Libertas Yearbook for 1964

Continuing our offerings of high school yearbooks from Liberty, Sullivan County, New York, we’re happy to present the Libertas yearbook for 1964.

High school yearbooks are one form of history that records everyone when they graduate from high school.  They, and their community, are frozen at a point in time that the yearbook captures and keeps.  Haircuts, clothes, friends, teachers – they are all captured as they were, not as we choose to remember them or tell our children they were back in the good old days.  The class pictured in this yearbook – their yearbook, the Libertas yearbook for 1964 – was born just after World War II ended, and had come of age at a time when Liberty, as one of the hubs of the “Borscht Circuit”, was near its peak (although few, if anyone, in this class at the time of their graduation, had any inkling that things in their home town were not going to get better and better.)

For a few things did get better. We like to track the career of Alan Gerry, the Liberty entrepreneur who built the Cablevision empire and who was the foundation of the arts center in Bethel commemorating the Woodstock festival (as well as many other good works throughout Sullivan County) from year to year.  In 1964 his business is “Alan Gerry’s TV & Appliance Co.” while it had been “Store” in the previous year’s Libertas.  Was he thinking bigger?  In the photo in the ad, a young man with a crew cut is holding a 12 string guitar – a bit of disruptive technology in the music world, and not something one would have seen in Liberty two years earlier.  Who knew?  Would these well-scrubbed Liberty kids eventually would be in enthusiastic attendance at that Woodstock festival Gerry subsequently memorialized?

In Asia, while this class was receiving their diplomas in Liberty, things were ramping up.  Although it would be nearly a year before conventional US forces were deployed in Vietnam, the Special Forces and Military Advisors were already at work when this class graduated.  Still, few in this class had focused on that part of the world.

In terms of real change in Liberty, perhaps most important was that this class was the first to graduate from the new Liberty Central School on upper Buckley Street.  They kicked the envelope by choosing white and yellow for their class colors, and created a yearbook that would stick out like a sore thumb in a stack of Libertas of previous years that tended to run to maroon and silver for their color schemes.

Bob Dylan’s second album, The Times They Are A Changing, had been out for a bit over two months when this class walked down the aisle for the first-ever graduation in the Buckley Street building.  Yes, the times were indeed changing, but in ways that few if any realized.

To go directly to our Liberty, NY page, where, if you are so inclined, you can buy and download the Libertas yearbook for 1964, simply CLICK HERE.

A full catalog of our offerings can be found at http://www.betweenthelakes.com.  We invite you to visit us there as well.

Libertas yearbook for 1964

 

Libertas yearbook for 1963

The Libertas yearbook for 1963, from Liberty Central School, in Liberty, Sullivan County, New York, is another in the series we have been publishing from that school.   Of course, it’s not “just” a high school yearbook, it is also an item of New York State history, and now it is once again available.

High school yearbooks are one form of history that records everyone when they graduate from high school.  They, and their community, are frozen at a point in time that the yearbook captures and keeps.  Haircuts, clothes, friends, teachers – they are all captured as they were, not as we choose to remember them or tell our children they were back in the good old days.  The class pictured in this yearbook – their yearbook – was born at the end of World War II, and had come of age at a time when Liberty, as one of the hubs of the “Borscht Circuit”, was near its peak (although few, if anyone, in this class had any inkling that things in their home town were not going to get better and better.)

For some it did get better, and quite a bit better at that!  As an example, Alan Gerry, the Liberty entrepreneur who built the Cablevision empire and who was the foundation of the arts center in Bethel commemorating the Woodstock festival (as well as many other good works throughout Sullivan County), is mentioned in these pages as “Alan Gerry’s TV & Appliance Store” among the advertisers.  Who knew?  And how many of these well-scrubbed Liberty kids eventually would be in enthusiastic attendance at that very Woodstock festival, for that matter?

