The AIDS Memorial Quilt: 40 Years Later

 by Erin Doane, Senior Curator

In 1981, doctors in Los Angeles reported a rare lung infection in five previously healthy young gay men. Doctors in New York and California also reported cases of a rare, aggressive cancer among gay men. This was the start of the AIDS Epidemic. In September 1982, the U.S. CDC used the term Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) for the first time. French researchers discovered that a retrovirus caused AIDS and it was official named Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) in 1986.

Between 1980 and 1987, more than 1,000 San Franciscans died of AIDS. In June 1987, Cleve Jones gathered a small group in that city “to take all of our individual experiences, and stitch them together to make something that had strength and beauty.” That was how the AIDS Memorial Quilt was born. Jones, along with Mike Smith, Gert McMullin, and several others, established the NAMES Project Foundation to formally organize their efforts.

Word of the Quilt project spread quickly to major cities throughout the country. On October 11, 1987, the NAMES Project Foundation displayed the AIDS Memorial Quilt for the first time in Washington, D.C., laying out nearly 2,000 panels on the Capitol Mall. Each fabric panel measures 3-feet by 6-feet and nine panels are sewn together into a 12-foot by 12-foot block. 

Pieces of the quilt were first displayed in the Southern Tier in the late 1980s. In 1989, the Arnot Art Museum hosted two 12-foot by 12-foot blocks while the Corning Museum of Glass and the Rockwell Museum each hosted one. Arnot Art Museum director John D. O’Hern called the Quilt a moving artifact saying, “AIDS doesn’t just affect statistics, it affects people.”

Arnot Art Museum director John D. O’Hern with 
an AIDS Quilt block, Star-Gazette, November 24, 1989

More displays took place throughout the 1990s including at Elmira College, Ithaca College, Cornell University, Corning Community College, Binghamton University, Schuyler-Chemung-Tioga BOCES in Horseheads, the Steele Memorial Library, and the Southern Steuben County Library in Corning.

Evelyn O’Buckley (left) and Wendy Richardson at Elmira College with one of six new 
local AIDS Quilt panels in the background, Star-Gazette, December 12, 1990

Nine blocks of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, made up of 472 individual panels, were laid out at the Murray Athletic Center (the Domes) in Horseheads April 20-22, 1996. Panels on display included those of famous people who had died of AIDS including Rock Hudson, Freddy Mercury, Liberace, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Ryan White. The event was sponsored by Elmira College, Arnot Ogden Medical Center, The Southern Tier AIDS Program, the Southern Tier Interfaith Coalition, Planned Parenthood of the Southern Tier, the Chemung County Health Department, and the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. Donations benefitted the Southern Tier AIDS Program, Southern Tier Hospice, HIV Primary Care Clinic at the Arnot Ogden Medical Center, and AIDS Rochester.

Visitors to the event were encouraged to sign their names and share their thoughts on a 12-foot by 12-foot signature block. Over the course of three days, nearly 5,000 people visited the Quilt, including 1,925 students.

Horseheads host signature block created during the Quilt display at the Domes, 
April 20-22, 1996, in the collection of the Chemung County Historical Society

During the event, 29 new panels honoring local residents who had died of AIDS were dedicated and added to the Quilt. One of the panels was made in honor of Rick Teachman, a local AIDS activist. Teachman tested positive for HIV in 1986. He began volunteering with the Chemung County AIDS Task Force and was its president by 1993. He was one of the first people in the Twin Tiers to publicly admit to having the disease and made about 200 speeches around the region trying to put a face on the epidemic. He died on February 10, 1996 at the Arnot Ogden Medical Center due to complication from AIDS. He was 34 years old.

Rick Teachman’s panel being dedicated during the Quilt 
display at the Domes, Star-Gazette, April 22, 1996

When the AIDS Memorial Quilt was on display in Horseheads, the Star-Gazette published statistics on AIDS in the Southern Tier. Local cases of AIDS increased between June 1993 to April 1995:
    ·        Chemung: from 39 cases to 63 
    ·        Tioga: from 9 cases to 16
    ·        Steuben: from 20 cases to 34
    ·        Schuyler: from 5 cases to 11

At the height of the epidemic in the early 1990s, nearly 80,000 new cases of HIV were being reported in the U.S. each year with more than 50,000 deaths. Educational campaigns, the increased availability of HIV testing, and the use of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and antiretroviral therapy (ART) after exposure have contributed to a decline in new cases and deaths. In 2022, 31,800 new cases of HIV were reported along with 19,310 deaths. Today, more than 1.2 million people in the United States are living with HIV. 

