Alsace S. Blandford: Painter by Trade and for Art

By Erin Doane, Curator 

I had never heard of local Elmira folk artist Alsace S. Blandford until recently which is not surprising.  The ex-slave painted during most of his life but few of his works seem to have survived.  The museum has three paintings donated by his son in 1966.  Our own archives only has a slim folder of information about him.  The few sources available provided just a tiny glimpse into his long life.

Alsace S. Blandford was born a slave on March 17, 1858 in Maryland.  He and his family lived on a plantation of 1,000 acres with more than 120 slaves in Prince George County, Maryland which was just 12 miles from Washington D.C.  When the Civil War broke out, Alsace’s father, Thomas Blandford, learned that they could become freedmen if they escaped Maryland.  This information set a plan in motion.  Thomas was the foreman at the plantation and was responsible for driving produce to Washington for sale.  He created a false bottom on the produce wagon under which he hid his wife and six children.  Alsace was just three years old at time.  Thomas placed a full load of potatoes in the wagon and left the plantation as he always did.  Since he was a common sight on the route Thomas was never challenged.  This time instead of going to market he took his family to freedom.

The story of the potato wagon is common among the few sources I found but after that some accounts differ.  A 1938 newspaper article reports that the family stayed in Washington until 1867 when they moved to Sherwood, NY and then to Poplar Ridge, NY a year later.  Alsace is said to have remembered the family’s former master coming to visit them in Washington after the war.  He asked Thomas to come back to work for him and offered the family 100 acres of land.  Thomas declined the offer.  Another source states that Thomas drove the wagon to the Northern part of Maryland where they made contact with some Quakers who were members of the Underground Railroad.  The family was passed from one station to another to Philadelphia before finally ending up at last in Poplar Ridge, NY.

It is known for certain that Alsace Blandford, himself, came to Elmira in 1879 at the age of 22.  He married an Elmiran named Helen Abigail Condol and they had six children together.  He made his living as a house painter and paperhanger even though he was told when he started that no one would hire an African American for such work.  He continued to support himself with that trade well into his 80s.  His real love, though, was painting landscapes and rural scenes.  He had always enjoyed painting pictures from an early age and his works show great skill even though he was never formally trained as an artist.  The walls of his home on Madison Avenue in Elmira were said to have been covered in oil paintings, pastel drawing and watercolors that he had created.  Alsace died on April 13, 1948 at the age of 91.

One Story, Many Voices: The Battle of Newtown

By Kerry Lippincott, Education Coordinator

Good, bad or ugly, it’s my responsibility to tell the stories of Chemung County.  It’s not just about telling a story, but as much as possible presenting a full and complete story.  In many cases this means having multiple voices tell a single story.  Take for example the Battle of Newtown.

At the beginning of the American Revolution, the Iroquois were split in their loyalties.   As the war progressed with attacks on their villages by the Continental Army and the persuasion of British loyalists, most Iroquois nations sided with the British.   In 1778 British and loyalists troops with their Iroquois allies attacked frontier settlements in Wyoming Valley, Pennsylvania and Cherry Valley, New York.  When settlers demanded protection, General George Washington formulated a plan to break the British and Iroquois alliance in New York State.  The plan called for the immediate destruction of Iroquois villages which would cut of supply lines to the British Army and their Iroquois allies.    Once cut off from their resources the aim was to push the Iroquois back to British-held Fort Niagara on Lake Ontario in hopes that they would become a burden to the British army thus ending the alliance. 

