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By Richard White Copyright © 2026 All rights reserved by the author. Cover of a 1922 edition of F. Scott Fitzgerald 's book Tales of the Jazz Age , painted by John Held, Jr. “I don’t think jazz should be called music.  It has no harmony.   It’s harsh and lacks dignity and beauty… It tears a piano to pieces and is suited only to a cheap instrument.”  This was the 1927 observation, and stern opinion, of Attica’s  Philetus Sheridan Tyler, nicknamed Leet, as quoted in the Buffalo Evening News on March 16.  For over 50 years, he tuned pianos in Western New York, especially in Buffalo, and across the Great Lakes region.  But just as jazz tore a piano “to pieces,” it started to tear Leet apart as well.  The Jazz Age and its associated Roaring Twenties, with its flamboyance and excesses in the name of hedonism. Tyler was a sensitive, proud, small-town American who recently served in the military in Europe.   The end of the war brought him to Boston, where he learned the piano business and provided him time to develop his thoughts on jazz.  At some juncture, he countenanced what he regarded as cultural damage, decay, and destruction that jazz created, and would continue to destroy our cultural landscape.  Opponents of jazz wished that it would vaporize. There was a mild, low-key stance in his resistance to jazz.   Leet never staged a rally or addressed a crowd, and he was a guest on a radio show only once.   Nothing has been found about him accosting a jazz fan, or even picketing a movie such as “The Jazz Singer," which was released in 1927.  And he definitely did not define himself as a hero.  But for the juggernaut of avant-garde jazz performers and artists, there was a cultural stockade defended by a diverse but like-minded defenders, such as Henry Ford and Thomas Edison, to foil or silence the Jazz-ers.  It would be a misjudgment to contend that Leet was weak because he operated by himself almost universally.  He stood for and exhibited hardcore, country individualism.          On occasion, though, the Tyler family journeyed beyond Buffalo not only to find a new market for piano tuning and instrument repair, but also to hold nighttime assemblies for discussion in a rented hall, exposing neighbors and friends to the dangers of jazz.  In addition, Leet often pointed out the names of three traditional songs, the type of which were necessary to preserve our national make-up. They were classic pre-jazz songs.  First was “Annie Laurie,” a romantic song likely written by William Douglas.  Second was “Old Kentucky Home,” whose lyrics were written by Stephen Foster with the never-to-forgotten passage, “The sun shines bright on my old Kentucky home.” Leet always included “Sweet and Low,” scribed by Stephen Foster, which calls upon singers to remember “the wind of the Western Sea.” He continued using them when he tuned a piano or sold one in his later years. In the Twenties, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s writings on the Jazz Era depict a rebellion against traditional values.  Philetus Sheridan Tyler from Attica fought the rebellion. About the author: Richard White's articles have appeared in  Civil War History, The Journal of Negro History , and other publications.

By Paul Lubienecki, PhD Copyright ©2025 All rights reserved by the author. Portrait of George Fox, courtesy of Wikipedia The religious history of the United States is one of persecution and yet tolerance. Differences in theological perspectives, politics, and loyalties existed among all denominations and religious communities. This aspect of life was also prevalent among the Society of Friends. Their spiritual life and journey to western New York reflected their civil and religious values as they established themselves in local society. Origins The Society of Friends originated from the aftermath of the English Civil War in the 1650s. Religious persecution and corruption that plagued England during the Civil War provoked many people to desire religious freedom and toleration away from the Anglican Church and other orthodox denominations. The Society of Friends emerged in the midst of chaos under George Fox, a dissenting preacher and the son of a wealthy weaver from Leicestershire, England. [1]  Fox looked down upon those who claimed to be professors of God’s truth and developed radical social views for the seventeenth century. George Fox turned away from most forms of religious authority by rejecting ordained ministers or clergy as interpreters of God’s word and looked with disgust at many forms of corruption in those church positions. Fox developed his own belief, which became the foundation of the Society of Friends. He focused his confidence in the direct revelation of Christ through the Inner Light to the individual believer.  Soon, people who believed in the Inner Light, like Fox, met at a “meeting house” without a designated priest and reflected during a quiet time interspersed with many testimonies that gave glory to God. [2] Other non-typical norms of seventeenth-century people that Friends implemented included neither swearing oaths to the state nor paying tithes to church leaders who functioned as part of the State. Those practices led early Quakers to be persecuted.  Unlike other orthodox religious groups, such as the Anglicans or Presbyterians, Friends did not believe in sacraments at their meetings. Communion is derived from a silent meditation with God, not an outward show of taking bread and wine like other denominations. Friends also disregarded both infant and adult baptisms, believing that a relationship with God is an inward connection; consequently, it was not necessary to represent it on the outside through water baptism. [3] There are two fundamental aspects to Quaker faith. First, Friends believe that all people are capable of directly experiencing the divine nature of the universe, which is known by many names, such as God, the Holy Spirit, or simply Spirit, and is among the most common. They believe that you do not need a priest or any other kind of spiritual intercessor and do not need to perform any kind of ritual. Quakers profess that when you need to hear from God, you will. When the Spirit has a message for you to share, you should share it. The second key principle is belief in continued revelation. In the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, there are many stories of God communicating directly with people. Friends believe God’s revelations have never stopped, and that God might reach out to anyone at any time. When Quakers come together to meet for silent worship, they participate in a shared space in which all strive to recognize such divine messages. The Religious Society of Friends does not have an unshakable system of religious dogma. There is no specific belief about the “right” way to experience contact with the divine. It is a relationship with divinity and ultimately unique to each person. Many scholars today consider Quakers radical Puritans because the Quakers carried many Puritan convictions to extremes. [4]  They stretched the sober deportment of the Puritans into a glorification of "plainness." Theologically, they expanded the Puritan concept of a church of individuals regenerated by the Holy Spirit to include the indwelling of the Spirit, or the "Light of Christ," in every person. Such teaching struck many of the Quakers' contemporaries as dangerous heresy. Quakers were severely persecuted in England for daring to deviate so far from orthodox Christianity. By 1680, 10,000 Quakers had been imprisoned in England, and 243 had died of torture and mistreatment in the King's jails. This Reign of Terror impelled Friends to seek refuge in New Jersey in the 1670s, where they soon became well-established. In 1681, when Quaker leader William Penn (1644-1718) parlayed a debt owed by Charles II to his father into a charter for the province of Pennsylvania, numerous Quakers were eager to seize the opportunity to live in a land where they might worship freely. By 1685, as many as 8,000 Quakers had come to Pennsylvania. Although the Quakers may have resembled the Puritans in some religious beliefs and practices, they differed from them over the necessity of compelling religious uniformity in society. Quakers were pacifists, an ideology that also developed from the turmoil of the English Civil War, and carries through into the present day.  This viewpoint separated Quakers from most other religious groups in England and made them outcasts, considered as traitors to the established Church and to the State in times of war.  Friends' refusal to take up arms stemmed from their pacifist views, belief in religious tolerance, and a need for separation between Church and State domination. Equality was another area where Friends set themselves apart, as women and men were viewed in society as equal in the eyes of God. Belief in equality also led some Quakers to advocate for the abolition of slavery in the eighteenth century and, more forcefully, in the years leading up to the Civil War. It became an issue that led to disagreements among Quakers throughout the Antebellum period in America. Due to the chaos in England following the English Civil War and the Friends’ desire to spread their beliefs in the Inner Light far and wide, Quakers began the first of many migrations of their faith to the American colonies and the Caribbean. Upon arrival in the New World in the seventeenth century, Quakers settled alongside other religious groups in the New England colonies of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Hampshire. In the mid-Atlantic region, the colony of Pennsylvania became a refuge for Quakers and many other diverse populations. Pennsylvania: The Quaker Colony Pennsylvania was founded through a grant from the King by wealthy Quaker William Penn, a businessman and a philosopher in his own right. King Charles II of England owed a debt to Penn’s father, an admiral and a politician who sat in the House of Commons. To repay his debt, King Charles II gave Penn the land now known as Pennsylvania.  Pennsylvania became a haven for Quakers from England under the guidance of William Penn’s “holy experiment” to establish the colony, almost autonomous from the others in the Delaware Valley, based on the Quaker political and social belief systems. [5] Pennsylvania, and especially Philadelphia, became the center for American Friends, and the Philadelphia Meeting served as a model for other Yearly Meetings as they were established throughout the colonies during the eighteenth century. Quakers dominated Pennsylvania’s government and provided models for the Society for almost seventy years. As the diversity of the Quaker population grew in the middle colonies, it inevitably led to disagreements between Friends.  Arguments and disagreements were tied to where Friends lived, whether Friends were urban or rural. Urban dwellers, according to the rural Friends, believed that Quakers living in Philadelphia had become too worldly or “church-like.” [6] Deviance from Quaker tenets led to Quakers becoming disowned. The politics of who ruled the meetings became too intertwined in the society, so many Friends attempted to maintain their pure society by migrating south and west. Subsequently, many Quakers moved away from the Delaware Valley, Maryland, and Virginia. Settling in Western New York: Orchard Park Members of the Society of Friends began settling in the Niagara region in 1783. They were part of a larger migration “from the states of New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, particularly the county of Sussex, in the latter state.” [7]  Many incoming settlers, including some Friends, had stood loyally by “King and country” during the American Revolution and could be counted as refugees from the United States. Nearly all Quakers who came to the Niagara region had taken no active part in the war and did not claim to be Loyalists. They had nevertheless suffered from double taxation and the loss of civil rights for their refusal to bear arms or to pledge to defend the new nation. These penalties continued after the war.  Settling around present-day Fort Erie, Ontario, these new immigrants crossed the rugged terrain of Pennsylvania with a caravan of handcrafted furniture, cattle, and religious zeal. Permanent settlements on the American side of the Niagara River were practically non-existent at this time, as the area was primarily under the control of Native Americans.  In 1791, Seneca Chief Cornplanter visited the nation’s capital in Philadelphia and met with the Quaker community. Impressed with their qualifications, he sent two Seneca Nation boys to be educated by them.  This was followed in 1794 with Chief Sacarese of the Tuscarora Nation meeting Quakers from Philadelphia at Canandaigua, New York, during treaty negotiations. The Quakers were appointed to assist the Native American tribes in education and “European style” of agriculture, supplying them with “ploughs, axes, and hoes,” being “liberally” supplied to the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. [8]   These Quakers, at the request of Chiefs Cornplanter and Sacarese, established missions in Allegheny and Cattaraugus counties, as well as on Tuscarora lands. The Holland Land Company, a syndicate of land developers, surveyed and purchased large tracts of land bordering the Genesee River in the east to the shores of Lakes Erie and Ontario in 1792.  This was within Native American territory, and multiple disputes arose over ownership and use.  This area of western New York remained unsettled and primitive. The Philadelphia Committee on Indian Concerns visited the area as needed, supplying the Native Americans with materials required for construction and industry. [9] Yet a prevalent problem remained: alcoholism among the native population.  The Quakers, in conjunction with tribal elders, moved to ban the sale of alcohol. The area around Buffalo was slowly growing with the emergence of new settlements surrounded by farms, grist mills, saw mills, and other businesses. In 1804, Quaker Amos Colvin and Baptist Deacon Ezekiel Smith purchased substantial acreage from the Holland Land Company in the southwest of present-day Orchard Park, New York. The acquisition was for his family for farming and development. [10]   News of land opening up in western New York for purchase and development spurred settlers and speculators to migrate there. These new Quaker pioneers came from various parts of New York State, Pennsylvania, and New England.  In 1805, Quaker Gideon Dudley purchased 200 acres in the Town of Hamburg, New York, and David Eddy acquired sizable acreage in Orchard Park. The Society of Friends in this area south of Buffalo was growing, but no formal Meeting House had yet been established. The nearest recognized meeting was in Bertie, Ontario (Ft. Erie), some twenty miles away.  With the influx of settlers, Orchard Park was rapidly evolving into a predominantly Quaker district.  A prominent Friend was Obadiah Baker. He relocated his family from Vermont in 1807, purchasing 100 acres for farming, and constructed a log cabin on the site. Before his arrival, the small but growing Quaker population sought a “proper” local meeting house for worship.  This group of Friends was under the jurisdictional control of the Pelham Monthly Meeting (Canada), and the Quakers in “the district of Erie near Buffalo” petitioned for their own meeting house. [11]  In 1807, a Meeting House for Worship was approved in the district of Erie near Buffalo (Orchard Park) under the care of Pelham Friends Meeting (New Welland, Ontario). Friends first met in the home of Obadiah Baker in 1807 on East Quaker Road, and continued to meet there until a log Meeting House was completed in 1812 near the corner of East Quaker Road and Buffalo Road. David Eddy, the first settler of the Village of Orchard Park, who built and operated an inn and tavern in the village, sold the land to the Quakers.  By this time, there were 25 Quaker families in the community, and the number was growing.   In 1817, the Meeting purchased three acres of land at the corner of East Quaker Road and Freeman Road from Aldrich Arnold and obtained the approval of Farmington Quarterly Meeting to build a larger, more suitable meeting house.  This meeting house served them until the early 1820s, when they built and occupied the current structure. Additionally, the first lending library was established by the Quakers in February 1823 with an assortment of books donated to the Meeting, with the charge that their curators “lend them to such families as they shall find to be most in need, having a particular regard to women Friends.”  [12]                                                  The Southtowns Region As Quakers settled in the Orchard Park area, others relocated to lands further south, closer to Lake Erie and the Native American reservations. The plight of the Native Americans was a constant concern for the Philadelphia Committee on Indian Concerns. Jacob Taylor, representing the Committee, opened a mission in 1809 in Collins, New York, near the Cattaraugus Reservation of the Seneca Nation. While the Quaker missionaries worked with the Native population, they did not try to convert them; their purpose was to educate. [13]    The following year, Quaker families settled in Gowanda, New York.  These new families: Tucker, Sission, Haight, Barker, and others established homesteads for farming, fishing, commercial enterprises such as grist mills, lumber mills, carpentry, woodworking, and furniture production, and most importantly, missionary work with the Senecas.  During the following years, Quakers continued to migrate to the lands south of Buffalo and Erie County.  These settlers came from Vermont, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and other parts of New York State.  Their settlements became the present-day towns of Eden, Evans, Boston, and Collins. [14] Quaker pioneers were no different from others who settled the land. They sought fertile farm land, raised cattle, cleared forests, and operated small business ventures. The Quaker population continued to swell and move further out.  While worship services were held, they became somewhat sporadic, and the potential for lax practices existed. However, a review of the matter by the Pelham Monthly Meeting group found that the worship services were “reputably kept up.” [15]   Although Friends were established there by 1820, Collins and Concord had no formal meeting house. Schools were established as early as 1815, but the first Quaker meeting house in Collins was finally built in 1888. [16] Imminent Conflict Political tensions began to percolate as early as 1811 between the United States and Great Britain. With the apparent eruption of hostilities, the Farmington (New York) Monthly Meeting noted the situation and the potential for a great divide between the Pelham (Canada) Friends and those in New York State.  The Farmington Friends sent a delegation to Pelham to ascertain the conditions between the two national groups. They reported that at that time, no animosity existed between the Canadians and Americans. When the War of 1812 commenced, the British controlled Lake Erie, blocking access to Canada and the Pelham Quakers. As a pacifist group, the Friends endeavored to remain politically neutral and openly refused military service. Their theology commanded that Christians were to be obedient to the law. Still, when governments interfere with the “religious rights or bind the consciences of their subjects, then Christians are to endure sufferings rather than comply with the laws of men which violate their higher and supreme obligation to God.” [17]   After the American Revolution, many Friends settled in Canada, leaving extended families in the newly formed United States. This ultimately meant compulsory military service for Quaker men living in Canada. During the War of 1812, young Quaker Aaron Hambleton was forced to join the Canadian military. He refused and was jailed, where he subsequently died. The family was then compelled to leave their property near present-day Toronto and relocate to Orchard Park. [18] Just a few years later, Aaron’s father, Moses, plagued by the tragedy, drank heavily and was disowned by the Society of Friends; he died soon afterwards. [19] When British troops destroyed Buffalo and Black Rock, the Quakers of Orchard Park and the Southtowns feared that this same devastation would happen to them. Fortunately, the British army saw no consequential value in marching south of Buffalo. But communication between the Orchard Park group and Pelham was now “interrupted.” The Orchard Park Friends soon separated from the Pelham community and were now under the care of the Farmington Friends Monthly Meeting. Commerce, Growth, Expansion With the conclusion of the war, commerce on Lake Erie restarted. Western New York became the gateway to the Midwest as grains, furniture, clothing, produce, cattle, and other goods passed through the area on their way west. This created multiple business opportunities for the area’s Quakers. As an independent and self-sufficient group, they disliked government intrusion, taxes, and regulations on their work but complied as necessary. The initial Quaker pioneers cleared the land for farms, cattle, swine, and orchards. As more skilled craftsmen and artisans arrived, their entrepreneurial character evolved. Obadiah Baker farmed the land and built houses. Dry goods stores opened, selling groceries, clothing, window glass, nails, and other household necessities.  The barter system was the common method of transaction. [20] David Eddy, an intermittent member of the Society of Friends, built an inn at Orchard Park’s Four Corners area. Still, controversy surrounded this enterprise as it was believed he also owned an adjacent tavern. Eddy also operated a saw mill on Smokes Creek in the town, and his business partner, James Reynolds, managed a dry goods store. Just west of the village, Obadiah Griffin founded a grist mill, and Daniel Nichols and Seth McKay established a wool works and fulling mill for cloth. [21] In nearby Colden Benoni, Sprague operated a tannery. The majority of the men in this Quaker colony were farmers, while others had skills necessary for frontier life. Carpenters, furniture makers, wheelwrights, blacksmiths, coopers, cheese makers, and potters comprised the additional work.  Quaker women benefitted from mostly equitable roles in both religious and familial life. Women were responsible for the household, which required working a loom, sewing and tailoring clothes, baking and cooking, canning produce, and knowledge of medicinal remedies and animal husbandry.  Education was a cooperative endeavor, but women were the primary instructors in children's schooling. The growth of Quaker communities in Erie County, New York, in the years after the War of 1812 was dynamic. In 1813, the Concord and, later, Collins Friends Meeting were recognized, and the following year, the Eden Monthly Meeting was separated from Farmington. The Eden Monthly Meeting was further divided into three local groups, and in 1817, three log meetinghouses were built in the present-day Eden, Collins, and Boston, New York. Quakers also established a Meeting in a private home south of Orchard Park in Holland, New York. Within twenty-five years of the first Quakers settling in western New York, a quarter of the land was cleared for farming and housing, six townships, with Quaker roots, were formed, and five meetinghouses were built. [22]   The Great Separation As the nation expanded westward away from the eastern seaboard, a spirit of adventure and the desire to cultivate a new society motivated these pioneers.  This hope-filled attitude was prevalent among men and women of all faiths and creeds.  The new nation’s economic prosperity gradually created social classes and friction between urban and agrarian populations and between the wealthy and the poor.  This was evident for America’s Society of Friends as these socio-economic divisions birthed a theological split. In 1827, America’s Quakers experienced a tragic split among the Society of Friends. The Orthodox-Hicksite Separation, also known as the Great Separation, began over a theological dispute about the role of the Bible and Jesus Christ in the individual faith of believers. The Hicksites, led by Elias Hicks, emphasized the importance of the Inward Light in guiding the individual believer in matters of faith and conscience. The Orthodox Quakers, influenced by the Second Great Awakening, which occurred at this time, adopted a more Protestant emphasis on Biblical authority.  This split resulted in two distinct groups. There was a mid-twentieth-century reunification of the Society of Friends and the development of a more inclusive and diverse membership. [23] The implications for the Quakers on the Niagara Frontier were substantial.  At Orchard Park, two-thirds of the members aligned themselves with Hicks, and the Orthodox group relocated to another site in the village. This scenario was repeated throughout the area, and new meeting houses were constructed in Evans and Collins to accommodate the new Orthodox members. The Hicksite Separation created four new meetings, many of them weak and lacking leadership or deep spiritual motivation. In later years, a few additional meetings were set up. Orthodox Friends started a meeting in Buffalo about 1840. [24]   It maintained some degree of activity for a quarter of a century.  Both groups shared similar characteristics: members becoming increasingly influenced by worldly concerns rather than spiritual concerns; a lack of strong leadership; a lack of spiritual leadership; and many Quakers moving out of the area in search of opportunities in other Midwest locations. Consequently, both factions disowned each other, creating friction, and the theological and organizational divisions continued throughout the 19th century. This led some to leave the Society of Friends and join various spiritualist communities that formed in the area during the 1830s and 1840s.  Further controversy and divisions continued in the mid-1800s.  Following the Hicksite/Orthodox separation of 1828, Orthodox Friends were further divided by a Wilburite separation in 1847-1848, and the Wilburites were subdivided into Kingite and Otisite branches in 1859.  During the 1860s and 1870s, there were four different bodies called Scipio Monthly Meeting: Hicksite, Orthodox, Kingite, and Otisite.  The Wilburites later reunited and affiliated with the Canada Yearly Meeting (Conservative).  Finally, in 1955, the separate groups in New York State united. Social Advocacy and the Civil War Since they arrived in western New York, the Quakers have been involved with the local Native American tribes.  This consisted of education and support of their legal rights and a fight against the appropriation of their traditional ancestral lands. Prior to the Civil War, the local Society of Friends was involved in the anti-slavery movement and in the Underground Railroad. They established two “stations” in the area, calling themselves the “Liberty League.” [25]   In November 1846, Quakers in Collins organized the Western New York Free Produce Association. Their purpose was to restrict the sale and purchase of goods produced by slaves, especially the very necessary items of sugar and cotton cloth. The following year, this same group sent “94 bushels of corn and $25 in cash” to assist with Irish famine relief. The Civil War created a dilemma for the Quakers. As a group opposed to slavery, they were not prepared to participate in an armed conflict that would ultimately decide the fate of the nation. The many Friends' anti-slavery organizations were concerned about being too politicized or affiliated with clergy who disagreed with Quaker theology.  Many were hesitant to mix with non-Quakers, and apprehension was apparent. Meetinghouses in Eden and Collins were available for rallies, but local Quakers concentrated their efforts on shuttling runaway slaves to Canada via the Underground Railroad. Military service in this war was a contentious matter for eligible men. Draft riots and paying commutation to avoid fighting in the war were common.  Quakers wrestled with how best to serve the country and be a good Christian. At the New York Yearly Meeting of 1863, the issue was addressed. The Society of Friends reissued their Peace Testimony, stating: “We love our country and we are grateful for its many blessings,” and had no sympathy for the rebel cause. Quakers were not to profit from the business of war, and they were only to be warriors for Christ. [26] However, several Quaker men from western New York served with the Union forces. The exact number is unknown. Those who did serve from other areas of New York State were disowned for not adhering to Quaker doctrine. Equality and Idealism From the outset, Quaker women enjoyed near-equal status with men in worship services and were permitted to openly voice their testimony. Some were even leaders at the meetinghouse. Yet in matters of business, women occupied a subordinate place.  As America became more progressive, women's roles in society advanced. Quakers, especially women, occupied an important role in prison reform, women’s rights, and the suffrage movements of the nineteenth century.  The tradition and values of the Friends centered on a belief in women’s God-given rights, responsibilities, and equality, which the men supported. This was at the core of their activist activities. Additionally, since the early 1800s, Quakers were concerned about the social impact of alcoholism.  Temperance societies and anti-salon leagues, organized by women, appeared throughout the state. Batavia, Rochester, and Utica became headquarters for these movements. The Women’s Crusade of 1874 organized protests in the state and nation, closing hundreds of salons and taverns. [27] Quaker women occupied a prominent place in these campaigns, and the most renowned was Susan B. Anthony.  Born in Massachusetts and raised as a Quaker, her family relocated to Rochester, New York in 1845. It was in this faith tradition that she was immersed in the values of morality and zeal for the betterment of others through progressive causes. [28]   Her crusades in the temperance movement and political engagement led to much-needed reforms that altered the roles of women and society. Testimony of Peace A core value of the Society of Friends is that of a pacifist. This trait was predominant during the twentieth century. The Quaker response to the events of World War 1 posed a dilemma for Quakers as a matter of faith and patriotism. During World War 1 Quakers could not escape the difficulties of holding fast to a pacifist testimony.  This experience for Western New York Quakers was awkward, as the area was mostly settled by Germans, and their language dominated work and life, particularly in Niagara County. American Quakers in Erie County and New York State were caught off guard by World War 1. The scope of the conflict and the astonishing violence were unprecedented.  American Quakers were not only ill-prepared on how to respond to being drafted but also lacked religious unity. Guided by the Inner Light, each person had to weigh their spiritual values against loyalty to their country. The additional problem was the draft and the consequences of not serving in the military. The statistics for western New York Quaker men who served are imprecise, but most who were drafted served in combat positions during World War I. Overall, of those who objected on religious grounds, only a small portion took the absolutist position and refused to participate in the war effort in any capacity. Figures from the War Department show that “3,989 out of 2,810,296 inducted men made any claim in camp for exemption from any form of military service.” [29] Quaker bravery during battle was admired: “Unarmed and essentially non-combatant, the members of our American unit were many times under fire and showed bravery in its highest sense. They performed construction work while the enemy bombarded, and they risked life repeatedly to aid in the rescue of wounded soldiers.” [30]   Local Quakers worked closely with the Red Cross, preparing medical equipment, supplies, and food packages for the front lines. Protests against the war were practically non-existent as the Friends’ patriotic response was to serve those in need and not necessarily take up weapons. The American Quaker response to this war was the formation of the American Friends Service Committee. Founded in Philadelphia in 1917, it was established to assist civilians and war refugees through various relief efforts. As the first war ended, tensions arose in Europe during the 1930s, and the AFSC assisted German Jews in leaving Nazi Germany. [31] As new wars and conflicts continued into the twentieth century, Western New York’s Society of Friends sought a unified response. Unlike the First World War the reaction to Second World War was somewhat different. A direct attack on the United States aroused a more patriotic response.  Many served in the military, but some continued to refuse to carry weapons. Buffalo was a major manufacturing source for the military.  Some women labored in local factories in support of the war effort. Others objected to this direct work of violence but contributed to relief efforts through the Red Cross or the AFSC. Social Justice Practiced Western New York’s Friends were active participants in the social justice issues of the 1960s. They were ardent advocates for Civil Rights and prison reform. Historically, campaigns for prison reform were always a primary effort, but prison reform legislation did not achieve the successes hoped for in the state. However, some Quakers worked with both the victims of crime and those newly released from incarceration. The Vietnam War protests demonstrated the Quakers’ resolve to promote non-violence and also relief efforts.  On Easter Sunday, 1967, friends gathered at the Peace Bridge in Buffalo to march into Canada, taking medical supplies for both North and South Vietnam.  It was uncertain whether the governments of Canada and the United States would permit such an endeavor, and the possibility of arrests loomed. There was significant publicity about the event, and protestors heckled the Quakers at the bridge. Ultimately, both governments agreed to allow the Quakers to march into Canada with their medical supplies. [32]  The Society of Friends continued non-violent protests and relief efforts for both sides throughout the war.   As the Quaker communities progressed into a new century, their social justice attention focused on immigration reforms and assisting those migrating into the area. Additionally, their works include housing, environmental concerns, relief to third-world peoples, and advocacy for the poor and marginalized.  The meetinghouses throughout New York State are vibrant and continue to flourish. The primary mission of the Society of Friends is that of a spiritual community seeking to hear that still small voice , following the inner Light, and respond in ways that spread peace and love to the wider community. This was evident from the establishment of the first meetinghouses on the Niagara frontier and continues to this day. About the author: Paul Lubienecki obtained his Ph.D. in History from Case Western Reserve University and has taught courses in American history, theology, spirituality, and museum studies. He is a contributing editor to the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History. He has been a Special Studies Instructor at the Chautauqua Institution. He is the founding director of the Boland Center for the Study of Labor and Religion, where he teaches, publishes, and lectures on the integration of history at the intersection of religion and the labor movement. Sources: [1] Rufus M. Jones, ed., the Journal of George Fox (New York: Capricorn Books, 1963), 81. They called themselves 'Friends' because of the words of Jesus recorded in John 15:14, 'You are my friends, if you do what I command you.'  [2] Jones, 93-102. Also see: George Fox, “The First Years of Ministry 1648-49,” [3] Hiram Hilty, “North Carolina Quakers and Slavery” (PhD diss., Durham: Duke University, 1969), 2. [4] Quakers are officially called "The Society of Friends". The word "Quaker" was originally a derogatory term used by King George to William Penn, who would not take his hat off in deference to his majesty. Penn told the King that instead of worrying about a silly thing like hats, he should be "Quaking before the Lord." The King then responded "Get this  quaker  out of here!" So at first, "Quaker" was actually a slur. To counter this the Society of Friends adopted the term in reference to themselves. Melvin Endy, William Penn and Early Quakerism, (Princeton University Press, 2015), 10. [5] Samuel M. Janney, The Life of William Penn (Philadelphia: Friends’ Book Association, 1878), 163. [6] Frederick Tolles, Meeting House and Counting House: The Quaker Merchants of Colonial Philadelphia, 1682-1763 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1948), 230-41. [7] Robert W. Ramsey, Carolina Cradle: Settlement of the Northwest Frontier, 1747-1762 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1964), 10. [8] Karim Tiro,  ""We Wish to Do You Good": The Quaker Mission to the Oneida Nation, 1790-1840".  Journal of the Early Republic . 26, 2006, 353–376. [9] “Rev. David Bacon’s Visits to Buffalo in 1800 and 1801.” Erie County Historical Society Journal, Vol.6, 185-186. [10] Frank Sererance , Quakers Among the Senecas , Buffalo Historical Society publication, Vol. 6, 167. [11] Suzanne Schultz Kelp, Our Quaker Legacy. A Documented History of the Early Quakers, Their Migration and Settlement in Western New York, (Orchard Park Historical Society, Orchard Park, NY, 2019), 65-67. [12] Ibid, 68. [13] Lorna Spencer, History of Collins, (Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society, 1971), 4. [14] Perry Smith, History of the City of Buffalo and Erie County, (D. Mason & Co., 1884), 116-120. [15] Kelp, Our Quaker Legacy, 71. [16] Spencer, History of Collins, 2. [17] Hugh Barbour, ed., Quaker Crosscurrents: Three Hundred Years of Friends in the New York Yearly Meetings, (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1995), 63-64. [18] Kelp, Our Quaker Legacy, 73. [19] Farmington Monthly Meeting minutes, May 1821. [20] Advertisements in the Buffalo Gazette announced the opening of a new store by Mr. Shepherd in Orchard Park in 1815 accepting “most kinds of country produce will be taken in payment.” Buffalo Gazette November 23, 1813. [21] Buffalo Gazette , November 9, 1813.  Fulling is a process of cleaning and processing wool. [22] Levinus Painter, “Quaker Settlements in Erie County, New York,” Quaker History , Vol. 55, No. 1 (Spring 1966), 28. [23] Hugh Barbour, ed., Quaker Crosscurrents, 100-110. [24] Painter, “Quaker Settlements in Erie County, New York”, 29. [25] Ibid., 31. [26] Hugh Barbour, ed., Quaker Crosscurrents, 190-193. [27] Sabron Reynolds Newton “New York Friends and the Concern about Alcohol” based on New York Yearly Meeting minutes, various years, 1992. [28] Emily Morry, Susan B. Anthony’s Rochester , Rochester Beacon, February 6, 2020. [29] Lester M. Jones , Quakers in Action: Recent Humanitarian and Reform Activities of the American Quakers (New York: The Macmillan Company,1929), 206. [30] No author listed, Advocate of Peace, journal, 1919, 245. [31] AFSC staff  writer,  "Love in action: A brief history of AFSC's work in the past 100 years" .  American Friends Service Committee Bulletin, 2024. [32] Hugh Barbour, ed., Quaker Crosscurrents, 304.

