Bovina's Polish Community in 1910

I've finally finished the initial transcription of the Bovina 1910 census. I say initial because I need to clarify some of the entries - the handwriting was a bit of a challenge. And the fact that census summaries say Bovina had 912 people while I have a list of 910 needs to be addressed. A couple of people may be missing.

But in the meantime, I can report that the vast majority (848) of the people living in Bovina said that they were born in New York. The second most common response was Scotland, with 15 making that claim. Tied for third place with 7 people each were England and, a bit of a surprise, Poland.

The seven people who were born in Poland actually said Russia as the country. Remember that in 1910 Poland did not exist as a country - modern day Poland came into existence after the First World War. The reason we know it was Poland is because with the country, the census taker also noted the native language spoken.

So who were these seven people? There were Mike and Jennie Zenkowski. Mike was a farmer who came to the US in 1902 and had been married for 4 years in 1910. He married his Polish born wife about 4 years after he came to the US (the census records do not say when she arrived). He and Jennie had two children, both born in the US. There was Frank Zemkowski, who was living with the Dixon Thomson family as a farm laborer. It is possible that Zenkowski and Zemkowski were the same name and the census taker messed up the spelling.

Steve Slimenski came to the US in 1909, while John Slimenski came the following year. They may have been related, but we can't tell from the census. Steve was 21 and working as a farm laborer on the Zenkowski farm. John was 30, married and living as a boarder at the home of Fred White. His wife was not with him and very likely was still in Poland (if he had been widowed, it would have said so in the census). The two Slimenskis were listed as only speaking Polish.

Frank Sylvesca or Sylvisca was a 48 year old farm laborer at the home of Dewitt Sharp. He too was only able to speak Polish, at least according to the census taker. He arrived in the US in 1900, as did his fellow countryman, Arthur Silinsky (or Silunaky). Arthur was a 25 year old farm laborer on the Maynard farm and was able to speak English.

There is much the census can't tell us about Bovina's Polish residents. We have no idea how they may have interacted with each other. If they did interact as a community, they didn't last long - at least not in Bovina. The Zenkowskis had two more children while in Bovina but by 1920 the whole family had left town. In fact, all of the seven Polish natives who showed up in the 1910 census for Bovina were gone by the time the census taker came back a decade later.

I'll have another entry or two about the 1910 census and what the data show, but this small group of Poles in Bovina caught my eye as an interesting and untold story about the town.

Murder Most Foul and Unnatural - More Breaking News

This will be a brief post, written outside Russell's where the forecast rains haven't hit yet. I have a follow-up to my March 3 post about the possible murder I reported last fall. In the March 3 post, I noted that it appeared likely the murder didn't happen in Bovina. A notice of a Sheriff's sale of the property of Christina McDonald, widow of the victim, John, noted that the McDonald farm was on Lot 78 of Great Lot 39 of the Hardenburgh Patent. This put the farm in Andes (though the sheriff sale notice did say Delhi). I had hoped to find a deed or notice about the sheriff sale, but unfortunately, this particular one was not recorded or the record is lost. I did verify, however, that indeed the farm was in Andes, specifically on Cabin Hill Road. The farm was not far from the Bovina Town line. Why did the notice say Delhi? My speculation is that with the creation of Andes in 1819 and Bovina in 1820, the location of certain farms got rather confusing to people. Before the creation of Andes, the farm would indeed have been in Delhi.

I still hold out hope that at some point I can find out more detail about the sheriff's sale. And though the crime didn't happen right in Bovina, it happened close to Bovina, the inquest was in Bovina and the victim's daughter lived in Bovina a good part of her life.

Regardless, it makes an interesting story.

Teaching in Bovina's One-room Schools

In the interest of full disclosure, this blog entry is a variation on an article I did for the Bovina UP Church Newsletter in 2006.

With 13 common school districts, Bovina had numerous teachers during its history. In the early years, there were two school terms, winter and summer. Teachers for the winter term usually were men. It was felt they could better handle the larger boys. The boys had to work the fields in the summer, so they weren’t as likely to be in school. In the 1865-66 school year, William Seacord taught the winter term at District 4 (the school in the Bovina Center hamlet) from December 1865 to March 1866. Maggie Scott taught the spring term from April to September 1866. This was not always the case. District 6 (Lake Delaware) that same year had women teaching both in the winter and summer terms.

