Swine Driver and Pound Keeper for Geneva in 1852

By Karen Osburn, Archivist and City of Geneva Historian

Recently I read the Village of Geneva minutes of the Common Council for the time period May 18, 1852 to May 11, 1853.  In that roughly one year period there were at least 11 mentions of Swine, Cattle and the “Pound”.  The entries began with William Earl being appointed Swine Driver and pound keeper.  A month later, he was removed from office and Luther Stockwell appointed instead.  Between March and April 1853 there is the notation of “another election” and Henry Snelling is listed as Swine Driver and Pound keeper.  The next entry, April 13, 1853, indicates that Henry refused to serve and John Payne was appointed in his stead.  The month following that announcement, May 1853, it is announced that Payne’s appointment was rescinded and William Earl reappointed to position of Swine Driver and Pound Keeper and also placed in charge of public parks.  Whew! That is a lot of changes for one political appointment!

Checking the Geneva Newspaper Index I found few articles on loose farm animals running the street.  In fact, I only found 3 references in the index.  However, in September of 1852 a man was prosecuted for “breaking open the pound” and remarks in January and March of 1853 made reference to a man forcibly removing cows from the pound keeper’s possession.  It appears there was a need for the position and some displeasure over how the responsibilities were carried out.

This may be difficult for us to relate to nowadays, but if we spend a few moments thinking about it we realize that livestock often represent a large portion of a farmer’s wealth in any time period.  Furthermore loose livestock can be a pesky annoyance at best and a danger to the citizens of an urban area at worst.  Anyone who has spent much time around farm animals realizes they can be unpredictable. They are just being animals, but since we are just being people, and many of us are people with limited experience with livestock, we often misunderstand an animal’s actions.

Imagine waking up one morning to a cow munching your carefully tended flower garden,  when you step outside to confront the creature you realize not only has she decimated your garden, she has also “fertilized” your sidewalk and broken down your raspberry canes.  When you approach the bovine, with broom in hand, the cow looks at you complacently and turns her horns in your direction….they look a bit intimidating don’t they? 

In an era when many a city family may have kept a cow, pig or horse for milk, meat or transportation it was not unheard of to find they had escaped and were distressing your neighbors.  Today, this type of animal interaction seldom occurs in urban areas, but in the transitional areas between farm and city it is much more common to look out your window and find your neighbors’ grey pony consuming your bird seed in competition with a wily raccoon. 

My own encounters with livestock have been mostly benign, but several of them have been more interesting than I expected.  I lived in a rural area for a large portion of my life and experienced some moments that branded themselves in my brain.  When I was very young a team of horses escaped from the farm across the street and came galloping through our yard, frightening my mother while I gaped in awe at their thundering hoofs disappearing into the field behind our house.  Then there was the time when I encountered an entire herd of loose draft horses while driving down a country road someplace west of Rochester.  The horses surrounded our small car and escorted us down the street with our eyes about level with their bellies.  Unbelievably, nobody I spoke to knew whose horses they were! 

As a child my parents and I visited a farm where pigs were raised.  While the adults were chatting, I went with the other children into the barn to see the new piglets.  I discovered how fast you can run with a “barking” sow chasing you out of a barn.  How did we know she thought we were dangerous to her babies?! 

That experience left me less than enchanted with pigs.  Imagine my thoughts when I moved to the country as an adult and discovered feral pigs on my property!  Apparently the neighbor’s pigs had escaped and he had recaptured all but two.  Those two hogs decided that being free was preferable to being sausage and did their best to remain wandering adventurers.  At that time we had just completed building a house, an endeavor which left us little money to spend on a lawn mower.  The resulting meadow was about 2 feet high and I was standing on the front steps surveying the situation when I noticed the vegetation in front of me parting and a pair of pigs’ backs cruising through what was masquerading as a lawn.  Shortly afterward we borrowed a scythe from my father in an attempt to “tame” the pasture and the pigs were eventually trapped by another neighbor and properly confined.

Then of course there were the cows.  Another neighbor kept dairy cows of a large and crafty variety.  (Anyone who has stood next to a Holstein knows these are BIG animals.) They were continually escaping his fence and standing in the middle of the road, just over the crest of a hill where you could not see them when you were headed south up the hill.  My first encounter with them taught me to crawl over the crest of the hill at a reasonable speed, but it took another neighbor hitting a cow with a truck to encourage the farmer to put up a cow crossing sign.  The idea of a cow or swine driver and a pound for the offending livestock is beginning to sound pretty good isn’t it?

