Posts By: historian

What do you see in the Flint House’s future? All ideas are welcome!

I have reserved the meeting room at the Scotia Library for September 4 at 5:30 pm.

We can do a little bit of general brainstorming about possibilities for future uses and for fundraising. Then we can send volunteers home with research assignments relating to grants and other ways to move forward.

As many of you know, the building is under threat of demolition, so prompt action is needed to show public interest.

Hope to see you there!

(If you can’t come to the meeting and want to show your support to keep and use the Flint House, please email your village trustees! Their email addresses are on the village website.)

If you are interested in local history, genealogy, or the history of your house, you might want to give Sanborn maps a try.

In the late 1800s and 1900s the Sanborn Map Company published detailed street maps of urban (densely populated) areas all over the country. These were to assist fire insurance companies in assessing their liability as they issued policies. The drawings and details written in about building materials, size, windows, etc. are fascinating looks at the structures in a community.

As an example, let’s take a look at the corner of Mohawk Ave. and Ten Broeck, where Scotia Village Hall is currently being renovated.

In 1900 the map shows a 2-story building called Fire Eng(ine) Ho(use), and some detail about supplies inside the firehouse.

In 1914, the fire department has added the little bay windows on the second floor, more information is given about what’s inside, a one-story wagon shed at the back (where the village horses were also kept), and a 2-story Club Ho(use) at the corner of John St. No note of what exactly it was used for, but it was not labeled D for dwelling.

To explore the Scotia of the past, you can view some of these maps online at the Library of Congress. Or you could look at another town you know pretty well, or one where your ancestors lived.

Here’s how to get started. Go to the Library of Congress at https://www.loc.gov and type Sanborn maps into the search box.

Click on Collection Sanborn Maps.

There are 3 choices at the top:

Read the “About this Collection” part and the “Articles & Essays”  if you like—it’s pretty interesting.

Click on “Collection Items” to search for the maps.

On the left hand side select Available Online, United States, New York, Schenectady County.

Scotia is included in the 1894 and 1900 Schenectady maps, and has its own map in 1914. Each map has many pages; the first pages have a street index and picture of the individual map coverage areas.

Have fun exploring!

Photo: A fond look at the Flint House magnolia, which split apart in the heavy snow of March 2023. It had to be removed, along with many trees at the back of the house.

The Preservation League of New York State awarded the Village of Scotia a Technical Assistance Grant for an engineering study of the Flint House, to provide information on structural problems that may need to be resolved now or in the future.

The Technical Assistance grant program is a partnership between the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) and the Preservation League of New York State, made possible by NYSCA with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

The study has been completed and the final report, with recommendations, is due in May. Our engineer is Tim Schroder of Enginuity Engineering & Design.

This report, along with a report done last summer by Walter Wheeler, an architectural historian, will bring up-to-date information to the discussion about preserving the building and using it for community purposes.

If you think the Flint House is a valuable part of the village, please let your Village Trustees know. They are planning a series of monthly sessions for listening to residents and planning for the future. You can attend those meetings, or contact your trustees by email (contact page at villageofscotia.org).

@preservenys

@NYSCArts

Village Hall Renovations Begin

After some setbacks, Village Hall renovations have finally begun. The building is emptied out, and all the offices have moved temporarily. That information is elsewhere on the village website.

This article from 1948 tells us something about that original hall, which was built directly behind the fire house. A transcription, for easy reading, is below. It seems clear (and as many of you may know from personal experience) that renovations have been ongoing through most of the building’s history.

There is no indication which newsletter this article was published in. If you happen to know, please email the historian!

historian@villageofscotiany.gov

#scotiahistory

Village Hall Observes 20^th Anniversary

By Shirley Armstrong

Village hall is observing its 20^th—and to date most important—anniversary this week.

Which has nothing to do with matrimony, although the hall has been “hitched” to the fire department for years.

This anniversary is a birthday and the first since the final payment on the $25,000 building.

The brick structure on Ten Broeck Street was constructed by Corneau and Gardner and was occupied by the village Dec. 15, 1928.

Designer of the structure was George Miller, who now resides on North Holmes Street and is employed by G. E. as an engineer. He is the son of John Miller, for whom John Miller Hook and Ladder Co. was named.

Plumbing and heating were installed by G. E. VanVorst Co. and lighting by Forsythe.

First payment on the hall was made Aug. 1, 1929; last Aug. 1, 1948.

