The Story of Cooperstown

by Ralph Birdsall

J. B. Slote

The Lyric at Cooper's Grave

The Cooperstown Centennial celebration was remarkable for its great success in calm defiance of the fact that the year of its observance was not really the centennial of anything worth commemorating in the history of the village. The psychological moment seemed to have arrived when the people of the village were resolved to devote themselves to some high effort in praise of Cooperstown, and so they gloriously celebrated, in 1907, the centennial which a former generation had neglected, and which succeeding generations might indolently ignore. A disused act of village incorporation passed in 1807 was seized upon as suggesting a convenient antiquity, but there was no slavish conformity to mere accidents of date, and the whole history of Cooperstown was included in this elastic centenary. The entire community was united in the desire and effort to make the celebration a success, and the sticklers for historical propriety became quite as enthusiastic as the others. The commemoration was planned and carried out on a really dignified scale, with an avoidance of tawdriness; and the elements of the celebration, with religious, historical, literary exercises, and pageantry, were well proportioned in their appeal to the mind, to the romantic emotions, and to the love of the spectacular. Some of the addresses such as that of Brander Matthews on Fenimore Cooper, were valuable contributions to the literary annals of America. Throngs of spectators were attracted to Cooperstown by the celebration, and in one day there were at least 15,000 people in the village which included only about 2,500 in its normal population. The old village and lake offered an effective background to the scenes of carnival. Natty Bumppo at home in his log cabin, Chingachgook with his canoe, appeared in living representation in the line of floats that paraded the village to set forth the historic and romantic memories of the place. A chorus of village schoolgirls dressed in white, and with flowing hair, presented an exquisite scene at Cooper's grave in Christ churchyard, bringing their tribute of flowers, and singing the lyric written by Andrew B. Saxton to the music of Andrew Allez. Otsego Lake offered a superb spectacle in the calm summer night, reflecting the glare of rockets and the bursting into bloom of aerial gardens of flame. There were moments of utter darkness suddenly dispelled by dazzling cataracts of fire that made one aware of thousands of pallid faces thronging the shore, while the effulgence set the waters ablaze from Council Rock to the Sleeping Lion, and flung a weird splendor upon the forests of the surrounding hills.

A lovable patriarch of the village was Samuel M. Shaw, well known throughout the state as editor of the Freeman's Journal. He had once been an editor of the Argus, in Albany, and became editor and proprietor of the Freeman's Journal in Cooperstown in 1851. In this position he continued more than half a century, and had a history almost unique in village journalism. When he began his work Shaw was regarded as an innovator, for he was one of the first editors in the country to introduce columns of local news and personal items, a practice which, at a time when newspapers were wholly devoted to politics, speeches, foreign affairs and literary miscellany, was widely ridiculed. He survived long enough to be regarded as an exemplar of conservative and old-fashioned journalism, and became the Nestor of Cooperstown. In the office of the Freeman's Journal, with its clutter of old machinery, piles of grimy books, its floor littered with newspapers, its wall streaked with cobwebs, the aged editor seemed exactly to fit into the surroundings. Here he received his friends, for the bed-ridden wife at Carr's Hotel, where he had rooms, was unequal to much social duty. The printing-office was his kingdom, and here, at the battered desk, he reigned supreme, a benevolent-looking man, with white beard closely enough trimmed to show a firm mouth, while the bald head shone above the desk as he bent his eyes closely to the pen in writing, and the left hand occasionally stroked the cluster of silvery locks that overhung the back of his collar. Late every afternoon he put aside his pen and proof-sheets, and with a coat held capewise about his bent shoulders, toddled to the Mohican Club to play bottle-pool with his old friend, G. Pomeroy Keese. Every Sunday the editor's venerable figure was conspicuous in a front pew of the Baptist church, in which he was a pillar, and always held up as an example to the youth of the village.