The rate of pay for male teachers was higher than that for females. Bovina district 7 (Russell Hill Road) in the 1877-78 school year paid Thomas Ormiston for the winter term $9 per week, including room and board. The wages and room and board it paid Mary Gladstone for the spring term was $6 per week. In 1890-91, district 6 was paying its male teacher $3 more per week than its female teacher. As Bovina and the rest of the world moved into the 20^th century, this gender difference in salaries was not always the case. In 1908-09, District 2 (Pink Street) paid John McCune $336 for 160 days or $2.10 a day. That same school year, Kathryn Reynolds in district 4 was paid $527 for 185 days, or $2.84 each day. In 1925-26, district 4 had one male and one female teacher; both paid the same - $1140 each per year.

Teaching tended to run in families. Thomas Gordon taught in Bovina schools in the 1870s and 80s. His daughter Margaret taught Social Studies to many students at Delaware Academy from the 1940s to the 1970s. Three of teacher Thomas Ormiston’s daughters, Lois Davidson, Ruth Monroe and Marjorie Whalley, all taught in Bovina.

Lois recollected her time as a teacher in notes she wrote in the early 1970s and transcribed by her son Allan: “I graduated in 1915 [from the teacher-training program at Walton High School] and was hired to teach at the Miller Avenue district at $10 a week. We had to do our own janitor work. I well remember coming home from school the first day saying I would rather earn my living doing manual labor. I eventually grew to like it and taught six years ending with a salary of $20 a week.”

Among the last Bovina common school teachers were Grace Coulter Roberts, who taught in Bovina’s district 4 in the 1930s, Stella McPherson, who taught there in the 1940s and Edward Schenider, brother of Lillian Hilson, who was the last teacher at the Maynard (District 1) school, teaching through the 1958-59 school year. Mary Hyzer Jardine was the last teacher to teach in a Bovina common school, teaching at district 4. It was the end of an era when district 4 closed in June of 1961.

Murder Most Foul and Unnatural - Breaking News

Last fall, I reported in a two part blog entry (November 4 and 8, 2009) about what appeared to be Bovina's first murder. John McDonald died in 1819 under suspicious circumstances. Two years later, his son and daughter were arrested for murdering their father, though the daughter was later released and the son ultimately was never convicted of murder because of lack of evidence.

This update concerns a question I had as to whether or not the death of John McDonald really happened within the boundaries of present day Bovina. The death happened a year before Bovina's creation, but when it was prosecuted as murder a year after Bovina was created, the coroner's inquest took place in Bovina. I took that as a key clue about where the McDonald farm and the site of the death were located. It was about the only clue - the location of the McDonald farm was never made clear in the coroner's records.

A very interesting little piece of crucial evidence has shown up, thanks to the 'I Love Delhi, NY' group on Facebook, that points to the McDonald farm being in Andes, though barely. In going over the many images posted on the site, I saw a few news clippings and was startled to find one about a sheriff's sale for the property of Christina McDonald. This Christina very likely is John's widow (the court records from the inquest list her as Christina or Christian).

The notice, dated May 23, 1820, stated that by "virtue of two executions against the goods and chattels lands and tenements of Christina McDonald, I [Sheriff Isaac Burr] shall expose to sale at public vendue [auction] on the 29th day of July next, at 1 o'clock P.M. at the house of G.H. Edgerton in Delhi, all the right & title of said Christina to Lot number 78 in the town of Delhi." The lot referred to in the sale was in Great Lot 39 of the Hardenburgh Patent. That actually doesn't put it in Bovina nor Delhi, but Andes. It does put it close to Bovina, however.

Beyond the name of the owner, another clue that points to this being John McDonald's widow is the mention of two of the neighbors in the description of the lot - Alexander More and Archibald McKnought (McNaught). These are key names. Alexander More provided testimony during the inquest and the first neighbor to come to the McDonald house after John McDonald died was Mrs. McNaught, brought there by John's son Cornelius after (he claimed) he found his father dead.

So I think there is a case to be made for this murder happening in Andes, not Bovina. The coroner's inquest took place in Bovina in what I think was the Lake Delaware area, not far from Lot 78, so the fact of the inquest taking place in Bovina may simply have been a matter of convenience. Since part of the inquest involved exhuming the body, they simply may not have wanted to haul it all the way to the village of Andes for the inquest and used Bovina instead.

I've got a bit more digging to do, checking deeds at the Delaware County Clerk's office. There's the confusion about the ad saying the land was in Delhi, but I cannot find any lot 78 in Great Lot 39 that is in Delhi. There are two lots in the two distinct tracts of the Great Lot 39 that go by number 78 and both are in Andes.

So I suppose I should be happy that this murder took place beyond Bovina's borders, but it was a colorful story about my home town. I'm sorry to have to let it go! But the historian wants to seek the truth. And the story still has a Bovina connection with the site of the coroner's inquest and the fact that at least some of the neighbors likely were from Bovina.

