Elmira's First Black Firefighter

 By Susan Zehnder, Education Director

In 2007, Thomas J. Reid, Jr. was interviewed about his status as Elmira’s first Black firefighter. His reply that “I suppose I was a trailblazer…” reflects only part of his story. He was born in 1923 to Viola and Thomas J. Reid Sr. The family had two daughters and would add a second son a few years later.

Reid Sr. was a World War I veteran, and the family lived on Elmira’s Eastside. After returning from the war, he worked driving trucks for Remington Rand. Reid Jr. attended Elmira Free Academy, where in addition to his studies he lettered in varsity football, basketball and track. He graduated from EFA in 1941. His standout sports achievements earned him an athletic scholarship to Lincoln University, the nation’s first historically Black college and university, located in Pennsylvania. At Lincoln he played both football and basketball and majored in physical education.

It was wartime and just a year into his college career he was inducted into the Army. He left for boot camp, however due to a previous sports injury, he was honorably discharged one month later and returned to Lincoln University. Sometime before 1945 he married Wilhelmina Woods, a nursing student from Tennessee. She went on to pursue graduate studies in nursing at Syracuse University. The couple had a daughter and settled in Elmira. Over the next few years, they had two more children.

In 1950 Thomas J. Reid, Jr. joined the Elmira Fire Department, he was the first African American firefighter hired by the department. Wilhelmina worked for the County Health Department as a public health nurse. She also taught health classes and served on the Board at the Neighborhood House. In the fall of 1963 Wilhelmina died leaving her widowed husband with three young children to raise. Reid remarried in 1965 to Marjorie, a widow with three young children of her own. Marjorie worked at Iszard’s Department Store.

While he was with the Fire Department, Reid received two commendations. In 1961 he was credited with saving a woman’s life, carrying her out of a burning building. During the rescue he suffered smoke inhalation and was hospitalized. In 1965 he was named Fireman of the Year for rescuing an elderly man who had fallen asleep while smoking. This rescue was intense, and he and another firefighter suffered severe smoke inhalation.

Star Gazette photo

After 35 years of service, Reid retired from the Elmira Fire Department in 1985. It would be fifteen years before the second African American firefighter was hired.

Whether or not he was influenced by his father’s work driving trucks for a living, Reid was always interested in anything with wheels. That fascination was part of the reason that in addition to firefighting, he was a successful inventor. He enjoyed creating things with wheels.

One of his early inventions was for a sled wagon with front and rear steering capable of turning 360 degrees. He received US and Canadian patents for this vehicle he called the Cen Ten Ion 200.

Another invention he received a patent for was an inline skate:

Patent drawing for inline skate

The skate had front and back wheels in addition to two center wheels.

After he retired from the Fire Department, he invented a scooter bicycle, seen here and modeled by his wife Marjorie. It was produced for many years by a bicycle manufacturer in Pennsylvania.

Star Gazette photo

One of the last inventions Reid came up with, he built himself in the early 2000s. It was a one-of-a-kind bike designed to accommodate riders of two different heights. He and Marjorie often rode it around town.

Thomas and Marjorie were married for forty-six years before he died in 2012 at the age of 89.  Marjorie died six years later in late 2018.

Thomas J. Reid, Jr. was a man with various talents: an elected member of Elmira’s Sports Hall of Fame, the first Black Fire Fighter in Elmira, and a successful inventor holding multiple patents.

For more about the family read our blog The Reids of Elmira, and listen to Wilbur Reid’s interview archived as part of our Black Oral History project.

 

The Amusing Instructor

by Erin Doane, curator

Board games have been around since the earliest days of human civilization.  By the late 19^th century, families in the United States were seeing an increase in their leisure time and sought new things to do. Companies responded by producing more board games in greater varieties. The Amusing Instructor is a board game invented in 1887 by Joseph H. Beach of Elmira. This educational game includes a game board with a central spinner and two chalk boards and a booklet containing instructions for playing 35 different games that can be adapted to all grades of intelligence.

Joseph H. Beach is first listed in the Elmira City directories in 1878 as a yard keeper at the Elmira Reformatory. By 1880 he was the principal keeper there. It is not certain whether he was still working at the Reformatory when he invented The Amusing Instructor in 1887. By 1889, though, he had gone into real estate as a career. He retired around 1922 and either moved or passed away around 1935. He is no longer listed in the directories at that point.

On the first page of The Amusing Instructor’s instruction booklet, Beach explains why he chose to create this educational game. In his own words he had, “at various times, had occasion to search through store after store for the purpose of selecting suitable games to present to his young friends, and it has occasionally transpired that after having made careful selections, after patient investigation, he has still felt that he was not quite satisfied with his purchase, for the reason that he had been looking for something that he could not find. He desired to procure games that possessed not only the merit to amuse, but also desired, if possible, to procure games that possessed the additional advantage of imparting useful knowledge; and he ofttimes found himself wondering why persons devising new games had not more frequently had in view, in their construction, the idea of the development of the mind.”

