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THURSDAY-FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 12-13, 2015
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HONOR PRESIDENTS DAY 2015 • MONDAY, FEB. 16
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PRESIDENTS
& Otsego County
artin Van Buren May Not Have Wandered, Lost, At Woodside Hall
Village Historian Doubts Yarn From Birdsall’s History T.R. IN ONEONTA: Former President Theodore Roosevelt spoke in Oneonta in 1915 and, while there, stayed in Congressman George Fairchild’s mansion at Main Street and Grand Avenue, now the Masonic Temple. Fairchild was later first chairman of the IBM board.
By JIM KEVLIN COOPERSTOWN
H
ow many times have any of us repeated the story? How Martin Van Buren, eighth president of the United States, during a 1839 visit to Cooperstown, attended a party at Woodside Hall – that Greek revival mansion with Egyptian revival gatehouse at 1 Main St. – and got lost on his way back downtown. The story got new currency last May when the 44th president of the United States, Barack Obama, spoke at the Baseball Hall of Fame. He was the first sitting president to visit Cooperstown since Van Buren had 175 years before. “For a long time, (Van Buren and a MacDougall companion) wandered and groped about in the darkness of the grounds,” Ralph Birdsall, the Episcopal rector of Christ Church, reported in his 1917 “The Story of Cooperstown,” “finally returning to the house for a guide and a lantern, just as the family” – Judge Morehouse’s – “were going to bed.” It’s a good story. Only thing, it may be wrong. It IS wrong, declares Cooperstown’s venerable village historian, Hugh MacDougall, who has been righting the mistakes in local history for the past 30 years. “I believed the story until I started reading the actual accounts of the visit,” he said the other day. Based on first-hand sources – a rePlease See VAN BUREN, B2
WASHINGTON SLEPT ... at Swanswick, then Roselawn, in 1983, in his tour of battlefields after the American Revolution, according to Ralph Birdsall’s 1917 “Story of Cooperstown.” It was then owned by Richard Cary; on his death, his wife Ann Low Cary married George Hyde Clarke, who built Hyde Hall. Swanswick is on the northeast end of Otsego Lake next to the Otsego Golf Course. WITH OWEN D. YOUNG: Then-governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt was featured speaker at the 1931 dedication of the Owen D. Young Central School. Young, the Jordanville native who founded GE, was considered a frontrunner Owen D. for the Democratic Young nomination in 1932. FDR, who wasn’t even on the radar in 1931, won the nod. PENSIVE “43”: In 1987, a pensive George W. Bush showed up for a private tour at the Hall of Fame. He bought a Houston Astros hat, and soon after he surfaced as a member and managing partner of a group buying the Astros.
Martin Van Buren’s official portrait, by George P.A. Healy
President Van Buren dined at Lakelands, right, instead of Woodside Hall, far right, where legend has him getting lost in the garden.
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GARFIELD ROOTS HERE: As a young woman, President James Garfield’s mother passed through Otsego County with her family, heading to Ohio. Thomas Garfield of Worcester was smitten and pursued her to Ohio, where they married and raised a family that included the future Civil War general and president. A historic marker in Worcester marks the family homestead.
Jim Kevlin/
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