Image: Louis C. Jones, 1950
New York Folklore celebrates the 75th anniversary of its founding in 1944. The New York Folklore Society was formed as an offshoot of the New York State Historical Association and had the blessing of then-NYSHA President, Ryan Dixon Fox, an educator and President of Union College. Jones writes in Upstate Literature: Essays in Memory of Thomas F. O’Donnell (1985):
“Thompson and I had begun to talk of a New York Folklore Society as early as 1938 when I was finishing my graduate work at Columbia… By the summer of 1944, I had, at Thompson’s suggestion, approached Dixon Ryan Fox, President of the New York Historical Society (as well as of Union College) and found him most receptive to the idea that the new society should be born at a meeting of the Association. It took place at the luncheon meeting held at the Trinity Methodist Church in Albany on October 6, 1944; a few hours later Thompson presided at a session devoted entirely to papers on New York Folklore.”
Jones’s glee of their success is apparent in the correspondence between Louis C Jones and Harold Thompson. Jones related to Thompson in a private correspondence:
I think everything is now set for the meeting next week. By this time you have the program from the Historical Association, which carried everything except the fact that we are going to have a cracker-barrel bull session Saturday morning at 10…… Besides these formal functions, the Jones’s are going to have Open House on Friday afternoon at which we are going to gather in the brighter spirits……..
Jones goes on to describe the party that he is planning, its food and drink, and his and his wife’s attire. We hope that you’ll join us in Ossining on November 16th to create a memory for the next 75 years!
Citations:
Jones, Louis C. “Early Days of the Folklore Renaissance,” in Frank Bergman. Upstate Literature: Essays in Memory of Thomas F. O’Donnell. Syracuse University Press, 1985.
Louis C. Jones Papers, Collection 410. Courtesy of the Fenimore Art Museum Library.