06/01/2026
๐ผ ๐๐ก๐๐ข๐ฅ๐จ๐ ๐๐ฃ๐ฉ๐ค โ๐จ๐๐๐-๐ฉ๐๐ฃ๐๐๐ฃ๐ฉโ ๐๐๐จ๐๐๐ง๐๐:* ๐ฌ๐๐ฉ๐ ๐ฟ๐๐ซ๐๐ ๐๐ค๐ง ๐ค๐ช๐ง ๐๐ค๐ฃ๐๐๐ฎ ๐๐ช๐จ๐๐ฃ๐
To be fair and honest, most of the best nuggets of research come up unexpectedly. โThis isnโt the findings youโre looking forโ moments can lead to side tangents that produce a value in research; provided you can still manage to accomplish the original goal.
While looking for updates on nyshistoricnewspapers.org related to canal drownings (exciting you may think!), the attached article caught an eye, as the headline intended. It is an intriguing glimpse into the latter 19th century revivalism occurring in America, particularly the northeast.
So a pivot occurred. While there wasnโt anything coming up on a quick search of the usual portals to knowledge, it will ultimately lead to a deeper dive. Here is the โquick and dirtyโ that has been unwound from the article:
G.G. Firth had a small store, labeled as a โgroc.โ on the 1890 Sanborn Map just off the canal (corner of Washington and Franklin โ a building still stands there that was presumably his). On reaching out to Kelly Farquhar, the Montgomery County Historian, she shed light on George Firth being โlisted as a Hotel Keeper in the 1880 census and one of his neighbors is Abram(?) Yates. Going back to the 1905 map I was able to make out an โA. Yatesโ nearby the hotel that used to sit on the corner of Erie Street across from the Donaldson Block โ this is the hotel that burned a few years ago. It used to be called more recently the Hotel Arthur and way back when it was also known as the Hotel Perkinsโฆ there was a bar in that hotel as well so it is possible that this was the location of Firthโs saloon.โ
W.E. or William Edgar Geil mentioned in the ๐ฝ๐โ๐๐ ๐ก๐๐ค๐ ๐ท๐๐๐๐ฆ ๐
๐๐๐ข๐๐๐๐๐๐ article, happens to have a more information available and what a wild interesting ride that was.
Synopsis: Geil, was only about 19 or 20 when that incident occurred, having never actually finished college, he became very well known as a revivalist evangelical orator. While from Bucks County, PAโhe spent a lot of time in the Mohawk Valley with revival meetings from 1895-1899 (Herkimer, West Troy, Schenectady, Fultonville, Johnstown, etc). Often preaching to upwards of 1,200 people. Eventually he ended up back in Pennsylvania married to an oil millionaireโs daughter and they traveled... a lot. He traveled even more solo and is an โunknown nowโ explorer who lived with head-hunters, pygmies, and walked the entire Great Wall of China (reportedly the first American to do so). After another trip to the Holy Land, he died in Italy of the flu in 1925. His wife, Constance Lucy Emerson Geil, passed in 1959 and had kept all of his travel journals and photos.
Additionally, it has been uncovered that his father Samuel Geil was a surveyor and cartographer who had come up from PA to do mapping on the Enlarged Erie Canal c. 1852-53 โ mapping the Ft. Hunter area of Montgomery County.
*Originally appeared in the Winter 2024 Newsletter