Many of us think of a “pound” as a place that takes in dogs and cats temporarily.  That is because in our urban areas today these are the animals that commonly need a shelter from neglect or a clearing center to be reunited with their owners.  One hundred and fifty years ago it was pigs, cattle, sheep, goats and horses that suffered from neglect or wandered off.    Sometimes their owners were cruel, but more often than not they simply were not aware their pigs or cows had wandered off, or if they did thought they would just go and collect them later.  Wandering livestock caused problems and necessitated the position of Swine driver and pound keeper be filled by a responsible person.  In an area where most people knew their neighbors and their animals it was easier to return an animal to the right owner than it is today, when many of us are not familiar with our neighbors due to available time and work schedules. 

Even today organizations like Lollipop Farm in Victor, NY are home to a variety of farm animals that have been abused or neglected or turned over simply because their owners are no longer able to care for them.  Bunnies, lambs, pigs, llamas, horses, ponies, sheep, goats and cows all come through the doors of these rescue/rehabilitation places in search of veterinary care or a new home. 

To end this article on a positive note, please consider adoption when you are considering adding an animal to your family.  There are wonderful animals available who will be grateful for a good home and you will be rewarded with a great new friend.

When Hobby Meets Work

By John Marks, Curator of Collections and Exhibits

I’ve played the violin since I was in the fourth grade, and I’ve fiddled for 24 years. (Violin is classically composed music, fiddle is folk music often, but not always, written by Anonymous or Traditional.) Along the way I’ve acquired a harmonica, some penny whistles, a mandolin, a tenor banjo, a ukulele…you get the idea.

I’m lucky enough to incorporate my hobby into my work in various ways. I often play background music for our events, from Geneva Night Out to fundraisers at Rose Hill. There’s often a giraffe-in-the-zoo element to it: people rarely see one person casually playing music, and almost no one anymore grew up with a relative who played folk music around the house. Most folks recognize the violin, but the mandolin, ukulele, and sometimes the banjo are completely foreign. I don’t consider these performances historical, but it does show people a time before MP3 files and YouTube.

I also play music from a specific time period for special educational events such as Farm Heritage Day, held every other year at the John Johnston House. The goal is to get people to think about music of 150 years ago. If you wanted music, someone had to play it; if you wanted it louder, more people needed to sing. Even without radio or television, there were national “hits” like songs by Stephen Foster; it was spread by sheet music and word of mouth.

Some fiddle tunes I know, like Turkey in the Straw, date back to the early 1800s and are appropriate. Jim Kimball, a musicologist at SUNY Geneseo, published a tunebook of his research into NYS dance tunes. His time period is the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, but again many of these tunes were around earlier. I’m fortunate to know Katie Boardman, an independent musician and researcher who formerly worked at the Farmers’ Museum in Cooperstown. She has researched  and shared tunes that were played in the first half of the 1800s, as well as songs done by community “singing schools”.

My current project is coming up with temperance songs for a fundraising party at Rose Hill. (A temperance party with beer and wine? While “teetotalers” abstained from all alcohol, many temperance people felt beer and wine were acceptable but hard liquor was the real enemy.) A national resource for period music is the Library of Congress American Memory Collection at http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html. I have found sheet music for 1870s classics such as “The Poor Drunkard’s Child” and “The Lips that Touch Liquor, Shall Never Touch Mine” as well as temperance lyrics set to well-known tunes.

I feel lucky to combine my interest with work. I don’t think there’s much call for fiddle tunes in real estate, insurance claims, or podiatry

Intoxicating Pursuits

On Friday, July 19 we are hosting a temperance themed party at Rose Hill.  And I know what you may be thinking – temperance?  What kind of party will that be?  Until the late 1800s a majority of temperance advocates were against “ardent spirits” (rum, whiskey, and other hard liquors).  Weaker beverages (like wine, beer and cider) were ok along as long as they were drunk in moderation.

Of course temperance advocates had their work cut out for them as alcohol was such an integral part of American life.  With coffee, tea, milk and water considered unacceptable beverages, the only other alternative was alcohol.  There was the eye opener of rum or whiskey in morning before a glass of beer or cider at breakfast.  Offices, shops and factories often closed at 11 am and 4 pm for a quick nip or two.  Wine at dinner was followed by night caps to avoid night chills.  There were other opportunities throughout the day for   a drink or two – social calls, business transactions, birthdays, christenings, graduations, marriages, funerals, elections, court sessions and the list goes on .  For every affliction from teething to aches and pains of old age alcohol was prescribed in one form or another (particularly brandy, whiskey and fruit based wines).

