The spring of 1942 found the United States at war with Japan and Germany. Japan, rapidly expanding its empire in the Pacific, was seemingly unstoppable.

The Japanese had not only had battered the American fleet at Pearl Harbor months before, but by early April had forced the surrender of American troops at Bataan in the Philippines, followed a month later by their taking Corregidor. Coming closer to our mainland in June, the Japanese landed in the Aleutians off the coast of Alaska.

In Europe, Adolf Hitler’s armies had occupied most of the continent and were sending endless bombing raids in an attempt to pound Britain into submission. Hitler’s June invasion of the Soviet Union was rapidly advancing. With ever worsening news from abroad, these were dark days for Americans.

In August 1940, with the threat of war looming, President Franklin D. Roosevelt called reservists and National Guard members to active duty, and that September Congress passed the first peacetime draft in our history, for men between the ages of 21 to 35.

By the spring of 1942, every community saw large numbers of its young men volunteering or being drafted. As the war went on, the draft expanded its classifications.

Local families whose sons and sometimes daughters were in the military hung rectangular service flags in a window, the blue stars representing their family members in the military and, as the tragic toll of war mounted, gold stars for family members killed in the war.

Communities, feeling the absence of so many of their young men and wanting to recognize their service, began displaying service flags and erecting wooden plaques or honor rolls in a public place for all to see. The honor rolls listed the names of all the local men and the occasional women who were in the armed forces.

Private Orsini MIA

as Altamont honors servicemen

The May 29, 1942 Enterprise had two front-page headlines, one reading “Honor Roll Plaque To Be Placed in Park, Plan Parade, Addresses,” while adjoining it was the lead headline “Altamont Man In Corregidor Area, When Island Fell/ War Dept. Waits Word From Japanese For Names of Prisoners Taken.”

The young Altamont man was Private Millard Orsini. Scheduled for June 21 in the park, the committee had already begun planning a parade and dedication ceremony, including all ages and groups, particularly recognizing the mothers of servicemen by seating them at the front of the dedication ceremony.

With the fate of the young Orsini serviceman hanging in the balance, Altamont’s dedication was probably the most emotional of all the local dedications.

On dedication day, the parade started from the fairgrounds down Grand Street to the Main Street, right on Lincoln Avenue, over to Western Avenue and then across Maple Avenue past the reviewing stand there and over to Depot Square and the park. Along the route, all the homeowners had been requested to display their American flags.

Four divisions marched in the parade, the first including Grand Marshall John Walker, a World War I veteran who had fought with the British and was a member of the Helderberg Post American Legion, followed by the ceremony speakers, village trustees, color guard, the British Empire War Veterans Kiltie Band, American Legion and its auxiliary, Red Cross members and their ambulance, Army jeeps and their representatives.

The second division had the Altamont Fire Department members and auxiliary and other  groups. The third division was headed by the chief air-raid warden and included the Altamont High School Band, air-raid wardens, and fraternal and civic groups. The fourth division was led by the chairman of the local Boy Scout committee, leading Boy Scout and Girl Scout units.

Once at the park, the large honor roll plaque was unveiled and dedicated. It listed 52 names with space for additional names to be added as the war continued.

The ceremony began and ended with invocation and benediction by Altamont’s two Protestant ministers with additional words from a LaSalette priest. A local woman sang “America,” followed by a welcome from the village mayor.

The actual dedication was led by Margaret Rickard and Ken Orsini, assisted by Margaret Orsini, Mary Rau, and the color guard. After the president of the fire department read off the names on the honor roll, General Ames T. Brown was the principal speaker. Mothers of servicemen were presented with service pins at the end of the ceremony.

Hamlet has plaque

on church lawn

July 1942 brought other honor-roll dedications in Guilderland’s communities.

Hamlet of Guilderland residents gathered on the lawn of the Presbyterian Church for the dedication of their honor-roll plaque, listing the names of 26 men in that election district. Both the plaque and a service flag with stars representing the 26 men had been erected on a corner of the Magill property next door to the church.

Today we know this as the Schoolcraft House, but the Magills lived there for many years in the 20th Century. There was no parade, but a dedication service was held in front of the plaque.

Opening the program, the orchestra of the Federated Sunday School played a march, followed by an invocation given by the Federated Presbyterian Church’s Rev. DeGraff and two solos, “America” and “Recessional” were sung.

Guilderland Center’s Rev. W.D. Worman of St. Mark’s Lutheran Church offered a prayer, then remarks were made by Aaron Bradt, a Spanish-American War veteran, and Rev. DeGraff offered a prayer.

The Home Bureau presented to the community a service flag that was accepted by Guilderland’s fire chief. To one side of the honor-roll plaque had been erected a flag pole to hold an American flag with the service flag hanging horizontally.

Next, many community organizations marched to the honor-roll plaque: Boy Scouts and Girls Scouts, a color guard, Sunday School children carrying flags, relatives of servicemen, Home Bureau members, the Red Cross, the Order of Red Men and their Pocahontas auxiliary (this was a fraternal organization based in the hamlet).

