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October 06, 2024

Sunday Story "Dinner at Isabel’s in 1944"

.....As this was wartime, the federal Office of Price Administration or OPA controlled Isabel’s prices. This federal agency regulated prices and rationed meat, gasoline and other items during World War II.

Dinner at Isabel’s in 1944
By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History, Daily Gazette, Amsterdam Recorder

  The prices on a 1944 menu from Isabel’s Tavern at 280 West Main Street in Amsterdam are eye-opening.

If you and companion (as food writers say) dined at Isabel’s in 1944, you could have had shrimp cocktail as an appetizer for 35 cents each. Fancy filet mignon with fresh mushrooms cost $1.75 per person, served with spaghetti or French fries plus two vegetables. You could have had a Manhattan before dinner for 35 cents and perhaps companion would have enjoyed a Courvoisier after dinner for 60 cents. The total bill, not including tip, would have been $5.15 for dinner for two. That would be worth over $90 today.

Isabel’s offered less expensive fare in 1944. You and companion could have dined on one of the Italian specialties, spaghetti and meatballs, for 50 cents each. You could have split an Italian Combination salad for 50 cents. Each of you could have had a 15-cent glass of burgundy for a total bill of $1.80 for dinner for two.

For a light meal, you could have considered two Western egg sandwiches, each costing 20 cents.

As this was wartime, the federal Office of Price Administration or OPA controlled Isabel’s prices. This federal agency regulated prices and rationed meat, gasoline and other items during World War II.

The Isabel’s menu states, “All prices are our ceiling prices or below. By OPA regulations, our ceilings are based on our highest prices from April 4 to 10, 1943. Our menus are available for your inspection.”

Amsterdam historian Hugh Donlon in his “Annals of a Mill Town” noted that affluent people were able to lessen the impact of wartime meat rationing by dining at Isabel’s and other restaurants.

The OPA distributed a controlled number of red stamps to each family allowing meat purchases.

Donlon said, “Unlike the original rationing in Europe, the U.S. restaurants did not require red stamps from dining patrons and as a result the more affluent were eating out, enjoying meats of higher grade while saving the red stamps issued for home supply. Both money and proper connections helped to ease inconveniences.”

Isabel’s 1944 menu also advertised its facilities for weddings and special parties and would take reservations by telephone at 2490.

The 1944 menu was “snitched” from Isabel’s by Ray Goldstein according to Phyllis Byron of Watervliet, who sent the document.

Local radio station, TV cable owner, and elected government official Joseph Isabel died in 2022. He said some years ago that the family restaurant was started by his grandfather, also named Joseph Isabel, in 1929. Isabel’s parents, Guy and Ida, became sole operators in the 1940s.

“My mom was born here and my dad came here from Pisciotta, Italy,” Isabel said. “He started out as a barber. My uncle Alex Isabel was Recreation Commissioner, Hector worked for Mohasco and Nunzio sold autos.

“My mom and dad were great cooks. He cut all of his own steaks and had a showcase in the dining room where you could pick out your own steaks.

“After my dad died in the early 1970s, my uncle Lou Frollo, Jerry (Pup) Isabel, Mike Aldi and my sister Mildred and her late husband Bill Buono assisted my mother. It was a real family operation.

“My mom sold the restaurant to Mike Aldi in the early 1980s. Mike worked for them as a part time cook and was like family to my dad. Mike also ran Aldi’s TV on the South Side. He ran the restaurant until he had a heart attack in the early 1990s. After that, it changed hands a few times before it
closed.”

Bob Cudmore is a free lance writer. bobcudmore@yahoo.com

518 346 6657

September 29, 2024

Off to the Cemetery

Fairview Cemetery

By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History

  It was built on a 110-acre parcel of land once owned by Revolutionary War surgeon Dr. David Shepard on a hill on the north side of the Mohawk River, partially in the city and partially in the town of Amsterdam.

Dr. Shepard and his family lived there until his death in 1818.

By the late 19th century, after changing hands several times, the land was purchased by Warren K. Nibble of Troy. Nibble wanted to build a resort there, but when many of his financial backers turned against that idea, they decided to use the land for a cemetery.

The Amsterdam Daily Democrat agreed, “The site had natural beauty with soil well adapted for a cemetery.”

The project was laid out by landscape engineer G. Douglas Baltimore. Many remains were moved to Fairview from other cemeteries, thus many stones pre-date 1899 in Fairview’s oldest section (Section 1).

