Please help The Historians podcasts to continue providing entertainment and education.
CLICK HERE to give to Bob Cudmore's Go Fund Me campaign.

March 28, 2024

Bob with stories from "2021"

....Bob Cudmore has stories from his Daily Gazette Focus on History columns including Amsterdam’s horse racing track, the life of a volunteer nurse in the Civil War and Amsterdam radio announcers who served in Armed Forces Radio.

An Empire State Birthday on "What date"

Tomorrow, Friday, March 29, 2024-Episode 418-Bruce Dearstyne is encouraging New Yorkers to celebrate April 20 as the birthday of the Empire State.  The first New York State constitution was adopted April 20, 1777 during the Revolutionary War.  Bruce Dearstyne was formerly on the staff of the Office of State History and the State Archives.

44 overcast in The City of Amsterdam at 6:06AM-Thursday, March 28, 2024-Mohawk Valley Weather-A chance of showers, mainly between 9am and noon. Patchy fog between 11am and noon. Otherwise, cloudy, with a high near 47. West wind 6 to 10 mph. Tonight Mostly cloudy, with a low around 31. West wind 8 to 10 mph. Friday Partly sunny, with a high near 48. Breezy, with a west wind 10 to 20 mph, with gusts as high as 32 mph.

Bob at WBUR Boston Public Radio

Something to read while you wait for "fill in the Blank"

A story from the lost year of 2021

Soccer, ice cream and men's clothing among 2021's topics
By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History. Daily Gazette and Amsterdam Recorder

Soccer players from the British navy competed in a 1941 exhibition game against the Bigelow-Sanford United's, a soccer club sponsored by the Amsterdam carpet manufacturer.

The Recorder reported, "With pipers piping and a total of three bands contributing to a musical background, the Bigelow-Sanford team squeezed out a 3-2 victory over picked players from the Royal British Navy Saturday night at Mohawk Mills Park in the greatest soccer show of all time in Amsterdam."

Ed McKnight scored twice for the locals and Howie Dynes scored once. It was the first local soccer game under the lights. Rain made the field slippery.

Great Britain was at war with Germany when the benefit was played to raise funds for British relief.

The Bigelow-Sanford soccer team formed in 1893. Gavin "Guy" Murdoch, who fought in World War I with the Canadian army, was anonymous editor of United's PX, a monthly newsletter published during World War II

Guy Murdoch was a quality supervisor at Mohawk Carpet. His grandson Gavin Murdoch, retired Amsterdam high school principal, provided information for this story.

Tollner's ice cream occupied a white building on Route 5 in Fort Johnson near the railroad tracks, west of the main gate of St. Mary's Cemetery.

Willis Tollner, Sr., started the popular shop with his father, Fred Tollner, in 1935.

Willis Tollner, Sr., died in 1955 at 47. Also that year Willis's father Fred and his wife moved to Yonkers, New York, where one of their daughters lived.

Willis Senior's sons Willis Junior (Bill) and Ron operated the ice cream shop in its later years according to Fort Johnson native Shirley Kosinski.

Bill Tollner, married Fran, who had worked as a carhop. They relocated to western New York and have four children. Ron Tollner died young, leaving his wife Peggy Van Patten Tollner and one son.

Tollner's closed and the building was torn down along with many other structures when Route 5 in Fort Johnson and Tribes Hill was rebuilt in the 1960s as a four lane highway.

Paul Guttenberg, who headed Mortan's men's store in Amsterdam until it closed in 1990, passed away in August 2021. Paul was born in New York City in 1927, the son of H. Morton and Pearl Rauch Guttenberg.

Mortan's was named after Paul's father, who moved his clothing store from Schenectady to Amsterdam in 1933. Despite launching in the Depression,

Mortan's prospered at several East Main Street locations. Mortan's last store was in the downtown mall.

In his memoir "Too Long Ago" about growing up in Amsterdam, historian David Pietrusza wrote, "Imagine Paul Newman operating a clothing store in Amsterdam, and, you have an approximation of Paul Guttenberg, whose skill in making a sale was prodigious."

Guttenberg was a U.S. Marine veteran and graduate of Union College. After Mortan's closed he pursued other interests including skiing and flying airplanes.

The Guttenbergs made their home in Broadalbin. In 2007 Paul and his wife Susanne, a health administrator, assumed ownership of Montgomery Meadows, a 120-bed nursing home on Amsterdam's South Side. The facility was renamed River Ridge Living Center.

Eleanore Cramer Breier, widow of late Amsterdam mayor and industrialist Marcus Breier, died last May in Miami, Florida at 101. A graduate of Ithaca College, Eleanore was a physical education teacher at the former Theodore Roosevelt Junior High in Amsterdam.

Veteran radio broadcaster and Mohawk Valley Daily Gazette reporter Sam Zurlo, 90, died October 25 at his Tribes Hill home. In July a column had chronicled Zurlo's early working years when he was in the U.S. Army, a disc jockey and newsman at Armed Forces Radio Service in Frankfurt, Germany.

Mohawk Valley News The Daily Gazette, The Recorder News, The Leader-Herald and Nippertown. https://www.dailygazette.om/c

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.

October 20, 2023

David Pietrusza

Friday, October 20, 2023-Episode 496-David Pietrusza with a guided tour of organized crime in the 1920s in New York City, Gangsterland.

October 06, 2023

David Brooks

Friday, October 6, 2023-Episode 495-David Brooks with an insightful look at the 115th New York Volunteer Regiment in the Civil War. The regiment was composed of men from Montgomery, Fulton, Saratoga and Hamilton Counties. Commanded by Simeon Sammons the troops went to war from Fonda. Brooks is a member of the board of the Fulton County Historical Society.

September 29, 2023

HighLights Edition 5

Episode 494-Highlights edition #5-Christopher Gorham with the story of FDR aide Anna Rosenberg; Gregg Ficery tracing the origin of the National Football League; Scott Shane chronicling the life of Thomas Smallwood, an African American who named the Underground Railroad and interviews from the 2015 Fort Plan Museum conference on the American Revolution.

September 22, 2023

Scott Shane

Episode 493-Scott Shane, author of Flee North- A forgotten hero and the fight for freedom in slavery’s borderland. The book traces the life of Thomas Smallwood, an African American who named the Underground Railroad.

September 15, 2023

Charles Yaple

Friday, September 15, 2023-Episode 492-Episode 493-Charles Yaple, Professor Emeritus at SUNY Cortland, has written Jacob’s Land, a history of his immigrant family in New York State in the 1700s. Yaple has also written The Tree of Us following men, from Richford, New York, including John D. Rockefeller, once the world’s richest man, and Gurdon Wallace Wattle, a friend to five U.S. presidents.
< Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12   Next >