Robert M. Hartley was my great uncle (married to my great Aunt Fannie). He lived near Amsterdam in NY state. He was a gentleman farmer with means to pursue hobbies most of his adult life. He was a tolerable archeologist and historian, and many of his collected Revolutionary and Civil War buttons and Native American artifacts are in the Kateri Tekakwitha museum in Fonda NY. In the 1930's he began to document French and Indian War to Revolutionary War powder horns of the Mohawk Valley, by making drawings of them as though they were unwrapped, sort of like a flat map of the globe.
Those drawings (more than 30) are in the basement of the library in St. Johnsville, NY. John Proud and others became aware of them and John went and took high quality photos of them a few years ago. I heard of it and talked at length with John about Uncle Rob as he was described by my father.
John and the "horners" are putting together a book of these drawings.Uncle Rob passed away long before Aunt Fannie. When she died in about 1960, my grandfather was the executor of the estate, and as a young lad or 7 years old, I went with him to inventory and prepare the goods that were not passed on to family, for auction. In the attic I found boxes of Native American artifacts- all the low quality stuff that didn't make it into the nuseum collections- and a few copies of his drawings of powder horns. I still have about a dozen of those copies.
4 years ago I went back to the museum and took some pictures of the drawings Uncle Rob made, but the lady there would not let me take them out because "somebody already did that" (John Proud). It was still great to see them all and attempt to hurriedly take pictures through the glass cases, with bad flourescent light glaring off the glass.
Here are a few examples.
Here is a scan of one of the copies I own, from Uncle Rob's attic. The copies were in black and white.
I may be biased but I encourage you all to think about getting this book when it comes out, as the whereabouts of the vast majority of these documented horns is unknown and they have not been photographed.
