John Conway

John Conway is the Sullivan County Historian and teaches a class on Sullivan County history at SUNY-Sullivan.

Roebling’s Wire Rope Modernized The D & H Canal

June 10, 2014 by John Conway 2 Comments

John Augustus Roebling celebrated two milestones in June of 1849, his 43^rd birthday and the beginning of construction of the Neversink Aqueduct on the Delaware & Hudson Canal. It was the third of the four aqueducts he would design and build for the canal company, and followed the completion of the Delaware and Lackawaxen Aqueducts the previous year.

Roebling (his given name was actually Johann August) was born in Muhlhausen, in Prussia, on June 12, 1806, the youngest son of Christoph Polycarpa Roebling and Fredericke Dorothea Mueller Roebling. He grew up in a world of private tutors, learned the music of Bach and the poetry of Goethe, and according to some sources, built a model of a suspension bridge when he was nine years old that bore a striking resemblance to what would be his most famous work, the Brooklyn Bridge. He gained admission to the prestigious engineering program at the Royal Polytechnic Institute in Berlin, where he studied languages and philosophy as well as architecture, bridge construction and hydraulics. He graduated in 1826, and went to work for the state, as was the requirement at that time, serving three years building roads in Westphalia. [Read more…] about Roebling’s Wire Rope Modernized The D & H Canal

The Architectural Legacy of George Ross Mackenzie

June 3, 2014 by John Conway 16 Comments

Few places in Sullivan County have a more interesting history than the hamlet of Glen Spey in Lumberland, NY. And fewer places still, possess the architectural treasures that grace that area.

So much so, in fact, that architect Robert Dadras has dubbed the area “Sullivan County’s Newport,” referring, of course, to the Rhode Island resort city where so many of the millionaires of America’s Gilded Age built their remarkable summer “cottages.”

That, more than anything else, is why Glen Spey is included as part of “The Magical History Tour,” this year’s Architectural/Historical Bus Tour, scheduled for June 7. [Read more…] about The Architectural Legacy of George Ross Mackenzie

Heritage Tourism And Sullivan County

May 28, 2014 by John Conway Leave a Comment

There seems to be a great movement underway in recent years—the European Union is a good example—to make all places the same or at least more like each other. This global homogenization, for want of a better term, has threatened national identities and it has also created new challenges for those areas whose economies have been dependent upon heritage tourism.

Heritage tourism is defined by the National Trust for Historic Preservation as “traveling to experience the places, artifacts and activities that authentically represent the stories and people of the past,” but it is only viable if different places have different stories to tell. Eliminating differences makes that a real challenge. [Read more…] about Heritage Tourism And Sullivan County

The Magical History Tour: Revolution to Revolution

May 19, 2014 by John Conway 2 Comments

Architect Robert Dadras is quick to admit that when he helped conceive the idea of an Architectural-Historical Bus Tour back in 1996, he wasn’t at all sure it would catch on.

“There were comments like, where will you ever find architecture in Sullivan County?” he recalls.

The fact that cities from Miami, Florida and Greensboro, North Carolina to Chicago, Illinois and Toronto, Canada had successfully used similarly constructed tours to boost tourism and economic development did not make it any easier to sell the idea locally, Dadras concedes, at the same time relishing the fact that this year’s tour will be his nineteenth. [Read more…] about The Magical History Tour: Revolution to Revolution

Shad: The Founding Fish Returns

May 13, 2014 by John Conway 1 Comment

There was a time when Lenape fishermen – or women, since they did much of the fishing in that culture— would use nets woven from branches, saplings or wild hemp to catch huge numbers of shad in the Delaware River. Much of their catch would be preserved by a unique smoking process that would keep them edible through the winter. The Lenape designated March as the month of the shad and celebrated with a festival that often lasted six weeks or more.

The early European settlers learned the importance of shad from the Natives and quickly picked up the technique of smoking them to provide food for the harsh winters when game was scarce. Some historians, including William E. Meehan writing in Fish, Fishing and Fisheries of Pennsylvania in 1893, have noted that virtually every Colonial era homestead in a broad area bordering the Delaware River “had its half-barrel of salted shad sitting in the kitchen with some choice pieces of smoked shad hanging by the kitchen chimney.” [Read more…] about Shad: The Founding Fish Returns