Alvin C. Spitzer was mayor when the hall was first occupied and Howard Toll was village clerk.

A blueprint of the hall interior at that time would scarcely be recognizable today.

Offices of the police chief and village clerk were about the size of an average shower stall and huddled in space now a part of village clerk’s office space.

Two rooms now serving as police chief’s office and mayor’s office were then one room used as office of the village engineer.

Today’s police department was yesterday’s Court room, complete with the customary wood railing. The railing is now gracing the second floor meeting hall, where important trials are conducted. However, [a] majority of cases in police court are now conducted in the police department.

The second floor, where village board meetings are held and where numerous civic and fraternal groups meet, includes offices of the village engineer and building inspector.

Scotia has had four mayors since construction of the hall. Since Spitzer’s term, successive terms have been served by Adson J. Haight, John Sible and William Turnbull. The latter is now serving in that capacity.

There have been three village clerks. Following Toll’s death, Raymond J. Ballert took office and was succeeded by the present clerk, J. F. H. Robinson.

Miss Dora Hayes, deputy village clerk, who began work for the village as court clerk, says it’s impossible to count the many improvements and alterations which have gradually altered the appearance of the hall interior. “I can count the number of places I’ve had my desk, though,” she said—“Six. Every time I move I wonder if I’m in permanent residence or if I’m still a transient.”

Spring is almost here! But there’s time for a few more Scotia winter stories to close out the season.

The newspaper clipping of the trolley photo is not very clear, and we don’t know what newspaper it was, but you can see the rotary brushes that kept the track clear. The trolley came across the old bridge, up Schonowee, and along Mohawk to Toll St. Another route split off and went up Ballston, Wallace, Fifth, and then Vley to near the train tracks. Power came from overhead lines.

Michelle Norris, and helpers, made oral history tapes in the 1970s and 1990s with several community members. There are many great stories about Scotia, and here are some winter ones looking back at folks’ boyhoods around 1905 to 1920.

School was never cancelled, no matter the weather, so kids had to fight through the drifts and snowstorms to walk to school. (In the early 1900s the Mohawk school was right on Mohawk Ave. where the Village Parking Lot is today.)

Great fun was had by riding the 8-kid toboggan that was kept in the village equipment barn (and sometime horse barn) on Ten Broeck where the Village Hall is now, behind the firehouse. With a good push, and sometimes with the track iced down by the firemen, they would be able to slide down Ten Broeck almost to the river. There weren’t many cars in town, but the trolley did go back and forth; one kid was supposed to warn the others when it was coming so they could wait. Of course, one time that didn’t happen and the sled ran right into the cow catcher of the trolley—apparently no one was hurt, but after that the sled was kept locked up.

If there was an ice jam from an early thaw, the Mohawk backed up and flooded the islands and the low parts of the shore, and backed up into Collins Lake as well. If it froze back up quickly and stayed cold, there was great skating until March.

Horses and sleighs were raced on the river and on Collins Pond.

Another winter event was watching the men cut ice on Collins Pond. There was a big ice house (about where the upper ball fields are now) and a conveyor belt which pulled the ice up from the lake and stored it for everyone’s ice boxes—no refrigerators yet!

With some wintery weather, and a Village email about skating on Collins Pond, let’s look back at some of the winter entertainments from times past.

All excerpts are from “History Walks with Scotians”, by Frances Anderson Sloan, published in the Scotia-Glenville Journal on the dates noted.

Feb. 7, 1963

During this frost and snowbound period, we can travel a few miles by imagining ourselves journeying out from Schenectady or Scotia along the Mohawk Toll road, the Sacandaga trail or the Ballston or Saratoga path….sometime between the late seventeen hundreds and eighteen-fifty.

In winter we should be swaddled in heavy clothing snuggled down beneath the warm buffalo or beaver or other animal furs traded from the Indians, and perhaps handed down from an exchange made in grandmother’s day. In an 1874 letter to his cousin, Catharina Van Rensselaer Bonney, John Sanders wrote about the pelt his grandmother cherished and used in the cutter in winter. It had come to her from an Indian trade made by John Glen. Usually the early Indian trade was in defiance of the authorities of the West India Company. The sleigh or cutter would, of course, be open. Perhaps a hot brick or a foot warmer with live coals inside would take the chill off our feet. Crossing the ice on the Mohawk river was in many ways more pleasant than waiting for the ferry, or, after 1808, bumping over the toll bridge. Visitors to Scotia from Albany would whisk over the pine plains and the river, approaching Scotia at a point where a path had been outlined up the bank, frequently by evergreen trees or branches stuck in the snow. Not to follow the outlined approach might mean a dunking in the river through the thin ice along the edge, and the prudent always waited for the safe approach to be marked but the impatient drivers took their chances, as they do today.