The AIDS Memorial Quilt is considered the largest community art project in history. Today, the 54-ton tapestry has roughly 50,000 panels with more than 110,000 names. It has increased public awareness of the AIDS epidemic through thousands of displays around the country and helped to show the humanity behind the statistics. The Quilt is now under the stewardship of the National AIDS Memorial. You can visit www.aidsmemorial.org for more information about how to create a Quilt panel, make a donation, or host a community display. The National AIDS Memorial has also digitized all of the Quilt panels and created an interactive website where you can search for the panels of friends and loved ones.

The 1996 Horseheads host signature block is on display at CCHS now through April 30, 2026.

Strike! The Secret History of Elmira's 1840s Bowling Saloons

By Milo Miller, CCHS Volunteer

Lucy Rossi Cesari, 1950s, CCHS Collection

Because bowling surged in popularity during the twentieth-century, many in today’s Elmira would be surprised to learn that the sport first became popular downtown in the 1840s. In those days, bowling was not played in lanes with automated pinsetters. Instead, it was more likely for city goers to play the game in establishments known as bowling saloons. Bowling saloons typically had an upstairs that contained a standard saloon along with bowling alleys in the basement. In the alleys, working-class men would meet, bowl, drink, gamble, and socialize. Due to these activities, those who gathered at the bowling saloons developed unsavory reputations, influencing the public perception of the sport.

Before the 1830s, when New York City’s Knickerbocker Hotel began to house indoor lanes, bowling was an exclusively outdoor sport in the United States. Often, establishments had side lots where they hosted lawn bowling on bowling greens. With the rise of bowling saloons, this changed rapidly, and indoor alleys sprang up across the country during the 1840s. By 1850, New York City alone had over 400 indoor alleys, all of which had sprung up within a 15-year span. This rise in popularity catalyzed changes to bowling that have carried over to today’s game. On bowling greens, early Americans usually played nine-pin bowling rather than the now-popular ten-pin game. During the 1840s boom of indoor bowling, several cities and states outlawed nine-pin bowling in an attempt to curb the drinking and gambling that became associated with the sport.  Many alleys quickly switched to ten-pin bowling to circumvent these laws. Even though lawmakers caught on to this change quickly, banning all forms of bowling, this switch resulted in the ten-pin game becoming the more popular option in the United States.

In Elmira, early bowling matched the objectionable reputation that plagued bowling alleys nationwide.

Stone Bowling Ball, CCHS Collection

Though the location and inception date of the first bowling alley in Elmira are unknown, the first mention of the game in Elmira’s newspapers occurred in The Elmira Gazette on January 2nd, 1841. In the story, a writer for the Elmira Gazette lists a number of places he thought that young men ought not go, explaining that when he saw the “young entering the gin palaces, or the rum shops, or the illuminated billiard rooms, or the dark bowling alleys...I could wish some spirit would put the thought into their minds- ‘Never go there.’”

This reputation prevailed for years- in one extreme instance, quoting a Baptist pastor, Elder Knapp, an 1846 article from the Elmira Gazette claimed “the devil was rolling ten pins, and the little devils [set] them up; and that the devil rolled three balls, the first of Infidelity, the second Universalism, and the third ball of Damnation.” By 1850, it seems there were several bowling saloons in Elmira. On Main Street, in the Globe Hotel, R.P. Kinyon and E.A. Darling operated one bowling saloon until the hotel burned down in 1850. On Lake Street, Thomas B. Borden operated an alley in Knickerbocker Hall, and Miles Cook operated the Old Soldier’s Bowling Saloon, which appeared to be quite popular.

