When we admitted we hadn’t, he found a copy for us, explaining that we would probably find it of interest. And indeed we did as we discovered, once we paid for it and dutifully carried it home, that the entire edition features articles on Cooperstown history. In fact, the edition clearly states: "This special edition of New York History commemorates the bicentennial of the incorporation of Cooperstown as a village in 1807. The contributors offer important new insights into Cooperstown’s rich history and the community’s role in shaping American physical and human landscapes. With articles that focus on the lives of village residents as they experienced the great social, cultural, and economic transformation of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this special bicentennial edition also provides creative models for researching and writing local history. The editors are very pleased to present this new scholarship and celebrate Cooperstown’s 200th anniversary."

We must say that we are quite chagrined to have missed this particular edition of New York History. We thank Mr. Wright for pointing it out to us and encourage anyone who is at all interested in Cooperstown history and has not yet seen it, to do so. We have been told that copies of this edition of New York History are available at both the Farmers’ Museum Gift Shop and The Fenimore Art Museum Gift Shop.

We have also recently encountered another book, "A Centennial Offering; Being a Brief History of Cooperstown with other Interesting Local Facts and Data," written by S.M. Shaw in 1886. We discovered this book quite by accident when we were on-line searching for another book. This particular version of "A Centennial Offering" was, according to the book, produced by the Cornell University Library "... as part of The Making of America Project, a cooperative endeavor undertaken to preserve and enhance access to historical material from the nineteenth century."

The book includes "The Chronicles of Cooperstown" by James Fenimore Cooper as well as "The Chronicles _ Continued" by by S. M. Shaw. And while we have seen both of these parts of the book elsewhere, we discovered a third section, "The Village Interests," which seems to be completely new to us. This section begins with "The Streets and Buildings" from which we learned "There are on the corporation of Cooperstown, the county buildings, six church edifices, seven hotels, a large summer boarding house, 416 dwellings, 80 stores, engine house, orphanage, rink, shops, etc ..." All in all, there were in 1886, "... 510 structures exclusive of barns, stables and carriage houses." It is pointed out that in 1838, James Fenimore Cooper reported the number to be 253, just about half of the total of 1886. We have to think that growth in the village during that time frame was quite something.

"A Centennial Offering" also contains information on any number of village organizations and issues. Among those we noted was a section on secret societies which proceeded to list the membership of two of them. There is a comprehensive list of the "Oldest Residents of Cooperstown" which includes a note that one of them had died between the writing and the publishing of the book. Also, in a section on "Fish and Fishing in Otsego Lake," we discovered that "... no other water of the State could the conditions be more favorable for the artificial propagation of fish." To that end a total of 1,359,000 fish were introduced into the lake in a 12 year period. The fish included 854,00 salmon trout, 168,000 Otsego bass, 300,000 whitefish, 30,000 California mountain trout, 5,000 landlocked salmon and 2,000 rock bass, black bass and smelt. We had no idea that the lake had been stocked in the 1800’s.

In closing, we found much of the information in "A Centennial Offering" of interest. It certainly paints a very clear picture of what Cooperstown was about in the 1880’s. But most fascinating, we think, is an accounting of the Orphan House of the Holy Saviour, written we believe by Susan Fenimore Cooper, which starts with the purchase of a house and farm on the lake shore known as the Masers’ farm which then belonged to Mr. Henry B. Walker. We feel we have perhaps found a good beginning for our research into the history of orphanages in Cooperstown.

We remain,

In these Otsego hills,

The Ellsworths

The Ellsworths may be reached by mail at 105 Pioneer St., Cooperstown, N.Y. 13326, by telephone at 547-8124 or by e-mail at cellsworth1@stny.rr.com. They look forward to hearing from you.