Their Own Voices
Their Own Voices

Author: Winston Adler

Publisher: CreateSpace

Published: 2011-07-01

Total Pages: 168

ISBN-13: 9781463648923

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Beginning in the 1840s and continuing until his death, Dr. Asa Fitch (1809-1878) of Salem, NY, interviewed elderly neighbors, questioning them about the time of first European settlement, the Revolutionary War, and the first decades of the 19th century. Fitch was more than just a medical doctor. By the 1850s, he ranked as a world-famed entomologist, with important discoveries about insect life to his credit. He turned his precise, scientific mindset to good account in his oral history work. He seems to have functioned almost like a human tape recorder, transcribing and preserving vivid, colloquial statements from a wide range of individuals---most not fully literate people (that is, people who could read their Bible and sign their names but not write fluent accounts of the incidents of their lives.) Jeanne Winston Adler's excerpts from Fitch's manuscript ("Notes for a History of Washington County, NY," NY Genealogical & Biographical Soc., NYC; and elsewhere on microfilm) present the liveliest "voices" collected by the 19th-century scholar. Some portions of Adler's "Their Own Voices" (first published in 1983) were re-published in her "In the Path of War: Children of the American Revolution Tell Their Stories" (Cobblestone Publishing, 1998). A facsimile reprint of the 1983 book, containing all material originally excerpted from Fitch, is now offered here.

The Salem Book
The Salem Book

Author: Salem Historical Committee (Salem, N.Y.)

Publisher:

Published: 2012-10-27

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 9781939216021

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Historic Washington County
Historic Washington County

Author: Judith Irwin Flagg

Publisher:

Published: 2021-05-04

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9781614686286

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HISTORIC WASHINGTON COUNTY: A Photographic Portrait explores the storied past of Washington County through photographs of what life was like from the 1840s until the early 1950s. Although early settlers migrated to the north country before the Revolutionary War, farming and industry did not thrive until the early 1800s, as rivers like the Batten Kill and Mettawee powered the mills and the Champlain canal carried the products of the county's agriculture and industry. The people who came to Washington County were diverse in numerous ways: lifestyles, ethnicity, religion and skills. Men often worked in the fields planting crops in the spring and harvesting their bounty in the fall. Women worked in the factories all year round; they were seamstresses making shirts, garments and gloves. Most who lived in the small communities which grew up along the waterways were either dairy, sheep, or potato farmers. Others worked in mills producing paper, lumber, tools and equipment.In the early 1800s, Washington County boasted a population of over 45,000, the third largest in New York State at that time. In 1861, when young men were conscripted into the Union army, the county was one of the most prosperous in the entire country. The decades following the Civil War and through much of the 20th century were a time of invention, achievement and prosperity for many, when people were able to create a better way of life for themselves and their children.This book depicts how our ancestors dressed, what they did, and how they lived. It is a tale of the people and by the people, told through photos from private collections and archives.