Home on the Grange with the Patrons of Husbandry

by Rachel Dworkin, Archivist

The National Grange of the Order of the Patrons of Husbandry was founded in 1867 in an effort to bring Northern and Southern farmers together.  The organization really took off in the 1870s when the National Grange sent paid agents out to form local chapters.  As fraternal organizations went, the Grange was unique in that encourage the active participation of both men and women and, in fact, most chapters required that four of the offices be female.  Throughout the Progressive Era (1890s-1920s), the Grange lobbied hard for pro-farm legislation including regulation of railroad shipping costs and grain warehouses, free rural mail delivery and the farm credit system as well as a range of social issues including prohibition and women’s suffrage.  While membership in the Grange has fallen sharply off in recent decades, they continue to work on issues regarding free trade and farm policies.  In many rural communities, the Grange Hall acts as a community center.

In addition to its more public activities, the Grange was also a secret society.  There were seven degrees of membership with a range of rituals and symbols borrowed from Freemasonry, Greek and Roman mythology and the Bible.   While the Grange no longer has secret meetings or practices many of the rituals, some vestiges of the practices still exist today.  

The Chemung Valley Grange, chapter No. 57, was found in 1885.  Other Chemung County Granges include the Ashland Grange No. 210, Big Flats No.  1106, Veteran No. 1108 and Horseheads No. 1118.  We recently acquired a collection of papers from the Horseheads and Veteran Granges. Here is a selection of Grange-related items from our collections.

Ashland Grange dance program, ca. 1890s

Big Flats Grange By-Laws, 1907

Veteran Grange handbill, 1941

Certificate for Degree of Ceres, 1937

Root, Root, Root for the Home Team!

Do you remember the taste of your first ballpark frank? Remember the smell of the oil on your glove and the feel of the bat in your hand? Remember the crack of the ball on the bat and the roar of the crowd? For more than 150 years, people in Chemung County have shared these experiences.

 

Although its origins are a mystery, baseball likely evolved from an older English game called rounders.  There were a number of regional variations but, in 1845, the New York Knickerbockers wrote the rules of the modern game.  By the 1850s, the Knickerbocker rules were used throughout New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.  During the Civil War, soldiers from across the Union played ball and created a unified version of the game.  But baseball wasn’t just for players, spectators enjoyed it too.  Elmirans bought their first baseball tickets for a game between the Erastus Ransom Alerts and soldiers from the local garrison in 1866.  Throughout the 1860s and 1870s, Chemung County fans paid to watch semi-pro teams from across the Twin Tiers play in a regional league.

local baseball in the 1860s

To learn more about the history of baseball in Chemung County come see our new exhibit from June 22 through the end of September 2013.

Blacksmithing in Chemung County

by Rachel Dworkin, Archivist

As a craft, the history of blacksmithing dates back to the Iron Age, or about 1200 BCE.  At its most basic, smithing involves using fire and an assortment of tools to forge items from iron or steel.  Over the centuries, smiths have made everything from tools to weapons, horseshoes to art. 

Before the 20^th Century, every town and village in America had at least one blacksmith.  In 1861, there were 7 smiths in Elmira; 4 in Big Flats; 3 in Breesport, Post Creek, Millport and Wellsburg; 2 in Horseheads and Van Etten; and 1 in Pine Valley, Seely Creek, Ashland, Chemung and Erin.  These local blacksmiths shod horses, made and repaired farming implements, pots and pans, wagon parts and a wide range of other things necessary for everyday life.       

Industrialization, however, greatly reduced the need for blacksmiths.  Machines could produce metal goods faster and more consistently than any human could.  The products produced by blacksmiths could vary widely from piece to piece, but a machine would make the same thing each time.  Towards the end of the 19^th Century, most blacksmiths had moved away from making tools and hardware and were primarily involved in either shoeing horses or doing decorative work.  And then came the car.  In 1900, there were 25 smiths working in Elmira alone.  By 1920 there were 10 and by 1960 there was only one smith in the whole county. 

Nationally, the 1960s were the nadir of the blacksmithing trade.  Throughout the 20^th Century, smiths transitioned to automotive repairs or retired and few people were interested in taking up the craft.  In the 1970s the Bicentennial led many to take an interest in traditional crafts from quilting to blacksmithing.  Today blacksmiths can be roughly divided into two groups; farriers (they just shoe horses) and artisans.  The Artisan Blacksmiths’ Association of North America has nearly 4000 members, many of whom make decorative pieces and/or provide demonstrations at museums and living history centers. 

