Monthly Archives: April 2013

Doris B Morton, Libraries

Whitehall CHRONICLE 1870’s

In May 1870 an inquiring person around town asked why the libraries of the old
Academy and that of the Y.M.C.A. were housed in a farm house outside the village.
Investigation found that in 1865 when the Academy was sold by mortgage foreclosure.
A. C. Cooke purchased it and was in possession of the library and laboratory equipment.
He took the materials to his farm, then on the site of the present Methodist Church.
When the Y.M.C.A. was organized the collection was sent there with the books in a
suitable bookcase. When these rooms were given up, R. C. Cook took possession of
them until the Opera House was ready to receive them. However the Opera House was
not ready at that time but the new school was. This would make the statement that the
library and laboratory equipment of the Academy went to the new high school.

Doris B. Morton, Town Historian – Whitehall Times – June 23, 1988

Bands and Bandstands, Doris B Morton

100 Years Ago in Whitehall 1886

In July Father Ethier’s band cleared $50 at an open air concert. This second concert of the summer finished enough money to pay for the erection of their bandstand and to buy some music. This was before the 1892 bandstand was erected on the east side of the canal and the church edifice was near the corner of Saunders Street and now Broadway.

 Doris B. Morton, Town Historian – The Whitehall Times – July 24, 1986

Bands and Bandstands, Doris B Morton

The Juvenile Cornet Band 1887

Whitehall, according to old programs and newspapers, has always had musical talent, Following a century-in-years tradition, Whitehall now has another band, that of the Whitehall School Alumni.

Back in December, 1887, on a Friday the Juvenile Cornet Band of Whitehall was organized by the Rev. J. S. Ethier, who was its director. The original group was composed of 16 boys but this number grew so rapidly that by its first anniversary there were 75 active members, ages 10-18 years. Others were taking lessons and would soon join them. The boys practiced three nights a week, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays in the rectory of Notre Dame des Victoires on Wheeler Avenue. Father Ethier also gave private lessons for those who wanted to catch up. The boys practiced marches, chorals, quicksteps, waltzes, gallops, serenades, schottisches, gavottes, overtures, etc., besides the scales and exercises of Ripley, Collins and Samuels methods.

Father Ethier was the founder; conductor and patron of this Juvenile Cornet Band, At one time he himself owned 50 of the instruments. He copied by hand many of the pieces of music that each boy had mounted on cardboard in a book with his name imprinted. Father Ethier composed several of these pieces. He trained the boys in military evolutions to use while marching in the streets, practicing them in Temperance Hall. During the first year the band filled 36 engagements in and out of town.

Father Ethier was an artist, specializing in crayon portrait drawing. He advertised in the local papers for patronage, $15 for a framed product, the proceeds to be used for the benefit of the band. He bad spent $1500 himself on the band project, His stated philosophy was: “Music cultivates and elevates the minds of our young men, refines and moulds them into serious practical habits of gentlemanly life,”

At the close of the first year the temporary uniforms of the boys were worn out. There was only $130 in the uniform fund. To furnish enough to outfit the whole band it was decided to have a fair and festival about Christmas time in Griswold Hall. The chosen uniform was to be the colorful one of the Zouave type — short jacket, baggy blue or red trousers and tasseled cap or turban. An oil painting of one was displayed in the store windows preceding the fair and in the hall during it.

The fair and festival was held during Christmas Week in 1888, from Wednesday through Saturday of one week and repeated Thursday and Friday of the following one. Its attractions consisted of a concert every evening by the full band in which each boy was given an opportunity to show what he could do; an oyster supper; and a sale of articles donated by friends. One highlight each evening was an award by vote of some article given for that purpose. Some of these were gold pieces, lamps, silver and glass dishes, barrels of apples, crackers and flour. Evidently a gold watch was the cherished prize won by Louise Lortie who had only a few more votes than Maggie Nolan.

