Sean Kelleher

Sean Kelleher is the historian in the town of Saratoga, NY. He writes a daily blog at https://historianatsaratoga.wordpress.com/ Kelleher served as a Commissioner for the NYS French and Indian War 250th Anniversary Commemoration Commission. Sean can be reached by email at historiantosaratoga@gmail.com.

A Chat With Fort Ticonderoga’s Rich Strum

February 29, 2012 by Sean Kelleher Leave a Comment

Rich Strum is the Director of Education at Fort Ticonderoga. For the past 13 years, Strum has responsible for all the educational activities at the Fort (including the 2,000 acres of landscape). His focus includes school programs, family programs, youth group (scouts) programs, seminars and conferences, workshops, college and university partnerships, and lecture programs.

Fort Ticonderoga, America’s Fort, is a private not-for-profit historic site and museum along Lake Champlain that presents the struggles, sacrifices, and victories that shaped the nations of North America and changed world history.

New York History had the opportunity to do an email interview with Strum about his work at Fort Ticonderoga.

NYH: What is a challenge you face in your job?
RS: I think like all non-profits, the biggest challenge is maximizing limited resources to produce quality programs.

NYH: Tell us about the projects you’ve been working on this past year?
RS: Fort Ticonderoga has a strong reputation for hosting quality seminars and conferences. Our War College of the Seven Years’ War is entering its 17th year and the Seminar on the American Revolution is in its 9th year. In 2012, we’ve added three new seminar programs that reach out to new audiences: “Material Matters: It’s in the Details” is geared for collectors and others with an interest in 18th-century material culture. The First Annual “Garden & Landscape Symposium” complements our King’s Garden and reaches out to regional home gardeners. The “Conference on Lake George and Lake Champlain” takes a holistic view of these lakes, exploring the history, geography, culture, ecology, and current issues related to the region.

We are also expanding our scouting programs, building on our successful school programs to develop scout-specific opportunities on-site.

Probably the biggest undertaking in the past year was hosting an National Endowment for the Humanities Landmarks of American History and Culture Workshops program for school teachers. In July 2011, we held two week-long workshops for a total of 80 teachers from around the country. The focus was “The American Revolution on the Northern Frontier: Fort Ticonderoga and the Road to Saratoga,” looking at the first three years of the Revolution (1775-77). Thanks to a grant from NEH, we were able to bring scholars from across the country to spend a week with teachers talking about aspects of the Revolution. It was a great opportunity for me to work with some prominent national scholars, including William Fowler (Northeastern University), Holly Mayer (Duquesne University), and James Kirby Martin (University of Houston).

NYH: What is the primary constituency you serve?
RS: Most people think “students” when they hear Director of Education, but teachers and adult learners are probably a bigger part of my work. In many ways, every visitor setting foot onsite is my constituency, either directly, or through cooperation with the Collections, Interpretation, and Landscape departments.

NYH: What tools (traditional and digital) do you currently use to work with your constituency (whether it is teachers or docents, etc.)?
RS: We are blessed to have a fantastic collection of artifacts and documents as well as a historic landscape. Digital technology can still present some challenges as we still are beyond the reach of Broadband technology at the Fort itself. Over the past year, we’ve been better about embracing social media (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) and we’ve revamped our website. I find Constant Contact especially useful in reaching both broad and specific audiences.

NYH: If you could do anything in the online or physical world to better serve your constituency, what would it be?
RS: As part of a much larger long-term goal, we need a visitor orientation center. Currently, visitors are thrust into the landscape with little orientation. In the more immediate future, solving the Broadband challenge would open up a number of opportunities for sharing our programs with those who can’t attend on-site.

