The Trumansburg Conservatory of Fine Arts (TCFA), founded in 1982, teaches students "in a range of  artistic endeavors," according to their website. The organization is housed in a beautiful historic Greek Revival building that was originally constructed as the Baptist Church of Ulysses, built in 1849.

We have recently received the original building specifications of the church that describe the details of its construction. These specifications spell out the agreement between the Second Baptist Society of Ulysses and Daniel Elmore of Ulysses, contractor, regarding all aspects of the construction, including basic drawings of the frame of the building. It dates from an era before professional architects, when the master builder oversaw all aspects of the building craft, from conception to final product.

Held for many years in the Conservatory offices, the TCFA Board of Trustees has determined that this important architectural information will be more accessible to researchers in The History Center's archives, and we are delighted to add it to our Town of Ulysses Collection.

For more information please email archives@thehistorycenter.net

Summer Projects at The History Center...

As engagement with local history on digital platforms has grown, we - along with others across the museum and arts field - have struggled with the long hours and high technical costs that go into digitizing our physical archives. 

This summer thanks to the work of multiple high-school interns, student workers, and docents, community volunteers, and local historians we've continued on the long process of digitizing and improving accessibility to our local history collections as well as national archives on digital platforms. 

This summer six Exhibit Hall workers transcribed over 380 pages through the Smithsonian Transcription Center; mostly contributing to digitization of the Freedmen's Bureau Papers, and 'Celebrating 175' collections. Our YES (Youth Employment Services) Teen Worker added five of our photograph collections to the platform HistoryPin. These collections have already been viewed by hundreds of people around the world! Our HistoryForge volunteers have made significant progress adding records to the HistoryForge Ithaca project and thanks to some very exciting grant news (read below!) are moving forward full steam ahead with the recently released 1950 census for the City of Ithaca. HistoryForge also recently completed the digitization of our Tompkins County Clock Maps to New York Heritage Digital Collections!

One of our undergraduate summer interns transcribed a series of 20-50 year old pamphlets about historic buildings and businesses in Tompkins County. Our high school interns also continued the year-long process of adding verified subtitles to all videos and programs on our YouTube channel. Adding captions to our videos ensures that they are accessible and easier to engage with for more audiences. It's a slow process, but we've now transcribed over 90% of our videos! Our volunteers in the archives in collaboration with THC staff, completed over a dozen additional Archival Finding Aids for our boxed collections, continuing the project funded by the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation last year.

In addition the two part-time transcribers hired through our 'Preserving Community Oral Histories' grant from the American Historical Association in July have already made progress on dozens of interview transcripts from our Oral Histories of Tompkins County Collection in their first 8 weeks.

THANK YOU TO ALL OF OUR SUMMER WORKERS! We still have volunteer, docent, and internship positions available for the fall term for all ages. 

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This article is from the September 2022 History Happenings newsletter. 

This event is FREE and open to the public.

If you have questions or need accommodations to participate, please contact Alex (ahm253@cornell.edu).

PLEDGE TO SUPPORT BEN'S 9/24 RIDE!

Traverse Tompkins started in the fall of 2020 as a unique fundraiser to support The History Center in Tompkins County. Executive Director Benjamin Sandberg biked all around the county, live streaming videos exploring historical points of interest in each municipality. His challenge was to ride as many miles as possible in a single 24-hour period.

This year we're expanding Traverse Tompkins and Facing historic Floods!

In addition to Ben's 24-hour ride on September 24th (Sponsored in part by SERVPRO of Tompkins & Tioga Counties), we're asking more cyclists, runners, and riders to join our fundraising efforts! Riders can join sections of the route with Ben, or make their own path with the Facing Floods free roam PocketSights tour. Details on registering to 'Ride with Us' are on the Pledgeit platform. 

As part of this community effort we are also seeking CITIZEN ARCHIVISTS to help expand our flood collections! From September 23rd - 26th, we're asking folks across Tompkins County to take  photographs of waterways and systems in Tompkins County. From your favorite lookout spot to the creek that travels through your neighborhood, we need the help of all citizen archivists in creating a photographic collection for future generations in Tompkins County! As our community faces more dramatic impacts of extreme weather, the landscape of our home will change, and change quickly. Contact archives@thehistorycenter.net if you'd like to participate as a classroom or community group!

Join our team during the last weekend in September to preserve this moment in ecological time!

Ben's 2022 ride is being sponsored by     of Tompkins & Tioga Counties.

PRESS RELEASE

For Immediate Release – 8/17/2022

The History Center in Tompkins County

Media Contact: Zoë Van Nostrand, Community Engagement Director

(Ph.) (607) 273-8284 ext.229. (E.) community@thehistorycenter.net

The History Center in Tompkins County receives major award through the Digital Humanities Advancement Grant from The National Endowment for the Humanities.