Fairview Cemetery was eventually converted to a not-for-profit corporation owned by and operated for the benefit of lotholders. A volunteer board of trustees oversees the operation.

In 1901, the Daily Democrat reported, “The new chapel and mausoleum on the grounds of Fairview Cemetery has been completed and accepted by the association and is now ready for service. 

The chapel’s Gothic architecture was built of granite and erected by contractor Dennis Madden of Amsterdam. The interior is marble and the ceiling is oak. There are stained glass windows throughout. The original cost of the building was $20,000.

The chapel was dedicated to the memory of Dr. Benjamin Button in 2017 and a replacement roof was completed this year.

A gateway of stone and iron was erected on Steadwell Avenue as the entrance to the cemetery in 1902.

Many of Amsterdam’s prominent citizens were buried at Fairview: the Shuttleworth family, who founded the factory that became Mohawk Carpet Mills; the Chalmers family, who operated knitting and button mills; and manufacturer John R. Blood, among others.

Now, in 2024, the placement of two historic roadside markers will enhance the front entrance. One marker is dedicated to Fairview Cemetery and the second is for the Admiral Dahlgren cannon, located in Veterans section 9.

Amsterdam city historian Rob von Hasseln said the Dahlgren cannon was forged for the U.S. Navy during the Civil War in 1864 in Providence, Rhode Island. After the war, the cannon was installed on the USS Monongahela, Pensacola and Essex. It was then stored at Washington Navy Yard before coming to Fairview.

Next to the cannon is a display of its cannonballs which are red, not black. This distinctive color was a way to match the correct balls to be fired with the cannon. In later years, the gun was retrofitted to use conical-shaped shells.

One of the first pieces of property in America purchased by the Cudmore family, immigrants from England, was a cemetery plot at Fairview. My grandmother, Elizabeth Copp Cudmore, was buried there in 1934. Her husband Harry lived another 22 years and also was buried at Fairview as were my parents and sister. When I was a child, we visited the cemetery in the summer and had picnics among the tombstones.

Bob Cudmore is a free lance writer.

bobcudmore@yahoo.com

518 346 6657

September 22, 2024

Sunday, September 22, 2024 Focus on History takes us back to March 26, 1933

Paderewski’s Amsterdam concert

An evening to remember—Paderewski’s Amsterdam concert

By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History

   Ignacy Paderewski, world-famous pianist and composer who served as an early prime minister of Poland in 1919, performed at Amsterdam’s former junior high school on Guy Park Avenue on March 26, 1933. According to historian Hugh Donlon, Paderewski was invited by Reverend Anton Gorski, founding pastor of St. Stanislaus Church, one of the city’s predominantly Polish-American parishes.

Paderewski and Gorski were distant relatives by marriage. Donlon said “(Paderewski) came more to show his appreciation of the intense loyalty of Amsterdam Poles to their native land than to any other purpose.”
 
Historian Jacqueline Murphy wrote in an article for Historic Amsterdam League that the concert was a benefit for the Sisters of the Resurrection orphanage.

Paderewski’s performance raised nearly $2000 and enabled the Sisters to pay off their bank debt.

The Sisters had opened a nursery on Park Street for children of women working in city mills in 1926. The nursery closed the next year and the Sisters then opened an orphanage on Brookside Avenue. Murphy wrote, “The ongoing increase in the need for their services soon overtaxed the Brookside Avenue facility and in 1932 the orphanage relocated to the former Gardiner Blood residence at 118 Market Street on the southwest corner of Market and Prospect.” Donlon recalled the 1933 concert in a column written after Paderewski’s death on June 29th, 1941, “Those of us who were fortunate enough to get into the auditorium—and it was crowded—are now even more privileged to claim with pride, ‘I heard him.’"

Among the first to greet the pianist in Amsterdam was Division Street physician Dr. Julius Schiller who had heard Paderewski when he played for the first time in America with the Chicago Symphony in 1891.

Donlon wrote that in Amsterdam Paderewski played as though he was among “a small group of personal friends.” The program began with a Bach fugue, Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata and a sonata by Schumann.

Donlon, who had spent many years as a church organist, wrote, “Before the evening was over he had wandered far from that musical fare. In response to wild enthusiasm he went from one Chopin composition to another, and finished with the brilliant Military Polonaise that left his spellbound audience wishing the joys of the evening might never end.”