Unfortunately, bowling at the Old Soldier’s may have claimed a child’s life in Elmira. An 1854 story in The Elmira Gazette reported that a boy named Thomas Doolin was hit in the stomach by a ball. Though he was still alive, the newspaper was not optimistic about his recovery. There likely were other Elmira bowling saloons that went unreported. In a unique case, after a Maine ban on alcohol an 1855 article in the Elmira Advertiser speaks of an underground alley on Water Street that flew a white banner, “though not [one] of truce,” exclaiming “Maine Law Drinks Below.” The days of the bowling saloon were relatively short, losing popularity quickly after the 1850s. In Elmira, they leave few traces, existing only in old newspapers and business directories.

Elmira Bowling Alley, 1900-1932, CCHS Collection

 

Sweet Home Big Flats: The Story of DeMet’s Turtles and Their New York Connection

 

by Karen Meade, CCHS Volunteer

If you're ever passing through Chemung Valley on 1-86 or walking on the Sperr Memorial Park trail and catch a faint, chocolatey sweetness in the air, you'll know where it's coming from. Big Flats candy lovers have a small piece of American confectionery history, the place where a century-old Chicago dream found a new home in upstate New York.

CCHS Collection

There’s a good chance you’ve bitten into a DeMet’s Turtle at some point in your life, that perfect little cluster of crunchy pecans, gooey caramel, and silky chocolate,and never once wondered where it came from. If you live in the Southern Tier of New York, the answer might be closer than you think.

1929, Chicago Historical Society

The story of DeMet’s Turtles begins not in New York, but in Chicago, Illinois, where candy maker George DeMet opened a shop on Madison Street in 1898. It was a classic American confectionery dream: a candy store and soda fountain where George crafted sweets by hand and built a loyal neighborhood following. By 1916, he had struck upon something truly special. It was a cluster of pecans draped in caramel and dipped in chocolate. The shape, with pecan “legs” poking out from the chocolate shell, reminded someone of a little turtle crawling across a marble board. The name stuck, and an American candy icon was born.

The Turtles brand passed through several hands over the decades, eventually landing with Nestlé in 1988, before being acquired in 2007 by Brynwood Partners, a private equity firm that resurrected the dormant DeMet’s Candy Company name and set about building something new.

When the newly reconstituted DeMet’s Candy Company began searching for a U.S. manufacturing home, they cast a wide net across the northeastern states, looking at New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. What they found in Big Flats, a small community in Chemung County just outside Elmira, checked every box.

DeMet’s selected a 17-acre parcel in the Airport Corporate Park to construct their 100,000-square-foot facility.  The location offered excellent transportation access, a strong regional labor pool, and critically, was part of New York State’s Empire Zone incentive program. This gave DeMet’s the competitive edge it needed to choose the Southern Tier over other states. To date, the project has created 250 new jobs for the region. This has been a meaningful boost for a community that, like many in upstate New York, had weathered its share of economic headwinds.

 While the iconic original Turtles clusters are primarily produced at DeMet’s facility in Scarborough, Ontario, the Big Flats plant soon became a hub for the company’s broader confectionery portfolio, including Flipz chocolate-covered pretzels and other snack products that DeMet’s brought under its umbrella after Brynwood Partners consolidated several candy brands.

 

CCHS Collection

It’s worth pausing to appreciate just how enduring the Turtles formula really is. It consists of only three ingredients: crunchy pecans, creamy caramel, and a chocolate shell. This formula has kept candy lovers coming back for more than 100 years.  Just a simple, honest combination that George DeMet figured out more than a century ago on a marble board in Chicago.

 Today, DeMet’s is owned by Yıldız Holding, the Turkish conglomerate that also owns Godiva, and the brand sells tens of millions of units annually. But the soul of the product remains the same — and part of that soul, for the better part of two decades now, has been rooted in the quiet, hardworking community of Big Flats, New York, a local sweet spot

 

DIY Newspaper Jigsaw Puzzles

by Erin Doane, Senior Curator

I love jigsaw puzzles and I love happening upon random interesting things in historic newspapers. A recent find brought both these loves crashing together. From February 6 to 17, 1933, the Star-Gazette ran daily jigsaw puzzles in its pages. The idea was that readers would paste the puzzle to a piece of cardboard, cut out the scrambled pieces, then put them together again. It was a fun, low-cost, diy activity - perfect for those suffering through the Great Depression - and it drew on the jigsaw puzzling craze that was sweeping the nation.