General John Sullivan was chosen to lead the campaign through northern Pennsylvania and New York.  Joined by General James Clinton, the campaign included over 4,000 Continental soldiers.  Starting from Tioga, (present day Athens) Pennsylvania in August 1779, Sullivan and his men moved toward New York seizing what food they could use from Iroquois villages and destroying the rest.  For the Iroquois and British the arrival of Sullivan was not a surprise.  In fact, they expected there would be retaliation for attacks in the Wyoming Valley and Cherry Valley.  However, they did not expect the magnitude of Sullivan’s army (over 4,000 Continental soldiers compared to their 600).  To divert the campaign, small parties periodically attacked the Continental soldiers with little or any success.  The British and Iroquois then chose a site near the Iroquois village of Newtown to ambush Sullivan’s men as it was right on the trail the Continental soldiers were using.  On August 29, 1779 the Battle of Newtown occurred and the Continental soldiers forced the British and Iroquois to retreat.  Ensuring that the British and Iroquois would not return to the area, Sullivan ordered his soldiers to destroy Iroquois villages and crops.  

Two days after the battle Sullivan and his men continued their march north to Geneseo and came back through the area in September. The Battle of Newtown was the only significant engagement with the British and Iroquois during the campaign, which became known as the Sullivan-Clinton Campaign.

When the peace treaty between England and the United States was signed in 1783, the British ceded Iroquois lands (including portions of New York State) to the United States.  Believing that they were an independent nation the Iroquois were shocked to see their own land being given away.    The parcels of land in New York were given to Continental soldiers which opened up the Southern Tier to white settlement.

Though the British, American and Iroquois viewpoints of the battle and its aftermath are all extremely different they are still part of the Battle of Newtown’s story.  This weekend you can experience these stories at the Revolutionary War Event at the Newtown Battlefield State Park.  The event is sponsored by the Chemung Valley Living History Center and for more information visit www.chemungvalley.org.

Chemung County Melting Pot: Asian Edition

By Rachel Dworkin, Archivist

According to the 2010 census, approximately 1.3% of Chemung County residents are of Asian descent.  While the majority of that population came here after 1943, there were a handful of Chinese immigrants living in the county as early as 1900.

The earliest Chinese immigrants to the United States came in the 1820s as part of the Trans-Pacific trade.  By the mid-1840s, there were several hundred Chinese living in the United States, mostly on the West Coast.  With the discovery of gold in California in 1849, that number jumped into the hundreds of thousands as immigrants came to seek their fortune.  Most of these immigrants were young men from Guangdong province, aka Canton, on China’s southeast coast.  Once in the United States, many of them worked in California’s mining camps or fisheries, labored on the transcontinental railroad or provided cheap labor on southern plantations.

In 1868, Congress ratified the Burlingame Treaty with China which, while granting China favored trade status and encouraging immigration, also denied Chinese immigrants the chance to become naturalized citizens.   A series of laws including the Page Act of 1875 and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 severely restricted Chinese immigrantion to the United States.  These laws made it harder for unmarried women and laborers to enter the country.  Over time, more and more restrictive laws were passed until 1924 when all Chinese immigrants were excluded from the United States.  It wasn’t until the Magnuson Act of 1943 that Chinese nationals in the United States were granted the right to become naturalized citizens and immigration was allowed once again, abet at only 105 a year.  In 1965 the quota was dropped with the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act allowing Chinese immigration to begin in earnest.

Most of the pre-1943 Chinese immigrants who settled in Chemung County were not laborers, but businessmen.  The first I've been able to find was a Mr. Yee Lee of 325 Carroll Street who appeared in the 1884 city directory as the owner of Elmira’s first Chinese laundry.  In 1885, he was joined by Gee Lee of 221 West Water Street.  By 1901 there were five laundries owned and operated by Chinese immigrants.  There continued to be Chinese laundries in Elmira well into the 1930s.    

Interestingly enough, I would never have even known about any of this if it wasn’t for the photograph above.  The photograph is part of our unidentified cabinet card collection and was taken by the Chemung County photographer Charles Tomlinson sometime between 1874 and 1891.  I stumbled across it while scanning images for an upcoming exhibit.  While I still don’t know who the man is, I now know a lot more about how an Asian man might have ended up in Elmira in the late-1800s. 

A Working Vacation: Mark Twain's Summers at Quarry Farm

By Kerry Lippincott, Education Coordinator

I wish you were here, to spend the summer with us. 

