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Edward A. Hagan |
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Edward A. Hagan |
Edward A. Hagan, immediate past editor of the SCHOHARIE COUNTY HISTORICAL REVIEW, honorary and past trustee of the Schoharie County Historical Society and author of several books on local history, died at his home on Cliff Street, Middleburgh, on May 19, 2002. Mr. Hagan edited the REVIEW for 20 years starting with the Spring 1981 issue and concluding with the Spring 2001 issue. He passed away following a year-long illness.
I first came to know Ed not in person but as the author of detailed and well researched local history books. I have long had an interest in railroads and not long after moving to Schoharie County I contemplated researching the history of the Schoharie Valley railroads. I found that Ed had already written the book. Later, when visiting his home, I was able to see the 1:87 scale models he had built and as a former rail modeler I was impressed with the neat construction and detail in his work.
In 1987 and 1988 when assembling Sloughter’s Instant History of Schoharie County for the county Historical Society, I found that Ed had written detailed histories of Schoharie County in both the revolutionary and civil wars. It was about then that I became a subscriber to the HISTORICAL REVIEW and found that Edward A. Hagan of Middleburgh was the editor. I could not have known that, again, he was preceding me, but it was not long before I aspired to succeed him as editor of the REVIEW.
Edward Hagan had a much fuller life than as an author, historian and editor. A Westchester County native, he was a crewman on the destroyer USS John W. Weeks during World War II when the ship was a picket in the Pacific theater. When I asked him how he got into history and writing, he related that, at the close of the war, he had written the ship’s history without the captain’s authorization. Notwithstanding the breech of protocol, the work was accepted, but with a little discipline.
Following the war he attended and was graduated from the Pratt Institute and took a position teaching art at Fleischmanns. Five years later, in 1952, he took Middleburgh Central School’s high school art position, from which he retired in 1983.
In 1948, he married Stasia Ross of Manhattan, in Manhattan. They have three daughters, a son and five grandchildren. Ed’s history books were self published: Pride of the Valley, 1973, Schoharie Valley railroads; War in Schohary 1777-1783, 1980, the revolutionary war; Hot Whiskey for Five, 1985, the civil war; St. Catherine’s Roman Catholic Church Middleburgh N.Y. 30th Anniversary, 1991; and An Alarm of Fire, 1995, the Middleburgh Fire Department.
Ed was a communicant and former lector of St. Catherine’s Church. He served terms as commander of American Legion post 246, vice commander of the Schoharie County American Legion and director of the Esperance Historical Society as well as filling his Schoharie County Historical Society posts. He was also a trustee and president of the Middleburgh Library Association, and was very involved in the library’s Dr. Best house and collection.
With Stasia, he co-chaired the Middleburgh Bicentennial Commission. At one time he wrote a local history column for the former Middleburgh News and, for 15 years, he was advisor to the Middle Fort Yorker history club at Middleburgh Central School.
When the time came to pass the reins of the REVIEW to another person, Ed made sure he gave the Historical Society sufficient notice to find another editor, and told officials he would assist the new editor. After I was selected and he finished his last issue, I spent several hours at his home one evening as he told me what he could and turned over a number of articles. Among the articles was a detailed account of a contemporary local murder which I had submitted in the 1980s. When I submitted it, I suspected it was too explicit for the REVIEW and presumed that Ed would edit the article. I did not then realize that Ed preferred to publish articles as submitted. It was probably on that evening, when he was introducing me to the work of the REVIEW'S editor, that I asked him why he did not edit submitted materials. He replied that there is a “certain charm” in unedited articles. He emphasized to me that the Historical Society’s job description for the position gives the editor the complete authority and control over the publication, and said Society officials and others may try to tell me what to put in the REVIEW but must be ignored.
