Up, Up, and Away

 By Susan Zehnder, Education Director

For two days in July 1911, thousands of people flocked to Elmira’s Maple Avenue Park. What was it they paid .50 cents to attend, and an additional .25 cents to sit in the grandstands to watch?

The event was The Curtiss-Beachy Aviation Meet organized by the Star-Gazette newspaper. The meet brought together the latest in aviation technology with the daring and flashy flying of a 24-year old pilot, named Lincoln Beachey, whom the paper called the “greatest living birdman.” It was a combination few could resist.

Airplanes were then in their infancy and the public was fascinated with flying machines. Although the Wright brothers of Ohio gained early fame for their aeronautical experiments, New York State was also a hub of flying activity. Glenn Curtiss, or nearby Hammondsport, NY, was an aviation pioneer and inventor, having successfully flown a plane of his own design in 1908. At the 1911 Elmira meet, the Glenn Curtiss exhibition team – which included young men and at least one woman - showcased what Curtiss’s planes could do. The team pushed limits by performing exhilarating airborne acrobatics.

At 24 years old, Curtiss pilot Lincoln Beachey was already considered one of the best.

Lincoln Beachey

Beachey was born in San Francisco in 1887. When he was 17 years old, he joined his older brother to work on dirigibles. In 1910, his brother took up flying, and Beachey followed suit. At a June 1911 air show, Beachey successfully recovered from a nose-diving spin, something no other pilot had survived. This caught the eye of Curtiss, who invited Beachey to join his exhibition team. Another team member was Blanche Stuart Scott, the first woman credited with flying solo. (Scott also appears in our blog on Women Drivers, which recounts her 1910 transcontinental drive in a Willys-Overland sponsored by the John North Willys from Elmira.)

Air shows, stunts and races were an exciting way for the public to see what airplanes could do. Before the Curtiss-Beachey Aviation Meet took place, The Star-Gazette dedicated the entire front page of its evening edition to the aeronautical event. Articles covered how to get to the meet, and what to expect at the event. Spectators were invited to view the Curtiss planes up close, to watch daring aviation exploits, and to observe skilled flying that demonstrated the usefulness of airplanes. The organizers charged a fee to watch, but nothing to park your automobile. Trolley schedules were doubled and ran on the half-minute. Businesses used the opportunity to advertise their products with aviation themes like this ad for pest control. 

Joining the team and getting used to flying the new Curtiss designs, Beachey crashed three times. He wore a business suit while he flew, and was known for his modest and unassuming manner. Though at one time he donned women’s clothing and flew erratically in front of a shocked crowd to mock Miss Scott.

As a celebrity, the paper covered every move that Beachey made prior to flying and afterwards. Rorick’s Glen had an Aviator’s evening inviting Beachey to attend.

Beachey did not disappoint. Although he crashed three times while getting use to flying the new Curtiss designs, on the day of the meet he successfully performed loops and flybys. He demonstrated how planes could be useful in war to drop “bombs” onto targets, and he took up the challenge to race another vehicle. Known for his modest and unassuming manner, he wore a business suit while he flew. The exception is the flight later in his career during which he donned women’s clothing and flew erratically in front of a shocked crowd to mock Miss Scott.

The air-ground competition was the anticipated highlight of the evening. Beachey flew a Curtiss Bi-Plane. His competitor, George Saulsman drove a Chalmers 40 sponsored by the American-LaFrance Fire Engine Company. Saulsman reached speeds of 70 mph as he rounded the track, but Beachey won the race. Inspired by the crowd, speed, or lucrative nature of races, Beachey later approached racecar driver Barney Oldfield driver from Ohio to repeat the stunt. The two of them would go on to compete at more than 35 different venues around the country, and together they earned more than $250,000, or over 6 million dollars today.

The evening was a success, even though a heavy rainfall interrupted events causing the crowd to temporarily relocate under the grandstands until it passed.

Beachey would return to Elmira more three times to put on airshows. But, in 1915, his daredevilry caught up with him, and he died in a plane crash. He was 28 years old. Barney Oldfield lived until 1946, when he died of a heart attack at 68. 

Beachey flying in Elmira, 1912

The aerial speed show that flew over Elmira that July must have been thrilling to watch and well worth the .75 cents spent.

Play On!

by Susan Zehnder, Education Director

Today July 6^th, the Museum and Booth Library are opening doors after more than one hundred days of closure due to the COVID19 pandemic. To protect our visitors and staff, we’ve adapted safety rules and best practices. We’ve installed new exhibits and are eager to see visitors, members, volunteers and researchers drop by again. If you have questions, we’ve posted expectations near our entryway, and on our website or you can call us at 607-734-4167.

Chamber of Commerce Parade, July 4, 1919

One hundred days feels like a long time and being in the middle of something, it’s hard to get any perspective on a bigger picture. We just don’t know when our pandemic situation will change. With the advantage of time, and a 21^st century lens, looking back at history can give us a different perspective.

Travel back to Elmira in 1920 by first looking at the front page of the Elmira Star-Gazette for July 6^th.

