Christmas Past at 901 Union Street...

901 Union Street (Now renumbered to 847 Union Street), Schenectady, NY --
The house where I grew up

The imposing house, about which I have written before, stands on the northeast corner of the intersection of Union Street (County Road 146) and Gillespie Street in Schenectady, New York.  It was a large enough home to contain both our family (3 children, 2 parents, and my maternal grandmother) as well as my father's dental offices and, waiting room, and laboratory.  My brother and I shared a bedroom, my sister Ann had her own room on the third floor, my parents had a bedroom, and my grandmother had a bedroom.  And there were enough bathrooms to handle the needs of 6 people.

Whenever Christmas rolls around, and especially when I see the movie "A Christmas Story," I recall the many rituals and traditions that made Christmas so special in that home that I dwelled in for my first 18 years.  I'd like to share some of those recollections.

Decorating the house was a big deal.  We lived in a neighborhood dominated by doctors and dentists.  It was important to "keep up with the Jones's."  So the decorating started a little before Thanksgiving.  We wrapped the front porch columns with evergreen garlands, framed windows with lights, and had a small lighted tree on the porch to greet the patients unfortunate enough to have scheduled dental work around the holidays.

The "big" tree always occupied the same location -- in the center of the dining room bay window.  These 3 windows had window seats covered with dark crimson corduroy tufted cushions.  Under the seats, in cubbies protected with a grille of ornate spindles resided three cast iron radiators that kept those seats toasty warm.  The tree had to be kept far enough away from those heaters to prevent it from drying out too quickly.  Thus, we could walk (or crawl) around the back side of the tree to keep track of any new gift boxes that might appear in the weeks leading up to Christmas.

The circle encloses the bay widow where our tree always stood.

There was always the ritual of watching our father arrive with the tree strapped to the top of our 1940 Chevrolet, untying it and cutting the base of the trunk just so, and mounting it in its stand ever so carefully to ensure it would not lean one way or another.  Then we'd all help get it through the kitchen door and take it through the butler's pantry to the dining room, shedding needles all the way.  We kids would all help put water in the base to keep the tree alive.  And my father always dissolved aspirin in the water because he had read somewhere that it extended the life of the tree.

A 1940 Chevrolet, similar to
my father's "tree hauling  car

After Mom vacuumed up the debris, we'd all go to the attic to retrieve the several boxes of ornaments to start unwrapping them and reminiscing about their origins or arguing about who got to hang the "best" ones.  Dad would have strung the lights while we were retrieving the ornaments.  Last, of course, was the hanging of tissue-thin strips of lead tinsel (Yes, tinsel was lead before it was aluminum before it was plastic.).  We were admonished to drape the individual strands, never to toss them. 

After the tree doily was placed around the base came my favorite activity.  We set up my brother's Lionel electric train in an oval around the base of the tree.  He had received his train on his first birthday in September 1937.  My dad wanted to make sure he was raised understanding the importance of trains (notwithstanding the fact that my father had never owned an electric train when he was a child).  After all, Schenectady was the home of the main plant of the American Locomotive Company, ALCO.  By the time I was growing up, they had produced over 50,000 steam locomotives!

My brother's Lionel set was pulled by
their 1937 Torpedo locomotive

Church played a huge role in our collective lives.  This was a family of Irish Catholics (My mother's maiden name was McLaughlin.).  And we lived within a city block of St. John the Evangelist Church, a daunting edifice that dominated the city's skyline with its 220-ft. central spire, topped with a 14-foot cross.  So it's only natural that the pace of church-related activities picked up around the celebration of Christ's birth.

All three children in the Mead family attended St. John's parochial school.  We were taught by Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, a conservative French-Canadian order of nuns.  If you attended St. John's and were a boy, you were expected to be trained as an altar boy and to be a part of the boy's choir.  My brother Bill and I did both.  So at Christmas, our sister Ann would be part of a Christmas pageant while Bill and I were part of an endless series of choir commitments and seasonal Masses ranging from 6:00 AM daily Mass to the Solemn High Midnight Mass that was typically more than 2 hours long.  My mother and grandmother were constantly laundering and ironing our cassocks and surplices that had to be perfect for every service.

