On The Importance of Being Alf
By Richard Heppner, Woodstock Town Historian
Author's Note: Alf Evers, noted local and regional historian, died on December 29, 2004. At the time of his death, he was just weeks shy of his 100th birthday. Since his death, numerous articles have been written memorializing his remarkable life. Rather than echoing much of what has already been written, this essay attempts to focus on his earlier years in Woodstock and some of the lessons Alf taught us all about pursuing local history.
When I was first appointed historian for the Town of Woodstock, I was interviewed about my new position by the Woodstock Times. As I read the result of the interview in the paper the following week, I was generally pleased with the way the reporter had framed our discussion. That was, until the very last line. In one of my more eloquent moments, and in response to a question about Alf Evers, I had somehow managed to blurt out, "I ain't no Alf." In my defense, the response was a somewhat humorous attempt to deal with the embarrassment of having my name mentioned in the same sentence as Alf Evers. In reality, I knew that if people thought my comment to be a demonstration of my command of the English language, my tenure as historian would be a short one. When I related this story to Alf a few weeks later, he laughed and, like a seasoned veteran talking to a rookie, assured me that all would be well. "You've got to be your own person," he admonished me. "Just make sure you do your research and let the facts take you where they want to go." Finally, as if he were reading my mind and sensing the uncertainty, he added, "And when you run into people who think they know everything, just remember - they don't."
While I have attempted to craft more articulate responses to reporters over the last few years, the original sentiment behind my statement of four years ago remains the same; Alf Evers commanded history on a level few of us will ever know. To begin with, Alf Evers' work gave Woodstock its history. In and of itself, this is a remarkable gift. Remarkable not only in terms of the totality of the effort, but in the realization that few in Woodstock's 217 year history have shaped our community's sense of place to the extent that Alf Evers did. Through his essays, stories, and his classic work Woodstock, History of an American Town, Alf Evers constructed the foundation upon which we continue to build Woodstock's story. For those reasons, it is understandable why we Woodstockers will always claim Alf as one of our own. And yet, Alf's work was not contained by political boundaries. Indeed, his seemingly innate desire to learn more about what might be further down the road, has permitted our entire region to reap the benefits of his curiosity. Through his major history, The Catskills, From Wilderness to Woodstock, we are awakened to our sense of shared history and to our responsibilities as the temporary trustees of what Alf called this "enchanted" place. So too will Kingstonians soon understand what it means when Alf Evers devotes almost fifteen years of his life to the study of their city. Just prior to his death, and despite a host of infirmities that would have sidelined a much younger writer years ago, Alf placed the finishing touches on a history of Kingston that will be published by Overlook Press some time this year.
More than most, it seems, Alf saw the "whole," rather than just the individual parts that many of us wrestle with every day. As Ulster County Historian Karlyn Knaust Elia related to me, "He was perennially curious; always amazed and delighted to learn; he was both wise and humble. I asked him what it meant to be a historian, and he replied, 'You can't understand a town without understanding the surrounding towns, and as you go more and more deeply into it, it takes you farther and farther from your base. You start accumulating books about your town's history, and then you begin to buy books on the surrounding towns, and then on the county and surrounding counties, and then the state and the surrounding states. The process can go on until you reach the limits of the planet and by that time, possibly, there will have been discovered that somewhere out in space there are planets surrounding suns that we know nothing about, in which there are other towns, which have their local histories. And, so, eventually there will be space travelers that may bring back local histories to people like me, who are so green on the subject.'"
Like many, Alf found his way to Ulster County and, eventually, to Woodstock through a series of unanticipated events and unplanned circumstances. Born in the Bronx in 1905 to a Swedish father and a Hungarian mother, Alf's family which included three sisters moved to Tilson in 1914. Following a downturn in professional opportunities in New York, his father, both an architect and a painter, concluded that it was time to try his hand at farming. Ironically, while his young son would one day write sympathetically of the difficulties encountered by the early farmers in Woodstock, Alf's father soon found that the life of the farmer came without guarantees. After six years of effort, the family gave up the farming life and moved to New Paltz, taking up residence in the Abraham Hasbrouck house. While the move allowed Alf and his oldest sister to attend high school in New Paltz, it also permitted him to encounter his first historic preservation project, as he and his father set out to restore the Hasbrouck home.
