HOMETOWN HISTORY, July 18, 2014

125 Years Ago
The Oneonta Chair Company – Ground was broken for the original building June 15, 1887 and work began January 1, 1888. The company now manufactures about 20 varieties of chairs, ranging from the kitchen chair to the more expensive spring rocker. Most of the work, however, is on the less costly varieties. All the common hardwoods of this vicinity are used, veneered in some cases with the more valuable black walnut. Most of the output is shipped in bundles to New York and other cities, where it is put together and finished, but some of the work is finished here. The frames are sent out to be caned. None of this work is done in the factory. The women who do this work receive from five to fifteen cents per piece varying with the size of the chair. The factory now employs 55 workmen. Add to these the number employed in the woods and in hauling logs and we have about 70 on the payroll, whose monthly wages amount to about $2,500. In other words, the chair company alone is now paying $30,000 a year to the working men of Oneonta. The company now turns out over 12,000 chairs per month, an average of nearly 500 per day. When the new building, now under construction, is completed, they expect to be able to send out from 15,000 to 16,000 chairs a month. The new building will be of wood, 40 x 72 feet, three stories high and with a basement.
July 1889

100 Years Ago
The famous aeronaut Frank Burnside, a former resident of this city, accompanied by his wife, survived a 2,000 foot plunge into the Hudson River last Tuesday as the 90-horsepower motor of his hydro-aeroplane stalled out within sight of Manhattan after leaving Seagate for Dobbs Ferry. The flying boat was working perfectly at a speed nearly a mile a minute when a scattering of spectators gathered below at Greystone heard the barking of the motor cease. The speed decreased and the aeroplane seemed to sink on its wings and pitch forward. It dived, brought its head up, dropped and dived again. In the tricky wind that played over the Palisades it turned half around as it fell. Mrs. Burnside could be seen, a long veil streaming behind her head, sitting bolt upright beside her husband. A moment later the craft righted itself and skated off at an angle, striking the surface of the river. There was a cloud of spray and then the boat appeared. Edward Cook, Superintendent of the Tower Bridge Yacht Club jumped into a launch and went to the rescue. He attached a line to the air boat and towed it and its passengers off to Dobbs Ferry about two miles away.
July 1914
80 Years Ago
Eight Rules to Prevent Marriage Crack-Ups: 1. Yield on little points. 2. Be as fair to your spouse as you would to your business partner. 3. Be sure you both have common interests and then work together for common purposes. 4. Don’t conceal financial worries or financial successes. 5. Avoid letting your family or your friends influence you against your mate. 6. Be moderate in work and play. 7. Respect the privacy of your spouse and suppress your curiosity. 8. Keep a sense of humor at all times.
July 1934

60 Years Ago
The government is planning a device that could sound an advance warning within each home in a target area in the event of an atomic or hydrogen bomb attack. One such device, still in the experimental stage, could be installed in a bedroom and set off by a change in electric current if enemy bombers approached. Civilian Defense Administrator Val Peterson disclosed the idea before a House Appropriations Committee looking into the cost of preparations for the mass evacuation of American cities in an emergency. Peterson conceded that the mass evacuation concept under which millions of city dwellers in target areas would flee to the countryside presents “staggering problems.” But he said it is the only practical approach to the H-bomb threat. Peterson repeated predictions that within two years an elaborate detection system would be able to give target cities two to six hours advance warning of an enemy bomber attack. Peterson’s testimony was given last May but released for the first time today.
July 1954

40 Years Ago
President Nixon, terming Watergate “the thinnest scandal in American history,” says that if the charges against him were true, “I wouldn’t serve for one minute. But I know they are not true and therefore, I will stay here, do the job that I was elected to do as well as I can and trust to the American constitutional process to make the final verdict.” The President’s comments were made in a broad-ranging interview with Rabbi Baruch Korff, a Nixon supporter from Providence, R.I.
July 1974

30 Years Ago
A secretary who purchased a lottery ticket on Friday the 13th claimed the entire $15.6 million prize Sunday in the Massachusetts Megabucks Lottery. It was the world’s largest gambling haul by one person. Marcia Sanford, 45, a secretary from Westfield Massachusetts, will receive $780,994 a year for 20 years. The winning numbers were 8-13-27-28-30-36. Most of the numbers she chose were from family birthdates. Sanford’s husband David is a mechanic. Mrs. Sanford had just finished trimming the hedges outside her rural home when the winning numbers came over the radio. “I started shaking and crying,” she said. The previous record was a $10.2 million jackpot won in New York in March by a Queens, N.Y. woman.
July 1984

20 Years Ago
The oldest traces of human life in New York State have been uncovered in a swamp on private farmland near Lake Ontario. More than 100 early Indian hunting tools, fireplaces and other artifacts are believed to be around 11,000 years old, nearly a 1,000 years after the Ice Age ended. Nomadic hunters followed the receding ice sheet into the area looking for caribou, mammoth and stag moose. Tools for cutting meat and scraping animal hides were found including flint arrowheads.
July 1994