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Lawrence Gooley: The Spanish Swindle Revisited

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Many of us have received e-mail scams from fake sources (bogus relatives, supposed political prisoners) promising great financial reward if we agree to help them recover a secreted fortune. I’ve received them from Ghana and Germany, and even one from the country of West Africa. Never heard of it? I can assure you it’s real—in 2008, world traveler Paris Hilton said “I love Africa in general. South Africa and West Africa, they are both great countries.”

The senders of these messages range from detained relatives and imprisoned citizens to dethroned kings, urgently seeking help. Most people think it’s “an Internet thing,” but the only thing new about it is the manner of delivery.

That particular scam has been around for more than a century. Known as the Spanish Swindle, it is believed to have originated in Spain’s infamous prisons during the late-nineteenth century. Inmates with far too much time on their hands took advantage of a corrupt system, developing many criminal strategies and exercising them to great effect.

The original Spanish Swindle hasn’t changed much, except that it was often a two-step process. The first was to hook the sucker with a plea for empathy and the promise of great wealth. When a nibble was received, the ante was raised with an urgent plea to help rescue the prisoner’s poor, innocent daughter from the clutches of some tyrant or lecher.

Just as is done with e-mail today, hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of such messages were sent at the same time by mail. In the Adirondacks, a few hotel owners were among those who received the letters, their addresses having been obtained from newspaper advertisements. The plea was appropriately modified— in the hopes of gaining sympathy, the sender claimed to have once been a hotel owner himself.

None of those in the Adirondacks who received the message were fooled by the scam attempt, but elsewhere, pharmacists, doctors, and others were victimized, much to their embarrassment. The Spanish Swindle became so successful that, in 1912, the US Official Postal Guide began including a complete description of the process in order to alert employees.

That’s not to say North Country folks are immune to trickery. All types of swindles have been attempted in the region, many of them successfully. A number of scams from long ago focused on obtaining a person’s signature. A sort of caveat emptor (let the buyer beware) then took over: if your name was on a document, you were bound by its clauses. Even if a signature was obtained fraudulently, victims often paid to avoid court time and public embarrassment.

In 1888, teams of encyclopedia salesmen made the rounds in Franklin County, targeting schoolteachers. The first salesman gave his best pitch for a great new line of books, innocently asking the teacher to sign his log book to record the visit. A few days later, a second man delivered a full set of books, demanding payment from the surprised teacher, whose signed order was offered as proof of sale. (Sleight of hand and “bait and switch” were routine components of scams. Papers were subtly arranged to obtain signatures on documents hidden beneath.)

Sleight of hand was sometimes replaced by the latest technology. In 1889, swindlers focused on the devoutly religious, of which the North Country had many. An attractive female pleaded for donations of ten cents to aid overseas missionary work. Donors, asked to sign a sheet, were all too happy to have their names displayed on the list of generous givers.

But vanity came with a price. Beneath the sheet was “an ingenious copying paper which transcribed the name onto a promissory note.” In those days, a promissory note was as good as a check or a banknote. The notes were quickly cashed and the scammers moved on.

Photo: 1951 North Country headline noting the return of the Spanish Swindle.

Lawrence Gooley has authored ten books and dozens of articles on the North Country’s past. He and his partner, Jill McKee, founded Bloated Toe Enterprises in 2004. Expanding their services in 2008, they have produced 19 titles to date, and are now offering web design. For information on book publishing, visit Bloated Toe Publishing.

Civil War Lectures Set for Schoharie Crossing

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Schoharie Crossing State Historic site’s Enders House (adjacent to the Visitor Center at 129 Schoharie Street, Fort Hunter, NY, five miles west of Amsterdam, off Route 5S) will host a series of lectures on the Civil War, Wednesdays in April, 7:00 pm.

On April 4, the lecture series will begin with Montgomery County Historian Kelly Farquar, who will discuss “The Abolitionist Movement in Montgomery County,” a topic of her latest publication.

The series continues on April 11 with Bob Arnold, an instructor at the College of St. Rose whose talk is entitled “New York State and the Civil War.” Arnold is also the former Albany County Historian. On April 25 the lecture series concludes with Matt Zembo’s talk on “Civil War Weapons and Strategy.” Zembo is an instructor at Hudson Valley Community College and is a military reenactor.

The fees for these lectures are $3.00 adults, $2.00 seniors and $1.00 for children under 16. Please contact Tricia Shaw at [email protected] or 518-829-7516 for more information.

Photo: Schoharie Aqueduct, showing the canalway (Courtesy Wikipedia).

Tour Troys Mt. Ida Cemetery, Poestenkill Gorge

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Rensselaer County Historian Kathryn Sheehan will lead a tour of Mt. Ida Cemetery, which features some of the oldest headstones in the city of Troy, and the Poestenkill Gorge, a favorite destination for picnickers, photographers, and nature enthusiasts for centuries.