NYH would like to thank Rich Strum for taking the time to answer our questions. Fort Ticonderoga offers a wide variety of educational opportunities for students including the highly acclaimed National History Day program held on March 10 at the Deborah Clarke Mars Education Center at Fort Ticonderoga. A new line-up of field trip experiences await students in 2012 including the new “To Act as One United Body” program where students will experience the basics of being a soldier fighting for the Continental Army. For more information on student activities at Fort Ticonderoga visit http://www.fortticonderoga.org/learn/students or call 518-585-2821to schedule a visit.

If you are or know of a museum educator who would be willing to answer a few questions about their work, please contact kelleherseanp@gmail.com.

Sean Kelleher is served as a member of the New Hampshire Council for the Social Studies Executive Board and was the Director of the Washington County Fair Farm Museum.

History Habits: National Parks Passports for Kids

January 30, 2012 by Sean Kelleher Leave a Comment

History Habits is a series designed to offer activities to parents to encourage their children’s love and enjoyment of history. The goal is to provide parents with tools they can use to stimulate your children’s active involvement in the history that surrounds them every day.

Next time you go exploring either locally or across the country, do not forget your Passport. That is your Passports to Your National Parks and, most importantly for parents, do not forget to bring along your Kids’ Passport to Your National Parks Companion. Passports are a way to “record” your visits to National Parks, Monuments, Recreation Areas, etc. National Park visitors centers and book stores usually have passport stations where you can stamp your books with their location stamp. (Many sites in New York actually have more than one stamp.) The cancellations, similar to those received on an international passport, record the name of the park and the date you visited.

“It is always a delight for me to see families with children come to Martin Van Buren National Historic Site and the first thing they ask for is the stamp for their NPS passports” explains Park Superintendent Dan Dattilio. “Once they get that important task done they
go out and enjoy the park.”

As a parent of two preschoolers, I have seen these passports engage my children by creating a fun learning experience. What I really appreciate is the Kids’ Passport to Your National Parks Companion is an owner manual to the National Parks for children. This companion allows children (guided by parents) to develop a connection with history and the natural world. I hopeful someday my children will appreciate having this record and that is will spark great memories.

These passports provides background information on the National Park Service (NPS) and encourages children to use all of their senses to explore parks. There is plenty of space to record observations, sketch plants and animals, list accomplishments, track visits, and even collect park ranger autographs. The collecting of autographs has created a dialogue between my children and the Park Rangers. It is great fun to see the children engaged in learning and it is my hope that this is the first step in creating stewards for history and National Park sites.

Passports are easy to obtain. You don’t even need a birth certificate or photo. Most NPS visitors centers sell the spiral-bound 6 x 3.5 inch passports and a special Kids’ Passport to Your National Parks Companion for $13.95. For further information call Eastern National 1 (877) NAT-PARK or go to www.eparks.com.

One suggestion for parents to extend the learning is to bring extra index cards and collect each cancellation stamps on its own index card. This allows for scrap booking the stamp with photos from the site to create a memory book.

If you want to dig deeper into NPS cancellation stamps, think of joining the National Parks Travelers Club. This is a nonprofit, hobbyist organization that have an entire list of where NPS stamps and non-NPS stamps (lighthouses, National Registry homes, State Parks, etc) are located. It is free to join the discussion boards for information on National Park travel or for $10 a year one has access to the entire stamp database, as well as Google Earth maps to each location.

Cancellation sites in New York include:

African Burial Ground NM—New York City

Castle Clinton NM—New York City

Eleanor Roosevelt NHS—Hyde Park

Ellis Island—New York City, N.J./N.Y.