Patronage was excellent; the first Friday night was the biggest with 530 tickets being sold. The net profit was $923.90. Immediately a uniform committee was appointed, the clothes being ordered from G. S. Simmons & Co. in Boston at $15.50 each. They were worn for the first time when the band “turned out” on Washington’s Birthday anniversary, 1889. By this time the boys were practicing in their spacious rooms in Anthony Renois’ block.
During this year the Juvenile Cornet Band had been written up in papers of communities where they appeared like the Troy Catholic Weekly but more – notably in the national Harpers Weekly in an article entitled “The Military Band of the United States,” by Leon Mead.

Another fund raising affair was a musical and dramatical entertainment given in Music Hall at Easter time, 1889. Two French Comedies that had never been presented before in this country were produced by the boys — “The Departure for California” and “The Despair of Jacrisse.” The full house provided a net of $121.46 for the band. The evening ended with the Rev. Mr. McMiilan of the Episcopal leading three cheers and a tiger for Father Ethier and his band.

After Lent in 1890 the band gave a presentation of the French drama “Vildac” and a farce “The Two Blind Men” besides a repetition of 1889’s comedies accompanied by music from the orchestra formed from members of the band appearing for the first time.

For several years after this newspaper accounts list the activities of the Juvenile Cornet Band as it appeared in concerts, sponsoring excursions on the lake, leading parades and entertaining a field.

Could it be that there is still in existence ore of the photographs showing 78 members of he band and orchestra, including Rev. J. S. Ethier, the leader, and John Bellegarde, the drum major?

Doris B. Morton, Town Historian – The Whitehall Times – April 5, 1973

Doris B Morton, Libraries

“First”

Labeling something as a “first” is a tendency for any person, be he collector, writer, researcher. Louis Jones of Cooperstown Farmer’s Museum inveighed against this practice in historical accounts.

Church histories of Whitehall tell of libraries established in their rooms for Sunday school members, the library of the Episcopal in 1836 being an example. But when was the first village or school library set up in Whitehall? The Whitehall academy on Williams Street had a library that was transferred to the Union School when it was established in 1866, and doubtless the earlier academy on Academy (Division) Street set up in March, 1885, with the consent of both the village and the school.

Over the J. H. Sullivan and Co. store at Saunders and Canal streets, according to their advertisement, a room was designed as a village library. The Union School gave books, cases, a desk and chairs which were newly painted and grained by volunteers. One thousand books were transferred to the shelves and an appeal made to the public for contributions of volumes.

The library was a subscription one as consent was sought to receive the “Alvord
Library” of 100 volumes for the shelves. Publishing companies donated books, Ivison, Balkeman, Taylor and company sent 20 volumes, among them an atlas of the United States. A. S. Barnes and Company gave 15 volumes of miscellaneous works with a popular history of the United States, Carrington’s Battles of the American Revolution, and Memoirs of President Garfield. Sheldon and company sent 12 new volumes. Individuals saw that the library received some good reading. Professor Miller contributed 30 volumes of new books with 11 volumes of Washington Irving’s works, six volumes of Miss Yonge’s Histories in England, France and Rome, Macaulay’s five volume history of England and three volumes of Macaulay’s Essays.

This all seems serious reading but O. A. Manville supplied the lack of lightness by donating 50 volumes of new fiction. Other villagers contributed: Village President E. A. Martin, druggist J. R. Broughton, Baptist Rev. M. C. Lockwood and Jeremiah Adams. Placing books on the shelves is the smallest bit of library work. Six weeks later these 1200 books plus several hundred duplicates had been cataloged sufficiently to allow borrowing on a regular basis and the library was opened to the public on Thursdays 3- 4:30 p.m. -and Saturdays 11-12.

In the meantime early readers had borrowed some volumes and, as usual habit, had not returned them. Books, like umbrellas, seem expendable. The library guardians asked that people return their selections with the pointed plea “that others may also read” and with the emphasis that a set of books is valueless if some of its parts are missing.

It was noted “not a few valuable sets are broken and useless till the wandering parts can be found.” It was further noted that the board of education had these books in trust and it was their duty to insist on their return. The plea ended on the diplomatic note we “trust that all who have books will return them.”

How long did this library survive? Two years later the local Y.M.C.A. established as large a library in their rooms in the building on the site just north of the present Knights of Columbus building. Did this local library finally find its way to the old red building on Williams street?

Doris B. Morton, Town Historian – Whitehall Times – November 16, 1972