The waters of the Poestenkill collect in Dyken Pond, then make a dash for the Hudson River below. The Mt. Ida falls drop roughly 85&#8242- into a gorge of crumbly black shale, make a right angle turn, dropping a further 75&#8242- into a massive pool. This source of water power fueled several industries along the Poestenkill’s banks in the 19th century.

Hidden History – Mt. Ida Cemetery and the Poestenkill Gorge will be held on Tuesday, March 27, 2012 at 4:30 pm. The cost is $15 per person and $12 for RCHS members.

The Rensselaer County Historical Society and Museum (RCHS) is a not-for-profit educational organization established in 1927 to connect local history and heritage with contemporary life. RCHS is located at 57 Second Street, Troy NY 12180.

Photo: Mills along the lower Poestenkill Gorge at the foot of Cypress Street including the Griswold Wire Works, Tompkins Brothers machine works, and above Manning Paper, which occupied earlier Marshall textile mill buildings. Courtesy Troy Public Library.

This Weeks New York History Web Highlights

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Each Friday afternoon New York History compiles for our readers the previous week’s top weblinks about New York’s state and local history. You can find all our weekly round-ups here.

Subscribe! More than 2,600 people get New York History each day via E-Mail, RSS, or Twitter or Facebook updates.

This Weeks Top New York History News

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  • New Hall of Governors Website
  • Montauk Indian Museum Caught In Crossfire
  • Federal Suit in Jell-O Museum Death
  • For Nathan Hale, Perhaps Another Regret
  • Search on for Brooklyn Rev War Graves
  • Bancroft Prize Winners Announced
  • Scarsdale Historical Under Fire
  • Old Fort Johnson Gets $10K Grant
  • Google Slows Univ Library Book Scanning
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica Ends Print Editions

    • Each Friday morning New York History compiles for our readers the previous week’s top stories about New York’s state and local history. You can find all our weekly news round-ups here.

    Subscribe! More than 2,600 people get New York History each day via E-mail, RSS, or Twitter or Facebook updates.

    Iroquois Beadwork at the Art of Flowering Talk

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    The Adirondack Museum’s fifth 2012 Cabin Fever Sunday series program, &#8220Inventing Fashion: Iroquois Beadwork at the &#8216-Art of Flowering’&#8221 will be held on Sunday, March 18, 2012. The event will be offered free of charge.

    In the mid-19th century, New York State officials began to collect Iroquois material culture, intending to preserve remnants of what they saw as a vanishing race. At the same time, Iroquois women were discovering that their beadwork was appealing to the fashionable Victorian women flocking to Niagara Falls and Saratoga Springs on the Grand Tour of America.

    This multimedia presentation by Dr. Deborah Holler traces the historic development of Iroquois beadwork and costume, which came to define the public image of &#8220Indian-ness&#8221 around the world. Images are drawn from the collections of the Lewis Henry Morgan and Rochester museums, as well as private collections. These images also illuminate the contributions of the Iroquois to the textile arts, as well as the complex cultural exchange that defined the fashions of 19th century New York State.

    Dr. Deborah Holler is a Lecturer and Mentor at Empire State College and teaches in Cultural Studies, Literature and the Arts. Her articles and creative writing have been published in regional and national magazines as well as academic journals. She has presented her lectures at national and international conferences, historical societies, and cultural events throughout New York State and is currently working on projects concerning the life and times of 19th century Seneca Caroline G. Parker Mountpleasant.

    This program will be held at the Adirondack Lakes Center for the Arts at Blue Mountain Lake, and will begin at 1:30 p.m. For additional information, call (518) 352-7311, ext. 128 or visit www.adirondackmuseum.org.

    Photo: Pincushion, typical of souvenir made for tourists by Eastern woodland Indians. From the collection of the Adirondack Museum.

    New-York Historical Announces Fellowships

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    The New-York Historical Society has announced five fellowship recipients for the 2012-2013 academic year. New-York Historical offers fellowships to scholars dedicated to understanding and promoting American history. Basing their work on New-York Historical’s museum and library collections of more than 350,000 books, three million manuscripts, and collections of maps, photographs, prints, art objects and ephemera documenting the history of America from the perspective of New York, these scholars extend and enrich their previous work to develop new publications that illuminate complex issues of the past.

    National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow

    Kevin Butterfield, currently Assistant Professor of Classics and Letters at the University of Oklahoma, is the 2012-2013 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow. Butterfield received a Ph.D. in History in 2010 from Washington University in St. Louis. He is an active member of his profession who has published articles and reviews in the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, and Common-Place, as well as the New York Times and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He has been a Gilder Lehrman Fellow at the New-York Historical Society (2006) and has won numerous fellowships and awards. His research project, an expansion of his dissertation, is entitled “Membership in America: Law and Voluntary Association in the Early Republic.”

    Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowships

    Andrew C. Lipman, Assistant Professor of History, Syracuse University, received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, in 2010. Lipman, who will develop his dissertation, “The Saltwater Frontier: Indians and the Colonization of Long Island Sound,” while in residence, has also published in the journals William and Mary Quarterly and Early American Studies. An experienced tour guide in Philadelphia, he has also reviewed books for scholarly journals and taken part in professional activities in his field.

    Robin Cheyne Vandome is currently a Lecturer in American Intellectual and Cultural History in the Department of American and Canadian Studies, the University of Nottingham, U.K. He received a Ph.D. in the Faculty of History, Cambridge University in 2005 and has been a doctoral exchange student the Boston University. His 2012-2013 project at the New-York Historical Society will be the conversion of his dissertation into a book manuscript, provisionally entitled The Romance of Knowledge: American Endeavors in the Natural and Human Sciences, 1850-1900. An intellectual history of the development of attitudes toward science in the late nineteenth century, the work will draw on the resources of the New-York Historical Society’s Patricia D. Klingenstein Library in a variety of fields.

    Bernard & Irene Schwartz Fellowships

    Dael A. Norwood, Ph.D. Candidate in History, Princeton University, expects his degree in the spring of 2012. His dissertation, “Trading in Liberty: The Politics of the American China Trade, c. 1784-1862” investigates the relationship between trade with China and its impact on the politics of slavery, states’ rights, commerce and global relations. His work at the New-York Historical Society will draw heavily on the resources of the Naval History Society collection and the papers of Gustavus Fox, as well as family papers, logbooks, correspondence, and printed materials from the early nineteenth-century. Mr. Norwood has made many scholarly presentations and comes with strong recommendations from his dissertation advisers.

    Catherine McNeur expects to receive her Ph.D. from Yale University in the summer of 2012. Her background in urban design and architecture studies, the subject of her undergraduate major at New York University has contributed to her current work, “The ‘Swinish Multitude’ and Fashionable Promenades: Battles over Public Space in New York City, 1815-1865.” By exploring how the struggle to define public spaces in the city during a period of rapid expansion affected the lives and livelihoods of New Yorkers, McNeur hopes to demonstrate how the decisions made during these years had an impact on subsequent urban planning and city life. Her work will draw on the resources of the Children’s Aid Society, the papers of John Randel, Jr., and documents relating to the development of the Croton Aqueduct and Central Park as well as related materials. McNeur has published in the Journal of Urban History, Louisiana History, and Common-place and has acted as a teaching fellow at Yale.

    Fellowship positions at the New-York Historical Society are made possible by the generous support of Bernard & Irene Schwartz, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. All fellows receive research stipends while in residency- Bernard & Irene Schwartz Fellows each teach two courses at The New School during their year as resident scholars.

    New Contributor: Drew Alberti of Lakes to Locks

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    Please join us in welcoming our newest contributor, Andrew (Drew) Alberti of Lakes to Locks Passage. Drew is a graduate of the University at Albany with a BA in European History, and a MA in Public History. His previous experience includes Collections Management at the New York State Museum, and Park Ranger at Martin Van Buren National Historic Site. Drew has been Program Manager for Lakes to Locks Passage since 2008 where he focuses on 21st century technology applications and local and regional interpretation and planning. Drew is co-author of From Forest to Fields: A History of Agriculture in New York’s Champlain Valley, and is editor for the Lakes to Locks Passage and National Geographic Geotourism website.

    Canal Life: Near Tragedy on the George W. Lee

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    In November 1886, Captain John Frawley of the canal boat George W. Lee reached the eastern terminus of the Mohawk River at Cohoes. Before him was the Hudson River intersection: south led to Albany and New York City, and north was the path of the Champlain Canal, which ran from Waterford to Whitehall, at Lake Champlain’s southern tip. Access to the Champlain Canal was on the north bank at the Mohawk’s mouth, opposite Peeble’s Island.

    At the mouth of the river was a dam, maintaining calm water so the boats could cross the river, and about 500 feet upstream from the dam was a bridge. Canal boats were pulled by tow ropes linked to teams of mules or horses. To cross from the south bank of the Mohawk to the north, towing teams used the bridge, which is what Frawley did.

    Sounds simple, and usually, it was. But the Mohawk was badly swollen from several days of rain. Traveling at night, Frawley was perhaps unaware that the normally strong current had intensified. Water was fairly leaping over the nine-foot-high dam.

    Accompanying the captain were his mother, around 60 years old- his ten-year-old son- and the boat’s steersman, Dennis Clancy. To help ensure that things went okay, Frawley left the boat to assist the team driver during the crossing of the 700-foot-long bridge. They moved slowly—the rope extended sideways from the bridge downstream towards the boat, an angle much more difficult than pulling a load forward along the canal.

