100 years ago in The Record
Saturday, May 5, 1917
For many years, Mrs. Edward Pratt was a familiar face to people traveling between Lansingburgh and Cohoes across the Twelfth Street Bridge, where she helped her husband collect tolls before the bridge went public.
Mrs. Pratt’s body is found floating this evening in Little River, a tributary of the Hudson near the Troy-Albany road. A note left on the riverbank indicates that Pratt took her own life by jumping into the river.
The letter leaves instructions for her daughter Gladys to find a bank book hidden under a sofa in the Pratts’ Lansingburgh home. It “tells a sad story of an unhappy life, indicates that the woman endeavored by every means in her power to clear up a situation that had evidently given her much pain, says that she had nothing to live for, that nearly all her money was spent, and that she believed her act justified,” the Sunday Budget reports.
“Persons well acquainted with Mr. and Mrs. Pratt said that their relations always seemed to be of the most agreeable character, and it is therefore believed by many that the unfortunate woman was suffering from some sort of delusion, or at least that the statements contained in her letter may have been written under the stress of some mental excitement.”
Most recently Mrs. Pratt was working as a “canvasser” or door-to-door saleswoman who reportedly had “consider- able trade” in dressgoods and aprons. She was last seen alive sometime this morning, but investigators question the accuracy of relatives’ accounts, since Pratt’s body shows evidence of having been in the water “nearly twenty-four hours, if not even longer.”
Newinterest in naturalization
May normally sees a rush of foreign residents applying for U.S. citizenship, but with the U.S. at war with Germany The Record reports that applications are down drastically from last year. The war has curtailed naturalization applications in two ways. Since the declaration of war on April 6, people of German or Austrian origin are ineligible to apply for citizenship, though they can still formally declare their intent to become citizens after the war. On the other side, immigrants from nations opposed to Germany who haven’t been naturalized already are often subject to military service in their home countries. So far this month, only seven people have “sought information concerning citizenship papers. “Most of the applicants, as has been the case for quite a long time, are from Italy and Russia,” our reporter notes. One rarity this month is an applicant from France. “France very evidently has a very firm hold on the affection of her sons,” says deputy county clerk John Smith.