---

Support for Davenport’s farms and woodlots did not stop with shops and crafts.  Professional services in the form of doctors (and undoubtedly surveyors, followed soon by lawyers and judges) were present from the very beginning of the town.  Also from the beginning, townsfolk themselves provided, often on a volunteer (or co-opted) basis, the many activities that a later age would term municipal services: boundary (“fence”) adjudicating, school organization and administration, policing, road construction and maintenance, and collective efforts to fight the all too frequent fires.  This chapter will trace the development of several of these services, namely the town’s schools, its medical services, its fire fighting efforts, and its search for drinkable water.

Davenport’s schools.  One strong incentive for establishing the new town in 1817 was the need for children’s education.  The state had passed the Common School Act of 1812, amended in 1814, that provided for establishing school districts and for the financing of schools, mostly through local taxes and tuition fees but with some state support.  Within three weeks of Davenport’s organization, the three new Commissioners of Common Schools had formed six school districts.  Four schools were operating within a month.[2]  In 1831 there were twelve school districts—some shared with neighboring towns—and in 1839, eighteen.  By 1860 the number of schools had reached 19 with 979 children being taught.[3]

 Looking back over the 19th century school history and the rich details uncovered by members of the Davenport Historical Society, one is struck by contrasts.  First, there is no question about the high priority that the early inhabitants placed on schooling.  The rapidity and enthusiasm with which new schools were established attests to the interest in education.  On the other hand, there were many conflicting demands on children, farm and housework being the heaviest.  For many families, too, only a minimum amount of book learning made sense, namely some reading and writing and the ability to do simple money accounts.  The younger scholars might be encouraged to attend classes regularly while attendance would often decline sharply among adolescents, both male and female.

School records, reported by trustees at the end of the year, reflect the competing demands on children’s time and the consequent effects on school attendance.  In 1845, for example, 44 of the 50 students in District #4 (High Point) attended school for less than four months and only two for between six and eight months.[4]  Twenty of the fifty, or forty percent, went to school that year for less than two months.  These latter were probably older students on whom competing demands were most intense.   Joint district #19 with Maryland the year previously had had 66 school-going students whose average attendance was 29 days.  Fourteen students, half male and half female and probably among the older group, attended for less than 20 days, and seven for less than 10 days.   Some families did not send their children to school at all.

Another contrast relates to the physical facilities themselves.  It was several decades before Davenport schools began in any way to resemble the “Little Red Schoolhouse” of fond recent memories:

 

For many years it was customary for taxpayers to provide for the most frugal way.  We think of the little red schoolhouse as being a neat little building in the middle of a lush meadow filled with wildflowers in full bloom.  Not so!  The school lot was often an unused corner of a farmer’s land that was too rocky to cultivate, or it was set apart by a brook, or it was too near the pig pens… The buildings…were often unused tool sheds, chicken coops, spinghouses or barns…They were dark and cold in the winter; hot and stifling in the summer.  (Briggs, ca. 1986, 3-4.)

About 1840, many new frame schools began to be built, usually 16-20 feet wide and somewhat deeper, with a number of glass-pane windows, and a stove.  Families at that time had to furnish the wood supply.  (At first each family had to supply wood for a week or a month at a time.)  By the 1840s some local districts supplied the wood, part seasoned and part green. 

When Jesse Haynes went to the little district school in the township of Stamford in the 1880s, each boy took a turn in keeping the wood box full. If a boy should forget to bring in his armful of wood, he would sit as far from the stove as possible.  One day a big boy decided to retaliate.  He came early and filled the stove to the brim with wood.  When class time arrived, the room was hot, hot, hot.  The teacher in turn decided that the culprit should put on his sheepskin coat and sit as close to the stove as possible.  Years later at age 94, Mr. Haynes could “still see the streams of perspiration running down the fellow’s face.”[5]

A Health and Decency Act at some point mandated that there be separate privies for boys and girls, fifteen feet apart and separated with a fence at least seven feet high.[6]  Not all school districts met this high standard.

 

 

 

Eleven new schools were built in Davenport between 1840 and 1849, nine of them after 1843.  Why this sudden burst of enthusiasm for school construction?  The records so far unearthed do not say.  There were some increases in state aid, but they did not come until the next decade.[7]  There may have been pressure brought by Delaware County school officials.  The most likely explanation, however, is threefold.  Davenport’s wealth, new ideas, and probably the perceived benefits from education had begun to increase with the opening of the Charlotte Turnpike in 1834.    More of the town’s former log residences were being replaced by frame houses, and there was pressure from the bottom as parents’ resentment built up over earlier primitive school conditions.  This parental pressure probably reflected pride in their children’s scholarship and in turn encouraged new leadership efforts within the school district and from town officials. 