Next, the director of the Girl Scouts, assisted by her brother-in-law, a naval storekeeper third class, unveiled the honor-roll plaque. A Boy Scout presented the American flag and a Girl Scout presented the 26-star service flag, which were then raised by a member of the Order of Red Men. The ceremony concluded with Rev. Worman offering benediction.

Parade starts

Guilderland Center ceremony

The next weekend, Guilderland Center dedicated a service flag sponsored by its fire department. The event began with a parade headed by the 50-piece Roesselville Band (this high school preceded Colonie Central High School).

As he had been in Altamont, World War I veteran John Walker had been invited to be Grand Marshall.

In front of the Cobblestone School, an invocation given by Helderberg Reformed Church’s Rev. James Moffit was followed by a solo of “America,” a welcome, then the guest speaker Past Commander of the Albany County American Legion, followed by a few words from Fr. Dillon of LaSalette Seminary.

The main address was made by Col. John Chambliss, the officer in charge of the Voorheesville Holding and Reconsignment Point (the official name of the Army Depot).

Then the service flag was presented and the names of those on the roll of honor were read, a bugle call to the colors sounded out, and the audience recited the Pledge of Allegiance. The flag was formally accepted for the community.

Then auxiliary members of the Guilderland Center Fire Department presented service pins to mothers of servicemen and the dedication service culminated in the singing of “The Star Spangled Banner” and a benediction offered by Rev. Worman of St. Mark’s Lutheran Church.

In Westmere: A promise to

‘have a good America waiting’

The community of Westmere dedicated its own honor-roll plaque in June of 1943, recognizing the 90 men from that fire district serving in the armed forces with a parade on Route 20 and a ceremony at the Westmere firehouse.

It was noted that this was the first time in history a parade had been held in Westmere.

One of the speakers was the Albany chairman of the Joint War Veterans’ Advisory Board who looked to the future saying, “Let us promise those men in uniform that we will have a good America waiting when they return … .”

The president of the Albany Chamber of Commerce also spoke, warning the present war is “an all-out struggle for our way of life.” Reverend Carothers had opened the ceremonies with a prayer and town Supervisor Earle B. Conklin of McKownville also spoke.

Honor rolls grow

In Altamont, July 4, 1943 was marked with a parade and rededication of their honor-roll plaque, which was so filled with names that two side panels had to be added to provide space to list nearly three times the number of the original names.

The list given in The Enterprise article included one man who had died in service; one woman; and, next to Millard Orsini’s name: “held prisoner by the Japanese according to report of the International Red Cross.”

One of the seven Orsini brothers who fought in World War II, Millard survived the war and came home to Altamont. The American flag he fashioned as a prisoner of war, risking his life to do it, is now displayed at Altamont’s Home Front Café.

Two flag poles had been donated, one for an American flag and the other for a service flag erected on each side of the now expanded plaque. A man volunteered to repaint the weathered names on the original plaque and add the new names.

The rededication ceremony was similar to previous ones with clergy, civic groups, the Altamont High School Band, and officials taking part. Later that year and again in 1944, notices appeared urging anyone knowing of an armed-forces member from that vicinity not listed to make officials aware so his name could be added.

In 1944, Guilderland Center folks were raising money to enlarge the service plaque, while in Guilderland the Home Bureau was raising money to get new flags and enlarge its honor-roll plaque. If McKownville had an honor roll or service flag, there seemed to be no mention of it in The Enterprise.

These patriotic dedication parades and ceremonies served not only to honor and support the men and women in the armed forces, but also to raise morale on the home front. As members of the community came together, the ceremonies fueled their determination, no matter their ages, to do what it would take to win the war.

Almost anyone with an interest in our local history is aware Altamont was once known as Knowersville, but few realize that the original hamlet of Knowersville was located to the east of the present village until  the beginning of a new chapter in the village’s history in 1863 with the arrival of the Albany & Susquehanna Railroad.

Beginning in the 18th Century, the old Schoharie Road passed where Severson’s Tavern (site of Altamont’s Stewart’s) was the last stopping place before the arduous ascent up the escarpment on the route to Schoharie. West Guilderland was the name given to the location when a United States Post Office was established at the tavern in 1829.

East of the tavern, the land was very sparsely settled until, in 1795, Myndert A. Wimple leased a large piece of property from Stephen Van Rensselaer along the old road. A few years later, he transferred this land to the successful Albanian Benjamin Knower, who built a grand stylish house fronting the road. With its large size, fireplaces, and interior woodwork, it could be classified as a mansion compared to other Guilderland homes of the era.

On land behind his house along the Bozenkill, Knower built a hat factory. He retailed the hats at his store at 421 South Market Street in Albany where he did a steady business selling hats that had been subjected to a secret waterproofing process, allowing them to keep their shape when wet from rain or snow.

His secret process consisted of immersing the hats in the Bozenkill’s cold water for a certain period of time in a deep spot in the creek called “Hatter’s Hole” by local residents. As Knower became a wealthy man, he became involved with the management of the Mechanics and Farmers Bank in Albany, establishing himself as a man of prominence in the early years of the 19th Century.

