Charlotte Grange – Honoring Charlotte’s agricultural roots and helping to build a sustainable future for all.

Charlotte Grange – Honoring Charlotte’s agricultural roots and helping to build a sustainable future for all.

Charlotte Grange: Our Values and Vision – Welcome to our new monthly column.  We hope you will enjoy learning more about the Charlotte Grange and how it is building on its proud 100+ year history in town and revitalizing its role in our community. 

Caroline Ardelia Yale

Caroline Ardelia Yale

No person should be restricted or defined by disabilities. Society seems to have few expectations of people with disabilities such as deafness, perhaps ascribing a lack of ability to overcome them. Caroline Yale began life in Charlotte on September 29, 1848, the youngest of five children of Deacon William Lyman Yale and Ardelia Strong.

Old and In the Way

Old and In the Way

I’ve been driving by the old dairy barn on Mount Philo Road for 22 years—you know the one, a couple of miles north of Charlotte Central School. When I lived east of Route 7, I sometimes drove by it in upwards of six times a day. I was always fascinated by it—such a beautiful curiosity, imposing, impressive, a relic of Charlotte’s strong agricultural past. 

Locals reflect on The Charlotte News’ history

Locals reflect on The Charlotte News’ history

Last July, at the beginning of the yearlong countdown to this 60th anniversary of The Charlotte News, I wrote about how the paper was started because of my horse, Sox. It was time to sell her, but we needed to find a buyer nearby because she balked at being loaded in a trailer. Back in 1958, advertising choices were limited to the regional newspaper or to notes pinned to bulletin boards at the local stores. We needed a local newspaper.

Riding the bumper, delivering the papers

Riding the bumper, delivering the papers

I graduated from Binghamton North High School in January 1960 and needed a job to carry me over to the fall when I would go off to college. My next-door neighbor, Chuck Sladky, ran the mailroom at the local evening paper, The Binghamton Press, and offered me a job distributing bundled papers to the news boys in town (and they were all boys back then), who would, in turn, break open the bundles, fold up the papers, put them in their shoulder bags and either walk or bike their routes, flinging papers onto front walks, porches and stoops in the late afternoon. 

In remembrance of a “National Veterans Day” salute

In remembrance of a “National Veterans Day” salute

Armistice Day became a national holiday in 1926. The idealistic notion of the end of war was itself shattered by subsequent conflicts. In 1947, WWII veterans sought to honor those who fought in the second Great War by calling for a “National Veterans Day” salute with parades and festivities to be held on Nov. 11. In 1954, Congress passed and President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed legislation to rename Nov. 11 as “Veterans Day” to honor all those who have served in the military.

Rokeby Museum donates items to Charlotte Historical Society

Rokeby Museum donates items to Charlotte Historical Society

Jane Williamson of Rokeby Museum contacted our historical society about items she had received pertaining to the Dean family of East Charlotte that she felt were more appropriate to our museum. Included was a remarkable portrait album in a heavy leather binding, with gilded edges and a bronze hasp and lock.

17th Annual East Charlotte Tractor Parade set to roll

17th Annual East Charlotte Tractor Parade set to roll

The 17th Annual East Charlotte Tractor Parade will be held at Spear Street and Jackson Hill Road in East Charlotte on Oct. 8. Food vendors, a petting zoo and more will be set up by 11 a.m. and the parade will begin at 1 p.m. Last year, The East Charlotte Tractor Parade boasted a whopping total of 129 tractors.

Celebrating past, present and future art at the Clemmons Family Farm

Celebrating past, present and future art at the Clemmons Family Farm

Many of you may remember the intriguing signs for Authentica African Art Imports located along Route 7, Ferry Road, and in front of the shop owned by Jack and Lydia Clemmons on Greenbush Road. Located in what was once an 18th century blacksmith shop, Authentica included an art gallery and an enthralling assortment of exotic treasures collected by the couple during their work and travels in Africa between the 1980s and early 2000s.

Rendering the Clemmons Family Farm vision

Rendering the Clemmons Family Farm vision

A year ago at a breakfast Alice Outwater hosted at Shelburne Farms, Lydia Clemmons (the younger) alerted me to her family’s plans to transform their farm into an African American Heritage and Multicultural Center here in Charlotte. I was impressed with their undertaking and drawn in by Lydia’s enthusiastic rendering of the Clemmons Family Farm vision. But it was meeting Jackson and Lydia (the elder) Clemmons and listening to their inspiring and often poignant stories about their lives in Charlotte as well as their family history back to the time of slavery that fully engaged my heart.

Steamboats on Lake Champlain, a brief history

Steamboats on Lake Champlain, a brief history

When Thompson’s Point became a magnet for the summer cottages of the leading businessmen of the area, thanks in no small part to a major dock facility, they would commute to work and return to their camps aboard the Chateaugay and then the Ticonderoga, which were among the first steel-hulled steamboats on the lake, or in other small steamers and naphtha-powered steam launches that brought campers back and forth to Vergennes, Burlington or Westport, N.Y. By 1895, one of the occupants was Justice D. J. Brewer of the U.S. Supreme Court. President Theodore Roosevelt visited Thompson’s Point in 1902 as a guest aboard Dr. William Seward Webb’s steam yacht, the Elfrida.