The 2013 Reunion

Schenectady, NY and Malden-on-Hudson

19-20 July 2013

Blue Gray Line


Jackie Woods and June Hicks (sisters) in front chairs
l-r Sheri, Jeff, Sena, Rod, Chris, and Matt Bigelow (my family)
then Don Bigelow, (Dale and Alan Bigelow -brothers)
then Bob Bond and his wife Barbara Sharp-Bond and Jim Hicks

     So instead of the minutes of the meetings, we who attended are giving our thoughts on the reunion as a whole. The only officers attending were President, Vice-President, Forge Editor- Donald E. Bigelow, and June Hicks-Director. We did hold 3 board meetings with proxies, and a general meeting with auction according to the By-Laws. A financial report was given and our 3 Directors that were facing expired terms were re-elected: David Bigelow, John C. Bigelow, and Dee Bigelow. Our finances are good, but could be better with  enlarged membership. Don Bigelow has presented some good ideas on increasing membership to the President, and will be discussed in email to the other directors.
      The Library Staff hosted a wonderful reception in the Library Friday evening so that people can spend time viewing the Bigelow exhibit.  They provided beer, wine, and appetizers for that occasion. The reception Friday evening in the library featured remarks by College librarian Frances Maloy, David Hayes, acting dean of the faculty and vice president for academic affairs, and Mark Walker, the John Bigelow Professor of History. Matthew Connolly, who works here in the Library, also spoke, and has been instrumental in working on the John Bigelow web site and is also working on a book on Swedenborgianism in Bigelow’s approach to civic engagement.
       On Saturday morning the Library served a delightful brunch and the Library Staff: Annette LeClair, Frances Maloy, Ellen Fladger, and Matthew Connolly gave talks.  Annette LeClair is the driving force behind the creation of the Bigelow web site and its various parts.  Ellen spoke about the Bigelow collections as a whole.  We also took another tour of the exhibit.
     On Saturday afternoon we traveled down to Highland Falls and the Bigelow Homestead (see LINK).  The Library provided a box lunch for everyone at the Reunion on Saturday noon. 
We came back to Schenectady on Saturday night for dinner and last board meeting. Below are newspaper and web articles about the reunion and the Library exhibits.
Union College, Schenectady, NY
Site of the John7 Bigelow exhibit
Union College Home News & Events
Ties that bind: Bigelow family celebrates Union's favorite citizen
    
     In the early '90s, Rod Bigelow came to campus to visit his son, Jeffrey Jon 13 Bigelow-class of  '95. Wandering into Schaffer Library, he noticed a special "Union Worthies" publication that chronicled the extraordinary life of John Bigelow.
     Thumbing through the 40-page booklet, he learned about the post-Union feats of John Bigelow, a member of the Class of 1835. Co-founder of the New York Public Library. Editor and publisher of Benjamin Franklin's autobiography. Appointed consul general to Paris by President Abraham Lincoln, to name just a few of his accomplishments.
     What Rod Bigelow didn’t know at the time was that he was related to one of Union's most distinguished alums. This past weekend, Rod Bigelow and more than a dozen other members of the Bigelow Society met for the first time at the College for their annual meeting. The group has about 500 members and publishes a quarterly newsletter, The Forge, about the genealogy of generations of the family descended from John Bagley Bigelow.
     The focal point of this year's gathering was Union's Bigelow, the seventh generation of the family in America and arguably one of the most unheralded figures of the 19th century and early 20th century. A reception Friday evening in the library featured remarks by College librarian Frances Maloy, David Hayes, acting dean of the faculty and vice president for academic affairs, and Mark Walker, the John Bigelow Professor of History. On Saturday, the group, including staff from Schaffer Library, visited Bigelow's homestead in Malden-on-Hudson in Saugerties, N.Y. They also listened to presentations from Ellen Fladger, head of Special Collections, Matthew Connolly, digital projects specialist and Annette LeClair, head of technical services at Schaffer. Attendees also enjoyed an encore of an earlier exhibit about Bigelow, "Remembered First Citizen," featuring artifacts such as his death mask, typewriter and working papers for his groundbreaking edition of the Franklin autobiography. Also on display are letters to Bigelow from such luminaries as Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan and a telegram from President William Taft noting the death of Bigelow on Dec. 19, 1911. - See more at:
http://union.edu/news/stories/2013/07/ties-that-bind-bigelow-family-celebrates-unions-favorite-citizen.php
     The title of the exhibit is a nod to the 1947 Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Bigelow, Forgotten First Citizen, by Margaret Clapp, who believed that Bigelow never received the attention he deserved. "He just wasn't a self-promoter," said Rod Bigelow, a retired inspector for the U.S. Customs Service and president of the Bigelow Society. "He was a great man who had a fascinating life. You look at politicians and others today who are just promoters, John wasn't like that." The Bigelow reunion coincides with an ongoing project at Union, The Correspondence of John Bigelow, a massive digital index of more than 20,000 letters from political, cultural and literary giants, including Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain and Charles Dickens. The collection was gifted to the College by the Bigelow family decades ago. Along with the New York Public Library, Union boasts the largest collection of Bigelow material. "We are so thrilled to have the Bigelow Society meet here," said LeClair. "John Bigelow was a remarkable man, and to be able to share his story with his relatives is special."