 The page is full of articles on the upcoming presidential election in November. There’s no mention of the global trauma of World War I which had claimed 16 million lives. There’s also no mention of the recent chaos of the flu pandemic of 1918. It had lasted fifteen months and caused 50 million deaths worldwide. It’s easy to think that the past was a rosier time, but in fact in the 1920s, the US was experiencing upheaval. There were meat packing and steel industry labor strikes, huge and terrifying race riots, an economic depression, conflicts over prohibition, disagreements about nationalism and waves of anti-immigration.

The 1920s experienced a lot of change. Increasing industrialization brought down prices on radios, automobiles, and telephones, items once only available to the well-to-do. Each, in different ways, changed people’s ability to connect with the world around them. As a city, Elmira was experiencing prosperity. In 1920, the county’s population was 65,000. Today, that number hovers around 83,000 people. 1920 was the year the Mark Twain Hotel, the Steel (Carnegie) Memorial Library, and the Keeney Theater buildings opened their doors. 


The newspaper articles are all about the future. On July 6^th, 1920, the City of Elmira and Chemung County celebrated in a way that one writer wrote: 

The event to celebrate the fourth of July, was a parade.


It’s hard to verify how large the parade was, or if it really was the, up to then, greatest of its kind in Elmira’s history. The article appears on page four of the paper and is five columns long. In a flourishing descriptive style, it mentions thousands of people attending and crowds up to five deep watching along the sidelines. Participating organizations represented military, history, civil service, and education. There were floats, marching bands, costumed performers and dancers. The parade stretched eight divisions long in addition to a finale, and hundreds of people participated. The parade is a sincere and earnest celebration of our national holiday. Unfortunately, the Historical Society has no picture of the ‘greatest’ parade.


We do have information on at least one of the bands that participated. Following just behind local dignitaries, Hager’s Band marched along playing “a catchy march as only Hager’s can give it.”

To learn more about Arnold Hager and his band, read our blogpost. To see him and his band, we’ve just installed an exhibit “The Band Played On” which we hope you will drop by to visit. In it, we tell the history of local musicians, composers and musical organizations in the area.


The “greatest” parade was not the only parade mentioned in that evening’s edition. Page thirteen lists another parade taking place in Elmira Heights the day before. It was held to observe both Independence Day and a War Memorial. It only received four and a half paragraphs of description. 


It might seem frivolous to look back at this kind of history. Like the article on the parade, our exhibits show different aspects of life in the past. Reflecting on history helps us pause and look at what’s going on today, and can be hopeful. Newspaper readers from one hundred years ago didn’t see the depression, looming WWII, Civil Rights struggle and cold war on the horizon. They celebrated that day with pomp and circumstance and were hopeful. History relies heavily on who tells it, it’s not always pretty or simple. Our exhibits offer you the chance to look at different people and events from Chemung County to find meaningful connections to your own story.

A Puzzling Response

by Susan Zehnder, Director of Education

Recently, I presented the topic of immigration to second graders, and asked “who is an immigrant?” Ever since, I’ve been thinking about one response I heard. 

Required to study immigration by New York State, second-graders learn who  came to the United States during the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, and some of the reasons why. Students easily identify the Statue of Liberty. They understand it was a gift to America from France, and was dedicated in 1886 as a sign of friendship between the two countries. Well over a hundred years old, the statue has been carefully restored three times. She is an important symbol of what America stands for, and continues to hold her torch high over New York's harbor.

Statue of Liberty's recently restored torch.

Nearby, other buildings of a similar age used to process newly arrived immigrants, now house the Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration run by the National Park Service. Operating as a gateway to America and the possibility of a better life, Ellis Island processed over 12 million hopeful people from 1892 until it closed in 1954. Immigration is nothing new.

 

Both the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island can be seen in this photo from a NYC tourist website.

Immigration is in the news a lot these days. In the United States, the first restrictive federal immigration law was passed 144 years ago in 1875. Called the Page Act after Representative Horace F. Page, a Republican from California, it aimed to prohibit Chinese women entry to the United States. Up until then, immigrants from China were mostly men. Lured by the financial possibilities surrounding the 1848 California Gold Rush, the majority of these men borrowed money to make the trip. Working, they paid back that money plus interest.

However, what they earned was often not enough to bring over their wives or girlfriends. Lacking family life, prostitution, nothing new to the west, grew in this immigrant population. Congressman Page created The Page Act, saying he wanted to address the issue of prostitution and to focus on the plight of poor Chinese girls brought over as prostitutes or slaves. Today, speculation is the restrictions were to keep Chinese laborers from taking jobs that could go to white men, by depriving them of the chance to start families. 

To implement the Page Act, potential immigrant women were subjected to rigorous questioning first by the American consul in Hong Kong. Passing that, they would have to again answer the same questions just before sailing. These answers were carefully compared to their previous ones. Those that were approved, were then asked the same questions by Hong Kong’s harbor master of the British colonial government. Once on board the ship, the women were questioned again, and upon arriving, the women presented their photographs, health records and answered the same questions again. If anyone changed any answer or didn’t match their photo from before, they were returned to Hong Kong and seen as duplicitous.

