Lecture Series 2019-2020 Throwback - Part 1

 As everyone practices social distancing and staying at home, museums are also closed - or remain in "off-season" until things go back to normal. Some places are taking advantage of all the virtual and remote opporunties to enjoy their museums - Waterford Historical Museum and Cultural Center has an audio tour available on the UniGuide Audio Tour app available for FREE through Google Play. Depending on your location, you may be out of range - but you can always participate in the cell phone tour offered by the Mohawk Towpath Scenic Byway (your standard rates will apply for this one - check  out #18!). Both are options that you can take advantage of without having to step foot inside the museum. Also check out our website for pages on local history, exhibits like the Making Waterford Our Home immigrant heritage project,and explore our online database of artifacts! Our social media pages are also still active with posts on Facebook @waterfordhmcc and Instagram @waterford_museum. 

With programs on the backburner for the foreseeable future, here's a throwback to the 2019-2020 Annual Winter Lecture Series at the Van Schaick Island Country Club - which seems appropriate considering we had some wintry weather and icy roads this week.

Town Historian, Russ VanDervoort, shared the story of the brazen 1872 robbery of the Saratoga County Bank. Waterford’s prominence as a bustling canal terminal, riding off the business that came from sloop trade, prompted the Saratoga County Bank to open its first location in Waterford. As Russ also noted, there were several other businesses too, such as the 42 saloons, which moved the location of the bank around until it settled on the building still standing at the north corner of Second and Broad Street. Even before this robbery, the bank survived the financial Panic of 1837, burning in the 1841 Great Waterford Fire and hit by counterfeit $10 bills in 1868. 

An example from The Marysville Tribune, November 1872.

The other figures listed on this page are the varying totals
given in articles from other newspapers - the most
accepted figure is that of $625,000

But the theft of $625,000 in cash, bonds, and jewelry (or thereabouts since reports kept shifting the exact figure), made national news. The resulting trial was also newsworthy, as the suspects were noteworthy as well. The bank robber gang consisted of several big names in burglary as a profession, most of which had enough aliases that it makes keeping their stories straight particularly difficult (as they intended). The case was significant enough thanks to the high monetary figure to warrant the Saratoga County District Attorney, Isaac Ormsby, to be involved - who also happened to be a Waterford native. 

The case was full of intrigue as well, including a séance to discover the location of some of the stolen goods and scrutiny over the involvement of  bribery of Hudson police officers, Dyers and Best, to let the 2 gang members arrested "escape". Dyers eventually admitted on the stand that he had been paid to be a witness was currently under indictment for robbing a safe....and Best outrighted stated that he'd been given $60 and a revolver to let them escape, he'd later gone to NYC to receive some more, and that "Any  previous testimony that I have offered in Waterford and Ballston Spa has been false and I knew it was false when I gave it."

The Ballston Spa courthouse was packed with crowds, as it was the event and talk of the area - which the opening prosecutors took full advantage of since their opening statements took a full hour. The suspect, known as Peter Curly, was the focus of this trial. He was identified by Dyer and Best, with speculation by the servant girl of the Hovenburg family that lived in above the Waterford bank that he was there based on noticing that one of the masked men had large ears that Curly quite obviously also had. But, he made the news for another, more amusing reason: the local Waterford and Ballston Spa area ladies who clung to every detail of the suspects’ trial. It wasn’t for the brilliance of their plan, but for the fact that someone so good looking couldn’t possibly be responsible (or jailed away from their eyes even if he did the crime). 

Ultimately though, the suspects were acquitted, citing that the various other witnesses couldn't be totally certain that they recognized Curly. A celebratory evening was held at the Sans Souci Hotel in Ballston to thank the jury and their defenders, with the money that may – or may not – have been the product of the heist. A few bags of money were found later in NYC that were traced to this robbery and in other areas as time went on, but these suspects were never jailed- at least for this crime. The building also had other roles, such as serving as a funeral parlor, before becoming a private residence. 

Keep on the lookout for parts 2, 3, and 4 to cover this series!