Erie Canalway NHC—Waterford, Buffalo,Rome, Stillwater, Seneca Falls, AKWAABA, Amherst Museum, Burden IronWorks, Camillus Erie Canal Park, Chittenango Landing Canal Boat Museum, Day Peckinpaugh, Erie Canal Discovery Center, Erie Canal Museum, Erie Canalway Visitor Center, Historic Palmyra Museums, Mabee Farm HS, Mary Jemison, Port of Newark Canal Park, RiverSpark VC, Rochester Museum & Science Center, Sam Patch, Sch’dy CHS History Museum, Schoharie Crossing SHS, Seneca Museum of Industry & Waterways, Spencerport Depot & Canal Museum, UGR History Project

Federal Hall N MEM—New York City

Fire Island NS—Wilderness, Watch Hill, Lighthouse, Sailors Haven, William Floyd Estate, Patchogue, Long Island

Fort Stanwix NM—Rome

Gateway NRA—Jamaica Bay; Floyd Bennett Field, Brooklyn; Wildlife Refuge District, Queens; Breezy Point, Fort Tilden, Ft. Wadsworth; Miller Field, Staten Island; Great Kills Park, Staten Island

General Grant N MEM—New York City

Governors Island NM—New York City

Hamilton Grange NM–New York City

Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt NHS–Hyde Park

Lower East Side Tenement Museum NHS— New York City

Manhattan Sites–Federal Hall, St. Paul’s Church NHS Mount Vernon, General Grant New York City

Martin Van Buren NHS—Kinderhook

North Country National Scenic Trail

Sagamore Hill NHS—Oyster Bay, Sagamore Hill Nature Trail, Roosevelt Museum at Old Orchard,

Saint Paul’s Church NHS–Mount Vernon

Saratoga NHP—Stillwater

Statue of Liberty NM—New York City

Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace NHS—New York City

Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural NHS—Buffalo

Thomas Cole NHS—Catskill

Upper Delaware SRR—Narrowsburg, Zane Grey Museum

Vanderbilt Mansion NHS—Hyde Park,

Women’s Rights NHP—Seneca Falls, M’Clintock House

Sean Kelleher. Kelleher is the Historian for the Town of Saratoga and Village of Victory in the Upper Hudson Valley. As an educator, he was a New Hampshire Council for the Social Studies Executive Board member and the Director of the New Hampshire Teacher Training Institute for Character and Citizenship Education.

British Assault on the Home of Pie a la Mode

January 26, 2012 by Sean Kelleher Leave a Comment

“The British are coming” is the warning shouted in Washington County as the British TV Chef Gordon Ramsey comes to the historic Cambridge Hotel this week. Ramsey is expanding his Fox TV shows beyond cooking to remaking hotels in a new program called Hotel Hell. The concept of the show is “help fix struggling, privately owned hotels, inns and bed-and-breakfasts in destination towns across the U.S.”

“The Cambridge Hotel holds 126 year history of housing local celebrations and so seems to have a very permanent part in the memory of the people of our community,” explains General Manager Shea Imhof. “Often folks stop in to see us and share pictures and stories from their 1960’s wedding or speak to how the whole family gathered for an elders passing. These memories are made stronger by sharing them in the setting in which they were made which is in part why we strive to exist.”

Today, the Cambridge Hotel is a hotel run by the Imhof family. It is best known for inventing pie a la mode, (French for “according to the fashion”) apple pie with vanilla ice cream. In the 1890s, Professor Charles Watson Townsend dined regularly at the Cambridge Hotel. He would frequently end his meal with an ice cream topped apple pie, which another diner called “pie a la mode.”

While dining at the famous Delmonico’s restaurant in Manhattan, Townsend requested his favorite dessert and was met with blank stares from the waiters. Townsend was quoted as saying “Call the manager at once. I demand as good service here as I get in Cambridge.” Townsend was overheard by a newspaperman from the New York Sun, who reported in the next paper about Delmonico’s working to recreate the dessert served in Cambridge Hotel. The story was repeated and pie a la mode became a standard menu item at restaurants across the country.

Townsend died in 1936 at the age of 87 and his New York Times obituary notes that he “inadvertently originated pie a la mode.” There are some conflicting reports including Barry Popnik’s The Big Apple that mentions the dish appears to have been first served at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. However this being a New York History site, we are going to stick with the Cambridge Hotel as the inventors of pie a la mode.

