Question: What the members of this chorus line lacked in coordination they more than made up for with enthusiasm. Dubbed “The Rockettes,” this group was part of an original three-act musical comedy that was presented on the stage of the Baldwinsville Academy. There were two performances — one on a Monday afternoon for a limited audience and the second on the following Thursday evening as a fundraiser for the local cancer drive. Admission to the second performance was 60 cents. Do you recall this production or recognize any of the performers?
Last week’s answer: George Washington Harris was a scientist employed by the United States Department of Agriculture. His specialty was tobacco production. Harris was sent to Baldwinsville in July 1906 in response to a request from the New York State Tobacco Growers Association (NYSTGA). The NYSTGA had held their annual meeting here in recognition of the area’s dominance in state tobacco production and wanted to improve it even further. Harris’ mission was to investigate local tobacco agriculture and develop strategy to increase both quality and yield of the local crop.
Harris soon learned that Lysander and Van Buren, the heart of the state’s tobacco production, had an extreme diversity of growing conditions within the towns themselves. A one-size-fits-all program was not going to be effective. This discovery led Harris to devise several individualized programs to be used throughout the Baldwinsville area. Harris was here for almost 25 years as he worked to fine tune the coming year’s program to adjust for the fickleness of Mother Nature.
A congenial fellow with a bright intellect, oratorical talent, fine baritone voice and a notable naturalist recognized as an authority on bird life and flora, Harris soon became involved in community life. He sang with the Presbyterian choir, the Masonic Minstrels and the Masonic Male Chorus. He organized Memorial Day entertainments and appeared in many local theater productions.
Harris is credited with organizing Baldwinsville’s first Boy Scout troop in 1912, only two years after the first troop in the United States was formed. Harris’ troop had a cabin on The Hundred Acres, the fireplace of which was still standing in 1935. (The Hundred Acres was a tract of 100 acres owned by Gus Bigelow north of the village.) Although the troop followed the principles of boy scouting, it was never officially chartered and disbanded after two years. But local interest had been sparked and Alfred Oppleton picked up the torch. Today Baldwinsville Boy Scouts can claim a formal history of more than 100 years.
Harris was also a talented photographer in the age of tripods, large cameras and yards of dark fabric that was put over the photographer’s head and camera to allow him to use the viewfinder. The camera documented his agricultural work but was also an art tool. Harris took thousands of photos, which he developed and printed himself while experimenting with various photo media and papers. The photo seen here is a self-portrait taken c.1915.
As the child of a tobacco farmer, the late Bill Crego was the subject of many of Harris’ photos. Bill recalled seeing Harris travel from farm to farm on his bicycle with his camera strapped to its frame and whistling all the while. During his tenure in Baldwinsville, Harris lived at the Seneca House Hotel at the Four Corners. Upon his retirement in 1930, he left CNY and went to live with one of his children. Harris passed away in 1943 at the age of 85. He is buried in Elm Grove Cemetery, Mystic, Connecticut.
Bill Crego’s daughter, Mary, gave us our first correct answer this week. In an email, she said: “George Washington Harris was a photographer who recorded farming especially tobacco. Many of his photographs were taken on my father’s farm when he was a young boy. I have a photograph he took of the bridge in Jack’s Reef when it was a wooden covered bridge. The Shacksboro Museum has a large collection of pictures that were donated by my father, William Crego.”
Contact Editor Sarah Hall at [email protected] or leave a message at 434-8889 ext. 310 with your guess by 5 p.m. Friday (please leave the information in the message; we are not generally able to return calls regarding History Mystery responses). If you are the first person to correctly identify an element in the photo, your name and guess will appear in next week’s Messenger, along with another History Mystery feature. History Mystery is a joint project of the Museum at the Shacksboro Schoolhouse and the Baldwinsville Public Library.