by Jonathan Woolley Copyright ©2025 All rights reserved by the author. Gerald Ford's presidential portrait Just in case you're not feeling old, I'd like to remind you that there are hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers who are adults today who were not yet born when New York City nearly went bankrupt in 1975. And of those who had been born, many of them were still small children or, at the very least, teenagers at the time this occurred. So, for those of you who were adults back in 1975 and are reading this now, I commend you: you have managed to survive an unintentional dig at your age without throwing the computer you're reading this on against the wall. But all joking aside, New York City's financial crisis in 1975 was significant. It left a lasting legacy on the city to this day in terms of concerns about city budgets and state oversight of municipal finances here in New York State. So for that reason alone, it deserves to be remembered, at least in the history of municipal finance and government finance. This year, 2025, marks the 50th anniversary of that fiscal crisis. And so while many of the players who were involved in it at the time are no longer in government (and some are now deceased), the decisions they made and the effects of those decisions shape municipal finance and municipal government-state government relations not just between New York City and the state government in Albany but between all communities in New York state and the state government in Albany to this day.   October 30th, 2025, marked the fiftieth anniversary of what is perhaps the most famous - or perhaps one should say the most infamous - moment of the entire fiscal crisis: the moment when the Daily News , in response to a speech given by President Ford at the National Press Club, ran the headline “Ford to City: Drop Dead” followed by the sub-headline “Vows He’ll Veto Any Bail-Out” [of the city government]. The headline became a symbol, not only of the financial crisis itself, but eventually of all the malaise that was affecting New York City's government and society in the mid-1970’s, whether it be financial issues, rising crime, reasons for the middle class to decamp from the city, widespread protest movements, strikes, or just general graffiti, dirt, and a sense of lawlessness and urban blight that pervaded certain parts of the city. As a result, I decided to look at some of the newspaper coverage of the fiftieth anniversary of that headline.   Background The root cause of the financial crisis that afflicted New York City’s municipal government in 1975 is simple. For several preceding years, the city government had spent liberally on various programs while the government’s revenues had not kept pace. Indeed, the tax base, the most critical source of city government revenue, had actually declined somewhat. This policy, which had occurred under both Republican and Democratic mayors [i] and council members, had by 1975 resulted in a structural deficit of significant proportions. (Democrats had always retained control of the Comptroller’s office, which also oversaw city finances). The city government used loans, in the form of issuing municipal bonds, to finance this deficit, ultimately issuing bonds - supposedly backed by anticipated revenues that were not guaranteed to ever actually be received - to finance current expenses. In 1975, the lending institutions stopped indulging this “financial flimflam” [ii] (as critics would later call it). This created the crisis because the city no longer had adequate financial resources to meet its current obligations.      The Mayor and Comptroller (Beame and Goldin, respectively) went to the state government in Albany to ask for help, and the state government did provide it. That help was crucial, but, on its own, insufficient: New York City’s obligations were so huge, and its deficit so pronounced, that solving the problem was too herculean a task for the state government to solve all by itself. After coming within hours - really, minutes - of bankruptcy in the early Fall, city and state officials felt only federal government assistance could stave off a default by the city on its next round of bond payments (which were due in a few weeks). “[C] ity officials were,” quite literally, “again running out of options ” [iii] .   When approached, however, the federal administration of Gerald Ford had reservations about supporting the city government financially, fearing both that it would be rewarding a municipal government with poor financial management at the expense of those with good management and that supporting the city financially would encourage other local governments around the nation to expect the federal government to subsidize them too. Consequently, in a speech on October 29, 1975, President Ford said the federal government was not in favor of financially assisting New York City’s government, “ deliberately assail[ing] the leadership of New York City for 35 minutes” [iv] - many felt - in the process (although he did not actually say the words “drop dead”) .   The next morning, the Daily News , then perhaps the most widely-read newspaper in the city, covered the speech by running the headline “Ford to City: Drop Dead." The headline, which was written by William J. Brink (a managing editor at the Daily News ) as a preface to an article covering the speech entitled “Ford to New York: Drop Dead” by the reporter Frank Van Riper, immediately caught the public’s attention. The speech made civic and business leaders, city and state government officials, and the city’s population at large realize that the city government would have to fend for itself and take the tough decisions necessary to do that. The Daily News headline served as a sort of symbolic flag for this view: five words that said we [the city’s stakeholders] must do it ourselves; nobody else cares enough to help us. Although Ford would later reverse course and although the financial crisis went on for months, to this day, no other words or image is as associated in the public consciousness with the ‘75 economic crisis as that headline. As Rohatyn and Yost note, “The Daily News published a headline that, in five words, helped turn the tide on a financial crisis that had held New York City in its grip for months. Landing with a thud on newsstands, it was an instant classic and remains one of the most famous headlines in history” [v] .     It is for this reason, and also because the headline has “ endure[d] in the national consciousness” all these years, becoming “a universal front-page stand-in for No Way, No Chance” [vi] , that I decided to look at the articles in the New York City press commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of its original publication.           Articles Commemorating the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Headline “Ford to City: Drop Dead” My research method was to read every article printed in the mass-circulation popular press within a range of several days before and after the actual anniversary date (October 30, 2025). In fact, not every publication in New York City marked this event. There was little or no remark on it in the New York Post (except for one Opinion piece by the columnist M. Goodwin endorsing A. Cuomo for mayor in an upcoming election) , the Staten Island Advance , or Newsday . Or New York Magazine’s print edition. Nor did either The New Yorker’s online edition or many of the political commentary shows on television remark on the event . However, the Daily News , which had of course published the original headline of “Ford to City: Drop Dead," did run an editorial on the 50th anniversary of that headline, and the New York Times posted a few articles that week commemorating or remarking upon the anniversary.    The Daily News marked the anniversary of its famous headline by running an editorial accompanied by a picture of the original October 30, 1975, front page banner headline. However, the editorial, while describing the 1975 fiscal problems as the city’s “deepest financial crisis” [vii] and very briefly summarizing what happened and how the city recovered, used the editorial to promote the candidacy of former governor Andrew Cuomo, who was running against (the eventually victorious) Zohran Mamdani for mayor in the election scheduled for a few days hence. The 1975 crisis, therefore, was simply ammunition in the paper’s endorsement of a 2025 mayoral candidate. While the editorial’s headline “Not dead” and text acknowledged the fiscal crisis had not destroyed the city but rather that the city had, over time, bounced back very well, the editorial did not (as I had expected it to) spend a great deal of time discussing either the fiscal crisis itself or the impact that famous headline had once made, either for the paper itself or in the broader public and on the events in question.    This failure to discuss the original’s front page’s impact - or, more importantly, the crisis’s long-term impact further is both surprising and regrettable. The Daily News ’ headline and the speech it referred to became not just a symbol for all that was wrong with both Ford’s opposition to a federal bailout of the city’s finances and with the city’s dire financial situation, but also part of the story itself. It created an easily graspable catalyst for opposing the laissez-faire attitude the Republican administration was taking toward an ideologically liberal, politically Democratic city (and, to a lesser extent, state) polity and government. Thus, there was a lot of scope for the newspaper to do a retrospective reflection on what was perhaps its most impactful headline ever. Such a retrospective reflection could have taken the form of an editorial, a reflection by an on-staff columnist, an outsider perspective through either an Op-Ed or a Guest Columnist, or simply a spot of regular reporting that interviewed people who either participated in or simply remembered the events and headline in question. But, at least in the print edition, there was nothing other than that one editorial, either on October 30 or on the surrounding days before or after.      To be fair to the Daily News , however, the newspaper did make an additional acknowledgement of that day’s anniversary on its website. Two postings, listed as articles on the newspaper’s web index, were added early that morning. One, from the Associated Press wire service, was a brief few lines of copy acknowledging this day was the anniversary, accompanied by a 1976 photograph of then-candidate Jimmy Carter using a copy of the headline as an anti-Ford prop at a campaign rally in Queens. (Many, including Ford himself, concluded after the election that Ford’s lack of interest in helping New York during the crisis helped convince swing voters to support Carter). The other posting, written by the News’ real estate reporter Téa Kvetenadze, was also designed as a brief historical review. It consisted of two paragraphs of copy, along with photographic reproductions of three pages from the original October 30, 1975 paper and one paragraph from a critical-of-Ford editorial that was published that 1975 morning. The two paragraphs of copy by Kvetenadze, like the Associated Press story, briefly stated that October 30, 2025, was the anniversary of the newspaper running a headline about Ford’s speech the previous day. However, unlike the Associated Press-derived posting, this posting – perhaps because an in-house reporter wrote it – did acknowledge not only that it was “perhaps its most iconic front page” [viii] but also why the headline lodged in the public consciousness: because it so strongly implied Ford’s opinion was in the wrong (“[it] hit out at President Ford for saying he would veto any bill calling for a federal bailout of New York”).        The New York Times ran an Op-Ed - a guest essay - comparing the political situation in 1975 regarding federal funding for New York to today’s political situation. This piece, which was written by the documentary filmmakers Michael Rohatyn and Peter Yost (who had co-directed a documentary on the 1975 financial crisis) and posted online on October 27, claimed that New York City’s ability to unify its disparate groups and make the hard decisions necessary to solve the crisis ultimately proved that urban communities of 2025 are capable of standing up to the federal government when required. Their message that Republicans “Mess with cities like New York at your own peril” [ix] is perhaps more directed at Republican officials and activists, as well as New York City’s residents, political activists, and civic boosters, rather than at senior federal officials or historical scholars. This makes some sense, since, not only is President Trump constitutionally limited to two terms, but unlike many other U.S. Presidents and other senior Republican officials (and unspoken by Rohatyn and Yost), President Trump was a New York City resident and real estate executive in 1975. He, more than anyone, ought to be able to appreciate how much the city’s near-bankruptcy affected real estate values, home sales, and other economic indicators. Rohatyn and Yost’s essay, therefore, structurally parallels the Daily News editorial but aims its message at a regional and national, as much as at a city, audience.    However, the Times also ran two articles on the fiftieth anniversary. One, written by Tim Balk and posted on its website on the anniversary day (it was published in the National section of the print edition the next morning), was entitled “New York Didn’t Drop Dead in 1975, but Trump Poses a New Challenge” and followed the same vein as the Daily News ’ editorial. Subtitled “City is Fiscally Healthier Now, but Faces a White House More Hostile Than Ford’s, it both summarizes the crisis of 1975 and compares the city’s financial health in 1975 to its health in 2025. However, the article concludes with a warning that then-candidate (now Mayor-Elect) Mamdani’s spending plans could be a proverbial straw that breaks the back of the city’s budgetary health. “Things move very fast,” the article quotes one lawyer as warning, “When the financial community loses faith in city leadership, it can turn with breathtaking speed” [x] . Overall, it’s a good article for someone who wants to know a brief background on the 1975 financial crisis and how it compares to today’s municipal financial condition in the city (it states today’s is much better), and therefore it made for an appropriate article for the fiftieth anniversary of Ford’s speech (and the Daily News headline). Still, Balk’s focus is clearly to tie it in to the mayoral election campaign that was reaching its crescendo at the time it was published.       The other story I read in the Times was the most interesting of all the pieces I read. Authored by Bill Brink and opening with the words “My father dropped dead. His headline lives on; the article, titled “My Father Wrote a Headline That Refuses to Die,” is both a retrospective on the author’s father (who coined the headline) and a discussion of its importance. The first part of the article deals with the importance of the headline. It states that the headline is used both in discussions of municipal finance and municipal-federal government relations, on the one hand, and, more generally, to indicate that one person or entity has no interest in helping another. It then goes on to cite examples of these, both from several years ago and this year, ranging from coverage of the Trump Administration’s views on possible future bailouts to the federal government’s deployment of National Guard personnel to urban areas to more mundane matters such as baseball team rivalries. The author believes what made the headline so memorable was its concision, simplicity, directness, and the searing phrase. He contrasts it to the New York Times ’ own headline on the same subject that 1975 morning, which was about three lines long and is nowadays remembered by nobody.    The second part of the article is about the life of the headline’s author, William J. Brink. He was a no-nonsense man born over a hundred years ago who served in World War II. But he was also a career newspaper reporter who cared for his fellow reporters - hence, his onetime firing for apparently attempting to get a trade union more involved in the paper he worked for. He was also somebody who wanted to make sure he did things correctly and, perhaps more importantly for a managing editor of the catering-to-the-everyman Daily News , someone who understood what the proverbial average Joe wanted to know: the article recounts how he once measured the roughness of unrepaired potholes during the 1975 crisis by driving a car over them and measuring the size of the bumps. No wonder he was able to think up such an iconic headline.   Thus, this article is both the most interesting and the most commemorative of all those that appeared at the time of the fiftieth anniversary of the original 1975 Daily News headline. (It was posted online on the actual fiftieth anniversary, October 30, 2025, and published in the print edition the following Sunday). It provides an intimate portrait of the writer while also offering an analytical perspective on the headline itself. The analytical perspective is the most useful to either a historian or a journalism researcher. It makes a good argument for what would have made a good headline that would catch the attention of a 1975 audience and would also catch the attention of an audience today.   Conclusion There was a lot less published commemorating that famous headline on its fiftieth anniversary than I had expected. (And most of what there was wasn’t really focusing on the anniversary , as it was using the anniversary as part of a piece about the upcoming mayoral election. This relative lack of published commemoration material surprised me, particularly about the Daily News . While I had expected all the publications to publish something regarding the fiftieth anniversary of Ford’s apparent dismissal of the city, I had especially expected the Daily News to want to get more proverbial mileage out of the anniversary, given that it was the newspaper whose coverage of Ford’s speech had so seared itself into the public’s mind. After all, not only was the headline “ an instant classic [that] remains one of the most famous headlines in history” [xi] but “Implicit in ‘Drop Dead’ was not only that Ford had rebuffed New York, but that he had made a big mistake in doing so” [xii] . Furthermore, the headline has, over the years, become almost a symbol of the Daily News’ brand. Thus, the writers and editors at the Daily News had plenty of potential fodder to capitalize upon for articles, particularly retrospective ones. But, while the New York Times seems to have made an effort to do this, the Daily News seemed less eager. Perhaps newsroom staffing issues forced management to focus the paper’s coverage on other topics. I can't say precisely why other news outlets did not wish to publish anything remarking upon the 50th anniversary of the famous headline. Still, there are a few likely reasons why [xiii] . One is that a heavy rainstorm, which caused severe flooding, occurred in the days surrounding it, perhaps not only taking up space in both the print and online editions but also dominating news reporters’ and editorial directors’ attention. Thus, they may have felt an understandable journalistic impulse to shift their focus away from the fiftieth anniversary to more pressing immediate news issues. The then-ongoing federal budget shutdown and related events in Washington also clearly (and understandably, given their possible effect on people) took up significant news time and space. Most likely, however, it was because, unlike in 1975, October 2025 preceded a mayoral and city council election. So public attention – and thus news outlets’ attention – was on more immediate issues regarding New York City’s government. And, of course, there had been some coverage of the fiftieth anniversary of the crisis earlier in the year, when both a documentary movie and a book were released on the subject. In particular, when the film in question, “Drop Dead City”, came to be shown in New York in April, several news outlets had discussed the anniversary and/or what happened in 1975 while covering the film’s showing in New York City. Nonetheless, the lack of coverage in these newspapers [xiv] , or in other outlets such as New York One News, at the time of the fiftieth anniversary of the famous headline, was somewhat surprising.   Of course, there were items published that discussed (or referenced) the fiscal crisis and its famous headline, but they were published outside the date range I examined. The New York Post , for instance, published several pieces during the mayoral election campaign, as well as an editorial nearly a month after the anniversary, that either directly or indirectly referenced the fiscal crisis and its famous headline as part of the paper’s coverage and editorial criticism of the mayoral election campaign of Mamdani. There have also been occasional articles about the fiscal crisis in various mass-circulation media publications over the intervening years since 1975; for instance, the New York Times ran one in 2006 [xv] .  Some publications, therefore, may perhaps be excused for not publishing more on the fiftieth anniversary of the “Ford to City: Drop Dead” headline; those publications may perhaps have felt they had printed enough on the subject at other times.   The main lesson from the 1975 financial crisis itself is that, to borrow a quote from one newspaper article, “A shortfall has real repercussions” [xvi] . Yet the city government spent the months leading up to the crisis pretending everything was all right, engaging in the “financial flimflam” [xvii] of poor accounting and substandard financial reporting to assure everyone, inside and outside of government, the business community, and the public, that the city government was solvent and fully able to pay its bills. This wasn’t just a case of “ the choice of what is presented has implications for what oversight is possible. ” [xviii] (a criticism that some made about the MTA (the Metropolitan Transportation Authority) years later), it was also a case of not having sufficient information to present in the first place. Thus, in addition to the main lesson that budgetary shortfalls can have dire consequences if left unremedied, a secondary lesson is the importance of good financial reporting. (Fortunately, some significant strides regarding these lessons have been made at both the state and the city level since 1975).   As mentioned previously, there was less written than expected on the anniversary, and much of what was written related to 1975’s issues with Mayor-Elect Mamdani’s fiscal plans. A lesson of the commemoration articles, therefore, is that media attention both follows public attention and is easily drawn to where the media thinks the public’s attention is. There was a high-profile mayoral election campaign, as well as severe inclement weather and disputes over the enforcement of federal law in other cities, around October 30, 2025. The media seemed to prefer focusing on those issues rather than on the commemoration of the city’s fiscal crisis – perhaps because the immediacy of those events was felt to trump the importance of the city’s one-time near bankruptcy in the media’s view of the public’s attention. This is an understandable position for the media organizations to take when viewed through the lens of their need to sell newspapers (or otherwise gain public viewership as a means of earning revenue), However, it leaves a historian – particularly a financial historian – somewhat hanging, wanting more information on the importance of the fiscal crisis (and the famous headline it generated) both in terms of how it was received at the time and in terms of its effects on state and municipal government. It also leaves students of history and journalism wondering how the headline affected later journalistic practices.   Much of the information on the effects of the fiscal crisis on New York’s state and municipal governments is available, although not all in one place. However, future researchers may wish to investigate further the effect of the Daily News ’ famous headline on subsequent journalistic practices, particularly its impact on the tabloid wars fought in New York’s newspapers and newsstands over the next four or five decades. For now, though, I will venture the opinion that the headline became something of a gold standard that later headline writers would aspire to match or exceed with their own headlines.       About the author: Jonathan Woolley is an independent analyst and researcher. He did his undergraduate studies at Manhattanville College and his graduate studies at Rutgers University. He has previously published reviews of exhibits on the history of New York City's zoning laws and the Federal Reserve.   Endnotes   [i] John Lindsay was elected as both a Republican and an independent. [ii] Mark Lieberman and Bruce Drake. “How big guys burned the little guys.” New York Daily News , August 28, 1977. [iii] Tim Balk. “New York Didn’t Drop Dead in 1975, but Trump Poses a New Challenge.” New York Times , October 31, 2025. A23. [iv] Ibid. [v] Michael Rohatyn and Peter Yost. “Trump Should Remember When New York Had the Last Laugh“. New York Times . Op-Ed, October 27, 2025. [vi] Bill Brink.  “My Father Wrote a Headline That Refuses to Die.” New York Times , November 2, 2025. MB4. [vii] “Not dead”. New York Daily News . Editorial, October 30, 2025. 20. [viii] Téa Kvetenadze . “New York Daily News Flashback: ‘Ford to City: Drop Dead’.” New York Daily News . October 30, 2025. Accessed December 2, 2025. https://www.nydailynews.com/2025/10/30/new-york-daily-news-flashback-ford-to-city-drop-dead/ [ix] Op. Cit. Rohatyn and Yost. [x] Op. Cit. Balk. [xi] Op. Cit. Rohatyn and Yost. [xii] Op. Cit. Brink. [xiii] These reasons might also explain why the Daily News did not publish more on the subject. [xiv] Such as the New York Post , The New Yorker , Newsday , the Staten Island Advance , and New York Magazine , etc. [xv] Sam Roberts. “Infamous ‘Drop Dead’ Was Never Said by Ford.” New York Times , December 28, 2006. Accessed November 27, 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/28/nyregion/28veto.html [xvi] Maddie Hanna, Kasturi Pananjady, and Jasen Lo. “A look at funding for Pa. school districts.” Philadelphia Inquirer , September 10, 2023. A14. [xvii] Op. Cit. Lieberman and Drake. [xviii] Gerald J. Miller and Jonathan B. Justice. “Managing Principals and Interests at New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority.” Presented at the Annual Conference of the Association for Budgeting and Financial Management, Washington D.C., January 2002. Accessed November 28, 2025. https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=bc0a5976c2c9f875fc327d03f0bf51e0403bdaa1             References   Associated Press. "Today in History: October 30, Gerald Ford tells New York City ‘Drop Dead’." New York Daily News , October 30, 2025. Accessed December 2, 2025. https://www.nydailynews.com/2025/10/30/today-in-history-october-30-gerald-ford-tells-new-york-city-drop-dead/   Balk, Tim. “New York Didn’t Drop Dead in 1975, but Trump Poses a New Challenge.” New York Times , October 31, 2025. A23.    Callahan, Richard and Mark Pisano. “Bankruptcy: The Divergent Cases of the City and the County of San Bernardino.” Public Finance and Management 14, no. 1 (2014). 84-105.    Cebula, Richard., Richard McGrath, and Michael Toma. “Impact of the Primary Budget Deficit on the Nominal Long Term Interest Rate Yield on Tax Free Municipal Bonds.” Review of Business Research 6, no. 1 (September 2006). 84-92.   Dickey, Robert J. “Municipal Governments’ Fiscal Distress and Potential Default: Is it an Expense Problem or a Revenue Problem? –Considering the US Experience.” Proceedings from the Korean Association for Local Government Studies Summer Conference, Pusan, South Korea, August 2014. 261-279.   “Eric Adams delivers some harsh budget reality for duped Zohran Mamdani backers.” New York Post . Editorial, November 23, 2025. Accessed November 24, 2025. https://nypost.com/2025/11/23/opinion/eric-adams-delivers-some-harsh-budget-reality-for-duped-zohran-mamdani-backers/   Goodwin, Michael. “A Zohran Mamdani mayoralty would mean a long, sour decline for NYC.” New York Post . Opinion, November 1, 2025. Accessed December 3, 2025. https://nypost.com/2025/11/01/opinion/mamdani-being-elected-nyc-mayor-could-risk-the-city-of-gotham-returning-to-dark-times/   Gramlich, Edward M. “The New York City Fiscal Crisis: What Happened and What is to be Done?” American Economic Review 66, no. 2 (May 1976): 415-29. Hanna, Maddie., Kasturi Pananjady, and Jasen Lo. “A look at funding for Pa. school districts.” Philadelphia Inquirer , September 10, 2023. A1, A14.   Hildreth, W. Bartley, and Gerald J. Miller. “Debt and the Local Economy: Problems in Benchmarking Local Government Debt Affordability.” Public Budgeting and Finance 22, no. 4 (2002): 99-113.   Helfand, Zach. “Survivors.” New Yorker , April 28, 2025. 8-9. Justice, Jonathan B. and Gerald J. Miller. “Accountability and Debt Management: The Case of New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority.” American Review of Public Administration 41, no. 3 (2011). 313-28.   Kvetenadze , Téa. “New York Daily News Flashback: ‘Ford to City: Drop Dead’.” New York Daily News, October 30, 2025. Accessed December 2, 2025. https://www.nydailynews.com/2025/10/30/new-york-daily-news-flashback-ford-to-city-drop-dead/       Lieberman, Mark and Bruce Drake. “How big guys burned the little guys.” New York Daily News, August 28, 1977. Accessed November 27, 2025. http://www.nydailynews.com/features/bronxisburning/battle-for-the-city/How-Big-Guys-Burned-the-Little-Guys.html   Miller, Gerald J. “Debt Management Networks.” Public Administration Review 53, no. 1 (1993): 50-58.   Miller, Gerald J. and Jonathan B. Justice. “Managing Principals and Interests at New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority.” Presented at the Annual Conference of the Association for Budgeting and Financial Management, Washington D.C., January 2002. Accessed November 28, 2025. https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=bc0a5976c2c9f875fc327d03f0bf51e0403bdaa1   “Not dead”. New York Daily News . Editorial, October 30, 2025. 20.   Roberts, Sam. “Infamous ‘Drop Dead’ Was Never Said by Ford.” New York Times , December 28, 2006. Accessed November 27, 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/28/nyregion/28veto.html     Roberts, Sam. “The fiscal crisis: Forgive, but don’t forget.” New York Daily News , August 22, 1977. Accessed November 27, 2025. http://www.nydailynews.com/features/bronxisburning/battle-for-the-city/The-Fiscal-Crisis-Forgive-but-Dont-Forget.html   Rohatyn, Michael and Peter Yost. “Trump Should Remember When New York Had the Last Laugh“. New York Times . Op-Ed, October 27, 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/27/opinion/trump-cities-drop-dead.html .   Rohatyn, Michael and Peter Yost, dir. Drop Dead City . 2024; New York: Pangloss Films. Multiple viewings.   Shalala, Donna E. and Carol Bellamy. "A State Saves a City: The New York Case." Duke Law Journal 1976 (1977): 1119-32. Multiple downloads. https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2598&context=dlj .   “Simply Incredible.” New York Daily News . Editorial, August 19, 1977. Accessed November 27, 2025. http://www.nydailynews.com/features/bronxisburning/battle-for-the-city/Editorial-Simple-Incredible.html     Uth, Bernadette., Helena Stehle, Claudia Wilhelm, Hanne Detel, Nicole Podschuweit . “The Journalism-Audience Relationship in the Digital Age: A Theoretical Literature Review.” Journalism 26, no. 1 (2025): 45-64.   Van Krieken, Kobie and Jose Sanders. “What is Narrative Journalism? A Systematic Review and an Empirical Agenda.” Journalism 22, no. 6 (2021): 1393-1412.   Van Riper, Frank. “Ford to New York: Drop Dead.” New York Daily News , October 30, 1975. Accessed November 27, 2025.  http://www.nydailynews.com/features/bronxisburning/battle-for-the-city/Ford-to-New-York-Drop-Dead.html   Woolley, Jonathan. “New York City’s Fiscal Crisis of 1975 and the Film “Drop Dead City’”. New York History Review (2025). Multiple downloads. https://www.nyhrarticles.blog/post/new-york-city-s-fiscal-crisis-of-1975-and-the-film-drop-dead-city

By Jeff Blanchard , Town of Verona Historian Copyright ©2025 All rights reserved by the author. If one were to drive through the Town of Verona, NY, on State Route 46 in this current century, a few things are hard to miss, while others are seemingly unremarkable and not hard to miss at all. One of those hard-to-miss sights is an unusually wide ditch-like body of water clinging to the edge of Route 46, brimming with cattails, fallen trees, and other vegetation. Road signs are abundant on Verona’s stretch of Route 46, denoting hamlets and areas with unique, and at times peculiar, names such as Durhamville, State Bridge, Stacy Basin, Higginsville, and New London. Clusters of homes, the occasional business, and large tracts of farm land dot either side of Route 46, with some stretches presenting the driver with nothing but wilderness.  If one were driving a bit too fast, it would be easy to miss a yellow and blue sign titled ‘Stark’s Landing’ or the signs for a crossroad known as Jug Point Road. Now, if the clock were to be turned back to say the mid-Nineteenth Century, the sights would change dramatically. The wide ditch-like body of water (known more famously as the Erie Canal) would not be full of vegetation. Still, it would present packet boats leisurely traveling along, full of either cargo or passengers, destined for a stop somewhere along the canal’s endless miles. In Durhamville, immigrants from Europe, many of them Irish, would have been busy building and launching the next canal boat at Doran Dry Dock. State Bridge would have boasted businesses and a hotel. A booth to collect tolls for the State of New York on the Erie would have been found in Higginsville. Stark’s Landing would not have been hard to miss, with its grouping of a hotel, store, and a shop just a stone’s throw from the great canal. At Jug Point, canal boats would have been at a halt, the boat captains handing off empty water jugs to get topped off by the child workers of the nearby hotels. New London would have been a hub of entrepreneurial activity, with hotels, stores, dry docks, and charming homes clinging to either side of the Erie Canal. The tracts of farmland would still be in this mid-Nineteenth Century scene, except that the farmers would have been placing their processed crops on canal boats bound for distant markets. Now, one must be shocked that the sights and scenes from two centuries ago included a bit more hustle and bustle than the sights and scenes of the Twenty-first Century. The hustle and bustle of mid-Nineteenth Century Verona, including the economic activities of local businesses, hotels, industry, and the built-up nature of local communities, was the result of God’s gift to the Town of Verona: the Erie Canal. To fully understand the wondrous prosperity the Erie Canal brought to Verona, as well as its eventual demise, the story of how the canal came into being is essential. During the United States’ colonial and post-Revolutionary period, the Appalachian Mountains proved to be a formidable barrier between the original colonies and the eventual states and the lucrative lands west of the mountains. [1] Pioneers had a rough go through the treacherous wilderness trails in order to settle in the lands beyond the Appalachians. The challenge of getting past the Appalachians was not just an issue for pioneers but also a geopolitical challenge for the young American republic. George Washington, in 1775, just prior to the American Revolution, expressed concern that if a way past the imposing mountain range could not be found, the lands west of the Appalachians would be lost to the great powers of either France or British Canada, leaving the U.S. as a minor power consigned to the Atlantic coast. [2] Thus was born the concept of utilizing canals to traverse the Appalachians, and so began the quest to build a pathway to the west. In 1777, Gouverneur Morris, a Congressman of the First Continental Congress, made the first proposal for a navigable waterway that “... would extend from the Hudson (River), through the valley of the Mohawk, all the way to Lake Erie.” [3] Morris’ proposal was both forward-thinking and advanced for its time, with Morris himself proving to be an inspiration many years later. Energetic and ambitious men such as George Washington and General Philip Schuyler set out to breach the Appalachian range with a navigable waterway through private ventures after the War of Independence, such as Washington’s Patowmack Company (attempting to ‘canalize’ the Potomac River in Virginia) [4] and Schuyler’s Western Inland Lock Company (an attempt to convert the Mohawk River into a ‘canal’ to allow boats to navigate from the Hudson River to Lake Ontario). [5] Both of these ventures failed due to a lack of finances, but the idea for a navigable waterway spanning the length of Upstate New York from the Hudson to the Erie did not die. Gouverneur Morris continued to advocate for the creation of a canal across New York despite the failures of other canal ventures. Morris highlighted the many advantages and benefits that such a canal would create, not only for New York but for the fledgling United States, with two members of the New York State Legislature sharing in Morris’ sentiment in 1805 by advocating for the construction of a canal. [6] Enthusiasm for a trans-New York canal grew, but many pessimists doubted that such a project would succeed. In 1809, two members of the New York State Legislature traveled to Washington, D.C. to present the Erie Canal project to President Thomas Jefferson in order to secure Federal funds for the venture, but Jefferson proved to be a doubter stating the project was “. . .little short of madness to think of it at this day!” regarding the great challenge and difficulty that it would have taken to create such a canal. [7] Despite the rejection of the Erie Canal project by the Federal Government, a champion for the canal, and one who would see to its creation, was found in an unlikely character of a man. DeWitt Clinton was a politician of many shades. He had been the Mayor of New York City, a New York State Legislator, a U.S. Senator, and he would be just the man needed to champion the Erie Canal. Clinton had no interest in the Erie Canal project. Still, his chief political opponent, Jonas Platt, himself a proponent of the canal, knew Clinton was the right caliber of politician to support it. [8] Although Platt could have allowed his political ambitions to steer Clinton away from the Erie Canal project, Platt knew that the canal project would not be successful without Clinton’s support, leading Platt to encourage Clinton to take the lead in supporting advocacy for the Erie Canal. [9] Clinton, after realizing the political advantages that throwing his support to the canal project would bring, became a member of the Erie Canal Commission in 1810 to explore plans for building the canal. [10] Several years passed after the Erie Canal Commission was established in 1810, with various plans and proposals for the canal's route and design. The biggest break