Out of the Archives: 1913 letter
written on White Sulphur Springs stationery
by Kevin Schlottmann, Levy Processing Archivist, Center for Jewish History

Before email and before the telephone, people wrote letters.  And, as any archivist will tell you, some people wrote lots and lots of them, as they fulfilled a desire for economical daily communication when apart from friends and loved ones.  Hotels were happy to provide letter-writing materials, and they prepared stationery with printed letterhead that advertised the establishment.  

This letter illustrates both things nicely: It is written on paper with prominent letterhead advertising the author’s vacation locale, and it is one of the hundreds of daily letters that Stella Koch wrote to her husband Richard whenever they were apart.  The letterhead, from the White Sulphur Springs, Bathing Establishment, Pavilion Hotel and Cottages, Sharon Springs, NY, comes from the Leo Baeck Institute’s Richard Koch Family Collection, AR 25369.

The author’s locale also deserves closer mention.  Sharon Springs, NY was already a noted spa town at the birth of mass American tourism in the mid-nineteenth century, and hotels and resorts sprung up to cater to those seeking the prominent natural mineral springs in the area.  Later in the nineteenth century, Sharon Springs began to cater to wealthy German Jews, who were excluded from the premier New York State spa and resort town of the time, Saratoga Springs.   

As first-generation German-American Jews, both Stella Koch and her husband fit into the community that vacationed there. The town’s popularity continued into the twentieth century; according to this family blog, Sharon Springs was even a stopover for Jewish bootleggers. Running their liquor from Canada to New York City, they passed through town on their way south and sold some of their wares to local proprietors.  Like many resort towns in upstate New York, it experienced a decline in the mid-twentieth century, although it did get another influx of German Jews after the West German government—which paid for medical care for Holocaust survivors—allowed therapeutic spas as a legitimate treatment.  Mirroring demographic shifts, today it is mostly Hasidic and Russian Jews who frequent the mineral spas.  

Click here for a view of the Lower Bath House and the White Sulphur Temple of the Pavilion Hotel, Sharon Springs, NY in 2010. (Photograph by Anne White via Flickr.)

Additional information about the history of Sharon Springs can be found from the local Chamber of Commerce, a newsletter of the New York Folklore Society, and the Jewish Virtual Library entry about New York State.