[There is a wood & tin foot warmer from 1816 in the Glen-Sanders collection (of items from the mansion) at Colonial Williamsburg.]

Feb. 21, 1963

Maunsell Van Rensselaer wrote in 1888, “Scotia was the home of my great uncle Judge John Sanders who maintained the reputation for unbounded hospitality. The house [now the Glen-Sanders Mansion] was always full, and there was plenty of good cheer. In the winter they had sleighing and coasting and homemade sausages and head cheeses and buckwheat cakes, with oiley-cocks and crullas [Dutch cakes most like our donuts] and the great open fireplace filled with logs and no fear of frost.”

March 7, 1963

Snow rollers packed the snow down on the roads instead of ploughs scraping it up, so that travel in winter by cutter or sleigh was smoother and faster than summer travel through mud and ruts. Our hardy ancestors, bundled up well, as we have said, in furs and with a foot warmer of some kind, would strike out for a party at an inn in Sloansville or Schoharie. There they would sup on hot oyster stew or roast meat with plenty of hot toddy, dancethe square or round dances of the period by candlelight and the warmth of the huge fires in the fireplaces or perhaps Dr. Nott’s new contraption, a stove. Then by the light of the cold full moon the young people would glide home before dawn. The full moon on the glistening snow provided all the illumination necessary for the driver and, more importantly, the horses.

Dec. 3, 1964

The river played a role in many festivities, historic and social. The Sanders and the Van Rensselaer families would come to see their Scotia relatives when winter had frozen the ground and river so that they could drive their spirited horses across the pine plains from Albany and over the ice of the river, choosing a bright moonlight night for their return….Frozen, it was the means of crossing to the Dutch Church of Schenectady without paying toll on the covered bridge.

Mar. 18, 1965

In winter the river was always a source of pleasure until the last half century. Horse races were held on the smooth ice and ice skating, with huge bonfires along the shore and, in the early nineteen hundreds, small warming huts in which to change shoes.

June 16, 1960

Scotians of the 1870s enjoyed winter tobogganing on a slide running north from the Dyke [Schonowee Ave. now] on a line dividing the Collins Farm from the Sanders.

This picture is from the 1870s.

We can say a cozy goodnight to 2021 with one of Miss Flint’s elves, and hope for cheerier times ahead in 2022. Instead of a current photo of our grey and gloomy weather, a few fall pictures from the Flint House.

Last time I transcribed a Neil Reynolds column from 1938 about Scotia and Reeseville. This time I’m posting some Then-Now photos of the places mentioned in that column, in the order they appear. First, this view of Scotia from about 1892, taken from Riverside Ave.

You can see the spire of the First Baptist Church (now City View Church with a much shorter steeple) and next to it the school house. Houses are just beginning to be built up, so the big gap between Scotia and Reeseville is much easier to imagine than it is today. Reeseville isn’t in the picture at all. There is no “Now” picture, because the view is all houses and big trees.

Next is the house/hotel (later an apartment called the Beehive) of Jim Reese, on Mohawk between Sacandaga and N. Reynolds.

Then the Dave Reese house/hotel on the NW corner of Mohawk and N. Reynolds.

Followed by the house of “Fabe” Reese (photo 1938), now the Flint House.

So far no pictures of the original Scotia one-room school on Sacandaga have been found, but there is a 1938 picture of the coal pocket. You can see that house is still there today.

While the new school was being built in 1870, classes were held at “the Junction.” One source says that was at the old Cramer Hotel, later Slover’s Grocery, on the NW corner of Ballston and Mohawk.

That new school you can also see in the first picture of this set, next to the church—here’s a closer view of that first Mohawk School (later Colonial Ice Cream).

The article ends with a suggestion to drive through the villages of Charlton or Jonesville to see places reminiscent of the old Scotia. I checked them out and, despite the development on their outskirts, those villages have changed much less than Scotia through the years—Mr. Reynolds’ advice provides for an interesting excursion.