Not long after the Spring, 2002, issue was published, he asked me to come down for some more materials, and among them was an article which, in the best tradition of high school teachers, he titled “A Book Report.” It was a review of the translation of a rare German book which I had recently purchased on E-Bay, Der Waldpfarrer am Schoharie (The Forest Parson on the Schoharie) by Dr. Friedrich Mayer. The translation was titled Fifty Years in the Wilderness. Ed had not seen Der Waldpfarrer, I had not seen Fifty Years, and we chatted about the book. Later, I called him and said that perhaps, since he had read the translation, it may be more appropriate to identify his article as a review of Fifty Years in the Wilderness, by translator A. W. Reinhard, rather than as a review of Mayer’s Der Waldpfarrer. He told me to do whatever I wish with it and firmly reminded me that I am the editor and should not be influenced by others. Any changes would be fine, he said.
On May 23rd I found it difficult to read the 23rd Psalm at Ed’s funeral. Deciding whether to publish “A Book Report” or to edit it into a book review was very easy.
--L.E.H.
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A Book Report
EDWARD A. HAGAN
Der Waldpfarrer Am Schoharie By Dr. Frederick Mayer
In The Early Palatine Emigration by Walter Allen Knittle, 1936 I found in the bibliography under Special Works, Mayer Frederick [Reinhard, A. W.] Fifty Years in the Wilderness, (Los Angeles, California, 1931), “A work of fiction so realistic and so close to the facts the casual reader may take it for what it purposes to be, a translation of a contemporary diary of Palatine Life in Schoharie Valley.” For years I have tried to obtain the English translation of the book through Rare and Used Book Dealers with no success. Recently some one stopped by and said “Ed I thought you would like to read this.” It was the book I tried so hard to find.
“Fifty Years in the Wilderness” is a translation of the German book Der Waldpfarrer am Schoharie by Dr. Fredrick Mayer. The Young Men’s Christian Association in Germany published it in 1911. For one knowledgeable in Schoharie county History the book is not “so realistic” or “as close to the facts.”John Peter Resig comes as pastor and founder of St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church on the Schoharie. When he arrives, he moves into the Parsonage made of “rows of roughly trimmed logs laid on top of one another in the form of a square; the cracks filled with mortar. “My God this miserable hut certainly does not deserve the dignified name of parsonage.” He moves in and lives here for the next 60 years, and keeps a diary. It is from the newly found diary that the book chapters are supposedly from. The valley is an immense forest when he arrives and he acquires the title Forest Parson. He becomes friends with the Weiser’s, father and son, with the Herkimer’s, father and son and with Sir William Johnson.
According to the diary of Pastor John Peter Resig, Jonathan Schmul (a German Jewish peddler) was the first white man to enter a series of caverns, sometime between 1709 and 1734, which he names Howe Caverns. Here, the peddler lived. According to the diary the caverns played and important part, as refuge, during the Revolutionary War.
The Parsons final act is to build a stone church on the mound next to the cemetery. At the dedication of the church were, General Herkimer, Sir William Johnson and the Weisers.
From the Post Script – “It will shock readers of this book, who have not been informed as to the present state of the historic Stone Church at Schoharie, to be told that what was once the joy and pride of the Forest Parson and his valiant followers, is now reduced to a museum... We ask: If Pastor Resig, the Herkimers and Weisers and the hundreds of German Colonists, who built and worshipped in this sacred edifice, were to rise from the dead and see their beloved Gotteshaus filled with antiquated pots and pans, farm implements and ancient material of war, what would they say? They would stand aghast at the sight, their hearts would fail them. A monument of the fathers to their children, the Forest Parson styled the church, and now this! That under the stress of war the Stone church was temporarily converted into a fort, was undoubtedly necessary. But, after peace was restored, this holy landmark should have reverted back to the status for which it was built and dedicated.”Note: “The Old Stone Church Fortress at Schoharie was erected by the Reformed Protestant High Dutch Church Society as a house of worship during the summer of 1772 under the Pastorate of Rev. Johannes Schuyler.” From the SCHOHARIE COUNTY HISTORICAL REVIEW, Spring Summer 1972.