In the 1820s and 1830s growing concerns for occupational safety, public safety and personal health led to the development of temperance societies like American Temperance Society, Washington Temperance Society and Sons of Temperance.  The societies held conventions, encouraged men to sign pledge cards, circulated petitions, and held lectures.  By 1833 there were over 5,000 temperance societies in the United States. Between 1851 and 1855 prohibition laws were even passed in 11 states and 2 territories.    Temperance even became part of pop culture.  Temperance songs included The Lips that Touch Liquor Shall Never Touch Mine, Girls, Wait for a Temperance Man and Willie Has Signed the Pledge .  Beginning in the 1840s temperance tales (novels, short stories, plays and illustrated materials that warned of the dire medical, social and moral consequences of alcohol) became best sellers.

By the 1850s the temperance movement had lost momentum.  The nation’s attention was focused on the approaching of Civil War.  European medical reports stated that alcohol was dangerous in excess but alright in moderation.  Prohibition legislation was either repealed, modified or simply unforced.    During the mid-1870s the movement would gain momentum again.  But instead of moderation and personal choice, supporters would advocate for legislative bans on all alcohol for everyone.

So if you would like to discover more about the temperance movement; sample food, wine, beer and temperance beverages popular in the 1800s; listen to  19th-century music; or  explore food and beverage production and consumption at Rose Hill, please join us on Friday, July 19 from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m.  Tickets are $18 for members and $20 for non-members.  We hope to see you there!

For more information on the history of alcohol in the United States and the temperance movement, see The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition by WJ Rorabaugh and Drinking in America: A History by Mark Edward Lender and James Kirby Martin.

126th New York At Gettysburg

By Kerry Lippincott, Executive Director

(Warning – I’m not a military historian.  What follows is my small attempt to commemorate the 150^th Anniversary of Gettysburg and the role played by the 126^th.  For more information, I recommend Written in Blood: History of the 126^th New York Infantry in the Civil War by Wayne Mahood and The Redemption of the Harper’s Ferry Cowards: The Story of the 11^th and 126^th New York State Volunteers Regiments at Gettysburg by RL Murray.)

Every family has that place where you visit on a regular basis.  It’s a place where even though you know the lay of the land, you may still “discover” something new.  For my family one of those places is Gettysburg.

In 1989 we made our first we made our first visit and over the years we’ve been back too many times to count.  While on our first visit, my brother Matt and I actually thought that the body of Jenny Wade (the only civilian killed during the battle) was in the basement of the Jenny Wade House.  As our parents toured the house, Matt and I stood at the basement’s entrance warning people not to go down.  (Twenty-three years later I finally overcame my fear and re-visited the house.  And yes, the “body” is still there).  On another visit Matt and Dad roamed Little Round Top looking for a marker for the 20^th Maine while Mom and I suggested that perhaps we all should stay on the nice trail created by the National Park Service. Eventually they stumbled upon the statue of Joshua Chamberlain.  In 2008 I thoroughly enjoyed the tour of the Shriver House as it tells a side of the Civil War that often gets forgotten – the effects of a battle and its aftermath on civilians.  

Last summer our “adventure” was searching for the 126^th New York monument.  My parents had read about the regiment so they wanted to know where the monument was located. Whether we will admit it or not, my family has a ritual at Gettysburg.  On our first night we simply drive around the battlefield.    After a good thirty minutes or so, we found the monument in Ziegler’s Grove on Hancock Avenue.  If you are familiar with Gettysburg, the monument is near the old Visitor Center.  At the time I knew the 126^th had some connection to Geneva.

On June 15, 1862 the 126^th New York Infantry Regiment was organized in Geneva by Eliakim Sherrill (who would become the regiment’s commanding officer).  The regiment consisted of men from Ontario, Seneca and Yates Counties.  Company E was made up of men from Geneva and Rushville.    During their first engagement, the regiment surrendered to the Confederates at Harper’s Ferry earning them the nickname “Harper’s Ferry Cowards.”    The regiment was quickly paroled and spent several months at Camp Douglas in Chicago waiting to be exchanged.  It goes without saying that the men of the 126^th had something to prove and Gettysburg was their chance.

In late June 1863, the 126^th was on garrison duty around Washington, DC when they were transferred to the Army of the Potomac.  The regiment arrived in Gettysburg on the early morning of July 2 (the second day of the battle).  For two days, the regiment played an important role in defending the Union lines, particularly during Pickett’s Charge.  Of the approximately 455 men from the 126^th at Gettysburg, 40 were killed (including Sherrill), 181 were wounded and 10 went missing.  Only three other Union regiments had more men killed, wounded or captured – 24^th Michigan (272), 111^th New York (235) and 151^st Pennsylvania (223).  Three members of the regiments (George H Dore, Morris Brown, Jr. and Johnny Wall) would receive Medals of Honor for capturing Confederate flags.

