Holland Land Office Museum Director Pat Weissend tells us why our forebears saw fit to end New York state at Lake Erie instead of just continuing on to the Mississippi... or on to the Pacific. Why not? Pat tells us. Also included in this third installment of our series on what's going on over at that museum is Pat's explanation of why Transit Road is called Transit Road. Really, this one's a gem, folks. Enjoy!
From muck to dirt, the countdown of the "Twenty-Five Things That Made Genesee County Famous" rolls right along.
Number 20 was announced this afternoon as the Hiscock Site in Byron. Holland Land Office Museum Director Pat Weissend explains:
Known locally as the Byron Dig, the site is an ongoing archeology dig in the Town of Byron. In 1959, landowner Charles Hiscock was digging a pond on his property when his backhoe pulled up a mastodon tusk. ... To date, less than one-quarter of the 52-acre Buffalo Museum of Science-owned property has been explored.
Visit the Holland Land Office Museum Web site for more information on the Hiscock Site and the other things that made Genesee County Famous.
Who knew muck could be a claim to fame... It's dirty. It sounds gross. It doesn't contribute anything to society. What has muck done for you and me?
But before we get to that bizarre question, let's start simple: What is muck? Holland Land Office Museum Director Pat Weissend takes up the question in his latest post in the countdown of "The 25 Things that Made Genesee County Famous."
As Pat says:
Muck? What is muck? That is a question often asked by visitors to our county. What is this land with such an unusual name? Muck is a black soil that is left behind after swamplands are drained. The soil is made up mostly of humus. The mucklands in northern Genesee County and southern Orleans are thought to be the largest continuous section of this type of soil in the world. To create muck, wetlands must be drained, and because of environmental concerns, it is unlikely that any more mucklands will be created in the United States.
Pat gets into much more detail than that on the museum's Web site, so be sure to check it out. Also, we here at The Batavian — inexcusably in my own estimation — forgot to post a reminder when Number 22 in the countdown was released a couple weeks ago: Iroquois National Wildlife Refuge. So go check that out, too.
From the Daily News (Monday):
For the complete stories, the Daily News is available on local newsstands, or you can subscribe on BataviaNews.com.
So... we've ticked off the first two "things" that made Genesee County famous: John Kennedy and the Thruway. Number 23 went up on the Holland Land Office Museum Web site today, and it looks like we've moved from pavement to people to edibles with Kutter's Cheese Factory taking up the next rung in the ladder. (If you have no idea what we're talking about, check out our post from last week that discusses the "countdown" in a little more detail.)
Opened in 1947 on Route 5 in Pembroke, Kutter's was soon supplying stores all over the area with its cheese, explains Patrick Weissend, director of the Holland Land Office Museum.
Kutter's core of cheeses include cheddar, muenster, colby, edam, gouda and havarti. In the 1960s, writes Weissend, the business expanded to include some sour creams and cottage cheeses. These days, they've even got a Kosher line of dips and cheeses.
After the Kutter sons retired, the place was bought by Yancy's Fancy. Says Weissend: "Today, they employ 45 people who make 30,000 pounds of cheese 24 hours a day, five days a week."
Be sure to visit the Holland Land Office Museum's main Web site, and then check out the special countdown page to get much more interesting information than what we include here.
Hmm. I wonder if we can get a little contest going to see who can guess the next on the list. Hmm.
Last week, the Holland Land Office Museum announced the first "thing" to make the list of the "Twenty-Five Things That Made Genesee County Famous," a six-month countdown of the oddities, happenings, dudes, dames, places and episodes in history that put our lovely county on the map — and you thought a cartographer did that, ha ha ha.
Some of us were a little surprised to find that the New York State Thruway eked its way onto the list, even if it was onto the bottom rung of the ladder. I don't know about the rest of you, but whenever I hear "thruway," I tend to cringe. I remember that it costs about a buck and a quarter to get from Henrietta to Batavia on that gum-stained stretch of barren road that has about as much of a personality as a sleeping Parisian. But even the not-so-pretty things sometimes warrant a niche in our collective history. Take Louis XIV, for example.
