OBITUARIES

(Not Indexed)

MALTBY, MATTHEW JAY continued

Cutlery Co. For a time, he was an electrical contractor in the area and was instrumental in getting electricity into many rural communities. He is survived by his wife, Mrs. Charlotte Tinkham Maltby; three daughters, Mrs. Ada Mantle of Endwell, Mrs. John Reidlen of Valley Springs, Calif., and Mrs. Charles Christie of Vestal; four grandchildren and five great-grand-children.

MALTBY, MERRITT - p. 659

From the Syracuse Post-Standard, June 24, 1955: Merritt Maltby, 79, a life resident of Bonta Bridge Rd., town of Brutus, New York, died June 22, 1955, in Weedsport after an illness of several months. He was a retired farmer. Surviving are his wife, Mrs. Cora K. Maltby; two sons, William L. and L. James Maltby, both of Syracuse; four daughters, Mrs. Ambrose Welch of Marcellus, Mrs. William Smolenski of Solvay, Mrs. Richard Chapin of North Berwick, Maine, and Mrs. James Elmore of Denver, Colo., and nine grandchildren. Burial will be in St. Joseph's Cemetery.

CHIEF JOHN BIG TREE

The name Onondaga is said to signify "people of the hill." Of course residents of Onondaga County are quite aware of what follows, but others reading this may not be. "An important tribe of the Iroquois confederacy and the official guardians of the council fire of the league. Their chief residence was about the lake and creek of the same name in central New York, with jurisdiction extending northward to Lake Ontario and southward to the Susquehanna. Their principal village, which was also the capital of the confederacy, was called Onondaga or Onondaga Castle, and was near the present town of that name, a few miles south of Onondaga Lake. In 1677 it contained 140 houses. The Onondaga were estimated by the Jesuits in 1660 at about 1500 and by Greenhalgh in 1677 at 1750. The interior position of the Onondaga rendered them less prominent than the Mohawk and the Seneca, the two frontier tribes of the confederacy, and they seem also to have been of less warlike disposition."

The following death notice appeared in a midwestern city newspaper July 7, 1967. (We omit the photographs.) "Chief John Big Tree, who was one of the models for the Indian head nickels, died yesterday on the Onondaga Indian reservation near Syracuse, N.Y. He claimed to be 102 yeas old, but records of the Onondaga County Historical Association showed his age as 92. In addition to serving as a model for the coin, first minted in 1912, he played more than 100 roles in early cowboy and Indian motion pictures." Apparently he was an ambitious man, not a lazy one.

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