting minutes, and even diaries in our collections (click here for a complete list of all of the Vault Books in our collection), is one such example.

Vault Book 79 contains descriptions of properties for sale compiled by Fitch and Griffes, an insurance and real estate company in Schenectady, from 1870 to 1880. Virtually all records refer to properties in the city of Schenectady. The earliest entries are written in a brief narrative format; most entries utilize a printed form that includes spaces to indicate owner's names and descriptions of properties, including lot dimensions, stories, building material (frame/brick), number of rooms, any associated outbuildings such as a barn or carriage shed, price and terms, information about cellars, roofs, water, and fruit trees or gardens on the property.

Listing for home at 120 Front Street, between John Street and Jefferson Street, which after numbering changes became 210 Front Street. The house was demolished around 1966.

"Two story brick dwelling, no. 120 Front Street. Large lot 120 x 60. Garden prettily laid out. Fruit in great variety and abundance. Small barn on alley in rear. House in perfect order and condition, and well arranged for convenience. Good well and cistern, both in-doors and with pumps to each. Thorough drainage. Best of water. Slate roof on house and finish and trimmings of the best material, doors are heavy & well hung. Large dry cellar, abundance of closet room, clothes press large, with drawers, etc., pantries, etc. One of the best constructed and most convenient homes in the city. Price: $4,500."

In addition to those researching a house history, Vault Book 79 is also useful in examining local history and genealogy. Those conducting genealogical or biographical research can find contextual information about the home of the person or family they are researching. Those who examine the book as a whole can chart the development of neighborhoods such as the Stockade or Prospect Hill and compare prices and dimensions of homes and lots. The entries can also help to identify when street names or street numbers changed.

The Grems-Doolittle Library has compiled an index of all entries in VB 79, extracting the street name, street number or location description, and the owner's name, if given. We have created two lists; one arranges properties alphabetically by street name, and the other arranges entries by owner's name.  Both indexes can be found by clicking here.

"Various Deteriorating Conditions": WWII-Era Photos of Schenectady by Glenn B. Warren



Photograph of abandoned building plastered with advertisements, ca. 1944. Photograph from Grems-Doolittle Library Photograph Collection.


Photographs can capture the majesty and beauty of landscapes and buildings; they also can also document the grit, blight, and humdrum aspects of urban life. Below are just a few of the photographs that capture aspects and views of Schenectady in the mid-1940s not often seen -- junkyards, gas stations, newsstands, vacant buildings, garbage heaps, ragged advertisements, the back sides of run-down houses, and the areas around sections of railroad tracks. These photographs serve as interesting records of Schenectady's past. Additionally, in the passage of time, some of the photos appear downright artistic -- such as a lonely view of an abandoned building papered with advertisements.



Scene on Broadway near the Mica Insulator Company, visible in the center background, ca. 1944. Photograph from Grems-Doolittle Library Photograph Collection.


This group of photographs were taken around 1944 by Glenn B. Warren, who was at that time an engineer working for General Electric. He would later go on to serve as a vice president and general manager for the company. He took approximately 50 snapshots of various parts of Schenectady, mostly clustered around the area around the General Electric works and Broadway, Edison Avenue, Erie Boulevard, Duane Avenue, and Altamont Avenue. Warren's wife donated the images to the Schenectady County Historical Society in 1979 and recalled that her husband took the photographs to document "various deteriorating conditions" in the city and perhaps planned to present them to city officials to stimulate remediation of such conditions.

Bert's Esso Station at 121 Edison Avenue, ca. 1944. Photograph from Grems-Doolittle Library Photograph Collection.

414 Duane Avenue in Schenectady, home and business of James Laden, grocer, ca. 1944. Photograph from Grems-Doolittle Library Photograph Collection.

Junkyard, possibly Lew's Auto Wreckers at 1067 Altamont Avenue, ca. 1944. Photograph from Grems-Doolittle Library Photograph Collection.



Backyards and backs of buildings along east Front Street and River Street, ca. 1944. Photograph from Grems-Doolittle Library Photograph Collection.



