Former Cooperstonian William Hermann send us a very newsy letter with information about Bassett Hall, some of which he learned during his tenure at Bassett. And while some of what he told us, we already knew, there are several items he passed on that were new to us.

He relayed that the girl with her skirt flying as she slides down the hill in the famous sledding photo of the orphanage is Helen Pust. As a child Helen evidently lived at the orphanage and was, hence, in the photo. When we knew Helen she worked at Bassett with the he-we’s godmother, Hilda Tyler, and the he-we’s aunt, Helen Eckler. But we had no idea that she was the girl in the photo.

And while we knew that when the orphanage was no longer in use, the building was used as a school, we had never before been aware that the letters "CA" were added to the chimney at the end of the building when it became the Cooperstown Academy. Bill admits that he used to tell people the Dr. Charles Ashley had the initials put there after his appointment as MIBH Director. We can’t help but wonder how many people believed that bit of unsubstantiated local history.

Bill also told us that one of the older employees of the original Danny’s Market remembered that when he is was young and working for the market during the summer, he rode on Danny’s horse drawn wagon to make a deliveries at the back of the building. And, while the wagon was being unloaded, the young lad would go into the kitchen and the women working there always would give him something to eat.

Bill thought perhaps the ring to which the horses were tied might still be in the wall of the building. And since, Bill had passed on two things about the Bassett Hall building which we did not know, we decided a trip was in order to check it out ...

While we found the initials "C" and "A" still entwined on the chimney, we were unable to locate anything which we thought might have been a horse hitching ring. However, given the propensity of Bassett to re-do, we were not particularly surprised that the ring in question might not have survived.

Bill also shared a rather poignant story with us about one of the former orphans from the orphanage. Bill was asked by a local resident, whose father was going to be visiting Cooperstown, if the father might be able to take a tour of Bassett Hall. Evidently, the father’s father, died when the father was three and the mother got a job working at the orphanage. And it was possible for orphanage workers to place their children in the orphanage while they were working which is what was done with the father. While he was there, one of the nuns, who was pretty stern with the orphans, died and a vigil was set up in the chapel with two orphans assigned per two hour shift. The visiting father and another orphan were assigned to a midnight to 2 a.m. shift. Unfortunately, the other orphan was sick and so the father ended up in the chapel, alone at midnight, with the dead nun. Bill assumes, since the father never took the tour, that he really did not wish to visit the building again. And we can’t say that we blamed him.

We also heard from Grant T. Campbell, who tells us he was born in the Thanksgiving Hospital in 1926, and who shared with us the information that in the "History of Otsego County, N.Y. _ 1740 to 1887" there is, starting on page 41, an article about the Orphanage Home of the Holy Savior. Also on that same page is a list of paupers which included his great-grandparents, William and Sarah Hardy, and his grandmother, Margaret Hardy, who eventually married his grandfather, Grant Campbell. He notes that one Margaret Green Hardy, who we believe is also on the list of paupers, was at one time in an orphanage and thought perhaps census records might give us a lead to an earlier orphanage in Cooperstown. Mr. Campbell also mentioned that Christ Church has a picture of some inhabitants of an orphanage in Cooperstown. We wish to thank Mr. Campbell for his good advice. He told us he had some good luck using the census reports when researching the Grant Fenimore Campbell and Lucinda Ayres genealogy. So perhaps we will find his advice helpful as we continue our research of Cooperstown orphanages. And we thank Mr. Campbell for writing.

In closing, we are always fascinated by long time residents memories of bygone times in Cooperstown. Of course, over the years that we have written this column, a generation of long time residents has been lost. And unfortunately, the next generation has not seemed to step up to the plate to take its place. As a result the tradition of oral history in the village has been diminished. We can but hope that the next generation of long time residents will fill the need to maintain our oral history.

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.