Another contrast relates to the pressures on the public schools from private education.  Private schools are mentioned in the Davenport Historical Society report as having existed in districts #1, #4 and #7.[8]  One of these was assuredly run in 1843 by the “Miss Smith” cited in the Munsell history.  The same account suggests that the private schools mostly emphasized college preparation.  (Prior to 1848 in Davenport, students were prepared for college not in schools as we think of them, but by living with an educator, no more—usually—than about four younger scholars at a time.)  Ira S. Birdsall in fact had proposed to build a local academy for this purpose.  The villagers, however, “opposed all but public schools.”  Birdsall, discouraged, then built his academy in Harpersfield. [9][10]

The need for education beyond eighth grade and for the Greek, Latin and other skills required for college entrance was met by private schools and, in Davenport after 1848, by the Fergusonville Academy, known originally as the “Charlotte Boarding Academy.”[11]  The latter school trained its students, mostly boarders but including some local “day scholars,” in these advanced pursuits, often for entrance to Harvard and Wesleyan.  It will be described further below. 

Competing institutions in the 1850s, advertising in the Stamford Mirror, included the Stamford Seminary, the Harpersfield Union Academy, and the Roxbury Academy.  There was talk of a new Kortright Academy, but that apparently never materialized.  After the Fergusonville Academy closed in 1881, local students had to travel to high school in Stamford, Oneonta or Delhi, usually boarding in town during the week.  Later, spurred by perennial overcrowding in Davenport village’s District #7, the Union Free School was built in 1913-14 for grades 1-12.  Solving the high school problem with public moneys, however, was not always popular in the largely rural community.  Although the enabling legislation had existed since 1853, the Davenport vote of 1913 for the Union Free School passed by only a narrow margin.[12] 

 

 The new Davenport school prospered.  Compulsory attendance through age 14 had been required in New York State since 1874 and through age 16, since 1903.[13]  Twelve “academic” (non-elementary grade) students enrolled in the new Union Free School the first year.  This would have been one in seven of the 82-student total.  The school eventually developed dramatic productions (performed in Baldwin and later Wade’s Hall), debating teams, baseball and basketball teams (games played in Baldwin’s Hall), and an excellent orchestra  (practices in Baldwin’s Hall).  In 1938, its last year of operation, the Union Free School used “every available nook and cranny” for its 173 students, 52 of whom were enrolled in secondary grades.[14]

 

 

 

 Meanwhile, and this is one more contrast, pressure had been building not only for more school space but also for a large central school to serve not only Davenport but also parts of neighboring towns.  The advantages of such a school were clear but so were the disadvantages.  These included the loss of the sense of community promoted by the local one- and two-room schools, loss of community control, much longer commutes, and higher costs brought on by new courses and the need for school busses and the attendant prompt road plowing.  As early as 1932, letters to the editor were debating the pros and cons.[15]  What helped bring the community around was the Great Depression and the willingness of the federal Public Works Administration to build the proposed school, which it did in 1938.  At long last and after much heated discussion at a meeting in Odd Fellow’s Hall, a central school district was created at a September 21, 1938, by the  vote of 249 to 207.[16]

 

 

 The final and greatest disparity revealed by the research is between old crude one room schoolhouse of Districts #4 (High Point, built in 1860) or #15 (the joint school with Oneonta, built in 1834 and shown earlier in the Chapter 3 photo) with today’s expanded and successful Charlotte Valley Central School (CVCS).  Especially consider the latter’s well-stocked library, orchestra, dramatic productions, skilled faculty and successful sports teams not only for boys but for girls as well.  It is hard, especially for the modern younger reader, to imagine the difference. 

In contrast to today’s CVCS, in the earlier one- and two-room schools there were few books for students and only a handful for the school itself, no organized sports, and no musical instruments.  “Blackboards” were initially made of wooden planks painted black.  There was a cup and bucket in the corner for drinking, perhaps only a single outdoor privy, and a teacher whose only qualifications, at least initially, were to be able to read, write, and maintain order.  It is hard to imagine a school trustee writing today, as happened in 1857 in District #1 after a new frame school had been built only twelve years earlier, that the single room was “supplied with fresh pure air through ‘cracks in the floor and sides.’”[17]

 

 

The Fergusonville Academy.  The premier educational institution in the Charlotte Valley during the mid-19th century was the Fergusonville Academy.  As noted in the previous chapter, it was started in 1848 under the efforts of the Reverend Samuel D. Ferguson, assisted by his brother and former educator in Walton, Sanford I. Ferguson.  Sanford Ferguson also served as a Davenport School Commissioner in 1847 while awaiting the opening of the Fergusonville Academy.  The new boarding school proved successful in attracting college preparatory students from more urban areas and, as its reputation grew, from as far away as Latin America and Europe.  In 1849, the trustees reported an average of 85 students.[18]   In 1860 there were eight teachers and 159 students of whom over one-quarter were girls.  The number of local students came to about 50.[19]  After the Civil War, the total number of students declined.