The game board Beach created was designed so that people could play games of letters, words and sentences, games of numbers, and geographical games all on the same board. Children could learn the alphabet, orthography, figures, the locations and sizes of lakes, and many other things playing this game. On the game’s cover there is the claim that “The Amusing Instructor is the most desirable game board in existence.” Several of the 14 reasons for this claim are that the games played afford pleasure by harmless amusement; that useful knowledge is rapidly acquired by persons playing the games; that in many of these games there are elements of the greatest uncertainty; and that the board itself is not cheaply made.

The instruction booklet also includes “A Paradise for Puzzlers” containing puzzles, conundrums, tricks, fortune tellers, etc. If one wanted the correct answers to all the puzzles and explanations of how to do the trick, one only had to send five 2-cent postage stamps to him in the mail. Unfortunately for us, neither of our two copies of The Amusing Instructor came with the answer key!

Celebrating the Automatic Continuous Clothing Closure (a.k.a. the Zipper)

by Erin Doane, curator

There are so many little conveniences in life that we take for granted. Do you ever give much thought to the zipper? Just imagine how different your life would be without that fastener. Okay, so the difference would probably not be very dramatic – you would have to button your pants and lace your boots – but zippers are spectacularly useful things. 

Advertisement for “an interesting Exhibit of the Newest 
Fastening Device,” Elmira Star-Gazette, 1929

The ancestor of the modern zipper was developed in the mid-19^th century. In 1851 Elias Howe, inventor of the sewing machine, patented an “Automatic, Continuous Clothing Closure.” Howe never tried to market or mass produce his invention but his sewing machine was a great success.

1851 patent for Howe’s Automatic 
Continuous Clothing Closure

In 1893, Whitcomb Judson patented a “Clasp Locker” that was similar to Howe’s invention. It was a complicated hook-and-eye fastener used on shoes. Judson and businessman Lewis Walker created the Universal Fastener Company to manufacture Judson’s invention. They debuted the clasp locker at the 1893 World’s Fair. Judson continued to make improvements on his fastening device and received another patent for the “C-curity” fastener.

1893 patent for Judson’s Clasp Locker

Gideon Sundback, an employee of the Universal Fastener Company, is credited with designing the modern zipper. He made improvements on Judson’s C-curity fastener and received a patent for the “Separable Fastener” in 1917.

1917 patent for Sundback’s Separable Fastener

While the zipper as an object is a 19^th century invention, the name zipper did not get applied to it until 1923. That year, the B.F. Goodrich Company started using Sundback’s fastener on its new rubber boots. They called the fastener the “zipper” and the name caught on. Boots and tobacco pouches were the first things on which zippers were widely used.

Goodrich Lo-Zipper advertisement,  
Elmira Star-Gazette, 1928

Fire-resistant boot with zipper, late 20^th century

In the 1920s, manufacturers started putting zippers on clothing. One of its earliest uses was on leather jackets. The fastener was also especially popular on children’s clothing because it made it easier to dress squirming children and even let them dress themselves at a younger age. Today zippers are found on all types of products from clothing and shoes to housewares and camping items. What would we do without zippers?

Clothing advertisement, Elmira Star-Gazette, 1929

Child’s dress with zipper, 1955

The Eccentric and Tragic Life of Inventor and “Weather Prophet” Henry Clum

By Kelli Huggins, Education Coordinator, and Sean Bailey, 18 News Meteorologist

Henry Clum was a genius.  Yet, as is often the case with such gifted people who are ahead of their time, Clum spent most of his life misunderstood, underappreciated, and reclusive.  However, we can now recognize his rightful place in scientific history: Clum was one of the first meteorologists.

Henrich Augustus Clum was born on August 17, 1821 in Columbia County, NY to Jacob and Elisabeth Schultes Clum.  Clum must have been a precocious child and young man because he was allegedly put in an insane asylum near Le Roy, NY during the 1830s for claiming that he could predict the weather (a radical notion at that time).  He was released after one week when the doctors declared him sane.

Clum was an inventor and mechanical scientist who had a wide array of interests.  In addition to his weather inventions, Clum also patented a portable commode that could double as a fashionable ottoman and he gave lectures about and was an expert on early blimp aviation.