In 1925, Alf headed off to Hamilton College. A year later, after shifting his career interests towards the arts, he enrolled in the Arts Student League in New York. It was there that he would meet his wife Helen. With the Depression in full swing, Alf found work as a Fuller Brush salesman and, later, as an investigator for an insurance company. Eventually, Alf and his family would find their way to Woodstock in the early 1930s. Once here, his focus began to center on writing. The object of that focus, however, was not history, but children's books. In the years that followed, together with his wife Helen, he would publish over fifty books for children. Divorced in the early fifties, Alf would publish another children's book in 1955 that glimpsed at the direction his later writing would take. The primary thrust of The Treasure of Watchdog Mountain, he would later relate to his friend Ed Sanders, was, "an attempt to teach children what ecology was, about the relationship of man to the land. It was a pioneer book of its kind. I based it on Overlook Mountain, which I saw through my studio window."
The themes of ecology, preservation and the "relationship of man to the land," are central within all of Alf Evers' work. In many respects, it is his placement of human history within the context of the environment that carries his work to such an important level. More than a technique, it is a core element that reminds us that our human stories are intricately tied to the land from which they're drawn. As Town of Shandaken Historian Maureen Nagy explains, "Alf Evers' histories are imbued with his understated but irreducible environmental sensibility. Whether describing the maneuvers of the Hardenburg patentees during their famous land grab, or the predations of the tanning industry, often times his anecdotes are small morality plays showing humans pitted against nature for wrong-headed or ill-gotten gain."
Indeed, Alf's concern for the land was not only in connection with the past that he presented in his books, it was central to his daily life as well. In that respect, he was consistently in advance of the day's conventional thinking. As early as the 1960s, for example, Alf's concern over the potential for "dangerous" overbuilding along the Sawkill in Woodstock led him to urge an alliance between those involved in historic preservation with their counterparts in land preservation. In advance of a public hearing on the matter, Alf brought the Historical Society of Woodstock together with the newly formed Woodstock Conservation Club to hold discussions and view slides on what a change in the zoning ordinance would mean for Woodstock. Additionally, Alf clearly saw the potential threat to the Catskills in the form of new "recreational" technologies, unchecked tourism and corporate advertising. He decried the opening of the Forest Preserve to snowmobiles in the sixties, criticized the expansion of ski centers, and questioned the purpose of "recreational vehicles" when North Lake was opened to "mechanized camping." Even as Alf's age carried him well into his nineties, he remained vocal about the new preservation battles that occupy the pages of our local papers. He questioned the size and scope of the proposed resort and golf course project in Shandaken, while also expressing concern for his beloved Overlook Mountain and the construction near its summit that will lead to the dismantling of the Mead's Mountain House. Undoubtedly, through the decades, Alf's voice was an important one in defense of the Catskills. And, although he could be an optimistic writer when it came to the future of the mountains he cherished, his message, no matter the year or the issue, would vary little from a warning he issued in 1982, "The reawakening of Americans to the importance of personal contact with the world of nature is an encouraging development, but new ways of relating to nature must become accepted on our crowded earth if areas of natural beauty and usefulness like the Catskills are not to be destroyed.
As noted earlier, most know of Alf's work through his two most important texts, The Catskills, From Wilderness to Woodstock and Woodstock, History of an American Town. Certainly both books speak to the depth of his knowledge and to his understanding of our local and regional history. Of his preeminence as our area's most influential historian, there is little doubt. And yet, the above texts, as well as his forthcoming book on Kingston, speak primarily to the culmination of his work as a historian. The level to which his knowledge went, however, was built on years of curiosity and a thorough exploration of the individual pieces that ultimately shaped and formed the whole. As both president of the Historical Society of Woodstock and as Woodstock's Town Historian, the full scope of his interests is revealed in the breath of topics he held forth on during those years. One of his earliest contributions to the Historical Society is noted in the minutes of an August, 1947 meeting. On that particular evening he offered a talk on Woodstock barns and the Woodstock "red barn" school of painting. Here, long before it became fashionable, he urged that a serious effort be undertaken to preserve the remaining barns in town. As the minutes from subsequent meetings indicate, even the smallest story or folk tale was not unimportant to Alf. Such was the occasion during one evening's discussion when he related to those in attendance a sure-fire remedy for poison ivy, "Gather sweet fern and boil it until the liquid is brown, then use the liquid as a lotion guaranteed to cure!"
At the very same meeting he was offering a cure for poison ivy, Alf also read from a paper he had penned on the early days of bluestone quarrying in Woodstock. As I read the account of that talk, however, I was struck not so much by his substantial knowledge of the quarrying process, but by his poignant observations on the end of quarrying in Woodstock, and the impact such a loss had on those whose skills were no longer needed by an ever-changing world. Through his observations of a man he calls only "Murray," Alf connects his modern day audience to a 19th century experience they can relate to"He had worked his own small quarry until he could no longer make a living at it, and finally departed, leaving his home standing, fully furnished, and returning to it once a year to mourn and ponder at the vagaries of changing times. His last visit was 35 years ago, since then the roof has caved in, and the foundations have fallen in, and there are no more workmen in any of the quarries, just weeds and chipmunks."