 

 

 By the time of the 1870 census, Thomas B. Oliver, age 33, was listed as the academy’s principal.  His older brother, the then current storekeeper and cheese-maker, James Oliver, had purchased the Academy and taken over the principal’s position in 1856 upon the death of Samuel Ferguson in 1855 and the retirement of  Sanford.  (The Olivers were related by marriage to the Fergusons.)  In 1870 the school employed only two young teachers and an assistant teacher.  There was also a matron and four domestics, including two from Ireland.  At this time the academy housed 17 students, all male, age nine to seventeen.  Eight of the seventeen boarding students in 1870 were born in New Jersey.  The number of day students is not known, but as in other years they probably came from Davenport, Stamford, Harpersfield or nearby Maryland.

Enrollment in 1873 was 42 and in 1875, 39 (of whom five were from Spain).  The number of local students fluctuated, but numbers of boarders continued to fall until the school closed with the death of Mrs. James Oliver in 1881. 

 

 

Davenport’s medical services.   It is commonly assumed that the early residents of Davenport had very little access to physicians.  Such assumptions are surprisingly erroneous.  Daniel Fuller, the first physician, is said to have arrived from Connecticut in what would become Davenport in 1796.[20][21]  He is believed to have settled north of the river, in or below the Fitches Patent, with his wife, Abigail.  The house was probably above the present Charlotte Creek Road where it meets the road from East Meredith.  There were of course no roads at the time.  There was, however, an old Indian trail along the north side of the river, and most of the early settlers lived along that trail. 

Dr. Fuller was thirty at the time, born about 1766; his wife, Abigail, in 1767.  By his arrival in 1796, there were already several other settlers on the virgin lands, reported to have been Humphrey Denend, Harmon Moore, George Webster, Elisha Orr, and an unknown Van Valkenberg.[22]  More recent investigations (see Chapter 3) suggest that the total population in 1800 of what was to become Davenport may have been in the order of 460 in perhaps 80 or so households.  Dr. Fuller died around 1816-17.  His widow, Abigail (Miller) Fuller, lived to be about 100.

A son of Dr. Fuller, Daniel Jr., perhaps born before 1796 in Massachusetts, eventually became a Fergusonville dentist.  In one notice in the Bloomville Mirror he followed the practice of the time in announcing that he would be available at the Davenport Hotel on a particular day of the month.  No record is available of how long the practice lasted.

Training to become a physician and surgeon was quite different from today—or even later in the 19th century.  Many served as apprentices to a practicing physician for at least two years before being “examined” before a committee of doctors, usually at the county seat in Delhi.  If the apprentice displayed sufficient ability, he (or the very infrequent she) was presented with a diploma licensing him to practice medicine in Delaware County.  Some, later on, went on to attend college and obtain actual degrees in medicine.

These are other Davenport doctors of whom we know:

Dr. Robert Waterbury, age 26, resided near the Fergusonville Academy at the time of the 1850 census.  In his home he was training two medical students, James More, age 20, and James Kenyon, age 16.  Dr. Waterbury cared for student illnesses at the Academy, and his students received practical experience in the process.

Asahel Payne was certified by Judge H. Brent on October 4, 1797, to have had two years of training as a physician and surgeon in Harpersfield.  (The Paynes lived in Davenport Center.)

Dr. Gardner Westcott practiced medicine in Davenport in 1815 and continued until 1837.  He was actively involved with petitioning and organizing the Town of Davenport, being particularly interested in state aid for schools.  With four children of his own in the High Point school (District #4), Westcott served for a total of at least eight years as either Inspector of Common Schools or Commissioner of Schools between 1817 and 1831.  He and his family subsequently moved to Springfield Center, just north of Otsego Lake.  More than 100 years afterwards, a fracture frame was discovered in an old barn (now the Timbers/Vern’s parking lot) where Dr. Westcott practiced in Davenport.

Dr. John Ferguson was probably of the Kortright Fergusons (and possibly distantly related to the founders of the Fergusonville Academy though this is only a guess at present).  He followed Dr. Westcott and served for the next twenty years.  His license was filed in Delaware County, February 10, 1837.  Ferguson had children in District School #16 from 1825 until 1847.  He served as one of the three Commissioner of Schools, 1839-43.

