Print Collection

The Stillwater Club was founded by a group of men from Canton, New York on May 13, 1893, as a hunting and canoeing club; from its first days, the club showed an interest in conservation as a way to preserve its deer herds for future hunters and its trout for future fishermen.

The notebooks contain such items as membership lists, payments for lodging at the club, lists of deer taken, club by-laws, and financial reports. The photographs are of members with the deer they shot, wildlife, guides, caretakers and cooks. Also included is a map of club lands.

The “Oh You! Scraggy Club” was apparently a hunting club active in the southern-central part of Nova Scotia around 1910. The club was apparently located in the Loon Pond-Scraggy Lake area.

None of the people in the photos are identified but five of the three-dimensional images have some writing on the back. The collection also includes a viewer for the images called a Holmes stereoscope.

The Stage Door Canteen was started by the American Theatre Wing in 1942 and ended in 1946. Its location was the basement of the 44th Street Theater in New York City. Caterers and local merchants provided food and beverages while performers entertained the crowd. There were about 1,700 performers and service staff members who were in charge of keeping the Canteen in operation even during black-outs and curfews. About 3,000 to 4,000 servicemen from all over came to the Canteen to sing, dance, eat and drink before they went off to war.

The St. Lawrence Figure Skating Club was established May 5, 1953 and has its headquarters at Appleton Arena, St. Lawrence University, Canton, NY. The purpose of the club is to encourage instruction, practice and advancement of the members in school figures, free skating, dancing, and all types of figure skating. The St. Lawrence Figure Skating Club is affiliated with the United States Figure Skating Association.

The collection is organized alphabetically by town. The collection was given to St. Lawrence University by Mary Smallman.

This collection contains letters, maps deeds and other documents describing land speculation, purchases and other transactions in parts of St. Lawrence County prior to 1815.

St. Lawrence County is the largest county in New York State and has the longest frontage on the St. Lawrence River. St. Lawrence County is bordered on the north by the St. Lawrence River, the south by Lewis, Herkimer and Hamilton Counties, on the east by Franklin County and on the west by Jefferson County. The county has approximately 47 towns and villages and 1 city with the county seat in Canton.

Henry (Harry) and John Bannister were born in Conway, Massachusetts, and moved to St. Lawrence County with their mother Mary Nash after the death of his father. Mary married Asa Conkey and went on to have 4 children including Theodore and Charles Nash Conkey.

Theodore Conkey moved to Fond du Lac, Wisconsin where he raised a group of volunteers that were incorporated into the 3rd Wisconsin Volunteer Cavalry Regiment, Company I.

While the St. Lawrence Seaway project is considered one of the great engineering feats of the 20th century and resulted in easy movement of cargo from the Atlantic Ocean to the heart of the continent, it is generally accepted that the waterway was under-sized from its beginning in 1958. By the 1970's, some policy makers and industry representatives lobbied to expand the Seaway. Lengthening the navigation season from 8 ½ months to roughly 11 months was seen as one way to move more goods on the “lower” portion of the Seaway between Montreal and Lake Ontario.

The Southworth family in St. Lawrence County goes back to Rev. Constant Southworth, minister at Brick Chapel, Canton, who came from Vermont in 1820. In 1836 the family returned to Vermont but Egbert Henry Southworth, a young boy, remained with the Leonard family. He had various jobs throughout his life; a merchant selling from a cart between Plattsburg and Utica, a clerk for Ebenezer Miner in Canton, a sawmill operator, as well as jobs in the butter and cheese industry, before he turned to farming. He was known as a progressive farmer by building modern barns and using modern methods.