And my heartiest thanks to Ed Roche, the site coordinator and creator of 'I Love Delhi, N.Y.!' for posting this critical bit of evidence.

Bovina 100 Years Ago - the 1910 Census

In this census year, I have been doing a series of blog entries about Bovina censuses. I've been focusing on the censuses from 1860 and 1910 - 150 and 100 years ago. After a couple of entries about the 1860 census, I'm ready to review the 1910 census.

Bovina's population from 1860-1910 continued the drop that started after 1840. The 1910 population of Bovina was at 912, down over 300 from 1860's number of 1242 (it should be noted that the biggest drop took place between 1860 and 1870, when the Bovina's population fell by over 200). The population of Delaware County over that same period went up slightly, while New York State's population more than doubled. The US Population in 1860 was 31,443,321. By 1910, it was 92,228,496, almost triple the 1860 figure.

And while the numbers in Bovina were down, the information being collected was more detailed. Information collected in 1910 that was not being collected in 1860 included the number of children of each mother (and the number still living), number of years of current marriage, employment status at time of the census, did they own or rent, was the property mortgaged and were they a Civil War veteran.

During my initial skim of the census records, one thing that struck me is in this census, unlike the 1860 one, there are people that I recall from my childhood and young adulthood. Some of them included:

• Grace Coulter, who later married Dave Roberts and lived on Maple Avenue, was less than a year old in 1910. She was a school teacher at the Bovina school and in other area schools. I remember Grace and Dave later in their lives - I would visit them almost every time I came to Bovina. Grace was 83 when she passed away.
  
• Another Coulter I remember was Ruth Coulter, who later married Bill Parsons. Ruth was five years old and living with her parents and a couple of aunts in 1910. Ruth passed away in 2000.
• Fletcher Davidson, one of my predecessors as Bovina Town Historian, was a teenager living with his parents and his sister Vera. (See my blog entry from August 23, 2009 for more about Fletcher.)
  
• Fred and Nell Henderson were my neighbors when I was a child until they sold their home to Jim and Mary Haran in 1963. They were in their late 20s at the time of the 1910 census and had been married for 4 years. Fred and Nell would go on to celebrate 75 years of marriage before Fred's death in 1971. Nell died the following year.
  
• James Hilson, who I remember as the old gentleman who worked in Hilson's Store across the street from where he lived, was a teenager living with his parents and siblings. Jim died in 1984.
  
• Helena Strangeway was 22 at the time of this census, living with her parents and sister. She became the sister-in-law of James Hilson when she married his brother John in 1913. Helena died in 1976 at age 89.
• Bob Boggs, who became my uncle when he married my mom's sister Geraldine Edwards, was 4 months old at the time of the census. He had an older brother Don. Bob passed away in 1991.
  

Both of my paternal grandparents also are in the census:

• Anna Bell Barnhart, my dad's mom, was 16, living with her parents and three siblings at their farm on Pink Street. Grandma married James Calhoun (also in this census) in 1917 and was widowed a year later when James died in the First World War. She married grandpa in 1923 and died in 1980.
  
• My grandfather, Ben LaFever, was 10 years old and living with his uncle and aunt, Dave and Aggie (Burns) Draffen up on Crescent Valley Road (his younger brother, Clarence, was living with their grandparents, Alex and Nancy Burns, right next door). Grandpa's mother had died in 1908 so he and his brother were shipped off to his mother's relatives back in Bovina. Grandpa died in 1982.

Other names I remember from my youth include Cecil and Isabell Russell, Bill Burns, Les Hoy, Leroy Worden (another neighbor from my childhood), Helen Gladstone (Mrs. Robert Hall), Henry Monroe, and Margaret Gordon, who was my social studies teacher in 7th grade.

There will be more coming about this census once I get the data into a database so I can do some analysis. How many of the 912 people in Bovina were going to school? How many were employed? And at what occupation? Were family sizes bigger or smaller compared to 1860?

So watch this space for further developments.

The 3Rs in Bovina - The Numbers

This is an entry that first saw the light of day as an article in the Bovina Community Newsletter, produced by the Bovina UP Church, in 2006. It ties to some of the census information I've been providing lately, so this seemed like a good time to share this.

In 1820, the year Bovina was founded, one third of the town's population of over 1200 was made up of children aged five to fifteen. A little over half of these children actually attended school in one of the town's five school districts that year.

By the 1850s, Bovina had thirteen districts. Some of these districts were joint districts, overlapping with Delhi, Andes or Middletown. The number of school-aged children was close to 600.

