BOUND VOLUMES, September 6, 2012

200 YEARS AGO
Sound Logic – I saw two who are called federalists. I advanced & gave & received the salutations of the hour: says the first – let’s see – you are a republican tory – No, sir, I replied – I am a Whig, since the war admits but those two classes: are you sir, a tory – No sir, he replied, I am a true American. Then, says I, we are agreed in principle, and differ only in opinion. I hope so, said he, and we shook hands. The second then accosted me with “what do you think of me, who am a member of the Washington Benevolent Society?” You may be a tory, says I, notwithstanding – If you call me a tory, says he, I’ll knock you down – Then, says I, I’ll see you hang’d before I’ll call you a tory; I cannot withstand such “Knock me down” arguments. Never fear – that brawny fist of yours is admirably calculated to make proselites, and terrify subjects. I proclaim it openly, says he, that your, our I should have said, President, is entirely devoted to the views of Bonaparte – who dares to deny this. Nobody, says I, who is within the reach of that clenched fist of yours; but I hope you will allow me to say that I am an American, the fist of Bonaparte or John Bull notwithstanding, I will be. Sig. Somebody.
September 5, 1812

175 YEARS AGO
Hurricane in the West Indies – On the 2d of August there was one of the most severe storms ever known in the island of St. Bartholomew. It states that the town, composed of about 300 houses is two-thirds destroyed – among them some of the most substantial buildings, the greater number the dwellings of the poor. As yet between 20 and 30 lives have been discovered to have been lost in the town, most of them crushed to death under the ruins, and others horribly mutilated and since dead, and very many severely injured, with broken bones, &c. Hundreds have lost all they possessed, and are thrown destitute upon the charity of others. The sea, during the gale, had risen over six feet.
September 4, 1837

150 YEARS AGO
Arrest and Imprisonment – Mr. Timothy Herkimer, a farmer of the Town of Exeter, in this county, was arrested on Saturday last and imprisoned in the county jail, on an order issued from the War Department at Washington, charged as we are informed, with discouraging enlistment by facilitating the escape of his son and another young man into Canada, with advising a deserter not to return to the service, and when holding disloyal language when at home. The arrest is made under the general order recently issued from the War Department; which order, it will be remembered, suspended the writ of habeas corpus in all such cases.
September 5, 1862

100 YEARS AGO
H.W. Fluhrer, general manager, and J.M. Knapp, director, of the Otsego & Delaware Telephone Co., were in town Thursday conferring with Frank B. Shipman, resident director, regarding the forest of poles on Main Street. It is the purpose of the telephone company to remove as many of the poles as possible, which will mean very nearly all of them, as the new cable construction will not require as many. An arrangement has been made with Joseph K. Choate whereby the telephone, electric lights and the trolley will be on the same poles. Then, there are the old independent telephone poles which are neither useful nor ornamental and which will all be taken away.
September 4, 1912

75 YEARS AGO
How is peace among nations to be maintained in the face of recent increases in international political tension, expansion of standing armies, sharp increases in military budgets, and actual warfare in some portions of the globe? “Only as the world’s economic health is restored will individuals and nations develop again adequate resistance to the psychological madness that makes possible internal and external strife. Only as constructive economic effort once more fully engages the energies of mankind, will the nations of the world restore and develop their economic prosperity in full and turn their thoughts away from war and toward lasting peace,” says Secretary of State Cordell Hull.
September 8, 1937

50 YEARS AGO
Three 1961 graduates of Cooperstown Central School, now attending college, were the speakers at the regular weekly luncheon meeting of the Rotary club at the Cooper Inn. The three, who will begin their sophomore years later this month, were Don Rogers, a pre-veterinarian student at Cornell; Theodore P. Feury, Jr., who is at St. Lawrence University, Canton; and Joseph Booan, who is majoring in recreation and youth leadership at Springfield College, Springfield, Massachusetts. Rogers said he was attracted to Cornell when he visited there with his parents at age seven and saw a “cow with a window in it,” and it made a lasting impression on his young mind. Feury had planned to study engineering but may major in mathematics in a four-year liberal arts course. Booan expects to go into social rehabilitation work after college.
September 5, 1962

25 YEARS AGO
The Sandlot Kid statue at the entrance to Doubleday Field had begun looking rather tarnished until last week. The damage done by shaving cream, acid rain, and vandalism has been reversed through the efforts of The Friends of the Parks. The Village Parks Advisory Committee which administers the contributions of the Friends of the Parks, arranged for the statue’s restoration by Marianne Russell and Bob Marti, a team of sculpture conservationists that undertook work on the Indian Hunter statue in Lakefront Park last summer.
September 9, 1987

10 YEARS AGO
United States Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-New York) and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, visited Cooperstown on Saturday, August 31. The couple toured the National Baseball Hall of Fame and met with local officials as part of their upstate New York tour. Village Mayor Carol Waller met the Clintons at the Hall of Fame and presented them with a bat from the Cooperstown Bat Company.
September 6, 2002