for the canal project and its commission came in 1817. In that year, the champion of the Erie Canal project, DeWitt Clinton, was elected Governor of New York State, placing him in a position to advocate for and win support for using state government funds to finance the canal project after it became apparent that Federal funding would not materialize. [11] The chances of the Erie Canal building project moving forward were much higher with state funding in place, as previous private ventures had failed due to inadequate financial resources. Construction on the sought-after Erie Canal would finally start. It was fitting that the groundbreaking of the Erie Canal began on a patriotic holiday such as July 4th. In the Village of Rome, NY on July 4 th , 1817, the official ground breaking ceremony commenced, with many local and state political dignitaries in attendance as well as the man who would break the earth for the great canal project, Magistrate John Richardson who won the bid to begin digging the first section of the canal. [12] From Rome, an eight-year-long engineering project unlike any other at the time began. Construction of the Erie Canal was fraught with challenges, as engineers and surveyors were inexperienced, many hundreds of miles of forest had to be cleared by hand, and countless tons of dirt and rock had to be removed. Additionally, features necessary for canal building, such as locks, aqueducts, and feeder canals (to supply water to the canal), had to be devised for the project to be completed. By 1825, after eight years of laborious work carried out by a varied workforce, construction of the Erie Canal had been completed. The canal was officially opened on October 26, 1825, with a grand parade of canal boats led by Governor DeWitt Clinton on the Seneca Chief , going from Buffalo to New York City. [13] With the Erie Canal finally constructed and open for operation, prosperity and development, the likes of which had never been seen, were about to be lavished upon New York State in the coming years. The Erie Canal’s official opening in the fall of 1825 ushered in a new era of prosperity, economic growth, and industrial development, as well as the build-up of urban centers in New York State. Boat traffic on the canal provided for the transportation of goods and people from Buffalo all the way to the harbor of New York City. The sheer volume of boat traffic on the Erie Canal was such that between 1825 and 1836, enough revenue had been produced through boat tolls that the costs incurred to build the canal had been paid off entirely. [14] Various developments related to technology (such as the transition from mule-drawn canal boats to those propelled by steam) [15] and the reach of the Erie Canal (lateral canal branches were built off of or connected to the canal in the 1840s to allow for access to new territory and economic markets) [16] enhanced the impact that the canal had on New York. Communities along the Erie Canal route, such as Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse, went from seemingly insignificant to sprawling urban centers, each with its own unique specialized industrial manufacturing base. Overall, New York State witnessed growth in its population, the unprecedented development of population centers of all sizes, and the transformation of manufacturing and farming from subsistence activities to large-scale commercial profit-making ventures. [17] Not only did New York share in the benefits and transformation brought about by the Erie Canal, but so did the young American nation. The Erie Canal had overcome the age-old challenge to the westward expansion of the United States that was posed by the Appalachian Mountains. In doing so, the canal transformed the country in more ways than one. The Erie Canal linked the Eastern Seaboard of the United States to the country's vast interior, allowing Americans, particularly New Englanders, to migrate to the Old Northwest to settle and develop the land. [18] George Washington’s nightmare scenario of western lands being settled by great European powers had been averted. With the process of settlement and development in the West came economic growth and development for the country, as the prosperity of Eastern markets spread West and the bounty of western settlers, chiefly agricultural goods, flowed back to the Eastern markets. [19] The Erie Canal stands in early American history as a dividing line between the “Frontier without the Factory” and the “Frontier with the Factory,” as it facilitated the growth and development of industry and technology. [20] As the industrialized frontier developed, new territories in the West formed and eventually became states. These new states, with industrial economies, quickly established the sectional boundary line between the industrial “North” void of slavery and the agricultural “South” with widespread slavery, shaping the identity of the young United States. [21] Lastly, the Erie Canal developed the religious and moral character of the American nation in the 1830s, as the ideology and core tenants of Christian revivals spread along the canal corridor of Upstate New York and beyond New York’s borders, influencing the rise of moralistic thinking amongst Americans, such as the belief that the institution of slavery was evil and needed to be abolished. [22] The monumental transformation and bounty brought about by the Erie Canal to the nation and New York State would eventually reach the rural Town of Verona, NY. In 1820, three years after construction began, the Erie Canal opened for operation in the Town of Verona, cutting across the town in a diagonal line following the present-day State Route 46 corridor. [23] The canal was a physical dividing line in the town, splitting Verona into east and west. [24] With the opening of the canal, preexisting local industries, such as farming and logging, began to take advantage of its ability to ship products to more distant markets. New industries, such as manufacturing, developed as a result of the canal’s establishment. An abundance of timber in the town also fostered the lucrative (and prolific) boat-building and repair industry in the hamlet communities of Durhamville, Higginsville, Stacy Basin, and New London; the boat-related industry lasted in the town from the 1830s to the early 1900s. [25] Factories creating a variety of products developed alongside the banks of the Erie Canal, such as cheese factories, canning, and glassmaking. The glass-making industry, in particular, was prominent (partly due to an abundant supply of local lumber and sand), lasting from the 1840s to 1890, with factories in the communities of Durhamville and Dunbarton shipping glass products, such as windows, to New York City via the canal. [26] Additionally, many smaller, but still important businesses developed to serve the needs of the canal in Verona, such as general stores, hotels, provision stores, and others. Perhaps the most significant change the Erie Canal brought to the town was the establishment of new communities and the accelerated development of preexisting ones, topics that require individual examination. Durhamville, the southern-most ‘canal community’ in the Town of Verona, was the site of much prosperous activity related to the Erie Canal. Durhamville was first inhabited in the early 1810s (between 1811 and 1813) and was named after Eber Durham, who, after settling in 1826, prospered from the Erie Canal by leasing surplus water to operate local mills and factories. [27] Many businesses related to the canal were established in the Hamlet of Durhamville, including dry goods and provision stores, warehouses, taverns, grist and feed mills, foundries, and tanneries. [28] The most significant industry to arise, though, was boat building, the Doran Dry Dock being the most prominent. The twenty-two-acre Doran Dry Dock, established in 1863, built and repaired canal boats, the likes of which traveled from the Great Lakes region all the way to New York City. [29] The Doran Dry Dock churned out numerous canal boats, employing large numbers of European immigrants who settled in Durhamville and established roots. Changing times led to the demise of the Doran Dry Dock: the ever-expanding railroad system created competition for the Erie Canal, reducing demand for canal boats and prompting the dry dock’s closure in 1924. [30] As previously mentioned, the glass making industry, in the form of the Durhamville Glass Factory, established in 1845 (originally owned by DeWitt Clinton Stephens and later sold to Fox, Gregory and Son) [31] utilized the canal as means of sending glass products to market. Perhaps the most distinctive feature of the Erie Canal in the Town of Verona was the Oneida Creek Aqueduct in Durhamville. The Oneida Creek Aqueduct, constructed between 1845 and 1855, carried the waters of the Erie Canal over Oneida Creek and was originally a sixty-foot-long double-arched stone structure before being replaced by a more adequate steel aqueduct in 1907. [32] The development and prosperity brought to Durhamville by the Erie Canal traveled further north along the canal’s path to the communities of State Bridge and Dunbarton. North of the hamlet of Durhamville are the curious hamlets of State Bridge and Dunbarton. State Bridge, named for a bridge carrying a section of a New York State-maintained highway, [33] was once a small but bustling community with many canal-related enterprises. In addition to numerous homes, State Bridge boasted a hotel, provision stores, a blacksmith shop, and a post office, [34] with many of these businesses located within close proximity to the Erie Canal (such as “Rollie” Potter's General Store, Feed Mill, and Post Office), serving the needs of canal travelers and Verona residents. [35] Just north of State Bridge was the community of Dunbarton. Dunbarton’s main focal point was the Dunbarton Glass Factory, located conveniently near the Erie Canal, allowing for glass products to be shipped to distant markets. The Dunbarton Glass Factory was a self-contained community, boasting its own post office. In this factory store, workers used a special form of currency known as shin plasters to buy provisions and housing for some workers. [36] Although the level of industry and enterprise were on a small scale in Sate Bridge and Dunbarton, these developments were nevertheless impressive for communities of their size due in part to the benefits the Erie Canal provided in both creating businesses to serve the canal or to enhance the profitability of businesses (such as the Dunbarton Glass Factory) through transportation of locally made products to distant consumers. As impressive as the development and prosperity were in State Bridge and Dunbarton, more prosperous development could be found further north in the hamlet of Higginsville. Higginsville, located in the central portion of the Town of Verona, was named after Christopher Higgins, originally a native of Connecticut. [37] Prior to the establishment of the Erie Canal, Higginsville’s main economic activity was farming, with canal-focused industry arising once the canal had been established. [38] As was typical in many canal communities in the town, canal-related businesses and activities included a hotel, post office, a New York State canal toll collector’s office, stores, a dry dock, a boat supply yard, in addition to businesses that benefited from the canal, such as a cheese factory, blacksmith shops, and a cigar store. [39] The Erie Canal not only transformed activity in Higginsville but also established various points of interest. Stark’s Landing was a focal point of social gathering in Higginsville, located near the Erie Canal, consisting of a hotel, store, and a blacksmith shop. Established by Jabez Stark, who moved to Higginsville from Seneca Falls in 1820. [40] Other points of interest were very canal related such as Lawton’s Bridge, a docking point for canal boats and Jug Point, an area where the sloping banks of the Erie Canal prevented canallers from getting off their boats, earning its name in the 1860s due the frequent activities of boys employed by the local hotel securing empty water jugs from canal boatmen using poles; the water jugs were then brought to the local hotel to be filled with fresh water and were handed back down to the canal boatmen by pole. [41] The most striking point of interest in Higginsville related to the Erie Canal was the Old Oneida Lake Canal. Similar to other lateral canal developments found throughout New York, the Old Oneida Lake Canal served as both a shortcut and a means of access to nearby Oneida Lake for canal boats. [42] The Old Oneida Lake Canal extended four and a half miles through Higginsville from the Erie Canal, then met Wood Creek, which brought canal boats another two miles to Oneida Lake; this allowed boats from the lake to enter the Erie Canal without having to travel further south to Durhamville. [43] The Old Oneida Lake Canal, opened for operation in 1835, utilized a system of seven locks and a guard lock made out of wood, which proved to be vulnerable to rot due to harsh winter conditions, with the canal experiencing the additional issues of sand bar build up at the mouth of the Fish Creek and troubles with the towpath by Wood Creek, which led to the closure of the Old Oneida Lake Canal in 1863 due to high maintenance costs. [44] The short-lived successor to the Old Oneida Lake Canal, the New Oneida Lake Canal, was constructed from 1869 to 1877 and intended to connect the Erie Canal to Oneida Lake at Durhamville, thereby allowing boats access to Lake Ontario via the Oswego River. The canal was abandoned in 1877. [45] The New Oneida Lake Canal was abandoned in 1878 after only a year of operation due to water leakage through the canal banks, as the canal was constructed on unstable ground. [46] Higginsville proved to be an example of how the Erie Canal’s establishment radically altered the landscape and the community development trends of a preexisting hamlet in Verona. But the trend of the growth of new communities after the canal’s establishment continued, as was seen in Stacy Basin. North of Higginsville, located approximately midway along the Erie Canal’s “long level,” [47] is the community of Stacy Basin. Stacy Basin, like many canal communities in Verona, was a bustling hub of varied commercial activities clinging to the banks of the Erie Canal. Located within Stacy Basin were six stores, boatbuilding yards, dry docks, and three blacksmith shops. Many of the commercial activities in Stacy Basin were geared towards serving the needs and demands of the canal, in particular, provision and general stores that ensured canal travelers had the commodities they needed on long journeys. As was common in Verona at the time, timber was a plentiful natural resource in Stacy Basin and provided the basis for the primary commercial enterprise of the community: timber harvesting; chord wood was used in the local glass making industry, used in home construction and was also being shipped by way of the Erie Canal to Syracuse to be used in the salt industry of that community. [48] Additionally, the town's primary staple industry, agriculture, benefited from the Empire State Canning Company, located near the banks of the Erie Canal. The Empire State Canning Company, organized in 1895 by Joseph H. Warren, employed approximately 175 local residents on a seasonal basis, canning locally grown produce with hundreds of thousands of canned products being churned out in the early Twentieth Century before the demise of the Erie Canal. [49] Stacy Basin was an excellent example of a community within the Town of Verona that developed new talents after the arrival of the canal, while preexisting commercial activities benefited from the canal as well. Stacy Basin was not alone in this example, as the nearby community of New London also developed in much the same way. New London would have been the last stop in the Town of Verona for a ‘canaller’ traveling on the Erie from south to north in the Nineteenth or early Twentieth Centuries. Located north of Stacy Basin, near the outer limits of Verona, New London was first settled in 1824, a year before the Erie Canal’s completion by a man named Ambrose Jones, [50] naming the community after his original hometown of New London, Connecticut. [51] The Erie Canal provided New London with the opportunity to capitalize on its local resources and establish new enterprises as the town's prosperity and population swelled in the mid-Nineteenth Century.  As was the case in Stacy Basin, New London had an abundance of timber, with trees thirty feet in diameter harvested and used not only for lumber (shipped out of the community in millions of board feet) but also for the extensive boat-building industry in five boat yards. [52] The New London boat-building industry was so industrious that lore circulated that the New London boat builders would construct boats a mile long, sawing them into barge-length sections that were finished as completed boats, producing a fleet of instant canal barges. [53] The establishment of the Erie Canal also allowed New London’s local agricultural and cheese making industries to ship their well cultivated grain, vegetables, flowers and cheese products to markets as far as New York City. [54] Not only did the Erie Canal allow New London to ‘export’ its products, but it also allowed New London to become a ‘port,’ with canal barges unloading products, such as sugar and manufactured goods, to be loaded onto wagon trains bound for Oswego and Jefferson Counties. [55] As was familiar in just about every other canal community in the Town of Verona, hospitality made for good business, with three hotels offering opportunities for canal travelers to rest on their long journeys. [56] The Erie Canal shaped New London into a bustling and prosperous community, as it did for numerous communities across New York State. As time and progress marched on, though, it became apparent that the days of the canal were numbered across the state.  As time went by for the Erie Canal, progress in transportation technology and engineering feats kept pace. The Erie Canal generated much public revenue through boat tolls starting after its official opening in 1825. The revenue generated was so profitable that the government of New York State began experiencing a surplus. In a cruel twist of irony, the New York State government began utilizing the surplus canal toll money for projects related to improving coach roads and constructing railroads throughout the state; this action had the unfortunate effect of creating significant competition for passenger traffic on the Erie Canal, driving many canal packet boat services out of business. [57] By the 1880s, demand for passenger travel and commercial shipping on the Erie Canal was greatly reduced, as transport by rail was considerably faster and cheaper than the leisurely pace of travel on the canal. [58] Despite previous efforts to widen and deepen the Erie Canal in the mid-Nineteenth Century to accommodate larger canal boats, canal transport was still fading, necessitating efforts to preserve its relevance and value. Starting in the early Twentieth Century, plans for a canal system that would utilize a combination of preexisting natural and man-made features along new travel routes were hatched. The New York State Barge Canal, as it was known, was built in the 1910s (just prior to the United States’ entry into World War I) and utilized natural and manmade waterways such as the Mohawk River, sections of the Erie Canal, and the Champlain, Oswego and Seneca Canals in order to accommodate considerably larger cargo boats to compete more effectively with rail and road transport. [59] For a time, the Barge Canal was profitable because of its ability to accommodate larger canal barges capable of transporting significantly greater amounts of goods more cheaply than by rail. Progress took its toll on the Barge Canal, as it did with the Old Erie Canal, with the arrival of improved rail and truck transport that proved faster and more efficient than canal transport; the final death blow arrived in 1959 with the completion of the Saint Lawrence Seaway in Northern New York, a waterway that was able to accommodate ocean-going vessels. [60] The Barge Canal still exists and is used by boat traffic. The glory days of the ‘canallers’ were over, with the Town of Verona’s section of the Old Erie facing the same fate. The Erie Canal in Verona faced the same challenges as sections in other communities, as rail, road, and alternative canal transportation began to develop. The greatest challenger of the Old Erie Canal in Verona, and the one that put it out of existence, was the New York State Barge Canal. Between 1918 and 1919, the Barge Canal opened for commercial transport, cutting across the northern section of the town, [61] with the new canal system taking a more direct route to Rome by traveling from Oneida Lake through New London. [62] With a more efficient canal transport system in operation, the Old Erie Canal was completely abandoned, [63] with the former canal system being repurposed as a feeder canal for the Barge Canal. [64] The abandonment of the Old Erie Canal in the Town of Verona had a devastating impact on the town. For many decades, the numerous canal communities oriented their economic activity towards serving the needs of the canal and using it to ship locally made goods to distant markets. With the arrival of the Barge Canal, which was less accessible to the community than the Old Erie, businesses and, eventually, the population of Verona declined, especially in New London and Durhamville. [65] Hotels no longer provided beds for weary canal travelers. Provision, General, and grocery stores no longer sold food and supplies to boatmen. Factories and farmers no longer had an easily accessible transport artery from which their rich products could flow to distant markets. Boat yards no longer had any demand for their sturdy vessels. Of the communities struck by this crisis of progress, New London was hit hardest by a combination of misfortunes. Not only did the opening of the Barge Canal take business away from New London in 1918, but previous competition from the Black River canal and two major fiery conflagrations through New London’s canal business district also devastated the small community. [66] The glory days of ‘canalling’ were over in the Town of Verona, but the memories of those days could still be cherished by those who lived them and can still be cherished by those who learn about them in the present. The Erie Canal, born out of a desire to penetrate the imposing Appalachian Mountains, was a blessing both to the State of New York and the Town of Verona, NY. The canal was conceived and brought to fruition through a difficult process involving the optimism of its proponents, such as Gouverneur Morris and DeWitt Clinton, who faced down pessimistic naysayers. Over eight years of hard, backbreaking labor, the Erie Canal was carved out of the soil and rock of Upstate New York by immigrants seeking opportunity and local community residents anticipating prosperity. Prosperity eventually arrived, and a new chapter was written in U.S. history as the way to the West was opened and industry began taking root in the American economy, with the Erie Canal allowing the movement of people and goods to far-off places. The Town of Verona took part in the bountiful ‘harvest’ of the Erie Canal, with communities such as Durhamville, State Bridge, Dunbarton, Higginsville, Stacy Basin, and New London becoming bustling, active, thriving hubs of civilization in the farmland of the town. The good times lasted for many decades, but would not last forever as the railroads, highways, and Barge Canal proved to be the way forward. Communities across the state, and within Verona, declined as the downward spiral set in, with business and trade stripped away by the new means of transport. Although the days of the ‘canallers’ are now preserved in history books, they can still be cherished by those living in the here and now, as the Erie Canal shaped New York and Verona into what they are today. If nothing else, the preserved memories of the canal across the state and town, eliciting images of packet boats leisurely streaming past refreshing countryside scenes while being pulled by plodding mules, provide a temporary escape for the postmodern mind existing in a fast-paced Twenty-First Century that refuses to travel at the leisurely speed of mule as in a cherished bygone era.     About the author: Jeff Blanchard has been the Historian for the Town of Verona, NY, since June 2025, and has vigorously pursued projects related to Verona’s rich history. Jeff earned a Bachelor of Science in History from Liberty University and is interested in local history, post-World War II military history, and American military history.              Sources Bernstein, Peter L. Wedding of the Waters: The Erie Canal and the making of a great nation . New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2005. Author Unknown. Erie Canal Timeline . Publisher Unknown, Date Unknown. Andrist, Ralph K. The Erie Canal . New York, NY: American Heritage Publishing, 1964. Cmaylo, Dorothy et al. Images of America: Verona. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2010. Cmaylo, Dorothy. “Verona.” Exploring 200 Years of Oneida County History . ed.Donal F. White. Utica, NY: Oneida County Historical Society, 1998. Ernenwein, Raymond. Verona Town History. Verona, NY: Verona Town Board, 1970. Hoffman, Sheila. Waterways in the Town of Verona, NY. Verona, NY: Sheila Hoffman, Date Unknown. Hopkins Adams, Samuel. The Erie Canal . New York, NY: Random House, 1953. Jones, Pomroy. Annals and Recollections of Oneida County. Rome, NY: Pomroy Jones, 1851. Kelly, Jack. Heaven’s Ditch: God, Gold and Murder on the Erie Canal . New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 2016.      Bibliography         [1] Peter L. Bernstein, Wedding of the Waters: The Erie Canal and the making of a great nation , (New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2005), 22. [2] Bernstein, Wedding of the Waters , 22-23. [3] Ralph K. Andrist, The Erie Canal , (New York, NY: American Heritage Publishing, 1964), 10 and 12. [4] Bernstein, Wedding of the Waters , 23. [5] Andrist, The Erie Canal , 16. [6] Bernstein, Wedding of the Waters , 24. [7] Andrist, The Erie Canal , 19. [8] Ibid, 20. [9] Ibid. [10] Ibid. [11] Author Unknown, Erie Canal Timeline , Publisher Unknown, Date Unknown, 1. [12] Jack Kelly, Heaven’s Ditch: God, Gold and Murder on the Erie Canal , (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 2016), 40 and 41. [13] Samuel Hopkins Adams, The Erie Canal , (New York, NY: Random House, 1953), 128 and 129. [14] Hopkins Adams, The Erie Canal , 174. [15] Ibid. [16] Ibid, 174-175. [17] Bernstein, Wedding of the Waters , 357-358. [18] Kelly, Heaven’s Ditch , 260-261. [19] Hopkins Adams, The Erie Canal , 177. [20] Bernstein, Wedding of the Waters , 358. [21] Kelly, Heaven’s Ditch , 261. [22] Ibid. [23] Dorothy Cmaylo, “Verona,” Exploring 200 Years of Oneida County History , ed.Donal F. White (Utica, NY: Oneida County Historical Society, 1998), 224. [24] Pomroy Jones, Annals and Recollections of Oneida County (Rome, NY: Pomroy Jones, 1851), 676. [25] Cmaylo, Exploring 200 Years , 224. [26] Ibid. [27] Cmaylo, Exploring 200 Years , 227. [28] Dorothy Cmaylo, et al., Images of America: Verona (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2010), 9. [29] Cmaylo et al., Images of America , 10. [30] Ibid, 10 and 12. [31] Ibid, 9. [32] Sheila Hoffman, Waterways in the Town of Verona, NY (Verona, NY: Sheila Hoffman, Date Unknown), 5. [33] Cmaylo et al., Images of America , 35. [34] Cmaylo et al., Images of America , 35. [35] Ibid, 36. [36] Ibid, 38. [37] Ibid, 35. [38] Ibid. [39]  Raymond Ernenwein, Verona Town History (Verona, NY: Verona Town Board, 1970), 61. [40] Cmaylo, Images of America , 35. [41] Ernenwein, Verona Town History , 62-63. [42] Hoffman, Waterways , 9. [43] Ibid, 9. [44] Hoffman, Waterways , 9. [45] Ibid, 9. [46] Ibid, 9. [47] Cmaylo et al., Images of America , 59. [48] Ibid, 59. [49] Ibid, 61. [50] Ibid, 59. [51] Cmaylo, Exploring 200 Years , 228. [52] Ibid. [53] Ibid. [54] Ibid. [55] Ibid. [56] Ibid. [57] Hopkins Adams, The Erie Canal , 177. [58] Hoffman, Waterways , 8. [59] Hopkins Adams, The Erie Canal , 177-178. [60] Kelly, Heaven’s Ditch , 263. [61] Cmaylo, Exploring 200 Years , 224. [62] Hoffman, Waterways , 11. [63] Ibid. [64] Cmaylo , Exploring 200 Years , 224. [65] Hoffman, Waterways , 6. [66] Cmaylo, Exploring 200 Years , 228.

By Jeff Blanchard , Town Historian, Town of Verona, NY Two hundred-twenty years ago, in the early nineteenth century, a feverish young woman rode atop her trusty horse in the Mohawk Valley region of Upstate New York. This young lady was returning to her parents’ residence in the Town of Verona, Oneida County. The young lady in question did not make her homeward-bound journey alone, for she had been accompanied by death-quite literally. The starting point of this historical tale was the summer of 1805. During that hot summer, Verona Town resident Miss Elizabeth Day had been residing with her friends in the Herkimer County community of Litchfield, which was experiencing an outbreak of Typhus Fever. [1]   Typhus Fever, common in new settlements such as Verona, [2] was a bacterial disease spread by various insects, including lice that bit their victims. The signs and symptoms most associated with Typhus were a high fever and a rash over large parts of the body, along with other symptoms ranging from nausea and aches to seizures and coma. [3] This disease was not considered contagious, but could be spread in unsanitary, crowded conditions by insects and was often fatal if left untreated. [4] Miss Day undoubtedly had encountered this deadly disease during her stay in Litchfield, with consequences that would deeply affect Verona. By the month of August in 1805, Miss Day wrapped up her stay in Litchfield and set off back home to Verona as scheduled. The start of Miss Day’s homeward journey was foreboding. Miss Day was anxious to return home and began her long journey on horseback despite feeling indisposed. [5] Miss Day’s journey was made strenuous by the searing August heat, but her difficulty was compounded when she spiked a high fever. Miss Day, bound and determined to make it back to her parents’ home, only allowed herself a brief rest break at a nearby relative’s home. By the time Miss Day made it home, she lay herself down onto her sick bed with the hope of recovering from her illness. Fate proved cruel, for Miss Day never arose, dying on her sickbed that August of 1805.             Elizabeth Day became the first victim in a Typhus Fever epidemic in Verona that would last from August 1805 to well into 1806. The disease had a tremendous impact on the residents of the Town of Verona. Approximately one hundred cases of Typhus occurred in the town, mostly amongst those who were young and unmarried, or those who were young and the head of their family. [6] The Typhus outbreak was particularly unforgiving and took a tremendous toll on the small population of Verona to the point that the town came close to being wiped out. Explanations for why the disease spread in the way it did varied. Nineteenth-century historian Pomroy Jones believed that “The cutting away of the timber letting in the rays of the sun might possibly have increased the malaria of the wetlands. . .” [7] Additionally, Jones believed that “... the rapid decay of the log houses as a likely cause, or at least that it contributed to the spread.” [8] Jones was personally affected by the 1805 Typhus outbreak, for the disease claimed his uncle, Captain Oliver Pomroy. Despite the ferocity of the Typhus outbreak, the Town of Verona lived on.             The Town of Verona’s dance with death from 1805 to 1806 is a stark reminder of the frailty of human beings in the face of disease. Even into the twenty-first century, with all the advancements made in disease prevention and treatment, the residents of Verona have still had to face the realities of disease outbreaks, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Just as those nineteenth-century town settlers moved on from Typhus after 1806, the town residents in the twenty-first century moved on from COVID-19 with the same hearty spirit of their settler ancestors.   About the author: Jeff Blanchard has been the Historian for the Town of Verona, NY, since June 2025, and has been vigorously pursuing projects related to Verona’s rich history. Jeff earned a Bachelor of Science in History from Liberty University and has an interest in local history, post-World War II military history, and American military history                  Sources:   Cleveland Clinic. “Typhus.” Typhus: Fever, Causes, Symptoms, Treatment & Prevention. Last reviewed July 24 th , 2024. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/typhus .   Ernenwein, Raymond P. Verona Town History . Verona, NY: Verona Town Board, 1970.   Jones, Pomroy. Annals and Recollections of Oneida County . Rome, NY: Pomroy Jones, 1851.   Karol-Chik, Shellie. “Diseases and Epidemics of Colonial New England – Handout.” The Mayflower Society, 2022. https://themayflowersociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Diseases-and-Epidemics-in-Colonial-New-England-Handout.pdf . Bibliography [1] Pomroy Jones, Annals and Recollections of Oneida County (Rome, NY: Pomroy Jones, 1851), 674. [2] Raymond P. Ernenwein, Verona Town History , (Verona, NY: Verona Town Board, 1970), 12. [3] “Typhus,” Typhus: Fever, Causes, Symptoms, Treatment and Prevention, Cleveland Clinic, last reviewed July 24, 2024,  https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/typhus . [4] Shellie Karol-Chik, “Diseases and Epidemics of Colonial New England – Handout,” The Mayflower Society, 2022, https://themayflowersociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Diseases-and-Epidemics-in-Colonial-New-England-Handout.pdf . [5] Jones, Annals and Recollections, 674. [6] Ibid., 675. [7] Ibid, 675. [8] Ernenwein, Verona Town History , 12.

By J.N. Cheney Copyright ©2025 All rights reserved by the author.     Strikers outside of Slovak Hall during the 1912–1913 Little Falls textile strike. Image courtesy of Wikipedia. Unbeknownst to many, the Mohawk Valley has a rich history of radical politics and organized labor. Some of these events, such as the Little Falls Textile Strike of 1912-1913, were torrid affairs in which strikers engaged in lengthy battles for better pay, working conditions, and other related provisions. Other times, though, these strikes end up as a blip on the radar. Some strikes are remembered as short but powerful displays of the strength of an organized working class. Such is the story of the 1950 Bertelle Manufacturing Company Strike.   The Bertelle Manufacturing Company (BMC) was a dressmaking company founded in 1937 and based in Herkimer, New York. [1] On July 21 st , 1950, upwards of 100 Bertelle employees initiated a strike. Seemingly, all of these employees were women. Members of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) went on strike mainly because Bertelle management failed to respond to a request to have their union formally recognized and to establish a union contract with the company. [2] Some sources, such as the Herkimer Evening Telegram, also indicate that the strikers fought for benefits such as pay raises, paid holidays, vacation and sick time, and other such improvements alongside their bid for union recognition. [3]   No reports indicate that there was any major unrest during the strike; thus, it can be inferred that this was a very calm, neat, and orderly affair. That said, there still remained some contention between the ILGWU and the BMC. It took five days for any sort of meeting between the two parties to discuss these problems to come to fruition, and even then, it had to be rescheduled to a different part of the day. [4] This could be chalked up to the fact that the manager of the Bertelle plant, one Jack Gordon, was reportedly out of town when this strike began. [5] Other newspapers reported that one Jacob Gordon, cited as the plant's owner, outright rejected the idea of recognizing the ILGWU. The website “Herkimer County, NY GenWeb” mentions a Jack Gordon in its Bertelle section, but there’s no mention of any Jacob. These may have been the same person, and a discrepancy in names may have been an error on the part of the different outlets reporting on this. Regardless of who was in charge, the BMC showed no interest in the union. Nonetheless, after five days of struggling to schedule negotiations, a meeting finally took place on July 26 th . [6] It was hoped that this would be the only meeting necessary and that the dispute would end early.   All accounts point to this meeting as the only one needed, as papers such as the Ilion Sentinel and the Syracuse Herald-Journal reported that the strike concluded the following day after extensive negotiations involving numerous figures in both the union sphere and Bertelle, including union representative Anthony Blasting. Through these negotiations, the striking women secured official union recognition, culminating in a collective bargaining agreement and a return to work. With this new contract, Bertelle employees earned a flat 10-cent per hour raise, a minimum starting wage of 85 cents per hour, three paid holidays, a one-week paid vacation, a health fund, and a death payment of $500 to go to the family of anyone who was a member of the union for at least two years. [7]   Although it was a small dispute compared to others that have occurred in the region throughout the twentieth century, lasting less than a week, the Bertelle Manufacturing Company strike provides an interesting glimpse into the vastly untouched history of the Mohawk Valley’s hidden radical kernels. This strike additionally serves as an example and lesson of what is possible through working-class power and organized labor, even in small doses. About the author: J.N. Cheney is an aspiring historian with a BA in History focusing on the labor movement, radical politics, and community action in New York’s Mohawk Valley. His work has been featured in Cosmonaut Magazine, Z Network, and The Bias, among other online and print publications. His forthcoming book with Algora Publishing is Women, Immigrants, and the Working-Class Battle in Little Falls, New York: The Textile Strike of 1912-1913. Bibliography [1] “Landmark Buildings of Herkimer County: The Mark Mill and the Gem Building,” Herkimer NY GenWeb, n.d., https://herkimer.nygenweb.net/herktown/morrismark.html . [2] “Herkimer Workers Strike For Union,” The Daily Messenger (Canandaigua, NY), July 21, 1950. https://www.newspapers.com/image/21639595/ .; “100 Women Strike at Herkimer Plant,” The Democrat and Chronicle (Rochester, NY), July 22, 1950. https://www.newspapers.com/image/136017203/ . [3] “Negotiations Started to End Dress Strike,” The Evening Telegram (Herkimer, NY), July 26, 1950.; “Strike Continues At Herkimer,” The Observer-Dispatch (Utica, NY), July 26, 1950. [4] “Negotiations Started to End Dress Strike.” [5] “Herkimer Workers Strike For Union.” [6] Ibid, The Evening Telegram. [7] “Herkimer Strike Is Settled By Union, Company,” The Sentinel (Ilion, NY), July 27, 1950.; “Agreement Ends Strike In Herkimer,” The Syracuse Herald-Journal , July 27, 1950. https://www.newspapers.com/image/1086549486/ .

