Chapter 12 – How Landscape and Wildlife Have Changed

Davenport has lived through several major environmental changes within written history.  The first followed the coming of the white man, particularly the settlement boom after the Revolutionary War.  At this time agriculture and lumbering transformed the landscape and eventually led to the loss of much wildlife.  A second major change came a century and a half later, following the Great Depression of the 1930s and World War II, when the hilltop and hillside farms all but returned to forest, and when turkeys, beaver, deer and bear returned to these new forests.  This chapter will say more about these two major events as well as several minor ones.

Forest fires have been a continuous threat and an occasional danger, but their impact on the landscape has been generally short-lived, at least when measured in historical terms.  They have already been touched upon in Chapter 8.  Windstorms and tornadoes, to be mentioned only in passing, have been another periodic and destructive threat.  The most serious of these in recent memory were the “twisters” of May 1983.  “Several homes, barns, and garages were mangled and twisted as they were blasted with the high winds and twisters that accompanied the storm…”  Especially hard hit in Davenport was the newly completed retirement home of Kurt Neunzig, the roof and ceiling of Lewis Garrison, and the upper level of Helen Osterlein’s barn, all on or near the Charlotte Creek Road.[1]

 Floods and flooding, made worse by the earlier loss of tree cover, have been a more constant problem.  They have precluded most permanent building in the flood plains and redirected the Charlotte River upon occasion.  More dramatically, their real and/or imagined contribution to downstream flooding, in Oneonta and far-off Binghamton, provoked the greatest of all environmental threats to Davenport.  This threat would itself have produced the greatest “flood” of all time, the man-made, permanent flooding of most of the town’s fertile agricultural lands from a proposed dam or dams in and above Davenport Center.

The last major environmental event to be touched on below was a rapid (in the historical sense) series of technological changes during much of the 20^th century.  Perhaps the most dramatic of these, affecting the opening up of the town, first to commercial agriculture and in more recent years to commuters and second homes, has been the automobile and the subsequent growth of the transportation system.  Turnpikes and railroads were discussed in Chapter 4.  These stories are continued below with the coming of government support for an improved secondary road system and, more recently, with major enhancements for the inter-town and interstate highway system. 

Where did all the deer go?  Daniel Patrick Moynihan drew attention to the first major changes noted above during a Fourth of July address at the Hanford Mills Museum in 1979.    Senator Moynihan contrasted today’s abundance of deer and game with that described in the classic comment of Rev. Nathaniel Sumner and Mr. R. D. Miller, authors of the Davenport chronicle found in “Munsell’s” 1880 History of Delaware County, N.Y.: 

The wild deer lingered latest of the large animals.  The writer saw one on the hills in 1843, and tasted the venison of one caught in the valley in 1845.  The trout, that yielded to the liquor from the tanneries, will return now that the bark is gone… (Munsell, 1880, 143.)

It is hard for the modern reader to visualize Davenport’s physical and wildlife appearance one hundred and fifty years ago.  A few old photographs show the surrounding hills almost bare of trees.  We may have read that the polluted streams had once killed off almost all fish, especially the sensitive trout.  We may remember, too, from our classroom lessons that the early pioneers would move west “when game grew scarce.”  Yes, there once were elk in our valleys.  Witness the two nearby “Elk Creeks,” one to the north in Schenevus and the other running south in Meredith from the Catskill Turnpike towards Delhi.

But some of the large game were already scarce by the time of the Revolution.  According to the Conservation Department at Stamford, New York, most deer had gone from Davenport soon after the Revolution.  Already in 1788, New York State required a closed season for deer from January to July.  For a time after 1845 the season on deer was closed entirely.  It opened again in 1929 for only a week.