In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act was adopted. This second immigration law suspended immigration of Chinese laborers to America for ten years; permitted those already in the US to remain in the country only after a temporary absence; and barred Chinese from naturalization, among other things.

There weren’t many Chinese in Chemung County at this time. In Elmira there were two Chinese launderers listed in the 1885 City Directory, with an additional three listed in 1896. Notes in our files indicate the number was “stable up to the 1920s.” 

In the immigration unit, the second graders read over copies of original documents to find clues about different characters who lived in our area. We use an advertisement from one of the laundry businesses listed in the Star-Gazette from September 2, 1914. 

Star-Gazette, September 2, 1914

This shows one business that was a successor to another, was open every day, and worked to provide the very best work. Through discussion, the students learn a little more of why hardworking people might have left their home countries and ventured to America. We look at documents on different immigrants who make up the complexity of our area.  

 

Just like in the early days as a nation, today America is a country of immigrants from countries all over the world. 

The answer that I heard when I asked the students “Who is an immigrant?” didn’t make sense until I thought about it. While I suspect he wouldn’t agree, it’s who the kids hear always talking about immigrants.

The puzzling answer I heard to who is an immigrant? The President.

Note: For more information on Chinese immigrants in Chemung County, see Rachel’s blogfrom August 13, 2012. It includes the story of Mr. Yee Lee, owner of the first Chinese laundry business in Elmira.

Read All About It: The Elmira Newsboys Club

You probably know that September 4 is Labor Day this year, but did you know that it is also Newspaper Carrier Day? No? Well, now you do! This fact made me recall this great photograph in our collection, showing the Elmira Newsboys Club. This got me wondering what I could find out about their organization.

The Newsboys in their clubhouse. The image below is from the newspaper, so the quality isn't as good (except for the rip in the original above), but it does include their names.

  In the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, Elmira’s newspapers, the Advertiser, Daily Gazette and Free Press (later the Star-Gazette), and the Telegram, used newsboys to sell their daily papers. Newsboys were seen as entrepreneuring young men, but who could also be prone to a bit of mischief. There was an issue with newsboys hopping on trains without paying in order to move faster through their routes and to sell to passengers onboard. Still, many people were fond of the boys and they usually got generous tips and gifts around holidays.

Christmas and New Years' appeals like these were common. This one features a picture of my favorite Elmiran of all time, Colonel

In 1907, an official Elmira Newsboys Club formed. They met weekly at the YMCA, where they had a variety of guest speakers and visitors, who spoke on everything from health and hygiene to leadership to adventure travel. At each meeting, local women’s charitable groups served the boys dinner. Afterwards, the boys played in the YMCA’s gym and pool. The newsboys, who were mostly between 13 and 14 years old, were given clubhouse furnishings by local businessmen, some of whom had delivered papers in their own youth. By the second meeting, they had almost 20 dues-paying members. 

In that first year, an April banquet got pretty raucous. It involved thrown food, boys falling out of their chairs, confusing cheese and butter, and more questionable table manners. They were a spirited group!

In August 1907, the Elmira Newsboys Club took that energy on their first annual outing. The boys, who governed their own club, raised enough funds to pay for a trip to Watkins Glen. None of the boys had ever been to Watkins before. They took a steamer boat ride on Seneca Lake, which was offered to the club at a discounted rate. 

Invoice showing a Telegram newsboy, 1892

The first president of the Elmira Newsboys Club was “Joe the Newsboy.” Joe was an Armenian immigrant who was well-known and liked and most likely a good deal older than the rest of the boys. Joe’s full name is a little hard to discern. In the newspapers, his name was spelled in the following ways: Hosep Kumrou, Joseph Kroumrou, Housep Kmorou, Housep Koumrou, Joseph Komrouian, and Housef Koumrouryan. For simplicity’s sake in this post, I’ll just stick with “Joe.” Joe, with his ambition, out-going personality, and broken English, was sometimes the butt of local jokes. He wrote a letter to the newspaper after he was satirically called “Joe the Nuisance” in an article.

Joe the Newsboy

Joe the Newsboy represented the club at the Jamestown Exposition, a world’s fair held in Virginia in 1907. He sold papers there and by all accounts had a great time. He sent letters to the club members. Once, Joe sent back a phonograph record of his voice. This gift was well-received: “The newsboys have been doing little else today except listening to Joe’s voice on the record as he makes his greeting to them over and over again.”

In September 1907, Joe returned from the Jamestown Exposition. He was in poor health and decided to move to Los Angeles, California for the better weather. When he left Elmira, the newsboys accompanied him to the train station and saw him off. It was said that “no one has been more faithful and more persistent in speaking well of Elmira than he.” Joe died in Los Angeles on April 28, 1916 after a long illness. He was buried in Los Angeles. 

The Elmira Newsboys Club continued on. They still had weekly meetings through the 1920s at least. They had a baseball team through the 1910s. The club reorganized in 1923 and seemed to meet more sporadically through the 1930s and 1940s. 

Elmira Star-Gazette carrier route book belonging to newsboy T. Clair Perkin, ca. 1930s (above and below).

Elmira Star-Gazette carrier route book belonging to newsboy T. Clair Perkin, ca. 1930s (above and below).