Amsterdam may not yet have been a small city back in 1792 when today’s Amsterdam Birthday Celebrant was born here but it looks like we already had a big heart. Charles Dayan’s father was an immigrant from Austria, who died a few months after Charles was born leaving his Mom destitute with two small children to care for. The family of an Amsterdam man named Zaceariah Peterson took them in and helped care for the trio for the next 14 years. It looks as if Dayan then went to work at an Amsterdam mill owned by a guy named Elliott for the next three years and then in 1809, he, his mom and brother moved to Lowville, NY, which is located about 60 miles north of Utica. It would be in that Lewis County community that the Dayans would prosper…