In 1824, his daughter Cornelia married William L. Marcy, later governor of New York. Our late town historian Arthur Gregg, relying on Knower family oral tradition passed along by the last family member to live in the house, felt the wedding took place at the West Guilderland house. However, he admitted he had not been able to find any documentary proof except a newspaper announcement stating they had been married.

Writing in 1934, Gregg mentioned James Matthews, still alive at the time of his article, had worked at the hat factory when it closed down at the end of the Civil War. Another man David Andrews reminisced to Gregg that he bought a hat there when a boy. Eventually the village of Altamont bought the property used in hat manufacture in 1918 for a water treatment plant.

Even though Knower was actively involved in Albany affairs, he also put down roots in West Guilderland. A short distance east along the Schoharie Road was St. James Lutheran Church (site of the modern entrance to Fairview Cemetery) which received from Knower an annual donation of $10, this being the largest single donation received during these early years.

Knower died in 1839, and being held in high esteem by the tiny community that had grown up around his house and hat factory, residents renamed their little hamlet Knowersville. The post office was moved from West Guilderland at the Severson Tavern to Jacob Crounse’s store in 1840 in what was now Knowersville.

The Crounse family

In 1833, two members of the Crounse family, father and son, settled in the vicinity of the Knower mansion and hat factory. The father, Jacob Crounse, acquired nearby property from Benjamin Knower to build a tavern, which would be about halfway between Albany and Schoharie.

Arthur Gregg, writing in 1933, quotes Webb Whipple who had grown up in the neighborhood, repeating information that had been passed down to him that the foundation stones of the old inn had been hauled from Howes Cave with the timber cut in the Helderbergs for its construction.

Across the road, Jacob Crounse ran a store and from 1840 until the Civil War served as the postmaster of the newly named Knowersville Post Office there.

At some point, Jacob Crounse either sold his hotel or lost it because of financial difficulties; its new owner was James Keenholts. The 1855 New York State Census lists J. Keenholts as “hotel keeper” and Jacob Crounse as “merchant.”

However, in a 1959 article about the Albany-Schoharie Plank Road, Arthur Gregg mentions, “Running in opposition [to the Keenholts Hotel] was the Crounse hotel across the way, later remodeled into the three houses that stand there now.” It seems probable that he acquired the hotel across the road and continued in the business at least for a time.

Later in life, Jacob Crounse is supposed to have moved in with his son, Dr. Frederick Crounse, busying himself making coffins in the barn.

That same year that Jacob had built his inn on the Schoharie Road, his son, Dr. Frederick Crounse, also obtained land from Benjamin Knower to the west of Knower’s house. There he built a house and a smaller, separate two-room office with an attic where at least for a time, he had an African-American servant living.

This parcel was on the corner of what is now Route 146 and Gun Club Road. For over 60 years, Dr. Crounse  practiced medicine, traveling to his patients on horseback or driving his gig.

Both Crounses were firm supporters of the Anti-Rent Movement against the Van Rensselaer interests. Dr. Crounse also made a speech in 1860 at one of Guilderland’s Wide Awake rallies supporting Lincoln.

In 1849, the improved Albany-Schoharie Plank Road was constructed through the midst of Knowersville, but it no longer totally followed the route of the old Schoharie Road. Not far beyond Dr. Crounse’s house, the plank road veered to the right to take a different path up the escarpment, putting Severson’s, the original tavern in the area, out of business.

The plank road, a turnpike built for investors’ profits from tolls, was constructed of a lane of thick planks laid over parallel sills. A dirt lane ran along the side to allow one driver to pass another.

The two Knowersville hotels thrived from the increased traffic carried by the improved road. The Albany-Schoharie stagecoach made a daily trip between the two places during the years the Schoharie Plank Road was in operation.

The stagecoach stopped at the Keenholts Hotel where the horse teams were changed and passengers were refreshed. (The modern day New York State Historic Marker in front calls it Inn of Jacob Crounse.)

The election of 1860 saw political demonstrations at both the Crounse and Keenholts hotels supporting either Lincoln or Douglas with poles, banners, bands, speeches, and crowds. Shortly after Lincoln’s victory and inauguration, the Civil War began and was soon brought home to the people living in Knowersville.

Volunteer regiments were forming in the northern states. In Schoharie, the 134th New York State Volunteer Infantry trained, then marched to Albany over the Albany-Schoharie Road, stopping halfway for the night in Knowersville.

Webb Whipple remembered the soldiers sleeping in the fields around the neighborhood. A 134th veteran reminiscenced in the 20th Century, mentioning sleeping under the hotel sheds at Knowersville. Probably men were anywhere they could bed down, while that night Dr. Crounse tended the weary; footsore; and, in some cases, sick men. Later, he would tend any wounded men returning home on the stagecoach.

Both of Dr. Crounse’s sons enlisted. Tragically, Eddie Crounse suffered a head injury while helping to build a fortification. A Schoharie woman who was nursing in one of the military hospitals found him there, and notified his father.

Dr. Crounse traveled south to bring his son home, but Eddie Crounse never fully recovered. One day, the suffering young man was discovered face down in the Bozenkill behind his parents’ home.

