An article of interest from the Olean Times Herald online
edition. 4 August 1999
"Angelica Historian's Discovery Uncovers Truth About
Republican's Roots" by John Anderson
BELMONT — Angelica will celebrate its heritage this weekend
with its annual Heritage Days festival, and an item purchased at an auction this
past weekend should provide another reason to celebrate. Angelica Town Historian
Bob Dorsey was nosing through items to be auctioned off at the Burt Funeral Home
last weekend when he found a bound book of old newspapers. And one of the
newspapers may help prove what some in Allegany County have argued for years:
that Angelica is the birthplace of the Republican Party. The Towns of Angelica
and Friendship had documents showing the existence of the GOP in 1854, but
Congress voted and authorized Ripon, Wisc., as the birthplace with documents
showing a party there around 1852. But one of the newspapers, the Angelica
Republican from September of 1831, has an article announcing sending Republican
Party delegates to the county and state senatorial convention. Allegany County
Historian Craig Braack said he believes that at that time, the two major parties
were the Wigs and the Democrat-Republican party. Mr. Braack was contacted by Mr.
Dorsey about the papers, as the cost of preserving them would be too expensive
for the Angelica Library. Mr. Braack then attended the auction, and the bidding
on the papers started at $10. He out-bid a man he didn’t know, and won the old
newspaper collection with a bid of $120. “Here, we have the Republican Party, by
name, in September of 1831 and it’s utterly spectacular,” said Mr. Braack. “I’ll
contact the National Republican Party and see if their historians are interested
in this, if it’s deemed accurate.” As for the papers from Angelica being found
in Angelica, a town with the motto “where history lives,” Mr. Braack said, “This
is why Angelica is the gem in Allegany County’s crown. There are marvelous
things there and it comes at a perfect time to push Heritage Days.” Mr. Braack’s
first order of business will be exhausting his historian’s budget to preserve
the papers and get them put onto microfilm. “The bad news is papers from the
mid- to late 1800s have a higher acid content than the rag weave content of the
Civil War-era papers which could survive hundreds of years,” Mr. Braack said.
“Ninety percent of the books in our library are ticking time bombs waiting to
disintegrate and it scares all of us in the field. Some of the old newspapers .
. . you touch them, they disintegrate.” Mr. Braack said he’s contacted the state
library in Albany and the papers will be taken to a conservator, a person
trained to handle archival materials, and each paper will be unbound, making it
easier for microfilming. They will then be sprayed and put in capsules for the
public and schools to view them.
The old newspaper collection was put
together by Angelica Republican Editor LaMont G. Raymond on July 1, 1898, who
wrote that he wanted them to stay in the area. Mr. Braack said there are 50 or
60 separate newspapers from Angelica, Nunda, Pike and Wellsville. Today, Oramel
is a small town outside of Belfast with a fire department and a diner, but an
1855 paper shows what a booming town it once was. “There is a magnificent 1855
Oramel paper, which was a weekly paper published in Oramel,” said Mr. Braack.
“That was a gem, and that was a major stop on the canal because Oramel was a
one-third of the way between Rochester and Olean ... it was a big place” back
then. The oldest paper is an 1806 Hartford (Conn.) Courant, and Mr. Braack says
“the only thing I can imagine, is when somebody had made up their mind to
migrate from Hartford to Angelica, they brought that last issue as a keep sake,
which is why it survived in the album. “In terms of history, they are
spectacular. There are marriages and deaths otherwise you would have no idea
about whatsoever because there wasn’t a state law for licenses until 1890,” Mr.
Braack said. “Socially, I can learn about businesses, postmasters, shops, wagon
makers, every type of business we have no record of. You didn’t need a permit to
open a business, you simply opened up your shingles and hung a sign.” Thumbing
through the papers and finding more information each page, Mr. Braack said “This
was the best $120 I spent for the county in a long, long, long time. A
spectacular purchase.”
Russell V. Combs Jr.
Ph.D. Program
Dept of
History
SUNY-Albany