Spirits of the season...

By Susan Zehnder, Education Director.

For those of you able to make this year’s historic Ghost Walk, we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. This was the 14^th year in a row the Chemung County Historical Society, the Friends of Woodlawn, Inc., and Elmira Little Theatre have offered a historic Ghost Walk at Woodlawn Cemetery. We worked with the Health Department to offer a safe experience for all and we know we had to turn away disappointed people when we sold all our tickets in record time. We were thrilled to be approved to offer this popular event despite things being so different right now. 

 

Alice Shaw, Lucius Robinson, Isaac R. Taylor

This year's version was different. For the first time, visitors began and ended their evenings entirely at the cemetery. 

Socially distant gathering

Masked guides from Friends of Woodlawn

We're encouraging everyone who attended and those that wanted to attend to visit the museum. Ask our receptionist about the scavenger hunt based on this year’s ghosts and enter into a raffle for an October surprise. (Hint to all: you can review the ghosts by reading the 2020 scripts now posted on our website.) Search above for 2020 Ghosts for some additional information on the ghosts including a link to a rare recording of Alice Shaw's whistling.

At the museum, you can also pick up a map of this year’s Ghost Walk route which you can use to walk the route again during the daytime, share it with others, or enjoy it yourself if you weren’t able to join us this year. At the bottom of the website's Ghost Walk page, you’ll find a family scavenger hunt for Woodlawn Cemetery. When everything shifted to online learning last spring, we developed this for elementary school students and their families. It connected with their learning about immigration and important people in Elmira’s past. If you are interested, download the map and plan on taking about 20-40 minutes to complete the walk. 

Last year we offered Ghostly Readings at the museum. This was an event where staff and Elmira’s Fire Marshall -  our celebrity guest -  read ghost walk scripts for those who were not able to navigate the nighttime walk. We don’t pretend to be actors, but were able to include some extras like images and fun facts about the ghosts. We look forward to offering this again in future years, while this year we have a special treat coming from Elmira College Theater students under the directorship of their Professor, Hannah Hammond. Watch for their short videos popping up on our Facebook page near the end of the month and into November.

Woodlawn Cemetery is a peaceful place to walk during the day, the winding paths through the trees pass a variety of grave sites and monuments. The cemetery was designed and influenced by the Rural Cemetery movement that was happening throughout the United States in the 19th century.

The first cemetery designed in this style was Mount Auburn located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Opened in 1831, it offered a sharp contrast to the existing overcrowded cemeteries in Boston. It was located on the outskirts of town and in addition to being a place to bury their dead, these cemeteries offered urban dwellers a respite from city living. The Rural Cemetery movement intended these places to be as much for the living as for those who had passed on. People were encouraged to visit, picnic and stroll among the grave sites. Designers used an English landscaping approach to highlight the outdoors, and give the impression that the cemetery was a part of wild nature when it was in fact really carefully planned. By providing this natural setting for people, it offered city dwellers the chance to stroll among trees to contemplate life, a very different experience than their daily lives existing in a quickly mechanized society.

A search for how many cemeteries are named Woodlawn brings up 336 throughout the USA and Canada. There are 17 alone in New York state. Woodlawn Cemetery in Elmira was designed by architect Howard Daniels and chartered in 1858. It is spread over 184 scenic acres and over the years 80,000 people have been interred there. Today the cemetery is visited walkers, joggers, dogs on leash, and by those with loved ones buried on site. Everyone is welcome to visit as long as they show proper respect and follow the posted guidelines.

Look here to find more blog posts about Woodlawn Cemetery.

 

Elmira’s Whistling Prima Donna: Alice Shaw

by Erin Doane, Curator

In 1885, Alice Shaw was living with her father in Elmira. Her husband had gone off to make a living for himself and didn’t return, leaving her with four young daughters to support on her own. She tried to make money as a dressmaker, but it wasn’t enough and they were struggling. What was the poor woman to do? Alice screwed up her courage, took a deep breath, and whistled her way to international stardom.

