Winter 1999

About the Winter 1999 Issue

Note from the Editors

Beth Flory introduces an account of life in Naples written in 1936 by Josephine Capron.The tale is called The Old Mill. Beth found the old pictures and maps that accompany the story.

David Minor's Timeline continues with happenings in New York during the years of 1793 and of 1794.

Abigail Hackett's everyday work of baking, tending house and sick children, sewing for her family, keeping warm, visiting and caring for her neighbors went on through the winter months of 1865 and 1866 along with Christmas preparations, the marriage of Charley, her eldest son, parties for her daughters, all interspersed with a savage murder, her husband's narrowly missed injury, and the deaths of two other neighbors. Her diary was transcribed by George Dickey.

For this issue we have two more chapters from the autobiographical book, Robert Beck's Story, written just 100 years ago in Hammondsport by Beck in his sixtieth year. Robert went in his thirteenth year to live and work for a kind Ontario boat captain at Texas, Oswego County, New York. Several years later, after a short apprenticeship with a carpenter in Rochester, Beck made his way by rail and foot to Iowa.

Virginia H. Gibbs reviews Out of The Wilderness: The Civil War Memoirs of Corporal Norton C. Shepard, 146th New York Volunteer Infantry, edited by Raymond W. Smith.

Beth B. Flory reviews two new books by Emerson Klees: One Plus One Equals Three: Pairing Man/Woman Strengths-The Role Models of Teamwork, and The Women's Rights Movement and the Finger Lakes Region.

Bill Treichler reviews Richard Sherer's new book Crooked Lake and the Grape. The book has full-color reproductions of grape-box and wine-bottle labels, plus many photographs of people and places and illustrations from grape and wine promotional leaflets.

Arvin Rice tells of his family's trip in 1797 from Connecticut to his father's veteran's claim in the Military Tract near Oswego and their settlement there. They went through hardships for several winters but eventually prospered and produced nearly 200 descendants by 1859 when Rice told his story. Richard Palmer found this report in an Oswego newspaper of that date.

Don Shilling describes recent meetings of the the New Society of the Genesee at museums in Palmyra and the Topham print exhibit in Rochester. Don has been busy getting a new building to house rolling stock at the Rochester and Genesee Valley Railroad Museum.

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