Broadway and Lower Broadway, ca. 1944. Photograph from Grems-Doolittle Library Photograph Collection.

Ice cream lovers gather at the Green's Ice Cream stand at 1109 Erie Boulevard, ca. 1944. Photograph from Grems-Doolittle Library Photograph Collection.

Advertisements and pedestrians on unidentified street, ca. 1944. Photograph from Grems-Doolittle Library Photograph Collection.

First Reformed Church Book of Indentures, 1788-1823



Portion of the first page in the First Reformed Book of Indentures, 1788-1823.

This blog entry is written by volunteer Paul Contarino.

Over the last couple of months I had the pleasure of working on the First Reformed Church’s Book of Indentures, 1788-1823. For those who are unfamiliar, an indenture can be defined as a legal contract involved with a purchase. In this case, all pertained to purchases of land.

The project involved creating high-resolution digital images of each page and extracting information from the indentures to create a spreadsheet. This spreadsheet serves as a finding aid and guide to the Book of Indentures. Fields in the spreadsheet were created with respect to what information might be potentially useful to a researcher, such as the names of the parties involved. The extracted information is subdivided into numerous categories such as page number, transaction date, and name of grantee. The description field contains information about the property, bordering properties and their owners, and any defining landmarks such as streams, trees, and roads. Information about the area of land is provided in morgans, followed by the payment date and method as well as present value. Any commuted land rent is listed and the date given. Memoranda are essentially amendments made to the indenture itself; these notations have been fully transcribed. A New Ledger book, also in the holdings of the First Reformed Church, is referenced by a number of indentures. There are some transactions in which the church elders signed. Some pages contain either a red seal, a non-red seal or no seal at all. Click here to open the complete spreadsheet.

Until I started working on this project, I did not realize the First Reformed Church possessed a lot of land. The ledger proved to be in surprisingly good condition considering its age, and the handwriting fairly legible. It is important, however, to have a digital copy not only for increased user access but also for preservation. Unfortunately, there is the real possibility of a flood, fire or theft.  I look forward to continuing to work with the First Reformed Church and the Schenectady County Historical Society in safeguarding the past.  On a final note, I extend my gratitude to both institutions.

1865 New York State Census Index and Transcription for Schenectady County

State Street, downtown Schenectady, ca. 1865. Photograph from Grems-Doolittle Library Photograph Collection.

Our volunteers recently completed transcribing information from the 1865 New York State Census for Schenectady County. This project was begun several years ago but had lain dormant for the past few years. Using these transcriptions, we were able to create an every-name index for that census. Being able to access this index is a particular boon to genealogical and historical researchers because the 1865 New York State Census is not indexed elsewhere, such as through websites like www.ancestry.com or www.familysearch.org.

The index, which is posted on our library collections page (click here to access the index directly), contains the first name, last name, middle initial if given, the city/town and ward or election district in which the person resided, and the family number assigned to the household that the individual lived in. Using this information, researchers can consult the transcribed census record or the original census record on microfilm in our library.

Having a digital transcribed record available to researchers in our library makes it very easy to find information for a particular family or individual. It also makes it possible to extract city/town-level or county-level demographic information, such as race, national origin, military service, or occupation of individuals with the click of a mouse.



Section from transcribed entries of the 1865 New York State Census for the city of Schenectady, Ward 1.  

The transcribed records include the following fields: City/Town name; District or Ward number; material of which the house is built; value of building; family number; name; age; sex; color; relation to the head of household; county, state or country of birth; number of children; number of times married; current marital status; occupation; place of employment, if outside the city or town in which the person resides; whether the individual is a native or naturalized voter, whether the individual is a foreign-born person not naturalized; current and former military service of individual; whether the individual is an owner of land.

Below is a summary of our holdings of New York State census records. Please feel free to send an email to librarian@schenectadyhistorical.org or call us at 518-374-0263, option 3, if you have any questions or would like to request a look-up of New York State Census records. 