In Asia, while this class was receiving their diplomas in Liberty, the United States was beginning to get seriously involved in what became the Vietnam war – but who in this graduating class realized that this war and its social manifestations on the home front would shape the nation for the next half century and more?  Who had any sense that the shiny new high school currently under construction on upper Buckley Street would be graduating seniors who looked far different from this class in not so many years, and that Grossinger’s would be gone, along with most of the resort industry and most of the tax base that financed Liberty Central School in 1964?

Yes, there is emphatically some history in this yearbook, the Libertas yearbook for 1963 – and particularly in this one yearbook in the long series of Libertas.  We think it is emphatically to the credit of the editors of this yearbook that they seized upon the fact that this was the 50th graduating class from Liberty High School (at this time, Liberty Central School) and projected the sense of history that this anniversary merited, if for that reason alone.

Please CLICK HERE if you would like to see our offerings from Liberty, New York, which now include the Libertas yearbook for 1963.

A full catalog of our offerings can be found at our main website, http://www.betweenthelakes.com.  We invite you to visit us there.

Libertas yearbook for 1963

Laurel Wreath for 1957

Here’s another yearbook to add to your collection:  the Laurel Wreath for 1957, from Lancaster Mennonite School in Lancaster, PA.  You can find it on our Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, page — just CLICK HERE.

One of our objectives at Between the Lakes Group is to provide varity in our republishing activities.  It’s our hope that by doing so we will encourage curiosity and historical investigation.  This yearbook is an example of our efforts in this direction.

While most people who purchase our yearbooks are either looking for relatives or remembering their own times in high school, this yearbook, as well as addressing those needs, will hopefully provide a window into Mennonite culture – one aspect of what is popularly called “Pennsylvania Dutch” – in Pennsylvania.  From our knowledge of this cultural and religious group we were a bit surprised to find that high school yearbooks were even issued!  Perhaps it comes as a surprise to you, too.

There are obvious differences between this 1957 yearbook and other yearbooks we’ve published of this vintage, and the most obvious is the pervasiveness of religion in what appear to be all aspects of school life.  For a religious school, that is likely not a surprise.  The fact that the entire yearbook is black and white – even the cover – seems, on consideration, predictable.  The senior photos, characterized by short hair for both boys and girls, modest attire (some girls wear head covering), are striking by comparison with those of other schools.  The limited range of activities – the preponderance associated with religion, and the lack of sports teams, are both notable.  It is a boarding school!  And this is the only yearbook we have ever republished that was actually indexed!

This is a document of a fascinating cultural and religious community.  We hope the Laurel Wreath for 1957 helps readers to understand it better.

Laurel Wreath for 1957

 

Erie County NY material

We’re happy to bring you some Erie County NY material.  While it was originally provided on our Erie County Directory CD-ROM, which, along with all the rest of our CDs, was discontinued, it has been unavailable long enough to qualify as “new” we think.

Without further ado, here is the “new” Erie County NY material:

The Saga yearbook for 1957 from Clarence High School in Clarence, New York.

The Gateway yearbook for 1954 for the Frontier Central School in Hamburg, New York.

The Erie County Directory for 1924.  Note that this is real Erie County NY material, not Buffalo material and not Tonawanda material (neither of those cities are included in this directory.  It appears they were published as separate directories shortly after this Erie County directory was published.

Some picture of antique postcards of Erie County and Buffalo.  We had included these times from our collection on the CD-ROM, and we hated to see them go to waste.  (You’ll see one of them below)

At any rate, all this Erie County NY material is available at a significant savings over what we charged for the CD-ROM, and you get to pay for only what you want, not everything we previously included in the CD.

Take a look at our Erie County page in any event.  We now have a fair amount of material that may be of interest if Erie County history is of interest to you.

Also, why not take a look at our catalog!

Erie County NY material

Middletown CT Downloads

We’ve got some Middletown CT downloads available for you!