    Below them, the George W. Lee lay heavy in the current, straining against the rope. All went well until the bridge’s midpoint was reached, when, with a sound like a gunshot, the rope snapped. Horrified, they watched as the boat swung around, slammed sideways into the dam, and plunged over the edge. Nothing was left but darkness.

    Shock and grief enveloped them at such a sudden, terrible loss. Within minutes, though, a light appeared on the boat’s deck. It had held together! At least one person had survived, but no one knew how many, or if any were injured. The roar of the river drowned out any attempt at yelling back and forth. With the boat aground, there was nothing to do but sit and wait until morning.

    With daylight came great news. All were okay! But, as had happened the previous evening, great elation was followed by great uncertainty. How could they be saved? The river remained high and dangerous. The boat, resting on the rocks below the dam, could not be reached. And the November chill, heightened by cold water pouring over the dam all around them, threatened the stranded passengers with hypothermia.

    A rescue plan was devised, and by late afternoon, the effort began. The state scow (a large, flat-bottomed boat), manned by a volunteer crew of seven brave men, set out on a dangerous mission. Connected to the bridge by a winch system using two ropes, the scow was slowly guided to the dam, just above the stranded boat.

    The men began talking with the passengers to discuss their evacuation. Then, without warning, disaster struck. Something within the winch mechanism failed, and again, with a loud cracking sound, the rope snapped. Over the dam went the scow, fortunately missing the canal boat. Had they hit, the results would have been catastrophic.

    Briefly submerged, the scow burst to the surface. A safe passage lay ahead, but the drifting scow was instead driven towards nearby Buttermilk Falls by the swift current. Two men leaped overboard and swam for shore in the icy water. The rest decided to ride it out.

    In one reporter’s words, “The scow sped like an arrow toward Buttermilk Falls. It seemed to hang an instant at the brink, and then shot over the falls. It landed right side up and soon drifted ashore.” Incredibly, everyone survived intact. Chilled, wet, and shaken, but intact.

    Meanwhile, still stuck at the base of the dam was a canal boat with cold, hungry, and frightened passengers. A new plan was needed, but darkness was descending. The stranded victims would have to spend another night on the rocks.

    On the following day, Plan B was tried. According to reports, “A stout rope was stretched from the Waterford bridge, over the dam, to a small row boat at Peeble’s Island [a distance of about 1800 feet.] Two men stood on the bridge and pulled the skiff upstream until it came alongside the canal boat Lee. The party embarked and the boat was allowed to drift back to the island.”

    What an amazing, fortuitous outcome. Two boats (one at night) over a dam- three people trapped for more than 36 hours in a raging river- two men swimming for their lives in icy water- and five men and a boat over a waterfall. All that potential for tragedy, and yet all survived unscathed.

    Photos: The dam at Cohoes, looking west from Peeble’s Island- A canal boat scene at Cohoes.

    Lawrence Gooley has authored ten books and dozens of articles on the North Country’s past. He and his partner, Jill McKee, founded Bloated Toe Enterprises in 2004. Expanding their services in 2008, they have produced 19 titles to date, and are now offering web design. For information on book publishing, visit Bloated Toe Publishing.

    Study: NY National Parks Support Economy

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    A new National Park Service (NPS) report concludes that 17,389,242 national park visitors in New York in 2010 spent $490,911,000 and supported 5,780 jobs in the state.

    Most of the spending/jobs are related to lodging, food, and beverage service (52 percent) followed by other retail (29 percent), entertainment/amusements (10 percent), gas and local transportation (7 percent) and groceries (2 percent).

    The figures are based on $12 billion of direct spending by 281 million visitors in 394 national parks and nearby communities and are included in an annual, peer-reviewed, visitor spending analysis conducted by Dr. Daniel Stynes of Michigan State University for the National Park Service.

    The National Parks in New York include: African Burial Ground National Monument, Appalachian National Scenic Trail, Castle Clinton National Monument, Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site, Federal Hall National Memorial, Fire Island National Seashore, Fort Stanwix National Monument, Gateway National Recreation Area, General Grant National Memorial, Governors Island National Monument, Hamilton Grange National Memorial, Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt National Historic Site, Martin Van Buren National Historic Site, Sagamore Hill National Historic Site, Saint-Paul’s Church National Historic Site, Saratoga National Historical Park, Statue of Liberty National Monument, Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site, Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site, Upper Delaware Scenic and Recreational River, Vanderbilt Mansion National Historic Site, and Women’s Rights National Historical Park.

    Across the U.S., local visitor spending added a total of $31 billion to the national economy and supported more than 258,000 jobs, an increase of $689 million and 11,500 jobs over 2009 the report concludes.

    The report is available online– click on Economic Benefits to Local Communities from National Park Visitation and Payroll, 2010. The report includes information for visitor spending at individual parks and by state.