ITHACA, NY. – The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) announced a major award of $145,634.00 to The History Center in Tompkins County (thehistorycenter.net) for their digital application HistoryForge: Mapping Census Data to Visualize Local History. In addition to this critical piece of funding, The History Center’s project earned additional recognition in the application process, and was selected to receive funding through the NEH’s A More Perfect Union initiative.

The History Center in Tompkins County is excited to take the next development phase with the HistoryForge platform. This digital database synthesizes historical maps, census records, and other historical materials to create a dynamic platform for exploring local history. The digital application is free to use – anyone can explore it at www.historyforge.net. During the previous project phase, The History Center transcribed City of Ithaca census records for 1900 – 1940, and expanded to Auburn (NY), Elmira (NY), and Oberlin (OH). Eve Snyder, HistoryForge project director and historian at The History Center, says

“Support from the National Endowment for the Humanities ensures our ability to broaden our reach in Tompkins County and beyond. With it we will be able to expand our initial Ithaca project into all of Tompkins County, and install the project with more communities across the United States.”

HistoryForgeis one of 18 projects from across the country to be awarded a Digital Humanities Advancement Grant. In total, the National Endowment for the Humanities announced 226 projects receiving $31.5 million dollars across all grant programs. ““NEH is proud to support the many scholars, curators, storytellers, filmmakers, and teachers who are helping preserve, examine, and share the country’s rich and expansive history and culture,” said NEH Chair Shelly C. Lowe (Navajo). “From books and documentaries to the preservation of cultural heritage materials, these 226 exceptional projects will foster the exchange of ideas and increase access to humanities knowledge, resources, and experiences.”

If you are interested in joining the HistoryForge team as a volunteer, please reach out to Eve Snyder at historyforge@thehistorycenter.net

About The History Center in Tompkins County:

The History Center in Tompkins County is the local history museum located on The Commons in downtown Ithaca, NY. The museum and Research Library steward 400,000+ objects and materials in their collections on behalf of the public. You can keep up to date on all things history in the Finger Lakes through their social media channels @TompkinsHistory and website, www.thehistorycenter.net.

The Lehman Alternative Community School (LACS) was founded in 1974, "to be a genuine  alternative where students, staff and parents are directly involved in governance,...where students may study subjects of personal interest, and courses are available  which relate to contemporary issues in society....." The broader philosophy of the school reflects the administrative goal of letting students use freedom responsibly, and to make their own educational choices appropriate to their individual levels of development. One such student was Satya Rhodes-Conway, who was heavily involved with leadership roles at LACS when she was a student there in the 1980s and 1990s. She served on the school's Advisory Board and was involved in various administrative efforts, including  personnel decisions, and curriculum planning. She saved numerous records from her years there and her LACS papers were recently donated to our collections.  Satya Rhodes Conway is still a leader in her community; she is currently the Mayor of Madison, WI.

This interesting collection of materials on the history of LACS can be seen in our Research Library. Contact archives@thehistorycenter.net for an appointment.

History Community Remembers the many Contributions of Lansing Historian Louise Pier Bement

"Lansing Historian and teacher Louise Pier Bement died at the Ithaca Hospicare residence on June 30,  2022, attended by family and friends, after an extended illness. Louise was 89 and had lived in Lansing since 1969. ... Louise taught 4th grade in the Lansing elementary school for over 19 years. While teaching full-time and raising a family, Louise completed her master’s degree in Reading and Language Arts at Elmira College in 1972 and became certified to teach K-12 in New York State. “I never expected to teach in the elementary school and hadn’t the least idea how to do it, but a job was a job, so I sailed in and learned how as I taught.” During Louise’s teaching career, she and her students produced four books on the history of Lansing: The Portland Point Cement Company, The International Salt Company that was located on what is now Salt Point, Cayuga Lake, and The Cayuga Rock Salt Mine now operated by Cargill.  Louise was proud of the books written by her young students, which were packed with facts from primary sources.  She often referred to them when she gave talks about Lansing history. ... When Louise retired from teaching, she continued with her interest in local history. The Lansing archives consisted of many uncatalogued boxes of records that had been stored for many years in the historian’s barn before being transferred to an attic at the Lansing town hall. Louise said, “There might have been a historical society, but it had been inactive for a long time. When I needed to access the archives to work on the Portland Point book, I needed to climb a ladder into the attic of the town hall to access the material. The attic was either unbearably hot or cold depending upon the time of year.” Recognizing a need to preserve Lansing’s history, Louise asked the town to make her town historian. Later, as the archives grew, Louise convinced the town to build a proper archive building to house the collection and she helped create the Lansing Historical Society to catalog and curate it. The Lansing Historical Association was founded in 1988 when interested people got together to form a board. Louise liked having the town history organized. It is wonderful to have an archive building where the archives could easily be accessed by many people at once. Louise researched Lansing’s connections to the Underground Railroad and created a historical plaque identifying a house that she documented in a diary to have harbored runaway slaves. Rogues Harbor Inn received its historical landmark status due in large part to Louise’s research. The relocation and rehabilitation of the Field School, a forlorn one-room schoolhouse, was her crowning achievement. Leveraging every resource she could identify, Louise planned and orchestrated the relocation of the school house to a site at the Lansing town hall. The utility company raised overhead electrical wires so the building could pass under them. Louise’s optimism and belief in the project enchanted scores of volunteers, highway department workers, tradespeople, and her husband Bill, to donate their skills and time to move, rehabilitate, and furnish the Field School. Now a beloved Lansing historical treasure, the schoolhouse project would never have happened without Louise’s boundless faith and spirit."

