Schoharie Free Library

LHLC-S1 & S5. Title page of Smokefires in Schoharie, DBCN AAP-6154, 21 cm. and the first page of the manuscript of Rainbow, both by Don Cameron Shafer.

Don Cameron Shafer is Schoharie's best known local author. He owned a large house just up the street form the Schoharie Free Library called "The Maples" (note the address in the upper left corner of the manuscript). He wrote many articles about fishing, hunting and the outdoors (the Library has several original editions of the magazines containing some of the articles) as well as serialized stories about the Wild West.

Shafer's most famous work is Smokefires in Schoharie, which according to his 1975 obituary is "referrd (sic) to by many as the finest journal ever written on early history in Schoharie County."

The Library also owns nine other manuscripts and several notebooks containing jokes and very short articles written by Mr. Shafer with penciled notations of date and magazine of publication as well as what he was paid for them.