Author: bleeckerhistoricalsociety

Join us on Sunday 15 December from 1-5pm at The Old School Museum for the annual BHS Christmas Open House. Enjoy mulled cider, eggnog, coffee, tea and treats. Please bring stories, photos, cards and memorabilia from Christmases past to share.

Members are invited to attend the BHS Annual Meeting on Monday 18 November at 7pm at the Bleecker Town Hall. The Annual Meeting is a chance for the membership to recap a successful season, as well as looking forward to a promising new year. Agenda items include our 2013 budget report and 2014 budget proposal, our collections and State charter, our speaker program for 2014, and annual elections. We will also devote time to an important new project, a Veterans Memorial at the Town Hall, for which the BHS will stage a fundraising drive and associated events in the coming year. Please bring your enthusiasm and ideas; refreshments will be provided.

The Board of Trustees will hold a brief meeting immediately following the Annual Meeting.

Collections Scope

The Society collects materials pertaining to the Town of Bleecker, a small rural community founded in 1831 and located in northern Fulton County in the southern foothills of the Adirondack mountains of New York State.

A. Resource Extraction. We seek artifacts documenting the heyday of Bleecker industry, including logging, tanning, farming, and ice harvesting, as well as associated manufacture and trade.

B. Wilderness Subsistence. We seek artifacts documenting informal subsistence activities, including hunting, fishing, trapping, gardening, canning, sugaring and household handicraft.

C. Mountain Tourism. We seek artifacts documenting the accommodation, recreation and travel industry, including camping, hiking, guiding, fishing, hunting, painting, photography and travel writing.

D. Built Environment. We seek artifacts documenting the vernacular architecture of residential homes and seasonal camps, as well as our largely vanished industrial landscape of mills and factories.

E. Social Life. We seek artifacts documenting social institutions, including churches, dance halls, social clubs, and youth groups, as well as local music, folklore, myths and legends.

F. Public Works. We seek artifacts documenting public transport, common schools, cemeteries, waste disposal, emergency response, town governance, and the Adirondack Forest Preserve.

G. Local Landscape. We seek artifacts documenting the shifting character of the town landscape, particularly related to forest clearance and regrowth with the vagaries of industry and development.

H. Military Service. We seek artifacts documenting the service of local veterans, their lives, memories, stories, images and memorabilia.

How to Donate

The Bleecker Historical Society now welcomes donations to its historic collections. At the present time, we are able to accept only small items such as postcards, books, journals, maps, signs, artwork and photographs due to spatial limitations. To donate an object or set of objects to the Society, please download a Donation Application, fill out the top portion, and return it to the Society (preferably with a photograph of the item) by email at bleeckerhistoricalsociety@gmail.com or by post to the Bleecker Town Hall, 575 County Highway 112, Gloversville, NY 12078. Potential donors may also submit an application at the Town Hall during our public hours. We will contact you to make an appointment to view the item. Donation Applications can also be obtained at the Town Hall, or sent by post.

In addition to original objects, the Society also gratefully welcomes donations of images. Images can be scanned by the donor, brought to the Town Hall during our public hours for scanning, or scanned by appointment.

 

Collection Management Strategy

To download a full copy of our Collections Management Strategy, approved by the membership and the Board of Trustees on 18 November 2013, please click on the  link above. The Strategy, comprising a collections management plan, policy and procedures, as well as a code of ethics, disaster plan and associated forms, is the document which governs our collections process. It will be reviewed on a yearly basis at our Annual Meeting and updated as necessary.

Active volunteers are vital to the success of the Bleecker Historical Society. To become a BHS volunteer, please send an email to bleeckerhistoricalsociety@gmail.com stating your skills, hours available to volunteer per week, and the number of weeks you would be willing to volunteer. We currently welcome volunteers in a variety of regular and occasional positions:

Collections Management

Collections volunteers staff our Archive at the Bleecker Town Hall during regular weekly hours, assist patrons with research, accession items to the collections, and undertake minor conservation of artifacts. No special skills are required, and an orientation session will be provided to volunteers, introducing them to the collections, our procedures, and conservation methods.

Press and Publicity

Volunteers are needed to assist with the creation of print publicity such as posters, flyers, and brochures, as well as to update our website and issue press releases to local newspapers and radio stations. If you have access to a computer and an internet connection, much of this work can be done at home. Some artistic ability is helpful, but if you would like to learn these skills, the Society can provide training.

Research and Writing

Research volunteers assist the Society with the vital work of investigating Bleecker history and communicating those findings to the general public. Research may take place online, at our own Archive, or at other local institutions such as the Fulton County deed office or area libraries. While previous research and writing experience is helpful, the Society can provide training if you would like to learn.

Events and Hospitality

Volunteers are needed for setup and cleanup at our occasional special events and fundraisers, such as our Ice Cream Social, Christmas Open House, and Photo Festival. Some physical labor is required, such as setting up chairs, tables and tents. Most of our special events offer (or sell) light refreshments including baked goods, sandwiches and beverages, and the Society gratefully welcomes such donations.

Of the six schools that once existed in the Town of Bleecker, only two remain standing: District No. 4, pictured above, which is today used as the Bleecker Town Hall, and District No. 3, which today houses The Old School Museum, currently celebrating the 140th anniversary of the structure. Join us on Monday, 4 November 2013, when Mike Gendron will present a program on the Common School
Districts in the Town of Bleecker. Michael F. Gendron, B.S, M.S., is an Independent Historian with a
concentration on School Districts in Fulton County, New York. Persons with information and/or photographs of School Districts in Fulton
County New York are asked to contact Mike at 107 Kingsboro Avenue,
Gloversville, NY 12078 or mgendron@nycap.rr.com. As usual, we will gather at the Bleecker Town Hall, with the meeting commencing at 7pm and the program at 8pm.

