Recent News

Robert Scramlin gave a land deed to New York State Historical Association in Cooperstown for property in the Lindsay Patent in Cherry Valley, which has been in his family since 1754. He still lives on the farm but about a year ago signed a conservation easement with the Otsego Land Trust to protect it from future development.

Scramlin presented the deed Dec. 14, accompanied by a member of the Land Trust board.

"I wanted to make sure it would be available to future generations," Scramlin said Tuesday. He was concerned the document might be destroyed or lost when people went through his papers. It has been kept in a safe-deposit box.

NYSHA head librarian Wayne Wright said in the more than 30 years he has worked at the archives, this is the second donation of a document from the 18th century that has been received. There have been a few documents purchased from the period over the years.

Its important because the Lindsay Patent was the first settlement by Europeans in Otsego County, he said. Seven Scottish-Irish families settled there in 1738. For 25 years, it was the only settlement in the county.

The deed shows the land was sold by Richard Miller of Albany to James Willson of Albany. He was an ancestor of Scramlin, and the property has been in possession of family descendants since that sale.

Although it hasn't been catalogued, the deed is already available for researchers at the library, Wright said.

 The historic Brookwood Point property in Cooperstown is one of three projects in New York state to receive a Scenic Byway Grant. The project, which is being overseen by the Otsego Land Trust and Brookwood Citizens' Committee, was awarded $188,000 to improve public access to the site as part of the U.S. Route 20 Scenic Byway Corridor, according to a media release from the Land Trust on Monday.

The 22-acre Brookwood property, on the western shore of Otsego Lake, is the site of the former Cook Estate and includes a main house, gardens, wetlands, flood plains and more than a quarter-mile of lake frontage.

The Cook Foundation, which had managed the property until its merger with the Otsego Land Trust a year ago, was created in 1985 by Bob Cook to oversee his family's estate.

At the time of the merger, Cook Foundation President Robert Poulson said the financial burden of maintaining the Brookwood property "exceed(ed) the Foundation's resources." In March, a plot of land in the village of Cooperstown was donated to the Land Trust by Jim and Eileen Dean with the goal that the organization could sell the land to support its maintenance of Brookwood. At that time, Land Trust executive director Peter Hujik said that long-term ownership of Brookwood could place an undue financial burden on the Land Trust.

Committee co-chairmen Francis Nolan and Martha Frey said in a media release that they were enthusiastic about the grant news.

"We felt we had a good chance to receive the grant because the project had come so far in terms of planning and overall support," Frey said in the release, which also reported that more than $100,000 has been raised by Otsego Land Trust to support Brookwood Point. "None of this would be possible without the Cook Foundation's collaboration in merging with Otsego Land Trust," Nolan said.