1842: The Pig That Dug Up a Pot of Gold in Sunnyside, Queens

Posted: 19th February 2019 by The Hatching Cat in Animal Stories
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…But for the investigating nose of the old sow it would have remained there this day…Brooklyn Daily Eagle, September 16, 1888

How many more pots of gold are buried around the same old premises the tourist does not really know, finding pots of gold not being his vocation.–Newtown Register, August 19, 1886

Vintage pig in barn
Were it not for Mr. Conklin’s pig, a large pot of gold could have been buried in Sunnyside forever.

In my last post about the feline mascot of TWA pilots at La Guardia Airport, I wrote about all the items that were buried to create landfill when the airport was constructed in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Some of the items included a colonial-era graveyard, some amusement park rides, a few hundred old safes, and several thousand automobiles.

While I was doing research for that story, I dug up an obscure tale about a pig that dug up a pot of gold on the old Teunis Brinckerhoff farm. The farm had been located on a hillside near the Dutch Kills Creek, in the neighborhood we now call Sunnyside, Queens.

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1940: Strato Lizzie, the Mascot Cat of the TWA Pilots at NYC’s LaGuardia Airport

Posted: 12th February 2019 by The Hatching Cat in Cat Mascots, Cat Stories
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Strato Lizzie, mascot cat of TWA pilots at LaGuardia Airport
Strato Lizzie, pictured here with the trophy and ribbon that she won in a Minneapolis cat show, was the feline mascot for the TWA pilots at the brand-new LaGuardia Field airport. The Queens, New York airport has an interesting history–and some fascinating things buried underneath its tarmacs and runways.

Once upon a time–around 1638–a farmer named Hendrick Harmensen took his cows from New Amsterdam and re-settled on a point of land along the Bowery Bay, where the East River and Flushing Bay meet on the northern tip of what we now call East Elmhurst, Queens. For several years, Harmensen–also known as Henrick the Boor or Henry the Farmer–was the only farmer on the north side of Long Island.

Hendrick Harmensen was reportedly killed by Native Americans during an uprising in 1643. Over the next 200 years, the land was occupied by numerous Dutch settlers and their descendants, including members of the Fish, Jackson, Luyster, Rapelye, Riker Cornell, Brinckerhoff, Schenck, Noorstrandt, Coggins, Purdy, Klock, Berrien, and Kouwenhoven families.

Many of these settlers were buried in a small family cemetery on a bluff overlooking the Bowery Bay. The cemetery has been buried under LaGuardia Airport for 80 years.

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1912: Captain, the New York City Feline Mascot of the RMS Carpathia

Posted: 3rd February 2019 by The Hatching Cat in Cat Mascots, Cat Stories
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On April 11, 1912, the RMS Carpathia departed from Chelsea Piers in New York City for Fiume (present-day Rijeka, Croatia), carrying about 740 passengers. The ship never reached its destination on this particular departure.

The Carpathia at Pier 54, Chelsea Piers
The Carpathia at Pier 54, Chelsea Piers

Just after midnight on April 15, 1912, Carpathia‘s wireless operator, Harold Cottam, received some messages from Cape Cod stating they had private traffic for the Titanic.

Cottam relayed the message to the Titanic. In response, he received a distress signal stating the ship had struck ice and was in need of immediate assistance.

After failing to get a response from some officers on the bridge, Cottam ran to the captain’s cabin to awake Captain Arthur Henry Rostron.

The captain immediately sprang into action and ordered the ship to turn around and travel full speed toward the troubled Titanic. Rostron later testified that the Titanic was 67 miles away and that it took the Carpathia—reaching maximum speeds up to 17.5 knots —three and a half hours to reach her.

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1920: Kelly and Buddy, the Dogs Who Saved Their Family at Brooklyn’s Bath Beach Hotel

Posted: 27th January 2019 by The Hatching Cat in Dog Heroes
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Ottawa Citizen, March 27, 1920

People often ask me how I find my stories. Most of my animal tales come from old newspaper articles followed by a lot of research. For this story set in Bath Beach, Brooklyn, there was also a large dose of coincidence.

While I was doing research for my last story about the mascot cat of P.S. 128 in Bensonhurst, I found some great vintage photos from the Bath Beach neighborhood of old New Utrecht that I put aside for future use. One of the photos was of the old Bath Beach Hotel (aka Bensonhurst Hotel or Hotel Bensonhurst), so I decided to do some research on this hotel. I found a very tiny news article about a fire and continued digging…

Brooklyn Daily Eagle, September 19, 1948

In the meantime, I’d been trying to find out if the Trump family had any pets while they were living in Queens. As luck would have it, on the very same day I started doing research on the Bath Beach Hotel, I typed in some keywords about Trump and dogs into my favorite newspaper archive website.

The result of this research is the following dog story of old Bath Beach, Brooklyn.

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1910: Nellie, the Beloved Class Cat of Brooklyn’s Van Pelt Manor Grammar School

Posted: 20th January 2019 by The Hatching Cat in Cat Mascots, Cat Stories
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Nelly Cat Van Pelt Manor
From the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, November 23, 1910

As I often explain, not all of the cat stories of Old New York that I share with my readers have fairy-tale endings. Of course I prefer to tell happy stories. But I also believe that the kitties that met tragic ends also deserve some attention. This story of Nellie, the classroom mouser of the Van Pelt Manor Grammar School in Brooklyn, is one such cat tale that I believe should have a tiny place in New York’s history.

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