Next time: More about the Reese family

Fagan map, 1856 (https://www.loc.gov/item/2013593232/)

Beers map, 1866 (https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e3-7300-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99)

[Neil Reynolds was Village of Scotia Historian from 1949 until 1959. He had a lifelong interest in local history and wrote many articles for the Scotia Journal in the 1930s and for the Schenectady Gazette in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s.]

Scotia and Reeseville

By Neil B. Reynolds

Originally published in the Scotia Journal

Feb. 3, 1938

If, sixty years ago [1878], you had owned a house on the Mohawk Turnpike near Sacandaga Road, you would probably have had to pay, besides taxes, a quit-rent on the land to one of the Reeses. If your land were in Scotia, the payment, would, in all probability, have been to the Sanders or Collins families. This curious custom of quit-rent—which is a remnant of the payments to the lord of the manor during the Middle Ages—persisted here down to the beginning of the 20^th century. In 1882, the quit-rent on the house at the corner of Mohawk and Sacandaga was three or four dollars a year.

The Reeses were then masters of their own village—Reeseville. There were three brothers: Jim, Dave, and “Fabe.” Jim Reese lived in the “white house”, now the apartment building between Sacandaga and McKinney [N. Reynolds] Street. Dave lived in the “yellow house”, now made over into the block of stores and apartments on the west corner of McKinney [N. Reynolds] Street. This building, which retains its original stair rail, is said to have once been a tavern, although not used as such in the last 60 years. Like the tavern still standing [not now in 2021] at Mohawk and Ballston, it has the floor of the third story lined with brick to deaden the jar of feet in the lodge room at the top of the house.

The third brother, “Fabe” Reese, lived on what is now the Ulrich farm [now Flint House and Village Park], at the foot of [South] Reynolds Street.

Reeseville, if judged by the number of its streets, was fully as important as Scotia. The Mohawk Turnpike–by this time swept clear of all toll gates and a free road—was the thread along which the houses of the hamlet were strung. Center Street, to give it its modern name, was a lane with two or three houses, and extended a few rods up the hill. Sacandaga Road was a through highway, as it is now, but it ran out into open country before the top of the hill was reached. North Street [now James] extended from the end of Center to intersect Sacandaga. [South] Reynolds Street was the farm lane leading to the Hook Farm (or Hoek, as it was spelled on the earliest maps.)

If Scotia had the two churches, Reeseville long could boast the only school. It stood on the west side of Sacandaga Road, halfway up the hill, about opposite the coal pocket [2021’s Precision Auto Repair]. A few residents of present Scotia can remember going to school there. Many somewhat younger can remember going in later years to dances and parties in the one-room building. At the end, before it was abandoned to social purposes, it housed as many as 80 pupils—a very tight squeeze. Its last teacher, Miss Root, must have had her hands full. For a time, while the new school on Mohawk Avenue was being built, she held her classes in the tavern at “the Junction,” and she continued to teach in the much more spacious building—of two rooms this time—which is incorporated in the Colonial Ice Cream plant.

Of the next-to-last phase of this school, hundreds of Scotians can speak from experience. But the school began as a two-room building, with one classroom above the other. There were two staircases, one on each side, separated for boys and girls. Presently the school was doubled in size to accommodate four rooms. Finally it expanded again—this time to eight rooms—with a central stairway, an office for the Principal over the entrance, and a not-too-musical bell in the belfry. (Does anyone know what became of that bell? Almost every Hallowe’en someone broke in and got in a few good pulls on the bell rope before being chased away.) But all this was later; for some years two rooms were adequate to take care of the Scotia and Reeseville children.

If Schenectady had not been so close, and if Edison had not bought the McQueen works in 1886, Scotia and Reeseville might still be two separate hamlets, separated by a stretch of cornfield. Plenty of nearby towns have stood still during the past half century. As a matter of fact, probably the best way to visualize how our village looked in the late seventies and early eighties [that would be 1870s and 80s] is to visit either Charlton or Jonesville. Each of these is built on a single long street. Each has been consistently avoided by the new through highways. And to walk from end to end of either of these two towns is to travel about the same distance as from Sanders’ to Reese’s, and to pass about as many houses as stretched along Mohawk avenue before Scotia began to grow.

But in certain respects, Scotia differed from Charlton and Jonesville—differed more then than it does now. Scotia had a number of thriving manufacturing industries. And these industries will provide material for another journey back into the last generation.

In Part 2, more info and pictures about the places mentioned in this article

In Part 3, more about the Reese family

Recently at the Flint House—azalea, rhododendron, peony (almost!), broomcorn, hops