When Samuel Shaw died, in 1907, occurred a dramatic episode which only a village community can produce. During his long career Shaw had accumulated a fair amount of property, and in his will had made kindly bequests to certain friends. Not until his death did it become generally known that his means had been dissipated by unfortunate speculations in the stock market, which was then in a depressed condition, and that margins upon which he had made purchases had been wiped out, hastening his death by financial worry, and leaving his estate almost bankrupt.

At his funeral the Baptist church was crowded by a congregation which represented the tribute of a whole village to a man who had been a leader in its affairs for more than fifty years. The pastor of the church, the Rev. Cyrus W. Negus, had not been long in the village, but already was known for his earnestness and sincerity. To deliver a funeral sermon over the body of so distinguished a member of his church offered an opportunity to make an impression upon the entire community. He began his sermon with the usual expressions of Christian faith in the presence of death, and passed to a commendation of Samuel Shaw's many good deeds in public service and private life during his long career. Then he changed his tone, and, to the amazement of every hearer, expressed his deep disapproval of the speculations in the stock market which had brought the veteran editor in sorrow to the grave, and declared that he was unable to indorse the qualities in the character of a man so prominent in religious and civic life which permitted him to resort to slippery methods of financial gain. In this respect Samuel Shaw was to be held up not as an example, but as a warning to the youth of the village.

Never was a congregation more astonished than when the speaker proceeded to develop such a theme in the face of the mourning friends of the dead. Probably the great majority of the congregation felt that the pastor's view of the iniquity of such stock speculations was utterly mistaken. Certainly all the friends of the dead editor were too indignant to realize in that hour that they were witnesses of an unusual exhibition of moral courage on the part of a preacher. It was some months later, when the Rev. Cyrus W. Negus himself lay dead, and all the bells of the village rang his requiem, that a friend and admirer of Samuel Shaw could also fairly recognize the mettle of this preacher who had the pluck to speak out what he believed to be his message, with every worldly reason to be silent. He had dared to defy the conventions of indiscriminate eulogy at funerals, to stand practically alone against public opinion, and to turn an opportunity of winning popular applause into an occasion for speaking out the necessary truth as he saw it. Some of his best friends felt that he had blundered, but no one who saw and heard this frail and pale-faced Baptist minister, as he stood by the coffin of Samuel Shaw uttering the quiet words that fell like lead upon the tense and breathless audience, may honestly deny his courage.

In some respects the most remarkable man in Cooperstown at this period was Dr. Henry D. Sill. It is perhaps a singular distinction in a Christian community that Dr. Sill should have been chiefly renowned for being a Christian. It was not that the Christianity of the village was below the average of Christian communities. It was rather that Dr. Sill so strikingly personified the Christian virtues as to become a saint among Christians. By common consent he was put in a class by himself. Christians were exhorted to imitate him, but nobody was expected really to equal him. He was at this time only forty years old, but was revered not only by the young, but by the aged, as wise unto salvation. He was the son of Jedediah P. Sill, a respected and influential business man of Cooperstown, and after graduation at Princeton and at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, he settled down to practise in his own village. Dr. Sill lived with his sister at "The Maples," in the spacious house which stands on Chestnut Street, with sculptured lions guarding the doorway, next to the Methodist parsonage. His office occupied the little wing at the north. Unlike some who pass for philanthropists in the outer world, Henry Sill was regarded as a saint in his own household. Mrs. Robe, the aged aunt who made one of the family, and cultivated the art of growing old beautifully and gracefully, herself a Unitarian, used always to conclude her frequent arguments against Calvinistic theology by saying, "Well, Henry wouldn't treat people so, and I believe that God is as good as Henry!"

Dr. Sill was a man of some means, but spent very little on himself. It had been his ambition to be a missionary, but since circumstances made it impossible to carry out this design, he annually contributed the entire salary of a foreign missionary whom he called his "substitute." He spent large sums of money in the improvement of Thanksgiving Hospital, in which he was deeply interested, and the equipment of that institution, especially of the operating-room, which gave it a rank far above the hospitals in many larger towns, was chiefly owing to his generosity.