The railroad changes everything

Sept. 16, 1863 marked the beginning of the end of the importance of the little community on the Plank Road. The first train to run on the Albany & Susquehanna Railroad passed over a right-of-way granted by the Seversons — revenge is sweet!

Within two years, a railroad station stood along the tracks, the Seversons had built a new hotel across the tracks, and a new commercial building stood nearby beside the tracks (where the Home Front Café is today).

The Knowersville post office was moved to the new railroad depot and, where there had only been two farmhouses, a building boom commenced and a new village arose. In the meantime, in 1867, rail competition forced the board of directors to disband the Plank Road Company.

What of the original Knowersville, that stretch of the Schoharie Plank Road where Keenholts’s hotel, Crounse’s store and Dr. Frederick Crounse’s home and office stood?

Now that the center of the village had shifted to the area of new hotels, businesses, and residences near what had become the Delaware & Hudson Railroad, the original Knowersville had become a backwater.

An 1884 Enterprise ad stated W.S. Waterman would repair watches, clocks, and jewelry “promptly and neatly at his residence, Old Knowersville, NY.” In 1890, when the village of Altamont incorporated, the old village was not included in the village boundaries.

And, in 1902, The Enterprise reported, “There was a large attendance at the auction sale at the Knower Homestead at the old village Monday afternoon.” Held after the death of George Knower, the last heir, it was as if a chapter had ended.

Today the three historic markers along Route 146 noting the Inn of Jacob Crounse, the Knower Homestead, and sadly, what remains of Dr. Crounse’s house are the only clues that this was once the 19th-Century community of Knowersville.

“Aaron F. Pangburn and Peter J. Ogsbury are building ice houses for the purpose of further advancing their interests in the creamery this coming season,” noted the Jan. 5, 1889 Enterprise.

Eagerly anticipating a string of subzero nights freezing nearby creeks and ponds to maximum thickness, these two were among the many farmers in Guilderland and other Albany County towns who were ready to begin the backbreaking, tedious chore of harvesting the ice crop, then hauling the ice cakes to their ice houses to be packed in to last through the warm months ahead.

“The order of the day is harvesting ice” or “the local ice crop has been harvested” appeared repeatedly during the months of January and February from the mid-1880s when The Enterprise began publication until the 1930s. To 21st-Century minds the terms “ice,” “crop,” and “harvest” just do not go together in the same sentence, unlike a century or more ago when the idea made perfect sense.

Like Peter J. Ogsbury, many farmers were fortunate enough to have a natural pond or were able to create one on their own property. Otherwise in Guilderland ice came from creeks such as the Bozenkill or Normanskill or from large ponds, the most frequently mentioned being Tygert’s pond on the outskirts of Guilderland Center created by damming the Black Creek.

Batterman’s mill pond in the Guilderland hamlet (today the silted in pond is still visible from Route 20 not far west from its intersection with Willow Street) also provided large quantities of ice.

In McKownville behind the McKownville Methodist Church was Henderson’s pond, reputed to have been created as a pond to provide ice. Also in McKownville was Witbeck’s pond and possibly the McKown’s Grove pond.

In the Altamont area, ice was cut at Sitterly’s, Hokirk’s and Conrad Crounse’s ponds as well as the village reservoir, although after 1910 fear of contamination caused the village to forbid reservoir ice-harvesting. The Kushaqua Hotel had its own reservoir where ice was cut and stored for its summer use.

Stephen Lainhart, who farmed his ancestral acres on what is now Lainhart Road and regularly kept a diary throughout his adult life, wrote frequent references to ice-harvesting. “Drawing ice,” “got four loads of ice from Wesley’s pond,” (Wesley Schoolcraft was his neighbor),”we worked at ice out of the Bozenkill,” “got two jags (obsolete term for loads) of ice from the covered bridge in the afternoon,” (it’s not clear which covered bridge) are a few examples.

Just as Peter Ogsbury had done, Lainhart in 1891 dug out his own pond, citing figures of cutting 203 cakes of ice there in 1901, and 180 in 1902. Even with a supply of ice from his own pond, he packed additional ice from the Bozenkill and from Tygert’s pond into his ice house.

Tools and techniques

Necessary for ice-cutting were special tools and techniques.

First, any snow on the ice’s surface was cleared as soon as the ice was thick enough to bear a man’s weight in order to remove an insulating blanket from the ice, allowing the intensely frigid nights to freeze the ice to maximum thickness.

A sharp deep freeze with no snow or wind to ruffle the water’s surface produced crystal-clear ice. The late Everett Rau recalled his father holding up a cake of ice, and putting his watch behind it to make it possible for Everett to clearly make out the watch’s numerals through the foot-thick piece of ice.

Often mentioned in the comments about ice-harvesting were both the ice’s quality, the best being “fine and clear,” and the thickness with the figures ranging from a low of 8 inches in 1890 to 26 inches at the Kushaqua’s reservoir and 24 inches at Tygert’s pond in 1888. Most years the thickness seemed to run between 10 to 14 inches.