“Not Animal Crackers, It’s a Jigsaw Puzzle,” Star-Gazette, February 10, 1933

The craze seems to have begun in June 1932 when the Pro-Phy-Lac-Tic Brush Company of Florence, Massachusetts offered a free 50-piece jigsaw puzzle with the purchase of one of their toothbrushes. The promotion was such a huge success that other companies followed suit. Cardboard jigsaw puzzles quickly became the hot-to-go item for those looking for inexpensive entertainment. By early 1933, people of all walks of life had been swept up in the craze. Searching though the February Star-Gazette of that year shows that jigsaw puzzles were very popular locally. Clubs and organizations were putting together puzzles at their social meetings and individuals included them at their card parties. Stores like Izsard’s, Rubin Bros., and S.S. Kresge Co. carried full lines of jigsaw puzzles and sold them for as little as $0.25 each (about $6.25 today).

The Star-Gazette also reported on jigsaw puzzle news from further afield. On February 8, it reported that burglars broke into the store of Mrs. Catherine W. Garrahan in Watervliet, New York and stole 10 jigsaw puzzles among other items. On February 11, the newspaper shared the story of the first ever reported jigsawing injury. Mrs. Abbie Burns of Norristown, Pennsylvania was holding her 9-month-old baby while working on a puzzle when the baby jabbed her in the eye with one of the pieces. Physicians said the injury was not serious. In business news, it reported on the five-story factory in Long Island City that produced jigsaw puzzles day and night and the St. Paul puzzle manufacturer that experienced an 85 percent increase in business in one week when the jigsaw craze hit.

“See Who He is by the Jigsaw Method!,” Star-Gazette, February 6, 1933

It's not surprising at all that the Star-Gazette itself wanted to get in on the craze. On Monday, February 6, 1933, it ran its first jigsaw puzzle. It was a cut-up photograph of “a prominent Elmiran.” The caption declared, “This one’s easy to initiate you to the craze.” It also promised the man’s name would be printed with the next puzzle. So, it was sort of a twofer puzzle – put together the jigsaw, then guess who or what was shown in the picture. Most of the puzzles showed local people and places including Elmira College President Dr. Frederick Lent, Elmira Patrolman Edward P. Carroll, Fitch’s Bridge, a fire at St. Anthony’s Church, and the Elmira Reformatory. The first published puzzle showed Elmira Police Chief Elvin D. Edwin.

Star-Gazette jigsaw puzzle from February 6, 1933, printed on plain paper and put together.

The newspaper’s puzzle the next day offered an additional challenge. “Five minutes is the limit for putting together this jigsaw puzzle of a leading Elmira educator.” How quickly a person could put the puzzle together became a common theme. The puzzle on February 13 was titled “Time Yourself on This Cutout Puzzle” so I did. “It took the photographer half an hour to change a perfectly good picture into the picture you see herewith,” the caption states. It took me 13 minutes to cut it out (plain paper not glued to cardboard) and 5 minutes to put it together.

“Time Yourself on This Cutout Puzzle,” Star-Gazette, February 13, 1933

February 13 jigsaw puzzle put together showing the lobby of the Second National Bank in Elmira after a fire.

The first few puzzles were cut into geometric pieces. The February 10 jigsaw puzzle (shown at the top of this post) was the first to be cut into pieces that more closely resemble the puzzle pieces we know today. Perhaps this was done in reaction to reader feedback. “Its interlocking parts will remain where you place them,” according to the caption. I had to use tape to hold my puzzle pieces together, but mine were on plain paper not glued to cardboard.

February 10 jigsaw puzzle put together showing Elmirans at the Orange County races.

The final puzzle in the series was published on February 17, 1933. It was a return to geometric pieces – all triangles in this case. I don’t think it was intended to be the last puzzle as no answer as to what the picture showed was provided. Of course, I had to put it together and find out. It’s described as “a thing of beauty” in the caption. It is a lovely picture of a house, but I have no idea where it is or why it’s significant. So, the 1933 Star-Gazette jigsaw puzzle series ended on a mystery.

