Question: The side of this wagon reads “Haven Grove Farm Jersey Milk.” “J. Wm. Hughes” is painted on the door. The photo is labeled “Floyd Voorhees, June 8, 1901.” Do you know anything about this picture?
Last week’s answer: The church pictured last week was the original structure of the Methodist Church. It was erected on land purchased from the Baldwin estate and dedicated in December of 1844. It stood on the west side of Oswego Street about opposite the present Presbyterian Church. It was used as a house of worship for 25 years.
The gentleman in the photo should have been recognized by many. It is a depiction of Mark Twain, the noted author and lecturer. Why are they pictured together? Mark Twain did several lecture tours during his lifetime and during one of them, he made a stop in Baldwinsville and lectured at that church.
Unfortunately, our local newspapers did not exist for that time, but in doing research on Mark Twain on the web, it was learned that he visited Baldwinsville on Jan. 17, 1870, during his Second Eastern Tour.
One of the other nearby cities that he visited was Oswego. It is fortunate that there is a write-up of that lecture still available. Hearing him talk must have been memorable. That article says that Mark Twain introduced himself.
“Ladies and Gentlemen — The next lecture of the course will be delivered this evening by Samuel L. Clemens, otherwise Mark Twain, a gentleman whose high character and unimpeachable integrity are only equaled by his comeliness of person and grace of manner. And I am the man. You will excuse me for introducing myself, for I have just excused the chairman from introducing me. I know it’s not the ordinary way, but the fact is I never yet have found a chairman of a lecture committee who was equal to the task of introducing me as I ought to be introduced.”
It further states: “This decidedly original introduction was greeted with shouts of laughter and is a fair specimen of the vein in which the lecture on ‘Our Fellow Savages of the Sandwich Islands’ was delivered. It was a good sample of his style of humor, and threw the audience into frequent convulsions of laughter. Twain is a fair looking model of humanity, and his manner is sufficient to provoke a smile. … He is a humorist in the radical sense of the work, and his wit crystallizes around an atom of fun and makes it sparkle like a diamond.”
Several past History Mysteries have also dealt with notable figures that have visited Baldwinsville: Mickey Rooney, Theodore Roosevelt Jr. and Marlin Perkins. Watch for others in the future.
Ben Heitman answered correctly on our website.
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 before the deadline, 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.
