Schoharie County Anecdotes

Send in your fun, humorous, unusual stories about Schoharie County. These stories often provide us with insights to the lives and events of our ancestors. Send your contribution to Doug Boyer today.

Gilboa's Four-Legged Chicken - submitted by P.R. Pottelberg

Mr. John Lamphere, of Gilboa, Schoharie County, it is said, is the owner of a chicken that has four fully developed legs. The rapid manner in which the fowl scratches earth, it is alleged, astonishes the other hens so that they hide their heads in their feathers and forget to lay eggs. When on roost the quartet of feet take up no more room than an ordinary chicken's feet do. This curiosity can run twice as fast as its companions and its legs do not interfere with one another. -- The New York Telegram, June 12, 1889.

Blenheim Bridge - submitted by MTK

For years there persisted in my family an anecdotal story about the Blenheim Bridge. Louise Dickerman Waite was my grandfather's mother. The story was that the Blenheim Bridge was purchased by her father and presented to her on her birthday, and that the tolls collected were her allowance. None of us had much faith in it's truth. Now we know it was true. Louise Dickerman was born in 1839. She married Charles Waite in 1864, moved to Watertown, New York and then to Manhattan, where she died in 1897. Waddaya know! We Dickerman/Waite progeny would like to know anything else there is to know about the Dickermans of Blenheim.

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