Need your feathers renovated?

Apr 2, 2014 | Tin Horn

While doing some research in the 1880 Middletown census I came across an unusual occupation of a man named J. L. Thurber, age 54: “feather renovator.” He and wife Olive had three sons, Adelbert, 20, Eddie, 18 and Herman, 14, all listed as laborers. Hmmm, what the heck was a feather renovator? Google and Goodsearch yielded a couple of ideas, the closest perhaps from the memoir of an Illinois woman, whose memories were published in The Prairie Historian, Jefferson Co. IL, March 1972:

“I remember when the feather renovators came to town. They stayed several days, making over and reconditioning feather beds and pillows. The young men were sporty guys and the girls liked that. One girl eloped with her renovator beau.”

It sounds like the cleaning and plumping of feather pillows and mattresses was later done by steam machines. For example, the Wikipedia entry for inventor Robert Benjamin Lewis of Maine explained that decorative feathers–ostrich, peacock, egret, and the like—were used to adorn the wardrobe of the fashionably dressed, and when the garments were sent out to be laundered and cleaned, the feathers would go also. On June 27, 1840, Robert Lewis assigned U.S. Patent no. 1655 to New York City businessman John H. Stevens; this patent was for a “Feather Renovator,” or a “Machine for Cleaning and Drying Feathers,” described as the “arrangement and combination of feathers by steam and steam heat” and could be used for dressing over old feathers or preparing new feathers for any domestic purposes.”

Any other ideas out there?

Tituses give geology talk March 29

Mar 21, 2014 | news archive

The first of two spring programs on the theme “Reading the Land” will be held Saturday, March 29 at 1 p.m., when Bob and Johanna Titus will present an illustrated talk, “Middletown: An Ice Age Origin” at the Historical Society of the Town of Middletown (HSM), 778 Cemetery Rd., Margaretville.

Admission is $2 for HSM members, $4 for non-members.

The Tituses’ deep knowledge of geology, and their accessible, engaging style have made them popular speakers. Robert Titus, PhD, is a paleontologist by training who has done considerable professional research on the fossils of upstate New York. He teaches in the Geology Department at Hartwick College. His previous books The Catskills: A Geological Guide, The Catskills in the Ice Age, and The Other Side of Time: Essays by The Catskill Geologist, were published by Purple Mountain Press.

Bob teamed up with his wife Johanna Titus, who has a master’s degree in molecular biology, to write The Hudson Valley in the Ice Age, published by Black Dome Press in 2012. Johanna teaches in the Allied Health and Biological Sciences Department at SUNY Dutchess.

The Tituses write regular columns for Kaatskill Life magazine, the Register Star newspaper chain and the Woodstock Times.

The second program on the “Reading the Land” theme will be held Saturday, April 26 at 1 p.m. when we’ll learn what turned up when a team of archaeologists dug deep to uncover evidence of Paleo-Indians in Middletown. “Arkville Underground” will be presented by Lynda Carroll of the Public Archaeology Program at Binghamton University. That presentation will also be at the HSM hall.

Who were the Waterburys?

Who were the Waterburys?

Mar 15, 2014 | Tin Horn

The headstone in the Sanford Cemetery, Dunraven is impressive, a bronze plaque on a granite monument: Robert L. Waterbury, MD, 1823-1881 “He lived so others may live”; Christiana Dowie, 1823-1878 “His faithful wife”; and two children, a five-year-old son, and a 22-year-old daughter who, we have learned, died in 1883 of typhoid fever while a student at Vassar College. She is actually buried at Poughkeepsie Rural Cemetery.

If you come to the 3rd Annual Living History Cemetery Tour June 21, you will learn much more about this family of cultured, educated men and women who hailed from Middletown pioneer stock. Fred Margulies (you’ll remember him from last year’s tour as John Blish who sold the Fleischmanns the land they would develop as a family compound) will portray Dr. Robert Waterbury. He was renowned as a teacher as much as a physician, teaching at several academies and colleges, and also serving as a surgeon to a NYS National Guard unit in the Civil War. He and wife Christina had 4 children, two of them, Lucy and Mary, becoming teachers themselves, as well as accomplished musicians who in the 1870s started a private school that was the precursor to Margaretville Central School.