     Descendants of John Bigelow Rod, left, and Don Bigelow at the Union College library on Friday July 19, 2013 in Schenectady, N.Y.
John Bigelow, Union College Class of 1835, was a statesman and publisher and a founder of the New York Public Library.
(Michael P. Farrell/Times Union)
      It's been 178 years since there were so many Bigelows on campus.
Descendants of John Bigelow, an 1835 graduate of Union College and a central figure in 19th-century American letters, gathered for a family reunion Friday at the school where their famous forebear developed a lifelong love of literature.
     Bigelow was a noted lawyer, author and editor who was also President Abraham Lincoln's minister to France during the Civil War, a founder of the New York Public Library and co-owner of the New York Evening Post. Bigelow also worked behind the scenes in the U.S. acquisition of rights to build a canal through Panama instead of Nicaragua.

Bigelow's descendants donated to his alma mater his 4,000-volume personal library and more than 20,000 letters Bigelow wrote and received from Theodore Roosevelt, William Cullen Bryant, Andrew Carnegie, Samuel Tilden, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and other major historical figures.

Librarians put together a special exhibit at Schaffer Library with samples of Bigelow's correspondence, his typewriter, archival items and other oddities.


  A display in honor of John Bigelow at the Union College library on Friday July 19, 2013 in Schenectady, N.Y.
John Bigelow, Union College Class of 1835, was a statesman and publisher and a founder of the New York Public Library.
(Michael P. Farrell/Times Union)
     "We're pleased to hold our family reunion at Union College this year," said Rod Bigelow, 70, a retired U.S. Customs agent who lives in Chazy Lake in the Adirondacks. He is president of the Bigelow Society, which has about 500 members. It publishes a quarterly newsletter, The Forge, which reports on the genealogy of 12 generations of the family descended from John Baguley Bigelow. The patriarch emigrated from England in 1632 at age 16. He settled in Watertown, Mass., worked as a blacksmith and fathered 13 children.
     John Bigelow, the notable Union alumnus, was the seventh generation of the family in America.<>"We're excited to have the Bigelows here," said librarian Annette LeClair, who has been expanding Union's Bigelow online database, which includes digitized copies of many of Bigelow's records and background on his remarkable coterie of associates.
     "The digital universe has opened up a new level of interest on Bigelow," LeClair said. There have been recent inquiries from scholars as far away as Mexico.

Librarian Annette LeClair looks through some of the books from John Bigelow's library on display at the Union College library on Friday July 19, 2013
 in Schenectady, N.Y. John Bigelow, Union College Class of 1835, was a statesman and publisher and a founder of the New York Public Library.
 (Michael P. Farrell/Times Union)

     The effort is aimed at reclaiming Bigelow's place in history. A 1947 biography by Margaret Clapp was titled "Forgotten First Citizen." It won the Pulitzer Prize in biography in 1948 for Clapp, who argued that Bigelow deserved greater recognition.
     Even descendants had forgotten. Rod Bigelow did not know about him until he visited his son, Jeffrey, a 1995 Union graduate, at the Schenectady campus and found a book about John Bigelow in the library and became fascinated."They have an incredible amount of material about him and his life at Union. That's why we're here," said Bigelow, who was joined by his son, Jeffrey Jon Bigelow, the Union alum, who works as a hydrogeologist and lives in Saratoga Springs.
     The weekend reunion included a reception and discussion about the library exhibit and the Bigelow papers as well as a Saturday visit to John Bigelow's family homestead at Malden-on-Hudson in Saugerties.
     "My brother drove over from Las Vegas, stopped at my house and we decided we should go to the reunion," said Dale Bigelow, 70, a retired city bus driver from Grand Rapids, Minn.
     "I don't know much about John Bigelow, but it's pretty amazing to see this exhibit about all the things he did," said his brother, Alan Bigelow, 79, a retired high school teacher who lives in Las Vegas. "We all share an interest in history."
     "John Bigelow is one of my favorite alumni at Union," said Ellen Fladger, college archivist and head of special collections. "He knew everyone who was anyone in his day, and there were so many facets to his life. He was a true power broker."
     Matt Connolly
, a digital projects specialist, has been digitizing Bigelow's correspondence and is working on a book about Bigelow's deep interest in Emanuel Swedenborg, the Swedish philosopher, theologian and mystic."Bigelow believed in democracy as a spiritual process and that historical events were part of God's plan," Connolly said.
     Don Bigelow, 70, a retired optometrist from Bradenton, Fla., who is is editor of the Bigelow Society's journal, expected to gather enough material for an article or two at the reunion. "I'm looking forward to learning a lot more about John Bigelow this weekend," he said.
 

A death mask is part of a display in honor of John Bigelow at the Union College library on Friday July 19, 2013 in Schenectady, N.Y.
John Bigelow, Union College Class of 1835, was a statesman and publisher and a founder of the New York Public Library.
(Michael P. Farrell/Times Union)

From:
http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/History-shines-at-family-reunion-4676031.php

by: PaulGrondahl


(Preview at: http://schaffer.union.edu/bigelow/

2nd - Malden-on-Hudson, NY
Page 2

Blue Gray Line

Rod Bigelow
Box 13  Chazy Lake
Dannemora, N.Y.  12929
rodbigelow@netzero.net
Back to Bigelow Society

BACK TO BIGELOW HOME PAGE