Notice of 2017 Annual Meeting

THE SCARSDALE HISTORICAL SOCIETY 2017 ANNUAL MEETING

Monday, February 6, 2017 at 7:30 p.m. 
at Randy Guggenheimer’s house
42 Butler Road, Scarsdale, NY

The purpose of the Meeting is to re-elect the following trustees: 

• Class of 2020 – 3 year terms – Seth Kaller, Michael Zeller 

Continuing Trustees are Randy Guggenheimer, Stewart Kagan, Barbara Shay MacDonald and Lucas Meyer

All members are cordially invited to attend the Annual Meeting.
If you have any questions, please contact us at (914) 723-1744

Mourning Lincoln by Martha Hodes

Martha Hodes, a professor of history at N.Y.U. and author of the critically acclaimed Mourning Lincoln (just selected as the winner of the 2016 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize), will be speaking at the Scarsdale Public Library on March 7 at 7 p.m. The book will be available for purchase at the event, and a book signing will follow the presentation. For details click here.

Notice of 2016 Annual Meeting

The Scarsdale Historical Society 2016 Annual Meeting

Monday, February 8th, 7:30pm
Lucas Meyer’s residence
21 Autenreith Road
Scarsdale, NY
 
The purpose of the meeting is to re-elect the following trustees:

• Class of 2019 – 3 year terms – Randy Guggenheimer and Stewart Kagan

All members are cordially invited to attend the Annual Meeting

Scarsdale in 1938

Here’s a detailed map of the Scarsdale area in 1938, courtesy of the United States Geographic Survey. Using this free resource you can download high-resolution maps of almost any area of the United States. The earliest USGS map of Scarsdale (within the “Tarrytown Quadrant”) dates back to 1892.

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Scarsdale Treasures Underground

As we noted in our previous post you can find digital copies of historical treasures relating to Scarsdale at the Digital Public Library of America.

You can also find the real thing—163 year-old hand-drawn maps, Scarsdale's original 1845 New York State census records, and much more—stored away in the basement of the Scarsdale Public Library.

Yesterday we were treated to a tour of the local history room—appropriately named in honor of long-time Scarsdale historian Richard M. Lederer, Jr. We met with library director Elizabeth Bermel, reference librarian Daniel Glauber, and department manager Jennifer Friedman, to explore ways the Scarsdale Historical Society can work with the library to make their treasure-trove available to online.

Detail of an 1851 map showing the mill dam, saw mill and bridge on the Bronx River.

The 1851 map includes a numbered index listing the property owners, acreage and how the land was being used.

Appointment Letter from Daniel D. Tompkins, April 30, 1814

The library has a set of of the four volume 1930 atlas of Westchester County published by G.M. Hopkins Co. The office of the Westchester County Clerk has already scanned their set and you can see it online here.

The 1845 census book contains a wealth of information, listing the names of all property owners and their answers to 48 questions—including where they came from, how much land they owned and even the specific crops they were growing.

Scarsdale Treasures in the Digital Public Library of America

Caleb Heathcote Buys the Richbell Farm by Gordon Samstag

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is an all-digital library that aggregates metadata—meaning information describing an item—and thumbnail images for millions of photographs, manuscripts, books, sounds, moving images, and more from libraries, archives, and museums around the United States. DPLA brings together the riches of America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world.

Here are a few of the items that turn up when you search the word "Scarsdale":

• The 1940 Census Enumeration District Map of Scarsdale from the National Archives.
• Caleb Heathcote Buys the Richbell Farm, a study for the mural at the Scarsdale Post Office at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
• Lewis G. Morris' Catalogue of the Scarsdale Stud, an 1870 catalog for an auction of horses scanned by Cornell University Library for the Biodiversity Heritage Library.