By Lawrence S. Freund Copyright ©2024. All rights reserved by the author   Simon Rosendale, courtesy of Albany Law School Two men of mid-19th-century Albany, New York, had much to share: origins in the Jewish communities of what would become Germany, immigration to the United States and more particularly to the New York State capital … and, eventually, the same father-in-law. But there, they diverged in ways sometimes dramatic and always of interest for historical, legal, and personal reasons. Many immigrants in the mid-1800s passed through the entry gates into New York City, where they stayed. However, some new arrivals saw the river emptying into the harbor as a route to another promising destination, Albany, the New York State capital that had relatively recently become the eastern portal of the engineering wonder known as the Erie Canal. Reflecting on the 19th-century immigration of Jews to the United States, scholar and author Deborah Dash Moore explains, “As central Europe transitioned from a society of estates, in which Jews served as middlemen between peasants and nobles, to an industrial society, many Jews faced dismal economic prospects. The slightly better off moved to larger cities in search of work; the poor migrated to the United States.” [1] In addition, Prof. Moore notes, the immigrants came from lands that restricted the access of Jews to “professions, trades, real estate, and even marriage.” [2] While the first Jewish arrivals in what is now Albany first set foot there in 1654, [3] as the late Rabbi Naftali J. Rubinger, a chronicler of the Albany Jewish community, suggested, “there is no doubt that any official Jewish community existed until well in the third decade of the nineteenth century.” [4] Albany by that time, added Rubinger, was “throbbing and thriving, bustling with an energetic realization of its economic potency and geographic status. Into its teeming environs, there thronged significant populations from western Europe. The primary sources of this immigration were England, Ireland, and Germany. As part of the sizeable German influx into the city of Albany, many Bavarian Jews made up the Germanic strata of this city.” [5] The mid-1830s is the generally accepted period for the arrival of the first significant new wave of Jewish settlers in Albany. An early source, writer Isaac Markens, listed the names of nine men who, he wrote, appeared in Albany in 1837. Two years later, according to Markens, there were 23 more arrivals, including two whose families would play a key role in the following story: Sampson Rosendale and Isaac Cohn. “In 1840,” Markens added, “the Hebrew population of Albany numbered thirty families.” [6] There is, of course, a significant omission in Markens’ chronology as there is in Rubinger’s more extensive list of these early arrivals: [7] the names of the women and children who may have accompanied these men. That there were women and children among these pioneers is evident in Rubinger’s own footnotes, attesting, for example, that Sampson Rosendale “married Fanny Sachs. He was the father of Silas, born in Saxony in 1834.” [8] Edward Bendell, another immigrant, “married Hannah Stein while yet in Bavaria,” according to another of Rubinger’s footnotes. [9] The precise arrival date of the Rosendale family (as well as their original names) remains uncertain, although most records suggest about 1837. [10] Sampson (alternately spelled Samson) established himself in Albany as a peddler, an easily accessible profession for many of the new arrivals. Sampson and Fannie Rosendale’s first American-born child was Simon Wolfe, born 23 June 1842; he was followed by Samuel, born in 1845, and Rosanna or Rose, born in 1848. Simon Wolfe Rosendale began his education in the public schools of Albany while at the same time, he received instruction at the synagogue school conducted by the Bohemian-born Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, who had arrived in Albany in 1846 as the reform-minded spiritual leader of Congregation Beth-El. Four years later, in 1850, the latent friction between some of the synagogue’s trustees and Wise broke out into a physical confrontation, leading to an open split within the synagogue and the creation by Wise and his followers of a new synagogue, Anshe Emeth. “When the storm broke over the head of Isaac M. Wise because of his activity in the 'Reform’ movement in Albany,” recalled journalist Isidor Lewi, a close friend of Simon, “Rosendale's father (Sampson) was one of the leaders of the opposition, but he lived to see the wisdom of the Wise campaign and became his friend.” [11] Simon continued his education in Albany [12] and then began his path to the legal profession by reading law, that is, serving an apprenticeship at a leading Albany law firm. After two years of clerking, he expanded his educational horizons and enrolled in the Barre Academy, a relatively new institution (founded in 1852) in nearby Vermont focused on classical instruction. The secondary school’s object, it said, was to “maintain a healthful moral influence, and to impress upon the minds of the pupils the claims of a vital religion,” and, while controlled by the local Congregationalist community, it maintained that “no discrimination has ever been made regarding the advantages of the institution, nor is it known that any student of another denomination has complained of any interference with his religious belief.” [13] Rosendale graduated from the Barre Academy in 1861, [14] but rather than continue his academic journey to college, he returned to Albany, now joining the law office of attorney Solomon F. Higgins, after which he was admitted to the bar. Rosendale’s choice of the Higgins firm was fortuitous; Higgins was elected Albany’s district attorney on the Democratic Party ticket in November 1862 and, after taking office in 1863, appointed the newly fledged lawyer as his assistant district attorney, the first rung of what would become an ascending career in the legal profession. Isaac Cohn and his wife Amelia were among the early German-born Jewish arrivals in Albany. Their first child was Levi, born in Albany in 1841, followed by Caroline (known as Carrie, born in 1843), Betsy (later known as Lizzie, born in 1844), and Helen (born in 1849). By 1850, Isaac had established himself as a dry goods merchant and, in 1860, employed his son Levi as a bookkeeper. In 1864, during the Civil War, Levi, likely through his Albany Democratic Party connections, was appointed paymaster of a New York State National Guard brigade with the rank of major. The position would lead in that same year to Levi’s appointment to a three-man commission sent to Washington, D.C., by New York’s Democratic governor to oversee the voting of New York’s soldiers in that year’s presidential election, as well as to attend to the troops’ pay and health. The three men were arrested on 27 October 1864, jailed, and tried on charges of election fraud by a suspicious Lincoln administration. They were found not guilty by a military tribunal, but it was not until 17 February 1865 that Levi was released from prison in Washington and could return to his home in Albany. [15] With the war's conclusion, Levi set up shop in Albany as a tobacconist. Meanwhile, in about 1864, Levi’s sister Lizzie married another arrival from Germany, Meyer Kallman Cohen, an insurance agent who preferred to be known by his initials, M. K. In 1868, tragedy struck the Cohn family when Isaac jumped into the Hudson River and drowned. “After relieving himself of his coat and hat and writing his residence, No. 88 Madison Avenue, on a card,” one newspaper reported, “he took the fatal plunge. It is surmised that he was laboring under insanity at the time, caused by sickness, with which he has been afflicted for some months. He was respected by his acquaintances and was very well situated financially.” [16] Two years earlier, Isaac had prepared for his death by signing a will in which he divided his estate among his four children, but tellingly stated, “whereas I have heretofore advanced to my daughter Lizzie Cohn the sum of one thousand dollars. Now therefore I charge and direct that the same be deducted, out of her share above given…” [17] By 1870, Lizzie and M. K. Cohen had become the parents of three children (Frederica, Ira and Howard; two more would follow, Herbert and Amy), but while claiming a relatively high and likely unreal estate value that year of $10,000, they were also sharing living quarters with another couple: Sampson and Fannie Rosendale. [18] The link between Albany’s Cohn and Rosendale families is clear. Three days after the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter on 12 April 1861, President Lincoln issued a call for 75,000 volunteers. Silas Rosendale, the eldest of Sampson’s children, responded by immediately enlisting as a corporal in a New York State volunteer regiment and was ultimately promoted to captain. In July 1862, Silas was wounded in the arm (“slightly,” according to one report). [19] In February 1863, after recovering at home, Silas (at the time, a first lieutenant) prepared to return to his regiment and was presented with a sword “by his Albany friends,” with speeches by, among others, his brother Simon and M. K. Cohen. [20] In 1870, a new lodge of the Jewish fraternal organization B’nai B’rith was founded in Albany. Installed as its president was Simon W. Rosendale, and as its treasurer, M. K. Cohen. [21] In February of that same year, Simon W. Rosendale married Helen Cohn, the sister of M. K. Cohen’s wife, Lizzie. The fourth and last child of M. K. and Lizzie Cohen, a daughter they named Amy, was born in 1873. In those years, M. K. continued his work in Albany as an insurance agent while, at the same time, performing as a tenor with choral groups in the city, singing, for example, “Seu Shearim” (“Open Up You Gates”) with a chorus from Albany’s Anshe Emeth synagogue at the consecration of a new synagogue in Hudson, New York. [22] In late 1874, however, M. K. Cohen’s fortunes took a decidedly bleak turn when he was charged with passing a forged check for $600. “Several persons were present to make similar complaints,” a reporter said. “After his arrest, Cohen gave bail for an examination, which was to take place this afternoon. Mr. Cohen was not present when the case was called, and it is alleged he has left the city.” [23] A few days later, another newspaper reported “nearly two hundred policyholders in various life insurance companies for which Mr. Hendrick, Mr. Safford, and Mr. Rose are agents, who are bewailing the absence of M. K. Cohen. It is alleged that Cohen would go to the office of the above-named persons, procure policies on trust, take them to the persons who were insured, get the premiums on them, and put the money in his pocket.” The newspaper added pointedly that according to an 1873 law, “the embezzlement of money by insurance agents is made larceny.” [24] Months later, with M. K. Cohen now absent, 29-year-old Lizzie Cohen and her four children, ages eight to two, moved into the Albany household of her 34-year-old brother Levi. [25] Simon W. Rosendale continued to serve in his appointed position as Albany’s assistant district attorney for four years, but in 1868, he decided to move into elective politics and accepted the nomination of the local Democratic Party as its candidate for recorder, a judicial position hearing criminal and civil matters along with some administrative responsibilities. Rosendale won the election with what a newspaper later described as “one of the largest majorities recorded up to that time for a Democratic candidate.” [26] Rosendale’s administration of justice drew quick praise from the Albany press, one journal rejoicing that “the spirit of lawlessness and rowdyism has received a check by the fearless manner in which Recorder Rosendale has administered justice. Acting entirely independent of all party considerations and political influences, he has meted out punishment to all offenders in a manner entitling him to the praise and respect of every law-abiding citizen.” [27] However, four years later, in 1872, when Rosendale ran for re-election, the Albany Democrats split into two factions, and the Republican candidate in the three-man race was the winner. [28] Having moved into private practice after his electoral defeat, Rosendale nevertheless returned to government service when Albany’s mayor, Michael Nolan, a Democrat, appointed him corporation counsel, in effect, the city’s chief attorney and legal adviser. Rosendale held that position until 1882, when he resigned because of what was described as “the pressing demands of his rapidly growing law practice.” [29] Indeed, in 1878, Rosendale had joined a law firm with Albany attorney Rufus W. Peckham, who, like Rosendale, had once served as the city’s district attorney and corporation counsel. [30] In 1883, Peckham, a Democrat, was elected to the New York State Supreme Court, a trial-level tribunal. As a result, with Peckham now on the bench, the Peckham and Rosendale partnership was dissolved, and the firm became known as Rosendale and Hessberg. Albert Hessberg was a young attorney who had started his law career at the same firm and, to his advantage, was Rosendale’s nephew by marriage (Hessberg was married to Frederica Cohen, a daughter of M. K. and Lizzie Cohen, the sister of Rosendale’s wife Helen). Three years later, in 1886, Peckham continued to ascend the judicial system and was elected in a statewide vote to New York’s Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court. [31] It was a career path that did not escape the notice of his former law partner. Faced in late 1874 with fraud charges and embezzlement, M. K. Cohen adopted a popular strategy: he decided to go west, abandoning his bail money and his wife and five children. By 1880, he had created a new life in San Francisco, but he was still apparently engaged in activities recalling his recent Albany misadventures. On January 15, 1880, a Sacramento newspaper reported that the previous day, a police officer from San Francisco had arrived in town “and arrested a peddler named H. K. Cohen upon a warrant charging him with embezzlement…” The pair was scheduled to return to San Francisco the following day. [32] Later that same year, in about August, Cohen experienced another encounter with San Francisco lawmen, although, on this occasion, he was evidently blameless. Likely with the approaching November presidential election in mind, the German-born Cohen went to the city’s registrar's office to register to vote. Claiming that he had lost his naturalization papers, he provided the place (Albany) and year (1860) he had become an American citizen. A month or so later, Cohen returned to the registrar's office and was told by an official, according to one account, “that he had written to Albany and received information that no man named Meyer K. Cohen had ever been registered in 1863. Mr. Cohen informed him that 1860 was the date given, which was found to be correct upon examination of the books. Deputy Holmes profusely apologized for his little mistake, and Mr. Cohen returned to his place of business with the assurance that there would be no further trouble.” [33] However, in October, according to this same account, Cohen was informed by another official that he was under arrest “for fraudulent registration and must give bonds or go to jail. He was finally released on his own recognizance after refusing to furnish bail.” The San Francisco Examiner commented editorially (although within its news article) that this was “a clear case of attempted bulldozing. It is said that there will be a systematic attempt made by the Federal election officials to prevent naturalized citizens from voting.” [34] In the meantime, though, Cohen had successfully registered to vote on 28 September 1880 as Mayer Kallmann Cohen, a shirt manufacturer living at 331 Kearny Street in San Francisco. [35] Of interest, on 11 June 1880, in that year’s federal census, Cohen still listed himself as married, more than five years after leaving his family in Albany. [36] M. K. Cohen appears to have sought a radical change in his circumstances, moving from urban San Francisco to Silverton, a new rough-and-tumble mining town in the mountainous southwest corner of Colorado. First laid out in 1873, Silverton, according to one historian of the town, was described “by an eyewitness (in 1876) as ‘presenting a rather disgusting appearance,’” and consisted “of 350 people, 100 houses, two sawmills, and four stores, along with the usual complement of saloons, hotels, boarding houses, cigar and tobacco shops, and gambling halls.” [37] In August 1881, Cohen first appeared in the annals of Silverton when he purchased a saloon in the town, selling drinks at the cut-rate price of two for a quarter. [38] But his occupational leap from shirtmaker to saloon keeper was balanced by a familiar pattern of law-breaking. In March 1882, Cohen was arrested in Denver and charged with larceny in what he claimed was “merely a scheme to force money from him.” [39] An accommodating judge discharged Cohen, but the sheriff from Silverton’s San Juan County quickly arrived in Denver and re-arrested him on charges of forging a note for $460. Cohen was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to four years in the Colorado State Penitentiary in Canon City. A Denver newspaper observed that Cohen was “well known in Denver as connected at one time with the firm of Simpson & Co., liquor dealers.” [40] After serving two years in the Canon City prison, Cohen saw a chance for freedom, thanks to the arguments of three attorneys before Colorado’s highest court. The court began its review of the case by recalling Cohen’s indictment, that he “did counterfeit and forge the handwriting of another, to-wit, Lawsha Brothers, to a certain promissory note of the date of January 3, 1882, for the sum of $460…” [41] Cohen’s trio of lawyers presented several challenges to Cohen’s conviction and, crucially, the Supreme Court accepted one of them: that the trial judge had neglected to instruct the jurors that to convict Cohen, they had to believe his “signing was forged or counterfeited, and with intent to damage or defraud some person.” [42] The court filed its ruling on 14 March 1884, reversing Cohen’s conviction and remanding him for a new trial. In June, a Silverton judge ordered the sheriff to retrieve Cohen from the penitentiary while the town’s citizens were already circulating a petition arguing that Cohen’s two years behind bars were sufficient for his crime and that the prosecutor should abandon any further legal action against him. [43] In Albany in 1891, Simon W. Rosendale continued his private law practice, testifying in February before a state senate committee on behalf of Albany merchants against a bill that would have extended the existing 1886 child labor laws (largely ineffective) [44] from factories to the state’s mercantile establishments. The bill, sponsored by a senior Republican senator, was “absurd,” Rosendale argued, claiming that “Stores are in a sense educational institutions and young men working there should not be hampered by having their hours limited.” He also maintained, "It would be an infringement of the laws of personal liberty to say that women should work only so many hours a week.” [45] Even as Rosendale was defending his clients and their interests, he was also focused on a larger goal, which he achieved on 16 September 1891 when New York State’s Democrats nominated him for attorney general at their Saratoga convention. A politically connected journalist for Whitelaw Reid’s Republican New York Tribune later reported a “highly interesting movement in Democratic politics” [46] that led to Rosendale’s nomination. Back in 1886, according to the story, Rosendale was instrumental in ensuring the election victory of Rufus W. Peckham, his former law partner, to the Court of Appeals. Peckham returned the favor now in 1891 when Rosendale sought the Democratic Party’s nomination for attorney general. “It was rather indecorous for a Judge of the Court of Appeals,” the Tribune suggested, “but nevertheless Mr. Peckham descended into ‘the dirty pool of politics’ so far as to solicit” the support of the Democratic party boss Edward Murphy. That accomplished, Rosendale secured the nomination. On 3 November 1891, the entire New York State Democratic ticket was elected, led by gubernatorial candidate Roswell P. Flower. Rosendale won by what a Democratic Party journal described as “a very flattering majority.” [47] But there was another achievement, largely unstated at the time, as one of his nephews, G. Herbert Cone, [48] would later recall: Rosendale’s election, Cone wrote, “was a great distinction then, as he was the first Jew to be elected to office in New York by a statewide vote.” [49] Cone, on close terms with his uncle in Albany, explained: “Always a devout Jew, Rosendale identified himself with practically all the movements in his active days that sought to advance Jewish interests and culture. He was President of the Court of Appeal of the B'nai B'rith, a member of the Executive Board of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, a generous supporter of the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, and an intimate friend of Dr. Isaac M. Wise, its founder.” [50] All that was reflected in Rosendale’s post-election comments to the press. “If my election means anything other than partisan success,” he said, “it also emphasizes that in this great Empire State, at least, no bigotry or prejudices are to operate to prevent the nomination of any person. If my election to the distinguished position of Attorney General will have a tendency toward refuting the cruel malevolent charge of the Goldwin Smiths, it will at least have accomplished some good purpose.” [51] Goldwin Smith, a 19th-century British-born academic, also active in Canada and the United States, has been described as “the most vicious anti-Semite in the English-speaking world.” [52] Goldwin’s name was a natural choice by Rosendale as a generic term for anti-Semitism. After spending two years in the confines of the Colorado penitentiary, M. K. Cohen arrived back in Silverton on 10 June 1884, and the prosecuting attorney immediately asked the local court to drop his retrial “in obedience to a request of a petition signed by citizens that two years in the penitentiary had satisfied justice in his case.” [53] Days later, Cohen, now at liberty, announced that he would be opening a saloon on Greene Street in Silverton, [54] and indeed, the new drinking establishment received its first customers on 1 August. [55] Cohen, an enthusiastic singer, aptly named the saloon the Arion after a mythological Greek singer/poet. Cohen, during his Albany days, had brought his tenor voice to concert halls and houses of worship. In Silverton, he performed opera,[56] high mass at the Silverton Catholic church[57], and blackface minstrelsy. [58] However, while successful in the concert hall, Cohen could not sustain his saloon and ran out of money. As 1884 ended, he lost the Arion. [59] The following year, Cohen, in partnership, purchased another saloon, this one in the basement of Silverton’s Grand Hotel, but once more, the scheme ended in failure for Cohen, and after just two months, his partner took over the business. [60] Realizing his lack of success in Silverton’s competitive saloon industry, Cohen moved on to other enterprises in the mining town. In 1886, he actively participated in sign painting and decorating, winning praise for a drop curtain he created at the Fashion Saloon as “the finest piece of artistic lettering done in Silverton.” [61] Sometime later, he received plaudits from one of the town’s newspapers after completing “some fine lettering for the Crystal Palace Billiard Hall of Anderson & Anderson. Mr. Cohen,” proclaimed the journal, “is a first-class sign-writer, not only in this country but any other. His fine ornamental sign work should adorn every business house in the city.” [62] Cohen also delved into the raffle business, offering Silverton’s residents 300 chances at a dollar each, with five prizes, including what was described as a diamond ring and a gold watch. [63] He offered a German-language class, announcing, “Those desiring to acquire a thorough knowledge of that language will address M. K. Cohen, P.O. Box 191.” [64] In 1889, a new chapter opened in Cohen’s life with the founding of an amateur band in Silverton, the "Rainbow Cornet Band," commonly known as the "Rainbows." The amateur musical group played locally on various occasions and traveled for a concert in nearby Durango, Colorado. In March 1890, the ensemble, dressed in their newly arrived uniforms, gathered at Silverton’s Grand Hotel to honor their president, M. K. Cohen, on what was described as his 51st birthday. “Mr. Cohen thanked the boys in a few well-chosen words,” according to a Silverton newspaper, “complimented the boys on their natty appearance and invited them upstairs where a very nice supper had been spread. Jack Sinclair proposed to Cohen’s health, and the boys drank one another’s health, talked over the Durango trip, and generally had a good time.” [65] Inspired by the success of its Rainbows, Silverton soon engaged with a musical group of considerably greater fame and accomplishment. It was called the "Dodge City Cow Boy Band," founded in about 1880 and taking its name from its original base in the booming Kansas cattle town. The musicians performed in cowboy attire and were led by Jack Sinclair, who substituted a revolver for the usual baton. On 12 September 1890, articles of incorporation for the band in its new home in Silverton were filed in Denver by several men, including M. K. Cohen and Jack Sinclair. [66] A few months later, the band paraded in Denver at the inauguration of Governor John L. Routt. “Clad in striking costume and with a banner surmounted by the largest pair of steer’s horns to be found in the world, (the band) proved the most striking feature of the parade,” enthused a reporter. [67] According to one Colorado-based report, the band had abandoned its Dodge City home base “because Dodge City was fast going downhill.” Meanwhile, the report continued, its leader, Jack Sinclair, had been called to Silverton to instruct the newly formed Rainbows, and “Upon finding good musical talent in that locality and receiving encouragement from the citizens, he procured most of the best players from Dodge City, who found ready employment in the thriving metropolis of the San Juan.” [68] At about the same time that Cohen was instrumental in bringing the band to Silverton, he also became an agent in Silverton for the St. Paul German Accident Insurance Co., advertising that he was “prepared to insure anyone and everyone against accidents. The company is first class in every respect and is doing a large business throughout the West and North-West. It does not cost much to insure, and having an income when you meet with an accident is very handy.” [69] Although Cohen had now resumed the insurance sales work he began in Albany two decades earlier, his primary focus at this time was the new band in town, and he became its secretary and bass drum player. [70] However, his engagement with the band in Silverton would come to bear elements of his problematic conduct in Albany. In a summary of his first year as New York State’s attorney general, 1892, Simon W. Rosendale wrote, “Probably the most important public questions were involved in what is known as the ‘apportionment cases.’” [71] The three cases argued on the same day, 4 October 1892, before the Court of Appeals in Albany, the state’s highest court, all focused on the same claim: the state legislature’s apportionment law enacted earlier that year was unconstitutional. The Democratic-controlled legislature had reapportioned the state’s senate districts while it reduced the number of assembly seats in some counties and increased them in others. In general, Republicans called foul. Lawyers arguing before the court nominally represented public officials, but, in the public view, it was a contest between Republicans and Democrats, with Attorney General Rosendale representing the Democrats and William A. Sutherland arguing for the Republicans (indeed, it was a rematch between the two attorneys: Rosendale had defeated Sutherland in the 1891 race for attorney general). Sutherland contended that Monroe County had been defrauded by the legislature’s act, which, he said, was unconstitutional. Rosendale countered that “absolute equality is impossible and that mathematical precision is not required by the Constitution.” [72] He also contended that the courts could not review the reapportionment law except in cases of fraud and gross injustice. On 13 October, the court delivered its ruling, upholding the constitutionality of the apportionment law. The principal opinion was delivered by Judge Rufus W. Peckham, Rosendale’s former law partner and a major sponsor of Rosendale’s candidacy for attorney general on the Democratic ticket. Peckham declared, “the courts have no power … to review the exercise of a discretion intrusted (sic) to the Legislature by the Constitution unless it is plainly and grossly abused,” and concluded, “We are compelled to the conclusion that this act of 1892 successfully withstood all assaults upon it, and is a valid and effective law.” [73] Response to the high court’s ruling was not surprisingly divided. One Democratic-leaning newspaper commented, “The charge that the decision is warped by partisan bias is simply the ill-tempered ravings of the defeated litigants” [74] while, in contrast, a Republican-leaning journal observed that the Democratic members of the Court of Appeals voted “to maintain the interests of the Democratic party and to affirm a law the inequality and unfairness of which they placidly concede.” [75] In October 1893, New York State’s Democrats gathered in Saratoga to nominate their candidates for the fall election. Simon W. Rosendale, whose two-year term as attorney general was nearing completion, handily won re-nomination. Albany lawyer and politician Louis W. Pratt proclaimed that the party’s best political achievement during the past two years was the reapportionment of the Senate and the Assembly. Pratt went on, “The man upon whom Democratic success depended and who single-handedly met the enemy in legal conflict, who defended the constitution and the law against every attack of our enemies and who won a glorious victory at every point – that man was the attorney-general of New York – Simon W. Rosendale of Albany.” [76] Democrats confidently considered Rosendale’s re-election a “foregone conclusion” [77] while Republicans charged that Rosendale had “shown the proper degree of subserviency to the Democratic machine, and whose connection with bank wreckers and the like does not entitle him to the confidence of the people.” [78] On election day, the entire Democratic ticket, including Rosendale, was defeated. However, Rosendale, still as attorney general until the end of the year, faced one last election issue, a flagrant challenge to the rules, although the rule breaker was a fellow Democrat. John Y. McKane, the Democratic boss in the Gravesend area of what is now Brooklyn, had turned back a delegation of Republicans who had a court-granted injunction to inspect the ballot registration lists and observe the local voting. McKane, crowing, “Injunctions don’t go here,” set his police on the Republicans and arrested them. [79] Asked by a reporter for his reaction to the incident, Rosendale explained that, as attorney general, he had no standing to take the case to court, but he went on to say, "I never read of a grosser, more abominable election outrage than that which McKane is represented as having perpetrated.” Not mincing words, he added, “McKane should be pursued by all the resources of the courts, for he has apparently defied and disobeyed the election laws of the State and brutally assaulted citizens who were endeavoring to have those laws respected.” [80] McKane was indeed tried and convicted of violating New York’s election law the following year. He was sentenced to six years at Sing Sing prison but was released after serving just over four years. [81] Rosendale’s career as an elected official was now at an end, but before leaving office in December, he was able to notch his last victory in his legal belt. Two years earlier, in 1891, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a split decision, had reversed its previous rulings on the taxation of railroads’ interstate commerce, allowing the State of Maine to impose an excise tax on a railroad company. [82] “Early in my term of office as Attorney-General in 1892,” Rosendale would recall, “I came across a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States which convinced me that the State had the right to tax that portion of the interstate business of the railroads which is done within this State. It was a test case brought by the Grand Trunk Railway Company, and the United States Supreme Court squarely decided that the railroad must pay a tax on the amount of interstate business it does within the State of Maine. I at once called Controller Campbell’s attention to this decision, deeming it my duty to do so, although I had my doubts as to the wisdom of the State of New York taxing its railroads upon their interstate business and thus putting them at a disadvantage with other great railways of other States in competing for this business.” [83] Rosendale argued the case against a railroad’s lawyer before a three-judge state panel, which ruled in Rosendale’s favor. [84] A friendly Albany newspaper commented, “The ability of Attorney-General Rosendale and his grasp of the important problems of litigation which have come before him is shown again by the unanimous decision of the General Term, sustaining his opinion in the matter of imposing a tax on foreign corporations.” The newspaper added, “It will be a great loss to the people of the State when Mr. Rosendale's term expires. He has performed his duties faithfully and well. A lawyer of the highest standing, a scholar and linguist of exceptional attainments, and a citizen universally respected, he will return to private practice with the record of an honorable and successful official career.” [85] Reflecting on his lifelong friendship with Simon W. Rosendale, Albany-born journalist Isidor Lewi would write, “Simon Rosendale was above all a Jew. If the chronicle of his earthly journey were to be preserved, it would have been his wish – those who knew him best think – that his name be counted among those who, by precept and example, added lustre to American Judaism. The American Jewish Historical Society was one of his great loves. He served as one of its vice-presidents from the first organization meeting in 1892 to his last day; he contributed learned papers on colonial New York in the early volumes and rarely missed an annual meeting.” [86] In an unsigned letter intended for publication in 1918, Rosendale wrote, “A long lineage of Jewish ancestry precedes my advent into the world. I have never felt the opprobrious epithets that are so frequently used in derision for being a Jew. I attribute my position, which has always been free from prejudice and slur because of my faith, solely to the fact that I am an American.” [87] Yet, prejudice was evident during that period, notably in a character in Edith Wharton’s 1905 novel, House of Mirth, and its leading character with a name not so coincidentally very similar to Rosendale’s, “Simon Rosedale.” Rosedale is not a literal figuration of Rosendale; Wharton introduces her Rosedale character as “a plump rosy man of the blond Jewish type” [88] and, later, “the same little Jew who had been served up and rejected at the social board a dozen times…” [89] Rosedale’s “existence in the novel,” writes author Elizabeth Pantirer, “embodies fears of Americans during the turn of the century who viewed Jews as a genuine threat to their identity and prosperity. [90] Simon W. Rosendale never regarded his Jewish identity as an issue. What became an issue for him was the evolution of the perception of Jewish identity in the early years of the new century. In 1896, the Hungarian-born journalist Theodor Herzl published a pamphlet urging the establishment of an independent Jewish state in Palestine and followed that the next year by convening the First Zionist Conference in Basel, Switzerland. That led eventually, in 1917, to Britain’s Balfour Declaration calling for a "national home for the Jewish people." In 1918, Rosendale published his response to Zionism, declaring, “We are Jews by religion only. Religious faiths, beliefs, and affiliations are and should be kept separate and apart from nationalism. Palestinian nationalism is not a dogma or doctrine of the Jewish religion.” Rosendale continued, “We are American citizens of the Jewish faith and as such cannot but oppose any movement for the creation of a state predicated on religious belief or affiliations.” [91] But a few months later, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, in a letter to Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, a prominent American Zionist, expressed satisfaction “in the progress of the Zionist movement in the The United States.” [92] Rosendale, unhappy with Wilson’s policy declaration, immediately picked up his pen and wrote to his congressman about what he called “a pretentious Jewish movement known as Zionism.” Speaking on behalf of the Reform movement of Judaism, among which Rosendale counted himself, he wrote that they “maintain that they are Jews by religion only and Americans by nationality.” Rosendale added, “they neither participate in nor approve of the effort to establish a Jewish Palestinian State.” [93] Rosendale followed that letter by joining 30 other “prominent men” in a petition sent to Wilson for consideration by the Paris Peace Conference deliberating the terms of the peace after World War One. “(W)e raise our voices,” they declared, “in warning and protest against the demand of the Zionists for the reorganization of the Jews as a national unit to whom, now or in the future, territorial sovereignty in Palestine shall be committed.” [94] Years later, while marking his 90th birthday in 1932, Rosendale showed no sign of abandoning the lessons he learned in Albany many decades earlier from Rabbi Isaac M. Wise and held then by Reform Judaism: “(W)e are Jews by religion only; declare against all claims to Jewish political nationalism; abandon many of the outworn, inappropriate customs and ceremonies as well as ritualistic formulas and practices.” [95] Dodge City Cow-Boy Band  https://www.loc.gov/item/2002712128/ M. K. Cohen continued his association with the world of music, entertaining with his own tenor voice in the Silverton, Colorado, area, acting as secretary of the Cow-Boy Band, and involving himself with a touring classical music group headed by the Spanish pianist Carlos Sobrino and cellist Richard F. Schubert. On 15 August 1891, a Colorado newspaper promoted a concert that week by the Sobrino-Schubert Concert Combination “under the management of M. K. Cohen.” [96] At the same time, alarm bells went off in Silverton, where a local newspaper informed its readers: “M. K. Cohen, a former resident of this town, is posing in Denver as manager of the Dodge City Cow-Boy Band. This is a copy of his card: M. K. Cohen Manager of the Dodge City Cowboy Band and the Sobrino Schubert Concert Combination 2647 Curtis St. Denver, Colo. The newspaper went on, “His card is simply to mislead the public and to endeavor to obtain the benefit of any reputation the band may have for his orchestra. Mr. Cohen acted as secretary for the band at one time and agitated the bass drum, but after his removal from the band, his connection with the band ceased.” [97] Later that month, the president of the Cow Boy Band, Horace Greeley Prosser – owner of a Silverton furniture store/undertaking establishment and a long-time singing partner with Cohen – advised Denver’s leading newspaper that the Cow Boy Band “is in no way connected with the Sobrino Concert company and that Mr. M. K. Cohen is not and never was manager of said band.” [98] Cohen had left Silverton and Colorado behind and made his way east, arriving in Chicago