On Saturday, June 15^th, from 1pm to 3pm, one of these artisan smiths will be doing a demonstration of his craft right here in the CCHS parking lot.  Nathaniel Francisco, a recent Elmira College grad, has been working as a smith since high school and interned with the blacksmith at the Farmers Museum in Cooperstown.  Some of the products of his work will be available for sale.  Hope to see you there. 

Calling All Local Civil War Collectors

Do you collected items related to the Civil War?  Do you know someone in the area who does?  If you do, CCHS wants to hear from you!

In October 2013, the exhibit Civil War in the Attic will open at the Chemung Valley History Museum.  The exhibit will be the third in our four part series commemorating the Sesquicentennial of the Civil War.  In this new exhibit we want to showcase historical objects borrowed from local history buffs.  We want to show what people collect, why they collect, and why the Civil War is still so talked about 150 years later.

If you have some Civil War related objects you would like loan to the museum or can suggest the name of a collector we should contact, please let us know.  You can email curator Erin Doane at curator@chemungvalleymuseum.org or call her at (607)734-4167 x204.  We can’t wait to see what sorts of Civil War treasures are tucked away in your attic!

Soldiers of 23rd NY Volunteers

Remembering the Meaning of Memorial Day

by Erin Doane, Curator

Since 1971 when the Uniform Monday Holiday Act went into effect, Americans have been celebrating Memorial Day on the last Monday of May.  On that same day, advertisers and marketing campaigns declare that summer has begun. It seems these days that most people view Memorial Day as a day off from work or school, a time for the first barbeque of the season, and a chance to score great deals at the mall not as a solemn day set aside for people to pay tribute to the men and women who have died while serving in the military. 

Originally called Decoration Day, the holiday was created to commemorate the roughly 625,000 Union and Confederate soldiers who died during the Civil War.  The exact origin of the holiday will always be debated but the practice of decorating the graves of fallen soldiers was widely adopted both in the north and south shortly after the war.  On May 5, 1868 General John A. Logan, commander-in-chief of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), proclaimed that Decoration Day should be observed annually on the 30^th of May all across the nation.  Members of the GAR, the organization of Union Civil War veterans, arranged reunions, parades and visits to cemeteries to commemorate the holiday.

The holiday was first called Memorial Day in 1882 but the name did not surpass Decoration Day until after World War II.  In 1967 Federal law declared it Memorial Day.  By the 20^th Century the holiday expanded from its original purpose to honor soldiers killed during the Civil War to include all those who died in the service of the US military. Groups of volunteers around the country place small American flags on soldiers’ graves to commemorate their sacrifice. People also use the day to generally remember loved ones who have gone before them.  My husband has told me that he remembers going to the cemetery with his grandmother on Memorial Day to clean up around the headstones of family members and place fresh flowers on the graves.

Memorial Day commemorates a major part of our shared history that should be preserved.   Hopefully by briefly telling that history here it will help remind people of what the day is really about.

 

Chemung County Melting Pot: South-Asian Heritage Month

by Rachel Dworkin, Archivist

According to my good friend Wikipedia, May is Asian-Pacific Heritage Month, Jewish Heritage Month, National Military Appreciation Month and, randomly enough, National Bike Month.  It is also South Asian Heritage Month.  South Asia generally refers to the countries south of the Himalayans including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.  While the peoples of these nations have long and storied histories, their history in the United States and Chemung County has been relatively brief. 

Prior to the 1960s, immigration to the United States from these countries was almost unheard of.   Before 1965, immigration from Asia was restricted through strict racial and national quotas which favored immigrants from Northern and Western Europe.  However, the Hart-Cellar Act of 1965 changed the way the United States handled immigration, doing away with racial-geographic quotas and instead given preferences to those with useful job skills in targeted fields or family members already living here.  By the 1970s, this resulted in an influx of highly skilled and educated immigrants from India and Pakistan.  As of the 2000 census, there were 2,000,000 people from India and 724,000 people from Pakistan living in the United States, plus their American-born children.  According to the 2010 Chemung County census, .78% of our residents are of South Asian descent. 

Attracted here by the hospitals and high-tech industries like Corning Inc., Chemung County’s South Asian immigrants have been settling in.  There are Indian groceries in Big Flats and Horseheads and a Mosque in Big Flats too.  The Southern Tier Indian Cultural Association (http://www.stica.org), a local social and cultural organization, hosts annual events celebrating Indian culture which have become quite a hit in Corning.  Still, their integration into the community hasn’t been easy.  In a recent interview as part of an oral history project, a Horsehead’s student of Pakistani descent expressed her anger at a patient who refused to let her mother treat her because she was wearing a hijab. 

The South Asians in our community might not have been here quite as long as some, but they are an important part of our Chemung County melting pot.  We here at CCHS are looking forward to collecting both their stories and their stuff.