Alice Shaw, The Cotton States and International

Exposition and South, Illustrated, 1896

Alice Horton was born in Elmira in 1853. She married W.H. Shaw when she was 20 years old. He was a widower with four sons, and ran a successful wholesale ration business in Detroit. Alice moved into her husband’s home in Detroit and the couple had two daughters. Around 1878, his business failed, and the family moved to New York City. They had two more daughters there, but he was never able to find profitable work. Alice gave up on living in New York City, and brought her four daughters to her father’s home at the corner of West Water and Grove Streets in Elmira. W.H. came with her but soon struck out on his own. Alice, too, decided to go her own way.

Music had been a part of Alice’s life from an early age, and she had always been oddly skilled at whistling. I say oddly, because, at that time, it was considered improper for women to whistle, and it was also considered difficult for them to learn in the first place. A reporter for the New York Times in 1887 explain that, “from the earliest times it has been agreed that it is a very hard thing for a girl to learn to whistle. The position of the lips is such as can only be maintained for any length of time in stern isolation from the male sex.” Alice somehow managed to overcome those difficulties, and in December 1886 she was a featured soloist at the holiday reception of the Teachers’ Association in Steinway Hall in New York City.

Illustrations of Alice Shaw and “the Pucker,” New York Sun, January 1, 1888

That one performance got such rave reviews that Alice was soon working as a professional whistler at high class concerts, private musicales, and society entertainments. The New York Sun ran an article on November 16, 1887 describing her talents:

Rather a unique figure in the amusement world is Mrs. Alice J. Shaw, who appears at benefits, private musicales, and similar performance. She is a wonderful performer, whistling without any instrument whatever in her mouth. She gives airs of the utmost intricacy and elaboration with complete accuracy and truth of expression. She is of rather majestic presence, decidedly handsome, and she has a larking expression of the left eye when she whistles which is no little factor of her success.

Recording of Alice Shaw whistling, 1888

After two years performing throughout New York City, Alice went to London. She was very well received in England, and even performed for the Prince of Wales (who later became King Edward). From there she continued touring the world. She spent a year in Russia, where she performed for Czar Nicholas. She was in India for a year, spent six months in Germany, and then returned to England for several more years. In 1899, while touring South Africa, she and her daughters had to hastily leave Johannesburg when the Boer War broke out. Her children traveled with her most of the time. Her twins, Elsie and Ethel, actually whistled with her on stage, starting when they were just five years old.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmoREPRdSJw

Recording of Alice Shaw and her daughters whistling, 1907

On February 24, 1889, Alice’s ex-husband was seen at her concert at Lafayette Hall in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. Their divorce had become official just four months earlier. He did not meet with her in person that night, and it was the first time he had seen her in over two years. When a reporter spoke to him about his world-famous ex-wife, he had little nice to say about her. “The wealth of the Indies wouldn’t tempt me to call her wife again,” he declared. “She has changed very much since I saw her last. She is growing fleshier.” While the comment about her “fleshiness” was certainly rude, Alice obviously understood the appearance of her body, and even capitalized upon it. In 1897, she supplemented her income by endorsing Dr. Edison’s Obesity Pills and Salts.

Advertisement for Dr. Edison’s Obesity Pills and Salt

featuring Alice Shaw, Philadelphia Inquirer, April 4, 1897

Alice returned to Elmira several times through the years to visit friends and to perform. In 1888, near the height of her popularity, she whistled at a benefit performance in support of the Elmira Elks Lodge. She returned in 1900, and offered two performances daily for a week at Dixie’s Theatre. Her twins whistled and danced with her.

Advertisement for Alice Shaw’s performance at Dixie’s

Theatre in Elmira, Star-Gazette, December 10, 1900

On April 24, 1918, Alice Shaw returned to Elmira one last time. Two days earlier, she died from heart failure in New York City. She had been suffering from ill-health for the past seven or eight years. A private funeral service was held at her home at 388 Manhattan Avenue before her body was brought to Elmira for interment in Woodlawn Cemetery. She was 65 years old.