in September. In November, he was in Milwaukee, staying at the city’s Grand Central Hotel. On 1 December 1891, he ended his life. At his death, local journalists added a description to their reports of Cohen’s suicide that he might have enjoyed: “Suicide of M. K. Cohen of the Dodge City Cow-Boy Band,” read the headline of the Milwaukee Daily Sentinel , [99] while Denver’s Rocky Mountain News , in a story sent from Milwaukee, began its account, “M. K. Cohen, business manager and part owner of the Dodge City Cow-Boy Band...” [100] According to newspaper reports, Cohen was found in his hotel room bed on the morning of 1 December. Near him were several letters and a business card listing him as business manager of the Dodge City Cow Boy Band – the same card his former band associate, Prosser, found so objectionable – along with his Denver address. There was also a letter to his long-ignored wife in Albany, Lizzie Cohen, from which a reporter deduced that “it appears that he had been separated from his family and that he felt desperate because his wife was seeking a divorce.” [101] Another letter indicated he had contemplated suicide while living in Chicago in September; other papers showed evidence that he had been a heavy user of morphine for the past year and that he had been a Colorado correspondent for several prominent papers. [102] Also, according to one newspaper, “There were about a dozen letters addressed to persons who owed Cohen money. Cohen told each one that if the account had been settled, a life would have been saved.” [103] Cohen, in his last request, asked members of Milwaukee’s Jewish community to arrange for his burial. Grasped in his lifeless hand, recalled one reporter, was “a prayer written in Hebrew,” [104] likely his final thought. Shortly after Cohen’s death, a Milwaukee newspaper reported that the city’s Jewish community would attend to his burial and that “A telegram was received yesterday from the wife of the deceased, who said that he had not been at home since 1874, and had not supported her and that consequently, she did not feel under any obligations to bury the remains.” [105] According to Milwaukee’s official record, Cohen, age 53, was buried at the city’s Greenwood Cemetery, a Jewish burial ground that opened in 1872. [106] As a final coda to Cohen’s last days, a Silverton, Colorado, newspaper commented just days after his death, “M. K. Cohen was evidently insane at the time he killed himself, as at no time in his life was he either manager or part proprietor of the Cow-Boy Band. He manipulated the bass drum at one time, but that was all.” [107] In the years after Cohen’s death, his wife, Lizzie, lived in Albany with their son Herbert, an attorney associated with the Court of Appeals. [108] A brief notice appeared in Albany newspapers that she died on 4 March 1903 at her residence (the home of her daughter Amy) and that there would be a private funeral service. [109] She is buried beside her father, Isaac Cohn, in Albany’s Beth Emeth Cemetery. Simon W. Rosendale, interviewed for his 80th birthday in 1922, said he had always been a Democrat and named three men who “best embody his political ideals” – Thomas Jefferson; Samuel Tilden, a one-time governor of New York and the Democrats’ losing presidential candidate in 1876; and Grover Cleveland, another former New York governor and the Democrats’ successful presidential candidate in 1884 and 1892. Cleveland, according to the birthday profile, was, in fact, “his close personal friend.” [110] According to journalist Isidor Lewi, Rosendale “was high in Cleveland's social inner circle, and the intimacy between them continued long after the Governor became President in 1893.” [111] The former attorney general was also on close terms with New York’s legal community, and In early 1898, he was elected president of the New York State Bar Association, which led the Albany Law Journal to characterize him as “one of the ablest lawyers at the bar of the Empire State, (and) is also possessed of that rare combination of qualities so seldom found united in one individual – legal and literary ability of the highest order, tireless energy, executive ability and urbanity.” [112] Speaking at the bar association’s annual meeting the next year, Rosendale urged judges not only to be free from political influence but also to be seen as unaffected by political considerations in their decisions. “It may well be asserted as axiomatic that a judge should not engage in active partisan politics,” he declared. “To the extent to which he permits himself to be ranked as an active partisan, to that extent, he impairs his usefulness.” [113] During that same period (1898-1905), Rosendale was also a special lecturer at Albany Law School, teaching civil law and “Law from a Humanitarian Standpoint.” [114] He advised the aspiring attorneys to pursue their studies in the city where they hoped to eventually practice. “Everyone knows,” he said, “that a young lawyer must make a large number of friends, and if he can do this while he is still in school, he is ahead of the man who studies in another city and who returns at the end of his course to find himself almost a stranger in his home city.” [115] On 8 March 1899, New York’s Republican Governor Theodore Roosevelt turned to Democrat Simon W. Rosendale to represent the state’s third judicial district (the Albany area) on the Board of Commissioners of Public Charities, a position he would hold for the next 18 years after reappointments to the post by succeeding governors. New York had established the organization in 1867, “an unpaid board of commissioners consisting of men of high character imbued with the spirit of public service,” as one history of the board put it. [116] They were charged with inspecting “Orphan Asylums, Hospitals, Homes for the Friendless, and other charitable institutions.” [117] Rosendale’s acceptance of the job aligned with the philosophy he once outlined in a conversation with a reporter. “I have always felt that when men are financially independent and equipped in any way to be of service to their community, reach the point where they might feel able to retire,” he said, “they should turn their endeavors in the direction of public works. There are always plenty of things that such men can do. And it is good for them.” [118] As a commissioner, in 1910, Rosendale objected to an economist’s comment that “with occasional exceptions, the almshouse system with its recurrent scandals and its often commonplace and unprogressive management, remains the black sheep in the philanthropic flock.” [119] Rosendale, concerned about lapsing “into too great a condition of pessimism,” asserted, “Great improvement is noticeable in the almshouses, a decided and gratifying improvement. In the country, almshouses… the inmates… are better housed, fed, and clothed than quite a percentage of the taxpayers themselves.” [120] However, in 1913, in an address to a charity conference, he seemed more open to reform, declaring, “The adequate relief of the poor in their homes is a subject which seems to require greater attention than it has hitherto received. There is a growing feeling that more should be done for the relief of the poor in their homes so that suitable family homes be kept together and the children saved from the necessity of being committed to institutions which, no matter how good they may be, can never be made to take the place of a proper family home.” [121] Rosendale resigned from the commission (as its vice president) in 1917, explaining that he had “accepted the position from a sense of civic obligation, and after eighteen years of service feel that I have earned retirement with conscious satisfaction of duty reasonably performed, and time and effort gratuitously, if thanklessly, rendered.” At Rosendale’s retirement in 1917, the Board of Charities adopted a resolution describing him as “A man of much ability, conservative by nature …” [122] F.M. Warburg & wife, S.W. Rosendale, Edw. Warburg https://www.loc.gov/item/2014719048/ In his later years, Rosendale remained engaged with his voluntary associations – religious, civic, educational – and was amenable to requests for reminiscence and commentary. Asked in 1929 about an apparent decline of the communal spirit in Albany’s Fourth of July celebrations, Rosendale blamed it on “the automobile and other means of modern travel,” but he tempered his observation with the comment, “I try not to become narrow and sit in judgment upon the younger generation for, after all, we must remember that each generation has its own way of doing things; and while things were much simpler in my youth, we all think our own way of doing things best.” [123] In 1932, in response to a 90th birthday message from the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the congregational arm of Reform Judaism, Rosendale wrote, “My early school days were passed under the sainted Rabbi Isaac M. Wise, to whose teachings and influence I am glad to attribute my interest in our religious affairs, and am glad to think that in mature years I was able to be at his side, among the protagonists of his far-seeing endeavors.” He concluded, “My attachment to the cause grows no less because of advancing years. While not so active in many matters, I remain interested in realizing that ‘as the evening twilight fades away, stars in the heavens appear invisible by day.’” [124] In 1932, American voters elected another New York governor to the White House, Franklin D. Roosevelt. On taking office, he launched a program of political and economic reform along with steps to relieve the nation from the tight grip of the Depression. Much of that program was blocked by the Supreme Court and its conservative majority, leading Roosevelt in 1937 to propose an ultimately unsuccessful plan to add new justices to the nine-member court. “In politics, Simon W. Rosendale was a Democrat,” wrote his nephew, Herbert Cone, at the time, but added, “I betray no confidence when I say that he looked askance at the present tendencies of the party under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He especially deplored the pending proposal to make radical changes in the Federal Supreme Court.” [125] Asked during this same period about the rise of Nazi Germany, Rosendale replied, “That brutal, shameful, and regrettable situation seems to me to be somewhat typical of the inherent unrestrained North German temperament – to be aggressively and assertively dominant. The South German temperament is more even and peaceful. I was in Berlin on the day the war was declared. The militaristic spirit ran wild everywhere, and the same spirit seems to be pervading Germany today. Hitler, who is not a German and who is supposed to be a civilian, invariably wears a military uniform. Even the small children are organized in a military fashion. Some people think the Allies were too easy on Germany at the war's end, and that may be true. When German troops returned to their homes, they were greeted almost as conquerors. The military spirit did not appear to have been crushed.” [126] Simon W. Rosendale died at his Albany home on 22 April 1937. “He was in his ninety-fourth year when he entered into sleep eternal,” wrote his lifelong friend, journalist Isidor Lewi, “but he was never an old man. Erect in carriage, scrupulously exact in his attire, keen and alert in conversation, with memory ever at command to recall incidents – personal, political, or historical – and a sense of humor by which he was prone to give a touch of merriment even to somber situations.” [127] The funeral was held at Congregation Beth Emeth in Albany with a eulogy by Rabbi Samuel H. Goldenson, formerly a rabbi at Beth Emeth and now the senior rabbi at Temple Emanu-El in New York City. “The life of Simon W. Rosendale,” he proclaimed, “was distinguished not only by great length of days but by his use of the days.” [128] Rosendale was buried at Albany’s Beth Emeth Cemetery with his wife Helen, who had died in 1922. They share a common gravestone with an epitaph from the Hebrew Bible’s Song of Songs: Until the Day Break and the Shadows Flee Away. About the author: Lawrence S. Freund is a former overseas news correspondent and news editor based in New York. A graduate of Queens College (City University of New York) and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, he has contributed articles on various aspects of the American Civil War and regional history. Bibiography [1]  Deborah Dash Moore,  Jewish New York  (New York: New York University Press, 2017), 123. [2]  Ibid., 126. [3]   https://friendsofalbanyhistory.wordpress.com/tag/asser-levy/ , retrieved 8 January 2024. [4]  Naftali J. Rubinger, “Albany Jewry of the Nineteenth Century,” doctoral dissertation, Yeshiva University, 1971, 5-6. [5]  Ibid, 44. [6]  Isaac Markens,  The Hebrews in America  (New York, 1888), 116. [7]  Rubinger, 45-47 [8]  Rubinger, 46. [9]  Ibid. [10]  The sailing ship  Hortense  arrived in New York City from Hamburg on 10 September 1840 with a Samson Rosenthal (38 years and six months), Seligman Rosenthal (three years and nine months) and Fannie Simon (36 years and 0 months) aboard. The names and ages correspond closely with the names and ages of the German-born Rosendale family of Albany, although the match-up has yet to be proven. ( Ancestry.com .  New York, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957  [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010.) [11]  Isidor Lewi, “Simon W. Rosendale,”  Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society , No. 35 (1939), 320. [12]  Many published sources indicate that Simon W. Rosendale attended The Albany Academy, a private secondary school, before reading law (for example,  The American Israelite , in a profile of Rosendale, reported “After attending the public schools of this city [Albany] he entered the Albany Academy, meeting there Charles Emory Smith (now Minister to Russia) and others who have all distinguished themselves in the various walks of life selected by them. On graduating from the academy (which he did in the honor list) in 1857, he commenced to read law…” (“III.—Our Distinguished Men,”  The American Israelite , 21 August 1890, 5). However, The Albany Academies, while locating enrollment records for Simon’s brothers Silas and Samuel, was unable to find an enrollment record for Simon (John McClintock, archivist emeritus, email to the author, 20 January 2024). [13]   Catalogue of the Officers, Instructors and Students of Barre Academy, Barre, Vermont, 1872-73  (Montpelier: Poland’s Steam Printing Establishment, 1873), 14. ( https://archive.org/details/annualcatalogueo00barr/page/14/mode/2up , accessed 9 January 2024). [14]  Ibid, 18. [15]  Lawrence S. Freund, “Abraham Lincoln and Levi Cohn: Jewish Attitudes in the North During the Civil War,”  The American Jewish Archives Journal  (Vol. LXXI, No. 2, 2019), 50-59. [16]  “Suicide By Drowning,”  The Daily Whig  (Troy, N.Y.), 12 May 1868, Page 4. [17]   Ancestry.com . New York, U.S., Wills and Probate Records, 1659-1999 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2015.Original data: New York County, District and Probate Courts, retrieved 10 January 2024. [18]   Ancestry.com . 1870 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2009. Images reproduced by FamilySearch, retrieved 10 January 2024. The census taker misspelled Sampson Rosendale’s given name, writing “Simon,” the name of Sampson’s son. [19]  “List of Casualties,”  The New York Times , 8 July, 1862, 1. Samuel Rosendale, a brother of Silas, joined the 177 th  Infantry Regiment in November 1862 and mustered out the following September. Simon W. Rosendale did not volunteer. [20]  “Presentation,”  Albany Journal , 20 February 1863. [21]  “Benai Berith,”  Albany Morning Express , 30 March 1870, 1. [22]  “Hudson,”  The Albany Daily Evening Times , 12 September 1872. [23]  “M. K. Cohen Charged with Forgery,”  The Albany Daily Evening Times , 23 December 1874. [24]   Albany Morning Express , 29 December 1874, 1. [25]   Ancestry.com .  New York, U.S., State Census, 1875  [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2013, retrieved 13 January 2024. [26]  “The Next Attorney-General,”  The Argus  (Albany), 3 November 1893, 2. [27]  “Assaulting and Murdering Policemen,”  Albany Express , 30 July, 1868, 2. [28]  “Simon W. Rosendale, Lawyer in Albany,”  New York Times , 23 April 1937, 21.  A Republican-leaning Albany newspaper commented before the 1872 election: “We have nothing to say against Mr. Rosendale. Upon personal grounds he is entirely unobjectionable. But he trains in a bad crowd, politically speaking, and the people can afford to permit him to retire, after having held the office for a full term.” (“The Recordership,”  Albany Morning Express , 8 April 1872, 2.) [29]  “Simon W. Rosendale,”  The Albany Law Journal , Vol. 57, No 1, 1 January, 1898, 58. Rosendale was again appointed corporation counsel by Albany Mayor Anthony Bleecker Banks, also a Democrat (Ibid). [30]   The New International Encyclopedia , Vol. XVII, (New York, Dodd, Mead and Company, 1917), 242. [31]  “The State Vote,”  New York Times , 5 November 1886, 5. [32]  “Embezzlement,”  Sacramento Daily Record-Union , 15 January 1880, 3. [33]  “An Outrageous Arrest,”  The San Francisco Examiner , 20 October 1880, 3. [34]  Ibid. “Bulldozing,” in this case, signifies “intimidation.” Meyer K. Cohen was naturalized in Albany on 6 July 1860, having renounced his allegiance to the King of Hanover (Meyer K. Cohen Petition, Albany Hall of Records, Albany, N.Y.). [35]   California, U.S., Voter Registers, 1866-1898, California State Library, Ancestry.com . California, U.S., Voter Registers, 1866-1898 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011 (accessed 24 January 2024). [36]   California Census, 1880. “United States Census, 1880,” FamilySearch ( https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M6P4-ZSD : Thu Oct 05 03:48:06 UTC 2023), Entry for Meyer K. Cohen and August Newbauer, 1880 (accessed 24 January 2024).  [37]  Allan G. Byrd,  Silverton Then and Now  (Allan G. Byrd Publishing Co., Lakewood, Colorado, 1999), 6. [38]  Ibid, 21. [39]  “Cohen Discharged,”  The Denver Republican , 31 March 1882, 5. [40]  “Four Years in the Pen,”  The Denver Republican , 30 June 1882, 3. [41]  “Cohen v. People,”  The Pacific Reporter , Vol. 3 (Saint Paul, West Publishing Company, 1884), 386. [42]  Ibid, 387. [43]  “District Court at Silverton,”  The Rocky Mountain News , 6 June 1884, 4. [44]  Richard B. Bernstein and others,  From Forge to Fast Food: A History of Child Labor in New York State , Vol. II (Council for Citizenship Education, Troy, NY, 1995), 17. [45]  “The Child-Labor Bill,”  Troy Daily Times , 19 February 1891, 2. New York State’s merchants successfully resisted the extension of the child labor laws to their stores until 1896. (Fred Rogers Fairchild, “The Factory Legislation of the State of New York,”  Publications of the American Economic Association  [November 1905], 64.)  [46]  “Flower or Peckham?,”  New York Tribune , 4 June 1894. [47]  “Hon. Simon W. Rosendale,”  The Tammany Times , 4 September 1893, 3. Rosendale received 580,185 votes, his Republican opponent (William A. Sutherland) received 535,205. (Will L. Lloyd,  The Red Book  [Albany, James B. Lyon, 1892], 483). [48]  A son of M. K. Cohen, Cone’s surname was originally Cohen. [49]  G. Herbert Cone, “Simon Wolfe Rosendale, A Biographical Sketch,”  The American Jewish Year Book  39 (1937), 25. [50]  Ibid, 26. [51]  “Mr. Rosendale’s Views, Bigotry and Prejudice at a Discount in the Empire State,”  New York Times , 5 November 1891, 5. [52]  Alan Mendelson,  Exiles from Nowhere: The Jews and the Canadian Elite  (R. Brass Studio, Montreal, 2008), 16. [53]  “On Trial for Murder,”  The Rocky Mountain News , 11 June 1884, 1. Coincidentally, two days later, Cohen’s brother-in-law, Levi Cohn – who had housed and maintained Cohen’s wife and minor children during Cohen’s extended absence from Albany – died in Utica, New York, at a mental institution. (Freund, 64.) [54]  “Sensational Court Cases,”  The Rocky Mountain News , 14 June 1884, 1. [55]  Byrd, 68. [56]  “San Juan Events,”  The Rocky Mountain News , 24 February 1886, 1. [57]  “Easter Sunday at High Mass,”  La Plata Miner , 24 April 1886, 3. [58]  “The Silverton Snows,”  The Silverton Democrat , 12 March 1887, 3. [59]  Byrd, 68. [60]  Ibid, 69. [61]  Ibid, 71. [62]   The Silverton Democrat , 25 June 1887, 3. [63]  Byrd, 73. [64]  “Business Notice,”  The Silverton Democrat , 4 September 1886, 3. [65]   Silverton Standard , 22 March 1890, 3. Sinclair was the band’s musical director. [66]  “New Companies,”  The Rocky Mountain News , 13 September 1890, 8. [67]  “Routt is In,”  The Rocky Mountain News , 14 January 1891, 1. [68]  “Cowboy Band Here,” The Rocky Mountain News, 13 January 1891, 7. Silverton is the county seat of San Juan County. [69]  Silverton Standard, 23 August 1890, 3. [70]  Byrd, 82. [71] Simon W. Rosendale,  Report of the Attorney-General of the State of New  York (James B. Lyon, State Printer, Albany, 1893), ix. [72]  “The State Apportionment,”  The Evening Post  (New York), 4 October 1892, 1. [73]  “Apportionment to Stand,”  New York Times , 14 October 1892, 2. [74]  “Judge Peckham’s Decision,”  The Utica Daily Observer , 14 October 1892, 4. [75]  “The Court in Politics,”  New York Tribune , 14 October 1892, 6. [76]  “Harmony,”  The Argus  (Albany), 7 October 1893, 2. [77]  “Hon. Simon W. Rosendale,”  The Tammany Times , 24 September 1893, 3. [78]   New York Tribune , 30 October 1893, 6. [79]  “Coney Island History: The Rise and Fall of John ‘Boss’ McKane (1868-1894),”  https://www.heartofconeyisland.com/john-mckane-coney-island-history.html  (accessed 8 February 2024). [80]  “Deserves Severe Punishment,”  New York Times , 11 November 1893, 5. [81]  “McKane’s Career at Coney Island,”  Brooklyn Daily Eagle , 30 April 1898, 5. [82]  Maine v. Grand Trunk Ry. [83]  “Rebates to Railroads,”  New York Tribune , 26 March 1894, 1. [84]  W. H. Silvernail, ed.,  The New York State Reporter , Vol. LVI, The People ex rel. Dunkirk, Allegheny Valley & Pittsburgh Railroad Co., Relator, App’lt, v. Frank Campbell, Comptroller, etc., Resp’t. (W.C. Little & Co., Law Publishers, Albany, 1894), 358. [85]  “An Able Official,”  The Argus  (Albany), 11 December 1893, 4. [86]  Isidor Lewi, “Simon W. Rosendale,”  Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society , No. 35 (1939), 321. [87]  Simon W. Rosedale, Letter sent to  New York Times , Box 34, Folder 18, New York Times Company records, Adolph S. Ochs papers, Manuscript and Archives Division, New York Public Library. On 12 September 1918, the  Times  published an article citing the support for Zionism of the Jewish banker and philanthropist Jacob H. Schiff. (“Sees Refuge for Jews,”  New York Times , 12, September 1918, 8.) Rosendale wrote a letter to the  Times  taking exception to Schiff, but it seems to have been pre-empted by a  Times  article on 13 September liberally quoting anti-Zionist Rabbi David Philipson in opposition to Schiff. (“Sees Danger in Zionism,”  New York Times , 13 September 1918, 7). [88]  Edith Wharton,  The House of Mirth  (Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1905), 21. [89]  Ibid, 25. [90]   Elizabeth Pantirer, “Anti-Semitism in American Realist Literature: Edith Wharton Sim Rosedale – A Thorn in American Identity,” (2020). Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects.  https://digitalcommons.montclair.edu/etd/479/  (accessed 2/10/24), 34. Ms. Pantirer adds in her master’s thesis, “Unfortunately, the racial ideologies exemplified in Wharton’s novel still resonate. Just as the novel acts as a product of its culture, it continues to resonate with growing anti-Semitism today.”    [91]  “Judge Rosendale on Zionism,”  The American Israelite , 16 May 1918, 4. [92]  “Wilson Praises Weizmann Board,  New York Times , 5 September 1918, 10. [93]  Simon W. Rosendale,  Congressional Record , Vol. LVII, Part 5, “Americanism v. Zionism [A letter to Congressman Rollin B. Sanford, twenty-eighth district, New York, by Simon W. Rosendale, former attorney general of the state of New York] (Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1919), 78. [94]  “Protest to Wilson Against Zionist State,”  New York Times , 5 March 1919, 7. The petition was given prominent space in  The New York Times , whose publisher, Adolph S. Ochs, was among the signers. [95]  “Simon W. Rosendale, On 90 th  Birthday, Pays Tribute To Teachings And Influence of Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise,”  The American Israelite , 7 July 1932, 5. American Reform rabbis, meeting in Columbus, Ohio, in 1937 reversed the movement’s longstanding opposition to Zionism, stating, “We affirm the obligation of all Jewry to aid in (Palestine’s) upbuilding as a Jewish homeland.” (“The Guiding Principles of Reform Judaism, ‘The Columbus Platform – 1937,’” Central Conference of Reform Judaism,  https://www.ccarnet.org/rabbinic-voice/platforms/article-guiding-principles-reform-judaism/  (accessed 12 February 2024). [96]  “Grand Concert,”  Grand Junction News , 15 August 1891, 8. [97]   Silverton Standard , 15 August 1891, 2. [98]  “Not the Same,”  The Rocky Mountain New s, 25 August 1891, 5. [99]  “He Took Strychnine,”  Milwaukee Daily Sentinel , 2 December 1891, 3. [100]  “M. K. Cohen’s Rash Act,”  The Rocky Mountain News , 2 December 1891, 1. [101]  “A Suicide By Morphine,”  Milwaukee Journal , 1 December 1891,3. [102]  Ibid, “He Took Strychnine.” There is no evidence that Cohen was a correspondent for these newspapers. [103]  “He Took Strychnine.” [104]  Ibid. [105]  “Strangers Will Bury Him,”  Milwaukee Daily Sentinel , 3 December 1891, 3. [106]  Registration of Deaths, 2 January 1891, Ancestry.com .  Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S., Deaths, 1854-1911  [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2018 (accessed 13 February 2024. However, cemetery staff have not been able to locate Cohen’s burial record or gravesite. [107]   Silverton Standard , 5 December 1891, 3. [108]   The Albany City Directory for the Year 1896  (Sampson, Murdock & Co. Albany, 1896), 137. [109]  “The Tomb,”  The Times-Union  (Albany), 5 March 1903, 2. [110]  “After Eighty Goods Years,  New York Times , 25 June 1922, 5. [111]  Isidor Lewi, “An Oversight,”  New York Times , 17 August 1935, 12. [112]  “Current Topics,”  The Albany Law Journal , 22 January 1899, 49. [113]  “Members of the Bar,”  The Argus  (Albany), 18 January 1899, 2. Rufus W. Peckham, Rosendale’s former law partner who became an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1896, seeds to have violated Rosendale’s precept when he promoted Rosendale’s candidacy for attorney general in 1891. [114]  Rosendale’s lecture notes are missing from the law school’s archives. [115]  “S. W. Rosendale Dies at Home; Noted Lawyer,”  The Knickerbocker Press  (Albany), 23 April 1937, 14. [116]  David M. Schneider and Albert Deutsch, “The Public Charities of New York: The Rise of State Supervision After the Civil War,  The Social Service Review,  Vol. 15, No. 1 (March 1941), 3. [117]  Ibid. [118]  “After Eighty Good Years.” One monthly journal saw fit to note in its announcement of Rosendale’s appointment that he was “the first Hebrew to be appointed to membership on the board,” adding that he brought “to its service not only his valuable legal attainments, but also an experience derived from long service in philanthropic work in the city of Albany.” (“State Boards and Commissions,”  The Charities Review , Vol. IX, No. 1 (Charity Organization Society of the City of New York, New York, March 1899), 57. [119]  Frank A. Fetter, “The Place of the Almshouse in Our System of Charities,”  Eleventh New York State Conference of Charities and Correction – Proceedings  (J. B. Lyon Company, State Printers, Albany, 1911), 27. [120]  Simon W. Rosendale, “The Almshouse,”  Eleventh New York State Conference of Charities and Correction – Proceedings  (J. B. Lyon Company, State Printers, Albany, 1911), 42. [121]   Annual Report of the State Board of Charities for the Year 1913 , Vol 1 (J. B. Lyon Company, Printers, 1914), 560. [122]   Fifty-First Annual Report of the State Board of Charities for the Year 1917 , (J. B. Lyon Company, Printers, Albany, 1918), 4. [123]  “Albany’s 4 th  Observance is Much Changed,”  Time-Union  (Albany), 30 June 1929, A-7. [124]  “Simon W. Rosendale, On 90 th  Birthday…” [125]  Cone, 27. The Supreme Court’s conservative majority at the time is generally credited with following the precedent of the court’s 1905 ruling in a case known as Lochner v. New York, which struck down state legislation limiting the hours that bakers could work because, among other things, it infringed on private contract rights. The author of the majority decision in the Lochner case was Rufus W. Peckham, Rosendale’s former law partner. [126]  “S. W. Rosendale Dies at Home; Noted Lawyer.” [127]  Lewi, 322. [128]  “Notables Attend Rosendale Rites,  New York Times, 26 April 1937, 19.

By  Michael Mauro DeBonis   Copyright ©2024 All rights reserved by the author World War II Memorial, Battery Park, NYC. Photo by MIchael Mauro DeBonis, April 2001. World War II (1939-1945) was the most bloody, destructive, and costly military and political conflict in the known history of humanity. The war spanned every habitable continent (except deep-frozen Antarctica), northern and southern hemispheres, and it was fought on land, sea, and air. America’s National WW II Museum’s website says World War II cost the lives of nearly 85 million people in total, including both civilians and military personnel, from across the globe. For the United States of America, WW II began late, in early December of 1941, as opposed to Western Europe, where the man-made catastrophe had started two years earlier, in 1939. World War II pitted the Axis Powers of Germany, Japan, and Italy against the Allied Powers of the USA, France, the United Kingdom and its Commonwealth, the Soviet Union, and many others. In America, the WW II historical museums and memorials, which honor our country’s many men and women who contributed to the war effort, are nearly countless in number and exist in every U.S. state and territory. This article focuses on just two of New York State’s numerous ones. At the southern end of Battery Park, in New York City, is the famed East Coast World War 2 Memorial. We know from nycgovparks.org that the East Coast (WW II) Memorial was designed by the architectural firm of Gehron and Seltzer in the early 1960s, commissioned by the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC) shortly before this time, and it was completed by the spring of 1963. NYCGOVPARKS.ORG further comments that this exquisitely built and executed WWII memorial was dedicated to American President John F. Kennedy on May 23, 1963. The massive Battery Park World War 2 Memorial comprises eight huge, smoothed granite walls, with each wall immortalizing the inscribed names, lives, and heroic sacrifices of 4,601 American military service personnel who died fighting against German naval forces during the very deadly and costly Battle of the North Atlantic, a savage seaborne campaign, which was waged between the Allies and Fascist Germany, throughout the entirety of World War II. It was only in 1943 that the Allies, badly outmatched by the German Navy at first, could gain the upper hand over their enemy. Wall of American Militarymen who died in the WWII Battle of the North Atlantic, WWII Memorial, Battery Park, NYC. Photo by Michael Mauro DeBonis. The East Coast World War II Memorial’s eight monolithic walls accurately record the service branch of each American military member who died fighting in the Battle of the North Atlantic. The names of American military members are not only those of the U. S. Navy and Marine Corps, but they also include the names of many U. S. Army, Coast Guard, and Merchant Marines, who were also killed on American military supply and naval ships, heading back and forth from America’s east coast to Europe, during WW II. Many of the American ships were unfortunately torpedoed and sunk by Germany’s infamous “wolf packs,” which were the deadly and stealthy submarines of the German Navy. German naval submarines were also called U-boats for being constructed and deployed to carry out Nazi Germany’s covert and malicious underwater warfare. Each of the eight walls of the East Coast WW II Memorial is nineteen feet tall, with four walls each being positioned at the extreme ends of both the northern and southern portions of the Memorial. The walls are situated firmly atop a well-paved plaza. At the eastern side of the Battery Park WWII Memorial, and placed securely on top of a well-cut pedestal of black polished granite, is a giant majestically sculpted bronze (American) bald eagle. The eagle is depicted in a downward swooping motion, carefully depositing an honor wreath on a rising sea wave. The colossal bronze metallic statue of the eagle was eloquently created and shaped by noted Italian-American sculptor Albino Manca, who died in 1976 and is recorded as such on nycgovparks.org and metmuseum.org for NYC’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Manca’s great bronze eagle sublimely and solemnly pays tribute to the Battle of the North Atlantic’s American fallen. Manca’s eagle is America’s eagle, and the eagle flies directly in the middle of the center aisle, which divides the East Coast World War II Memorial’s eight historic walls. The other WWII public monument discussed in this article is the Northport (Long Island, NY) Veterans Administration Hospital’s World War II Navy Memorial Plaque. A visual inspection of this WWII public monument (personally carried out by me in September of 2023) indicates that it was cast in bronze, although other composite metals and materials may have been used in its composition. The Northport VA Hospital’s WWII Navy Memorial Plaque is part of an internationally famous series of historical markers called Still on Patrol. The Still on Patrolmarkers are memorial plaques issued by the United States Navy, U. S. Veterans Administration Hospitals, and the U. S. Submarine Veterans of World War II to give the highest esteem and permanence to the lives of American naval officers and sailors who bravely sacrificed their lives, in both Pacific and Atlantic theaters of operation during the Second World War, to advance and preserve democracy. The War Memorial Center of Wisconsin states on its website, warmemorialcenter.org, that these very respected Still on Patrol historical markers were issued at least as far back as September 1988. They are intended to enshrine in perpetual honor the lives of 3,131 U. S. Navy submarine sailors and their 374 officers, who guided them in battle against the navies of Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany. The artfully embossed captions in bronze describing the Still on Patrol WW II Memorial Plaques affirm these statements. They further detail in bold capital English print all the specific names of the 52 sunken submarines of WWII’s U. S. Navy, such as the Albacore, Bonefish, Sealion, Seawolf, S-27, and S-28. At the top left and right-hand corners of the Still on Patrol WW II Memorial Plaque are also elegantly embossed in bronze the official seals and symbols of the U. S. Navy’s Submarine Warfare Insignia and Insignia of the U. S. Submarine Veterans of WW II, respectively. Just above the bottom center of the Still on Patrol Plaque is another gracefully embossed and deeply delineated large image of a U. S. Navy WWII submarine, swiftly splitting ocean waves, as it cruises the open waters of the high seas, looking for America’s maritime enemies. Directly below the raised large image of the WW II submarine on the Still on Patrol WW II Memorial Plaque are embossed two separate and moving comments regarding the dead and gallant American submariners of WW II, who valiantly served on the U. S. Navy’s sunken underwater war machines, and never again returned alive home, to both family and friend. One comment is movingly proclaimed from the mouth of WW II U. S. Navy Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, and the other stirring tribute is from WW II U. S. Navy Vice-Admiral C. A. Lockwood. They both read as follows: 1) WE SHALL NEVER FORGET THAT IT WAS OUR SUBMARINES THAT HELD THE LINES AGAINST THE ENEMY WHILE OUR FLEETS REPLACED LOSSES AND REPAIRED WOUNDS. FLEET ADMIRAL CHESTER W. NIMITZ, UNITED STATES NAVY, 1941-1945. 2) I CAN ASSURE YOU THAT THEY WENT DOWN FIGHTING AND THAT THEIR BROTHERS WHO SURVIVED THEM TOOK A GRIM TOLL ON OUR SAVAGE ENEMY TO AVENGE THEIR DEATHS. VICE ADMIRAL C. A. LOCKWOOD, JR., COMMANDER, UNITED STATES NAVY SUBMARINE FORCE, 1943-1946. Teresa Reid, a senior-level historian and curator for the Northport Historical Society, says that the “…Still on Patrol WW 2 Memorial Plaque at the VA Hospital at Northport, Long Island, was installed in 2013 to give the World War II U.S. Navy veterans of Nassau and Suffolk Counties the great admiration and honor due to them because of their bloody and historic sacrifices made for the American nation, at a most critical time of need.” The Historical Marker Database ( HMD.org ) lists the WW II U. S. Navy Still on Patrol Memorial Plaques as being posted at historical sites in as many as 28 different U. S. states. The submariners of World War Two who served and died on the Still on Patrol submarines are listed as “still on patrol” because they never returned home from the Second World War to their families and friends alive and (still to this day) are considered lost at sea. As members of America’s Greatest Generation, their lives and immortal tributes to defend American democracy will live on forever.  Although the Still on Patrol WWII Memorial Plaque is not the aesthetic masterpiece, as is Manca’s superlative eagle, it was not intended to be as such. The Still on Patrol WW II Memorial Plaque is a work of adequately conceived and delivered artistic craftsmanship. It is a work of solid and resilient creative competence. In being so, the Still on Patrol WW II Memorial Plaque (situated in Northport, NY) effectively transmits and conveys the American cultural ideals of democracy that American WWII veterans doggedly fought to preserve, as does Gehron, Seltzer, and Manca’s earlier World War II East Coast Memorial, on display in NYC. World War II's thematic and historical threads universally connect American war memorials. The Still on Patrol WW II Memorial Plaque (whose designer is currently unknown) should be interpreted philosophically and historically as an extension of the East Coast WW II Memorial. A viewer’s trip to personally see both is not wasted time or effort. About the Author: Michael Mauro DeBonis is a poet and a historian from Long Island, NY. A graduate of Suffolk County Community College (A.A. in Liberal Studies) and SUNY at Stony Brook (B.A. in English Literature), Michael’s work first appeared in The Brookhaven Times Newspapers. Michael’s latest poetry and prose may be found in The Lyric Magazine, The New York Almanack, and The New York History Review. Mr. DeBonis is dedicated to studying and learning the history of the great State of New York. BIBLIOGRAPHY: 1) DeBonis, Michael Mauro, Personal Visit to Manhattan’s East Coast World War II Memorial at Battery Park, NYC, April 2001. 2) DeBonis, Michael Mauro, Personal Visit to the Veterans Administration Hospital at Northport, Long Island, New York, September 19, 2023. 3) Reid, Teresa, Interview with Michael Mauro DeBonis at Northport, New York, October 3, 2023. 4) www.hmdb.org , Official Website of the Historical Marker Database.Org , situated throughout all 50 American states, Online Inquiry by Michael Mauro DeBonis, April 17, 2024. 5) www.metmuseum.org , Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC, Online Inquiry by Michael Mauro DeBonis, April 12, 2024. 6) www.nationalww2museum.org , The National World War Two Museum, New Orleans, Louisiana, Online Inquiry by Michael Mauro DeBonis, March 21, 2024. 7) www.nycgovparks.org , Official Website of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, New York City, New York, Online Inquiry by Michael Mauro DeBonis, February 23, 2024. 8) www.warmemorialcenter.org , Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Online Inquiry by Michael Mauro DeBonis, March 19, 2024.