It took an army of altar boys for a solemn high Mass in the 1950s

Because we didn't get to bed before about 2:30 on Christmas morning, the opening of presents usually was around 10:00 AM once Bill and I were old enough to be involved in church obligations.  Before that time, we started hounding our parents at the crack of dawn to get up and go downstairs to see what Santa had brought.

The Irish Mail pedal toy I received
shortly after the war

My memory of very special gifts lasts 'til today.  My sister and I each received a brand new 24" Columbia bicycle in 1945 - mine was red, hers was blue.  Electric trains weren't available during World War II, but I received my own Lionel train set in 1946.  I got my own baseball glove in around 1947.  I also received a riding machine called an "Irish Mail" at about the same time.  New shoes (always from Patton & Hall shoes, where my godfather worked) seemed to be a favorite gift.  I almost always wanted something from the A.C. Gilbert catalog.  At various times, I received an Erector set (Size 8-1/2, the ferris wheel set), a chemistry set, and a microscope set.  

The A.C. Gilbert Electric Eye laboratory

In 1949, I received an electric eye set that I played with endlessly.  It was described in the Gilbert catalog that year, "Uncanny! Amazing! Thrilling!  Can you think of anything more uncanny than making a bell ring by striking a match — turning a radio off or on by the flick of a flashlight — making the rising sun operate an alarm? These are only a few of the amazing things you can do with the mysterious Gilbert Electric Eye. By simply waving your hand you can stop and start American Flyer Trains or Erector action models — turn electric lights on and off. Set contains battery box, electric light socket with bulb, RCA Photo-electric tube, RCA Amplifier tube, tube shade, and power unit with variable potentiometer. Operates on 110 volt A.C. only. Packed in blue metal cabinet with illustrated manual of stunts. $13.75. Denver and west, $14.45."  Remember when things cost more in "Denver or West"?

The Lionel diesel locomotives that I
received in 1950 by saving up $21.50

In 1950, Lionel introduced the diesel locomotive Model 2344P, a New York Central twin unit with their latest technology, Magnetraction.  I simply had to get one for Christmas but my parents said that $42.95 for a toy was absolutely out of the question.  My grandmother came to my rescue.  She told me (without my parents' knowledge, I later found out) that if I would save half the cost, she'd pay the other half. I worked for several weeks, washing and waxing cars and washing windows for every neighbor I knew, and finally saved up the $21.50 to give Nana.  I got the locomotive for Christmas.  My parents were furious with my grandmother, but they didn't make me return the locomotive.

A similar thing happened in 1951, when A.C. Gilbert had introduced their Atomic Energy Lab.  I wrote a previous blog entry about my Grandmother's largesse that Christmas.  It had to have been the biggest surprise I ever had on a Christmas morning.

I feel very blessed to have grown up when and where I did.  There was almost always snow at Christmas time.  I always felt secure in a stable (if somewhat dysfunctional) family.  We had lots of friends and relatives to engage in holiday activities.  It was, in retrospect, a pretty magic time.

A Genealogical Breakthrough...

I have indicated in this blog previously that I am fascinated by my family history and occasionally perform research to push the envelope of knowledge further into the past.  My first interest in tracing my ancestry came from my Aunt Ethel, my father's sister.  She had to trace the family's lineage to a Revolutionary War soldier in order to be accepted into the Daughters of the American Revolution.  After she had succeeded in this effort with the help of many librarians and archivists (There was no Internet in the 1940's.), she provided my family with copies of her research.  I became the keeper of the archives by default -- No one else in the family was particularly interested in these useless facts.

The revolutionary soldier that Aunt Ethel had traced as a direct ancestor was David Mead, who lived from 1762 until 1836.  Her notes described him as, "David  Mead, born 1762, died March 22, 1836. A soldier of the revolution: Fourth Regiment of the New York troops, under Colonel James Holmes; later served in the Second Regiment, Dutchess county militia, under Colonel Abraham Brinkerhoff, and in the Fourth Westchester militia, under Colonel Thaddeus Crane. Later lived in Coeymans, Albany County, New York. He married, abt. 1787, Sarah Williams."