“You Working These Cut-Out Puzzles?,” Star-Gazette, February 17, 1933

February 17 jigsaw puzzle put together.

But wait, there’s more! Five days after that last puzzle was published, the Star-Gazette printed one more “Puzzle for the Holiday” (i.e. Washington’s Birthday). The solution to the jigsaw puzzle was also included several pages later making it clear that this was a stand-alone and not part of the previous series.

“Here’s Cutout Puzzle for the Holiday,” Star-Gazette, February 22, 1933

“Here’s the Cut-Out Properly Assembled,” Star-Gazette, February 22

For two weeks in February 1933, the Elmira Star-Gazette fully embraced the jigsaw puzzle craze and then it abruptly stopped. At least we still have the newspapers so we can enjoy the historic diy puzzles. If you’d like to try them yourself, click here for a pdf of all the puzzles. I didn’t include pictures of the solutions, so you’ll just have to figure them out for yourself. A stopwatch is optional.

Purity Above All

 by Susan Zehnder, Education Director

This is a story of a business whose success literally ran dry. In early 1900, downtown Elmira was abuzz. There were over 35,000 people living in the city and 54,000 in the county.

Water Street under water

While a year earlier, the city’s commercial area had flooded, the spring now saw the area recovering and prosperous. Business opportunities were growing. One business looking to expand into the area was Salzman & Siegelman, a wholesale wine and liquor store based out of Brooklyn, New York. Their Brooklyn store had been so successful that they’d been able to add stores in Albany, Amsterdam, Syracuse, and Troy. Now, in the spring of 1900, they were opening a sixth shop at 108 East Water Street in downtown Elmira.

The turn of the 20^th century saw a rise in the trend of drinking at home. It was a change from the past, when liquor and wine were mainly purchased and consumed in bars and saloons, often dark and smoky places. Leading up to the store’s May 5^th opening day, Salzman & Siegelman had been getting the store ready and advertising for weeks aiming to attract modern men and women interested in purchasing alcohol to drink at home. 

The Elmira store would be well stocked with the largest selection of wine and liquor in the area. It would carry the very best products and gladly refund customers if anything was found wanting. Because they’d learned from experience, they hired saleswomen to attract more women customers. Women, they found, were the primary customers when it came to purchasing liquor this way. Finally,  for an open and family-friendly atmosphere, the store’s walls and large shelves were painted white and well lit. Another draw was that for weeks ahead of its May opening, Salzman & Siegelman had been advertising that they would be giving every purchaser a souvenir card for a free quart bottle of Red Cross Port.

The man behind this business was thirty-year-old Morris Salzman. Salzman was born in Austria in 1870, and arrived in New York City at sixteen years old. He lived in the city’s Lower East Side, among other Jewish immigrants. He went to work in the growing liquor business, both making and selling whiskey. He adopted the motto Purity Above All and included it on everything he sold to promote the quality of his product. It must have worked, since his business boomed. By his early twenties, he had accumulated considerable wealth and expertise. He married Rose, another Austrian-American Jew, and the couple had three children. Around this time, he also went into business with Meyer Siegelman, forming the company Salzman & Siegelman.

The Salzman Family

Unfortunately, the new store’s May 5^th opening day in Elmira had a few hiccups. After weeks of whipped-up anticipation, several hundred customers lined the sidewalk hoping to gain admittance and receive their free port. By evening, the crowd had grown so large and impatient, the clerks were forced to limit customers in the shop to only 50 at a time. Four policemen were called in to restore order. By 10 pm, over 1,200 bottles of Red Cross Port had been given out, which still left hundreds more customers empty-handed. The store promised to honor their promise to any patrons who missed out.

Eventually things were resolved, and the store attempted other promotions and attractions. One that caught the attention of the newspaper was a window display of an eternally pouring bottle of Empire rye whiskey. It seemed to defy nature and intrigue passersby. Other promotions Salzman offered were shot glasses, whiskey jars, and bottles, complete with his purity motto.