By Harvey Strum , Russell Sage College Copyright © 2024 All rights reserved by the author Wikipedia image: Portrait of James Madison, one of the authors of the Federalist Papers , and the fourth President of the United States The Republican Party developed in New York during the first Washington administration around the core of George Clinton’s anti-Federalists. During the Revolution, they provided the leadership of the popular Whigs. Federalist foreign policies during Washington’s second term enabled the Republican Party to establish a mass following. “British policy on the high seas and on the frontier, coupled with the Federalist response to them,” historian Alfred Young concluded, “created the Republican movement in New York, enabling Republicans to catch full sail the fullest winds of nationalism to blow across the American political waters since the Revolution.” The growth of the Republican Party in the 1790s depended on the successful use of public hostility to Great Britain. [1] In 1794, John Jay negotiated a treaty with the British providing for British evacuation of the frontier posts in the West in exchange for American acceptance of British restrictions on trade with the West Indies, and a promise not to impose discriminatory duties on British goods. While the treaty pleased Federalists because it produced an Anglo-American entente, it angered Republicans because the British refused to recognize American maritime rights. “To Republicans, the battle against Jay’s Treaty, a betrayal of national interest, was a holy crusade; England, a den of iniquity; ‘Tory,’ the most odious epithet in their vocabulary.” Initial public outrage at the treaty’s abandonment of neutral rights aided the Republicans. However, Republican Anglophobia soon proved too strong for a majority of New Yorkers. Voters gave Republicans a majority of the state’s Congressional delegation in 1794 during the crest of anti-British anger over Jay’s Treaty. However, by the spring of 1795, New Yorkers found peace with the British more appealing. New Yorkers elected Federalist John Jay Governor and reelected Federalist majorities in the Assembly and State Senate. [2] New York Republicans took a more openly pro-French position than the national leadership of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. When the French requested bribes from American negotiators---XYZ Affair---Federalists capitalized on the public outrage in New York and portrayed the Republicans as seditious allies of the French. Federalists manipulated nationalism to their own advantage and seriously undermined the popularity of the Republicans. Adoption of the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798, which threatened basic civil liberties, backfired against the Federalists and allowed the Republicans to regain the political offensive. Thomas Jefferson’s successful attack on the foreign policy of President John Adams and the Alien and Sedition Acts aided the Republicans at the state and national levels. Thomas Jefferson defeated Adams for the presidency in the 1800 presidential election. Between 1800 and 1801, New York’s Republicans won control of the Assembly, State Senate, and the Congressional delegation. In 1801, Republican George Clinton defeated Federalist Stephen Van Rensselaer for governor. For the first time, Republicans controlled all branches of New York government. “A harsh and divisive dialogue pervaded the political atmosphere,” historian Paul Goodman observed in Massachusetts, and “men argued not over means but over ultimate ends.” In New York, as in Massachusetts, Republicans saw their opponents as aristocrats, British agents, and Tories. For the Federalists, Republicans were Jacobins, anarchists, democrats, and agents of France. Federalists believed Republican rule would lead to the destruction of “the foundations of society.” Eventually, “you will see the virtuous brought to the block and decapitated, their property plundered, and divided among the horde of wretches. They especially hated Jefferson, and when his presidency ended,  they thanked God for rescuing “us from the fangs of Jefferson.” [3] Federalism had been the dominant political force in New York since 1788, when forces in favor of the Constitution defeated the anti-Federalists led by George Clinton. Throughout the 1790s, Federalists managed to contain the growth of the Republicans until they stumbled over aspects of the foreign policies of Washington and Adams. By 1801, Federalists lost control of all branches of state government and went into rapid decline into political insignificance. A change in the electoral laws in 1804 led to the loss of one of their last bastions of political power, the New York City Common Council. By 1806, the Federalists held no seats in the State Senate, 19 of 112 Assembly seats, and two of seventeen seats in Congress. In 1804 and 1807, Federalists did not even bother to nominate gubernatorial candidates, hoping they could regain some power by endorsing one of the Republican candidates. The strategy failed so badly that it led to the death of the state’s leading Federalist in 1804, Alexander Hamilton. By 1801, the majority of New Yorkers, particularly in western New York, considered themselves Republicans. They identified with the principles of the Republican Party and with the state leadership of George Clinton. In the 1790s, the Republican Party developed independent of the leadership of Jefferson and Madison, and “there would have been a Republican Party in New York without them.” New York Republicans did not follow the lead of Jefferson and Madison in the Hamilton finance questions of 1789-90, and in the foreign policy crises of 1794-96, they took a more extreme anti-British position than either Virginian. While Republicans backed Jefferson in 1796 and 1800, they did so primarily out of hostility to Federalists, rather than loyalty to Jefferson. According to Alfred Young, “New York Democratic Republicans cannot accurately be called New York Jeffersonians.” [4] Republicans dominated New York politics after 1800 because they identified their party as the party of the people. They projected an image of democracy, a faith in equalitarianism. As an example, when Daniel Tompkins ran for governor in 1807, he ran as the farmer’s boy, just one of the people he hoped to represent. While many Federalists expected the public to defer to men of superior merit, virtue, or wealth, Republicans emphasized that men of merit were “still only considered as equals.” Republicans cautioned voters against electing Federalists,” men whose aristocratic doctrine teaches that the rights and representative authority of the people are vested in a few proud nobles.” Many Federalists felt ill at ease campaigning. “Saving one’s country” proved “a nauseous piece of business” to Washington Irving, who in 1807 “talked handbill fashion with the demagogues and shook hands with the mob.” As late as 1815, William North complained of “suffering the worst of all evils…to one who hates the manners of the Vulgar, an evil sufficiently great, that of mixing and battling with the herd, all folly, filth, ignorance, and drink.” In spite of the efforts to convey the image of representing the best interests of the people and the state, Federalists could not overcome “the dread of federalism entertained by the great body of the people.” By combining equalitarianism, nationalism, and Anglophobia, Republicans won the support of the majority of New Yorkers. [5] In the 1790s, the Federalists, as a party in power, discouraged the mobilization of public opinion, rejected the use of political organization, and frowned upon the expression of public opinion between the elections. Federalists denounced democratic clubs as the work of French Jacobins, as unruly revolutionary cells. The Federalist Party stood for a strong national government and a strong executive. Republicans glorified states’ rights in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions and popular protests against Jay’s Treaty, Alien and Sedition Acts, and the undeclared Quasi-War of 1798-1800 with France. After 1800, a partial reversal of roles turned New York’s Federalists into states’ rights advocates and into vigorous opponents of the nationalist policies of Jefferson and Madison. Federalists became champions of party organization, public protests, and constant agitation against the policies of Jefferson and Madison. Embracing new methods of party organization, Federalists founded Washington societies and, in the Capital District, Trojan Whig societies to get the faithful to the polls and to engage in public opposition to the foreign policies of Republican administrations. Republicans rallied around nationalism and the policies of the Jefferson and Madison administrations, but only if it appeared to give them an edge in New York politics. The various factions within the Republican Party used nationalism and states’ rights as weapons against the Federalists and their political enemies within the Republican Party. While upholding the popularity and democratic nature of their political clubs, like Tammany, Republicans denounced Federalist political clubs as a nest of Tories and treason. Ironically, both parties competed over which political organization represented the best expression of the Revolutionary tradition and the legitimate inheritors of the values of 1776. In the 1790s, the struggle to oust the Federalists from state and national power provided the incentive that kept the faction-ridden Republicans united. With the elimination of the Federalist threat in 1801, Republicans waged a vigorous internecine war for control of the party. During the early 1790s, George Clinton, a popular governor aided by his nephew De Witt Clinton, dominated the Republican Party. By the mid-1790s, the Livingstons, led by Robert R. Livingston and Aaron Burr, emerged to challenge Clinton. “While there was never any love between Clinton, Livingston, and Burr,” as long as the Federalists remained in power, the three major Republican leaders cooperated against their common enemy. [6] Jefferson’s election in 1800 provided an opportunity for the newly elected president to turn New York’s feuding factions into Jeffersonians. By failing to use the power of federal patronage, he left New York’s party leaders free to settle their own affairs and continue their internecine struggle. Rank and file Republicans identified with the national leadership of Thomas Jefferson and later James Madison. Local party leaders, especially the Clintons, ran the party independently and with little regard for the wishes of Jefferson. Party leaders identified themselves as Clintonians, Burrites, Lewisites (Livingston-Morgan Lewis faction), or Martlingmen (Tammany), not Jeffersonians except when it became politically advantageous to do so. After 1801, these factions fought for control of the Republican Party. In 1804, George Clinton accepted the Vice-Presidential post under Jefferson. Aaron Burr, former Vice-President of the United States, tried to succeed Clinton as Governor. The Clintonians, in cooperation with the Livingston faction, backed Morgan Lewis, Livingston’s son-in-law. Lewis won, and Burr blamed his defeat on Alexander Hamilton killing New York’s most prominent Federalist in a duel. Burr’s defeat and disgrace removed him from New York politics. His supporters tended to merge with the Martlingmen in New York City. George Clinton’s assumption of the Vice-President’s office left control of the Clintonians to De Witt Clinton. By 1806, Clinton and the Livingston-Lewisite faction split, and the 1806 and 1807 state elections turned into a contest for power between the factions. In 1807, Clinton challenged the reelection of Morgan Lewis by nominating Daniel Tompkins, a farmer’s son, as his challenger. The death of Hamilton further undermined the Federalists, and as in 1804, they were reduced to supporting one of the two Republican candidates. In 1804, most Federalists backed Burr, but switched to Lewis in 1807. Tompkins’ victory left the Clintonians in total control of the Republican Party and New York State, but only temporarily. The internecine political struggle within the Republican Party did not end with the triumph of the Clintonians in 1807 or the resurgence of Federalism in 1808. When Clintonians formed a coalition with part of the Burrites in 1806, supporters of Morgan Lewis objected to the alliance, and the Livingston-Lewisite faction reached out to the Martlingmen, who met at Abraham Martling’s Tavern in New York City. Since Martling served as sachem of the Tammany Society, the Martlingmen soon became synonymous with Tammany. Ironically, Tammany’s leaders included a number of former close associates of Aaron Burr, including Mathew L. Davis, Burr’s closest political associate. Hatred of the Clintonians, especially De Witt Clinton, united this strange coalition. By 1811, they successfully challenged Clinton’s control of the Republican Party in New York City but failed to generate much support upstate. During the 1811 race for Lieutenant-Governor, Tammany backed Marinus Willett only polled five percent of the vote when he challenged De Witt Clinton and Federalist Nicholas Fish. Clinton easily defeated Fish and Willett. In 1812, members of Tammany moved into their new headquarters near Martling’s Tavern, Tammany Hall, further cementing the identification of the Tammany name with the Martlingmen. Tammany added to the divisions and confusion in Republican ranks by expressing deep hostility to immigrants fresh from the bogs of Ireland. Leaders of the Tammany faction refused to nominate Irish Catholic candidates. The anti-Irish, anti-Catholic nativism lasted until the flood tide of Irish immigrants forced Tammany to relent in 1815. Members of Tammany belatedly realized they needed the votes of this growing immigrant population in New York City, especially since De Witt Clinton developed strong bonds with the Irish American community. [7] Trying to outflank the Clintonians, upstate Lewisite leaders Morgan Lewis, Robert Livingston, and John Nicholas joined with Tammany’s stalwarts, portraying themselves as champions of Jefferson and his successor James Madison. They described themselves as Madisonian when George Clinton appeared to challenge Madison for the presidential nomination in 1808. Later, in 1812, they backed Madison against De Witt Clinton’s bid for the presidency. By vigorously endorsing Jefferson and Madison and their major foreign policies — the embargo, non-intercourse, and war—Lewisites and Tammany hoped to win the endorsement of Presidents Jefferson and Madison in their efforts to destroy the political power of the Clintons. Realizing the potential political danger the embargo posed, the Clintons initially criticized the embargo because of its negative impact on the economy of New York. However, De Witt Clinton’s public attack on the law angered many Republican Party activists and provided an issue for anti-Clinton Republicans to use in their efforts to capture control of the party. De Witt Clinton’s handpicked gubernatorial candidate, Daniel Tompkins, solidly supported the presidential measure. After realizing his opposition to the embargo jeopardized his control of the party, Clinton backtracked and endorsed the law. This prevented a rebellion of pro-embargo Clintonians but drove his close political associate and editor of the Republican leaning New York American Citizen, James Cheetham, into the political wilderness. He was no longer a spokesman for the Clintons, and his past positions alienated him from the Lewisites and Tammany. Cheetham tried to form his own faction, consisting of Irish Americans, and he used his newspaper to harass both the Clintonians and Tammany in New York City. In spite of the resurgence of Federalism produced by the embargo, Republicans continued to fight for control of the party. After the 1809 Federalist victory, warring factions in the Republican Party negotiated a compromise in the summer of 1809 and during the spring elections in 1810. Federalist success drove them together, but their deep hostility prevented a lasting reconciliation. Compromise did not come easily. Tammany’s organizing chairman, Mathew L. Davis, expecting Clintonian opposition to Tammany’s pick for Assembly candidates, swore “an eternal war against every mother son of them.” Caught between the Clintonians and the Federalists, Lewisites described themselves as a ”poor set of true Republicans between Hawk and Buzzard.” Warring Republicans managed to strike a deal. Clintonians in New York City backed the Tammany slate for the Assembly. All Republicans supported the reelection of  Daniel Tompkins for governor, and the Clintonians endorsed Morgan Lewis for State Senator. For the first time since 1801, Republicans waged a political campaign united by their mutual hostility to the Federalists. [8] With the Republican comeback in 1810, open warfare broke out anew. The 1811 race for Lieutenant-Governor provided an opportunity for a test of strength. Clintonians easily defeated Tammany’s Marinus Willett and  Federalist Nicholas Fish by re-electing De Witt Clinton. However, when Clinton ran for the presidency in 1812, opposed the war, and sought an alliance with the Federalists, he split his followers. Prominent Clintonians, like Governor Tompkins and Martin Van Buren, abandoned Clinton. Many of his Irish American supporters, who hated the British, favored the war and rejected  Clinton. By 1813, his opponents within the Republican Party seized control as Madisonians, and Clinton’s quixotic and foolish attempt to block Governor Tompkins’ reelection in 1813 backfired, destroying his credibility for the remainder of the war. President Madison got his revenge against Clinton by dismissing Clintonians from all federal offices in New York. Politically isolated, Clinton depended on the Federalists to retain the Mayor’s office in New York City. Just as Burr in 1804 and Lewis in 1807, De Witt Clinton discovered that political alliances with Federalists alienated Republican voters. While Republicans fought each other, Federalists faced their own internal disputes. Between 1798 and 1800, the Federalists split into pro-Adams and Hamiltonian factions. The defeat of Adams and the death of Hamilton ended this division. Younger members of the party disagreed with their more deferential bound elders and proved quite willing to reach out to the masses and politic with the same vigor and democratic rhetoric of their rivals in the Republican Party. In Albany County, a repeated conflict developed between the Dutch Americans who controlled nominations and the desire of more recent arrivals from New England for a share of political positions. Disagreements also surfaced over the allocation of patronage appointments when Federalists won in 1809 and 1812-13. An especially bitter battle developed in 1810 because a nationalist faction emerged in New York City that endorsed the foreign policies of President Madison. Led by Oliver Wolcott, Jr, and Peter Radcliff, a faction within the Federalists wanted the party to adopt a more “American” stance and expel the Tories from the party. Other Federalists, like Robert Troup and Gouverneur Morris, strongly disagreed with endorsing foreign policies promoted by Madison, a man of “not only reprehensible but impeachable conduct.” Historian Lee Benson’s research into Jacksonian New York asked other historians to look for the ethno-social conflict in political loyalties. Within the Federalist and Republican parties, this appeared in the Yankee-Dutch conflict among the Federalists in Albany County and the Yorker-Irish split in the New York City Republican Party. In 1814, a group of Federalists led by Oliver Wolcott and Gulian Verplanck broke with the Federalists in New York City and organized the pro-war American Federalist Party, nicknamed the Coodies. [9] As an example of the generation gap between younger Federalists and the older members of the party, the Federalist Party pamphlet of 1808 in Schenectady County revealed the fundamental differences. Federalists in Schenectady articulated in greater detail the rights of the citizens to dissent from government policies and throw out of office men who betrayed the public trust. The American government was formed “for the people, and not the people for the government.” In the United States, “all power emanates from the people.“ Schenectady Federalists articulated a vision of people’s role in government similar to the Republicans. While many of the older Federalists believed in a speaking elite and silent democracy---deferential politics, Schenectady Federalists expressed a commitment to the popular will and veneration of popular sovereignty. Older Federalists, like John Jay and Gouverneur Morris, complained of the Republicans courting popular opinion and flattering the multitude. Schenectady’s Federalists willingly courted public opinion. They encouraged the public to criticize the government and vote. By encouraging the public to participate in the political process, Federalists sped the democratization of New York’s political structure. [10]             From 1801-1807, the Federalists remained confined to their areas of political strength, St. Lawrence County, and parts of the North Country; Southern Tier, Upper Hudson Valley, parts of the Mohawk Valley, especially Oneida County, and the lower three wards of New York City. By making deals with Aaron Burr in 1804 and Morgan Lewis in 1807, they tried unsuccessfully to play Republican factions off against one another. Their coalitions with the Burrties in 1804 and Lewisites in 1807 failed to win them political power. Between 1801 and 1808, the Federalists were a party in search of an issue. In 1807, Federalists turned to nativism. They hoped native New Yorkers’ hostility toward Irish Catholics would provide the catalyst for a political resurrection. The Federalist campaign of 1807 combined nativism with criticism of the foreign policies of President Jefferson. For the Federalists, the Irish symbolized the worst evils of Republican rule. To the Federalists, the Irish were anti-British and would embroil the United States in a second war with Great Britain. To stress their Americanism and opposition to immigration, Federalists became the American Party in 1807. Privately, Federalists expressed the same concerns about the Irish as they did publicly during the 1807 campaign. David Ogden, a lawyer and son-in-law of Gouverneur Morris, feared the Federalists could not carry New York City, because “this city is completely ruled by Irishmen.”  During the 1807 campaign, Irish Republicans and Federalists fought each other on the streets of the Seventh Ward. Street brawls were not unusual in the sometimes chaotic politics of New York City. Ironically, the Lewisites joined the anti-Irish bandwagon in 1807. Supporters of Governor Lewis accused the Irish of brawling, drunkenness, crime, and clannishness. Federalist William Van Ness optimistically reported that “the conduct of the Irish and French raised [the party] beyond all former example.” Van Ness could not count. Federalists only picked up five seats in the Assembly from 1806, and the Clintonian Republicans won a decisive victory over the Lewisties and Federalists. Federalist William Wilson blamed the Federalist defeat on the “United Irishmen and French Jacobins.” [11] President Thomas Jefferson’s foreign policy decisions turned around the fortunes of New York’s Federalists and gave the Federalists the first real chance in a decade to limit Republican domination of the state. The deterioration in Anglo-American relations after the Chesapeake Affair in June 1807 led the President to ask Congress to adopt the embargo on trade. Duplicating the tactics of the Jay’s Treaty fight, Republicans campaigned on Anglophobia, American nationalism, and the legacy of the American Revolution. In 1806, during the Leander Affair, Republicans successfully manipulated American hostility toward the British, but the adoption of the embargo on trade in December 1807 proved a Republican foreign and domestic policy blunder. The economic hardship produced by the embargo was more important to New Yorkers than appeals to Anglophobia, the Revolution, or patriotism. Farmers in upstate New York engaged in widespread smuggling of produce and livestock to Canada for shipment via Montreal to Europe. Even in New York City and Long Island, farmers and merchants managed to smuggle goods aboard British ships off New York Harbor or in Long Island Sound. Profit proved more persuasive than patriotism. In upstate, smuggling became so widespread that President Jefferson declared the Lake Champlain region of New York and Vermont in a state of insurrection on 19 April 1808 and authorized the use of the militia and federal troops to stop the smuggling. Jefferson also wanted to declare the Oswego region and neighboring communities on Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence in a state of insurrection, but Governor Tompkins, fearing the political consequences of a second proclamation of insurrection, persuaded Jefferson to refrain from issuing the proclamation. Fearing that the embargo would lead to an Anglo-American war, Barent Gardenier urged fellow Federalists  to create a public outcry against war in the state legislature “to catch the public ear.” Federalists introduced an amendment to the Assembly’s reply to the speech by Governor Tompkins assailing the embargo and the President’s handling of Franco-American relations. Then, on 28 March 1808, at the Albany meeting of the state’s Federalists, the party adopted an election address attacking the embargo and the foreign policies of President Jefferson. Their attack worked, and Federalists doubled their seats in the Assembly, jumping from twenty-four to forty-seven, and increased their share of the Congressional delegation from two in 1806 to eight in 1808 (8 of 17). For the first time since 1800, Federalists elected a State Senator. Jefferson’s foreign policy and the impact of the embargo on the lives of New Yorkers brought back the Federalists from political oblivion. As one example, the embargo destroyed the prosperity of Hudson, “sounding the death knell to a booming economy.” As Martin Van Buren and other Republicans, like former governor Morgan Lewis, admitted, “the embargo and the idea of French influence produced a most extraordinary effect.” [12] Events during the 1808 election suggest the chaos of New York politics during the early national period. Political emotions ran high in Columbia County in April 1808. Federalist Elisha Williams challenged Martin Van Buren to a debate on the embargo. To ensure a sympathetic audience, Van Buren brought Republicans from Claverack and Hudson. When Van Buren arrived with his Republican legion, Williams refused to debate him. Republicans took control of the meeting hall and held a pro-embargo meeting while Williams and the Federalists regrouped in another part of the building. Van Buren told De Witt Clinton that the “Federalists feared a debate.” During the first party system, political opponents rarely debated and showed up at meetings to heckle or silence each other's opposition. [13] A typical incident took place in New York City in late April when a donnybrook broke out at a meeting of pro-Federalist sailors. When Federalist Cadwallader Colden delivered an anti-embargo speech, a group of Republican sailors drowned him out. In reaction to “the tumult and confusion,” pro-Federalist sailors left while the Republicans took over the hall, adopting pro-embargo resolutions. In retaliation, a mob of Federalists marched into the heavily Republican Sixth Ward carrying an American flag, shouting “no Republicans, down with Jacobins.” Two days of post-election rioting by Republicans incensed the Federalists against the Irish. On 28 April 1808, a mob of 600 Irish Americans and Irish immigrants marched down the Sixth Ward shouting Kill the Federalists. Rioting on the night of the 29th led to the deaths of two men. William Coleman, the Federalist editor of the New York Evening Post, blamed “the tribe fresh from the bogs of Ireland.” [14] Many Federalists did not understand the nature of their political resurrection. Most of their votes came from citizens rejecting the foreign policies of Thomas Jefferson and the embargo, not embracing the principles of Federalism. Optimistic about the future, Federalist Henry Van Schaack  predicted we “shall do much better than we have done now.” Jefferson’s reliance on the embargo in 1808-09 turned Van Schaack’s prediction into reality. Republican appeals revealed a siege mentality. Failure to support the embargo, warned New York City Republicans, “threatened the existence of our Republic.” Republicans portrayed the embargo as a test between the free republican government in America and the tyrants of Europe. As David Gardiner argued, “we have asked for nothing but justice...which our independence and honor will never allow us to relinquish.” They blamed the failure of the embargo to successfully pressure the British into respecting American neutral rights on the Federalist traitors in league with the British. Republicans demanded the expulsion of the Tories from the United States, and some advocated invading Canada and driving out the Tories who settled in British North America after the Revolution. Once again, Republicans wrapped themselves in the legacy of the Revolution and Anglophobia to motivate voters to ignore the economic consequences of the embargo and counter the upsurge in support for the Federalists. Tammany could not put aside its hostility toward the Irish and refused to nominate Irish Catholics, which amused the Federalists. “A deadly animosity seems to have arisen,” Federalist John Foote noted, “between the imported and home-made Jacobins.” [15]             Public hostility to the embargo and Republican divisions encouraged Federalists to increase their organizational activity. Beginning in July 1808, Gulian Verplanck, Richard Varick, and Isaac Sebring established a chapter of the Washington Benevolent Society in New York City. In Stillwater in Saratoga County, younger Federalists joined the United Brethren of Washington. Younger Federalists created the Whig Society in Troy because younger Federalists wanted to preserve “everything dear and sacred” from corrupt Republican rule. In New York City, a split temporarily developed between younger Federalists led by Gulian Verplanck, who wanted to exclude former Tories and adopt a more nationalistic expression for American neutral rights. Accepting the advice of William Coleman and Robert Troup Federalists buried their differences and united to defeat the Republicans. Federalist organizational activities brought voters out to condemn the embargo and the foreign policy of President Jefferson and later President James Madison. Federalists organized meetings throughout the state to attack the embargo and the new enforcement act as an unconstitutional danger to American liberties. Using the discontent created by the embargo-induced depression, Federalists turned that state election into a referendum on Jeffersonian foreign policy. Their strategy worked, winning five of the eight contested State Senate seats and 63 of the 112 Assembly seats. Federalists won a majority in the Assembly for the first time in ten years. In the 1809 state elections in New York, a majority of voters repudiated the foreign policy of President Jefferson. Surviving evidence suggests that the embargo increased voter turnout. Political competition between Federalists and Republicans over the wisdom of the embargo brought voters to the polls. In 1809, the increase in voter participation benefited the Federalists because of their opposition to the embargo [16] New York’s 1810 election showed the importance of foreign policy issues in local and state politics. President Madison’s foreign policy dominated the Federalist-controlled Assembly, and the Republican Governor Daniel Tompkins. Federalists and Republicans debated foreign policy over the summer of 1809 and in the November Common Council elections in New York City. Madison’s foreign policy became the main issue for Federalists and Republicans in the spring of 1810 elections for the state legislature, governor, and Congress. Republicans called the Federalists Tories, lackeys of the British, and claimed the Federalists wanted war with France. Their opponents viewed continued Republican rule as a disaster that would lead to more embargoes and war with Great Britain. The 1810 elections revealed the connections between foreign policy and local and state politics. In November 1809, New York City voters went to the polls to elect the Common Council. Federalists and Republicans ran their campaign not on local issues but on foreign policy. Editor Zachariah Lewis predicted that Federalists would have the support of “all who deprecate a useless embargo and unnecessary war.” Republicans described their political opponents as Tories and agents of Great Britain. Both parties claimed to inherit the Revolutionary legacy. Ninth Ward Federalists reminded voters “they remembered the plains of Lexington and the bloody field at Monmouth, where Federalists led our patriots to victory. Republican divisions between Tammany and Clintonians aided the Federalists, who won fifteen of the twenty Council seats. Federalists interpreted their victory as evidence that the people would reject men who are “advocates of embargoes, non-intercourse, and war.” [17]             The 1810 campaign began with a direct confrontation between the Federalists in the Assembly and Governor Tompkins over supporting or condemning the foreign policy of President Madison. During the 1810 election campaign, Republicans denounced former British Minister Francis Jackson for “his vile attempts…to evade…the just claims of our government.” To the Republicans, the Federalists put the interests of Great Britain first, ahead of American neutral rights. Federalists argued that Republicans followed the orders of the Jacobin clubs of France. Republicans retook a majority in the Assembly, and Federalist congressional seats dropped from eight to five. Federalists won 41 Assembly seats. Their only surprise gain was six of the eleven seats from New York City. Republicans blamed the eight hundred African American voters and made plans to restrict their right to vote. Governor Tompkins easily won reelection. Without the embargo, the Federalists' efforts to blame President Madison for the failure of Anglo-American relations failed. This time, attacking England proved more effective than censuring President Madison and Republican foreign policy. [18] An apparent improvement in Franco-American relations in September 1810 and the continued stalemate in Anglo-American relations troubled New York’s Federalists. After President Madison declared on 2 November 1810 that the French had repealed their decrees that negatively impacted American neutral rights, Federalists worried about a further deterioration in Anglo-American relations. In the state elections of 1811, both parties attempted to use foreign policy against their opponents. Anglophobia worked better for the Republicans, and the Federalist critique of Madison’s foreign policies with France and Great Britain failed to move the voters. Republicans retained control of the Assembly, and De Witt Clinton won election as Lieutenant-Governor. [19] When Anglo-American relations continued to deteriorate, President Madison opted for a new embargo and war in the spring of 1812. A new embargo allowed Federalists to take power, winning a majority of seats once again in the 1812 spring state elections. Foreign policy dominated the campaign. In the spring of 1812, Congress approved a new ninety-day embargo. When news reached New York City on 3 April 1812, fifty ships rushed to leave port, and as Jonathan Ogden noted, “ a like confusion I have never seen.” The embargo and threat of war became a major issue in the election. Thanks to the foreign policy decisions of President Madison, the Federalists were back in power, winning three Senate seats and a majority (60 seats) in the Assembly. Results of the election suggested a majority of New York voters rejected renewed commercial restrictions and war. Divisions about the war, and initially splits within Republican ranks, became apparent when eleven of the fourteen Congressmen present during the war voted along with one of the state’s U.S. Senators, who voted against the war. Clintonian Republicans initially opposed war. Four Federalists and seven Republican congressmen voted against the war. Later, at the end of the year, when New Yorkers went to the polls to elect members of Congress, they selected 19 anti-war Federalists, one anti-war Republican, and seven pro-war Republicans. New York sent the largest anti-war delegation of any state to Congress, suggesting that a majority of the electorate in New York rejected President Madison’s decision to go to war. [20] While Governor Tompkins won re-election in 1813, his vote totals were half of 1810, and the Federalists, campaigning against the war, retained their majority in the Assembly in the spring 1813 state elections. Public sentiment changed in the winter of 1813-14 because of British raids on the Niagara Frontier, forcing thousands of New Yorkers to flee eastward to the comparative safety of Batavia to avoid the British and their Native American allies. Reacting to the reality that New York had become a major battleground of the war, voters elected twenty-one pro-war Republicans to Congress in the spring of 1814, and Republicans won two-thirds of the Assembly seats. However, the less-than-glorious outcome of the war allowed Federalists to make one more political comeback, denouncing the war and the foreign policy of President Madison. Federalists picked up twenty seats and almost tied the Assembly at 64 Republicans to 62 Federalists. In 1814, the Republican majority of thirty-two seats dropped to two in 1815, hardly a ringing endorsement of the War of 1812. In looking at New York politics between 1790 and 1815, four themes dominate: the impact of foreign policy on state and local politics, the factionalism of the two political parties, especially among Republicans, chaos in the election process and afterward, as the 1808 election demonstrated, and high voter turnout due to the increased competition between the Federalists and Republicans. [21] About the author: Professor of history and political science, program director for history at Russell Sage College. Most recent publication, "Not only Distressing but Truly Alarming," New York City and the Embargo Act of 1807," Gotham, online, August 21, 2024.               