A Glimpse Into “side-tangent” Research

A Glimpse Into “side-tangent” Research: with David

   To be fair and honest, most of the best nuggets of research come up unexpectedly.  “This isn’t the findings you’re looking for” moments can lead to side tangents that produce a value in research; provided you can still manage to accomplish the original goal.

   While looking for updates on nyshistoricnewspapers.org related to canal drownings (exciting you may think!), the article to the right caught an eye, as the headline intended. It is an intriguing glimpse into the latter 19th century revivalism occurring in America, particularly the northeast.

From: The Johnstown Daily Republican, April 22^nd, 1895

  So a pivot occurred.  While there wasn’t anything coming up on a quick search of the usual portals to knowledge, it will ultimately lead to a deeper dive. Here is the “quick and dirty” that has been unwound from the article:

   G.G. Firth had a small store, labeled as a “groc.” on the 1890 Sanborn Map just off the canal (corner of Washington and Franklin – a building still stands there that was presumably his).  On reaching out to Kelly Farquhar, the Montgomery County NY Historian, she shed light on George Firth being “listed as a Hotel Keeper in the 1880 census and one of his neighbors is Abram(?) Yates.  Going back to the 1905 map I was able to make out an ‘A. Yates’ nearby the hotel that used to sit on the corner of Erie Street across from the Donaldson Block – this is the hotel that burned a few years ago. It used to be called more recently the Hotel Arthur and way back when it was also known as the Hotel    Perkins… there was a bar in that hotel as well so it is possible that this was the location of Firth’s saloon.” 

   W.E. or William Edgar Geil mentioned in the Johnstown Daily Republican article,   happens to have a more information available and what a wild interesting ride that was.

   Synopsis: Geil, was only about 19 or 20 when that incident occurred, having never actually finished college, he became very well known as a revivalist evangelical orator. While from Bucks County, PA—he spent a lot of time in the Mohawk Valley with revival meetings from 1895-1899 (Herkimer, West Troy, Schenectady, Fultonville, Johnstown, etc). Often preaching to upwards of 1,200 people. Eventually he ended up back in PA married to an oil millionaire’s daughter and they traveled... a lot. He traveled even more solo and is an “unknown now” explorer who lived with head-hunters, pygmies, and walked the entire Great Wall of China (reportedly the first American to do so). After   another trip to the Holy Land, he died in Italy of the flu in 1925. His wife, Constance  Lucy Emerson Geil, passed in 1959 and had kept all of his   travel journals and photos. 

   Additionally, it has been uncovered that his father Samuel Geil was a surveyor and cartographer who had come up from PA to do mapping on the Enlarged Erie Canal c. 1852-53 – mapping the Ft. Hunter area of Montgomery County.

   More research is expected to be done over the winter and presented in an article on evangelical revivalism and the Erie Canal sometime in 2024.

  

Editors note: This article first appeared in the Winter 2024 Newsletter to the Friends of Schoharie Crossing, released Jan. 2024. 

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