“He was an old man then, Paderewski was,” wrote Donlon.  “The passing years, with their heartaches, were taking their toll, and there were times when he played as one tired, very, very tired. But then he would rouse himself and show flashes of his old-time technical mastery and poetic fire, his weariness concealed beneath flawless stage posture. “Those who were thcre need no jogging of the memory. Those who were not there-well, they missed Amsterdam at its musical best.”

The Sisters of the Resurrection Children’s Home on Market Street, made possible by Paderewski’s concert, filled a need.

Murphy wrote, “At times there were as many as 12 to 16 infants no more than nine days old being cared for at the home. And not only did the home care for children, but from time to time, it also helped others in need; a student from Poland who was unable to return to his home because of the world situation spent seven years under the care of the Sisters who made it possible for him to complete his medical studies,
 “The Children’s Home was closed by the diocese in 1960 and the Sisters’ ministry relocated to Massachusetts. The building was demolished in 1966 for the Route 30 South arterial.”

There was also a Protestant-based orphanage called the Children’s Home on Amsterdam’s Guy Park Avenue

Bob Cudmore is a free lance writer.

bobcudmore@yahoo.com

518 346 6657

September 15, 2024

Bob Cudmore/The Gazette/Sunday, September 15, 2024

Joseph Bucci’s Guadalcanal diary

Joseph Bucci’s Guadalcanal diary

By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History, Daily Gazette, Amsterdam Recorder

  Joseph A. Bucci fought valiantly on Guadalcnal in World War II and then furthered the war effort as a public speaker back home. Bucci was the son of Charles and Mary Bucci who lived at 12 Lark Street in Amsterdam’s East End.  Charles Bucci had served in World War I.  Joseph Bucci’s brother Anthony fought with the Army Air Corps in World War II.

Joseph Bucci was a graduate of St. Mary’s Institute in Amsterdam and the University of Notre Dame.  He was among the first local men to enlist in the Marines in January, 1942 after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December.  He had been working as a life insurance agent for John Hancock.  He also was a candy salesman.

By October Bucci was among those fighting the Japanese in a long campaign on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands of the South Pacific. Bucci and six others were pinned down by Japanese artillery in the Battle of Matiniku River.  The small band had missed orders to move from their foxholes to another position.

Through one long night and the next day the seven endured the artillery barrage and Japanese attacks. The seven Marines were credited with killing 175 to 200 enemy soldiers.Then Bucci and his comrades came under American artillery fire in a Marine counterattack. Ultimately the seven Marines were reunited with their unit.

By November Bucci was wounded by three pieces of shrapnel.  He contracted malaria and was shipped to a hospital in San Diego, California. It was there he learned he was to receive the Silver Star for his actions on Guadalcanal.  He was promoted to Sergeant.

He was home on leave in July 1943 when the Recorder printed an account of Bucci’s actions on Guadalcanal written by Marine private Eddie Lyon, who had interviewed Bucci at the San Diego hospital.  Bucci and his parents went to the Recorder offices to read the story and have their picture taken.

In December 1943, Bucci was still at home, assigned to the Scotia Naval Depot on Route 5, today an industrial park. He had applied for Officer Candidate School. That month Knights of Columbus Council 209 in Amsterdam honored Bucci at a dinner and presented him with a special ring. Bucci was honored or spoke at numerous gatherings while home on leave. “When I was in the South Pacific, I dreamed of getting home,” Bucci told the Knights of Columbus, according to a newspaper account.   “Just at the present I wish I were down there again.”

He added, “It is my fond wish and hope that this international mess will soon be over and that all of us can come back to the good old American way of life. However, I expect to be shoving off again soon and in whatever part of the world I am I will have this ring with me, a reminder of your thoughtfulness and I will be thoughtful for you.”

Bucci became a second lieutenant in October 1944. 

He attended Albany Law School after the war and in 1948 became head of the new Montgomery County Probation Department.

A 1951 clipping states that he was promoted to captain in the Marine Corps Reserve by President Truman. He and Louanne Wilkes of Albany married in 1953 and moved to California where Bucci worked in the Ventura County Probation Department.