Bibliography [1] Alfred Young, The Democratic Republicans of New York (Chapel Hill, 1967), 572. [2] Ibid, 259. [3] Paul Goodman, The Democratic-Republicans of Massachusetts (Cambridge, 1964), 72; New York Evening Post, 25-30 April 1807; Robert Morris to William Ludlow, 3 June 1809, Box 3, Ludlow Family Papers, Albany Institute of History and Art, Albany, N.Y. [4] Young, Democratic Republicans, 578. [5] John T. Irving, Oration Delivered Before the Tammany Society, July 4, 1809 (New York, 1809; Duanesburgh Republican Nomination, March 17, 1810 (Duanesburgh, 1810), Broadside, Schenectady County Historical Society, Schenectady, New York; George Hellman, Washington Irving, Esquire (New York, 1925), 70; William North to William Eustis, 27 April 1815, William North Papers, Manuscript Division, New York State Library ,Albany, New York; William Wilson to Ebenezer Foote, 3 May 1807, Ebenezer Foote Papers, NYSL. Note: Duanesburg today is a rural community about nine miles west of Schenectady. [6] Young, Democratic Republicans, 577. Also, see John Brooke, Columbia Rising (Chapel Hill, 2010), 200-203, 305-306. For Federalist political organizing, see, for example, Federal Young Men of Schaghticoke to Trojan Whig Society, 9 February 1810. Whig Society Papers, NYSL. [7] Jerome Mushkat, Tammany: Evolution of a Political Machine, 1789-1865 (Syracuse, 1971), 25-40.For further background on Republican divisions, see Craig Hanyan, De Witt Clinton: Years of Molding, 1769-1807 (New York, 1988); Steven Siry, De Witt Clinton and the American Political Economy, Sectionalism, Politics, and American Ideology, 1787-1828 (New York, 1990); Craig and Mary Hanyan, De Witt Clinton and the Rise of the People’s Men, (New York, 1996); Also see Tammany Society Toasts, Box 25, Tammania, Kilroe Collection, Special Collections, Columbia University, New York City; Gustavus Myers, History of Tammany Hall (New York, 1917, reprint 1968), Chapters six and seven. [8] Mathew L. Davis to William P. Van Ness, 2 January 1810, Mathew L. Davis Papers, Misc. Mss., New-York Historical Society (N-YHS), New York City; Jonathan Thompson to John Gardiner, 20 April 1810, Malcolm Wiley Collection, University of Minnesota; Also, see Mushkat, Tammany, 39-40; Henry Rutgers to Daniel Tompkins, 21 March 1810, Derek Brinckerhoff to Daniel Tompkins, 9 March 1810, Box 6, Daniel Tompkins Papers, NYSL; Martin Van Buren to De Witt Clinton, 9, 19 April 1810, De Witt Clinton Papers, Columbia University; John Kaminski, George Clinton; Yeoman Politician of the New Republic (Madison, Wisc., 1993), 270-74. [9] David Fischer, The Revolution of American Conservatism (New York, 1965); Ronald Formisano, “Deferential-Participant Politics: The Early Republic’s Political Culture, 1789-1840, American Political Science Review, 68(1974): 473-87. Rudolph and Margaret Pasler, New Jersey’s Federalists (Cranbury, N.J., 1975); Oliver Wolcott, Jr. to Frederick Wolcott, 7 December 1809, Alice Wolcott Collection, Litchfield Historical Society, Litchfield Connecticut; Robert Troup to Nathaniel Pendleton, 23 January 1810, Rufus King Papers, N-YHS; Gouverneur Morris to Abraham Van Vechten, 6 January 1810, Vol 19, Reel 3, Gouverneur Morris Papers, Library of Congress; Abraham Van Vechten to Ebenezer Foote, 13 January 1810, Ebenezer Foote Papers, NYSL; Lee Benson, The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy; New York a Test Case (Princeton, 1961) [10] Schenectady County Federalist Party, A Report (Schenectady, 1808), 3,4, 6,7, 10, 11, 14. Schenectady City Federalist Committee to Timothy Pickering, 25 May 1808, No. 329, Reel 28, Timothy Pickering Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, Massachusetts; John Winne to Abraham Ten Broeck, 15 April 1808, Ten Broeck Family Papers, Albany Institute; Robert Troup to Rufus King, 7 March 1808, King Papers, N-YHS. [11] New York People’s Friend, 2 May 1807; New York Evening Post, 1 May 1807; David Ogden to William Meredith, 6 May 1807, Meredith Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; Robert Troup to Rufus King, 24 April 1807, King Papers, N-YHS; Daniel Hale to Ebenezer Foote, 7 April 1807, Ebenezer Foote Papers, NYSL; William Van Ness to Ebenezer Foote, 11 April 1807, Ebenezer Foote Papers, NYSL; William Wilson to Ebenezer Foote, 3 May 1807, Ebenezer Foote Papers, NYSL. [12] Barent Gardenier to Rufus King, 26 January 1808, Rufus King to Barent Gardenier, 24 January 1808, King Papers, N-YHS; Journal of the Assembly, 31 st Sess., 1808, 45-7; Federal Republican Party, Address to the Electors (Albany, 1808); Francis Adrian van der Kemp to John Adams, 17 March 1808, Reel 405, Adams Family Papers, MHS; Robert Troup to William Jones, 27 February 1808, Pulteney Estate Letter book, Cornell University Library, Ithaca, New York; Brooke, Columbia Rising, 330; Morgan Lewis to James Madison, 16 May 1808, Reel 10, James Madison Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. [13] Martin Van Buren to De Witt Clinton, 16 April 1808, De Witt Clinton Papers, Columbia University; Also, for Van Buren’s vigorous defense of the embargo, Donald Cole, Martin Van Buren, and the American Political System (Princeton, 1984), 32 [14] New York Evening Post, 26-30 April 1808; New York American Citizen, 28 April 1808. [15] Henry Van Schaack to Stephen Van Rensselaer, 2 May 1808, #2180, NYSL. Also, see Dirck Ten Broeck to Abraham Ten Broeck, 9 September 1808, Box 1, Ten Broeck Family Papers, Albany Institute and Henry Glen and the Schenectady Federalist Committee to Timothy Pickering, 27 May 1808, Reel 28, Timothy Pickering Papers, MHS; New York American Citizen, 9. 12 July 1808; Kingston Plebian, 22 November 1808; New York City Republicans, Address of the Republicans of the City and County of New York, September 15, 1808 (New York, 1808); David Gardiner to John L. Gardiner, 18 July 1808, Malcolm Wiley Collection, MnU; John Foote to Ebenezer Foote, 14 April 1809, Ebenezer Foote Papers, NYSL.  [16] Albany Federalist Committee, to Ebenezer Foote, 17 January 1809, Ebenezer Foote Papers, Library of Congress; Fischer, American Conservatism, 60-61. 83, 118-20; Dixon Ryan Fox, “Washington Benevolent Society,” Columbia University Quarterly, 21 (January 1919): 31; Stillwater United Brethren, of the Washington School to the Trojan Whig Society, 5 April 1809, Jacob Houghton to Waterford Federal Young Men, 15 April 1809, Broadside, Trojan Whig Society, Albany Federal Young Men to the Trojan Whig Society, 20 March 1809, Oneida American Whig Society to Trojan Whig Society, 20 April 1809, Whig Society Papers, NYSL; Robert Troup to Rufus King, 4 April 1809, King Papers, N-YHS; William Coleman to Timothy Pickering, 14 January 1809, Reel 29, Pickering Papers, MHS; Cadwallader Colden to Ebenezer Foote, 11 April 1809, Ebenezer Foote Papers, NYSL. [17] New York Commercial Advertiser, 21-24. 1809; New York American Citizen, 26 November to 1 December 1809; Muskat, Tammany, 39; George Newbold to n.n. 24 November 1809, BV Newbold, N-YHS. [18] Albany Balance, February-March 1810; Samuel L. Mitchell to Catherine Mitchell, 13 February 1810, Samuel Mitchell Papers, Museum of the City of New York; Hugh Hastings, ed.. The Public Papers of Daniel D. Tompkins, Governor of New York State, 1807-1817 (Albany, 1898-1902), Volume II, 238-40; New York Commercial Advertiser, 7 May 1810; New York Public Advertiser, 8 May 1810. [19] See Harvey Strum, “The 1811 Election in New York,” National Social Science Journal, 57:2 (2022): 78-85. [20] Jonathan Ogden to Holsons and Bolton, 4 April 1812, and Jonathan Ogden to Robert Ogden, 4 April 1812, Jonathan Ogden Letterbook N-YHS; Nathaniel Griswold to Captain H Smith, 6 and 7 April 1812, War of 1812 folder, Box 1, Hurd Papers, Yale University Library., [21] For some Republican opposition to war see Thomas Sammons to John Lansing, 8 May, 17 June 1812, Thomas Sammons Papers, Fort Johnson Historical Society, Fort Johnson, New York; Samuel Mitchell to Tibbits and Lane, 19 May 1812, Tibbits Family Papers, NYSL; Pierre Van Cortlandt to Edmund Genet, 1 June 1812, Reel 9, Edmund Genet Papers, Library of Congress. For 1815, see the pro-war Republican Members of the Legislature, Address to the Electors of the State of New York, April 10, 1815, (Albany 1815; Poughkeepsie Republican Herald, March-April 1815; For Federalists, see Onondaga Register, February-March 1815; Poughkeepsie Journal, 22 February-1 March 1815; New York Evening Post, February-March 1815.

By Paul Lubienecki, PhD Copyright ©2024 All rights reserved by the author. Wikipedia image of the town sign by Pooley1999 The religious persecutions in Europe, particularly in the German-speaking regions during the 18th and 19th centuries, generated a mass influx of religious sects into America. Political and religious turmoil in the German territories produced a wave of immigrants seeking religious freedom, political autonomy, and abundant resources. In the early decades of the 19th century, the idea of a “New Germany” was promoted based on a mixture of paternalism and romantic adventurism. However, the urge to immigrate to the United States centered on the notions of land and liberty in contrast to the distressed conditions and state of affairs in the petty German kingdoms. [1] Religious concerns ultimately decided the issue. A primary justification for most Germans settling in America was based on their religious convictions. In 1817, Emperor Frederick Wilhelm III sought to secure his rule through a forced merger of the Lutheran and Reformed Churches into the United Evangelical Church of Prussia. He formatted an official United Church Agenda, or liturgical order of service, which prescribed the forms and orders to be followed in all churches. Many of the pastors and churches complied.[2] However, some Lutherans refused to believe this new Church, and its doctrines compromised their religious beliefs and convictions.  Inspirationists Many others were already in rebellion with the Lutheran Church for its ritualistic form of worship, more akin to Roman Catholicism than Protestant spirituality. A hundred years earlier, two leaders of this dissent within the Lutheran denomination were Eberhard Gruber and Johann Rock. Gruber, a Lutheran clergyman, and Rock, son of a Lutheran minister, founded what was deemed a cult known as the Community of True Inspiration (Wahre Inspirations-Gemeinden). [3] The Inspirationists believed that God spoke directly to Christians through signs, visions, and a relationship with the believer. They also believed that select community members, or Instruments, were chosen to communicate God’s teaching to the faithful. During moments of inspiration, the Instrument conveyed the word and teachings of God to the community. [4] The Inspirationists established faith communities throughout Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. As their adherents increased, so did persecution from the civil and religious authorities for their non-conformist ways. With the deaths of Gruber (1728) and Rock (1749), the elders governed the Inspirationists. But the vigor, spiritual enthusiasm, and numbers of the faithful waned. In 1819, Christian Metz, a 24-year-old carpenter from Ronneburg, declared that he received the “gift of inspiration.” He was not a neophyte to the faith, as his grandfather, Jacob Metz, was already an adherent. Christian was known for his management skills, organizational talents, and fearless spiritual leadership. [5] His persona partially facilitated a revival of the sect. The community grew with new adherents, and the faithful developed a communal lifestyle, much to the consternation of local residents. However, these dissidents continued to incur the persecution of Lutheran church officials as well as the government. Refusal by Inspirationists to obligatory military service resulted in arrests, imprisonment, and even forfeiture of property. As early as the mid-1820s, a “prophecy” emerged concerning immigration to the United States, where they could openly exercise their beliefs. [6] The harsh treatment that the Inspirationists endured worsened. The political unrest of the 1840s cast a shadow on this group, now regarded as a dangerous minority. Many endured economic hardships, especially tradesmen and craftsmen, as local residents refused to conduct business with them. Most struggled daily just to exist. The case was similar for those who were day laborers, ordinary workmen, and unskilled workers. These circumstances created the persuasive conditions for emigrating. That destination would be America. Unfortunately, in late 1840, Metz declared that the “time is not yet fulfilled.” But a continued series of crop failures and famines altered Metz’s convictions. On July 27, 1842, he declared: “Your goal and your way shall lead towards the west to a land still open  to you and your faith. I am with you and shall lead you over the sea.” [7] The New World On August 27, 1842, the faithful from all the communities gathered at Arnsburg to pray and appoint those who would find an appropriate settlement for the Inspirationists in America. Christian Metz, the 47-year-old spiritual leader of the movement, was selected. Additional members included William Noe, 38 years old, who was proficient in business affairs. Gottlieb Ackerman, 40 years old, was experienced with medical and pharmaceutical matters, and George Weber, also 40, was trained as a physician. Metz later declared that a revelation from God occurred, and Weber’s 11-year-old son, Ferdinand, should accompany them to the New World. [8] Metz and his group expressed feelings of dread and depression, leaving their homes to find a new one for the community. They acknowledged the burden and responsibility of this mission without certainty of success. The group left Bremerhaven on September 20, 1842, and landed in New York after a difficult thirty-seven-day voyage. During their journey, the ship’s captain, Johann Wächter, learned the purpose of their undertaking and gave them the name of a land agent, George Paulsen, in New York, who had experience working with German immigrants on land purchases. [9] Metz viewed this as the work of God since they had no direction on how to proceed once they landed in the New World. The group’s stay in New York City was brief. During his meeting with Paulsen, Metz inquired about land in Ohio but was advised that it was well settled. Wisconsin was a possibility, but Paulsen advised against it due to the many failed attempts by settlers. Paulsen was aware of a large 50,000-acre tract of land in Chautauqua County, New York, and provided him with a letter of introduction to Mr. Patterson of Westfield, New York, as well as additional letters of introduction to other land agents. The areas of upstate and western New York were ideally suited for Metz and the community's needs. Their beliefs would be tolerated and possibly welcomed in this part of the New World. During the 1820s, western and central New York experienced a series of popular religious revivals that later earned this region the label of the “Burned Over District,” which implied the area was set ablaze with spiritual fervor.[10] During this period, various religious, non-conformist, and spiritual sects such as the Shakers, the Oneida Community, Mormons, Millerites, and others flourished here. [11] The New World Inspirationists ventured to Albany and then proceeded by barge on the Erie Canal to Buffalo, arriving there on November 12, 1842. The group lodged at the Mansion House owned by Philip Dorsheimer. This proved to be providential. While lodging at Mansion House, Metz, Weber, and an interpreter met Patterson. The land agent discussed the benefits and significance of the property in Chautauqua County. Eavesdropping on the conversation, Dorsheimer advised Metz and Weber that Patterson was overvaluing the land. He suggested they examine the Buffalo Creek Indian Reservation as it was good land soon to be opened to white settlement. [12] The location was closer to the larger Buffalo market and the Erie Canal shipping hub. Coincidentally, the other two group members were visiting local German emigres who told them of the land prospects at the Reservation. All agreed to inspect the site. Metz, Noe, Ackerman, Weber, and Dorsheimer surveyed the area just a few miles south and east of Buffalo. Along Buffalo Creek, the group encountered several sawmills and spoke with these businessmen about the industrial prospects of the site. Metz was elated at the vastness of the virgin forest and the uncultivated land. [13] The group had decided to purchase the land, but agreed it was advisable to inspect the Chautauqua County tract. Metz and Noe, along with the property agent, traveled some seventy miles throughout the county, but the Inspirationists viewed the Buffalo Creek site as a more favorable one where they could establish their colony. Serious negotiations for the land purchase commenced at the end of November 1842. The initial offering was for 10,000 acres at $10.50 per acre. Delays in the purchase were inevitable, and problems with translating official documents tainted the process. Attorney Thomas Ogden of New York City was the corporate counsel for the Holland Land Company, which owned a three-million-acre tract of land in western New York.  Some of this land was purchased by Tomas and his brother David, who formed the Ogden Land Company. This firm purchased and facilitated the transfer of Native American land to white settlers. Contractual setbacks, legal limitations, and postponements frustrated Metz and his companions. After several weeks of negotiations and delays, some involving third-party advisors, the Inspirationists purchased 5000 acres at $10.00 per acre. [14] Metz concluded that reducing the acreage and lowering the price would facilitate a more straightforward transaction. During the intervening months since their arrival in America, several other Inspirationists traveled to Buffalo. On May 1, 1843, the four New World Inspirationists left Mansion House for their new property and resided in the former home of Chief John Seneca. The New Colony Construction of new housing began quickly and was done by the Inspirationists and non-member contractors. This new settlement, at the present site of Gardenville, was named Eben-Ezer, meaning “stone of help” from the Book of Samuel, chapter 7, verse 12. The name was soon abbreviated to Ebenezer. This particular place was chosen due to its proximity to Buffalo Creek, which provided water power to operate several mills. As the colony rapidly grew, it became apparent that more land and individual space were needed. Four hamlets were established within the colony to support the settlers and their industries. Middle Ebenezer occupied the area of the present-day Gardenville. Upper Ebenezer, present-day Blossom, was to the east; Lower Ebenezer, just north of Gardenville in present-day West Seneca and New Ebenezer, was situated between Middle Ebenezer and Upper Ebenezer on Cazenovia Creek. [15] As more members of the sect arrived, housing construction increased. The land was cleared, timber milled, wells dug, and small farm plots started. However, the local Indian population viewed this as infringing on their land rights. Many Native Americans still lived within the settlement, and arguments arose over the use of land and timber. The Germans were confused about the nature of this hostility, believing the land was theirs; however, their colony was settled on reservation land. The local tribes wanted the Germans to leave the reservation and pay restitution for the use of the land and the lumber they took. The tribes petitioned the Federal government, and negotiations began with the local Indian Agent and the Secretary of War. Settlement negotiations were protracted and often tense, filled with misunderstandings and ignorance of the law over property rights and land use. On August 1, 1844, the Federal government ruled in favor of the German settlers at the Ebenezer Colony, advising the Seneca Indians that they no longer retained ownership of the land and forest rights. Any intrusion by the Seneca onto the land would be deemed trespassing. Unfortunately, vandalism and destruction of the forest began, and several Senecas were arrested. The Ebenezer community did not want any further trouble with the Senecas and was sympathetic to their plight as they, too, had been persecuted in Germany. The Seneca Nation convened a meeting with the Ebenezer group to find a joint amicable remedy. The Inspirationists believed they had been deceived by the land agent regarding the purchase of the land and their rights to it. Yet, they still considered their position strong as they had legally purchased the land. With some reluctance, the Senecas reached a settlement with the Germans. The Native Americans would relocate to their nearby reservations in southwestern New York, in Allegany and Cattaraugus counties. Some would receive compensation for their land claims. Although it was an agreement that did not please all, it did end the conflict. By late 1846, the last of the Senecas left the Ebenezer colony, and the German settlers came into full possession of the land. [16] Now, the community could prosper and grow without impediments. The Ebenezer Community From 1843 to 1846, over 800 Inspirationists arrived at the colony from Germany. This diverse group included young and old, wealthy and poor, skilled and unskilled workers. The wealthier members were initially called upon to contribute funds and finance various operations. Land would be held in common for two years. This plan was based on conditions in the Old World, where wealth and property acquisition were difficult. This experiment failed at the colony. The economic conditions for attaining wealth and property were readily available in America. Demands for skilled and unskilled laborers in America meant abundant jobs, and a worker and his family fared better in the New World than in Germany. The challenge for the Community was to maintain a cohesive group that desired to live within the confines of Ebenezer and not be swayed by the “temptations” of the New World. To achieve this, the elders, in January 1846, crafted the Constitution of the Community of True Inspiration at Ebenezer. The document identified this society as a faith-based group founded on the Scriptures who “pledged to render obedience to their faith in all respects, to fight for it, to endure and suffer and struggle to preserve it to the end of life.” [17] All deacons and elders were to live a life of grace with the spiritual and temporal welfare of the community as their primary concern. Community members were to “live likewise” and recognize the deacons and elders as their spiritual teachers and pastors. All authority, both spiritual and administrative, was vested in the elders. The Ebenezer community exhibited the qualities of a communistic society and was the first such organized assemblage in western New York. Land, livestock, buildings, and machinery were held in common, and each member “was to bear his burden according to his ability for the common good of the community.” Under the terms of their Constitution, all received an annual fixed wage from the treasury, as established by the elders, and the guarantee of medical care, daily food, and shelter. [18] Incidentals such as tools, clothing, shoes, furniture, and bedding were to be purchased separately and considered the individual property of that member. This lifestyle achieved positive results for the community, and the majority thrived under this arrangement. Success and sacrifice, both spiritual and physical, were a shared experience. However, not all enthusiastically embraced it. Wealthier members lost control of their affluence, and poorer community members realized they could achieve a better and freer life outside the Ebenezer community. Many left, but the society did not document the numbers of those who moved away. Life in the Colony The four residential communities of the Ebenezer colony occupied approximately 8,000 acres, and the members resided in villages instead of scattered farmhouses. This settlement arrangement was due more to the elders' supervision and control over the Inspirationists than would have been possible if they lived in scattered homesteads. [19] The appeal of American self-determination was often regarded as a tacit threat to the communal routine. The elders assigned families to housing within the colony. There was no standardization of home designs. Some buildings were two stories, but most were one level or a story and a half, and the number of bedrooms varied. Homes were either timber frame or brick construction. The homes did not have a kitchen or dining room, as cooking and eating were communal events. Home furnishings were purchased by each family. Wood for heating the house was supplied by the community. Single men resided in a “brother's house.” This was a large home with individual apartments consisting of a bedroom and a sitting room. The location of a member’s residence was based on their employment. Farmers and agricultural workers were housed on the outskirts of the community. Cabinet makers, harness makers, butchers, craftsmen, and laborers resided adjacent to their work site. Bakers, cooks, and cleaners lived near the communal kitchens. Schoolmasters and some teachers lived above the classroom. [20] The Inspirationists did not favor large gatherings. Consequently, shared meals were eaten at the kitchen-house. These houses were situated throughout the four communities and of an appropriate size to accommodate the moderate number who gathered for daily sustenance. While the food was simple fare, there was always an abundance. Men, women, and children sat in separate areas, and conversation at the table was discouraged. A prayer service followed each meal. Education was a priority for the Ebenezer community. The German states in the 19th century had a prestigious tradition of educating boys and girls and ensuring that teachers were highly qualified. [21] This practice followed the Inspirationists to the New World. Boys and girls studied together in the classroom. The school day was long, enabling the parents to work without worrying about their children at home. Classes were conducted six days a week and year-round. The only exceptions were for religious holy days and to help with the harvest. The Ebenezer community was required to abide by the educational requirements of New York State. However, the colony, as the Incorporated Village of Ebenezer, had full control over the curriculum, allowing religious instruction. Students were taught their catechism, Bible history, and stories about the heroes of the True Inspirationists' faith. Additionally, boys and girls were taught practical skills such as knitting, as many made their own socks and small articles of clothing. Older boys learned a trade and worked as apprentices at the colony’s various craft shops. Girls were taught cooking, baking, spinning, and sewing. [22]  German was the main language spoken here, but business transactions with the “outside” required a command of English; subsequently, students were taught basic English. While bachelors lived in segregated housing, single women lived with their parents until married. Marriages had to be approved by the elders. A one-year courtship was required, and then a simple ceremony was performed. Men under the age of 24 were not permitted to marry, but there was no similar prohibition on women. Divorce was not accepted, nor was a second marriage to a widow or widower. Farming and Commerce The Inspirationists, while grounded in their faith, were sustained by commerce and agriculture, selling produce and manufactured products to support the community financially. Each of the four Ebenezer communities had a farm division supervised by a farm manager; the colony had 2200 acres under cultivation. Various industries, craft shops, and businesses were operated by the workers. The occupations of the members included farmers, merchants, butchers, shoemakers, copper workers, millers, tanners, potters, bookbinders, carpenters, dyers, wagon makers, tailors, locksmiths, saw millers, laborers, and other professions. [23] The New Ebenezer hamlet, the smallest of the four, had no farm. However, it contained 9 houses: a small dry goods store, a carpenter shop, a barn and stable, and a dye house. Its location on Buffalo Creek was an ideal source of water power for the woolen mill. Upper Ebenezer had a church, schoolhouse, general store, meat house, and bakery. Farming was conducted here with assorted barns and stables on the land. Industries employed tinsmiths, blacksmiths, carpenters, cabinet makers, and shoemakers. A grist mill and saw mill utilized the power of the Buffalo Creek, surrounded by lumber resources. Middle Ebenezer was the largest of the villages within the colony. It held the largest population of the colony, with 57 houses, a church, a schoolhouse, and a general store. Multiple businesses functioned here: a sawmill and a wool mill with looms and spinning machines. Skilled and unskilled laborers worked as carpenters, locksmiths, potters, blacksmiths, bakers, wagon makers, furniture manufacturers, boot and shoemakers, a book bindery and print shop, clock and watchmakers, and candle makers. A cider mill and brewery were also located in the village. The farm division managed a large piggery, a dozen barns, stables, drying sheds, and granaries. Slaughterhouses, meat markets, and produce storage sheds were part of the agricultural division. Lower Ebenezer was the community's spiritual center, as the largest church was located there. Like the other villages, it contained housing and craft shops for the residents. As the colony's population grew, more schools were located here. Religion The singular purpose of the Ebenezer community was religion. The daily activities of agriculture, work, and education provided the inhabitants with the necessary means to live apart from “the world” and concentrate on living out their religious beliefs. The community observed four core rites: baptism, confirmation, marriage, and burial, officiated by an elder. Those beliefs were focused on the Old and New Testaments and the revelations of prophecy. Following that were the 24 rules for living a Godly life. [2 4] Some of those precepts included obedience to God and the elders, praying, living a humble existence, hard work, and charity to all. Additionally, the community followed the “Twenty-One Rules for the Daily Examination of Our Lives.” This comprised more of a code of conduct for matters unrelated to the faith or religion. [25] The leadership of the faithful was comprised of the prophets and elders. The prophets were regarded as the head of the church. Usually, this comprised only two to four individuals. At times, accusations were made of false prophets within the community, but there is no written record of who they were, why the allegations were made, and the results of such assertions. However, there was some indication of jealousy at the root of these claims. Next were the elders who held various occupations within the colony. They were viewed as the spiritual fathers of the communities and pastors of each individual church. They conducted religious services and officiated at the ceremonial rites. The congregation was divided into three spiritual groups or “orders.” Membership was based on levels of piety. The “high order” was the first, followed by the middle group, and then the lowest, which was mostly children. In this third order, men and women, boys and girls were segregated. Each order held separate services simultaneously, which excluded the others. A yearly spiritual examination of the members was conducted, usually in late December. During this scrutiny, all members of each order were subjected to an intensive examination to determine their spiritual condition and placement into an order. Elders examined elders, and lay members evaluated each other. However, a person could be removed from a group based on their conduct. [26] The meetinghouse was a plain structure devoid of any signs or symbols of the Christian faith. This white-washed building contained no pulpit or stained glass windows. The interior was divided into three separate rooms for each order. Members entered in silence. The presiding elder sat at a table flanked by a row of elders facing the congregation. Men and women sat across from each other on long benches, each person carrying their Bible. Religious services were held daily, and attendance was mandatory. Morning services were conducted on Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays, with an afternoon service as well. Prayer services were conducted every evening, and extra services were held on special or holy days of the year. Each service began with a silent prayer followed by a hymn announced by the presiding elder. No musical instruments were to accompany the singing, and the tunes were analogous to traditional Lutheran hymns blended with Georgian chant. The melodies were described as melancholy. [27] Following the hymn was a long prayer recited by the elders while the congregants knelt on the hardwood floors. After that, a passage from the Bible was read with the men and then the women reading each verse. There was no formal sermon, but each elder provided a lesson for the congregation. The intention of the service was for each member to receive a message of inspiration from the Bible, the lessons, or directly from God. A concluding prayer and hymn ended the lengthy service, with the members silently leaving. The Move By the early 1850s, external pressures and conditions began encroaching upon the colony. The city of Buffalo was expanding into its area, bringing with it worldly distractions. Newly arrived immigrants from Germany were more attracted to well-paying jobs than to developing their spiritual life. These settlers preferred comfort, entertainment, money, and individuality over a communal religious lifestyle. Tensions percolated within the Community of True Inspiration. Envy and resentment among members and elders threatened to tear at the core of their faith. Some members were expelled or left voluntarily for better opportunities. Allegations that some community members were becoming wealthy or not abiding by the rules brought charges and counter-charges, creating an environment that was both contentious and corrupt.  Water power for the mills along Buffalo Creek and an adjoining canal diminished due to erosion. Farm production was reduced due to flooding. A railroad was proposed that, when completed, would divide Lower Ebenezer from Middle Ebenezer. The local legislative authorities viewed the Community’s property as a prime site for the expansion of industry and agriculture and desired to take more control of the area. It was apparent to the elders that survival of the community, both spiritual and material, necessitated a move. The Community decided that a larger parcel of land was required to continue their mission. Commanded by “inspiration,” it was decided that this could be acquired somewhere in the western part of the nation. In September 1854, four members —Christian Metz, Carl Winzenried, Ferdinand Weber, son of George Weber, an original settler at Ebenezer, and Charles Mayer — left western New York to find the Community’s new “promised land.” The four traveled first to Chicago, then St. Louis, and navigated the Missouri River to Parkville near Kansas City. They journeyed through the Kansas prairie in wagons and on foot with Native American guides, seeking their new home. [28] The four could not locate adequate tracts of land to suit the Community’s needs. Additionally, political tensions were raging in the territory over statehood and slavery, which disturbed the group. As a result, the men returned home. Later that year, John Beyer and Jacob Wittmer scouted land in the newly recognized state of Iowa. They reported that a favorable site was located twenty miles west of Iowa City near a river. In May 1855, they, along with Frederick Heinemann and Carl Winzenreid, examined the flat land in Iowa and, finding it suitable to the Community’s needs, purchased the tract. The society generally agreed to the move, but some remained in western New York. The historical record does not list names or reasons why they did not go west. In early July 1855, ten years after the colony was founded, the Community of True Inspiration started moving to its new land along the Iowa River. This new settlement was named Amana, a Biblical reference from the Song of Solomon Chapter 4, Verse 8, meaning “to remain faithful.” [29] The move, by wagon and steamboat, took almost six years to complete. These colonists took all they could, including the wares of their trades and livestock, to start their new lives. The properties were placed on the market, and the eight thousand acres of Eben-Ezer were eventually sold. With the start of the Civil War, the houses and lands that remained of the community were either abandoned or absorbed into the local governmental districts. In Iowa, the Amana Society thrived and replicated much of what it started in western New York, establishing several colonies within the community and following the same pattern of life, education, commerce, and religious practice. The Amana Society flourished until the Great Depression of the 1930s. At this juncture, the “Great Change” occurred as the Society split into two distinct organizations. One of which later evolved into the manufacturer of refrigeration units: the Amana Corporation. [30] Germans fled the Old World to the New World, seeking religious freedom and the self-determination to live as they wished. This vision was first realized in western New York but as the world encroached a move to Iowa was necessitated. The communal lifestyle of the Community of True Inspiration came at a time when the words of Karl Marx started to echo in Europe. While this Society likely would denounce Marx’s ideal of a godless shared community life, the group at Ebenezer was, in reality, one of the first communist groups in America. The difference was that the Ebenezer community’s raison d’être was to glorify God through their lives and work. This success was achieved in western New York. About the author: Paul Lubienecki obtained his M.A. in Pastoral Ministry from Christ the King Seminary, an M.A. in History from Buffalo State College, and his Ph.D. in History from Case Western Reserve University. His research work examined how Buffalo native Msgr. John Boland established labor schools to help workers integrate the fundamentals of the social encyclicals into their workplace practices. Dr. Lubienecki has lectured and published multiple journal articles on Catholic labor schools. He recently published The Americanization of  Lay Catholics on Organized Labor by Mellen Press. Dr. Lubienecki has taught courses in American history, theology, spirituality and museum studies and is a contributing editor to the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History.  He has been a Special Studies Instructor at the Chautauqua Institution and is the founding director of the Boland Center for the Study of Labor and Religion, where he teaches, publishes, and lectures on the integration of history at the intersection of religion and the labor movement. He is also engaged in union-organizing activities of service workers in the Buffalo are a. Bibliography [i]  Stefan von Senger in  Emigration and Settlement Patterns of German Communities in North America , (Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 1995), 148. [ii]  E. Clifford Nelson,  The Lutherans in North America , (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975), 132. [iii]  Charles Nordhoff , The Communistic societies of the United States , (New York: Dover Publications, 1966), 25. [iv]  Thomas Streissguth , Utopian Visionaries ,(Minneapolis: The Oliver Press, Inc., 1999), 67. [v]  Frank J. Lankes,  The Ebenezer Society , (West Seneca: West Seneca Historical Society, 1963), 9. [vi]  Bertha Shambaugh , Amana: The Community of True Inspiration , (Des Moines: State Historical Society of Iowa, 1988), 329 [vii]  Ibid., 57. [viii]  Lankes, 13. [ix] Alan DuVal.  Christian Metz: German-American Religious Leader & Pioneer . Ed. Peter Hoehnle. (Iowa City: Penfield Books, 2005), 21. [x]  Streissguth, 68. [xi]  David Ellis, James Frost, Harry Carman,  A History of New York State , (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967), 307. [xii] Frederick   Houghton ,  The History of the Buffalo Creek Reservation , (Buffalo:  Publications of the Buffalo Historical Society . Vol. 24. 1920), 110. [xiii]  Nordhoff , The Communistic societies of the United States , 28. [xiv]  Lankes, 24. [xv]  Lankes, 35. [xvi]  Houghton,  121. [xvii]   Constitution of the Ebenezer Community.   Elisha Blakeman's recollections found in “A Brief Account of the Society of Germans Called the True Inspirationists,” (undated) Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio. [xviii] Shambaugh,   Amana, The Community of True Inspiration,   45. [xix]  Lankes, 61. [xx]  Lankes, 88. [xxi]   Karl A. Schleunes, "Enlightenment, reform, reaction: the schooling revolution in Prussia."  Central European History  12.4 (1979), 322. [xxii]  Lankes, 90. [xxiii]  Lankes, 96. [xxiv]  Lankes, 41. [xxv]  Shambaugh, 277. [xxvi]  Shambaugh, 313. [xxvii]  Lankes, 44. [xxviii]  Lankes, 121. [xxix] Nordhoff, The Communistic Societies of the United States, 31. [xxx]  David  Hudson, Marvin  Bergman; Loren Horton, eds.,  The Biographical Dictionary of Iowa . (Iowa City, IA: University Of Iowa Press, 2009), 169. [1]  Stefan von Senger in  Emigration and Settlement Patterns of German Communities in North America , (Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 1995), 148.