Alf also enjoyed sharing the humor and the joy that can only come from the simplest tales that are so much a part of our local lore. One such occasion was a talk he gave on rattlesnakes and "snake-lore" in Woodstock. He began his talk by assuring the audience that, "We are not in a state of siege up here, surrounded by reptiles." That said, he went on to regale his audience by informing them that the old settlers had a habit of keeping a barrel full of them (rattlesnakes) outside the kitchen door to "amuse the children with." He also spoke of an old woman who claimed to be cured of tuberculosis by biting on a "live serpent." At the conclusion of his "tall tale" talk on snakes, Alf admitted that some of the accounts had been told by an early Woodstocker who "solemnly declared, after sampling a bit of country applejack, that his stories were true, and, as he gazed upwards at the overhanging cliffs of Overlook, that them mountains is growing taller every year." In the notes that summarized the above talk, the Society's recording secretary concluded simply, but perceptively, "We consider Mr. Evers' paper a classic of Americana."
When you came away from meeting and talking with Alf, you were always struck by the energy he possessed. Even at the age of 99, you were likely to find him poring over his notes for the book on Kingston. Despite failing eyesight and hearing loss, he would push on with an energy that would put most of us to shame. And, even though work on the Kingston book was coming to end, he was already making plans and gathering material for a new book on Hervey White, founder of the Maverick colony. That energy - call it passion, if you will can be glimpsed almost fifty years earlier when he discussed with the Historical Society the projects he was involved with that summer (1959). First, he announced, he was organizing a meeting to discuss the purchase of the old Vosburgh mill in Shady. It was his belief that the mill offered the perfect site for a museum dedicated to the Catskills. At the same time, he was also organizing a committee for the Hudson-Champlain festival that summer. In that regard, he was working with the Woodstock Artists Association on an exhibit entitled "50 Years of Art in Woodstock." Also included within the scope of his efforts for the festival was his work with the Woodstock Guild of Craftsman on an exhibit featuring 150 years of Woodstock crafts. At the same time, he was discussing with the Woodstock Garden Club a celebration marking the development of the Jonathan Apple in Woodstock. Plans included hosting a Jonathan Apple Day in town and the planting of a new line of Jonathan Apple trees. As if that wasn't enough, he was also talking with the Woodstock Library for a ceremony that would augment the 18 existing carved stars on the building with 32 new ones, thereby honoring each state in the union. All the above, remember, was during the course of just one summer.
As impressive as that schedule sounds today, it was equally impressive to those in attendance that evening. As a result, members of the Society called upon the Town of Woodstock to create the new position of Town Historian and immediately appoint Alf Evers as the first occupant of that office. In a letter written to then Supervisor Joseph Fitzsimmons, the Society stated, We the members of the Historical Society of Woodstock, have benefited by the activities, scholarship and writing ability of our President, Mr. Alf Evers, and for many years have been helped by his enthusiasm and undoubted executive ability. We feel now that the time has come when he should receive some recognition of his generosity and talents, and we hereby petition you to consider electing Mr. Evers 'Historian of the Town of Woodstock,' at a nominal salary of $100.00 a year"
As they say, the rest is "history." Well, almost. Alf Evers believed that our past is "owned" by all citizens, no matter what one's academic, economic, or social standing might be. At that time, however, the guidelines for accepting members into the Historical Society of Woodstock, at least in practice, didn't necessarily agree. Only a few years after the Society had lobbied for his appointment as Town Historian, Alf expressed the belief that the Society needed to open its doors and develop a more inclusive membership. Unfortunately, certain members within the Society took exception to his proposal. Some preferred to maintain what one board member referred to as a "small group of our most special people." As a result of their differences on this and other matters, Alf resigned from the Historical Society in protest. For Alf, and a few others in the Society at the time, historical societies were not meant to exist as ivory towers within a community. For them, and eventually the majority of the Board, the lesson was a simple one if our work is to preserve a history built on a foundation of equality, then too must that history be open to all who wish to engage it.