An Enterprise contributor, who called himself “Anonymous,” wrote sporadic columns appearing in 1971 and 1972. In one, he described ice-cutting on his family’s farm pond, which seemed to have been in the McKownville vicinity.

To begin, their team pulled an “ice plow” with a sharpened blade to make a four-inch deep groove across the pond. Using that cut as a guide, the plow was pulled to make parallel grooves in the area to be cut.

A hole was cut through at the shore to put in a chute to allow the cakes of cut ice to be slid out up the bank. The blocks were then loaded onto sleds or, in the 20th-Century, in trucks to be taken to their ice house.

Once the grooves had been made, long ice saws with big teeth cut off cakes and a “spud,” a tool used to crack free the cake from the groove, allowed the cake to float freely. Then men with long pikes pushed the floating cake to the chute or slide to allow it to be removed from the pond.

During the days between Jan. 28 and Feb. 9,  1887, Stephen Lainhart tells us he “went into Knowersville for a load of sawdust,” “ Irving (his son) went after ice tongs,” “ I went to Alex Tygert’s after sawdust,” “I drawed ice, Uncle Peter and Charley helped,” “put 30 cakes in the ice house,” “drawed two loads of ice,” “Irving and myself put ice in the ice house,” “ I drawed one load of ice in the forenoon,” “I finished drawing ice. Irving helped me put some in the icehouse.”

The ice house

A skill in itself, correctly positioning the ice in the ice house so as to have minimal melting during the warmer months was key. The loads of sawdust Stephen acquired were needed to insulate the ice.

After packing the floor with sawdust, the ice cakes were then piled in layers with space left between the ice and walls to then be filled with sawdust and sometimes straw. Before the next year’s ice could be stored, the sawdust from the year before had to be cleaned out; fresh sawdust was used for the new ice crop.

The ice house constructed by Peter Ogsbury in 1889 had double doors, one set above the other, where the top half opened separately from the bottom half.  When the top of the bottom half-door was reached, sawdust had to be placed between the walls and the ice and between the ice and the closed door.

Then a ladder that had been built at the same time as the ice house was used to pile in the top layers of ice until the ice house was full. Additional sawdust was put between upper layers of ice and walls, the top of the ice, and the closed door.

The ladder was used to remove the upper ice layers when they were to be used later on. If any of the ice cakes fused together, farmers had a special crowbar-type tool to pry them apart. Any sawdust stuck to an ice cake washed right off.

Profits

Money could be made cutting and selling ice and sometimes the owner of a pond would sell the rights to someone else to cut and sell the ice. Alex. Tygert did this in 1890 when Frederick Mynderse “purchased the ice on Tygert’s pond which he will sell by the load or otherwise.”

Altamont’s Sand & Sons were noted as the village ice dealers, though they were never mentioned as being involved with harvesting itself. Others filled the ice houses of village residents: Mayor Hiram Griggs contracted with William Hokirk to fill his, while the Ward Boys filled Mr. D. G. Staley’s ice house.

Wealthy cottagers on the escarpment had theirs filled with ice from Thompson’s Lake in preparation for their summer stays. However, friends, neighbors, and relatives freely helped individual farmers fill their ice houses knowing they would reciprocate.

Innumerable enterprising young men from Guilderland and other nearby towns traveled over to the Hudson to Cedar Creek, Selkirk, or Coxsackie where commercial ice-harvesting was a major employer for a few weeks each winter when tons of ice were cut from the river, and stored in huge ice houses that could warehouse up to 50,000 tons of ice.

The ice was later shipped to New York City in specially-constructed insulated barges. It is estimated that between 4,000 and 6,000 men were employed each winter cutting Hudson River ice between Kingston and Albany.

Even though men like A. Lincoln Frederick and E.J. Severson, just to name two local men mentioned as working on the Hudson at different times over the years, had to pay room and board while there for one to three weeks, the $1.75 daily wage must have made it worthwhile.

Near Guilderland in Karners, located in the Town of Colonie, the New York Central Railroad owned two large ponds where ice was harvested and stored to be used to chill the Central Railroad’s refrigerated cars, another location where local young men went to earn cash cutting ice.

Dangerous work

Ice cutting could be dangerous work as Philip Schemerhorn discovered in 1888 when he slipped and went into the icy water in the Guilderland hamlet. Men could prevent this by wearing felt boots or cork soles.

Sometimes a team of horses came to disaster falling in. Fortunately, when Meadowdale’s William P. Crounse’s horses broke through the ice, they were able to be rescued though “with difficulty.” There were times when men or teams of horses drowned, though this does not seem to have happened in Guilderland. Men were also injured by dropped ice cakes.

A creamery

A major motivation to building ice houses was the possibility of selling milk, especially once railroads gave easy access to nearby cities. Altamont area farmers joined together to build a creamery in Altamont in 1888, an initial success, but a year later it failed due to a big drop in butter prices.

In the meantime, there was more demand for ice with the building of local hotels and the rapid increase in summer visitors here who built “cottages” on the escarpment, stayed at the town’s hotels, or boarded with area farm families.