Several years ago, we collected a quantity of Middletown, CT material and published it on a CD-ROM, called, somewhat predictably, the

Middletown, CT

When we decided that times and technology had provided better alternatives than CDs for distributing our material, we took this one out of the catalog along with the others.  Now, The Middletown Collection has made its way to the head of the queue as “Middletown CT Downloads” and we are pleased to bring you four new items.

Here’s what is now available:

–The Middletown Real Property List, tabulated by street, for 1931.  Want to see exactly where someone lived in 1931 and what their property was valued at?  Want to see who lived in a particular location in that year?  You can do it with this download.

–The 1947 Cauldron yearbook from Middletown, CT, High School, including the supplement that filled in the blanks representing the time between when the yearbook was published during the school year and graduation.  The supplement, by the way, is very hard to find today — not surprisingly — but it is included in the download.

The Connecticut Quarterly was an elegant magazine about all kinds of Connecticut topics that began in the closing years of the 19th century.  One of the earlier communities that received feature article treatment was Middletown!  Lovely photos and quite a bit of history here too.

Middletown Ephemera.  One thing we miss about the CD-ROMs was the ability to include random material that certainly didn’t justify a CD of its own, and was even a little weak to make a separate download.  However, when we collected the ephemera from this CD, it represented a nice package, and some may find material in it that is of use to them.  One item here is the relevant Middletown listings for one of the annual Connecticut Registers.  Another is a collection of postcards of Middletown and particularly of the fraternity houses at Wesleyan.  A Chamber of Commerce brochure is here, as is the program for the Middletown tercentenary.

Unlike the old days, when you had to buy a CD-ROM with everything on it even if you just wanted one of these items, now you can pick and choose — and probably save yourself a few dollars in the process.

Why not have a look?  Take a look at our overall catalog as well.  Who knows what might be there for you?

The Wesleyan Gymnasium, back in the day

 

New Rhode Island Downloads

We have four new Rhode Island downloads now available.

Previously included on the discontinued CD-ROM covering Warwick, RI and points south, the four new Rhode Island downloads are now available individually at a considerable savings.

Here are the four:

Minutes of the Rhode Island Congregational Conference

Chronicle yearbook of West Warwick High school for 1930 and for 1932

Westerly High School yearbook for 1934

These downloads are all in PDF format, permitting you all the latitude you get with this format, and none of the roadblocks many downloaded books, whether free or paid, put up in the way of the user.  You can print individual pages, copy selections, and save the file wherever works best for you.

At any rate, this now completes the conversion of this CD-ROM to individual downloads, so we can begin to add new Rhode Island materials to the catalog.

While the links above will take you to the former contents of the CD-ROM, you may also want to take a look at our main Rhode Island page, and at our overall catalog.

Thanks for your interest!

One of the new Rhode Island downloads

PHOIS yearbook from Poughkeepsie High School for 1934

We’re delighted to bring you the PHOIS yearbook from Poughkeepsie High School for 1934!  This New York State high school was very dependable in titling their yearbooks:  “Phois” it was — and this was volume 26 of the series!

We were interested in two particular items about this yearbook — and we’ve seen a whole lot of yearbooks over the years (our “Yearbooks” page on our main website will give testimony to that!)  — first of all, the editors produced nice pen and ink drawings of what Poughkeepsie might have looked like in the past, and also what they felt it might look like in the future.  Can we simply say that their estimate of what Poughkeepsie might look like in the future was a tad optimistic?

The other was resolution of a question that had been on our minds for a long time:  during the Great Depression, did ordinary people realize that they were involved in something other than a minor business cycle fluctuation?  This yearbook answered that question for us.  In an ad for a secretarial school in the PHOIS yearbook from Poughkeepsie High School for 1934 appeared a line noting that this school was successful in placing graduates in good jobs “even in this depression.”  So the answer to our question is “yes”.

We also wanted to note that this was the first project our new intern, Gabby Gladding, was involved in.  She did a very capable job on the scanner, and, proving both that she’s a talented intern but also that she brings something else to the game, she identified and solved a problem we had been having with a strong outside light source affecting the scan quality.