Wild turkeys had succumbed to the settlers’ flintlocks (and a few of the new percussion cap guns) by 1845.  Laws then protected the pitiful few still left.  With turkeys, larger game, and most predators almost wiped out, squirrels and woodchucks thrived.  “Wild rodents proliferated as they were liberated from the attacks of foxes, wolves, panthers and bears and as they found an increased food supply in the fields of grain that expanded as the forest contracted.”[7]  The 1851 squirrel hunt reported in the Bloomville Mirror (see sidebar) was a well-established practice to limit crop damage.  Taylor reports a similar, 1807 competition in Worcester in which one party netted 1,540 squirrels and one bear while the second boasted only 828 squirrels and a porcupine.  A later hunt in 1820 claimed 5,383 heads.[8]

 The Bloomville numbers are even more astounding.  Note, however, that the quoted lead story appeared in one of the newspaper’s very first issues.  Could it possibly have been subject to reader-attracting, editorial license?  Technical difficulties certainly existed and could have contributed to the account’s extreme brevity and perhaps even to its somewhat vague arithmetic.  There was not yet a printing press available, and mounted type had to be struck by a mallet against each page.[9]

But even squirrels (which in those days were defined to include “chip-monks”) and raccoons grew scarce as backwoods farms continued to be cleared and trees continued to disappear.  The more marginal farms, especially on poorer soils and at higher elevations, themselves began to decline in the early 1900s.  As recounted in Chapter 6, some were converted to dairying and survived.  There was, too, a slowdown in the disappearance of small farms during the grim days of the Great Depression and the food scarcities of World War II.  But the trend for many years has been downward, and many of Davenport’s hilltop farms have now reverted to poplar, beech and maple.

Deer began to reappear in numbers after World War II.  Serious efforts were begun about 1952 to bring back the wild turkeys.  Though most died, there were some survivors among the 1200 turkey poults, raised on game farms, released locally by the Conservation Department in 1952, 1953, and 1957.  Dying trees in newly formed beaver ponds signaled the return of that animal, but the first visiting bear was not sighted until the last decades of the 20^th century.  (A bear was reported shot in South Kortright as early as 1960, but sightings did not become more frequent for another twenty years or so.[10]).

By 2000, flocks of wild turkeys were well established throughout our area.  They could be seen in old fields and along wooded roadsides almost any day—except, of course, during small game and bird season in October and turkey cock season in the spring.  The white-tailed deer population had increased dramatically to the point of exceeding forage capacity, partly because of a decline in the numbers of deer hunters.  Coyotes (see sidebar), bear, bobcat and beaver are now observed at intervals, and there have been convincing stories of panther sightings.  Even elk have been reintroduced to the south of Delaware County, in north central Pennsylvania, and there is some talk of extending their range to the north.[11]  (Elk compete only marginally with deer for fodder.)  The sighting of eagles along the Charlotte River is no longer newsworthy. 

Floods and flooding.[12] Floods have always been a periodic threat to settlers and settlements along the Charlotte Creek.  Nicholas Sigsbee, writing in 1889, remembered the great flood of 1812:

Nothing like it had ever occurred before within the earliest recollection of anyone in the valley.  The water reached across the whole valley [probably in the vicinity of the West Davenport home of the Sigsbees] from one hill to another.  There were but few spots out of water on all the flats.  New channels for the creek were cut through solid flats in several places.  Holes were washed out of the flats ten feet deep a quarter of a mile back from the creek.  On the lower part of what was lately known as the [John W.] Mickel farm a channel was cut by the high water at least sixty rods [990 feet] long, about ten feet deep and wide enough to hold all the water of any ordinary freshet in the creek.  Besides another channel was cut directly across the Charlotte nearly a mile long, where the creek has remained ever since, and making an island of ten or twelve acres.  (Sigsbee, 1889a, September 26.)

