BOUND VOLUMES, November 22, 2012

200 YEARS AGO
Advertisement – Ambrose L. Jordan and Samuel Birdsall, have formed a connection in the practice of law: Their office is one door south of Phinney’s Bookstore, in the village of Cooperstown, where commands relative to the profession will be executed with pleasure. Cooperstown, November 14, 1812. (Ed. Note: Ambrose L. Jordan was the father of Caroline Jordan, who, as a young girl, attended school in Cooperstown. Jordan left the village in 1819 for a law practice in the Hudson Valley, later serving as New York’s Attorney-General. In the early 1830s, Edward Clark became Jordan’s law partner and married his daughter Caroline. In the late 1840s, Edward Clark represented Isaac Singer in patent lawsuits over rights to the workings of sewing machines. By the mid-1850s Edward Clark and Isaac Singer had become business partners in the Singer Sewing Machine Co. In 1856, Caroline Jordan Clark persuaded her husband to purchase the farm then known as Apple Hill as a summer residence. Today, the property located on the east side of River Street is known as Fernleigh, the residence of Jane Forbes Clark, the Great-Great-Great Granddaughter of Ambrose Jordan, and Great-Great Granddaughter of Edward Clark and Caroline Jordan Clark.)
November 21, 1812

175 YEARS AGO
Smoking & Snuff – Tobacco belongs to the class of drugs called narcotics, and is possessed of the most noxious qualities. The excessive use of tobacco, in whatever shape it is taken, heats the blood, hurts digestion, wastes the fluids, and relaxes the nerves. Smoking is particularly injurious to lean, hectic, and hypochondriacal persons; it creates an unusual thirst, leading to the use of spirituous liquors; it increases indolence and confirms the lazy in the habits they have acquired; above all it is pernicious to the young, laying the foundation of future misery.
November 20, 1837

150 YEARS AGO
The double iron building erected by Mr. Geo. L. Bowne, formerly of Key West, is one of the most elegant structures of the kind in the state. The cast iron front is the work of Mr. James Bogardus of New York, who claims to be the original inventor of buildings of this kind. It is of the Corinthian style of architecture, beautiful in all its proportions. The plate glass for the front, in panes three and one-half by ten and one-half feet and cost about $700. The sides and end of the building are stone, very heavy. The stores are 22 x 70 feet, with a hall in the center of the building five feet wide. This leads to the Public Hall in the third story, which is 49 x 70 feet, 16 feet, 7 inches to the ceiling, and is calculated to accommodate about 700 people. The floor of this fine hall is double; it is well-ventilated; will be warmed from registers, and lit with gas from splendid chandeliers. The cost of this building, with the lots on which it is built, was about $13,000.
November 21, 1862

125 YEARS AGO
One of the finest country residences in this part of the state was that owned by Mr. William Constable, erected by him on the western shore of Otsego Lake at a cost of about $30,000. The Glimmerglen mansion was an object of attraction to summer tourists as they sailed by it. We regret to record the fact that it no longer exists. It was lighted by gas made on the premises from gasoline, and a leak occurred in the pipe in the cellar where there was a furnace, and an explosion was the result. This was about 1 p.m. on November 17. In a moment the cellar was filled with flames. Mr. Constable ordered the cellar door to be kept closed, while those in the house worked hard and rapidly to save such valuable pictures and furniture on the first floor as could be got out. Mr. J.K. Pierson ascended a ladder to the second story and succeeded in getting Mrs. Constable’s case containing very valuable diamond and other jewelry. The total loss is about $50,000.
November 25, 1887

100 YEARS AGO
Recently-elected Woodrow Wilson writes: “Democratic government has, the world over, had deep and far-reaching results. It has created a new conception of the functions of government. It is not merely that democratic government is based, as the old phrase used to go, on ‘the consent of the governed,’ but that it is based upon the participation in government of all classes and interests; and whenever this conception can be realized, whenever government is disentangled from its connection with special interests and made responsible to genuine public opinion, throughout the length and breadth of the great country, it at once gets new ideals and responds to new impulses. It then becomes an instrument of civilization and of humanity.”
November 20, 1912

50 YEARS AGO
The children of the village of Hartwick will have a new recreation area in the form of a playground in the center of the village on South Street, thanks to the generosity of the Oneonta Oil and Fuel Company, which made the village a gift of the property there. The Oneonta concern, which has owned the property since February 1945, deeded the property to the Hartwick Village. The Hartwick Union School building, built in 1878 at a cost of $1,300 will be razed to make way for the playground.
November 21, 1962

25 YEARS AGO
Bassett Hospital employees will be receiving a $500 bonus and salary grade increase as a result of careful planning and hard work. This is the first time in two years that revenues have exceeded expenses. All employees will be eligible for merit-based salary increases at the time of their annual performance review.
November 25, 1987

10 YEARS AGO
Otesaga Hotel general manager Frank Maloney will step down from the position he has held for the past 10 years on December 1st to begin duties as managing director until October 2003. The transition will allow the Maloney’s replacement, John Irvin, to become better acquainted with the hotel and the community.
November 22, 2002