Broome County History
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Broome County History SPRING/SUMMER 2017 BROOME COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY VOL 17 NO. 1 This Special Edition of the History Bulletin features Artwork of the Broome County Historical Society, including recent Acquisitions and Restoration Projects. John Broome, Lt. Col. American Revolution, 1775. Lieutenant Governor of New York 1804-1810. Artist unknown. From the Collection of the Broome County Historical Society. JOHN COLLIER By Gerry Smith In a small gilt oval frame rests a portrait -- only 16 inches by 13 inches in size. Yet, it holds the image of a most interesting character in our community’s history. The image is of John Allen Collier, a local attorney, land developer, partner of Daniel LeRoy and rival of Joshua Whitney. This powerful Whig was able to get Millard Fillmore nominated as Vice- President on the ticket with General Zachary Taylor. He watched with some interest when Fillmore ascended to the presidency upon Taylor’s death. A powerhouse in the community, Collier has also been the subject of a chapter in the On the Seamy Side of the Street book written by George Basler and this writer. John Allen Collier, ca. 1870 – Artist unknown Collier, despite his station in life, and his magnificent Ingleside home on the banks of the Chenango Canal, had issues. He had been arrested for exposing himself, he had a penchant for very young ladies and his son would later be fired for fiscal maleficence when hundreds of thousands of dollars were missing from his tax collector’s office at the Port of San Francisco. Collier had been elected to Congress (despite all the local rumors about him), and yet until recently, the only known image was the engraving of his likeness found in the archives of the House of Representatives. That all changed when family descendants assigned some family items to an auction in Marathon. Among them was this well-done image of Collier as a much older man, with black frockcoat, white shirt and black cravat – typical of the 1870 period when this was created. His face now much older than the Congressional engraving, and showing, perhaps, a touch of his curmudgeonly ways. Collier would die in 1873 and is buried in Spring Forest Cemetery. With the acquisition of this portrait, we are finally able to put a face with his story. 2 PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG BOY By Gerry Smith Just when you think that you have seen everything dealing with Broome County’s history, something wonderful this way comes. That happened recently with the donation of a portrait of a young boy. Early nineteenth century portraits are nothing new – it was the only way of capturing the image of family members in the years before the invention of photography. Not that long ago these portraits would come up for sale in an auction or an estate sale, only to be gobbled up by buyers using them to hang and provide some baseless link to a past that was not theirs. While that habit has faded away, it now allows truly important works to be preserved. Such is the story behind the portrait of a young boy that now hangs in the Local History & Genealogy Center at the Broome County Public Library. Through the donation of one of his descendants, the 1830 portrait of Robert Gosman Harpur now gives us a picture into one of the most significant families in early Broome County. Robert Harpur was one of the early professors in what is now Columbia University, who became an integral part of the state’s Surveyor General’s office at the time of the expansion of the state after the American Revolution. Harpur is often given credit for the many Robert Gosman Harpur, 1830 – Artist Reuben Rowley classical place names throughout the state. Harpur eventually settled in the Town of Colesville in the hamlet now known as Harpursville. Harpur Manor was his estate in which he raised his family, including his sons John Warren Harpur and Robert Harpur, Jr. 3 Harpur Jr. married Parmelia Betts and had five children. His son Robert Gosman Harpur was born in 1820 and would remain in the area throughout his life. It was during this period that the itinerant artist Reuben Rowley was travelling throughout the central New York area. Rowley had been born about 1800 in New York and took up the artist’s palette in the early 1820s. Through other examples of his work in the area, we know that he painted portraits of the Juliand family in the Greene, New York area about this same time period. The nearby community of Harpursville seemed to have been a good choice, as Rowley is credited with the painting of Mary Anne Harpur, the youngest of Robert Harpur Sr.’s children. The portrait was completed somewhere in the 1820’s, shortly before Rowley painted the young Harpur boy’s image. It may be that through Mary Anne’s portrait, Rowley got the commission to paint the image now in the collection of the Broome County Historical Society. Evidence on the internet suggests that it was not the only painting done of the members of Robert Harpur, Jr.’s family. One image of a young girl wearing a coral necklace uses the exact colors and background design as the boy’s portrait and could be his sister. Two others could have been those of Robert, Jr. and his wife. It was not unusual that the artist would complete portraits of all family members at the same time. Whether Rowley did just this one portrait or all of them, we are aware he was in the region until approximately 1836 when he relocated to the Boston area where he continued to work until his death in the 1850s. Robert G. Harpur continued to live in Harpursville until his death in 1859, and his portrait which had remained under one family member’s bed for 16 years, has now found itself back into the light for all to enjoy. DOUBLE YOUR PLEASURE: THE DOUBLEDAYS ARE RESTORED By Gerry Smith The mission of the Broome County Historical Society is to collect, preserve, and interpret the history of Broome County. It is a straightforward mission – and the Society has done a great job in most areas. However, there is always room for improvement. We have a huge collection of nearly 200,000 items dealing with the county – so we can knock collecting off our list. We have about 12,000 researchers a year using many of our collections located in the Local History & Genealogy Center or visiting one of the exhibits using those collections at Roberson Museum and Science Center or at the Library – so we can knock off interpreting. The last part of our mission is preservation. Artifacts and archival items are stored in climate controlled vaults at both facilities, placed in proper containers and catalogued into a database management system. What more can we do? 4 We asked ourselves that question many times and always came back to the same answer – we needed to ensure that aging items such as artworks were observed and restored on a needs basis to ensure that they would be around for future generations. Our first order of business was to compile data on what we own and the condition of each work of art. After this was completed, we did a needs assessment on which paintings required the most immediate action to ensure their safety. Lastly, we had to find funding to do the preservation. Some of the artwork had been restored or partially restored in the 1980s when funding was more plentiful from Broome County and Roberson had more staff. Gratefully, the Historical Society has been the recipient of an operating grant from the Conrad & Virginia Klee Foundation for several years to help augment our operation. Slowly that amount has risen, and along with it the commitment of the Society and the Foundation to set aside some of those monies for preservation. It seemed the ideal time to begin the multi-year process of restoration of some of the collections of the Society. But where do we begin? The answer was easy – we chose the portraits of Dr. Ammi Doubleday and his wife, Susan Pierce Doubleday. Doubleday was born in New Lebanon, Columbia County, New York in 1790 and moved from there to Tioga County and then to Windsor. In December 1813, he settled in the growing hamlet of Binghamton to partner with Dr. Tracy Robinson, helping in the drug trade for medical uses. After a year, he sold his part of the business to his brother and studied medicine with Dr. De Lamater of the Medical School at Pittsfield. He returned to practice medicine in Binghamton until 1817 when he was appointed Broome County Clerk and held that office until 1821. After that point, he stopped practicing medicine and ventured into several financially successful opportunities. They included construction of parts of the Croton Water Works and sections of the New York & Erie Railroad, organizing the Bank of Binghamton in 1852, real estate development, part owner of the Syracuse to Binghamton Railroad, and other successes. He had a wonderful Greek Revival home on Washington Street and lived a respectable life playing an important role in the development and improvement of the then village of Binghamton. He died in 1867. Somewhere, about 1820-1830, a pair of portraits of the couple had been painted by an unknown artist. The paintings had remained in the family hands until they were donated to the Historical Society many years ago. The passage of time for the portraits had not been kind.