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HomeMy WebLinkAboutSeptember 2016 news Sue Thompson NL Article Enfield Town web site information on page 4 take off use the article below. Planning Board Member changes: Take off - Calvin Rothermich Henry Hansteen should be listed as Town Board Liaison Enfield Town Web Site – www.townofenfield.org Just a reminder if you are holding a public event please send me the information and I can place it on the web site. (susan-thompson@townofenfield.org). Minutes from the meetings of the Town Board, Wind Advisory Committee, and Planning Board are placed on the website. Don’t forget to sign up to receive the “posting” notices from our website. If you don’t have ready access to a computer and want to know about our town meetings you can give the Town Clerk’s office a phone call 607-273-8256 or stop in to visit at 168 Enfield Main Road. Enfield Town Historian – Sue Thompson (Historian@townofenfield.org) A dedication ceremony will be held September 28 at TC3 in Dryden for four monuments representing civil war nurses, one will be honoring Enfield’s Sarah Graham Palmer “Aunt Becky”. I will have a display of Sarah’s life at the Enfield Harvest Festival in October. The Municipal Historians of Tompkins County are updating the towns touring brochures. Enfield’s brochure is done except for adding a few pictures. They hopefully will be published by January 2017. These are for the 200th anniversary of Tompkins County (April 7, 1817, by act of the New York State Legislature, the counties of Seneca and Cayuga were divided, and Tompkins County was formed). Enfield will be celebrating their 200th anniversary in 2021 (est. March 16, 1821) how would you like to celebrate the town? I recently discovered that familysearch.org has added New York State marriage records for Tompkins County on their website. "New York, County Marriages, 1847-1848; 1908-1936." This is a free genealogy website. It was exciting to discover this, try it out! If you need help in any of your genealogy endeavors let me know I would be glad to help out. Reading Sarah’s Diary “The Story of Aunt Becky’s Army-Life” by S.A. Palmer. 1867 Sue Thompson, Enfield Town Historian Sarah Graham Palmer Young “Aunt Becky” was born in Enfield on August 1830 her parents were James and Ann Graham. In 1862 two of her brothers, Theodore and John answered the call for volunteers during the U.S. Civil War. The brothers asked Sarah to accompany them into the field to care for them. Sarah left Ithaca September 3, 1862 in company with one of the 109th regiment soldiers, who had returned with the body of a comrade, killed by the cars (trains) while on guard along the railroad, Laurel Station, Maryland. She arrived in Baltimore, Maryland on the 4th and then moved on to her destination, Bladensburg, Maryland. She found work at the make shift hospital there. After three weeks of hospital work she dealt with an attack of pleurisy which kept her from duty for a few days. She speaks of the many days of eating, bread, potatoes, pork, beans, beef, rice, tea, and coffee to eating very little or nothing at all. She talked about the cooks – Stilman, West, Quick and Georgie (Enfield sent three men from the Quick family Henry, James and John Henry). In January 1863 her “hospital” was ordered to move to Laurel, Maryland. “Our hospital consisted of an old store and two-story dwelling house.” This site in Laurel and Sarah are honored with a Historical Marker www.hmdb.org/marker.asp?marker=78931). She was also moved to Falls Church Virginia and Mason Island Hospital. (She was invited to a “molasses lick” at one of the doctor’s homes. They never got to the “licking” point because it was midnight and they needed to return back to the hospital. I believe this “licking” was in reference to “all cookies, etc. made with molasses”. She was visited by Miss Dix, to discuss the workings of the hospital several times during her work as a nurse. (We will assume this was Dorothea Dix, who served as a Superintendent of Army Nurses during the Civil War.) She also wrote about her visit to Surgeon Dalton in Washington. While there she was told it was the home that President Washington once lived and where the “cherry tree” was that he chopped down as a child. [Note: This story of the cherry tree was invented by Parson Mason Locke Weems one of Washington’s first biographers in 1806 and never occurred]. Sarah lost her traveling truck with all her clothes during one of the many moves. She talked about her dresses she had to make from “bed ticking” material. Sarah has many “adventures” during this time of her life and I encourage you to read her diary which can still be purchased from many books stores.