James H. Leal may have been related to the Kortright Leals, Scots who chose the Patriot side in the Revolution.  On March 31, 1823, he received his diploma at Delhi from the Delaware County Medical Society.  It is doubtful he practiced in Davenport very long.

Dr. Guy W. Grant practiced medicine for a time in an office two buildings west of the Davenport Hotel.

Samuel Maharg (1818-1892) was born in Ireland.  He graduated from Castleton Medical College near Albany on June 7, 1846.  He built a small office and dispensary on the front of his Davenport Center house. Dr. Maharg married Rebecca H. Reynolds, daughter of the important businessman, Hosea Reynolds (for whom Hoseaville was named).  They had a daughter, Gertrude, born in 1850, and a son, Arthur E., born in 1854.  Gertrude graduated from The Medical College for Women in New York City on April 8, 1875, and practiced from her father’s office.  Gertrude’s husband, Gervasse Peck, accompanied her on her visits, serving as her assistant.  Later he, too, became a physician, licensed by the Medical Department of the University of the City of New York April 4, 1893.

James More Donnelly received a diploma on March 1, 1876, from the College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York City.  Born in Harpersfield, Donnelly “taught school winters, worked and studied, and acquired an education; studied medicine with Dr. Gallup of Stamford, and graduated from the New York City Medical college.  After one year with Dr. Gallup he settled in Davenport.  He married Frances M. Clark in 1878.”[23] His brother, Henry H. Donnelly, earned his diploma May 21, 1884, from Long Island Hospital in Brooklyn, New York.  He was burned to death in a fire at Davenport Center.

Dr. Gilbert T. Scott (photo below) graduated in medicine from the University of the College of New York on March 11, 1884.  He was highly admired as a doctor and a citizen.  His home, with a drugstore in front, was located in the center of Davenport village.  He was forever concerned about public safety and welfare.  With only one exit from the building next door where public events were held on the third floor, and with Dr. Donnelly of Davenport Center having burned to death in a fire, fire was a particular and constant worry for Dr. Scott.

George Brinkman received his medical diploma March 6, 1880.  He had a large practice though little is known about where he lived.

Dr. Ezra McDougal (1839-1923) moved from West Davenport to Grand Street in Oneonta (behind the Masonic Temple).  He is said to have been a dour Scot who bicycled through the streets, a stovepipe hat on head and medical bag in one hand while steering with the other.  His name appears often as the attending physician in the vital records of Davenport.

Dr. Thomas L. Craig (1865-1941; photo below) for many years was involved in town affairs and cared for patients in Davenport.  He obtained license No.1211, according to the Delaware County records, on October 15, 1895.  Both he and G. T. Scott, M.D. advertised their availability as physicians in the Davenport Standard of November 28, 1895.  Dr. Craig, born in Harpersfield, studied medicine under Dr. Hiram P. Hubbell of Stamford and later attended the Baltimore University Medical School.

 

 

Dr. Thomas Craig was always on call.  When patients needed surgery beyond his capabilities, he drove them to The Parshall Hospital in Oneonta and stayed with them, often assisting the surgeon.  On one occasion he accompanied one of his patients, Mrs. Orrin (Maggie) McIlwain to Brooklyn, NY, where he assisted with her operation.  At other times, Dr. Craig operated in a home, calling in a neighbor to administer ether.  Herbert Hebbard was operated on for an appendectomy on his grandmother’s kitchen table.  Dr. Craig had less success when New York State ordered vaccinations in the schools.  Davenport parents, despite Dr. Craig’s persuasiveness, were very much opposed and the program had to be held up for a year:

 

Dr. Thomas L. Craig was the school health officer for many years except for a period during World War I when he enlisted in the Army.  As health officer, Dr. Craig tried to impress the importance of vaccinations but with difficulty.  In 1916 Dr. Craig wrote that “nearly all” children in District #7 had been vaccinated.  His charge for that year was $18.50.  The next year 51 were vaccinated and 31 were not.  In 1919 only two were vaccinated.  In 1923-24 there were no vaccinations and the program was abandoned… immunization [then becoming] the responsibility of the family.  (Briggs, ca. 1986, 87.)

Dr. Craig continued his Davenport practice for forty years until he retired in 1936, selling his practice to Dr. Nathan Artsis of Jamaica, L.I.  Dr. Craig had also served as county coroner for over 40 years.  He died in 1941.

Another highly valued doctor in the area until 1916 was Dr. Frederick E. Bolt of East Meredith.  (See Chapter 7.)  On the brink of World War II, other doctors came and went.  Some preferred hospital associations rather than the life of a country doctor.  Others went into military service.