By Jonathan Woolley Copyright © 2025 All rights reserved by the author View from the Empire State Building observation deck, New York City, August 1975. Courtesy of Wikipedia. Municipal bankruptcies are, thankfully, few and far between. Allowing one to happen rarely happens overnight (although conceivably it could). Rather, it usually represents a combination of declining tax revenues, declines in other sources of municipal revenue, and insufficient reductions – or even increases – in municipal government spending over a period of several or more years. And the results can be messy.   Huge reductions in the provision of city services, the renegotiating (or outright defaulting) on pension obligations, and the sale of prized city assets (parks, publicly-owned art, buildings, or vehicles used to provide key city services, etc.) are examples of what may have to be done in order to make the municipal government less in hock to its creditors. And while municipal governments do have one advantage over private corporations or non-profit entities – they have a tax base they can draw upon – that advantage may not be as useful as they wish. Taxpayers can move out of the jurisdiction, or not have sufficient income or assets for the level of taxation necessary to remediate the problem.  Not to mention that bankruptcy and/or debt relief payments may divert funds from more necessary long-term projects, such as key infrastructure improvements or needed educational system restructurings.   But even if a municipal government manages to avoid bankruptcy, merely coming close to it is bad enough. It will still require a (often massive) reduction in municipal spending, and typically either heavy oversight of or a partial takeover of financial duties by the state government [1] . The result is likely to be widespread groaning among many people. With spending cuts, the performance of municipal services is likely to decline – if the services do not disappear altogether – and workforce reductions may result. And of course, workforce reductions are likely to have a ripple economic effect, less spending at local businesses (which now have less revenue to be taxed) and lower residential income taxes (assuming the workers live within the municipality that employs them). Not to mention that a community with a heavy debt load (in terms of its local government) will be less attractive to those wishing to relocate from other places, who will now have to fear paying higher taxes for years to come (so property values, and thus the value of their equity, may be diminished). Tiebout’s Public Choice theory of government, which postulates that those who prize equity values and/or lower taxes will be more likely to choose to live elsewhere (“If consumer-voters are fully mobile, the appropriate local governments, whose revenue-expenditure patterns are set, are adopted by the consumer-voters” [2] ), will play out in reality, meaning that it will become even harder to raise the necessary revenue to improve the municipality’s finances, even with a state government takeover.   New York City faced such a potentially bleak picture in the 1970s. After a number of years of relatively heavy municipal spending, while a number of middle-class residents were enticed to relocate to the suburbs, things came to a head during the mayoralty of Abraham Beame in 1975. The city government, unable to cover its expenses through taxes and user fees alone, had resorted to issuing bonds to cover the difference. Yet, at the same time, the city government, thanks to bad – or at least sloppy – accounting practices, had been understating its deficit. When a new comptroller’s audit and account reconciliation identified this – and showed the city’s actual liabilities were far higher than anyone had ever imagined – banks, which had hitherto been eager handlers of city debt instruments, became antsy and stopped loaning (the city wanted to back the loans with anticipated revenues that were undefined) without stern conditions that were politically unacceptable.   With a huge deficit, a lack of eager lenders, and payments on preexisting bonds coming due, the city (led by the Mayor and the Comptroller) had no choice but to scrounge around for every dollar they could. Large numbers of city employees were laid off – including policemen and firefighters (surprisingly, considering the city was experiencing a rise in both violent confrontations and arson at the time) – capital projects were suspended, unions were asked to make concessions, students were asked to pay for their education (higher education in city-run institutions had previously been fully subsidized), and appeals were made to state and federal politicians.   All this caused plenty of public anger. Most of it was directed at the banks – usually viewed as the larger New York City commercial banks, although it turned out, banks from all around the country were exposed to a potential city default – but some was also directed at the politicians and senior officials of various government entities (usually, the city’s government). Work slowdowns, strikes, and protests occurred, usually in protest of the job reductions. The unions were hounded and cajoled into investing their pension funds into city bonds – extremely reluctantly, in the case of the United Federation of Teachers. (This was the moment when the city came closest to default.) The state and, after much internal debate (“Ford to City: Drop Dead” was how the Daily News described one speech), the federal governments ultimately both stepped in to help out the city, albeit with terms attached: the city’s politicians had to cede fiscal control over just about everything to monitors appointed by higher levels of government. The monitoring agencies became the subject of some public anger, but in the end, the city never defaulted on its loans. It’s questionable how much awareness of this exists among people under fifty – or even fifty-five – much less how many actually have some memory of this time. And of those that are aware, it is possible a significant portion are likely either to be connected with the city’s municipal government or in some other role (such as in the state government’s Department of Financial Services or as a political news reporter) that necessarily requires some knowledge of New York City’s finances. The latest attempt to remind the public of this crisis is “Drop Dead City”. Originally titled “Drop Dead City: New York on the Brink in 1975”, the film, released last November, was produced and directed by Peter Yost and Michael Rohatyn (the son of a chair of one of the boards that was set up to oversee the city’s finances) using the production company of Pangloss Films. It’s a good film, and well worth watching for those who want to remember the pressures that affected the city government during the financial crisis. As part of that, it also provides a good reminder of the negative aspects of living in New York City – especially the Bronx and Brooklyn – in the mid-’70s.    The two biggest questions in any retrospective of any financial crisis are how it happened and who was responsible for it. Mayor Beame became the fall guy. This isn’t too surprising: not only was he an accountant by trade, but as mayor, he was the guy who oversaw - and was accountable to the voters for any failings of - the city administration. Mayor Beame does deserve his share of blame – he could have listened to the city comptroller, H. J. Goldin, sooner and have alerted Albany sooner – but he never had a magic wand that could have averted a serious fiscal problem in ‘75. New York in the sixties and early seventies had been a politically liberal town and had spent commensurately with that orientation, under both Democratic and Republican mayors. This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, as the resulting policies and programs gave thousands of people greatly improved lives. But it did require sizable tax and user fee revenues to offset the heavy spending, and as both manufacturing and the middle-class residential population declined, the necessary revenues became harder to obtain. Ironically, some of these middle-class residents had done so well from city programs such as free college tuition that they could afford to move to the less costly, more bucolic suburbs and thus stop paying city taxes and contributing to the city’s economy. (The film itself concentrates solely on the year 1975 and doesn’t tell much about either the causes or the lead-up before Mayor Beame took office – Governor Rockefeller is blamed, but previous mayors are not mentioned – Lindsay is only shown briefly in one scene and is not identified).      But while Beame may not have had a magic wand to prevent the crisis as mayor, he really became the fall guy for a different reason: as Comptroller, it was a key part of his job to keep an eye on both the books and the accounting methods the city used. Beame had served two terms as the city’s comptroller prior to being elected mayor (and had served as Budget Director before that), yet had apparently never done a thorough audit of the city’s finances. Add in that he was an accountant by trade, and this implied a potentially huge amount of negligence on his part. And that was Beame’s real problem: he should have entered his first two years in office as mayor (‘74 and '75) knowing city debt was ballooning rapidly, but apparently didn’t[3].     And anyway, it wasn’t all the fault of anyone in the city government. As the film points out, “For every stupid borrower, there’s a stupid lender”. Banks were also at fault – they continued to lend money to the city (buying bonds) for an extended period without conducting thorough due diligence on the city’s creditworthiness. Essentially, they were gamboling not only that the city’s fiscal house was in order but also that a combination of pride and anticipated revenues would keep the city from ever defaulting. Such a policy is even more surprising since, as Gramlich notes, not only do bondholders generally dislike governments using loans to cover current account deficits, but New York City had done so for almost fifteen years[4]. Nonetheless, the gamble worked for quite a while – until well into 1975. And, as the film notes, banks had a strong profit-making motive for wanting to keep selling city bonds. But making such an assumption without doing sufficient due diligence, however understandable, was still a poor strategic decision on the part of the lenders.   The actual crisis played out over a few months. The first solution, which the film gives good coverage to, was to cut spending by firing city employees and to ask state officials in Albany for a bailout. The results from the layoffs were predictable: strikes and protest rallies that just helped reinforce the city’s image as ungovernable. But escalating the issue to Albany proved to be more important – not only did Governor Carey become aware of the dire predicament, belatedly, but Albany also set up rescue mechanisms.    But even having the state set up the Municipal Assistance Corporation (and subsequently the Emergency Financial Control Board) wasn’t enough. The city still came within a few hours – well, really, a few minutes – of default. However, while cajoling the then-powerful public sector unions into aligning with the city government and, ultimately, having the bonds issued by the overseeing agencies backed by sales tax revenues was an invaluable help, federal assistance was ultimately required. This is why President Ford’s initial trepidation was so important – it took much of the Fall of ‘75 to convince him to support a federal bailout.   The film portrays Beame as not being responsible for what happened, and that’s true as mayor since he had a budget office that was initially giving him rosier-than-true information. But it can’t hide that Beame must have been under intense internal pressure during this time. He knew that, as both a former comptroller and a current mayor, he was the perfect person for everyone to blame (his hand was apparently shaking when he signed the bankruptcy petition that, in the end, was never submitted). One can sympathize with him from a political point of view: a large administrative organization that had grown used to having everybody give it money wasn’t likely to change its ways on a dime, and some of its spending was mandated by higher levels of government anyway. Not to mention that Beame, unlike many others involved, such as Felix Rohatyn, knew he would one day have to answer to the voters. But the film could have given Beame far more grief for not having done more as comptroller to prevent the situation from occurring. It also places considerable blame on previous state government officials, such as Rockefeller, without holding previous city mayors, like Lindsay, accountable. Perhaps this was because the filmmakers only concentrated on the actual events of the year 1975, rather than the lead-up to it.    Similarly, Albert Shanker, who ran the powerful schoolteachers’ union, is portrayed as agreeing to invest the teachers’ pension funds in city bonds because he didn’t want to be the guy who got blamed for the default (the bankruptcy Beame was so nervous about) that would have otherwise happened. No doubt that had a lot to do with his (and the union’s) decision. But it’s also true that, if the city had defaulted, the retired teachers – his union’s members – might have had to have accepted pennies on the dollar of their planned pension payments. A bankruptcy fiscal overseer – or possibly a judge – might have lowered the amount to be paid out due to lack of funds (of course, banks and individual bondholders might also have had to accept pennies on the dollar for their bond payments under such a scenario). The film could have mentioned this possible reason for Shanker’s decision, which no doubt came up in the union’s discussions, as well.    Overall, though, this is a really good film about the city’s financial crisis of 1975. It gives a great feel for how bad the city was in 1975: the sense of ungovernability the city had been developing before the crisis started, which was only exacerbated by the huge financial cutbacks public services experienced during the crisis. (And that feeling continued for many years thereafter). More importantly, it also gives a great feel for the sense of crisis that city officials had throughout the year. They were in the unenviable position of being at the heart of global capitalism, surrounded by numerous corporations generating massive profits and just blocks away from Wall Street’s capital markets, with no means to raise funds or settle debts except by appealing to state and federal officials. And all the while, every time these city officials seemed to proverbially turn around, another set of bond payments came due. No wonder 1975 seemed to be a year that was seared onto the memory of every city official who was interviewed for the movie.    Bonds, of course, are loans given under a nicer name. And maybe that’s why the city government allowed itself to get into such a messy situation: perhaps not using the word “loan” meant the debts somehow seemed less onerous, their repayment less imperative. The moral of this movie is that not doing so can have dire consequences, consequences that are difficult to rectify. The moral of the city’s fiscal crisis is that prudent public financing is the best – and safest – course of action when dealing with both handling taxpayers’ money and providing public services to taxpayers. And the state government learned another lesson: when, years later, Troy experienced financial problems, the importance of a Municipal Assistance Corporation was remembered and created to help straighten things out there, too.   A bout the author:   Jonathan Woolley is an independent analyst and researcher. He did his undergraduate studies at Manhattanville College and his graduate studies at Rutgers University. He has previously published reviews of exhibits on the history of New York City's zoning laws and the history of the Federal Reserve. Sources:   Drop Dead City. Accessed May 28, 2025. https://www.dropdeadcitythemovie.com/ .   “Drop Dead City”. IMDb. Accessed May 28, 2025. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt34279942/ .   Dunstan, Roger. “Overview of New York City’s Fiscal Crisis”. California Research Bureau, California State Library (1995). https://web.archive.org/web/20110125040733/http://www.library.ca.gov/crb/95/notes/V3N1.PDF . Multiple downloads.   Gillette, Clayton P. “Can Pubic Debt Enhance Democracy?” Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 50, no. 3 (2008): 937-88.   Gramlich, Edward M. “The New York City Fiscal Crisis: What Happened and What is to be Done?” American Economic Review 66, no. 2 (May 1976): 415-29.   Helfand, Zach. “Survivors.” New Yorker , April 28, 2025. 8-9.   Hildreth, W. Bartley, and Gerald J. Miller. “Debt and the Local Economy: Problems in Benchmarking Local Government Debt Affordability.” Public Budgeting and Finance 22, no. 4 (2002): 99-113.   Honan, Katie. “How the New York City Budget Gets Made – And What Happens if It’s Late.” The City , June 23, 2023. https://www.thecity.nyc/2023/06/23/how-budget-gets-made-what-happens-if-late/ .   Louis, Errol.  “ Peter Yost and Michael Rohatyn: The big lessons of New York’s fiscal crisis ”. Produced by New York One Spectrum News. You Decide with Errol Louis . April 24, 2025. Podcast, 27:09. https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/you-decide-with-errol-louis/2025/04/24/peter-yost-and-michael-rohatyn-the-big-lessons-of-new-yorks-fiscal-crisis .   Miller, Gerald J. “Debt Management Networks.” Public Administration Review 53, no. 1 (1993): 50-58.   Phillips-Fein, Kim. “The Legacy of the 1970s Fiscal Crisis.” The Nation , April 16, 2013. https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/legacy-1970s-fiscal-crisis/ .   Robbins, Tom. “Hugh Carey, Former Gov, Knew What a Real Crisis Looked Like.” Review of The Man Who Saved New York: Hugh Carey and the Great Fiscal Crisis of 1975, by Seymour Lachman and Rob Polner. Village Voice, August 19, 2010. https://www.villagevoice.com/hugh-carey-former-gov-knew-what-a-real-crisis-looked-like/ .   Rohatyn, Michael and Peter Yost, dir. Drop Dead City . 2024; New York: Pangloss Films. Multiple viewings.   Shalala, Donna E. and Carol Bellamy. "A State Saves a City: The New York Case."  Duke Law Journal  1976 (1977): 1119-32. Multiple downloads. https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2598&context=dlj .   Tiebout, Charles M. “A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures”. Journal of Political Economy 64, no. 5 (1956): 416-24.    Bibliography: [1]     In some states, a county or regional level of government could also take on this task, but in New York State, it would most likely fall to the state government for constitutional reasons. Although the authorities in Albany could, theoretically, decide to delegate the task to a county or regional government, I view this outcome as unlikely. [2]    Charles M. Tiebout. “A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures,” Journal of Political Economy 64, no.5 (1956): 424. [3]     To be fair, as Comptroller Beame had had a Debt Advisory Board that hadn’t screamed about this too much, and also had to deal with a city administration that was used to using their own figures and methods. [4]     Edward M Gramlich.. “The New York City Fiscal Crisis: What Happened and What is to be Done?” American Economic Review 66, no.2 (May 1976): 415.

by Claudia Keenan Copyright © 2025 All rights reserved by the author. Mysteries of New York by Alfred Trumble. I have done a great deal of traveling in my time—have climbed Mont Blanc; been carried by Persian slaves over Khivan deserts; have broiled in China, and frozen in Iceland; have loitered along the Boulevards in Paris, and walked down Fleet Street in London; have shot buffaloes on the Western plains, and seen bull-fights in Madrid; have skated on Russian ice, and slumbered in Havanese hammocks . . . [1]   The traveler, 26-year-old Alfred Trumble, had been the sole passenger on the schooner E. H. King , carrying logwood and coconuts from Jamaica to the Port of New York. It was a mild day at the end of January 1874. [2] A practiced adventurer, Trumble surveyed the harbor, scanned the skyline, descended the gangplank, and walked into the rising metropolis. Trumble’s bags were heavy with books, paper for writing and drawing, tools for engraving, and a pertinent wardrobe: Whitmanesque garments and evening attire. Having reported from all corners of the globe, he surely brimmed with confidence about his prospects as a writer in New York City.   To be mysterious in nineteenth-century America was an easy feat, yet less is known about Alfred Trumble than about most popular writers of his time. His birth in Virginia cannot be confirmed because Trumble was born in 1845 or 1847, before the state maintained vital records. Once, Trumble alluded to “higher studies, leisure hours in the life school of a famous art academy of this country.” [3] He was very knowledgeable about religion, world history, agriculture, engineering, and the arts, but if he received any formal education, no record exists. Nor are there drawings or photographs of Alfred Trumble, just two descriptions. “He is short in stature, with a fine, intellectual head on his shoulders,” one observer wrote. Another compared Trumble’s “poetical expression” to the actor Edwin Booth.” [4] In place of pictures, Trumble left behind millions of words, dozens of drawings, and an idiosyncratic New York story.  The man who is largely forgotten today once wielded influence through two very different types of publications. On one hand, Trumble wrote explicit guides to the underbelly of the Gilded Age city and theater sketches that denigrated immigrants. He pulled back the curtain on religion, impostors, and servant girls. He hung around jamborees, cockfights, and con games.  On the other hand, Trumble would become a reputable cultural critic for New York papers and magazines. Eventually, he established and edited a semi-monthly journal, The Collector, which was well-regarded by art dealers, collectors, and curators. He published it for eight years, a pretty good run in those days. In its pages, he dismissed Impressionism, “Human Magpies”—his cynical view of most art collectors—and Saint-Gaudens’ sculpture, Diana, atop the new Madison Square Garden. “Absurdly disproportional,” he proclaimed. [5]   “The Mysteries of New York”    By 1885, Trumble’s byline was familiar to New Yorkers. He had hitched his wagon to the Richard K. Fox Publishing Company , whose prize jewel, the National Police Gazette , had been transformed into the nation’s leading sports journal by Fox, an Irish immigrant who took over the failing magazine in 1876. Printed on pink paper, pictures of women cavorting through its pages, the National Police Gazette interspersed sports coverage—especially boxing—with gossip, scandal, and outrageous tales true and untrue. Indeed, while the newspaper publishers Hearst and Pulitzer are considered the pioneers of yellow journalism, Fox was a few years ahead of them. [6]   Soon after purchasing the Gazette , Fox began publishing “sensational books.” [7] Samuel A. MacKeever, a New York journalist and Trumble’s friend, was Fox’s first hire. “The American Charles Dickens,” as the hyperbolic Fox described MacKeever, covered the city’s “most unsavory places,” writing up to ten columns weekly and a few books. [8] After MacKeever died in 1880, Trumble assumed the mantle. [9]   Between 1880 and 1883, Fox published at least 24 books by Trumble. Each sold for 30 cents, available by mail order, with many tantalizing excerpts appearing in the Gazette . Trumble’s first book was A Slang Dictionary of New York , London and Paris: a collection of strange figures of speech, expressive terms and odd phrases used in the leading cities of the world, their origin, meaning, and application. It is attributed to “a well-known detective,” but Trumble’s authorship has been confirmed. [10]      To establish himself as an authority on New York City’s lawlessness, Trumble claimed to be a private detective. How else would he know the innermost details of robberies and embezzlement? [11] In fact, during the 1870s and 1880s, true-crime stories became very popular, and police officers and department brass were official and unofficial sources. [12] It’s evident that Trumble did his own fieldwork; however, he often inserted himself into his books and articles. While Trumble covered a range of subjects, fraud emerged as his favorite. Introducing Mysteries of New York, he wrote: Under our guidance, the stranger may travel New York end to end, unimperiled by the dangers which the newcomer in the metropolis is exposed to. Its snares or pitfalls can have no peril for the stranger who recalls our warnings of them, nor need any of its pleasures be beyond his reach.[13]   “Sharpers,” “mashers,” “cat-meat men,” “cabbage cutters,” “fakirs,” “time peddlers,” “flash ministers,”—since the seventeenth century, all types of tricksters had preyed on visitors to the city as well as its residents. Guidebooks proliferated, warning the innocent. Their effectiveness was debatable, but they certainly burnished the city’s reputation for iniquity[14] Meanwhile, Trumble found charlatans around every corner, and he seemed to know every corner in New York City. Here he writes about “bonus smugglers”: One evening, the writer came upon a party of them in a beer saloon on Third Avenue near Twenty-third Street, which he learned was their favorite resort. He learned, furthermore, that they are a gregarious lot, working in pleasant amity, and meeting every night to discuss the swindle of the day . . . the sale of Havana cigarettes and foreign cordials, both of which have their origin in New York. [15]      In Coney Island, he found “Sirens . . . not too diffident to devour ten-dollar dinners at the Manhattan [hotel restaurant], washed down with champagne by the quart, as you may find out if you have the mind, and never fail to give you a card with the wrong address when you part from her.”[16] A close observer of skin games, especially the notorious Faro, Trumble noted that the old-time gambling houses, “a stone’s throw of Union Square and Madison Avenue,” had been replaced by clubs run by professional gamblers located on the parlor floors of fancy uptown homes.[17] Trumble wrote feverishly for Fox: The New York Tombs, its History and Mysteries; Suicide’s Cranks; Or, Curiosities of Self-Murder; The Man-traps of New York , what they are and how they are worked by a celebrated detective; The Heathen Chinee, What He Looks Like and How He Lives, and more. The last title is grotesquely of its time, published the year that Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, and would not be Trumble’s sole venture into anti-immigrant slander.[18] In 1883, Trumble wound down his work for Fox to focus on the cultural scene. In 1879, he had written a drama, Custer, which was produced in Chicago, Boston, and Philadelphia.[19] Now, he wrote another play, Aunt Emily, published articles in the New York-based Decorator and Furnisher, The Theatre, American Art Illustrated, The Current, and The Curio , and in 1885 became editor of The Art Union .[20] Within a few years, Trumble transformed himself into a cultural critic who stood out even in a city accustomed to quirky virtuosos. By 1886, he had insulted the brilliant young painter Kenyon Cox.[21] By 1887, he regularly held forth at a raucous table of artists, actors, and writers at the bohemian restaurant Riccadonna, on Union Square.[22]  In 1888, an anonymous writer declared: “A curious genius is Alfred Trumble, conceded to be the cleverest journalist in New York and the one most cordially liked or disliked.” Art critic, dramatic critic, editor, story-writer, feuilletonist, and chroniqueur, past master in all the arts of daily and weekly journalism, his noms de plume are legion, his facility and fertility beyond precedent. His stories, critiques, paragraphs, and out-of-town letters are full of style and savoir faire. Perhaps Mr. Trumble’s fame will ultimately rest on his art criticisms, for in that department he stands alone—the only brilliant all-around critic New York has ever had.[23]   One has to wonder if the author of such an acclamation was Trumble himself.   About the author: Claudia Keenan grew up in Mount Vernon, N.Y. She is a historian of American education (PhD, New York University) and has taught at Emory & Henry College and the University of Virginia. She has published articles on such diverse topics as the history of American debate and the symbolization of the American First Lady, and reviews nonfiction books. She blogs about history at www.throughthehourglass.com.   [1] Alfred Trumble, “A Railroad Jaunt in Costa Rica,” Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly , November 1879, 533. [2] “Arrived,” New York Times , 27 January 1874, 8; Passenger List, District of New York, Port of New York, E.H. King , January 29, 1874, Ancestry.com . [3] “Alfred Trumble, “The Magpie’s Hoard,” The Curio , September 1887, 31. [4] Lewis Rosenthal, “The Critics at the Play,” The Theatre, January 24, 1887, 340; “Younger Editors of New York, A Few Points about the Most Noted of Them,” The [Savannah, GA] Morning News , August 9, 1887, 3. [5] Alfred Trumble, “The Magpie’s Hoard,” 30; “Notes for the New Year,” The Collector , January 1, 1892, 70. Diana now resides in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, American Wing, Charles Engelhard Courtyard. [6] Liam Barry-Hayes, “Richard K. Fox,” Dictionary of Irish Biography , https://www.dib.ie/ . [7] Alfred Trumble, The Mysteries of New York , a sequel to Glimpses of Gotham and New York By Day and Night , “Books that YOU should Read,” inner cover (Richard K, Fox, 1882). [8] Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, vol. II (Belknap, 1938), 331. [9] “National Police Gazette History,” National Police Gazette , May 29, 1880, 3. [10] Alfred Trumble, A Slang Dictionary of New York, London and Paris: a collection of strange figures of speech, expressive terms and odd phrases used in the leading cities of the world, their origin, meaning, and application (Fox, 1880). One lexicographer states that Trumble lifted most of the book from The Vocabulum by New York City police chief George Matsell (1859). My own comparison shows overlap but not plagiarism.   [11] Christopher P. Wilson, “Rough Justice, Crime, Corruption, and Urban Governance” in Christine Bold, ed., The Oxford History of Popular Print Culture 1860-1920, Vol. 6, 565-568. [12] See, for example, Edward Crapsey, The Nether Side of New York; or, The Vice, Crime and Poverty of the Great Metropolis (New York, 1872) and George W. Walling, Recollections of a New York Chief of Police (New York, 1887). 13 Trumble, The Mysteries of New York , 8. 14 Among the best-known are The Secrets of the Great City by Edward Winslow Martin (1868), The Gentleman’s Companion (1870), and New York by Sunlight and Gaslight, a Work Descriptive of the Great American Metropolis by James D. McCabe, Jr. (1882). 15 Trumble, The Mysteries of New York , 62. 16 Alfred Trumble, Coney Island, How New York’s Gay Girls and Jolly Boys Enjoy Themselves by the Sea! (Fox, 1881). 17 Alfred Trumble, Faro Exposed or, the Gambler and His Prey, being a complete explanation of this famous game and how its skins are worked (Fox, 1882), 99. 18 Alfred Trumble, The Mott Street Poker Club: the secretary’s minutes (White & Allen, 1889), Jew Trouble at Manhattan Beach [a play written with George L. Stout], 1878. 19 “The Attractions at the Howard, Boston Globe , May 23, 1880, 10, quoting New York Telegram. 20 “The Art Union,” Brooklyn Eagle , June 28, 1885, 2. 21 H. Wayne Morgan, ed. An Artist of the American Renaissance: the Letters of Kenyon Cox 1877-1882 (Ohio, 1995), 73. 22 “Where the Bohemians Eat,” The Journalist , November 5, 1887, 16. 23 “General Gossip of Authors and Writers,” Current Literature , August 1888, 108.