Her notes indicated that David had been born in Stanwich, Fairfield County, Connecticut.  The town of Stanwich was eventually absorbed into what we now call Greenwich, CT.  My attempts to find information on David's birth and baptism failed when I was informed many years ago that any records that might still exist are in Connecticut state records that I could only access by going to Hartford.  I simply moved on to other parts of my genealogy.  As a result, this branch of my family tree lay dormant for many years.

Last week, I decided to revisit my Revolutionary War hero.  Aunt Ethel had theorized that we were descendants of a Mead (Perhaps Oliver?) who had arrived from England in 1698.  I always remembered that date because it coincided with the year that the Iroquois massacred the occupants of my home town, Schenectady, when it was little more than a frontier outpost in the Mohawk Valley.

I entered "David Mead Sarah Williams, Coeymans" in Google and searched.  One thing that popped up was the text of a speech that had been delivered in 1903 before the Tarrytown [New York] Historical Society by a Mr. Marcus D. Raymond, entitled "David Williams and the Capture of Andre."  It sounded kind of interesting, but seemed to be unrelated to my search until I read this, "Then David Williams had a sister, Sarah, who married David Mead..."  Could this possibly be my David Mead?  I have learned that when doing genealogical research, it's dangerous to make any assumptions, so I filed this little anecdotal evidence away.

Another statement in this speech inclined me away from believing that this person was my ancestor.  The speaker described that David Williams had a son, Moses, who was baptized in 1769, for whom Sarah Williams was a sponsor.  The Sarah Williams who is my great-great-great grandmother would only have been 9 years old at the time.  It seemed somewhat strange to me that a 9-year-old child would be a baptismal sponsor.  Again, I simply filed this information away.

My Google search yielded another treasure, and this one is significant.  In the New York Genealogical and Biographical Records, Volumes 31-32, is contained the records of the Church of Christ in Salem, Westchester County, New York.  On December 21, 1786, is recorded the marriage of David Mead to Sarah Williams.  My David Mead would have been 24 years old and Sarah 26 years old.  They were both probably living in Westchester County.  I felt that this marriage record probably involved my two relatives of interest.

Then my search hit upon a mother lode of relevant information -- one of those "breakthrough" moments that genealogists wait for.  It is part of the Schenectady Digital History Archive.  The foreword to the document reads as follows, "This information is from Vol. II, pp. 617-618 of Hudson-Mohawk Genealogical and Family Memoirs, edited by Cuyler Reynolds (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1911). It is in the Reference collection of the Schenectady County Public Library at R 929.1 R45. Some of the formatting of the original, especially in lists of descendants, may have been altered slightly for ease of reading."  

The opening paragraphs certainly elicited my interest:
"The earliest traces of the Mead family are to be found in a history of "The Norman people and their existing descendants in the British Dominions and the United States of America," published in London, England, 1874. From that volume, it appears that the name Mead is the English form of the Norman "de Poato," which, translated into the English, is Mead, Meade, Mede and Meads. In 1635 there arrived in Massachusetts many ships from England, and among those arrivals is found the name of "Goodman" Mead (called Gabriel Mead). He is the ancestor of the Massachusetts branch. The most recent discoveries strongly indicate that he was accompanied by his brother, William Mead, ancestor of the Greenwich, Connecticut, Meads, from whom the family in Troy descend.

The Elizabeth

William and "Goodman" Mead sailed from Lydd county, Kent, England, in the ship "Elizabeth" in April, 1635. The Mead coat-of-arms, to which it is believed they were entitled, is thus described: Sable, a chevron between three pelicans, or vuln, gules crest; an eagle displayed; motto, "Semper peratus" — always ready. Goodman Mead remained in Massachusetts. William, however, followed the tide of emigration, which at that time was toward the Connecticut valley. The first English settlement was made at Windsor in 1633, and another settlement was made about the same time at Wethersfield, where William Mead settled first, and in 1641 he removed to Stamford with others from Wethersfield. December 7, 1641, "William Mayd (Mead) received from the town of Stamford a homelot and five acres of land." This William is the ancestor of the Fairfield county, Connecticut, family, although family tradition declares that John Mead was also one of those of eastern New York, western Vermont and Meadville, Pennsylvania. He was born about 1600. He married in 1625, and died in Stamford, Connecticut, about 1663. There is no record of his wife, but there is of his three children."