 

Informal practitioners in the Davenport community, although not quite doctors, also served the needs of the sick with nursing care.  When illness struck a household, it was customary for a neighbor to sit with the patient day and night.  Often in each neighborhood there was one person, usually a woman, whom the community depended on for advice in a time of illness.  She would also deliver babies and was on call for emergencies, not for pay, but because her services were needed by her friends.

After World War II, it was difficult for all small towns to recruit physicians.  Most preferred to practice near or in hospitals, not out of a medical bag in a distant farmhouse in the middle of the night.  Farming communities by then had very limited medical care.  By the time that the Methodist Church began trying to resolve the medical care problem in the 1970s, the Town of Davenport had not had a practicing doctor in thirty years.

Under the guidance of Rev. Rodney Johnson, the congregation of the Davenport United Methodist Church developed a mission statement to improve services, both church and medical, for all.  Over a six-year period, a building committee under the chairmanship of Donald C. Haight along with dozens of others labored to carry out the new plans.  A new site for the church was prepared with the help of Company A, 204th Engineering Battalion, New York State National Guard, Captain Brian Mitteer commanding.  The new church building was located further away from Route 23 and expanded to include a new Health Center.  The building was dedicated on Sunday, July 10, 1978, and the medical and dental clinic opened in July.  Earlier, since June 1976, a converted mobile home medical center was positioned in front of the construction where Dr. Richard Ucci treated patients one afternoon a week.

The clinic closed in the same year it started, 1978, for lack of sufficient financial support.  The search for local medical treatment continued until Bassett Healthcare set up a satellite office in the church’s clinic with Robert McCann, a hospital medical practitioner.  Bassett Hospital closed the facility in early September 1990[24].

Except for emergency treatment from Davenport’s First Responders service (see below), Davenport residents in the early 2000s must mostly travel to Oneonta, Stamford, Cooperstown or Binghamton for health and dental treatment.

Fires and water: Davenport in the early days.[25]  For much of its history, Davenport had to learn to live with forest, barn, house and even church fires.  Certainly, men could be mobilized to beat out and gradually contain conflagrations in wood lots and brush with spade, rake and axe.  In town, a brigade of buckets could hurl small amounts of water onto the flames.  In the countryside, a few close neighbors could do the same, but many could only stand by and watch.  There was just so much water in a well.  For almost a century and a half, the best that could be expected would be to slow the flame’s progress, to save a few precious belongings and rescue threatened livestock.[26] 

We know little about the great fires of the 1800s.  Available scrapbooks and diaries do not usually extend back that far, and the few weekly newspapers of the time—in Bloomville, Stamford, Oneonta, and Davenport itself for a brief period—have yet to be thoroughly searched.  There must have been many fires and many buildings—even some lives—lost.  We do know that when John Davenport died in 1825 he left the generous sum of $500 for building a Congregational Church no further than a mile from his home.  That church burned to the ground, possibly before it was even finished.  Then arose a prolonged dispute between heirs and the church’s congregation before a replacement was built.[27]  One account claims that the replacement church, too, suffered a fire while under construction, but that story has not been verified.[28]

 Local records reveal the many fire fighting claims made to the Davenport Town Board for fighting the great South Hill forest fire of September 1908.  That fire raged for a week in the hills above West Davenport and Davenport Center.  Under Fire Warden and Town Supervisor, E. A Taber, ninety-four men earned a total of over $1,100.[29]  A bill of $343.58 from Maryland for assistance with the 1908 fire was, however, rejected the following year.[30]

 The town in those days appointed fire wardens with the power to conscript as many men as needed for forest fire fighting.  The budget generally allowed $15 a year for this work.  This was not a great amount even then but enough for 100 hours of work at the prevailing fire fighting wage of 15 cents an hour.  The 1908 fire at this rate must have generated over 7,000 hours of employment.  There was even talk that the fires were reset from time to time in order to provide more work during an economic downturn.  It is more likely, as those know who have experienced the erratic behavior of fire in the northern woods, that “the new fires were caused by the eruption of smoldering pine needles below the surface.”[31]

Other forest fires occurred almost annually during the first five years of the 1900s (in 1900, 1901, 1903, and 1904).[32]  A fire south of Middle Brook in the fall of 1913, the season when summer drought made the woods especially flammable, destroyed a part of the Orrin McIlwain (former Sexsmith) woods and came within a hair’s breath (50-100 feet) of two cottages recently built on Sexsmith Lake.

The first major change in fire protection had come in 1884 with the formation of the Davenport Water Company by William McDonald.  It is said Uncle Billy, as he was generally known, started the stock company after his frustrating efforts to get water to his store on the north side of the turnpike.  (He had tried lifting water up the steep slope below the store with a windmill, but that had not worked well enough.)  By March of 1888 the company had installed water hydrants along the Charlotte Turnpike in Davenport village.  The water was (and still is) collected from springs on the hillside above the town to the east of today’s Brickhouse Hill Road.  This is the only municipal or private water company to be found within the town’s boundaries.

