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Looking Back Facts and Artifacts and Historical Highlights;
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Click on images to see larger versions. Click on links in the text to view or download the entire newsletter, from our collection of Back Issues. |
Elsewhere in this two-page issue, it was noted that “CHARTER MEMBERSHIPS are still available through May, 1975. 89 persons have joined in the seven months of our existence.” |
Facts and Artifacts continued as the newsletter name for several more issues. But the September/ October 1975 issue bore the name Sand Lake Historical Society News (Facts and Artifacts). Notable in that issue was the fact that a dinner was to be held to celebrate the granting of the Society’s Provisional Charter on June 27, 1975! Things continued either as …News or …Newsletter until July 1977, when Facts and Artifacts returned! The April 1978 issue hinted at more change: “We have decided to give the newsletter a new name. Details of the selection of a name will be published shortly. It’s time to put your ‘thinking caps’ on!” |
1979 was also the first year of memorial scholarships given for excellence in history to a boy and girl graduating from Averill Park High School. Awards were given in memory of Sanford Young. Also that year were a house tour and plant sale! Meetings during the period featured programs on such topics as charcoal burning, advertising tin containers, “The Role of the Town Historian,” and a roundtable discussion of “The Way it Was” with Myra Wehnau and Helen Crape Guy. Later that year (1979), the Sand Lake Historical Society was granted an Absolute Charter by the New York State Board of Regents on November 15! |
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The May 1988-February 1989 issue noted the availability of both bronze house plaques to identify historic structures in the Town and flag kits. Elsewhere it was noted that the Society’s own Library had been relocated to the (then still fairly new) Sand Lake Town Library at 43 Mall, a move that allowed much greater access to our collection (rather than having to wait for a monthly meeting)! |
The Fall 1994 issue feature was “The Wynantskill Hydro-Electric Co. – as I saw it grow” by D. Robert Hastings (originally copied by Stanley Buck on February 29, 1988, from notes by Mr. Hastings). |
Another article went into detail of Boughton’s involvement in that movement. |
The article also mentioned a number of private schools in the Town through the years. That list included: Select School known as Gregory’s noted to be “nearly opposite E. Renderts” in 1825; Select School at Sliter’s Corners (present hamlet of Sand Lake) noted to be “by Dr. Elmore’s” in 1854; Select School in basement of Second Lutheran Church (on Route 43) in 1854; Sand Lake Academy in Gabler Hotel (Lakeview Hotel) in 1843.
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Issues in 2009 — our 35th year — continued to feature interesting history-related articles. The Winter issue detailed baseball great and “hometown hero” Elroy Face. The Spring issue brought a feature on Cemetery Care, as well as articles on continuing restoration of the old West Sand Lake Fire House, note of a new historical marker on the site of the 1776 “log church,” and information on the rescue and restoration of the cupola from the old West Sand Lake Post Office, as that building and several others made way for the new Rite Aid store (now Walgreens). Looking back through these issues of our newsletter is a trip through all sorts of history…the history of our town and surrounding areas, and those who inhabited the area. It’s also a history of not only those times but the times during which these newsletters were produced. Some may well have been typed on mimeograph stencils and reproduced that way. Fortunately, xerography replaced the mimeograph machine and became not only very popular but quite inexpensive and of increasing reproduction quality starting in the 1970s and 1980s. Later on, computers, word processors, scanners and much better (and cheaper) printers enabled very attractive copy to be produced. Above all, though, we owe much to the efforts of so many over the years who contributed to these, those who typed, cut and pasted (or, ultimately, computer-generated) these, and even those who copied, collated, stapled, addressed and mailed them. And now many of you receive this electronically! The evolution of our newsletter is indeed history itself! -- from Historical Highlights, Volume 40, Number 3, Spring 2014. |
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Created 3/17/2022; last revised
March 17, 2022
-- asm. © 2002-2024 Sand Lake Historical Society; all rights reserved.