Adirondack Fiddlers Honor Memory of Catskills Fiddler Hilt Kelly and Adirondack Fiddler Loren Eddy

Linda Kelly Armour calls "Wabash Cannonball" based on her memories of accompanying her parents, Hilt & Stella Kelly, to innumerable square dances as she was growing up.

On April 10 my son and I ventured north to Schuylerville, east of Saratoga Springs, for a memorial program dedicated to Hilt Kelly and to another fiddler who had died.  Members of Hilt's family were present - son Lynn and daughter Linda, and Linda's husband Jim.  Listen tonight, April 19, on WIOX 91.3 FM or wioxradio.org at 7 p.m. to hear to recordings that go with these photos. Wonderful round and square dancing began and ended the program which included solemn tributes to both fiddlers as well as music from the Adirondack Fiddlers.  There were several callers from the club and Hilt's daughter, Linda Kelly Armour, pleased everyone with a rendition of "Wabash Cannonball."
 --Ginny Scheer, Folklorist.

Dancers at the Adirondack Fiddlers tribute to Hilt Kelly, dancing to Ron Bailey's "Mountain Girl"

Vernacular Architecture: Six Stone Houses in Roxbury

Catskills Folk Connection is proposing to study six 19th century stone houses in Roxbury, not only to document their history, their construction, and their builders, but also to understand more about their occupants' lives and what the houses may have meant to them.

Right now, Catskills Folk Connection is in the process of contacting the owners to obtain permission to study each house's historical documents, its exterior and possibly its interior, and to interview current residents/owners about the house.  The houses are:

1803: The Stone Tavern Farm, at the head of Meeker Hollow.

1806-1812: The Hardenburgh House, on Route 23 between Grand Gorge and Prattsville.  

1808:  The Underwood House, on Route 30 between Roxbury and Margaretville

1813: The "Stone Jug", at the intersection of Burroughs Memorial Road and the Hardscrabble Road

1828: The Walter Stratton House, on New Kingston Mountain Road, just above the Manhattan Country School Farm

1829:  The More family house, just off Route 30 north of the hamlet of Roxbury.

On a recent Catskills Folk radio program on WIOX (91.3 FM and wioxradio.org)  I discussed these houses briefly, and promised more as our study progresses.  I noted that the two story houses have what is known as a classic Georgian facade consisting of a center door flanked by two windows on the first floor, with five windows placed symmetrically above.  It is hard to drive either the main roads or the back roads of Delaware County without seeing many houses with this facade which can indicate an interior central hallway or an entry with a central winding stairway.  

These stone examples are early and may give some insight into whether or not such houses were built as two story houses all at once, or if they started out smaller.  Two of the one story stone houses have the Georgian facade, one the earliest stone house and the other the latest.  In between the other two one story stone houses have off center entries, related to a different interior plan.  The Walter Stratton House is an example of the "hall/parlor plan" in which the entry goes directly into the parlor, with a large "hall" or kitchen on the other side.

How were the houses built and where were the materials sourced? How do the six stone houses resemble or differ from other houses built in the area? Who lived in these houses?  How did the occupants change them to meet their current needs?  What kind of uses did they make of the spaces inside? 

These are some of the questions we will be trying to answer in our study of the six stone houses in 2017.  If you have information you would like to share about any of the six houses, don't hesitate to contact me at vscheer@juno.com or 607-746-3521 or by mail at 761 County Highway 2, Delancey, NY  13752.  Anything we can find out about these fascinating houses is welcome! --- Ginny Scheer, Folklorist

February 23 at 7 p.m. on WIOX: Square Dancing

Hilt Kelly and the Sidekicks: Don Strausser, Stella Kelly and Don Irwin

Tonight I am pleased to present for the first time on Catskills Folk a recording of Hilt Kelly and the Sidekicks playing and calling square dances. "Hilton Kelly & the Sidekicks: Catskill Mt. Square Dance Callers #1"was originally available as a cassette tape and has never been turned into a CD or a digitized music file.  My thanks go to Mike Teitelbaum here at WIOX who digitized the tape recording enabling it to be played on the radio. Hopefully, this will lead to wider availability of the recording in the future.

Listening to the tracks ftom this tape, WIOX listeners will realize (as I did not at first)  that square dance tunes are not necessarily the same as fiddle tunes, such as the ones on Hilt's CD "Catskill Mountain Fiddler."  On the radio program I will play as many of the familiar square dance tunes and calls as I can and compare them with square dance tunes and dances recorded by Camp Woodland in the 1940s & 50s in Norman Cazden's book Dances from Woodland, published in 1955.   Join me and delight in hearing square dance calls such as "Down the Center with a Butterfly Whirl" and tunes like Pistol Packin' Mama.  

-- Ginny Scheer, Folklorist

Church Architecture in Miniature

On WIOX tonight, Tuesday, February 9, 7 p.m., hear about Viola and Norman Marks's extraordinary miniatures of churches in the Catskills Region.