For the next two years, the 126^th fought in battles in Virginia, including the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor and Petersburg.  To honor the men of the 126th, the State of New York dedicated a monument at Gettysburg on October 3, 1888.

Honeybees: A Brief Overview and the Bees at Rose Hill

By Alice Askins, Site Manager of Rose Hill Mansion

A bee colony usually contains one queen bee, a fertile female; up to a few thousand drones, or fertile males; and a large population of sterile female worker bees.  The workers are the ones we usually see, and they have varied roles in the hive.  Eventually a worker goes outside the hive and spends the rest of her life as a forager. 

Foragers cooperate to find food and use a pattern of "dancing" to communicate with each other about the direction of a food source and how far it is from the hive.  In 1911 a bee keeper estimated that a quart of honey represented bees flying over 48,000 miles.

Honeybees establish new colonies by swarming. A mated queen and about 60% of the workers leave the hive.  The group clusters temporarily in a nearby location, and sends out 20 - 50 scouts to find suitable nest sites. A scout returning to the cluster promotes a location she found by dancing to tell the other bees about its direction and distance. The more excited she is about her findings the more excitedly she dances. If she can convince other scouts to check out the location she found, they may go to look at the site and join her in promoting it. Several sites may be promoted by different scouts at first, but after several hours (sometimes days,) of persuasion, a favorite location emerges. When all scouts agree on a site the cluster flies to it. Meanwhile in the original colony, the remaining bees have prepared for the change by raising a new queen.

People have managed honeybees for many millennia.  We use them not just for honey, but for commercial pollination of crops and other plants. Their pollination services are worth billions of dollars. That is why Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) is so alarming. Beekeepers have seen slow declines of stock for many years.  In early 2007, North America experienced abnormally high die-offs (30–70%) of honeybee colonies, an unprecedented decline.   We don’t know why this is happening, but most of the evidence suggests that CCD is caused by a combination of factors rather than a single pathogen or poison.

Inside the back wall of the barn at Rose Hill we have had a colony of honey bees.   We think they were in there for years and may be descendants of the bees dislodged from the Rose Hill porch column in 1966.  Though the bees have not been aggressive, we decided to find them a better place to live.  The trouble was that while most bee keepers will collect bees that are swarming (out in the open looking for a new home) very few will actually open up a wall to take them out.  Fortunately we found a bee keeper who will.

Tammy Fazzi of Dryden is dedicated to the wellbeing of the species.  She will take colonies from barns, silos, and anyplace else she can reach with scaffolding and ladders.  On Wednesday May 8, Tammy and her assistant made the trek up to Rose Hill. 

After removing the first couple of boards with a crowbar, Tammy began to collect the bees in her special vacuum.  They were angrier than most bees she usually encounters.  Although she was wearing protective gear, bees crawled down inside her gloves, then up inside her sleeves, and stung her arms.  Some got up under her veil and stung her neck.  She had to stop and put on duct tape.  She said, incidentally, that when you have been stung many times, it does not hurt as much.  She would know, but it is hard to imagine.

I was hovering well back, taking pictures with a zoom lens.  Some of the bees came after me, and I decamped and hid in the carriage house for a while.  This meant that I missed the moment when Tammy cut a rectangle out of the wall with a sawzall and exposed the honey combs.

She took the combs out of the wall.  Some of them were very old and she discarded them.  Our hive had an unusually high proportion of comb containing drones, so she did not preserve all of that.  There were a lot of queen cups, or cells where queen bees had developed; this indicates that many populations have left the barn over the years to make new hives.  The combs she took were put into frames and the frames were placed into a box that holds them upright.  If a section of comb is turned upside down, the larvae in it will die.

The removal process took about three hours.  The bees settled down after their first fury, and I came back and took some more pictures.  Tammy estimated that there were 55,000 to 60,000 of them, and they totally filled up her bee vac.

The wall will be left opened for a while.  Tammy said that neighborhood bees will come and clean out the remnants of wax and honey, but they will not try to make another hive because the space is open.   She also said any bees that escaped the round-up will find homes in other hives.  It appears, though, that more bees than she anticipated were out and about while she was collecting, so now we are trying to find a beekeeper closer to us to come and take the orphans.  Fingers crossed.

