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Correspondence of Rhoda Waterbury and
G. W. Clinton |
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Correspondence of Rhoda Waterbury and G. W. Clinton 1865 - 1867 Edited
by P. M. P.O. Box 299, Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis, Missouri, 63166‑0299;
and Research Associate, Buffalo Museum of Science, Buffalo, New York, 14204.
Email: mailto:patricia.eckel@mobot.org October 1866 Vol.3
No. 157 [M 72] Gloversville
Seminary Saturday evening
Oct. 6th [1866] My
dear Mentor, I
cannot tell you how glad I am to hear from you once more. I had just written
to Mr. Peck, did he know what had happened to you and before his answer came
yours, and now I have got so much to tell you & cannot wait another
moment. You see I am not at my own dear home but again in active life among
pupils and school book, and a pretty active one too, our school numbers a
hundred and fifty though most of them are day scholars which relieves us of
care out of school hours, but gives but little time at this season for out
door exercise though I walk every day and the weather has been so fine since
I have been home that I have collected some fine things and last Saturday we
made an excursion to Canada Lake the source of East Canada Creek. A
delightful time we had of it, a party of fourteen teachers and pupils, the
whole distance (sixteen miles) is wild and romantic and we passed several
small lakes, made a fire in the woods cooked our dinner and then gathered
mosses. I have already sent several specimens to Mr. Peck and find they are
new to me and I think they are not in the list you sent of yours - at least I
hope so for I want to send you something once more. I just wish I knew what
to do for you when you feel so downhearted, don’t you think after all we
shall have real happy times when we get together - on the other side? for I
fear I shall never meet you here, but I am sure I shall know you there;
sometimes and when I feel the most delighted with the objects about me too, I
feel as if I could fly if I might but forever enjoy His works without, pain,
and sorrow, and care, as I shall up there. I do assure you I think this hope
of immortality is glorious, yet I love life here but I am never quite
satisfied. The woods were just in their gayest colors last Saturday and the
day was made expressly for us, yet the company were strange to me, only
friends of a few weeks, and I did not dare talk of all these things as I
would to you who know me so well, and part of the pleasure was lost. They
think it so strange too that I gather mosses, and then I feel sensitive about
it, because you know one does not like to be odd, so I say just as little
about it as I can when I am just full of joy that I have discovered
something. It is too bad you are so confined to business, and I am anxious to
know what you think of the political field now, please tell me for I am
uncertain, uneasy, and want direction, you know how very important it is that
all women should be right in political affairs. Mr. Peck thinks this part of
the state has not been explored expressly for mosses and I may perhaps find
some rare things. I hope so too, and I think it a very favorable situation
for there the whole face of the county and the soil is very different from
Schoharie. It is very sandy and instead of mountains only hills and no rocks.
It is strange I was so little acquainted with a place so near my home &
the village is entirely given up to glove and mitten making and unless you
are acquainted with it you would be as much surprised as I was to see the business
done here. Although I am intensely Yankee in my ideas, it is impossible not
to remark the difference between a school in a manufacturing village and one
of our Academies in a county village. I believe it has often been remarked by
others but I have never felt it so much before as now. Yet my situation is
quite pleasant and I am contented. I must send you some of my new mosses even
if you have them. They will fill up the letter and may do for duplicates. Please
write me when you have time - and don’t let them abuse you with so much
business, take time to be happy. I am going home to spend the Holidays will
you not be in Albany about that time? The room containing the State Herbarium
is never open. I have called every time I have been in Albany the past year
and have never found any one to tend to it and Mr. Peck says the same thing.
Can there not be some arrangement made whereby we can have access to it?
Direct to me Gloversville
Sem, Fulton Co. N.Y. Recd
Oct. 9 Her comments on the difference between the
Schoharie Academy and that of Gloversville perhaps involve some lack of
refinement in the Gloversville population and an overriding zeal for,
perhaps, the Yankee pursuit of making money. “The room containing the State Herbarium is
never open. I have called every time I have been in Albany the past year and
have never found any one to tend to it and Mr. Peck says the same thing. Can
there not be some arrangement made whereby we can have access to it?”
According to French (1860 p. 27, ftnt. 4) all of
the collections of both the State Geological and Agricultural Hall, the
entire State Museum, that is, “The whole of these collections are open to the
public on every weekday except holidays.” Something was happening to disrupt
the state of affairs as it existed up to 1860 when French wrote his
gazetteer. Fulton County is 45 miles west of Albany. The
western boundary of the county is
formed by the East Canada Creek In 1860 French indicated that “The
manufactures [of the county] consist principally of leather, lumber, and
buckskin gloves and mittens.” (p. 314). “More buckskin gloves and mittens are
manufactured in this co. than in all others parts of the U.S. The center of
the manufacture is at Gloversville, though it is largely carried on at
Johnstown and other villages. Work is given out to families through a large
section of country, forming the most productive branch of labor in the Co.”
p. 34, ftnt. 5. Gloversville is aptly named as a
village of “glovers” for “There are in this town over 100 establishments for
the manufacture of gloves and mittens, and 10 mills for dressing the skins.”
French p. 317 ftnt. 9. The Gloversville Union Seminary was located
there and the township (Johnstown) educated the most children of any other
(3,210).In 1860 they employed 7 teachers to preside over 265 students of whom
60 studied “the classics.” There were 101 volumes in its library. French indicated that most of the county
bedrock was buried under glacial drift. The northern part of the county is
today in the mountains of the Adirondack Preserve, in 1860 called by French
the Great Northern Wilderness of N.Y. where “The hills are covered with a
light growth of forest trees; and when once cleared, the soil is too light
and thin to produce any thing else.:” p. 314 ftnt
4. Small lakes are a characteristic of the “wilderness region of Northern
N.Y.” Clinton apparently wrote to her after this
letter and in the same month (October). It is Rhoda who did not respond in
November or December and not until April of the next year (1867). |
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