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https://openvalley.org/files/original/4b517581b245534e5c3ac5927a2db4d6.jpg
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Caledonia 1892
Description
An account of the resource
This collection of images is based upon <a href="https://openvalley.org/files/original/3ae1204165be3bf753a4d31e568da22a.jpg" target="_blank" rel="noopener">an 1892 birds-eye panorama of Caledonia, NY</a> published by Burleigh Litho of Troy, NY. According to John William Reps, Lucien R. Burleigh was responsible—whether as artist or publisher—for some 228 lithographic city views (it is possible, even likely that the Caledonia map was executed by an employee named Christian Fausel). Trained as a civil engineer, economic recession pressed Burleigh into finding other ways of making a living. He began city viewmaking during the 1870s and by the mid-1880s was well established in his profession. His usual practice was to work from an available map, determine the most advantageous viewpoint (for a village like Caledonia, typically 1500 feet above the ground), and making small sketches at the street level. Another important task during a two- or three-week stay was soliciting subscriptions for the panorama: it took perhaps 100 persons, each paying $2.50-3:00 for a map, for the project to break even. <br /><br />The Burleigh map’s legend provides us with a snapshot of Caledonia in 1892, just recovering from a major fire in 1891. It lists railroad stations, churches, the public school, and even Seth Green’s fish hatchery, but a majority of the numbered locations are commercial enterprises—a likely base of customers for purchasing copies of the completed work. Using old newspapers and trade magazines, this collection has gathered advertising from most of the businesses. Its purpose is to populate an interactive map for the “Heraldry” section of the “Clans of Caledonia” exhibit, where we see immigrant affiliations interacting with national and commercial icons—a complex process of so-called “Americanization.”
Contributor
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Cooper, Ken
Source
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Thanks to Tom Tryniski, Fulton History
Still Image
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Original Format
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Newspaper advertisement
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Geo. Davis, Billiard Hall
Description
An account of the resource
Number 42 on the Burleigh map, it's not clear whether Davis (1860-1947) ever was successful in starting up his billiard hall--and the attendant liquor license likely for its operation. It's more certain that, by May 1894, he and Charles Bundy had opened a variety store whose advertisement appears here. But then on 13 November of that year a fire started in the basement of their building, eventually destroying the structure and most others along the west side of State Street. The Caledonia "Advertiser" held that its cause was arson--like the earlier one in 1891--and Davis found it necessary, two weeks later, to offer a $100 reward "for any information or proof of the author of the report in circulation that I set fire to the store...or had any guilty knowledge of the fact before the fire" (Caledonia Advertiser 6 Dec. 1894).
The facts of this case are murky; the fire could have been accidental (wood structures were susceptible to fires), or it could have been arson. Davis and Bundy lost $1,000 in stock to the fire, and were fully insured. Someone was insinuating that Davis was to blame. But there are at least two other possibilities. The first could have been a radical temperance advocate who saw the concentration of saloons on State Street as moral depravity--Caledonia was sharply divided on the issue of alcohol--and an announcement of Davis & Bundy's soon-to-open store mentioned that “Liquors of no description will be kept" in stock (12 April 1894).
The second suspect would have had racial motivations; after all, the fire occurred two years before the U.S. Supreme Court's "Plessy v. Ferguson" ruling that enshrined Jim Crow as the law of the land. As an African American, Davis himself experienced a number of suspicious incidents during his life that made it into the newspaper. Shortly after purchasing the farm of Jane Cameron in 1904, a “span of young horses valued at $300” broke out of his property, wandered onto railroad tracks, and were killed by an Erie train. “Hard luck,” reported the newspaper (Caledonia "Advertiser" 14 Sept. 1904). In 1906, Davis was reported driving a “handsome light wagon” in a “natty blue uniform” for Iroquois Portland Cement Company. “A man in livery is quite a sight in Caledonia," the author marveled (Caledonia "Advertiser" 1 Aug. 1906).
In 1901 Davis and Maurice Johnson were returning, in a horse-drawn buggy, from work in Garbutt at night when they were rammed--it seems deliberately--by a car of drunken men: “They accused Davis of ‘being in the middle of the road,’ a fact he did not attempt to deny” (Caledonia "Era" 13 Oct 1909). All of this suggests that Davis' life in Caledonia was complex. He still was involved in a State St. business as of 1910, although now in partnership of "nine colored men" with Davis as manager. “The new firm," predicted the newspaper, "ought to control the bulk of the trade of colored families of which there are many in this village and in Mumford and the surrounding districts" (Caledonia "Era" 5 Oct. 1910).
Publisher
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Caledonia Advertiser
Date
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1894-05-03
Contributor
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Cooper, Ken
Source
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Courtesy of Tom Tryniski / Fulton History
Format
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jpeg, 321 KB
Caledonia, NY
Charles P. Bundy
Davis & Bundy
fire
George Davis