In their later years Bucci and his wife moved to Virginia to be near one of their two sons. Bucci died in 2010 at age 96 at Lovingston Health Care Center in Arrington, Virginia. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Bob Cudmore is a freelance writer. 

bobcudmore@yahoo.com

518 346 6657

September 08, 2024

Bob Cudmore/The Gazette/Sunday, September 8, 2024

"Walking the horses"

"Walking the horses"

By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History, Daily Gazette, Amsterdam Recorder

  In the early 1900s, thoroughbred horses owned by carpet mill magnate Stephen Sanford walked each summer to Saratoga Springs from Sanford’s Hurricana Farm in Amsterdam. Racing Hall of Fame trainer Hollie Hughes, who served three generations of Sanfords, recalled the annual trek in Alex M. Robb’s book,”The Sanfords of Amsterdam.” The trip began at the Sanford horse farm on what is now Route 30 in the town of Amsterdam.

Efforts are underway to preserve remaining buildings at the complex, originally called Hurricana Farm but later known as Sanford Stud Farm. “First, we’d go up to Hagaman, a couple of miles away, and then we’d head for Top Notch, or West Galway, as it’s called,’ Hughes said. ‘That would be about five miles. Then we’d go three miles straight east to Galway village. Then we’d go to West Milton, about seven miles farther east, and there we’d stop at the old Dutch Inn and feed the horses and men. My, those breakfasts tasted good!

By that time it would be close to daylight. “On the way over, half the horses would be under saddle with boys up. After breakfast the saddles were put on the others which had been led by the men up to this point, and we’d walk the remaining ten miles to Saratoga, coming in by Geyser Spring.” In 1901, Sanford built his own stable on Nelson Avenue in Saratoga. He had as many as 35 horses at a time.

When asked why he kept so many horses, the industrialist replied he was not in the raising business for margin, in other words for profit. Author Robb, an official of the New York State Racing Commission in 1969 when he wrote his book about the Sanfords, said Stephen Sanford started buying the property that would become Hurricana Farm in the 1870s. His doctor recommended he take up farming as a hobby to help with what may have been stomach ulcers.

And Robb said that Sanford’s sons, John and William. encouraged their father in this enterprise because of their own interest in fast horses, especially jumpers. William died in 1896. From 1903 through 1907, the Sanfords invited the people of Amsterdam to the Sanford Matinee Races at Hurricana on the Sunday closest to Fourth of July. Trolleys ran up to Market and Meadow Streets.

From there, horse drawn wagons took people to the farm. Some automobiles went to the farm as well but were not admitted to the grounds. There was food, drink, music and, of course, horse racing. Some 15,000 attended the event during its last year. New York State outlawed betting in 1907 and racing stopped at Saratoga.

Temporarily, the Sanfords sold most of their horses to out-of-staters and Canadians, according to Robb. Stephen Sanford was blind the last five years of his life. Born in 1826, he worked with his father John and then on his own to create the famuly carpet mills. Stephen Sanford went to West Point, served in Congress and was a friend of Ulysses S. Grant.

The elder Sanford doted on his grandchildren, in particular his namesake, born in 1899. He gave young Stephen a Shetland pony almost before the youngster could walk. The boy called the pony Laddie.

The grandfather bestowed the nickname Laddie on his grandson as well. Stephen Sanford died February 13, 1913. Six months later, racing resumed at Saratoga along with the first running of the Sanford Memorial. Stephen’s elder son John continued to head the carpet mills and racing stables created during his father’s lifetime. According to Robb, John Sanford inherited $40 million at his father’s death.

Bob Cudmore is a free lance writer.

bobcudmore@yahoo.com

518 346 6657

March 31, 2024

The Historians

The Historians

Bob Cudmore and The Historians

2014-2024

Thank You

March 15, 2024

Bill Simons

Friday, March 15, 2024-Episode 513-Actor Kirk Douglas died four years ago at age 103. Emeritus history professor Bill Simons from SUNY Oneonta has done extensive research on the life of Amsterdam native Kirk Douglas and tells the story of visiting the actor’s childhood home.

March 08, 2024

Charles Postel

....San Francisco State University history professor Charles Postel is author of Equality: An American Dilemma 1866-1896. In this edit of Episode 286, Postel compares three important social movements: Knights of Labor, Women’s Christian Temperance Union and farmers’ Grange.

March 01, 2024

Mark Silo

Friday, March 2, 2024-Episode 512- British colonist William Johnson “made his bones” by defeating a French army who attacked his army at Lake George in 1755. King George II made Johnson a baronet, “Sir” William Johnson. Parliament awarded Johnson 5,000 pounds. Historian Mark Silo tells the story with commentary from Old Fort Johnson site manager Scott Haefner.