Most current residents can remember recent years when the creek overflowed its banks or even washed away structures, as when the bridge on Covered Bridge Road was lost to the  successive floods of 1935-1939.  Floods at this time were annoying annual events in Davenport Center and West Davenport.  Many were caused by ice jams in the area where Kortright Creek joins the Charlotte River.   Flooding occasionally occurred twice in one year.  One time about 1945 a large barn was removed from its foundation.  People were taken to safety on tractors when necessary (operated by Henry Doyle).  Ralph Every rescued others in his boat.  One of the worst in many years—perhaps a “150 year flood”—occurred on January 9, 1996, and caused a reported $55 million in damages and seven deaths throughout Delaware County.

In most years and further upstream from Davenport Center, the local damage from Charlotte flooding was relatively minor and perhaps even compensated by the soil enrichment of farmers’ fields, but in 1936 a far-downstream flood in Binghamton caused repercussions which confounded the valley for at least the next 35 years.[13]  A direct result of the 1936 Susquehanna flood was new national legislation and the authorization of seven new flood-control dams above Binghamton.  Two of these were subsequently built: at Whitney Point and East Sidney.  Another, regarded as a key to the further upstream flood control, would have been placed at Davenport Center.

Davenport’s dam battle.  The Davenport dam, if built, would have destroyed the village of Davenport Center, flooded 3,000-plus acres of land, caused the destruction of over 500 buildings, and forever altered the shape and nature of the Town of Davenport.  By one account the Davenport Center dam would be 121 feet high and stretch almost a mile across the valley.[14]  Water from the dam might back up almost to the hamlet of Davenport.  A later version of the project would have involved two dams, the second at High Point.  This arrangement would have flooded 5-6,000 acres and backed the water up to Fergusonville.

Questions arose from the beginning about the value of such a dam or dams.  The Charlotte’s watershed of 164 square miles represents only seven percent of the total Susquehanna watershed’s drainage area above Binghamton.  Above Oneonta, the valley’s share amounts to only 27 percent of the total.[15]  At best, flood control efforts at Davenport Center might reduce a flood crest at Binghamton by very little, perhaps by only eight or nine inches.[16]

 When first proposed by the Army Corps of Engineers in 1936, the Charlotte dam met with little opposition within the valley, mainly because its exact location and dimensions were still uncertain.  Plans were delayed by the advent of World War II.  But in 1949, surveyors’ stakes appeared in the Cerosaletti farm in Davenport Center.  Opposition to the dam began to gel, led initially by Davenport Supervisor Anker Norberg.  Norberg reported that the “vast majority” of the community were “unalterably opposed to the project.”  Norberg was at a loss, he told the Oneonta Star, why a minority of the town board, including former supervisor George Hillis, did not support the majority view.[17]

Despite minority misgivings, the local citizenry soon organized with a vengeance.  Protests grew during the mid-1950s, rising and falling with the likelihood of dam-funding appropriations in the U.S. Congress.  A meeting of 200 Davenport residents in February 1954 learned that New York’s Representative John Taber, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, had given assurances that the necessary appropriations would not pass “this year.”  In future years, the dam’s fate might depend on “strong action…taken by residents in the affected areas.”

The same meeting made permanent what had been a temporary steering committee to lead the fight against the flood control dam.[18]  Residents, following the advice of Representative Taber, were urged to launch a “flood of letters” to their representatives in Congress and to New York Assemblyman Edwyn E. Mason.

In March 1956, responding to the last minute discovery of a new appropriation threat, Davenport Town Supervisor Durward K. MacCracken led a 12-person delegation, including among others Clifford J. Eldred, representing the Oneonta Chamber of Congress, to Washington.  The delegation met with Representatives Bernard Kearney and Katherine St. George who both subsequently opposed the dam.