Less than four years after their Elmira store opened, Salzman & Siegelman’s business partnership fractured. While the reasons are unknown, the two men filed injunctions against each other. Each ended up starting competing liquor stores, but not in Elmira. Here, the store became Salzman & Co. Its last business listing in the Elmira City Directories was 1919, the year before Prohibition started.

In 1920, Morris Salzman joined the Greenpoint National Bank briefly before leaving and starting his own company, Colonial Discount Company out of Brooklyn. It offered loans for automobiles, another growing field. Salzman died in Brooklyn at 61 years of age in 1930. The obituary described him as a philanthropist and banker, with no mention of his whiskey making-- not a surprise since the country was still under prohibition and dry.

Today, you can still find bottles and liquor jugs with the Salzman name and the purity motto on them. It’s interesting to note that unlike many other whiskey makers, Salzman was never cited by state or national authorities for adulterating his liquor or wines.

Frederick Douglass in Elmira

 By Rachel Dworkin, archivist

 

During his lifetime, Frederick Douglass (February 14, 1818-February 20, 1895) was arguably the most famous Black man in America, if not the world. He was an ardent abolitionist, civil rights advocate, orator, author, and statesman. Douglass went on a series of speaking tours across the United States and Europe from the 1840s through the 1890s. As it turns out, he also spoke in Elmira. Multiple times.

Frederick Douglass was born into slavery in Maryland. He escaped to freedom in 1838. By the 1840s, he was traveling across the Northeast, speaking on the evils of slavery and the need for abolition. From 1845 to 1847, he toured the British Isles, lecturing and fundraising for the abolitionist cause. Upon returning to the United States, Douglass settled in upstate New York where he began publishing the abolitionist newspaper The North Star in Rochester while continuing to speak around the Northeast. After the Civil War and the end of slavery, Douglass pivoted to speaking about issues including civil rights for Blacks and women. From 1886 to 1887, he toured Europe, visiting the British Isles again as well as France, Italy, Egypt and Greece before returning to the United States.

Douglass first came to Elmira in the 1840s. During a visit in 1840, he inspired the establishment of an AME Zion church which now bears his name. In 1848, he came along with an African-born man named Ward who had been kidnapped into slavery in America. The two of them spoke of their experiences of slavery and the cause of abolition at a small school-room on Carroll Street to a crowd of 50 or so Blacks and a handful of whites. Robert Morris McDowell, then a lad of 14, described the two men’s speeches as “stirring, eloquent and pathetic.” The event seems to have been part of a larger speaking and fundraising tour as they apparently spoke again the following day in Corning. 

Frederick Douglass, ca. 1840s

 

After the Civil War, Douglass had multiple speaking engagements in Elmira. This time, however, he wasn’t drawing tiny crowds in dinky little school-rooms, he was selling out the Elmira Opera House. He spoke here twice in 1872. The first time was on February 23^rd when he spoke at the Opera House in support of the proposed annexation of Santo Domingo (now the Dominican Republic). The newspaper reported that he was staying at the home of Charles Langdon, the son of Douglass’s old friend and abolitionist ally, Jervis Langdon. Douglass was back in Elmira on October 1^st when he spoke at the Republican meeting being held in downtown Elmira as part of the New York State Fair.

Douglass returned to Elmira on July 17, 1873, to participate in a Grand Celebration of the Civil Rights Bill. The celebration was sponsored and planned by the Colored Citizens of Elmira. The day kicked off with a church service, followed by a parade featuring (in order) officers of the Elmira police department, the LaFrance Cornet Band, Taylor Guards of Williamsport (colored), Excelsior Cornet Band of Williamsport (also colored), a company of colored Elmira soldiers with drum corps, a bunch of kids with flags, and carriages with day’s speakers and public officials, including Douglass himself. The parade ended in Hoffman Grove (now Grove Park), where Mr. William H. Lester of Dryden read the 15^th Amendment and Civil Rights bill, and John W. Jones and William Johnson both spoke. After a break for dinner, Douglass gave a speech at the Opera House on the topic of Civil Rights which the newspaper described as “sound, practical discourse, lit up with many brilliant passages of rhetoric and abounding with eloquent expressions such as Mr. Douglass has long been noted for.” The day was capped by a dance party at Holden Hall and a festival at the AME Zion church. 