The format of the document beyond this point is a more traditional genealogical layout of generations following one another.  I began scanning down, looking for a David Mead who might coincide with my ancestor.  Then I saw this, "(VI) David (2), son of David (1) and Isabella (Knapp) Mead, was born in 1762, died March 22, 1836. He was a soldier of the revolution, enlisting in the Fourth Regiment of the New York troops, under Colonel James Holmes; also served in the Second Regiment, Dutchess county militia, Colonel Abraham Brinkerhoff, and in the Fourth Westchester militia, Colonel Thaddeus Crane. After the war he settled in the town of Coeymans, Albany county, New York. He married, in 1787, Sarah Williams, born 1760, died June 2, 1849. She was a sister of David Williams, one of the captors of Major Andre, the British spy, so closely connected with Benedict Arnold and his treasure. Five children."  (Emphasis mine)

In addition to the thrill of having extended my family tree back by several generations and knowing when and how my first Mead ancestors arrived -- in 1635, not 1698 as I had believed, I also wondered about that last sentence.  Who was this Major Andre, the British spy?  This had the makings of family lore.

It turns out that it was a HUGE deal.  Major Andre was in cahoots with Benedict Arnold to turn over the fortress at West Point to the British.  This likely would have enabled the British to divide the colonies, isolating New England from the rest of the colonies and would have ultimately led to the defeat of the Continental Army under George Washington.  Andre was caught by three members of the Continental Army while smuggling secret documents from Benedict Arnold to the British leadership on Long Island.  What followed is described in Wikipedia: "André rode on in safety until 9 a.m. on 23 September, when he came near Tarrytown, New York, where armed militiamen John Paulding, Isaac Van Wart, and David Williams stopped him.

A lithograph of the capture of Major John Andre

André thought that they were Tories because one was wearing a Hessian soldier's overcoat. "Gentlemen," he said, "I hope you belong to our party." "What party?" asked one of the men. "The lower party," replied André, meaning the British. "We do," was the answer. André then told them that he was a British officer who must not be detained, when, to his surprise, they said that they were Americans, and that he was their prisoner. He then told them that he was an American officer and showed them his passport, but the suspicions of his captors were now aroused. They searched him and found Arnold's papers in his stocking. Only Paulding could read and Arnold was not initially suspected. André offered them his horse and watch, if they would let him go, but they did not accept the bribe. André testified at his trial that the men searched his boots for the purpose of robbing him. Paulding realized that he was a spy and took him to Continental Army headquarters in Sands Hill."

Andre was later tried by a military court and found guilty of being behind American lines "under a feigned name and in a disguised habit" and ordered that "Major André, Adjutant-General to the British Army, ought to be considered as a Spy from the enemy, and that agreeable to the law and usage of nations, it is their opinion, he ought to suffer death."  He was hanged as a spy at Tappan, New York on 2 October 1780.

Major Andre's hanging

The three captors became instant national heroes.  A special medallion, known as the Fidelity Medallion, was authorized by the Continental Congress and awarded to each of them.  This is the first recognized military medal in the history of the United States.  It was never awarded again.  Congress also awarded each of them a lifetime pension of $200 per month.  This equates to about $6,500/mo. in current value.  David Williams is buried in the Old Stone Fort Cemetery in Schoharie, NY.  The inscription on his obelisk reads: "He with his compatriots John Paulding and Isaac VanWart on the 22nd of September 1780, arrested Major John Andre and found on his person treasonable papers in the handwriting of Gen. Benedict Arnold, who sought by treachery to surrender the military post of West Point into the hands of the enemy. In resisting the great bribes of their prisoner for his liberty, they showed their incorruptible patriotism; the American army was saved and our beloved Country became free." So with a single search and its results, I extended a branch of my family tree by 5 generations, learned the time and means by which my earliest Mead ancestors arrived on these shores, and discovered that I have a great-great-grand uncle who was a genuine national hero.  What a terrific weekend I had documenting these findings in my genealogical records.