We are perched on a hill-top that overlooks a little world - 

of green valleys, shining rivers, sumptuous forests and billowy 

uplands veiled in the haze of distance. We have no neighbors. 

It is the quietest of all quiet places, and we are hermits that eschew 

caves and live in the sun. Doctor, if you'd only come!

Mark Twain to Dr. John Brown, June, 22, 1876

Purchased as the Langdon summer home, Susan and Theodore Crane inherited Quarry Farm in 1870.  The couple expanded the property from seven acres to 250 and converted the cottage into their year around home.  For nearly twenty years summers meant Quarry Farm for Susan’s younger sister Livy, her three daughters (Susy, Clara and Jean) and her husband Mark Twain.

While at Quarry Farm, Livy conducted lessons with her daughters, rested, read, and visited with family and friends.  The girls spent their days exploring the farm, going on picnics, reading, visiting with their Langdon cousins, and playing in their playhouse “Ellerslie.”   Twain described a typical day at Quarry Farm to his sister-in-law Mollie - The Cranes are reading and loafing in the canvas-curtained summer-house 50 yards away on a higher (the highest) point; the cats are loafing over at "Ellerslie" which is the children's estate and dwelling house in their own private grounds (by deed from Susie Crane) a hundred yards from the study, amongst the clover and young oaks and willows. Livy is down at the house, but I shall now go and bring her up to the Cranes to help us occupy the lounges and hammocks--whence a great panorama of distant hill and valley and city is seeable. The children have gone on a lark through the neighboring hills and woods. It is a perfect day indeed.

Free from interruptions and the demanding social life of Hartford, Twain spent his days writing.  Twain would write - I can write ten chapters in Elmira where I can write one here [Hartford]... I work at work here but I don't accomplish anything worth speaking of... I can't succeed except by getting clean out of the world on top of the mountain in Elmira.

During the summer of 1874, Susan presented Twain with a study in the shape of a steam boat pilot’s house.  Twain wrote about the study to his friends Joe and Harmony Twitchell - Susie Crane has built the loveliest study for me you ever saw.  It is octagonal, with a peaked roof, each octagon filled with a spacious window, and it sits perched in complete isolation on top of an elevation that commands leagues of valley and city and retreating ranges of distant hills. It is cozy nest, with just room in it  for a sofa and a table and three or four chairs and when the storms sweep down the remote valley and the lightening flashes above the hills beyond, and the rain beats on the roof over my head, imagine the luxury of it!  It stands 500 feet above the valley and 2 ½ miles from it. Having this place to work provided Twain some privacy and quiet while it provided the rest of the Clemens and Crane families relief from his ever-present cigar smoke.

His summers at Quarry Farm were very productive for Twain.  He wrote to William Dean Howell - I haven't piled up MS so in years as I have done since we came here to the farm three weeks and a half ago. Why, it's like old times, to step right into the study, damp from the breakfast table, and sail right in and sail right on, the whole day long, without thought of running short of stuff or words.

 I wrote 4000 words to-day and I touch 3000 and upwards pretty often, 

and don't fall below 1600 any working day. And when I get fagged out, 

I lay abed a couple of days and read and smoke, and then go it again for 

6 or 7 days. I have finished one small book, and am away along in a big

433 one that I half-finished two or three years ago. I expect to complete it 

in a month or six weeks or two months more. And I shall like it, whether 

anybody else does or not.  It's a kind of companion to Tom Sawyer. 

There's a raft episode from it in second or third chapter of life on the 

Mississippi.....

While at Quarry Farm Twain would write Roughing It, Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Prince and the Pauper, A Tramp Abroad, Life on the Mississippi, A Connecticut Yankee at Kings Arthur’s Court and several short stories.

No matter what Twain was working on days at Quarry Farm ended the same.  After dinner everyone gathered on the porch to hear what he had written that day.