Over the years, Alice Shaw has faded into obscurity, but now and again, her extraordinary story is rediscovered.

Ripley’s Believe it or Not, Binghamton Press and Sun-Bulletin, June 5, 1983

Federation Farm

by Erin Doane, Curator

Federation Farm was a residential treatments center for children who were undernourished, anemic, or had been exposed to tuberculosis. The farmhouse, located on six acres of land on Hoffman Street in Elmira, opened its doors on April 14, 1917. Creation of the farm was spearheaded by two members of the Women’s Federation of Social Services, Mrs. John M. Connelly and Mrs. Thomas Fitzgerald. They were able to purchase the farm property with money from the sale of Red Cross seals and a donation from Mrs. J. Sloat Fassett.

Federation Farm

Tuberculosis was a major problem in the early 1900s. The disease mainly affects the lungs and is spread through the air from one person to another. Crowded living conditions and poor hygiene could increase rates of infection. The purpose of the Federation Farm was to help prevent the spread of the disease by removing children from poor conditions and building up their health. It was estimated that it would cost six times as much to treat and care for someone with tuberculosis as to prevent its onset through good nutrition and a healthy outdoor environment. Children between the ages of five and twelve in homes where there had been cases of tuberculosis were recommended for treatment at the farm with no cost to the families.

Children playing at Federation Farm

Federation Farm was seen as an ideal place for children to gain weight and build up their health. Situated on the outskirts of the city, there was plenty of open space and fresh air. Skinny, pale children would be kept at the farm fulltime from as little as a month to up to two years until they were robust and healthy. Physicians examined the children when they first arrived and continued treating them throughout their stay. Parents were allowed to visit on weekends but otherwise the children were under the full charge of the matron. Most of their time was spent outdoors, playing and helping in the garden or with the chickens. A teacher appointed by the Elmira City School District came daily to teach lessons on the porch.

A class on the porch

When the farm first opened in 1917, it could accommodate 12 children. Before any of them arrived, the public was invited to tour the home. It was reported that the children would enjoy the most modern conveniences including electric lights, a water heater, and a hot air furnace. The bedrooms on the first floor for the girls and second floor for the boys were all prettily decorated with blue checkered blankets on the beds. There were also sleeping porches. They were sure to benefit from the wholesome environment and five healthy meals a day.

Children helping in the garden

The Federation Farm operated entirely on donations – both money and materials. Toys, books, ice skates, canned fruit and vegetables, and even the beds that the children slept in were all donated. Proceeds from the sale of Christmas seals by the Red Cross went to keeping the farm operating and donations from private individuals and organizations were solicited to meet deficits.

The Odd Fellows and Rebekahs held

fundraisers to help support Federation

Farm throughout the 1920s

While many people contributed to keep the farm open, it perpetually struggled to find funding. It was close to shutting down in 1919 before New York State Governor Alfred E. Smith helped push the sale of Christmas Seals, its main source of revenue. In 1927, the Exchange Club in Elmira held an emergency vote and decided to finance the farm to keep it from closing due to lack of funds. Later that year, the Chemung County Board of Supervisors voted to take over management. With the county in control, tax dollars were then used to fund operations and maintenance. The farm became known as the Chemung County Preventorium and was placed under the same management as the Chemung County Sanatorium.

By 1940, the number of children being treated at the farm had dropped significantly. Over the years, hundreds of children had been treated there. In 1926 alone, 49 children had been in residence and 143 medical treatments and operations of various kinds were provided. In his statement to the Board of Supervisors in November of that year, Dr. Arthur W. Booth reported that only eight patients remained on the farm. With reluctance, he recommended that the Preventorium discontinue its activities and he submitted no budget for the next year. Parents took the last children home after a Christmas party on December 18, 1940. In 1943, the building was razed and the property became part of the federal housing project that was built to accommodate workers in the local wartime defense industries.