Mystery photo, What's happening here?
"Coming out of the ball smiling," -- is this the same event?
The image above left is one of 21 glass plate negatives found above Miller’s Drug Store in Margaretville years ago and donated to the Historical Society of Middletown by Al and Naomi Weiss. Several of the negatives were scanned and restored by Ed Kirstein of Roxbury. They were printed and framed by the Historical Society in 2007, and can currently be seen at Fairview Library’s conference room where the Historical Society will mount rotating historical displays.
What do you think is happening in this photo? What covered bridge is that in the background?
Is the postcard image at right, provided by Lynda Stratton, the same event? Is the clothing of the same era? Perhaps a daredevil sailed down the river in a flexible ball of some sort? Maybe the retaining wall at right (upon which the photographer must have been perched) offers a clue as to the location.
i think its a funeral. from back then
The boat (raft) picture may have had something to do with the Pakatakan Boat Club, which annually held a trip down the Delaware. In an article from May 29, 1908, Catskill Mtn. News it tells of a party of men composed of D.B. Cole, Dr. S.W. Reed, Erastus Clute, John Rotermund, Alfred Bell ( my Great Grandfather), Dewitt Whitney, John O’Kelly, Clifford Anderson, H. Williams, and Charles Crosby, starting out on the annual trip.
The first raft to run down the river is said to have been in 1765 and in the palmy days the number reached 3000 a year. In 1888 there were 30 rafts of commercial logs driven down the river.
In conversation with Len Utter, he also mentioned rafting trips down the river.
Possibly this picture is of one such boat trip, where the men were taking goods for sale down river to possibly Hancock, NY?
Erastus Clute, the last steersman from this area to pilot a raft down the Delaware in the event you relate, will be among 9 people portrayed in the Living History Tour of Margaretville Cemetery June 30. He was an interesting character, for sure! But these two images don’t look like goods on a raft. I think it’s some sort of stunt, like the people who went over Niagara Falls in barrels. Hard to figure it out. Anyobody else have an idea?