by John

PETERBORO, NY

Details: Published: Tuesday, October 25, 2022 10:41; by John Campbell; Hits: 664

Peterboro is a small town between Utica and Syracuse New York. l was born and grew up there and was aware of some of the history that the town was known for. We learned the estate that was across the main street from the village green had been owned by Garret Smith who had been a famous abolitionist. After moving away and finally ending up in West Virginia for the last 45 years I have returned each year to see my parents until their deaths and then my sister that still lives in Rome, NY which is about 30 miles from Peterboro. Each year now my sister and I visit our parents' graves in Peterboro and this year we learned that there was going to be a ceremony and induction into the Abolition Hall of Fame in Oct. We also learned that the Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum were housed in the building we had gone to school in for our first 5 grades. It was a National Historical site as was the Garret Smith estate. Peterboro was on the map and its history of being part of the Underground Railroad was being recognized. I wrote a blog about abolition when I returned home from this trip but have now just returned again from another trip to observe some of the ceremonies around the induction of 3 abolitionists into the Hall of Fame. I had time to renew some older friendships with the people that were aiding and working to make this ceremony a success and others that were working hard to restore the membership in the small Church across the street.

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DIVIDE OR UNITE BY PRESIDENT

Details: Published: Sunday, September 04, 2022 07:31; by John Campbell; Hits: 1232

I grew up starting with FDR and then HST. My first recollection of presidential discussion was between Ike and Taft. The next big debates were between JFK and Nixon. These and most of the following were about their respective thoughts about helping the American people have better and more prosperous lives and foreign affairs. I never heard any of them call their opponent names that depicted anything other than Americans. So, you can see that I was appalled when I heard our present president call me a threat to democracy because I voted for his rival. Our president told half of the American electorate that they were fascists and threatened American life as we know it. l am sure that he only read the teleprompter and did not make up those words because I really do not believe he knows where he is most of the time but any way his utterances were abhorrent and not a speech that any American should be orating.

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COLLEGE LOANS/ FORGIVING

Details: Published: Tuesday, August 30, 2022 16:16; by John Campbell; Hits: 801

In 1955, I started college at Syracuse University and paid $400. tuition for the first semester. Board and room was about $350. and I had worked all Summer at a canning factory for $.85 an hour to cover the board and room with some left over for books. My parents had extended their mortgage to pay the tuition. After the first year it was evident that neither my parents or I could make enough money to return so I got a job at GE. After being laid off I tried to sell cars but with one of the worse recessions ever that endeavor did not make out very good and I decided to return to school at the State University of New York at Morrisville, NY. It was a 2-year school but offered a med tech course which would allow me to continue in chemistry. The tuition was free at state universities in New York at that time and living at home I only, had to pay some fees and buy books. After 2 years I went to work for Allied Chemical as a chemical technician but quit after 6 months due to the long commute and went to work at our local hospital as a med tech doing the blood chemistries and helping the other technicians where needed. I started going to night school at Syracuse University and completed about 9 hours a year or as much as I could save enough money for. Leaving the hospital a few years later I went to work for Bristol Laboratories in Syracuse as a chemical technician. I continued to go to SU and take the required courses for a BA degree in chemistry. This took a few years since it was getting more expensive as the years rolled by. Bristol did refund half of my tuition after completing a course which helped but at the time, I was raising a family and it was still expensive. I finally graduated with my degree and by that time I had been promoted to a management position.

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WHERE'S THE SHERIFF

Details: Published: Sunday, August 07, 2022 13:34; by John Campbell; Hits: 1318

My wife and I went to dinner the other evening and ran into an old friend that had retired from law enforcement about a year ago. I asked him if he had retired at the right time, and he readily agreed. We talked about retirement and our golf games, and the conversation turned to what is happening to the police forces in our community. He said that the city and county were both down, severely, in the number of officers on their respective forces and that there was little reaction to recruitment efforts. Young men and women were not interested in becoming police officers.

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ABOLITION NOW & THEN

Details: Published: Saturday, August 06, 2022 11:35; by John Campbell; Hits: 1245

I grew up in a small town in central New York named Peterboro. The town consists of one square block with a village green on one street. There were and still are less than 200 people living there and it is still a small quiet bedroom community. While growing up there the surrounding area was small dairy farms which have mostly disappeared now. Many of the farms have been combined into large corporate farms and you can still see fields of corn and oats and barley. The history of this little town is large though since it was a center for the Underground Railroad before the Civil War. Garret Smith housed runaway slaves on the third floor of his mansion until he could provide travel to Canada. Any slave caught as a runaway had to be returned to their owner according to Federal law so Mr. Smith and anyone helping the slaves to escape were criminal and prosecuted if caught. As a child we learned about this and became proud of our heritage along with many of the ancestors of the freed slaves that lived there.

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Commentary by John Campbell

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PETERBORO, NY

DIVIDE OR UNITE BY PRESIDENT

COLLEGE LOANS/ FORGIVING

WHERE'S THE SHERIFF

ABOLITION NOW & THEN

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