If you’d like to consider buying the download of the PHOIS yearbook from Poughkeepsie High School for 1934, please CLICK HERE to go to the Dutchess County, NY page of our website.

PHOIS yearbook from Poughkeepsie High School for 1934

 

 

Libertas for 1967

We’re delighted to bring you yet another yearbook from Liberty Central School in Liberty, New York — the Libertas for 1967.

Libertas for 1967
Libertas yearbook of Liberty Central School, Liberty, NY for 1967

If you know the area — Sullivan County, NY, the Borscht Circuit, the Catskills — you can juxtapose the year and the fate that befell the area after the resort industry declined and virtually vanished.  The fact that Sullivan County is now in a rapid upswing doesn’t diminish the depths to which it was to sink in the latter half of the 20th century.

Yet it’s obvious from the happy faces of this crop of graduates that none of this was even remotely on their radar at the time they graduated.  Yes, the Vietnam War was ramping up; yes, there were troubles brewing, but this class looks as happy as we have seen a graduating class look.

At any rate, the yearbook is now available for download from our website.  Please take a look.  You can find it on our “Liberty page” — or http://www.betweenthelakes.com/NY/sullivan/liberty/liberty.htm

While you’re there, take a few minutes to look around!  There’s lots more to see in addition to the Libertas for 1967!

Genesee County, NY

Genesee County, NY has been one of our favorites for a long time.  Long-time customers will recall that we issued a CD-ROM called the “Genesee County Collection” some years ago.  Even before that, we enjoyed collaborating with some of the folks in the Genesee County Genealogical Society when we republished an important book about the history of Western New York State.

Well, when we made the difficult decision to leave the CD-ROM business (today it’s really old technology) and take advantage of the ability to deliver files instantly via the internet, we had a lot of content on CDs that we needed to make available.  Genesee County, NY, for some of the reasons listed above, was one of the earlier CDs we began converting.

So far, we’ve made two pieces of the CD-ROM available as downloads.  Here they are:

  • The O-AT-KAN yearbook from 1953 at LeRoy Central School
  • The Genesee County chapter from French’s Gazetteer of the State of New York (1860)

Take a moment to glance as our Genesee County page on our main website for these two, and for other Genesee County material we have available as downloads.  And check back soon, because we’ll be making more material from the CD-ROM available as downloads very soon.

Thanks!

 

Replacing our CDs

Minisink and Port Jervis replacing our CDs

Replacing our CDs has shown up a benefit we hadn’t really anticipated.

Here’s what happens.  As our customers know, our CDs usually contained more than one item.  However, we tended to title the CD with the name of the most important (our call) item on the CD.

However, when we replace our CDs with downloads, each publication on the CD becomes a product unto itself.  In that way, it gets its own listing in our catalog and on the various geographic and special interest pages of our website.

Here’s an example.  Recently we retired our CD-ROM about the History of the Minisink Region of New York State (and Pennsylvania, and New Jersey).  The featured component of that CD was Stickney’s 1867 History of the Minisink Region.   However, there were two other publications on that CD:  Twin River Valley, the 1834 yearbook of Port Jervis High school, and a particularly scarce 1922 Directory of Port Jervis  (which included neighboring locations).

The CD never sold as well as we thought it would; we suspect the reason was that if people already had access to the Stickney book, they went no further and never discovered the Port Jervis Directory or the Port Jervis High School yearbook on the same CD.

Well, now that we’re reissued the three as individual downloads, we think more people will be seeing these additional publications — that were actually there all along.

Do you want to take a look at any of these?

Here’s how to find them:

Stickney’s History of the Minisink — click HERE

Twin River Valley, the Port Jervis High School yearbook — click HERE

That elusive 1922 Port Jervis Directory — click HERE

Of course, our main catalog is HERE, so why not have a look at it, too?

Bottom line:  we think that replacing our CDs will help you find things you never suspected we had just as much as it helps us streamline our processes and deliver quality content to you faster and more economically.

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