February 23, 2024

Ghosts of Segregation

Episode 511-Photojournalist Richard Frishman and essayist and professor Dr. B. Brian Foster are authors of Ghosts of Segregation, a photojournalism collection depicting a visual history of segregation through buildings and landscapes where racism has left its mark.

February 16, 2024

Terry Golway

Former Albany Politico bureau chief Terry Golway is author of I Never Did like Politics: How Fiorello La Guardia Became America's Mayor, and Why He Still Matters. Golway tells the story of LaGuardia’s life through colorful episodes that relate to people today.

February 09, 2024

HighLights Edition 1-2024

Episode 509-Highlights Edition from 2023 and 2024 with excerpts from podcasts on Civil War volunteers from Saratoga, the story of Benedict Arnold, an ancient elephant tusk found in Maine and much more

February 02, 2024

Jerry Madden

Friday, February 2, 2024-Episode 508-Jerry Madden discusses his historical novel Steel Valley: Coming of Age in the Ohio Valley in the 1960s. Madden sets his story in Rust Belt in cities like Steubenville, Ohio, where steel mills have moved out.

January 12, 2024

Bruce Luyendyk

Bruce Luyendyk is a geologist and author of Mighty Bad Land, the story of his explorations of Marie Byrd Land in Antarctica in the 1990s, These explorations led to the discovery of a new continent, named Zealandia.

January 05, 2024

Gary Hoyle

Gary Hoyle is author of Mystery Tusk, the story of a 12,000 year old woolly mammoth tusk found in a manmade pond in Maine in 1959. Plus the chronicle of an African elephant, Old Bet, shot and killed in the early 1800s in Maine.

December 29, 2023

Chris Carola

Chris Carola, a former Albany based Associated Press reporter who lives in Saratoga Springs, talks to Bob about the Civil War’s 77th New York State Volunteer Infantry Regiment.

December 22, 2023

Amy Godine

....The Black Woods by Amy Godine chronicles the history of Black pioneers in New York's northern wilderness. From the late 1840s into the 1860s, they migrated to the Adirondacks to build farms and to vote. On their new-worked land, they could meet the $250 property requirement New York's constitution imposed on Black voters in 1821, and claim the rights of citizenship.

December 15, 2023

Jack D. Warren Jr.

Friday, December 15, 2023-Episode 503- Jack Warren is author of FREEDOM: The Enduring Importance of the American Revolution. Freedom is a look into British America, the Revolutionary War, the birth of a new nation, what freedom means, and how the events of the past are important even today.

December 08, 2023

Jack Kelly

Friday, December 8, 2023-Episode 502-Jack Kelly is author of God Save Benedict Arnold. Arnold committed treason. Yet he was more than a turncoat—Kelly argues Arnold’s achievements during the early years of the Revolutionary War defined him as the most successful soldier of the era.

December 01, 2023

Tim Keogh

Friday, December 1, 2023-Episode 501-Tim Keogh, author of In Levittown's Shadow: Poverty in America's Wealthiest Postwar Suburb. Keogh found that attics, basements, and sheds housed the poor during the suburban boom that followed World War II.

November 24, 2023

Dana Cudmore

Friday, November 24, 2023-Episode 500-Dana Cudmore, author of Farming with Dynamite. Before the introduction of concrete in the early 1900s, cut stones were used to build impressive structures such as churches, public buildings and homes. Cudmore documents more than 30 stone quarries across Schoharie County where dynamite was used to get large stones from the land.

November 17, 2023

Cosby Gibson/Tom Staudle/World Songs

Friday, November 17, 2023-Episode 499-Cosby Gibson and Tom Staudle with songs from Hanukkah, Kwanza and other year end holidays.

November 10, 2023

Jim Kaplan

Friday, November 10, 2023-Episode 498-Jim Kaplan on Revolutionary War General Horatio Gates. American commander in the key victory over the British in the Battle of Saratoga, Gates’ reputation suffered at the end of the war. He later moved to New York City and helped elect Thomas Jefferson as President in 1800.

November 03, 2023

Focus on History #3 for 2023

Several topics from Bob Cudmore’s Focus on History newspaper column: Amsterdam NY’s connection to Piscotta, Italy; carper mill tales; union Leader Leonora Barry. Plus an interview with Phillip Malcolm Bowler about his ancestors’ brewery in Amsterdam.
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