 

 

New water hydrants meant that fire fighters within the village had an immediate and reliable supply of water under pressure.  Bucket brigades and small water barrels pulled by men or horses became a thing of the past.  A state law had already provided that taxes could be raised to support a fire company.  The three Fire Commissioners of Davenport village, Walter Scott (lawyer), S. W. Utter (hotelkeeper), and Thomas L. Craig (physician) were quick to take advantage of the law and the new water supply.  A meeting of March 1899 organized a new fire district, extending 300 feet on either side of the line of hydrants.  Among the first items of

new equipment was a hose cart with several lengths of fire hose.  Quoting from Irwin Dent, “A Short History of the Davenport Fire Department” (written about 1967), we learn:

The first piece of equipment was a hand-drawn cart.  Fulton (Mike) Hanvey often told of racing up to Ezra Brown’s barn for the hose cart when the church bells sounded the alarm.  It was considered an honor to reach the cart first thereby being able to draw the cart to the nearest hydrant and attach the two and a half-inch nozzle to it…

The fire company at that time was loosely organized, but because William McDonald largely financed the operation of acquiring equipment, it was known as the McDonald Hose Company.

A ladder cart, pike poles and leather buckets [all probably dating from an earlier age] made up the balance of the fire fighting apparatus.  The hand-drawn cart served the village for many years and is now in possession of the Davenport Fire Department.  (Briggs, 1990, 4.)

Devastating fires continued.  It is hard to imagine but apparently true that the McDonald Hose Company did not acquire more modern equipment nor possibly even a new name during the period stretching up to World War II.  Newspaper accounts of fires, preserved in the Davenport Historical Society’s collection of  scrapbooks, continue to use the phrases, “burned to the ground,” “mysterious (or unknown) origin,” “neighbors quickly responded but were unable to save anything (or much),” “some insurance but not enough.”   Fire insurance, in fact, seemed about the only certain prevention against complete loss.  Fire apparatus from Oneonta occasionally came—usually too late—as far as Davenport Center and, from Stamford, as far as the village of Davenport.  One exception to the usual total destruction occurred in 1928 when a fire was discovered in Wade Hall, the former Baldwin Hall, and the fire was successfully controlled, with damage limited to $2,000.[34]

The fire protection issue arose anew in November 1937 when the Town Board voted to raise $175 for a Davenport Fire District.  Voluntary Firemen were officially organized six weeks later, and in mid-1938 new rural fire districts were set up in Kortright, Stamford and Davenport.[35][36]

Fires and water: Davenport in the modern era.  The modern era of Davenport and East Meredith fire protection did not arise until 1947 when a third-hand Mack fire engine was purchased through property owners’ subscriptions in the Davenport Fire District.  Initially, in fact, the truck was owned collectively by the subscribers rather than by a fire department.  A Davenport Fire Department was soon organized with R. Leslie Sanford its Acting, and later its official, Fire Chief.  At this time the new department took over for its fire hall the old Union Free School building, vacated since the inauguration of the Charlotte Valley Central School in 1939.

 

 

In 1948 the Davenport Fire District was extended to nearby areas without fire protection, and in 1953 a large part of the Town of Harpersfield was included.  For several years, too, the Davenport Department had a fire protection arrangement with the hamlet of South Worcester.

 

R. Leslie Sanford continued as fire chief for many years, from 1947-1961 [followed for five years by his grandson, Leslie A. Sanford, and later by another grandson, Richard Sanford]… The membership of the department was set at forty men, and most of the time there has been a waiting list to join the volunteer organization.

…Dances, pancake suppers, donkey baseball and basketball, and barbecues have been used to raise funds to build up firefighting equipment, for uniforms, and for maintaining and heating the firehouse.  Besides working with the County Firemen’s Association [and] the County Civil Defense, the Department, represented by Chief [R. Leslie and Leslie A.] Sanford, has put in many hours on radio and County Mutual Aid work and coverage for volunteer firemen…  (Irwin Dent, “A Short History…” in Briggs, 1990, 5.)

Another effort at the beginning of the modern era was to improve the water supply.  It was all but impossible for a tanker truck to carry enough water to control a house or barn fire.  Wells and springs, too, have limited capacity.  In areas away from fire hydrants, that is in most of Davenport, the next best thing was a nearby pond of standing water.  A pond, with the help of a pumper truck, would vastly increase water availability.  Consequently many such ponds were constructed in Davenport and East Meredith in the summer of 1949.  Volunteer fire fighters attended fire schools where they learned a great deal about handling pond water from William Balcom, a long-time fireman from Rye, New York.