The dam threat was momentarily defeated but reemerged in the 1960s, supported by the new Susquehanna River Basin Commission and with potential support from the New York State Legislature.  This time, given the earlier difficulty in identifying sufficient flood control benefits, the dam became “multi-purpose,” with the major portion of monetary benefits derived from downstream “pollution dilution” (technically, “low-water augmentation” or water quality control) and, most importantly, recreation.  It was about this time that a second (High Point) dam was added in one variant of the new Davenport proposal.  The benefits of this second dam would derive entirely from recreation, most of which was to be enjoyed by distant users.[19] 

In 1969 the valley towns organized a Charlotte Valley Watershed Association with Charles Cerosaletti, also at that time a member of the Davenport Planning Board, as secretary and Ray Christensen as Chairman.  The new Association helped to mobilize both public opinion and the efforts of local politicians, especially Assemblyman Edwyn E. Mason of Hobart (whose files have been especially useful in preparing this review.)  At a public meeting in August 1969, Cerosaletti and Christensen claimed to have “70,000 votes to oppose the dam.”[20]

 In addition to an enormous amount of public protest and behind-the-scenes politicking (see sidebar), experts were hired and articles published.  The Town of Davenport employed Dr. Peter Black of Syracuse University, “an eminent Water Resources Specialist,” to prepare the critical 1970 report cited several times above.[21]  Anti-Davenport dam articles were written and appeared in national publications, most notably the American Agriculturist (Christensen, 1969) and American Forests, the publication of the American Forestry Association (Kernan, 1969).  Henry Kernan, a forester and lecturer at Cornell University who owned (and still owned in 2003) a 1200 acre tree farm in South Worcester, also presented testimony attacking the economics of a prospective 150 ton per day sulfate pulp and paper mill.  The mill was being proposed to gain additional “industry and employment” benefits from the dam.[22]

 Sometime before a public meeting was to be held in Oneonta, the Readers’ Digest had published an article that “took the Corps of Engineers to task.”  The dam opponents asked for reprints, and when the Digest learned the nature of the upcoming meeting “they practically hand-delivered them—I mean they came like overnight with 1,000 copies and didn’t charge us anything.  So there are a lot of things you can do if you use a little ingenuity…”[23]

Local opposition was aided by the growing national recognition that big dams were often less satisfactory, ecologically and economically, than they had once appeared.  In addition to high costs and the loss of valuable valley lands, it appeared that some reduction of flooding was occurring naturally through the decline over time of hillside farming and subsequent regeneration of runoff-controlling woodlands.  In recent years there has even begun a reaction against government flood insurance which in effect has subsidized residential and commercial building on vulnerable flood plains.

The real reasons for the collapse of Susquehanna dam-building pressures were ultimately political.  John Burns had been the mayor of Binghamton and a strong early proponent of improved flood control that would protect his city.  Burns was also the chairman of New York’s Democratic Party and was able to enlist the powerful support of Governor W. Averell Harriman and of then Senator (and ex-governor) Herbert Lehman.  The chairman of the New York Department of Water Resources for a while threw his weight behind the multiple-dam proposal for the Susquehanna as did, as might be expected, the New York State Flood Control Commission.

Robert Kennedy when he became New York’s junior senator in 1964 supported the dam proposal and in 1965 sought $100,000 to step up further planning.  Numerous congressmen and women, mostly but not all Republican, opposed the Susquehanna dams; Katherine St. George, John Taber, and Samuel Stratton are the names that occur most frequently in the newspaper clippings from that era.

The intensity of local opposition and the broader, growing objections to big dams eventually persuaded Senator Kennedy to “give up the fight as not being worth it.”[24]  Little has been heard since Robert Kennedy withdrew his support.

“In 1978 Jim Hanley was our Congressman from Syracuse.  He had enough clout in Congress and we had access to [him].  That’s why it’s good to have both Democrats and Republicans in your [corner] because someone can get to the right door at the right time.  And we did that and we got [the dam] deauthorized.  This was an exercise in bureaucracy and an exercise in politics, and it’s an education for all of us, believe me.”  (Charles Cerosaletti in Christensen and Cerosaletti, 2001.)

Davenport Center’s own ice-jam and flooding problem, the source of numerous newspaper attention over the years, was largely solved by cleaning out channels and replacing the old, road-level bridge across Kortright Creek.

