Wild Plants Unlimited

By Rachel Dworkin, archivist

Spring is in the air and a girl’s heart turns towards wild edibles. Or at least this girl’s does. I love foraging. It’s basically a combination of hiking and a game of where’s Waldo with a tasty snack at the end.  Back in the spring of 1920, Mary Bentley was foraging too only, instead of eating her finds, she put them in an herbarium atlas. 

Mary Bentley's herbarium atlas, 1920

 

Each page features a plant found in the county along with its name and the exact date and location where it was picked. Some of the of the plants in the book include meadow rue, crinkle root, and several types of violets. Several of them are edible and quite tasty including strawberries, blueberries, and those violets I mentioned. Others are deadly poisons.

Bentley’s herbarium atlas is a great tool for studying the way our local ecology has changed. 

Strawberries in the atlas herbarium

 

Right now, the banks of the Chemung River are overrun with Japanese knotweed (Reynoutria japonica). Best harvested while it’s less than five inches tall, knotweed stems are a tasty rhubarb substitute, but they don’t belong here. Knotweed is an invasive species brought to America as a landscaping ornamental in the late 19^th century. Other invasive edibles by the found in abundance by the river include garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolate) and white clover (Trifolium repens).

There are no invasive species in Mary Bentley’s herbarium atlas. Everything in its pages are native to North America. Some of them I recognize. I’ve seen bellwort (Uvularia perfoliata) growing all over the place. Others I’ve never seen before. Am I just looking in the wrong place, or have they simply been out competed by their invasive rivals? Either way, it’s clear that the plants along the banks of the Chemung River aren’t what they used to be. 

Bellwort in the atlas herbarium

 

Bellwort in the field

*****

A quick note about wild edibles: foraging is a dangerous hobby. People have died from eating the wrong plants and even some nominally safe ones can have negative interactions with prescription medications. I have several references I use when I go out gathering, I always follow the harvesting and preparation guide, and I never eat something unless I am absolutely positive I know what it is. If you’d like to get into foraging, please, do your homework and stay safe.

War Memorial: The 107th New York Volunteers Association Scrapbooks

By Rachel Dworkin, Archivist

The first Memorial Day was celebrated on May 30, 1868 in honor of the Civil War dead, so it seemed fitting to feature the 107^th New York Volunteers Association’s scrapbook today. In the aftermath of the Civil War, veterans formed a number of organizations. The biggest of these was the Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.) which included veterans of the Union Army, Navy, and Marines with over 490,000 members at its peak. Chemung County was home to three different G.A.R. posts. In addition to being a fraternal organization where members could hang out and talk about their undiagnosed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, the G.A.R. was also one of the nation’s first political action groups. They lobbied Congress to make Memorial Day a national holiday and worked in support of pensions for veterans, voting rights for blacks, and Republicans for office. 

The 107^th New York Volunteer Association was formed in 1866 to give veterans of the 107^th  an excuse to get together.  Mustered in at Elmira on August 13, 1862, the 107^th New York Volunteers was made up primarily of men from Chemung, Steuben, and Schuyler Counties. They fought at Antietam, Gettysburg, and during the Atlanta campaign. The monument which stands in front of the Chemung County Court House on Lake Street is dedicated to them. The Association hosted its first annual reunion a year after the end of the war. In the early years, annual meetings involved picnics and hiking. By the turn of the 20th century, they were mostly having dinners at the Armory on Church Street.

They kept two organizational scrapbooks, one covering from 1862 to 1905, and the other from  1907 to 1930. The first book is more of a ledger of meeting minutes interspersed with newspaper accounts of their annual reunions. The second scrapbook has a bit more in terms of variety. It contains meeting announcements, photographs of members and events, ephemera, and articles related to the Civil War. In some ways, it’s a little sad. By 1907, most of the members were in their 60s. As the decades progressed, more and more obituaries filled the pages. By 1930, most of the original members were dead.     

Oddities and Crime: The Scrapbook of Chief of Police Levi Little

By Kelli Huggins, Education Coordinator

I feel a bizarre kinship to Levi D. Little that is based solely on the contents of his scrapbook. In fact, I consider Little’s scrapbook to be one of my favorite items in our entire collection. It’s not so much that the contents are remarkable—it consists of newspaper clippings which are mostly available to read elsewhere. Instead, what I love about the scrapbook is that I feel like it gives a unique insight into his personality, and as it turns out, we like a lot of the same things.

Levi D. Little

Levi Little was born in the Town of Baldwin on May 20, 1850. As a young man, he quickly moved up the ranks of local law enforcement; he was elected constable in 1873 and, in 1874, moved to Elmira, where he became as deputy sheriff. Three years later, he was elected sheriff on the Republican ticket. Less than four years later, he became the Elmira Chief of Police on April 11, 1883, a position he held until his resignation from the force in 1895. Claiming he was tired of the job, politics, and criticism, he worked the rest of his life as a detective for the Northern Central Railroad.

The scrapbook in our collection is from 1889 to 1890. Little mostly saved clippings of local police and crime news. That makes sense, of course. I used his scrapbook in my research for the “Great Female Crime Spree” chapter in my book Curiosities of Elmira because it includes clippings on the criminal dealings of forger Ella White, alleged murder Mary Eilenberger, and sex trafficker Mary Fairman (check out the book to find out more about these wild women). 

But the crime stories are not the main reason I love the Little scrapbook. Occasionally, Little would clip a news story that had nothing to do with his professional life. He seemed to have an interest in what we might call “oddities,” something Levi Little and I have in common.

An article of national news about a man who was allegedly 150 years old, from the Levi Little scrapbook

He clipped a story about John Lawes, a local man who found unwanted fame for weight gain caused by a uncontrollable medical condition. Lawes’ is a deeply sympathetic story (which I also tell in Curiosities of Elmira) and it is unclear if Little knew Lawes personally or was just following his story.

John Lawes, from the Levi Little scrapbook

Little also saved stories that had to do with the happenings of some of the local clubs and organizations with which he was involved, giving us a better sense of how he was a member of the community outside of his official duties.

News of the Elks Lodge, from the Levi Little scrapbook

I appreciate all of these things, but tucked away on a page toward the back of the scrapbook is the clipping I gravitate towards most:

Railroad Jack in 1890, from the Levi Little scrapbook

This article and etching show the famous Railroad Jack, a train-riding mutt from Albany, NY, who is the subject of my next book (check out www.findingrailroadjack.com for more information!)

From my research, I knew Jack was a frequent guest of Elmira and was popular here, but to see him actually show up in a scrapbook (of the Chief of Police, no less!) gives me a better understanding of just how much local people liked the dog. This has become an important piece of evidence in my book project to prove the reaches of Jack’s celebrity.

Levi Little died unexpectedly on March 8, 1901 from complications from surgery for appendicitis. He had never married, a fact that earned him some gentle ribbing in an 1888 Elmira Telegram article about local eligible bachelors. What was Levi Little actually like as a person? Like all people, he was certainly a complicated figure, but I can’t help but to like the glimpses of the “real” him see in his scrapbook.