As the reader is aware, the pursuit of local history is not an easy one. In some respects, it could be argued, the pursuit of local history brings with it a host of challenges not found on the "grander" stage of our national history. Historians working on a national level pursue subjects about which much has already been written or a great deal of information already exists. On the local level, the record often appears hopelessly incomplete, and the resources to support further investigation of that record are almost nonexistent. And yet, without the pursuit of local history, names, events, and even tall tales that have not obtained a level of importance in our national consciousness, run the risk of being lost for all time. That is why the work is so important. It is also why, when we examine the ways Alf Evers went about his work, despite the infirmities that plagued him during his later years, many of us do so with awe and reverence. As his friend Ed Sanders described, "I worked with Alf Evers very closely throughout the final 7 years of his life, observing his research and writing techniques, and picked up a fairly clear understanding of his methodology. The 19th century writer Thomas Carlyle complained about the "dry-as-dusts," those mountains of books, old dusty transfiles of historic records, diaries, letters and the like that a researcher must sift through while looking for useful information. Alf thrived on the dry-as-dusts. Each time I worked with him, he would be examining historic documents, ephemera, photos, battered old books from 1843 holding a magnifying lens close to the text.
It was obvious from the packed filing cabinets and teeming bookshelves in his home in Shady that Evers was a tremendously effective gatherer of historic texts. His book on Kingston was written almost entirely from the books and historic materials he had assembled over the years. He approach was "hands on," that is, actually taking the time to read over and over the results of his rummaging in the attics of estate and library sales, and pondering the old scrapbooks and photo albums which he so assiduously gathered into his tremendous personal library and archives.
Not only was Alf "Mr. Estate Sale" and "Garage Sale," but he constantly went to the people to learn their intimate tales of struggle and family history, a number of which he brought into his books. A good part of his genius was his way of drawing forth regular folk from the darkness of the dry-as-dusts for their moments in the lucent glow of his excellent prose. He was what they would call a "peripatetic writer." That is, when he was facing a thorny problem in sequencing some information, he would hike up through the pathways on the steep hill above his house, bringing with him his 3X5 cards, and often the physical act of hiking would help resolve the problem and he would jot down the results on his cards." 9
Like many of the people he wrote about, Alf Evers was a simple man; his Shady home a simple place. He didn't need the trappings that most certainly would have come had he directed his talents towards subjects with a more commercial appeal. Rather, as Weston Blelock, who is currently editing a new edition of Anita Smith's book Woodstock: History and Hearsay offered, "His life was a marvelous example, not only of a life well lived, but of holding a vision to the end."10 It was a vision that sensed, as Maureen Nagy described, a "shift in the wind towards more widespread appreciation of regional history and a new receptiveness towards taking history and preservation into account and listening to historians and preservationists in any discussion having to do with the Catskills future."11
When I last spoke with Alf, he told me that he was still at work on his notes for the book on Kingston. He said he was feeling well for a 99 year old and that he was looking forward to getting on with the Hervey White research. I could only smile, remembering how I had cursed my plight earlier in the day over a two page speech I had spent the last three days trying to assemble. We said our goodbyes and I went off for my talk at a gathering on Overlook Mountain. It was a fall day, the kind that reminds us why we choose to live in the Catskills. It was the kind of day that, thirty or forty years ago, would have found Alf conducting one his Woodstock history hikes for families; even helping to carry one small child when her mother grew tired. Or, you might have encountered him leading a troop of intrepid Historical Society members up the slope of Overlook to examine the hollowed out structure of the old Overlook Mountain House. Wherever you might have found him, there would have been a certainty to his purpose. It would be the same purpose that governed much of his life, and the same one that he tried to teach us all through example - always be curious about your history, for the key to understanding the present is often found when we explore the road that is our common past.
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Notes:
1. Knaust Elia, Karlyn. 17 February 2005, personal e-mail.
2. Sanders, Ed. "An Appreciation of Alf," Woodstock Times, January 6, 2005, Retrieved February 18,
2005 from http://www.ulsterpublishing.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=article&articleID=325525.
3. Nagy, Maureen. 18 February 2005, personal e-mail.
4. Evers, Alf. The Catskills, From Wilderness to Woodstock. Woodstock: Overlook Press, 1982. 718.
5. Quoted in Historical Society of Woodstock Minutes, June 21, 1952.
6. Ibid.
7.Quoted in Historical Society of Woodstock Minutes, June 27, 1953.
8. Historical Society of Woodstock. Letter to Mr. Joseph Fitzsimmons, Supervisor of the Town of
Woodstock, June 23, 1959.
9 Sanders, Ed. 11 March 2005, personal e-mail
10 Blelock, Weston. 2 February 2005, personal e-mail.
11 Nagy, op. cit