The motorization of America—and Davenport.  From the beginning of its settlement Davenport’s physical environment has been altered by the trails and roads that have gradually extended over much of the town.  The town’s human environment has been equally affected by the introduction of the motor car (and truck) that accelerated road building and by the series of other major technological inventions which characterized the 20^th century.

Social life (and fire-fighting efforts) were transformed by the arrival of the hand-cranked telephone in 1924[25] although the original friendly, personal touch vanished when the central telephone operator was displaced by the dial phone in 1939.[26]  Of similarly revolutionary impact, especially for refrigeration and lighting, was the arrival of electricity.  Although some rural homes and farms did not receive power until a decade or two later, most homes along the main thoroughfares were electrified in 1929.[27]

 It was the automobile and road expansion, however, that revolutionized almost every aspect of village life.  Included were dairy farming (milk trucks and trailer-tankers), education (school busses), employment (improved commuting for workers), rural mail delivery, fire fighting response, retail trade and deliveries, medical services (Dr. Thomas Craig in 1907 had one of the first autos in town), and eventually as agriculture declined, even land ownership within the town. Not all changes were applauded by the townsfolk.   At the end of the 19^th century, Davenport was a scattering of farms and self-contained rural villages, home to numerous retail establishments, small factories, local craftsmen, lawyers’ offices, and even newspapers.  Under the impact of motorization, Davenport at the end of the 20^th century had become more of a regionally (if not a globally) dependent community having few local-oriented businesses and far more commuters, seasonal visitors, and summer vacationers. 

One mark of the emerging automobile age was the increasing number of discussions at Town meetings and the increasing amount of town moneys spent on road improvements and road machinery.  The town leased a 10-ton Buffalo Pitts steamroller for the year of 1911 and in 1913 leased a 40-Horse Case Traction Engine over the negative votes of Supervisor James Nesbitt and Justice O.G. McIlwain.  A Linn tractor (made in nearby Morris, N.Y.) was acquired sometime after World War I and a 10-foot Adams grader in 1924.  The same year saw the purchase of a new Linn tractor (for $6,000), with a snow plow ($1,500) added two years later.  A Bay City gasoline shovel joined the Highway Department fleet in 1928.[30]

The transition to motor vehicles in Davenport was nevertheless gradual.  The 1916 budget for the Superintendent of Highways allowed $300 for all snow removal and one-third of that amount, $100, for watering troughs.[31]

 The dirt Charlotte Turnpike was graveled during the years before World War I, following the purchase about 1913 of the Case motorized road grader (called a “traction engine”), Davenport’s first piece of highway equipment.  It was later paved, bit by bit, in the 1920s.  The new turnpike-road at that time crossed Middle Brook using the covered bridge that until 1916 stood near the town’s eastern border.  In Davenport Center the turnpike still used a second covered bridge over the Charlotte (at the end of what was later called Covered Bridge Road).

As motor vehicle traffic increased, continuing improvements became necessary, especially the Davenport Center bottleneck where the railroad crossed the turnpike.  Farmers were unloading milk cans at the creamery, and fluid milk was moved onto cars bound for New York City.  Mail was being delivered, and customers were arriving at Burdick’s Garage and at Ervin Davis furniture and hardware store.

About 1930 the decision was made to build a viaduct over the railroad, thus avoiding the dangerous road crossing.  A new section of road was then built between the Davenport Center Methodist Church and the parsonage, linking to the viaduct.  Shortly thereafter, in 1931, the Ulster and Delaware installed a high footbridge and fence to prevent pedestrians from walking directly across the rails.  Though it has remained in place until this day, the footbridge was chiefly used for photographs.  The steps up and down were formidable, and the railroad’s fence was easy enough to walk around. 