New York State Census Records for Schenectady County in the Grems-Doolittle Library
1835 - microfilm; printed transcription; print name index
1845 - printed transcription for Rotterdam only. See Mohawk v. 8 no. 3 through v. 9 no. 1
1855 - microfilm; printed transcription; print name index
1865 - microfilm; digital transcription; digital and print name index
1875 - microfilm (searchable index available via www.familysearch.org)
1892 - microfilm; printed transcription for Schenectady Ward 1, Dist. 1 only (searchable index available via www.familysearch.org and www.ancestry.com)
1905 - microfilm (searchable index available via www.familysearch.org)
1915 - microfilm (searchable index available via www.familysearch.org and www.ancestry.com)
1925 - microfilm (searchable index available via www.familysearch.org and www.ancestry.com)

Ettore Mancuso and The Record Italian-American Newspaper



Banner of The Record weekly Italian-American newspaper.

This blog entry highlights The Record, a weekly newspaper published from 1925-1932 in Italian and English by Ettore Mancuso. The newspaper serves as a reflection of the Italian-American community in Schenectady of the time; it also tells us more about the interests, personality, and sense of humor of its editor, Mancuso.

Photograph of Ettore Mancuso in uniform in 1918. From Grems-Doolittle Library Photograph Collection.  

Ettore Mancuso was a lawyer who was very active in the Italian-American community in Schenectady as well as in local politics. He was born in Italy in 1896 and came to the United States at the age of 13. He attended Catskill High School, then relocated to Schenectady, graduating from Albany Law School in 1922 and establishing his law practice in Schenectady soon after. Mancuso was a Democratic candidate for alderman for the 11th Ward in 1929, and served the city as secretary to Mayor J. Ward White, as the city's Director of Public Information, and as Corporation Counsel during the 1930s. Through The Record, he was a vociferous Democrat; around 1935 he became an equally vociferous Republican, and remained so until the end of his life, frequently writing letters to the editor of the Schenectady Gazette about local and national politics up to 3 months before his death in 1979. He was involved in a variety of local Italian-American organizations, including the Sons of Italy, the Italian Culture Club, the Italian University Club, the Italian Political Association, and the predominantly Italian-American Brotherly Love Lodge of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. A veteran of World War I, he was also involved with the American Legion.




July 18, 1930 article encouraging Schenectadians to buy locally: "The 'Schenectady for Schenectadians' idea is not a new one, and it is not ours; but we are the only ones who have been preaching it consistently and persistently."

The Record's bilingual pages focused on events, personalities, and organizations related to the Italian-American community. Small articles, often with photographs, introduced Italian-American pharmacists, real estate brokers, and shop owners to the community. Local Italian-American graduates of Union College were honored and pictured on the front page of the newspaper, under the headline "Our Graduates." The activities of local ethnic organizations, such as the Sons of Italy and the Italian Political Association, were featured. Occasionally, the newspaper also featured social news, highlighting the wedding of a local couple. The Record also included a variety of advertisements for local businesses in both Italian and English. Mancuso occasionally published an article entitled "Why -- No Matter What Your Business -- You Should Advertise in the 'Record' and Other Foreign Language Weekly Newspapers," to encourage local businesses to place advertisements. "We carry the local news in Italian for our readers," Mancuso writes. "Our readers get genuine pleasure out of reading their news in their native tongue. Even if they can read English, they will get more pleasure out of reading Italian, for the same reason that you would get more pleasure out of reading the New York Herald instead of some French newspaper, if you lived in Paris." Mancuso also asserted that the smaller size of the weeklies encouraged more attention to the advertisements than in the dailies, and that members of the Italian-American community read it more devotedly than the daily newspapers. "He reads it from beginning to end. His family reads it. Often it is passed to others. It gets a reading such as the daily newspaper can never expect to get."

Italian-language advertisements for the Mont Pleasant Furniture House and the Jersey Ice Cream Company from the December 5, 1930 issue of The Record.



Profile of and advertisement for local Italian-American real estate broker Michele Suraci from The Record, August 29, 1930. In addition to advertisements, The Record often included short articles highlighting local Italian-American business people.

