Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford were mobbed on their visit to Yonkers in 1922
By Mary Hoar, City of Yonkers Municipal Historian, recipient of the Key to the City of Yonkers 1977, President Emeritus Yonkers Historical Society, 2004 Key to History recipient, Yonkers Landmarks Preservation Board Member, Founder of Revolutionary Yonkers 250 and President Untermyer Performing Arts Council
Monday, October 19th
October 19, 1942: School Trustee John Class reported at a Yonkers Board of Education meeting he “read something good had come out of Yonkers, something connected with the Board of Education.” New York Sun reported on our training of aircraft workers at Yonkers School of Aeronautical Manufacturing, describing it was “an impressive experiment in the working of practical democracy.” Since the school had opened almost two years earlier, it trained 1,500 aircraft mechanics working all over the country, including on the West Coast. It mentioned 75 women were in the school. When the program ended, most students were women!
Tuesday, October 20th
October 20, 1950: Dr. Francis P. Corrigan, prominent surgeon and political advisor on Latin American affairs to the US Mission to the United Nations, addressed Yonkers Rotary. During his talk, he spoke about our “breath-taking vista of the Hudson and the Jersey shoreline… I suppose you see it so often,” he observed, “you don’t quite realize how beautiful it is.” This was high praise from someone who had traveled to all parts of the globe.
October 20, 1920: Peter McMann, 55 years old and from Elm Street, told Philadelphia police his strange story, and nearly collapsed while speaking to them. He had indications of the torture he believed inflicted by the Ku Klux Klan; “deep red furrows ringed his wrists and neck.” McMann showed where he was tied, scars where he was whipped, and bruises over his body. He reported he was kidnapped by eight masked men in South Carolina. They tried to hang him; the rope was not strong enough. He was blindfolded and put on a train to New York with a stranger who watched him, ensuring he did not leave the train. He believed he was tortured because he helped a South Carolina woman get “her rights in the division of her father’s property;” her father was a bank president.
October 20, 1940: Thousands of wives, children, parents and friends said farewell to 125 Yonkers National Guardsmen when they marched in full war pack from the Armory to the Yonkers train station, Larkin Plaza. The men were on their way to Fort McClellan, Alabama.
Wednesday, October 21st
October 21, 1776: General Benjamin Lincoln joined George Washington at Wahington’s headquarters at Thomas Valentine’s home, Valentine’s Hill. While they were there, a party of American light horse and infantry troops took possession of Philipse Manor Hall.
Today Thomas Valentine’s property is the home of St. Joseph’s Seminary & College, the first college accredited in Yonkers!
October 21, 1941: Because of a growing copper shortage, the Office of Production Management banned manufacturing 108 civilian products, hoping it would create a more stable supply of copper for defense production. This didn’t affect Habirshaw Cable; for months, it didn’t receive copper to make civilian products.
Three non-defense products Habirshaw no longer manufactured were cuspidors, lipstick holders and car heaters.
Thursday, October 22nd
October 22, 1930: Mayor John Fogarty and Board of Education President Leslie Sutherland were principal speakers at the opening of Longfellow Junior High School on North Broadway; thousands toured the building afterwards. Today the school is Barak Obama School for Social Justice.
October 22, 1943: Former Councilman Al Richter, visiting Yonkers for a short time before reporting for training at Fort Schuyler, spoke to the Columbian Squires, the Knights of Columbus youth group Richter organized.
Friday, October 23rd
October 23, 1890: Thomas Ewing Jr. held a reception in his High Street home honoring renowned Civil War military leader—and Ewing’s foster brother– William Tecumseh Sherman. After the death of Sherman family’s father in 1829, the family was broken up. The family of Ohio Senator Thomas Ewing Sr. family took in Sherman. Ewing Sr., who also was the first Secretary of the Interior, obtained a commission to the US Military Academy for Sherman.
Saturday, October 24th
October 24, 1922: Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford joined festivities honoring Yonkers’ own tennis star, Vince Richards! The couple had difficulty making their way through the big crowd by the Elks Clubhouse; everyone wanted to see the famous stars!
But for the excellent work by the First Precinct police officers, the couple would have been swamped!
October 24, 1939: Yonkers Canoe Club paddlers Edward Balko and Richard Straub turned down the reward offered by Anthony Fokker, owner of the 112-foot Art Deco luxury yacht QED. Fokker loaned the vessel to a couple for a honeymoon cruise. While sailing on the Hudson River off Yonkers’s coast, a fast-moving fire broke out; the vessel was destroyed within minutes. Eleven people jumped off and were rescued by the two Yonkers paddlers. Our Yonkers men brushed off the reward, as they felt the rescue was something they should have done.
Saturday, October 25th
October 25, 1930: The War Department announced they would require Yonkers end river obstruction; they told Yonkers to dredge the Hudson River where deposits from the Nepperhan flume had accumulated. They became aware of this because of the Peene Wharf Company’s lawsuit filed against Yonkers, claiming flume deposits did $150,000 damage to its wharf property.
October 25, 1946: Dr. Edward Jones, Yonkers first Black Dentist and graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, was featured in an Ebony magazine spread as an influential resident of Sugar Hill.
Jones had been National Broad-jump champion in the 1910s and still traveled to sports events in the New York area.
Manhattan’s Sugar Hill was home to prominent African Americans such as Dr. DuBois, Roy Wilkins, William Andrews, Canada Lee and William Stanley Braithwaite.
Any questions on this column, email yonkershistory1646@gmail.com.
For information on the Yonkers Historical Society, the Sherwood House Museum on Tuckahoe Road or its upcoming events, please call 914-961-8940, visit website www.yonkershistoricalsociety.org, or email info@yonkershistoricalsociety.org.