Dr. Robert’s brothers were also teachers – seems like everyone in the family took a turn at teaching at the Old Stone School. Their parents, Rev. Daniel Waterbury and Mary Lewis Grant, raised the family on the homestead near the school established by Mary’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Asa Grant (he was the first postmaster in Middletown). Robert’s siblings included Daniel, a lawyer, State Assemblyman and gentleman farmer; and Edward, a teacher, insurance agent (improbably enough) and, in the 1880s, president of the Albany Normal School (predecessor of SUNY Albany).

There is a curious connection to Sandersville, KY near Lexington, where Robert, and his three 20-something daughters lived in 1880. Lucy either went there to teach music at a local college, or to care for the children of a wealthy northerner who had acquired a plantation there. Robert Waterbury is said to have died there, his body brought back to New York to be buried in an Arena cemetery later removed for the Pepacton Reservoir.

We’re still researching that one. Come to the tour to see what we discover!

Calling all bakers!

Jan 28, 2014 | Tin Horn

As you know we need a new roof and will be doing a lot of fundraising this year to pay for it. Our first event will be a bake sale at Freshtown (between Freshtown and CVS) on Saturday, Feb. 15 from 10AM to 2PM. Since it is Valentine’s Day weekend we think homemade chocolates and baked goods would be a great way to make some money for our roof fund. This is where all of you come in.

We need all of you great bakers to make the homemade goodies to offer for sale. And we need help to staff the table for one hour shifts. Anne Sanford will be coordinating the bake sale so could you please let her know by email, natty55@verizon.net, or phone, 607-326-4817 if you can make a goody and/or staff the table by Feb. 5 (or sooner if possible)?

Please package baked goods for sale so we can minimize handling. We’d appreciate it if you could price each item, too. It would be helpful if you can drop off your goody at Freshtown between 9 and 10 that morning. If you can’t, please email, or call Anne to make other arrangements.

Thanks for your help!

Does the man on the left look familiar?

Does the man on the left look familiar?

Jan 24, 2014 | Tin Horn

Backstage at the Capitol Theater, NYC

 

Paula Eisenstein Baker, Houston, TX cellist and musicologist, is trying to verify whether he is Bernard Nadelle, a prominent cellist with the house orchestra at the Capitol Theater in NYC in the 1920s and 30s. Eisenstein Baker, adjunct instructor of violincello at University of St. Thomas in Houston, is writing a book about an overture on Jewish themes composed for the Capitol Theatre by the man in the center, violist Leo Zeitlin (1884-1930). The man on the right is Alexander Savitsky (188?-1965). These three, and violinist David Mendoza, played together in a string quartet on the radio program “Major Bowes’ Capitol Theatre Family,” broadcast Sunday nights on WEAF in the 1920s. The photo is labeled (on the back) “Capitol Rest Room” (i.e., musicians’ lounge).

So here’s the local connection: Bernard Nadelle and his wife, Feliska Lezeynska Nadelle, were frequent visitors to the Denver Valley, spending time in an apartment at the farmhouse of Lena and Howard Greene. In 1951, they purchased land from the Greenes and built a small home on the Denver-Vega Road where they vacationed for many years. “He was always practicing,” remembered Shirley Greene, who married the farm couple’s son Gerald. “You had to be quiet.”

But the music died in May of 1964 when Nadelle, suffering from cancer, took his own life in the little country house. His widow stayed on, receiving help with rides and shopping from Mrs. Greene and another neighbor, Ethel Roberts. Shirley recalls that Mrs. Nadelle, like her husband a Polish immigrant, had a playful side. “She was a foxy lady, a lot of fun.” She painted the house pink, and once, after a visit to the undertaker to make her own funeral arrangements, cheerfully took Shirley out for a strawberry soda.

Feliska Nadelle died just before Christmas in 1967. She is buried in Roxbury. Her husband rests in Bnai Israel Cemetery, Clovesville.

If you recognize the man in the photo as Bernard Nadelle, or by some miracle, have a confirmed photo of him, contact Eisenstein Baker, at eisenbak@stthom.edu; 713-522-9488.