Bound Volumes
May 23, 2024
135 YEARS AGO
Excursion—The D. & H. Company is to run an excursion train from Sidney to Albany on Thursday, May 30, which is a holiday, and on that day Barnum’s great circus exhibits at Albany. Leave Sidney at 6:30 a.m.; arrive at Albany at 11 a.m., and leave there on return at 6 p.m. Fare for the round trip at all points as far east as Schenevus, $1.75; Worcester and points east to Schoharie Junction $1.50. A special train will leave Cooperstown at 7 o’clock a.m. to connect with the above at a reduced rate for the round trip.
Pensions—After years of effort by different attorneys, Capt. A. Davidson has finally succeeded in obtaining for Mrs. Eliza Eggleston of this village a widow’s pension of $12 a month with arrearages amounting to $2,000. She is now an invalid, and it is feared will not long live to enjoy her good fortune. Tabor Card of Hartwick has received a pension of nearly $1,300, with eight dollars per month during life.
May 24, 1889
110 YEARS AGO
In Our Town—At a meeting of the members of the Sunset League held at the office of C.B. Johnson on Wednesday evening it was voted to levy a tax of 25 cents on each member of the various teams and each member should pay 10 cents each week toward the support of the organization. The money collected will be used to repair the bleachers, grandstand, players’ benches, scorers’ stand, club house and to defray the expense of a man to keep up the grounds and mow the grass. The city water will be turned on and the clubhouse will be open to the members who wish to make use of it. (Ed. Note: The ball field was located on the site of the present Cooperstown Elementary School.)
May 20, 1914
85 YEARS AGO
A photo reproduction of a letter from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt dated April 19, 1939, appeared on the front page of The Freeman’s Journal. The text reads: “It is most fitting that the history of our perennially popular sport should be immortalized in the National Baseball Museum at Cooperstown where the game originated and where the first diamond was devised a hundred years ago. Baseball has become, through the years, not only a great national sport, but also the symbol of America as the melting pot. The players embrace all nations and national origins and the fans, equally cosmopolitan, make only one demand of them: Can they play the game?” (Ed. Note: In 1939, there were no African-Americans playing in the white-only professional major leagues; integration finally came in 1947 when Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers)
May 24, 1939
35 YEARS AGO
Otsego County representatives voted in favor of a resolution to purchase more than six acres of land at $9,000 or less per acre near the Meadows where a new Otsego County jail will be constructed. Otsego County has been under pressure to build a new jail to relieve overcrowding in a structure built in the 1840s in the village.
May 24, 1989
20 YEARS AGO
Local historian Tom Heitz recently stumbled across previously unnoticed references and articles describing suffrage activist Susan B. Anthony’s visit to Cooperstown in early February, 1855. Heitz, who was researching entries for his history column Bound Volumes in The Freeman’s Journal at the NYSHA Library said Anthony scholars at Rutgers University confirmed that the information was previously undocumented. (Ed. note: The Freeman’s Journal incorrectly listed the year of Anthony’s visit in their 2004 story as 1885 rather than 1855.)
May 21, 2004