On display at The Charles Cook County Office Building in Delhi are a set of miniature carved and painted models of churches from our mountain region.  They were created by Viola Marks and her husband Norman Marks beginning in the 1950s.  Norman and Viola both worked at Bendix in Sidney and lived in Unadilla.  The church models are now part of the collection at Delaware County Historical Association, Delhi, NY.  DCHA organizes exhibits for the Cook building and this one will be on display until the end of February.

Listen tonight at 7 p.m. on WIOX 91.3 FM or wioxradio.org to find out where these churches were built.

Viola says that she sketched the churches, then translated the drawings onto graph paper, which Norman used to cut out the pieces of the models.  Viola carved some of the decoration with an Xacto knife and painted the models.  In keeping with her organizational skills as a systems analyst at Bendix, Viola labeled each of the models and kept a careful list of the churches to go along with the photos of the collection.

The architecture of our country churches in the Catskills is an excellent example of the style and variety of vernacular building in the Catskills. Included are examples of Greek Revival, Gothic Revival, as well as High Victorian Gothic churches, in shapes that hark back to European models or reflect the forms of more current trends.  What would be interesting to a folklorist is discovering how the building was conceived:  was it built by a local builder? with ideas, but no plans, from a builder's guide? He probably knew from the local tradition how to build the usual forms, but how did he add special features of certain styles?  How was this combination of folk form and high style detail affected by changes in transportation and communication?

I hope I have the opportunity in the future to research some of these buildings and to share my findings with you on Catskills Folk, alternate Tuesdays at 7 p.m. on WIOX, 91.3. FM and wioxradio.org.    

Unadilla; Episcopal Organized 1809, built 1816; Methodist built 1850; Presbyterian built 1844.

Unadilla Center: Methodist built 1830; Baptist Church Estab. 1844;
Friends Church (Rogers Hollow) Built 1904

Coventry: United Methodist; Wells Bridge: Baptist; The Methodist Church of Wells Bridge (recently destroyed);
Sand Hill Methodist Church built 1857; First Congregational Church of Coventryville Estab. 1804. 

United Church of Christ First congregational Church of Greene, Org. 1811. built 1987;
Meridale Presbyterian; First Baptist Church - Morris

Delhi: St.Peter's Catholic Church; First Presbyterian; West Delhi: United Presbyterian built 1846

Walton: United Presbyterian Church built 1866; First Methodist Church built 1894;
 Christ Episcopal Church built 1831

Otego: Baptist Church; Presbyterian Church Estab 1805; United Methodist Church

Dry Brook: ME Church Estab. 1867 (Viola's childhood church);
Sidney: First Congregational UCC founded 1808, Plymouth Church first opened 1858 

Sidney Center: Baptist Church constituted 1828; Sidney Center Untied Methodist Church
 Estab 1852 (arson); Harpersfield: Methodist built 1871

Front row: Unadilla Episcopal, Unadilla Presbyterian.
Back row: Unadilla Center Methodist, Unadilla Methodist, Unadilla Center Baptist

Lavern Kelley, Folk Artist

Folk Art in the Everyday Lives of Farm Women

On Friday, September 18 at 6 p.m., Ginny Scheer will give a presentation at the Livingston Manor Library, Livingston Manor, NY, about folk art expression among farm women.  It is the second presentation of a project called Farm and Field: the Rural Folk Arts of the Catskills Region, sponsored by the New York Folklore Society and funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Based on interviews with four women who grew up on farms or who make their living on farms, and including a little known historical folk artist, Scheer's slide presentation will examine how the expressive lives of these women relate to stereotypes of rural women's folk art and crafts, and how their creations come out of the rural culture of which they are a part.

The Livingston Manor Free Library is located at 92 Main Street, Livingston Manor, NY  12758.  for more information call 845-439-5440.

Square Dance October 4 at Walton Theatre

Catskills Folk Connection's 2013 square dance series

Catskills Folk Connection will offer its final dance of the season on Sunday, October 4 at 4:00 PM in the coffeehouse of the Walton Theatre, located on historic Gardiner Place in Walton , NY.  The dance will feature John Jacobson and the Tremperskill Boys, following in the tradition of the late legendary Catskill fiddler Hilt Kelly and his band, the Sidekicks. In addition to Hilt’s Catskills repertoire of eastern square dances, caller John Jacobson will feature some familiar and some innovative longways sets.

Come to this dance to experience the new generation of square dance calling that is keeping the tradition alive. Beginners are welcome and instruction for all levels of dancers will be available.  Admission is $7, ages 12 and under free. For more information contact Ginny Scheer, Folklorist, at 607-746-3521 or e-mail vscheer@juno.com. 

Catskills Folk Connection is supported by the Roxbury Arts Group.  It is funded in part by the New York State Council on the Arts, Gov. Cuomo and the NYS Legislature and the o'Connor Foundation.