Local butchers and fish venders needed ice as well. Ice cream became a popular summer treat. In the early 20th Century, milk stations requiring ice were being set up by big diaries where milk was picked up and farmers earned cash.

Once electrical refrigeration became common in the 1920s, commercial ice-harvesting became history. Gradually, ice-harvesting by Guilderland farmers became less and less common as use of electricity grew. By the 1930s, it would have become a rarely seen activity and it’s not likely farmers missed what was once a common cold-weather chore.

Dr. Frank H. Hurst was a Guilderland Center boy who became a doctor, graduating from Albany Medical College in 1895, followed by two years in Europe where he continued his medical studies. Returning home, he opened his practice in Guilderland Center in 1903 and served as the community’s physician until 1945, except for the years from 1917 to 1919.

August 1914 saw the opening shots of catastrophic World War I in Europe, a war that resulted in millions of casualties, a war in which the United States wanted no involvement. The nation adopted the official policy of neutrality.

When the Germans, who began unrestricted submarine warfare to prevent food supplies and war materiel from reaching Britain, started sinking American merchant ships in early 1917, the United States declared war on April 6. Having only a small regular army and an inadequate medical corps, the nation was ill prepared for all-out war. Many volunteers immediately came forward, including 44-year-old Dr. Hurst.

An early June Enterprise announcement informed everyone Dr. Hurst was leaving that day for Ft. Washington in D.C. where he would become part of the medical corps of the regular army, having been given the rank of lieutenant weeks before. Six weeks later, readers were assured the newly promoted Captain Hurst had reached France safely.

“Dr. Hurst Writes” was a front-page feature in early November 1917, penned in response to an Enterprise request to his wife for information. In a very lengthy letter written directly to the newspaper, Dr. Hurst gave details of his early months in service.

His Atlantic voyage had been uneventful under beautiful weather aboard an ocean liner he couldn’t name due to wartime censorship in a convoy protected by American and British destroyers. Upon landing at a British port he couldn’t name, he took a train to London where his accommodations at the “fashionable Hotel Curzon” in a posh neighborhood were provided by the British.

Free for the next few days, Hurst took the opportunity to “visit haunts of his medical school days” as well as doing considerable sightseeing, all described in detail in his letter.

At week’s end, when his orders came through to report to ------------ (because of censorship, lines replaced specific information) in France, he boarded a troop train to ----------, a seaport on the south coast of England where they embarked on a troop ship. After a very rough voyage across the stormy English Channel when half of the 1,300 men on board were seasick, they landed at ------------, a French seaport.

Dr. Hurst had a few leisurely days for sightseeing and a swim in the ocean at a nearby beach. During that time, the fresh troops were being taught how to wear the protective “tin hat” (Dr. Hurst’s quotes), the helmet worn by British soldiers, and how to wear the gas mask so crucial against German poison gas attacks.

Dr. Hurst, although a captain in the American Expeditionary Force, was assigned to a British regiment and would serve with the British until the summer of 1918 when he was reassigned to an American unit. This came about because, immediately after the Americans declared war, the British sent over the Balfour Mission seeking aid, including at least 1,000 doctors.

In a mutual agreement, Dr. Hurst was one of the American doctors and other medical personnel who would be aiding the British in dealing with mass casualties by filling out their depleted medical corps while at the same time learning from British experience in treating the wounded.

His lengthy letter continued that, after being assigned to a unit, they were loaded on a troop train moving only at night, everything darkened; otherwise German planes would have bombed them. Met by automobile, he was driven to headquarters of the 4th Cavalry Division of the Third Army where he was met by “fine British officers” who were “gentlemen,” fed a big breakfast and enjoyed an after-breakfast smoke.

At first, Dr. Hurst was assigned as the medical officer of the Division Advanced Supply Column, then, after several weeks, he was transferred to a British Field Hospital in charge of six wards and given his own operating room. His promotion to captain had come at this time.

Soon after the 1914 outbreak of the war, the Western front became a stalemate between the British and French against the Germans. Each side dug miles of deep trenches through Belgium and France with a no man’s land between them, the trenches protected by rolls of barbed wire.

For long periods of time, soldiers lived in these trenches often in terrible conditions. The strategy of generals on both sides was to initiate attacks with huge artillery bombardments of the enemy, followed by ordering the men out of the trenches to race across no man’s land through the barbed wire to attack the entrenched enemy in the face of machine gun fire, shrapnel, and after 1915 poison gas.

Casualty rates were catastrophic and by war’s end the British alone counted 487,994 dead. In his references to actual combat Captain Hurst (for the remainder of the war, this is how he signed his letters) refers to “carnage” and “roar of the battle,” additionally mentioning the constant strain from the danger of shrapnel, bombs, shot and shell, and poison gas.

Because his hospital was near an aerodrome, Captain Hurst often treated aviators who were sick or wounded, making friends with many of them. He didn’t hesitate when offered the opportunity to fly numerous times, once to the altitude of 16,500 feet, which he noted in his letter was about the distance from Guilderland Center to Altamont. He claimed the sight of the sky when flying above the clouds was “one of the finest experiences of my life.”