Meet Me at the Fair: A Brief Ride Through Fair History in Chemung County

By Kerry Lippincott, Education Coordinator

The history of the Chemung County Fair begins with the Chemung County Agricultural Society.  Formed in September 1842, the society was to meet annually in October “for the purpose of holding the regular fair and exhibition of domestic animals, manufactured articles of the farm and garden and agricultural implements.”  The first fair was held in October 1842.  During that fair cash prizes were given in a variety of divisions including horses, cattle, pigs, butter and cheese, grain crops, fruit, silk agricultural implements and household productions.

Unfortunately, after 1842 there are gaps in the fair records.   Though we may not know the exact dates of the fairs, we do know the locations.   Early fairs were held in Horseheads.  In 1871 400 acres of land between Elmira and Horseheads (the area where Anchor Glass is currently located) was secured for the fairgrounds.  Twenty-one years later the fair moved to its current location in Horseheads.

Of course, county fairs were not the only fairs held in the county.  Between 1841 and 1889 the New York State Fair was held annually throughout the state.  Host cities included Syracuse, Albany, Rochester, Poughkeepsie, Utica, Buffalo, New York City, Watertown and Elmira.  In fact, Elmira hosted the state fair nine times in 1855, 1860, 1869, 1872, 1875, 1878, 1881, 1884, and 1889.  Over the years two locations were used for the state fair – East Water Street (where Kennedy Valve is currently located) or the Maple Avenue Driving Park (now Dunn Field).  In 1890 the state fair moved permanently to Syracuse.

Between 1889 and 1891 the Interstate Fair (a joint effort between New York and Pennsylvania) was held at the Maple Avenue Driving Park.

This week marks the 170^th Annual Chemung County Fair.  If you happen to be at the fair, please stop at our booth in the Commercial Building!

When a (Mini) Disaster Strikes

By Erin Doane, Curator  

Normally, I enjoy irony but when I’m on the receiving end of the universe’s sense of humor, I’m not too pleased about it.  The museum just opened up an exhibit on the Flood of ’72 a couple weeks ago and I wrote a blog entry about how to salvage water-damaged items.  So, on the morning of Monday, July 2 when I discovered that our ac unit in collections storage had sprung a leak, I felt like the butt of a cosmic joke.  I don’t think I would have taken it so personally except that a similar thing happened to me at a previous job.  That time I had just completed a disaster response workshop that included salvaging items from a kiddie pool filled with water one week before the plumbing in the men’s room decided to leak into collections storage.  Just a coincidence?  I’m beginning to wonder.

So, just after 9:00 am I walked into textile store to collect the climate information for the past month and was surprised to find puddles of water on the floor.  My first thought, of course, was “oh expletive!”  My next thought was that I’m glad that I’ve been trained in this sort of thing and that the museum has two boxes of supplies collected just for an emergency like this.  I absolutely love it when institutions have disaster plans in place.

A quick perusal of the situation showed that this was only a minor disaster, at worst.  The part of the ac unit that was dripping is mounted on the ceiling above a metal shelving unit containing twenty archival boxes filled with textiles.  Fortunately, the water was coming from a part of the unit that was not directly over the shelves so it only dripped on the floor.  It did splash up, however, and the front edges of four textile storage boxes on the bottom shelf were soggy.  The unit must have dripped all weekend when it was hot and humid. 

I removed the four boxes from storage and brought them into the museum’s conference room.  We are very fortunate to have a space with four large, empty tables.  I’m not sure how I would have laid out the damp items otherwise.  I laid down plastic sheeting from the disaster supply kit and removed the clothing from the wettest of the boxes first.  The water had wicked up through the cardboard and the tissue paper wrapped around a lovely yellow and brown 1870s dress and soaked into where the skirt was folded at the end of the box.  The water went through four layers of fabric but the dress was not soaking wet.  A skirt, a petticoat and the shoulders of another dress from the other three boxes were also slightly damp.  I spread them all out on the tables and brought a fan into the room to circulate the air.  By noon the items were all dry with little sign that they had ever been wet.  The only casualties of this minor disaster were two textile storage boxes that were soaked enough to deform the ends making them useless.  