Last year, a 132 year-old piece of Northville History came to an abrupt end when the Hubbell Chimney was dismantled. The chimney was erected by Stephen Acker as part of the Globe Metallic Binding Company, owned by Ray Hubbell and James Cole, in 1880. The chimney, outlasting the factory for which it was originally built, found greater fame in the twentieth century, becoming a seasonal home for Chimney Swifts who travelled some 7,000 miles from their home in the Amazon to visit the Adirondacks every May 6th – Ray Hubbell's own birthday. On October 7th, Gail Cramer, historian for the Village of Northville and Town of Northampton, will discuss the history of the chimney and the prospects for a return of the Swifts as a replacement chimney is constructed.

The Bleecker tanneries are one of the Town's most obscure and fascinating mysteries. An industry that commenced in the 1850s and had folded by the dawn of the twentieth century, its mark upon Bleecker remains only in a few lingering place-names and decaying foundations. On 3 September 2013, anthropologist Eliza Jane Darling will present a talk on both the history and the historiography of Bleecker's lost tanneries: what we know about them, and how we know it. With no known images of the tanneries themselves in existence, the talk will focus on the forms of evidence that indicate where they were located, who founded and managed them, what they produced, and how long they operated: census records, genealogical histories, maps, deeds and the slim historical record itself.

On August 11, the Bleecker Historical Society will hold its first Photo Festival, where we will display, document and digitize historic images of the Town of Bleecker: its people, buildings, landscapes and events. The Festival is both for people who have images to share, and for those who would simply like to learn more about the Town's history through photographic exhibits.

"If Fulton County has a ghost town…then the town of Bleecker must come as close to it as one could imagine." Thus wrote Kenneth Shaw in his 1974 pictorial history Bleecker, Mayfield, Perth: Then and Now. Indeed, due to the wilderness character of the town, much of Bleecker's history lays hidden beneath the blanket of forest growth that has reclaimed former industrial, agricultural, and social spaces. Most of the sawmills, tanneries, shops, churches, schools, dance halls, hotels, boarding houses, homesteads, barns and croplands that thrived from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century are now lost to time, while the experiences of the men and women who lived and worked in them now reside in family memory.

As part of our mission to preserve and interpret Bleecker history, we invite members of the public to share their historical images of the town with us. While we gratefully accept donations of original photographs, the Photo Fest offers an opportunity especially for those who would like to share their images but keep their originals. We will have scanning stations set up at the Town Hall, where we will digitize images, saving a copy (on CD) for the donor and a copy for the Society, and return the originals to the donor on the spot. From these donations, we hope to build a collection of historic Bleecker images to use in exhibits, publications, and especially in an online gallery — all educational tools that bring the "ghosts" of Bleecker back to life.

The Photo Fest will take place at the Bleecker Town Hall, 575 County Highway 112, on Sunday 11 August from 11am to 3pm. We will offer light refreshments and a genealogy project for children, and we will also raffle a beautiful hand-framed historic image of Bleecker (the one on the front of our 2013 brochure). Members will be on hand to exhibit their own photographs, and to help donors identify theirs, while materials will be available to set up on-the-spot exhibits. Admission is free; donations are welcome, and all proceeds go to support the collections of the Society. For further information include a downloadable FAQ, please see our "Events" page.

Join us on August 5th when craftsman Michael Olivette will give an illustrated presentation on his modern reproduction of an Adirondack guideboat. Michael will also talk about the history of guideboats and guiding in the Adirondacks.

Michael Olivette is a self-taught woodworker and has been building various "things" out of wood for nearly 35 years. He started making furniture in his kitchen while in graduate school at Syracuse University. He has built both traditional and rustic furniture and also built – with local resident Pete Habla – a timber-frame cabin here in Bleecker. In 2000, after three years of research and hundreds of hours of shop time, Michael completed his first guideboat, putting all his woodworking skills to the test. Not long after completing the boat, he co-authored with John Michne, Building an Adirondack Guideboat: Woodstrip Reproductions of the Virginia (Nicholas Burns Publishing, 2005). Michael and partner Craig Tryon operated Adirondack Wilderness Experiences Guide Service, from 1991-2006. A 20-year member (1987-2007) of the New York State Outdoor Guides Association, Michael also served for many years as the organization's treasurer, vice president and ethics committee chair.

A social psychologist by training, Michael received his doctorate from Syracuse University in 1984. A professor and administrator at Syracuse University for nearly 17 years (1990-2006), Michael joined the University of Scranton in 2007 as an associate dean.  He currently serves as Dean of the Division of Natural and Health Sciences at SUNY Westchester Community College in Valhalla, NY and lives with his wife Dawn in New York City. Michael and Dawn will move to Dutchess county next year where he will – finally – resume boatbuilding!

The Bleecker Historical Society will hold its annual Ice Cream Social and Bake Sale on July 20th from 1-4pm at the Old School Museum, 114 Lily Lake Road in Bleecker. Tickets cost $2.50, children 5 and under free. Proceeds will benefit the Bleecker Historical
Society. Please join us, rain or shine, for ice cream, home-baked treats and tours of the 19th-century District No. 3 schoolhouse.