It Turns Out Lots Of Presidents Have Otsego County Ties

2-12-10

By JIM KEVLIN


George Washington, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Those names came immediately to mind when Bob Brzozowski, Greater Oneonta Historical Association president, and Tom Heitz, Town of Otsego historian were questioned.
But when they thought about it further, it was surprising the number of presidents and presidents-to-be who have surveyed Oneonta’s hills and Glimmerglass’ limpid waters.

For instance:
• Martin Van Buren, 1837-1841, attended a party at Woodside Hall, Cooperstown, in 1839, hosted by Judge Eben Morehouse, and got lost in the dark garden on his way back to town.  He finally found his way back to the house and was escorted to town.
•  James Garfield, 1881, had roots in Worcester, where you can still see the Route 7 farm operated by his grandfather Solomon and father Thomas.
• Chester Alan Arthur, 1881-1885, who attended the Central New York State Fair at Belmont Circle, Oneonta, in 1889.
• Grover Cleveland, 1885-1889 and 1893-1897, who, while running for president for the first time in 1884, took a train from Elmira to Albany and stopped in Oneonta for 15 minutes.  He didn’t deliver a speech, but shook hands all around, according to Brzozowski.
(Town of Richfield historian Marjorie Walters reports Cleveland was nominated for governor in Richfield Springs, and returned there for his victory celebration.)
• Theodore Roosevelt, 1901-1909.  In the waning days of his presidency, he dedicated the public library in Jordanville, just north of Richfield Springs, which had been endowed by his sister Corrine Roosevelt Robinson.
• William Howard Taft, 1909-1913, and Theodore Roosevelt visited Congressman George Fairchild in Oneonta, spending the night at the Fairchild mansion, now the Masonic Temple at Main and Grand streets.  

One Friday evening, probably in the spring of 1988, Tom Heitz received a call from his boss at the National Baseball Hall of Fame, where he was then librarian.
Young George Bush, the then-vice president’s son, was visiting the next morning.  Tom was assigned to show him around.
Heitz remembers the future president as being very uncommunicative and uninterested, although he spent 40 minutes in the gift shop, where he bought a Texas Rangers cap.
That August, he bought the team.