Prior to the modern era there had been little official town support for fire protection.  Until 1946 the town’s budget had allowed $25 annually for each fire warden and $50 for fire fighting.  In 1948 the budget total rose from $175 to $300 and the next year to $675.  In 1955, a new fire truck was added to the fire department’s equipment.  Six years later another tank truck and pumper were purchased to meet the department’s expanding needs.

Davenport’s “First Responders.”[37] Emergency response and mutual aid have been the defining characteristics of fire departments from the beginning.  Both have improved with better transportation and pumping equipment and more rapid communication.  In recent years, response capability and newer technology have led firefighters into assisting with medical and related emergencies.  It is now common to see fire equipment at accident scenes or at a neighbor’s home when there has been a heart attack, stroke or other emergency.

Another long-standing fire department tradition has been that of mutual aid.  In addition to assistance with very large fires, physical location will sometimes mean that a neighboring town has a faster response time to a fire or emergency.  Today and over the years, Davenport has benefited from such assistance from its neighbors. 

In the recent past and before Davenport had its own medical emergency response capability, the town was covered by the fire departments of Oneonta, Stamford, Jefferson, Meridale, and Schenevus.  Time is of the essence in medical emergencies, and even this help proved inadequate at times.  A person can bleed to death from a severed artery in 3-4 minutes.  CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) and automatic defibrillation need to be done or started in less than eight minutes.  The normal response time from these neighboring fire departments proved to be 10-17 minutes minimum.

 

 

In Davenport, Paul Merwin of the Davenport Fire Department had already been answering emergency calls as a fully trained Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) after 1975 and as an Advance EMT in 1980.  Under the prodding of Merwin and with the 1989 support of the three Davenport-connected fire departments (Davenport, Pindars Corners and East Meredith), and especially with the help of Dr. John Spoor along with Davenport’s Glen Brandon and Pindars Corners’ Henry Mancke, Davenport formed its own First Responder Squad.  In the spring of 1990, sixteen firefighters from the Davenport Fire District took First Responder training.[38] 

Certified by the New York Health Department in 1990 to become an active First Responder Agency, the group applied the next year for certification as an Advance Life Support Unit.  This meant that those trained as Advance EMTs could perform, among other procedures, defibrillation of heart attack victims, intravenous therapy (for victims of trauma or for drug administration), and “intubation” of patients.[39]   The First Responders also began offering regular CPR and automatic defibrillation classes to the community.  The Charlotte Valley Central School as a consequence had, in 2003, 20 staff members trained in these skills.

The Stamford Fire Department donated the First Responder squad’s first heart monitor and some other equipment (with thanks to Pat Kaufman and Aleska Mason).  In 1992-93 the squad raised $4,000, matched by a $4,000 grant from the O’Connor Foundation, to help purchase a new, $8,500 heart monitor.  In 1993, the squad was able to purchase for $2,000 a used ambulance from the South New Berlin Fire Department.  The ambulance held up for only a few years, after which the squad reverted once more to Davenport’s own Rescue Van (driven by other Davenport firemen) for carrying equipment and answering calls.  The Oneonta Fire Department then did most transporting of patients with occasional assistance from Meridale, Schenevus, Stamford and, more recently, Cooperstown Medical Transport.

Nineteen ninety-three was the year of the squad’s first birth delivery.

The First Responders started out answering 100-110 calls each year, but these dropped over time to 70-80 calls.  All were usually true emergencies.   The squad’s annual budget began at $1,500, increasing over time to $3,000 for supplies, equipment, training devices, and education classes.[40]

Fire fighting by East Meredith and Pindars Corners.  The East Meredith story is important not only because of its long and close personal and business association with Davenport but because joint fire efforts have brought the several communities, if anything, even closer. 

As Davenport was entering the modern fire protection era, about 1948, meeting after meeting on the same subject was held in East Meredith.  On January 28, 1949, the East Meredith Rural Volunteer Fire Department was officially organized.[41] 

Soon the new organization was able to purchase a fire truck and an ambulance.  (Ambulance service was discontinued seventeen years later, in 1966.)  These were followed over time by a pumper and a thousand-gallon tanker.  The Company even managed to purchase in 1952 its own squad car, a 1936 red (of course) LaSalle, for $300.[42]

The first fire station, acquired in 1950 from Harry Beams, was the old furniture and casket factory of Will Flower (see Chapter 5) located on the Delhi road near the intersection with Main Street.  The building, recently a garage, now housed fire trucks below and a meeting room above.  It served the community for many years until a new building, north of the village on the Davenport Center Road, was purchased in 1997.  Controversy arose over the purchase because the firehouse was built on land once owned by the Department and was seen by some as having avoided a state law on competitive bidding and the payment of union wages.[43]  The building nevertheless required long hours of work by members of the volunteer department before it could be used as a firehouse.

