Fossil Collection, Gift to Museum, Goes on Display
SCHOHARIE, June 19, 1936—An outstanding fossil display including the first formations ever to have been taken from Howe Caverns, have come to Schoharie for display at the Old Stone Fort Museum on North Main Street for inspection by the thousands from every state of the Union who annually visit this historic shrine.
The collection is the gift to the museum by Mrs. M. J. Miller of Baltimore, Md., a great granddaughter of Lester Howe, who discovered the caverns in May 1842.
The formations were taken from the caverns in several successive years, during which they were exploited and conditioned by Howe, who made a private collection, which has remained in the Howe family until this time.
Mrs. Miller is one of the last survivors of the Howe clan.
Among the outstanding specimens of the collection, placed in charge of Chauncy Rickard, curator of the museum, are the fossil remains of a Trilobite, the creature in which the first eye was said to have been developed and which existed in the ancient Silurian sea.
Included also are beautiful specimens of calcite crystal formed of countless transparent pyramids and regarded as being 150 million years old.
—From the June 20, 1936, Schenectady Gazette, likely submitted by Chauncy Rickard, curator of the Stone Fort Museum.
WHAT’S ON DISPLAY AT THE FORT
The display case containing the Howe exhibit is in the northeastern corner of the second floor of the Stone Fort Museum. It contains the calcium carbonate “brain” coral shown here, a few cave formations and invitations to two events at the cave.
The first, headlined “Schoharie Cave Party,” invites a gentleman and lady guest to a New Year’s Day, 1845 “Cotilion Party” at Lester Howe’s Assembly Room, starting at 2 p.m. Cotilions are typically a southern affair meant to introduce young ladies to both society and eligible young men. Howe’s daughters, Huldah and Harriet, were pre-teens in 1845, so perhaps the word was used differently in that era.
The invitation begins with an odd quote: “Live while we live the managers say and sport the pleasures of the present day.” Fourteen “managers”—all of them local men—are listed.
In the 19th Century, most entertaining was done at home. An “Assembly Room” in a home was the gathering place for members of the higher social classes, and open to both men and women.
The second invitation is to a “House Warming (sic),” to be held Thursday, Sept. 5, 1849, at the Cave House. Other than noting “Good music will be furnished,” there are few other details. History records Howe as a violinist; his daughters played the piano.
This may have been to show to visitors the second Cave House. The first was destroyed by fire in 1847.
THE PROVENANCE: Following Lester Howe’s death in 1888, the collection was first held by the Howes’ son, Dr. Halsey John Howe, a dentist practicing in Dunkirk in western New York. It was displayed in a local library for several years, according to the Stone Fort’s records. Halsey and his wife were childless, and the collection then went to one of the Howes’ grandchildren.
The description in the display case does not match what was written for the newspaper by Curator Rickard. The exhibit notes Frances Miller of Chevy Chase, Md., donated the collection given her by Dr. Howe to the fort in 1936. Miller was the daughter of Harriet Elgiva Howe Shipman.