So... what is Number 24, you ask? Or should we say who?
Why, it's none other than Mr. John Kennedy, that paragon of pedagogy, that eponymous father to Batavia's grade school, that Englishman turned Midwestern calvaryman who came to Batavia in 1890 to take over as superintendent of schools.
As HLOM Director Patrick Weissend writes of Kennedy: "Visitors to Genesee County often think the elementary school on Vine Street in the City of Batavia is named after the 35th President of the United States, but even the kindergarteners attending the school will correct you and tell you its “JK” not JFK."
Be sure to visit the Holland Land Office Museum Web site to keep up with the other 23 "things" forthcoming. And be sure to check back with The Batavian next Friday to hear about Number 23.
So it begins... The Holland Land Office Museum kicked off its countdown of "The Twenty-Five Things that Made Genesee County Famous."
And what, you ask, was the first to make the list?
None other than that 500 mile stretch of bleached tarmac and costly tolls otherwise known as the Governor Thomas E. Dewey Thruway, "the longest toll road in America."
Visit the HLOM site for more info and to keep up with the countdown.
In Episode Two of our living history series at the Holland Land Office Museum, Pat Weissend tells us about a pair of Civil War medals on exhibit. Check it out:
We'll be back at the museum before long, so be sure to watch for the next episode!
The Holland Land Office Museum announced on its blog yesterday that on June 13, it will begin an "online exhibit" series of 25 things that made Genesee County famous.
For this online exhibit, a panel of 15 people spent six months sifting through 100s of things know world wide. It was the panel's job to come up with a list of 25 things that made Genesee County famous. Every week, until November 28, 2008 the Holland Land Office Museum will release another item.
Cool idea, and it's interesting that this physical museum has chosen the digital world to highlight such a potentially fascinating list of events, people and items.
Anybody want to guess what some of these 25 things might be? Leave a comment. (I'm guessing #1 is anti-masonry and the Morgan Affair. Joseph Mancuso and the business incubator have to be pretty high up there, too.)
This morning, Pat Weissend was kind enough to show me some of what they've got over at the Holland Land Office Museum, where he serves as the director. I took a video camera and we stepped out onto the cold stone floor of the wood-walled museum addition that houses the 14-foot gibbet — a variation on the gallows. He tells me that the hangman's noose is the most popular artifact at the museum — no surprise, I guess, when you consider the morbid curiosity of children big and small.
This video will be the first in a (hopefully) long series of discovery-style episodes over at the museum, where they have thousands of other artifacts to scope and get the story on. So be sure to tune in regularly and keep an eye out for those. We'll try and get a new one up every couple weeks or so. In the meantime, and without further ado, The Batavian presents: The Hangman's Noose.
Visit the museum's Web site for more information, and to access links to Pat's podcasts on history. Or just head over to 131 W. Main St. and check out the collection.
Finally paid a visit to the Holland Land Office Museum on Main Street this afternoon. Ron Pinney was kind enough to take me around and show me some of the artifacts they've got on display there. He told me about the corkscrew as big as a cat that the colonials used to unplug lumps of dried fruit from a barrel. He showed me the dentist chair and the rusty metal tooth-yanker that made us both wince.
Pat Weissend came out and introduced himself, too. He's the museum's director, and a bit of an online experimenter himself. He has been filing podcasts all about the museum and its goodies for some time now. There's one about the infamous anti-Mason William Morgan. Another about the Seneca Chief Red Jacket. Even a quick three-minute episode called: "Where did the name Batavia come from?" Check it out if you want to find out.
Tune into The Batavian next Friday for a video tour of the Holland Land Office Museum, led by Pat Weissend. In the meantime, here are a few photographs I snapped while I was there today. Maybe you can figure out what they are.
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