After time on the front line, he was given leave, and always the intrepid sightseer, he visited Paris and Rouen, observing that almost every woman whom he saw was dressed in mourning. He did admit that sleeping in a real bed and enjoying a real hot tub bath was deeply appreciated.

Captain Hurst’s letter ended with his address, giving the folks at home the opportunity to write the latest hometown news. His letter was actually the length of a magazine article, not what you would ordinarily think of as a letter.

New year in a wasteland

The next of his published letters was written soon after New Year’s Day in 1918 to the Guilderland Center Red Cross branch that he had helped to establish before he shipped out, leaving his wife in charge for the duration of the war. Appearing in the Jan. 11, 1918 edition of The Altamont Enterprise, the letter came from “somewhere in France.”

He thanked Enterprise readers for their Christmas greetings, giving assurances he had read and reread them. After characterizing the Germans as “ruthless” and “insidious,” he let the Red Cross members know how much the troops appreciated the items that had been sent over to them.

Describing the devastated countryside as being in complete ruin, there were few comforts for the troops in the trenches, “just the bare necessities of coarse food, scant shelter from the elements and only enough fire to keep from actually suffering in the wintery atmosphere and when in actual fighting not even that.”

While giving no specifics of the recent fighting on the front lines, he let his correspondents know by telling them if they had followed the activities of the cavalry from Nov. 19 to Dec. 6, they could get an idea of his surroundings.

Those who followed the war news would realize that it had been the Battle of Cambrai in France where the British Third Army bombarded the enemy’s Hindenburg Line firing 1,000 pieces of artillery, and then had ordered thousands of men and 476 tanks to attack the Germans along a five mile front. There had been huge losses on each side with little gain.

Captain Hurst’s dedication to the cause was clear when he wrote, “I am not complaining, for before I offered myself for the common cause, I knew full well all the privations and hardships and suffering that were before me.”

Brush with death

March 1918 saw a note in The Enterprise that Captain Hurst, while with the British army 10 miles back from the firing line, had had a close brush with death, when just after dismounting his horse, as he turned to speak to someone, a shot killed the horse.

Also recently he had been under fire on the front line when tending to a wounded soldier in a shell crater where he was trapped from early morning until after dark when he was able to crawl through the mud back to British lines.

The front page headline of May 3 read, “United States Medical Unit Was Captured,”  “Captain Frank H. Hurst of Guilderland Center Says Only Self and Major Escaped Somme Fight — Was Wounded in The Hand.”

Mrs. Hurst had notified the editor that Dr. Hurst and the major were the only two in their medical unit who weren’t killed or captured. He was wounded in the hand while evacuating wounded under shell fire on March 23 and by the 24th all had been captured or killed except himself and a major.

This attack was part of General Erich Ludendorff’s huge offensive to reach the English Channel by breaking out between the British and French armies. At first, the Germans successfully managed to push the British back 12 miles, hence the need to evacuate British wounded from the onslaught of the Germans. The German strategy was unsuccessful and their desperate attempt failed.

Soon after the offensive came to an end, Captain Hurst wrote to Mr. and Mrs. John Scrafford in Altamont on April 6, thanking them for cookies he had received the day before after having been without mail for 16 days dues to the German attack. Cookies were a real treat after all those days of eating nothing but hard tack and corned beef.

With an apology for writing the letter in pencil, Captain Hurst explained, “Please excuse my using pencil, for I cannot hold a pen, having been wounded in my right hand by a piece of bursting shrapnel, as we were evacuating our patients while under fire from the enemy as he was advancing on_____________, where our hospital was located. We were under fire the entire time, and as I was directing the loading of patients in next to the last car, a shrapnel burst just as my side, and one piece hit me.

“It is fortunate it was no worse. I held my wound with my left hand until I had finished loading, then jumped on the last car, and as we drove away, I applied First-Aid Dressing to myself and it was 10 o’clock at night, after we had all our patients under canvas on stretchers, that I found time to go to a CCS [Casualty Clearing Station] near our new camp to have my wound treated. But we had saved all our patients. Next morning we had to evacuate again as the enemy was still advancing, and my Colonel sent me to No.2 Stationary Hospital.”

After five days in the hospital, Captain Hurst requested he be sent back to his unit and was happy to report the Germans were being pushed back.

Joining other Americans

Captain Hurst was finally transferred to the American Expeditionary Forces in a different part of France in August 1918. His wife assured the Enterprise editor that her husband was pleased to be with American troops.

“Dr. F.H. Hurst Is In Thick of the Fighting” was the headline describing another letter shared by Mrs. Hurst. Writing in mid-September, he had been reassigned to the 89th Division’s 314th sanitary train, after having first been ordered to the 2nd Cavalry to “get their medical equipment in shape.”

Explaining that the 314th sanitary train corresponded to the field ambulance he had been attached to with the British, Captain Hurst went on to relate his first experience of battle with American troops.

Amazingly, he was writing on “Boche” paper left behind in the German field hospital his division had just captured, following “so closely on their heels that they left practically everything — even the water was hot on the stove in the sterilizer.”