Meanwhile America’s love affair with the motor car set record after record of car, bus and truck ownership.  Between 1910 and 1925, motor vehicle registrations doubled every few years.  The total numbers at the beginning of the Great Depression were twice what they had been in 1922 and four times the number at the end of World War I.  Meanwhile the road builders struggled to keep up.  While motor vehicle numbers rose almost sixty-fold between 1910 and 1930, surfaced rural road miles grew at only one-sixteenth that rate.[32]  The town of Davenport, as just mentioned, had no paved roads at all until well into this twenty-year period.  Total road mileage in town increased almost seven-fold, from 13.14 miles in 1915 to 88 miles in 2003.[33]

In 1924 New York drivers for the first time had to apply for licenses.  A hand-cranked Ford touring car cost $295 although another $85 payment would be needed for a starter and “demountable rims.”[34]

 Construction of both state and federally assisted roads progressed steadily throughout the 1920s and 1930s with a pronounced acceleration during the job creating days of the 1930s.  But supply could not keep up with demand.  Around major cities, weekend traffic jams in the 1930s and 40s were far worse than anything seen in more recent times.  Road detours and delays were frequent, automobiles and their tires were primitive by today’s standards, and a long trip could take twice the time it would in after years. 

The biggest changes occurred after World War II when Federal aid to highway construction grew dramatically.  In 1954, the federally-financed share of the Interstate System was raised from 50% to 60% (state budgets paid for the balance) and then to 90% in 1956.  The 1950s saw the beginning of the limited-access, national interstate and defense highway system, designated by the prefix “I” in place of the former “US,” that transformed long distance travel for future generations.

As far back as the late 1930s, under the push of public works activities and a slow rearmament response to the rise of Nazi Germany, New York State had begun to straighten and improve a number of Delaware County roads, including Davenport’s principal east-west thoroughfare, Route 23.  (One of the first sections to be rebuilt was that of the long climb up Windham Mountain from Catskill and Cairo, just west of the Hudson.  The older road in this section followed an alternative turnpike route parallel to the eastern end of the Catskill-Susquehanna Turnpike.)

Route 23 between Stamford and Oneonta was in those days a long and winding road.  From Davenport village it took, in the motor cars of the 1930s, the better part of an hour to reach either the village of Stamford or the town of Oneonta.  By 1939-40 the section of Route 23 between Harpersfield and Davenport was rebuilt using stone from a quarry in Davenport Center.  (A different company reconstructed the 8.3 miles between Stamford and Harpersfield.)  The rebuilding straightened out several curves and improved the grades, especially through the George Hillis farm and above the “Boarding House” farm near the eastern approach to Davenport village.  It also by-passed completely sections of the old road through Hoseaville and in Davenport village and Davenport Center.  In early 1940, the Town of Davenport paved short sections of side roads in West Davenport and Mill Road in Davenport.[35]

Route 23 construction came to a halt during World War II, and a short section to the west of Davenport Center was further delayed by uncertainties caused by the proposed Charlotte River Dam.  By 1949, work from the western edge of the Center to Oneonta was resumed by a company from Binghamton.  Residents near the western section of the road feared the new highway would be subject to flooding, as their fields had been in earlier times (the old Route 23, now Southside Drive, had been placed on higher ground) but no flooding problems have occurred.  Meanwhile, the one-mile section where work was delayed by dam uncertainties has been repaved but, except for the viaduct above Kortright Creek rebuilt in 1979, never updated.  (Robert Miller, the foreman for the viaduct contract, subsequently became a permanent resident of the town.)

Modern improvements to rural roads: the Urwin and Donovan Plans.  With the main roads much improved, New York State unveiled the Urwin Plan about 1951.  The purpose was to upgrade the farm-to-market roads in rural areas.  The Plan provided Davenport with funds to widen and re-grade town roads.  Elmer Moore was the Davenport Highway Superintendent (1942-1975) at the time.  He and his men re-worked all local roads over a period of years.  The Urwin Plan was followed by the Donovan Plan in 1974 to provide oil and stone for improving the surface of local roads.  