After the 1860s, as the town's population dropped, so did the number of school children. In 1878, 282 out of the 360 school-aged children in Bovina were being taught in the town. By 1909, ten of Bovina's eleven school districts were still operating their schoolhouses, but the number of children attending was down to 180 students.

In 1936, Bovina was down to nine districts, with two of these contracting their children out to other schools. Bovina had 127 children attending school through the 8th grade that year. Part of the reduction in school districts was caused by the creation of central school districts in Andes, Delhi, South Kortright and Margaretville. At the end of the 1930s, only seven districts were still in existence in Bovina.

The last school to operate in Bovina was Bovina District Number 4, which is now the public library. That school closed after the completion of school in June 1961. (I missed attending school here by one year - I started school in the fall of 1961 in Delhi.)

If you want to see some pictures of Bovina's one-room schools, go to my Flickr page. And if you have pictures you would like to share, please let me know. And stayed tuned for future blog entries about Bovina schools.

Remembering Jack Hilson

On Sunday Bovina lost another one of its long time familiar faces with the death of Jack Hilson (his obituary is in the Daily Star at http://www.legacy.com/thedailystar/Obituaries.asp?Page=LifeStory&PersonID=139551588). Jack was a life long Bovina resident and a descendant of one of Bovina's oldest families. I remember Jack as the proprietor of Hilson's Store and Hilson's Feedstore, along with his brother Alex.

I also remember Jack as a great source on Bovina town history. Jack recalled that as a youngster, he had roller skated in the old Bovina Methodist church building, which was next to his boyhood home. This information helped me narrow down when the building was demolished - I finally found a newspaper article about the demolition in April 1926. Here's a picture of Jack and his older sister Louise in front of the church, probably not long before the church was torn down.

When I started working on this entry, I checked out a brief biography of Jack's great grandfather, the first John Hilson, sometimes known as 'Old Jock.' This biography comes from the 1895 Biographical Review of Delaware County. I include it here partly because of the number of similarities between Jack and his great grandfather. Jack's ancestor was a farmer and a merchant, like Jack, and was actively involved in the community, also like Jack. They both were members of the Bovina United Presbyterian Church - Jack had recently been honored for his 76 years of membership.

"JOHN HILSON, one of the most successful businessmen of Bovina Centre, was born in Scotland on May 25, 1827, the son of Alexander and Elizabeth (Nesbit) Hilson. ... John lived at home with his parents until his twenty-third year, being educated in Scotland, and learning the plasterer's trade of his father. In 1850, at the age of twenty-three, he came to America landing in New York after a pleasant voyage of only thirty days in a sailing ship. He came directly to Delaware County, and settled in Bovina, where he followed his trade for more than four years. In 1855, the year after his marriage, Mr. Hilson bought a farm of a hundred acres, where he started a dairy, having fifteen cows to commence with, and increasing the number to twenty-five during his seventeen years of farming. He has owned three different farms in Bovina, and now has a splendid one of two hundred and six acres, besides his residence in Bovina Centre.

"In 1845 he married Hannah S. Hamilton, a daughter of Robert Hamilton, one of Bovina's hardy pioneers. He started a large general store in 1867; and, before retiring from business, in 1889, to return to Scotland for a summer's visit, he had built up a very good trade. Since his return Mr. Hilson has speculated somewhat in butter, but has engaged in no active work, leaving his son Alexander to take charge of the store, in partnership with Mr. Blair. Alexander Hilson, born in 1855, is the only child of his parents. He was married in 1880 to Isabell Archibald; and they have two children, John [Jack's dad] and Jane Hilson, born in 1881 and 1885 [I have 1888 and 1891 respectively as the birthdays of John and Jane].

"John Hilson has a large circle of friends, he and his wife being members of the United Presbyterian church, wherein he has held the position of Trustee for a number of years. He has also been town clerk for ten years, and Superintendent of the Poor three years, and now holds the office of Notary Public. The Hilsons have always been identified with the interests of the town, and are esteemed by all who know them.

"Well has it been said by a poetic philosopher of our own day, Dr. J. G. Holland: -- 'God gives every bird its food, but he does not throw it into the nest. He does not unearth the good that the earth contains; but he puts it in our way, and gives us the means of getting it ourselves.'"

I think this quote equally refers to Jack. Jack was always working, whether as a farmer, merchant, a veteran of World War II or a conscientious citizen of his community. Jack did not let a stroke slow him down very much. He found the means to keep working. I used to see him tooling around town using a large three wheeled bicycle to run errands at the post office and store. And he continued to mow the front lawn of the church. He had the old Scottish toughness of his ancestors. They would have been proud of him.