History, Natural History & the Arts
The Nassau County Museum of Art has abruptly dismissed its Museum Director in a controversial move that is prompting calls for his reinstatement and the Southampton History Museum has announced a new Executive Director without controversy.
This is the second time in six years the Nassau County Museum suddenly and without warning replaced its Museum Director. [Read more…] about Leadership Changes At Long Island Museums Stir Controversy, Confidence
After more than three years, the Federal Student Loan payment pause ends and interest resumes on September 1, 2023 with payments scheduled to restart in October 2023.
Begun under the Trump administration in March 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Federal Student Loan payment pause allowed borrowers to stop making payments on their federal student loans without penalty. The payment pause was extended by the Biden administration several times, but widespread cancellation was halted by the conservative Supreme Court.
The end of the payment pause will have a significant impact on borrowers and is expected to lead to an increase in defaults on the some $1.75 trillion total debt from some 45.3 million borrowers. [Read more…] about Federal Student Loan Payment Pause Ending
Robert Fulton did not invent the steamboat. There were perhaps 20 others who worked toward the same goal before the North River Steamboat, later known as Clermont, left the dock in the city of New York for Albany on August 17, 1807. [Read more…] about August 1807: Robert Fulton’s Steamboat Makes History
The New York State Museum, New York State Archives, and the New York State Archives Partnership Trust, in collaboration with the Hudson River Valley Institute at Marist College and the Cooperstown Graduate Program at SUNY Oneonta, have announced a New York State History Conference for June 2024.
It will be five years since a general conference on New York State history has taken place. [Read more…] about New York History Conference Returning in 2024
New York State Museum leadership is under fire again. This time from Albany Times Union columnist Chris Churchill. He points out that it’s been eight years since a $14 million overhaul of the museums exhibits was announced. [Read more…] about The Decline of the New York State Museum
Dennis Warren left his job as a coal shoveler on the New York Central Railroad in Albany to ship out to the First World War. His transport ship had a close call with a German submarine on the way over, but got there in time to take part in what one of the bloodiest military campaigns in American history.
For Americans after the war, the Argonne would mean what Normandy meant just 25 years later – sacrifice. Sadly, that sacrifice in the Argonne Forest was never repaid to Dennis Warren, who met the death of a smuggler – running from an officious and invasive law on a treacherous mountain road near Port Henry on Lake Champlain.
According to the newsman who reported his death at the age of 29, “Canadian Ale was spread across the road.” [Read more…] about Smugglers & The Law: Prohibition In Northern New York
Night and day for three full weeks six well-dressed men would take shifts standing watch over Betsey Hays in her bed. They planned to stay with her two at a time in her one room cabin and make careful scientific notes. For Betsey, who spent most of her time tormented by uncontrollable bodily contortions and seizures, it was something she was used to.
Over the past two years, thousands of people had come to Chestertown in Northern Warren County to stand over her as she suffered. [Read more…] about “Strange things about Mrs. Simeon Hays,” The Woman That Lived Without Eating
Last week Thomas Webster, a 20-year veteran of the NYPD, was sentenced to the stiffest sentence so far – 10 years – for his actions while attacking the U.S. Capitol on January 6th in an effort to keep Donald Trump in power. In the effort to identify the insurrectionists, Webster was given the name “eye-gouger” for his attempt to gouge the eyes of a Washington D.C. police officer.
It’s a long American tradition. Eye gouging, not insurrection. [Read more…] about Rough And Tumble: A Short History of Eye Gouging
California’s 8th Governor and long-time Senator Leland Stanford, namesake of Stanford University and one-time president of the Central Pacific Railroad, has a unique connection to New York State’s Capital District.
Leland was born in Watervliet in 1824, the son of Josiah Stanford and Elizabeth Phillips. Among his seven siblings were New York Senator Charles Stanford (1819-1885) and Australian spiritualist Thomas Welton Stanford (1832-1918). The elder Stanford was a wealthy farmer in the eastern Mohawk Valley before moving to the Lisha Kill in Albany County where Leland was born. [Read more…] about Leland Stanford, The Bull’s Head & Albany’s 19th Century Cattle Market
The St. Lawrence & Adirondack Railroad, also known as the Mohawk & Malone – eventually owned by the New York Central and called the Adirondack Line or the Adirondack Railroad ran directly through the Adirondacks from Herkimer (near Utica) to Malone connecting the rail lines along the Mohawk River to the Main Trunk Line running into Montreal. The line is often attributed to William Seward Webb, but it was the men who actually built the line that are the subject of this essay.
On March 29, 1892 a Boston Globe article titled “Labor’s Slaves in the Adirondacks” reported that Utica “resembled Washington during war times, hundreds of penniless and destitute Negroes are camped out tonight in the temporary places of shelter given them, and the citizens of Utica are consulting as to the best means of returning them to their homes.”
The Globe told readers that all night, “runaway slaves” had been coming into town. One hundred and fifty of them, mostly black laborers from the Deep South, but some recently arrived European immigrants as well. [Read more…] about “Labor’s Slaves in the Adirondacks”: Building the Adirondack Railroad