Even before the Urwin Plan, the Town’s road crew had not been idle.  Machinery leases and purchases during the early 1900s, as described above, had substantially reduced the former pick, shovel and wheelbarrow labor.  The Town even managed to acquire, for $6,625, a new L1nn tractor for in 1933.   This last purchase included a Depression-era arrangement allowing Davenport to benefit from any future price drops throughout the life of the four-year payment plan.  Four years later, according to Town Meeting Minutes, Davenport added a truck-and-snowplow and two 1938 Chevrolet dump trucks.  Other major purchases continued well into the years of World War II.  Work on removing embankments, straightening bad curves, and in some cases abandoning roads that were too steep or hard to maintain continued throughout the war.  The hairpin turn on McIlwain Road, a relic of the early-motor vehicle age, was eliminated in 1945. .(The hairpin turn had been added to the old “Sexsmith Hill” road in the fall of 1910 at a time when horses had an easier time with hills than automobiles.[37]) 

The friendly skies above.  At the end of the 20^th century, Davenport was host to a single, and little-known airfield owned by Charles Zimmerman off Parker Schoolhouse Road in the east end of town.  (The airfield, actually, was just across the town line, in Harpersfield.)  This was a private airstrip, used by Zimmerman and his friends.

The Zimmerman field was not the first in town.  In 1926, thirteen years after Earl Fritts had flown a bi-plane from the Wilcox Flats and the Pony Farm in Oneonta[38], an airplane was acquired by a Delaware County resident, A.H. Peaslee of Hancock.  The Whitlock “airstrip” in Davenport  Center was inaugurated within the following year as recounted by Delaware County Historian, John Raitt:[39]

E. LaVern Whitlock of Davenport [Center] had been rebuilding [in 1927] an airplane at his home the past winter.  He had purchased the plane the fall before.  It was a Canadian model powered by an eight cylinder Curtis motor.  With Carlton Hinman as pilot they flew down to Oneonta on Tuesday the first week of May.  Later in the afternoon they flew to Middlefield.  The later trip was made in 25 minutes.

In August, Roy Tyler, a Hobart Merchant, was having an airplane overhauled at the Whitlock field in Davenport.  It was a Canadian Canunk with clipped wings powered by a Curtis OX-3 motor.  He planned to take the plane to the Oneonta airport and there learn to fly it. 

In reality, the event was considerably more dramatic than the published account.  E. LaVern (Vern) Whitlock lived with his mother, two brothers and a sister on a farm on Pumpkin Hollow Road.  Vern was physically handicapped but a talented mechanic.  He and his brother Dewey went to New Jersey to procure two wrecked aircraft that Vern then combined into one.

There was no room on their Pumpkin Hollow farm for a landing field, but Ray Rider had just cut the hay on his field in Davenport Center (just east of the later Town Hall and between the highway and the Charlotte River).  Ray (and everyone else) was curious about Vern’s plane so he allowed the brothers to use the Rider field.  Several interested bystanders gathered as Vern tuned up the motor before the arrival of pilot Carlton Hinman.   Then, without ever having flown a plane, Vern took off by himself toward Oneonta.  (This may have been a day before the “first week of May” flight described above by County Historian John Raitt.)  Everyone was aghast.  Not only had Vern never flown, let alone landed a plane, but it was late in the afternoon and getting dark.  Ray Rider and others called for cars to come and light the field with their headlights.  Vern “landed like a bird,” reportedly thrilled.

Another incident with early flying involved Jay MacClintock of East Meredith.  Jay was checking out his field of oats when the propeller of an airplane rotated down from the sky in front of him.  The plane itself shortly followed.  Someone had secured the prop with copper wire.  When the wire got hot there was a problem.

Norman Crandall and Ralph Every[40] were two other local aviators.  They both owned their own planes and flew them from the small airport in Oneonta, probably the D.F. Keyes Airport off Country Club Road.

The following additional illustrations to be found here.

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