What a Trip!

         We saw upstate New York at its finest.  Ten days of great weather and gorgeous autumn color.  Beautiful lakes, rolling hills, farmland. No tacky billboards shouting Adult toys! Big Ed's Fireworks! Find Jesus! like some other interstate highways I know of.  And dear little Roscoe, unchanged, a little shabbier, but hey, they've got a micro-brewery now.  AND, where there used to be a string of houses including my father/grandmother/gr. grandparents' house - on Railroad Avenue….

The house on Railroad Avenue

there's a little park! With a plaque marking the beginning of the street where the famous Roscoe Hotel used to be (before my time).  I walked a certain distance under a canopy of trees beside the Willowemoc River, pass where the Dudley house once stood, a little further to where I felt the Jones' house had been.  I looked down at the bank of the river and there were the railroad ties that my gr. grandfather had installed to form a kind of dock! The view from that spot was just as my dad had photographed it with his little Kodak box camera when he was a kid and just as I remembered it from decades ago.  So to me, that little park was like a memorial to my Roscoe ancestors!             As soon as we arrived in Roscoe, hubby and I paid a visit to the Roscoe Free Public Library where I had made an appointment to meet with the librarian/local historian. We had a blast. Learned a lot about the area's history (thank you Joyce!), looked at and exchanged copies of old photos and vintage post cards. I  shared photos from my collection that I had brought, noting surnames written on the backs that the librarians recognized:  Sprague! They owned the department store!  Mootz! Barnes!  I went to school with a Barnes!  Dudley! My mother spoke highly of the Dudleys! 
       And thank you Alice! for running home and returning with this amazing photograph:
                     

It's a 1914 photo of the students who attended Roscoe's single building schoolhouse. I immediately recognized my grandmother, Elizabeth Jones!  There she was, seated 3rd from the right. I saw her face, the strong cheekbones that we were always told reflected her Indian heritage. It's a beautiful picture.  And someone had written the identities of all the students!!!  Probably at a class reunion years later.  

     

     We also visited nearby Liberty and Livingston Manor, trekked through five cemeteries - in Roscoe, Sidney & Unadilla,  searched for ancestors' graves, found a few.  Talked to local historians and average folks who knew a lot about history and some who were just plain fun to talk to.  A lovely couple who owned an antique store in Gilbertsville told us to be sure and go to the small church just up the street.  Just walk on in, go down a hall, you'll see a closet door on the left. That closet had a secret passageway which led to a shelter for escaping slaves on their way to Canada. We went inside - this on one of the very few gray, drizzly days.  Looked around, didn't find the closet but this was the place, somewhere beyond those ceiling beams perhaps, where frightened people sweated, held their breath in the dark, and hoped.