This mini disaster was caused by a blockage in the drain tube for the ac unit.  The blockage was removed later that day and we haven’t had any trouble since (knock on wood!).  So, I guess one lesson from this experience is to periodically check out the ac unit to make sure everything is running as it should.  Probably the greater lesson is that being prepared can save the day.  The Historical Society has a disaster plan in place that covers emergencies great and small and boxes of supplies ready for when disaster strikes.  The relatively small amount of water from a plugged ac unit was not too difficult to deal with but the potential for other catastrophes is always there.

Clang, Clang Went the Trolley. Ding, Ding Went the Bell: A Brief History of Trolleys in Chemung County

By Kerry Lippincott, Education Coordinator

In July and August the museum is hosting Trolley Into Twain County Tours.  On Tuesdays through Saturdays people can catch the trolley at the museum and go on an hour long, narrated tour of Elmira.  Sites include Mark Twain’s Study, Woodlawn Cemetery and the Civil War Prison Camp.    I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to explore the county’s trolley history.

 On August 23, 1871 the county’s first trolley line opened.  Operated by the Elmira and Horseheads Railway Company, horse drawn cars traveled between Elmira and Horseheads.  Rides within Elmira were five cents while travel to and from Horseheads was fifteen cents.  Other trolley companies were quickly established.

·        The Maple Avenue Railway was part of a real estate project to develop Maple Avenue.  On August 30, 1890 going between 12 and 15 miles an hour, the railway became the first to have an electric trolley in Chemung County.

·        In 1891 to help develop Elmira Heights, the West Side Railroad was started.   

·        The East Side Railroad operated briefly before merging with the West Side Railroad.

·        Residents along West Water Street contributed money to have a one mile track between Main Street and Foster Avenue.

·        The Elmira Transfer Railway ran between East Water and Fifth Streets along Clemens Center Parkway.

·        Known as the Glen Route, the Elmira and Seneca Lake Railway Company made trips between Horseheads and Watkins Glen.

·        Since trolleys were not equipped with bathrooms, the Elmira, Corning and Waverly Railway could not provide non-stop service from Waverly to Corning, passengers had to change cars in Elmira.  A popular activity on this route was shipping canoes on the cars to Corning and paddling back to Elmira down the Chemung River.

 The period between 1890 and 1939 is called Elmira’s Trolley Car Era.  Connecting people, places and events, the trolleys were the life lines of the community. With five cents (during World War I the fare increased to six cents) and routes running every fifteen minutes, one could go practically anywhere within the county.   During the summer open cars left for Rorick's Glen every 7 ½ minutes and double deck cars transported people to Eldridge Park.  The Hotel Rathbun (now the Chemung Canal Trust Company on Water Street) had special tracks from its Baldwin Street side to the Erie Railroad Station so hotel guests could be transported by a special yellow trolley to and from the hotel.  People choose homes based on distance from a trolley line.  There were even trolley parades where people traveled to an event in decorated trolleys.   1919 was a record breaking year for trolley fares.  In that year alone there were 10 million fares (this broke the previous record of 8 ½ million fares set in 1913).

By the early 1900s most of the trolley companies were consolidated under the Elmira Water, Light and Railroad Company.  Not only did the company control transportation routes, but the water and electric light utilities as well.

Like most things in life, all good things must come to end.  With the increase use of cars and the introduction of bus lines people rode the trolleys less.    On March 11, 1939 Car 501 made Elmira’s last trolley ride. To commemorate the event, the Chamber of Commerce staged a parade.  Pulled by a team of horses, Car 501 led a procession of three bands and several buses from City Hall to Third Street to the car barn on East Fifth Street.  The crepe decorated car had a “To Graveyard” sign on the front and “Good-by, Elmira” on the back with its roll turned to “Home for the Aged.”   At 4:16 pm the car barn reported that the trolley had completed its route and the order was sent to Fred B. Reynolds to turn the power off.  Nearly forty-six years earlier Reynolds had turned the power on for Elmira’s first electric trolley.