Sixty-two years ago, Amsterdam had a celebration
By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History, Daily Gazette, 06-25-06
Amsterdam observed its 150th birthday with a ten-division parade and other celebrations in July 1954. The sesquicentennial was a joyous and raucous event that took place at the beginning of the end of the city’s years as a carpet-manufacturing center.
One float in the parade was Bigelow-Sanford’s depiction of a flying carpet. Within a year, Bigelow-Sanford, one of Amsterdam’s two major carpet makers, announced it was moving out of town.
Another float, sponsored by Vail Mills Drive-in Theater, featured young women in bikinis and was a crowd favorite. The Recorder reported, “It was the parade of parades that the youngsters will be telling their descendants about for years to come.” The grand marshal was Joseph A. Janeski.
There were two sesquicentennial queens: Dorothy Wozniak was Miss Amsterdam Sesquicentennial and Nancy O’Meara was Miss Mohawk Valley.
The night the queens were crowned at Mohawk Mills Park, today’s Shuttleworth Park, the amplified voice of Amsterdam native and movie star Kirk Douglas was heard calling by telephone from Hollywood to congratulate them.
Rogers Producing Company and director Harry Miller staged a 700-person dramatic historical spectacle called “Horizons” to tell “the Amsterdam story.” “Horizons,” followed by fireworks, ran for a week at Mohawk Mills Park.
Starting with the Mohawk Nation, the pageant showed scenes through Amsterdam history. The finale predicted that America was “certain to make the Atomic Age the age of Utopia.”
Burgomaster Arnold Jan D’Ailly of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, who had visited the Mohawk Valley the previous year, sent a congratulatory cablegram to local Mayor Burtiss Deal.
A big part of the celebration was creation of over sixty neighborhood chapters of the Brothers of the Brush, who did not shave, and Sisters of the Swish, who were long dresses. Amsterdam’s taverns were among the sponsors of these clubs that held a kangaroo court, dances and otherwise engaged in revelry.
According to historian Tony Pacelli, the kangaroo court was at the corner of East Main Street and Vrooman Avenue.
“If any member broke a rule, such as shaving or a change in costume they went before a judge and jury and were fined,” Pacelli wrote. “I recall a friend of mine was to buy a keg of ale, another bought candy for the youngsters.”
Buckman’s Dairy donated a milk wagon to the Lying Brothers of the Brush chapter at Louie Grum’s Grill on Park Hill. The horse-drawn wagon was outfitted with broom handles for bars. Named “The Marauder,” the wagon toured the city looking for Brothers or Sisters who broke the rules.
Harriet DePaulo was chairwoman of the Sisters and the chairman of the Brothers was Clement Ciulik.
The names of the chapters illustrate the high spirits of the ten-week celebration. Sisters of the Swish clubs included the Swishers of Veddersburg, Jezebelles, Dizzy Dames, the Flora Dorettes of Florida and the Gabby Ups.
Brothers of the Brush chapters included the Crow Hill Croppers, Bigler’s Barber Dodgers, the Bushwackers, the Frontiersmen and the Itchy Koos.
The anniversary commemorated by the 1954 celebration assumed that a meeting changing the name of the settlement at the confluence of the North Chuctanunda Creek and Mohawk River from Veddersburg to Amsterdam took place in 1804. About 1783 Revolutionary War veteran Albert Vedder had built a gristmill there. The settlement he founded was first called Vedder’s Mills then Veddersburg.
Historian Hugh Donlon said the name change took place sometime between 1804 and 1809. Adding more confusion, the city celebrated its 100th birthday in 1910.
The celebrations that have followed the sesquicentennial have stuck to its arithmetic. Amsterdam observed its 175th anniversary in 1979 and its bicentennial was in 2004.
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