Clum's Portable Commode, patented in 1878 in Elmira

Clum's Aerial Locomotive

Poster for one of Clum's lectures

He patented several barometers, including his most famous one, the aellograph.  Clum’s invention likely worked very similar to his other barometers. This machine measures the air pressure, in this case using mercury to determine whether the pressure is rising or falling. According to the National Weather Service, mercury is used since it is 14 times denser than water. This means that mercury does not need as long as of a tube or vessel to measure its reactions to fluctuations in the air pressure.  The first barometer was invented as early as 1643 by Evangelista Torricelli, an invention Clum expanded upon with his own scientific findings.

Clum and other scientists built upon the discovery that the stronger the air pressure, the more force was placed on the bottom of the tube. This then forced the mercury to rise. High pressure, which typically causes clearer skies, indicates sinking motion in the atmosphere and therefore pushes down harder. Anytime the mercury is above the mean sea level pressure (MSLP) of 29.92 inches of mercury, it indicates high pressure. When the mercury is below 29.92, air is pushing down less on the tube. This indicates areas of low pressure, and can show the potential for rising air motion. When the air has the ability to rise, it can condense and form clouds and even storms if the rising motion is strong enough. 

 

Patent for Clum's 1860 barometer

Face of Clum's 1860 barometer (see patent above) from CCHS collection

The aellograph, or “storm writer” was 10 feet tall, weighed nearly a ton, and allegedly had the ability to detect changes in atmospheric pressure as far away as the Rocky Mountains.  In Rochester, Clum was a founding member and trustee of the American Aelloscope Company, which in 1866 released a circular describing the machine and the science of weather prediction. 

Clum’s radical invention was not easy to sell as he struggled to convince people of its practical use.  Although an 1874 newspaper joked that Clum should now “make his everlasting fortune of intending bridal parties and women with new bonnets," he failed to actually strike it rich.  In fact, Clum was destitute for much of his life.  He did sell some of his machines, including one aelloscope to Queen Victoria of England after doing a demonstration in her court.  France’s Napoleon III and the Russian government each purchased one, too.   He was once offered $10,000 for his patent, which he refused, believing that it was worth no less than $100,000.  He made most of his income from the sales of his small barometers and the lectures that he gave across the country and Europe.    

Clum with his aellograph

Henry Clum likely came to Elmira during the 1860s.  He first lived on the northwest corner of Carroll and Lake Streets and then moved to the block of the Lyceum Opera House.  While in Elmira, Clum built a storm finder for the New York Tribune, which used the machine for 6 years.  He was in talks with Senator Charles Sumner to build a storm finding machine to sit atop of the US Capitol building, but the plan was called off after Sumner died.  The US government eventually did purchase one of Clum’s machines.  The machine needed to be taken apart and cleaned every year, and by the second year, the government thought that they could do it themselves without Clum’s assistance.  They succeeded in getting the machine apart, but could not put it back together.  Clum refused to help, claiming he didn’t take “second hand” jobs.

At this time, Clum’s personal life suffered about as much as professional life.  He married Elmiran Annie Snell, who was the war widow of Charles Harris.  The couple was happily married for five years and had a daughter when the presumed dead Harris came back to claim his wife.  Annie and their young daughter went to Buffalo with her first husband (who being the jerk that he was, left Annie again).  Though Clum and his wife never reunited, Clum continued to use his meager income to support Annie until her death in 1881.  He even had to go to Buffalo to bury her.

One of Clum’s only close friends was Matt Lockwood, the costumer for the Lyceum Theater (and another fascinating character who I am writing a future blog post about).  The two friends spent much time together, and Lockwood was allegedly one of the only other people who were able to understand and put together the aellograph. 

Matt Lockwood

On July 6, 1884, Clum was in Binghamton to give a lecture at the Fireman’s Hall.  While he was preparing his equipment, there was an explosion which caused iron shrapnel to strike Clum in the head and fatally wound him.  Although the windows of the hall were blown out and Clum was killed, the aellograph, which was on the stage, was remarkably unharmed.  When Clum’s friend Lockwood came to bring the body back to Elmira, he discovered that the people in Binghamton were planning to keep the machine.  Lockwood disagreed with this and he waited until the Hall’s janitor left and he stole it out of Binghamton.  It remained in his possession until he donated it to the Chemung County Historical Society.  At one point, the inner workings were stolen, and may have never been recovered (they are not part of CCHS’ collection).

Aellograph case in CCHS collection

His funeral was attended by his few friends and his daughter, Ettie.  Clum was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in Matt Lockwood’s plot.  Despite his many achievements during his lifetime, Clum is another one of our historical figure who has been largely forgotten.  When he has been remembered, the accounts of his life have focused more on the melodrama of his biography rather than his scientific contributions.  While these personal hardships certainly were important points in his life, I prefer to remember Clum as an eccentric scientific genius rather than a figure like those in a Shakespearean tragedy.

Clum's gravestone in Woodlawn Cemetery