In addition to news of the Italian-American community, The Record also featured many articles about local politics, local news, and national politics. Mancuso made no claims of being an unbiased news source, always emphasizing the editorial content of the paper; all articles appeared under the statement on the newspaper's banner, "All the News You SHOULD Know With Comments." During the early 1930s, the topics of local elections/politics, the problems of crime resulting from prohibition, and police corruption surfaced again and again. The Record also contained a column of brief comments on local and national news and happenings under the heading "This is Station B-U-N-K. The only broadcasting station using a permanent wave. 'We tell the universe.'" In the "Station B-U-N-K" column, Mancuso commented about a variety of topics, from federal immigration quotas to the statements of local politicians, sometimes with a serious tone, other times tongue-in-cheek. Mancuso also occasionally used the column to make occasional jabs at other local media outlets for what he saw as shoddy reporting. The most frequent target was the Union-Star newspaper, as in this excerpt from the Record's "Station B-U-N-K" column on July 18, 1930: "The Union-Star has made a startling discovery. Lack of business is due to the piling of money in banks, says our afternoon daily, which 'prives that people have the money, but that they are hoarding it.' Since the Star has found the cause of the trouble, we suggest the remedy. If the ones who own the money prefer to keep it in the banks, why don't the banks loosen up and loan it to those who are anxious to borrow it?"



While many of the "Station B-U-N-K" columns addressed a potpourri of issues, the September 26, 1930 column focused solely on local gambling operations.

The library's Ettore Mancuso Collection includes a number of issues of The Record, as well as several speeches and letters written by Mancuso, a recollection of his World War I experiences, newspaper clippings related to local politics and political figures, and other materials. A complete finding aid for the Ettore Mancuso Collection can be found here. 

Education Documents in the Grems-Doolittle Library

This blog entry is written by Hannah Hamilton, a Library volunteer.

The education files contain over three hundred items including lists of colonial schoolmasters, receipts for the tuition of students, hand-made textbooks and diplomas from Union College. The documents date from the late 18th to late 20th century. Click here for a complete list of documents in the collection.

Particularly charming are those documents which are written out in longhand (cursive script). The Toll family was one of the prominent families in the Schenectady area for much of the early history of this country. A number of their family documents pertaining to the education of their children have been preserved and are included in the Education documents (part of the Historic Manuscripts Collection) at the Grems-Doolittle Library. Images of some of these documents may be viewed below.





The front page of a small, string-bound notebook written in longhand and discussing global geography. The first page is a description of the geography of Africa (ED 182). Beside it, the front page of another textbook, this one focused on “Arithmetick.” Both are presumably products of the Toll children (ED 184).



A receipt for $13.00 paid to the Schenectady Female Seminary by Reverend John C. Toll for his daughter Jane Sarah Toll. The Education was to take place between December of 1826 to March of 1827 (ED 183). An image of the ladies’ school dating from the 19th century is alongside it (ED 139). The photo is a photocopy of the original.



Can you figure out this tricky little math problem? It reads “POSITION; When first the marriage knot was tied / Betwixt my wife and me / My age did hers as far exceed / As three times three doth three / But after ten and ___ ten years / We man and wife had been / Her age came up as near to mine / As eight is to sixteen / Now ____ skilled in numbers say / What were our ages on the wedding day”.

The student who wrote out the puzzle was clever enough to work out the answer, and wrote below, “Sir forty five years you had been / Your wife no more than just fifteen”. The slip of paper was found at the beginning of a thick, hand-bound book of arithmetic. The opposite side of the paper is a simple explanation of arithmetic series (ED 268).

These files are all particularly interesting due to the strong personality conveyed through the hand-written documents. The modern scholar can sense the amount of attention which students paid to details, and the grueling levels to which they went in order to simply take notes. They also offer a fantastic view of the attitudes which high-society families held towards the education of women. If the handwriting can be labored through, we can gain a better perspective of colonial and ante-bellum education.