Culled by Judy Garrison From  July 1913 issues of

The Andes Recorder 100 Years Ago

 Week In and About ANDES

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Events of a Week as Chronicled by the Man on the Street

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With commentary by Jim Andrews

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Mr. and Mrs. Manetho Hilton and four children, of Yonkers, spent from Friday until Tuesday in Andes. Mr. Hilton, who was a native of Andes, remembered his native village seven years ago by presenting the school district with the Intercollegiate Institute and grounds for its high school home. The property was presented in memory of his father and Hilton Memorial High School stands as a monument to the Hilton name. [Jim Andrews: The Collegiate Institute building had been constructed in the 1840s as a junior college and managed to maintain students and staff until the turn of the century. After it closed, the building sat vacant until the Hiltons donated it to the town along with sufficient funds to modernize it and supply it with a “modern” science laboratory, textbooks and furniture. Interestingly, the town had been offered the building for sale back in 1904 and for a lesser amount of around $1,000, but chose to put an addition on the already outdated and too small high school located on Lower Main Street. Pinching pennies even then. They were only too glad to accept it when it was a gift.]

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Ira Mason, of Colo, Iowa is visiting in this vicinity. Mr. Mason was a native of Cabin Hill and later with his parents came to Andes village and occupied the house now owned by Andrew Gibbs [JA: the current home of Dale Tait and of Dr. Robert Chakar] and his father kept a store in the building adjoining, torn down during the Union Hotel fire in 1896. Mr. Mason went west in 1867 and this is his first visit to old scenes. He finds the changes many and comparatively few people who were here in days of yore.

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L.J. Frisbee, at Perch Lake, has been exhibiting a stalk of timothy that was five feet and eight inches in height.

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The culverts are being put in on the Andes end of the State road and travel is practically suspended. The only way is to go thru the fields along the sidehill with danger of the wagon being upset every minute. The Andes-Delhi Stage now goes via Biggar Hollow. Grading is being done at Ed Coulter’s.

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Prince Hirza Kahn, Persian ambassador to the United States, is spending the summer at the Jetter cottage near the Grand Hotel station, Pine Hill and will remain in the Catskills until about the first of November. [Ed.: Those were the days when our country had friendly relations with Persia/Iran.]

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Fifty Persons Die in Four-Story Plant of Binghamton Clothing Co.

Fifty persons were killed according to late estimates and many injured a dozen of them mortally, in a fire which swept the four-story building of the Binghamton Clothing company, Tuesday afternoon. The victims were chiefly women and girls. About 125 persons were in the factory when the fire broke out….There was small opportunity for any to use the ordinary or even the emergency means of escape. The building was equipped with fire escapes and an automatic alarm system. It is thought that the fire was caused by the careless throwing away of a cigarette stump. [Ed.: After the deaths of 146 garment workers in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in Manhattan on March 25, 1911, 60 of the 64 new laws recommended by the Factory Investigating Commission were legislated, with the advocacy of Gov.William Sulzer. The American Society of Safety Engineers was founded on October 14, 1911.]

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Albany, July 15. “Honeycombed with graft, the state of New York as my investigators are today revealing the inside workings, is a lesson to her sister states in the Union.”

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The above quotation comprises the first paragraph of a three column copyrighted article by William Sulzer, governor of New York, now running in the newspapers….The governor’s declared intention to expose grafters and stop graft is altogether commendable…It is, however difficult to reconcile some of the statements made by the governor in his newspaper article with some of his official acts.  For example: [Ed.: the writer goes on for many columns to discredit the governor. The more things change….]

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Ed.: The following printed in the Andes Recorder from a Rochester Post-Express piece displays much more colorful rhetoric on the same subject:  “What citizen who keeps himself informed of affairs at Albany is not ashamed and sick at heart? Has there ever before within living memory been a more malodorous state of things, more intrigue, bitterness, frantic pulling and hauling, howling and clawing or greater evidence of political putridity? It seems incredible that the people will not scourge the offenders out of the temple at the earliest opportunity.” ~