The 89th had been part of the American army’s advance and capture of the St. Mihiel salient, a bulge in the German line held for four years of German occupation. This offensive from Sept. 12 to 16 was the first for the green American soldiers involved.

Captain Hurst’s wife was told not to worry about him if he didn’t communicate for a time, he was so busy dressing wounded that he barely had time or eat or snatch a little nap, noting, “I have been in the thick of it.” He had had no mail and hoped to send this letter out with an ambulance driver. He claimed to be well, and feeling fine, only very tired.

Captain Hurst sent a second letter a few days later, this time on a German officer’s stationery, unsure if she had received his earlier letter. He was terribly upset that, while he and others were fighting in the St. Mihiel offensive, thieves had entered the barracks they left behind and had ransacked it.

“I have lost my trunk and all my souvenirs and postcards, as well as my two good and almost new uniforms, everything I had except my old uniform I had on last spring when I was in the British retreat,” wrote Captain Hurst.

He also complained of losing his shaving kit and bedding roll. However, his most regretted loss was his diary. The two letters appeared in the Oct. 25, 1918 edition of The Enterprise.

Within a month, the 89th Division was relocated to the Verdun sector where they were heavily engaged in the Meuse-Argonne Forest Offensive, one of French Marshal Ferdinand Foch’s efforts to force the Germans to retreat from their defensive Hindenburg Line. Combining forces, the United States and France threw in 37 divisions but, while the Germans were pushed back, their line held and no breakthrough was achieved.

Major Hurst is gassed

In the midst of this battle, Major Hurst was gassed by phosgene, a compound of carbon monoxide and chlorine, and was carried on a stretcher to a base hospital where he lay for three weeks.

“Major Frank H. Hurst of Guilderland Center Tells How He Was Gassed” was the headline in the Dec. 13 Enterprise, updating readers about his promotion in rank and his latest news from the battlefield.

Unable to lift his head from the pillow for three weeks, and overcome with faintness if he tried, his heart had been weakened from the effects of the gas. According to his doctors, it would be a month before he would feel stronger.

Having been wounded twice previously, Major Hurst commented, “Nothing compared to this, the Huns nearly got me this time.”

His letter says that he had actually been gassed twice, the first time light enough to keep tending the wounded, but the second time weakness overcame him and hemorrhaging began from his lungs. Now that he was in a hospital bed away from the sound of guns, the quiet came as a relief after having been in constant warfare for over a month.

A second letter penned a few days later was also included in the paper. Now reporting much improvement, he was now able to sit up in a wheelchair, but was not yet allowed to walk.

As soon as his heart was stronger, he was going to be transferred to Cannes on the Mediterranean for further recuperation. As it was, the current hospital’s location was peaceful and beautifully located, one of 10 hospitals 40 miles from Dijon able to accommodate 20,000 patients.

A letter written Nov. 1 brought news that Major Hurst had walked the length of the ward, gaining strength so rapidly that, by the following day, he had walked around the pavilion outside. He expressed a wish that peace would come.

Armistice brings joy

The Armistice ending the fighting was to take effect at 11 a.m. — the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month: Nov. 11, 1918.

In Major Hurst’s next letter, written 11 days after the armistice had been signed and peace had come to the trenches, his expression of relief was obvious. “When I am well again,” he wrote, “I will not have to go back to those dreadful scenes.”

He followed this with a description of the rejoicing following news of the armistice in the nearby small village of Allavey, where there were parades and flags, singing and shouting, guns being fired off from the fort on the nearby mountain and from ships in the harbor while ecstatic Frenchmen shook hands and the women, weeping tears of joy, handed out flowers and kissed them, all in gratitude for American aid in winning the war.

The celebration went on far into the night. Now that he was in Cannes in southern France, Major Hurst felt the balmy climate was restoring his health. The time spent on the beach under the palm trees or sailing and fishing with other officers was just what was needed.

Early in January 1919, orders had come through for Major Hurst to report to the commanding general at Bordeaux who ordered him to take command of the 500-bed Camp Hospital No. 79, situated in a beautiful 600-year-old chateaux at St. Andre de Cuzal. He was feeling well, but still coughing at night, fearing it would be some time before embarkation home.

His next letter, written on Easter morning, mentioned his disappointment at not being sent home and discharged in spite of putting in for it, but he was hoping he’d be home by July or August.

He proudly related that, “General Noble, the Commanding General here at Bordeaux, told me I have established the finest hospital — large or small — that he’d seen in France, and he wants me to keep charge of it. We take care of the boys who are taken sick while here in the area awaiting embarkation; we get them in shape and well, to send them home to their people healthy.”

Finally released from active duty, Major Hurst sailed on the liner Saxonia, leaving Brest for the United States and finally reaching American shores in July. After getting his final discharge, he resumed his medical practice in the Guilderland Center area immediately.

However, his military career wasn’t over quite yet. In early January 1920, it was announced that he had been promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in recognition of his faithful and distinguished work for medical services while in the war zone. He then served in the Army Medical Corps Reserve and during the next few years periodically reported for duty. He finally retired from the reserves in 1925.