Read Full Obituary at Ithaca Voice

Louise's books and other local history articles are preserved and available to the public in The History Center's Research Library & Archives.

After a two-year hiatus due to the Covid pandemic, we are happy to report that we have  resumed our educational programming with Ithaca College students. Almost every year since 2005 we conducted highly successful research projects with Professor Michael Smith and his History of American Environmental Thought classes. Students were taught how to be practicing historians, with in-depth introductions to our archival collections and guidance on best practices for researching. Focusing on various topics of local environmental significance such as energy use, water concerns, public health, transportation, agricultural history, and industrial development, students did extensive research in our archival collections and then prepared a final project outlining their findings. We resumed that successful program this spring, and at the same time began work with a second Ithaca College class based on the same research model. This new group's focus was on local history, exploring the Ithaca community in a study of Regenerate History that is, the kind of history that the community might draw upon to help it move forward into the 21st century. These first year students examined our collections covering the past and present of this small city they recently made their home. Their emphasis was on understanding Ithaca as a place, either socially, politically, environmentally, or culturally. They studied noteworthy sites throughout Ithaca, including the Commons, the Southside Community Center, the Ithaca City Cemetery, and Stewart Park. 



We are delighted to be engaging with Ithaca College students again in this fun and fruitful research process, and are grateful that all of the students adapted themselves to our Covid precautions, carefully wearing their masks and working in small groups in our Research Library. As the semester progressed we were able to welcome more of them on research days, and their continued vigilance ensured a safe and enjoyable experience for us all. We are looking forward to continuing this research collaboration in the coming years. 

Send These to Me: Immigration and Ethnicity in Tompkins County by Elaine D. Engst and Carol Kammen is the newest work from the Tompkins County Historical Commission.

Tompkins County Historian Carol Kammen and former Cornell University Archivist Elaine Engst's work 'Send These to Me' tells the story of immigrant communities who came and made their homes in Tompkins County. Send These to Me hopes to show where we have come from and, hopefully increase our understanding of where we are going as a society. This history looks at human habitation and immigration of Tompkins County following the Revolutionary War and the forced relocation of the Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫɁ, Tutelo, and Saponinis by the 1779 Sullivan-Clinton Campaign.

Includes summaries of known immigration and settlement by the following groups: English, Dutch, German, Jewish, Italian, Syrian, Chinese, enslaved and free Black Americans, Finlanders/Finnish, Central Europeans, and Greeks.

We are delighted to announce another welcome addition to our New York Heritage Digital Collections page. This newest collection honors a grim but important topic: flooding.

Tompkins County has suffered several major floods throughout its history. Situated in New York’s Finger Lakes region, its many creeks and streams, as well as Cayuga Lake itself, pose considerable threats during and after heavy rainfalls. In 1857, 1901, 1935, 1956, 1972, and 1981, the area was devastated by floods that destroyed property and threatened (and took) lives and livelihoods. In 1935 the small village of Trumansburg alone suffered five deaths and more than $700,000 in damages, a horrific toll that required state and federal relief assistance and took months to recover from. These black and white images are from The History Center’s General Photo Collection, the largest and most diverse of our many photograph collections. Most are the work of unknown photographers, and they date from ca. 1901- ca. 1956. Most document the ravages of the 1935 flood, but some cover the floods of 1901 and 1956 as well.

You can view these fascinating images on the New York Heritage website:
nyheritage.org/collections/tompkins-county-flood-photographs

To see more about New York’s rich visual history and culture, browse the New York Heritage site: nyheritage.org

For questions about the Archival collections, or to discuss 1972 flood images, please email archives@thehistorycenter.net