Frederick Douglass, 1876

 

Douglass’s last speaking engagement in Elmira was for a similar event on August 3, 1880. This Emancipation Day Celebration commemorated the passage of Great Britain’s Slavery Abolition Law in August 1833, as well as America’s own Emancipation Proclamation. Black folks came to Elmira from a hundred miles around to participate in the festivities. The event was kicked off by a parade from Dickinson Street in the heart of Elmira’s Black community to Grove Park. The parade featured the LaFrance Band, the Palmer Guards of Syracuse, Black Civil War veterans, carriages with various notables, young ladies representing each of the states, the Rescue Hook & Ladder Company of Norwich, the colored Horseheads Hose Company, Elmira Colored Y.M.C.A. band, and members of the colored Masonic lodge. At the park, there was a program of music and prayer followed by a reading of the Emancipation Proclamation by William H. Lester of Dryden and a speech by Douglass. A feast was served at the AME Zion church in the evening followed by a grand ball at the Armory. The Elmira Daily Advertiser pronounced Douglass’s speech to be an “able and eloquent production, and every way worthy of the great reputation of its distinguished author” in a front-page article the following morning. 

Grove Park, ca. 1900

 Just think, if you had been born in a different era, you might have been able to hear Frederick Douglass, world-famous orator and activist, speak right here in Elmira. Not once. Not twice. Multiple times. Kind of wild when you think about it.

A Unique Opportunity for Change

 

by Bruce Whitmarsh, Executive Director

CCHS Executive Director, Bruce Whitmarsh

Throughout 2025 the Chemung County Historical Society Board of Trustees worked on updating their own internal operations. The result is a new committee structure that in 2026 the Board will be working on to bring into full use. The goal is to make better and more efficient use of the talents that are present on the Board. In much the same manner, the CCHS staff holds annual staff retreats where we spend a full day away from our desks, even traveling offsite, just to discuss and plan for our upcoming year. This includes thinking about what exhibits to produce, what programming to offer and what changes we may wish to see as a staff. This discussion then guides our day-to-day work for the remainder of the year.

In December of 2025 I learned that I had been awarded the Leadership Advancement Award from the Community Foundation of Elmira-Corning and the Finger Lakes to allow me the chance to take an extended sabbatical from my position as Director. The Board of Trustees, staff and I are currently planning for me to be away July, August and September of this year. Given the planning work mentioned above, this may seem like the opposite of what is needed but just bear with me for a moment.

The use of sabbaticals as part of a non-profit executive compensation package is still a relatively new, but growing, idea. The opportunity for me to take a sabbatical actually comes from the Community Foundation granting a sabbatical to their president, Randi Hewitt, a few years ago. Upon her return, she and the Community Foundation as a whole, found that they had both benefitted with Randi refreshed and reset while the organization had developed new operational capabilities and resilience during her extended break. The success of this experiment led to the establishment of the Leadership Advancement Award that is now permitting me to step away later this year.

Prior to applying, I reached out to my colleague Elaine Smith, Executive Director at Tanglewood Nature Center and Museum. Elaine had been awarded one of the first Leadership Advancement Awards two years ago. As I was considering whether to apply myself or not, she shared her positive experience with her own sabbatical. The chance to step away from the day-to-day of her organization and take the time to pursue some of her interests gave her the chance to refresh and refocus. The proof for this is the Tree top Canopy that Tanglewood will begin construction on in 2026. This has been a multi-year fundraising effort, with more work to come, but her time off allowed Elaine the necessary break to come back with more determination and energy to now bring this project to a successful conclusion.

In the same manner, I am looking forward to getting away myself. I will do some traveling and plan to attend a woodworking class, supported by the grant. I will also spend some time in my own workshop, trying to complete some half-finished projects as well. I am confident that during my time away the Board and staff will be able to manage the everyday operations of the CCHS and that I will be ready to take on the big projects we have started talking about for 2027. This is all a bit theoretical at the moment, but I will be sure to follow up here with all of you at the end of this year to let you know how things turned out.