Training in firefighting and in medical services, as in Davenport, has always been an important part of members’ activities.  Although ambulance service had been discontinued, the need for emergency medical treatment was real and present:

 

In 1991 the First Responders were organized with five members.  In June they began a six month intensive training program to become “Certified First Responders.”  Since then, several members have received additional training to become New York State certified…Paramedics, Emergency Medical Technicians I – II – III’s.  With funds from the Niels Norberg fund [former East Meredith fire chief, 1967, and son of former Davenport Supervisor, Anker Norberg, 1946-49], a $5,000 matching grant from the O’Connor Foundation, and generous donations from the community, the First Responders were able to purchase an emergency vehicle and equipment.  (Barbara MacClintock and David Briggs in Telian, 2000, 98.)

An earlier major change had occurred in 1962.  East Meredith long helped provide fire services to Davenport, especially to Davenport Center and the western end of town.  Because the area of coverage was so widespread, as early as 1952 or 1953, the people in West Davenport met to consider setting up an East Meredith satellite fire district with a station at Pindars Corners.  The meeting, at the home of Earl Simmons, was joined by Lyle Henderson and Ben Beams from East Meredith.  The meeting’s conclusion was to proceed with such a substation as soon as the heavy current indebtedness of the East Meredith Department could be relieved. 

East Meredith Rural Fire Department No. 2 was subsequently formed ten years later and the Pindars Corner fire station was built in 1963.  Robert and Metta Chambers of West Davenport donated the land.  The East Meredith district donated the Quonset hut building, expanded in 1971 with a four-bay addition, and volunteers contributed hundreds of hours of night work.  A series of second-hand tankers, pumpers, and vans finally led up to a $112,000, state-of-the-art, 1000-gallon Class A pumper in 1987.

Pindars Corners, in addition to its modern equipment, had the additional distinction of having in 1982 the first two qualified female firefighters in the Davenport-East Meredith area, Sally Beams and Yvonne Lombardo.  The two served for the next fifteen years.

Firefighters and the community.   Rural volunteer firefighters come from all parts of the communities they serve.  Their fire departments receive strong community support and give back, in turn, much more than skills against the occasional fire or medical emergency.  The departments themselves have become an important social institution within the town, both in giving and receiving.  In many ways they, along with today’s churches, provide the chief settings for social life and for promoting an all-important sense of community identity.  These functions had been formerly associated with, in addition to the churches, the one-room school district, the occasional revival meeting or town fair, and the village baseball team.

Part of the community involvement comes from self-interest.  The departments always need money for gear and equipment, fire trucks, heart machines, and less frequently, a fire station.  The volunteers themselves raise much of the money for these necessities.

The Davenport Fire Department sponsors the town’s Annual Memorial Day Parade, an event enthusiastically joined by fire departments from several neighboring towns.  Along with the parade, barbecued chicken sales raise money and are a social event.  Tag days are another source of funds, not only for local needs but, in 2001, for the relief of those hurt by the tragic events of  “9/11.”   The Department sponsors a CVCS graduation prize for the senior with outstanding qualities of loyalty and service to the school.

The East Meredith fire company has raised money through dances at the old Davenport Center Grange Hall (now the Davenport Historical Center above Davenport’s town Hall).  The first dance raised $222.18.  They have also put on clambakes in the past, but since 1955 the East Meredith Department has depended on the annual “Frank Briggs Pancake Day.” The firemen and the Ladies Auxiliary prepare the meal, known far and wide for the quality of the “whole porker” sausage, made using Frank Briggs’ special seasoning.  The firemen circulate among the diners when they are not attending one of the six pancake grills.  More than seven hundred guests typically turn out year after year to enjoy the food and camaraderie.  (The May 10, 2003, event served 775 persons.)

The Davenport Ladies Auxiliaries, in addition to coffee and refreshment service for firemen on duty, support the firemen financially, help sponsor the Memorial Day Parade and Barbecue, and help organize Halloween programs for children.  Pindars Corners has had an active Ladies Auxiliary since the department’s beginning.  East Meredith until 1975 had a less formal women’s group to assist at the fire scene.  An official Ladies Auxiliary was formed in that year to include not only firemen’s wives but “all ladies of the district” to assist and support the firemen.  They have helped with fund raising, their most popular event in recent years a raffle held in conjunction with Pancake Day.  Money raised is used not only for firemen’s supplies but for donations to the needy.[44]

 

The following additional illustrations to be found here.