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museum tells New Scotland's story
"You would be hard pressed
By Bryce Butler
1
NEW SALEM — Anyone who today to go any place where
has read Dennis Sullivan's pam- they would use real brass," said
David D Austin, who designed
phlet on the Bender melon farm
m New Scotland knows the the museum "They would use
- cheap plastic and throw it
Bender melons were a big deal
A hundred years ago the suc- away "
Historical story
culent golden treats, watered,
Austin shared the historical
fertilized, and pampered individually bn their hand-tended vines, ' association's A r t h u r Pound
were shipped to P a n s and, Mex- Award t h i s year with Huck
ico, as well as New York City Spaulding, who donated the
and Saratoga But to really imoney for the museum In an
realize what a big deal they interview this week, Austin
were, you have to go to the New explained the e x h i b i t ' h e had
Scotland Historical Association designed.
"What we tried to do was lead
Museum, to see how they? were
people through, m a clockwise
served
'
What we tried to do was lead people, in a
clockwise rotation through the room, through
the origins of the Helderbergs, then through
geological history, then the early inhabitants,
then trade with the Europeans, then the
patroon system."
— Museum designer David Austin
a
A picture there shows a huge
banquet hall, holding 5,000 men
(a very [few women were in the
balconies)
_^A table in front of the picture
demonstrates the hors d'oeuvre
that stood on those men's plates.
It is a model of a hull-shaped
section of melon. Sticking into t
is a mast, with rigging and sails,
tricking out the piece of melon as
a square-rigged ship
The mast and sails are made
out of brass
More than any reading about
the melons' celebrity, seeing this
real rmetal ornament makes you
realize what sort of world appreciated these products of the
New Scotland soil, and how distant that world is.
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rotation t h r o u g h t h e room,
t h r o u g h t h e origins of the
Helderbergs, then through geological history, then the early inhabitants, then trade with the
Europeans, then the patroon system, it's pretty much a chronological organization of the
space."
The corner devoted to geology, with a mound of rocks in
the center and a geological timeJ
line on the wall, is not j u s t a
Micheneresque attempt at cosmic scope. Fossil rock, laden
with the raw material of paleontology (and also the locks on the
Erie Canal) is a mam export of
New Scotland The famously
fossihferous Helderberg rocks
are p a r t of t h e reason for
Thacher Park
,
For display, the two rooms of
the historical museum are fairly
dark, with objects picked out by
dramatic display lights Both
rooms have tall barriers in the
center, that keep the whole room
from being visible from any one
place
One of the more dramatic displays, for instance, a "calico
Indian" from t h e , Anti-Rent
Wars, cannot be seen from the
entrance "We tried to block the
view, so there would be surprises every time you turned a
corner," Austin said The lighting allowed him to control the
points of visual interest.
"We tried to create something
in every area t h a t would stop
people in their tracks," he said.
The Enterprise— Bryce Butler
Agriculture and induitry: Haifa dozen businesses are represented here. The brown bottle on the
upper right is a Mott prune juice bottle, a legacy of the the Duffy Mott Plant in Voorheesville, which was
better known for its apple products. The row of bottles in the center is from the town's once-thriving dairy
industry. The fiery end of one dairy is the subject of the Knickerbocker News story on the wall to the right.
The Enterprise — Bryce Butler
Classroom of the past: This corner of the New Scotland Historical Society museum recreates a oneroom schoolhouse, complete with an apple in the teacher's hand The Wyman Osterhopit Community
Center on Old New Salem Road, which houses the museum, wa&onceaone room school So was the town
hall, on Route 85 tn the hamlet of New Scotland The pictures on the wall show before and after pictures
of former schoplhouses in New Scotland
I
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"A lot of people are not interested in geology, but if they see
the time line, and see the geological history, and the time frame
we are talking about, t h a t will
spark their interest"
The goal", he said, is to get people thinking ^about things, putting things together. For instance, t h e Helderbergs are
"made of layers of stratified rock,
formed from years of sediment
through early seas.
"If the fossils are formed by
, sediments filtering through an
ocean," Austin said, "you won' der where the sediments came
from. If you are told they came
from the Arcadian Mountains,
- that were all over Western New
'Y<>rk, » d that these formed be; fore -utere* was an Atlantic
s Ctaeafl^ou'have one of those
£**
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You don't just see the rock, old
as it is, but the rock that formed
the rock, and what heaved it up
so it could descend as sediment
The chronology is less clear in
the second room, although the
artifacts are more numerous.
This is partly because Austin and
the committees he worked with
had twq yearsrto design the c first
.room "\SJhen we got to the second roorh, we were up against a
time deadline,- and We didn't
have as jmanvo volunteers)" he
said. $They were unable to
scramble, to make those stories
..succinct, so there isn't a fully-developed script in t h e second
room. We haven't told the story;
that is still in progress. The
* wholetfmuseum project is an ongoing effort. Hopefully we will
get people who are interested in
one area or another to volunteer
their time, or research, 01 event
artifacts, to help fill in t h e gaps
We have "
A rewarding first stepAnyjuld
be a visit to the museum, which
has special summer hours foi
the rest of this month The New Scotland Historical
AssociationMuseum
is in the
Wyman Osterhout
Community
Center, on Old New Salem Roffd
The road goes off Route 85 just
uphill front the New Salem end
of Route 85A During
August,
the museum is open from 10
a.m to hoon Thursdays
and
from 2 to 4 p.m. Sundays It ih1
always open by
appointment
For
information
or
an
appointment, call Ann Eberle,
director of the museum, at 7652071; or Ann Richards, president
of the New Historical Society, at
765-4446.
h