Objects 'Given in Trust' will tell village history, more welcomed
—Enterprise file photo
A beloved contemporary Altamont inventor: Marijo Dougherty and Joe Merli at the exhibit, several years ago, “Altamont’s Early Inventors.” Altamont Mayor James Gaughan recently called Merli “truly a Renaissance man who will be sorely missed.” Merli died on Feb. 13.
ALTAMONT — The Altamont Archives and Museum will host an exhibit beginning in about April that will highlight several important recent gifts to the collection.
The exhibit is to be called “Given in Trust: Recent Gifts to the Museum Collections.”
Among the gifts featured will be one from Pam Crounse Jones, of documents from the house on Brandle Road that was in the Crounse family for 175 years until it was sold following the death in January 2015 of her brother Fred Crounse.
“It was hard going through the house, let me tell you,” Jones said.
The Crounse documents include some “written in Old German on beautiful handmade paper that didn’t, thank God, disintegrate,” said village archivist Marijo Dougherty. One of them, she said, conclusively settles the question of where the family originally came from, because it lists the old village and the names of all the children and their birthdates.
The exhibit will also include a memorial appreciation to Joseph Merli (1951–2016), for the gifts that he created for an archives exhibit held several years ago, called “Altamont’s Early Inventors.”
When Dougherty was planning that exhibit, she had a handful of patent drawings for local inventions, but no examples of the objects themselves. She showed the drawings to Merli, who scrutinized them and said, “I can make these!” He was able, she said, to envision the three-dimensional objects solely on the basis of the one-dimensional drawings.
Several of the objects he made will be included, with the drawings. These will include, for instance, a guardrail invented by P. Edelman.
Dougherty told The Enterprise that P. Edelman used to sit in his train-station office, in what is now the Altamont Free Library, and watch the railroad cars attempt to turn around to make the trip back to Albany. Often they would wind up jumping the track. He invented the guardrail to prevent this.
Although he was an experienced railroad man, Edelman was killed when he walked between two trains and did not see the oncoming one, said Dougherty.
The exhibit will also include newer gifts such as a money clip/calendar from Altamont Hardware, donated by Vall Pulliam.
Dougherty added that she hopes to receive still more documents or artifacts for possible inclusion in the exhibit. These should be items, she said, that are clearly identified as being from Altamont — or Knowersville, as the village was originally called — and that add to the historical understanding of the area.
