Charles J. Browne This is Me

Education

 Web References

1. 1. Broome's past restored in stereo

   www.pressconnects.com/apps/pbc - [Cached]

   Published on: 1/29/2006   Last Visited: 1/29/2006

   Deputy County Historian Charles J. Browne of the Broome County Historical Society authored the book Past & Present: Stereographic Scenes In and Around Broome County.
   ...
   Known to the world as "Chas," Browne will sign copies of the softcover volume from 6 to 9 p.m. on First Friday, Feb. 3, at the Connelly Gallery on State Street in Binghamton.
   
   Stereographs, the book explains, consist of two nearly identical photographs taken simultaneously with separate lenses, then shown through a viewer to appear three-dimensional.
   
   "David Dixon, president of the society, wanted to showcase our stereograph collection, which is a small part of our photographic collection," Browne explains.
   ...
   If Browne had used the whole photo collection of more than 17,000 pictures, he could have been working on the book the rest of his life rather than just the last five years.
   
   Browne lives a life immersed in local history as it is. He's deputy county historian for Broome and collections specialist for the Roberson Museum and Science Center, and over the years he has learned plenty of fascinating facts about local luminaries of bygone days.
   
   One man who had a Binghamton street named for him was a womanizer, and was busted in Albany for parading around naked in a hotel window, Browne says.
   
   A one-time mayor of the city may have faked his own death for insurance purposes. Another former mayor, involved in the Cardiff Giant hoax, later married a woman 27 years his junior - who he had previously referred to as his adopted daughter.
   
   "History tends to whitewash people, especially the powerful," Browne says. "We tend to forget they were humans with real foibles."
   
   Not all of those details made it into the book, which sells for $24.95, plus tax, at Roberson Museum and Science Center Gift Shop, the History Center at the Broome County Public Library and other local galleries and gift shops.
   
   Browne learned that a number of slaves who escaped to this region aligned themselves with Native Americans, keeping a low profile and living among them.
   
   "I had never come across that before," says Browne, who received a degree in history from Binghamton University.
   
   The more he came to understand, the more the plights of persecuted minorities touched him. He discovered one thing he hadn't known before: small African-American communities existed all over the county.
   
   Poignant, too, was the obliteration of much fine architecture in the days of Urban Renewal.
   
   "This section of Court Street was mansion after mansion," he says.

2. 2. WBNG-TV ACTION NEWS

   www.wbng.com/data/web_8204.sht - [Cached]

   Published on: 6/20/2005   Last Visited: 6/20/2005

   Deputy County Historian Charles Browne has written a book called Broome County, Then and Now. He's having about 100 images recreated. "It was a glass plate negative arranged to form a panoramic. It was pretty early in the history of photography in this area to have a photo from 1859 and the courthouse was built in 1857 so it was a novelty to show that view," Browne describes of one of the images. Browne says only two buildings shown in the old photograph still exist as they were today. The first courthouse burned down in 1896, but Browne says the one that stands today was built using the same floor plan with the dome in pretty much the same place. Browne's working with Broome County Historical Society and plans to publish the book soon.

3. 3. pressconnects.com | 06/25/05 | News Story

   www.pressconnects.com/today/ne - [Cached]

   Published on: 6/25/2005   Last Visited: 6/25/2005

   "There have been presidents here, but never royalty," said Charles J. Browne, deputy Broome County historian.