New York Almanack

History, Natural History & the Arts

Dave Waite

With a lifelong interest in upstate New York history, Dave Waite has researched and written about topics ranging from hermits in the Adirondacks to stage coaching in the Mohawk Valley. He has had over forty articles published by a wide range of organizations including the New York State Archives, St. Lawrence County Historical Society, Saratoga County History Roundtable, and Warren County Historical Society.

Joe Gingras: A Major League Baseball Career Thwarted By War

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Joe Gingras Signs with Kansas CityIn 1870 Francois Dieudonné Gingras left his native Canada for Manhattan where he met and married Mary Roohan. By 1896, now with three children and another on the way, this couple had settled in Saratoga Springs where they opened a grocery store.

Their oldest son, Frank, was soon brought into the family business and the store was renamed, F. D. Gingras & Son. Their youngest son, whom they had named Joseph Elzead John Gingras, was looking to pursue a far different life: baseball. [Read more…] about Joe Gingras: A Major League Baseball Career Thwarted By War

The Silk Train That Killed Financier Spencer Trask

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Ogdensburg Journal, January 3rd, 1910On the morning of December 31, 1909, Saratoga Springs philanthropist and financier Spencer Trask was just waking up after a night in a railroad sleeping car at the rear of the Montreal Express. The night before this southbound train had picked up Trask in Saratoga as it made its way toward New York City.

At 8:03 am, only moments after the express train had stopped unexpectedly on the mainline near Croton, Westchester County, New York, a train transporting bales of raw silk crashed into its rear, killing Trask, the porter in his sleeping car, and injuring several other of the passengers. While the direct cause of this deadly wreck pointed to a failure of signal equipment and railroad personnel, events leading up to the tragedy had been put into motion six thousand miles to the west seventeen days earlier. [Read more…] about The Silk Train That Killed Financier Spencer Trask

When Caleb Ferris and Galway Celebrated 100 Years

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Caleb Ferris at 100Galway in Saratoga County has always been a caring community, one where both long-time residents and new arrivals pitch in and help when there is a need.

In the April 12th, 1882, Daily Saratogian newspaper I found two examples showing that the community spirit that is still with us today was just as alive 140 years ago. [Read more…] about When Caleb Ferris and Galway Celebrated 100 Years

Aeronaut Carlotta Myers In The Clouds Over Saratoga

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Carlotta and Zepher in Congress ParkIt was a quiet September afternoon at Saratoga Springs’ Grand Union Hotel, with families and small groups gathering to relax and be seen by Saratoga’s high society. As the clock struck 4:30, a hush fell over the hotel’s piazza and every eye was drawn across Broadway to Congress Spring Park where a huge net shrouded sphere slowly rose above the trees.

When the giant ball had cleared the treetops, hanging below it was a small figure standing suspended in an open wire cage waving a handkerchief to the onlookers below. The crowd that day in 1884 witnessed a gas-filled balloon ascension by female aeronaut Carlotta Myers. [Read more…] about Aeronaut Carlotta Myers In The Clouds Over Saratoga

The Smith Family of Acrobats and Clowns & Saratoga Springs

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Eddie Fritz Smith, 2nd Generation ClownIn the year 1900, York Avenue on Saratoga’s East Side was a quiet working-class neighborhood with a mix of young families, as well as older citizens, all living side by side. Listed on the street in that year’s census were laborers, painters, liverymen, and surprisingly, actors.

The neighborhood folks representing the theatre were Edward “Eddie” Fritz Smith, his wife Kitty Sharpe, and their children, Catherine, Sidney, Eddie, Jeal, and William. This couple was no stranger to the life in the spotlight, for even as they settled into a quiet life in Saratoga Springs they were still known across the globe as international celebrities. [Read more…] about The Smith Family of Acrobats and Clowns & Saratoga Springs

Jock Wright & Dut Barber: Honondaga Lake History

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Map of Jock’s Lake is taken from the 1876 E. R. Wallace Map of the Adirondack WildernessOne of the earliest written accounts of Jock’s Lake in the Adirondacks (about twenty-five miles east of Boonville) was given by Jeptha Simms in his 1850 book Trappers of New York: A Biography of Nicholas Stoner & Nathaniel Foster:

“Jock’s Lake, so-called after Jock (Jonathan) Wright, an early trapper upon its shores, is a very pretty lake, five or six miles long, though not very wide; and is situated in the north-eastern or wilderness portion of Herkimer County, some ten miles from a place called Noblesborough. Its outlet is one of the sources of the west branch of West Canada Creek.” [Read more…] about Jock Wright & Dut Barber: Honondaga Lake History

Through The Fulton Chain of Lakes in 1877

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1885 Stoddard Map of the Adirondack WildernessThe adventure began with an exchange of letters in the spring of 1877 between a sportsman in Syracuse, NY, and Byron P. Graves of Boonville, a town on the western border of the Adirondacks. The purpose of this correspondence was to hire a guide and transportation for a two-week hunting and fishing trip into the Fulton Chain of Lakes for the man and his 11-year-old son Ned.

The sportsman was Ansel Judd Northrup, a 43-year-old attorney who would later write the book, Camps and Tramps in the Adirondacks (1882), where this story was first told. The final communication from Northrup, in the form of a telegraph, simply read, “Engage Brinckerhoff, will reach Boonville, morning train, July 5th.” [Read more…] about Through The Fulton Chain of Lakes in 1877

The Whitetail Deer Paddock in Saratoga’s Congress Park: Some History

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llustration by Prentiss Ingraham 1885 Saratoga Winter and SummerIt is difficult to imagine tame whitetail deer roaming freely through Congress Park in downtown Saratoga Springs, yet in its early years, it was both a common sight and an eagerly anticipated part of experiencing the city for both young and old.

It all began with a gift. [Read more…] about The Whitetail Deer Paddock in Saratoga’s Congress Park: Some History

The Showboat Era on Lake George 1933-1937

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Horicon IIWhen the sidewheel steamboat Horicon II was launched on Lake George in 1910, she was both the longest and fastest passenger vessel to ever sail the lake. Over the next 29 years, she would be used for transportation of cargo and residents around the lake, as well as cruises for tourists.

The construction of a road on the west side of the lake, as well as the region’s rapidly increasing mobility with the introduction of the automobile, brought a dramatic decline in passengers. In response to this trend, in 1932 the Delaware & Hudson Railroad, owners of the steamboats on the lake through the Lake George Steamboat Company, announced that they would not be running boats that year. [Read more…] about The Showboat Era on Lake George 1933-1937

Laura Smith Ellsworth: Devoted Spiritualist

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Mrs.Laura Smith Ellsworth courtesy The Wayside of Life, 1906These days clairvoyant is not a term that is often used in describing a doctor’s ability to diagnose disease. Yet, in the last half of the 1800s it was not uncommon to seek out a “clairvoyant physician” when a person was concerned about changes in their health.

Laura Smith Ellsworth, a self-proclaimed spiritualist, medium and clairvoyant physician who would devote her life to spiritualism, grew up in Charlton, in Saratoga County, NY. The daughter of Henry and Jane Smith, the youngest of their three children, Laura was born in 1862 and baptized in September of the same year at the Charlton Freehold Presbyterian Church. [Read more…] about Laura Smith Ellsworth: Devoted Spiritualist