Writing Exhibits

By John Marks, Curator of Collections and Exhibits

May and June are our traditional months to put up new exhibits in time for increased summer visitation. This year’s exhibits are Scientific Investigation: A History of the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station and Geneva A-G (part one of a larger A-Z project).

I titled this “Writing Exhibits” rather than fabricating, creating, or designing exhibits. People come to museums for artifacts and photos, and for computers and electronic wizardry at larger museums, but they still learn primarily through reading. We think in panels, or posters; the main idea at the top of each panel should be short and clear, followed by images and slightly more complex (but still short) captions. The mantra I learned in graduate school was, “No one wants to read a book on the wall.” Main ideas should be kept to about 50 to 100 words at a time.

“Piece of cake!” I hear you say. However, “short writing” has its challenges. One hundred words require as much research as 10,000. Then that research is distilled and filtered into the “best stories” – what are the things upon which I should focus? In the case of the Experiment Station, it spans 131 years of scientific history that is unknown to people outside of agriculture. Do I cover all 131 years, or even do it by decade? Do I focus on some notable scientists and offend the families of those I didn’t think were notable? Do I explain all the science, or none of it?

View of the original Denton house and barns at the Experiment Station, around 1900.

Like any writing, there are steps in the process. Write anything, regardless of how bad it may be, to get the ball rolling. Step away and sleep on it. Rewrite, then hand over to co-workers for editing. (Any writer who says s/he has never been edited is probably lying.) Answer co-workers’ questions and in the process discover the really important ideas that you haven’t conveyed. Rewrite, and continue the process until the deadline looms.

Our main goal is to offer new information to our visitors in an easy-to-experience format. Our audience has varying levels of education, interest in Geneva, and time to spend in the museum. We try to present the “best stories” about a topic and hope it inspires people to learn more. As always, the staff is happy to talk with visitors and provide more information.

Scientific Investigation: A History of the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station will be on display until April 2014. Geneva A-G will be on display until January 2014, followed by Geneva H-N.

Museum Volunteers

By Karen Osburn, Archivist and Geneva City Historian 

I have a real soft spot for museum volunteers.  Once upon a time I was one and it led to a career in museum work that I still love.  I didn’t know when I made that first phone call and was offered a choice of volunteer duties that by choosing to work in the museum library I was going to one day become an archivist with 20 years of museum training under my belt.  That day all I knew was that I loved museums and libraries and it seemed like a great volunteer combination.

Our Geneva Historical Society volunteers come from all walks of life.  Some are retired and some are still working.  Some come for social contact and interaction, some for history, some because they want to contribute to their community and some because they love museums and research.  A couple of people who volunteered for me have gone on to become archivists and I would like to think that their exposure to archive work at our museum helped them make that decision.

With museums, as with many other non-profit organizations, volunteers are a tremendous help with day to day operations or with special events.  When a historical society owns several properties with numerous out buildings, has a limited budget and also a limited number of staff, the volunteers are extra hands, and brains.  They do all sorts of tasks from helping with artifact cataloging to taking photographs, baking cookies, working on fundraisers, working on landscaping, fixing things in buildings, painting, cleaning, greeting visitors, giving tours, running gift shops, helping researchers, washing and ironing table linens and gloves, and indexing records.  Some volunteers take on a long term project that may occupy them for years; others take a short term, one time only projects like helping with a workshop.  Some help once a year with a special event; others contribute their time weekly. 

The some volunteers assume responsibilities like finances, opening and closing of buildings and supervising other volunteers.  Why do they accept these large responsibilities for no pay?  Volunteers are special people.   Whatever their reason for helping an organization they are enjoying themselves or they would not give their time.  And of course, (in volunteering for a museum) there is the added bonus of seeing and handling various artifacts, whether historic, natural science or otherwise, every day.  Where else might you see a 150 year old chamber pot, a taxidermy passenger pigeon, or a tintype photo?  Depending on the museum you could even see Mastodon skeletons, whale bones, fossils of trilobites or flowers, suits of armor, or an Egyptian Mummy!   The different types of specialty museums are too numerous to mention here, but there is one for every interest.

Most museums rely on volunteers to some degree.  Some small museums are run entirely by volunteers.  Some museums add up volunteer hours and record them each year.  These hours are often cited in grant applications, sometimes for matching grants.

Volunteers add so much to the organization where they donate their time that it is hard to thank them enough.  We acknowledge our volunteers’ generosity with a luncheon in the autumn.  I invite you to consider becoming a volunteer somewhere.  The rewards are incredible.