The other little tidbit is that apple pie isn’t American, it’s British. There were no apple trees or pies in America before the British settled according to a recent Historic Foodways blog posting from Colonial Williamsburg.

It may be just dessert that a British Chef is helping to remake a historic American hotel best known for pie a la mode.

Sean Kelleher is the Historian for the Town of Saratoga and Village of Victory in the Upper Hudson Valley. He served as the Director of the Washington County Fair Farm Museum, and worked with a number of Champlain, Hudson and Mohawk Valleys historic sites on grant writing, interpretive planning, and marketing.

Teresa Mitchell, Seaway Trail Executive Director, Dies

January 26, 2012 by Sean Kelleher 1 Comment

Teresa Hall Mitchell, 59, the Executive Director of the Great Lakes Seaway Trail, passed away on January 24 at her home in Clayton with family at her side. She was an advocate for history and tourism along the 518 mile scenic driving route that follows the shores of Lake Erie, the Niagara River, Lake Ontario, and the St. Lawrence River in New York and Pennsylvania.

Mitchell had been been fighting a very aggressive cancer. She was determined to finish a quilt commemorating the War of 1812, which she did between hospice visits and pain medication. Just 11 days ago, she was sending out emails to colleagues sharing that plans for an 1812 guide book and wayside exhibits that were moving forward.

“Teresa was a hard and dedicated worker who made good things happen, and we were all privileged to have had the opportunity to have worked with her,” said Robert Weible State Historian and Chief Curator at the New York State Museum. “Her untimely passing is a loss for the state’s entire history community.”

“Teresa was always the one to push the envelope for America’s Byways, I am honored to call her a friend and greatly appreciate all of the support she has provided over the years — she will be greatly missed.” said Janet Kennedy, Executive Director of Lakes to Locks Passage, an All American Road.

“The best thing I got from being on the NYS French and Indian War 250th Anniversary Commission was Teresa Mitchell, as a friend and mentor,” said Barbara O’Keefe, Executive Director of Fort La Présentation. “Our trips to Albany flew by with talk of quilting, knitting, children and grandchildren and marketing ideas. I have never met an individual who loved their job more or did it better. NYS has lost an amazing tireless advocate for cultural heritage tourism.”

I had the pleasure of working with Mitchell for 5 years as a member of the NYS French and Indian War 250th Anniversary Commemoration Commission. We shared a passion for marketing historic sites and events. She was relentless in her efforts to work with legislators and state agencies to promote unique historical locations and cultural heritage sites. Mitchell’s work with web sites, tour guides, wayside exhibits and the award winning Great Lakes Seaway Trail Travel Magazine made history exciting and accessible to visitors. The entire State has lost a special individual and a strong advocate for history in the North Country.

To learn more about Great Lakes Seaway Trail

To learn more about the success of the Seaway Trail visit the The National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Heritage Tourism Program

A full obituary can be read at Newzjunky.com

Sean Kelleher is the Historian for the Town of Saratoga and Village of Victory in the Upper Hudson Valley. He has a particular interest in colonial history, being active as a reenactor for 34 years and has served as a Commissioner on the New York State French and Indian War 250th Anniversary Commemoration Commission.

Richard Ketchum, 89, American Revolution Author

January 23, 2012 by Sean Kelleher 1 Comment

Richard M. Ketchum, an author and editor who writings include Saratoga: Turning Point of America’s Revolutionary War and Divided Loyalties : How the American Revolution Came to New York, died on January 12 at a retirement home in Shelburne, Vermont. He was 89 and until four years ago had lived on his nearly 1,000-acre farm, Saddleback, in Dorset, VT.

Author David McCullough describes “like Shelby Foote unfolding the drama of the Civil War, Richard M. Ketchum writes of the Revolution as if he had been there . . . No novelist could create characters more memorable than the protagonists on both the American and British sides”

I had the pleasure of meeting Mr Ketchum, ten years ago in Olympia Hall in Schuylerville. He volunteered to speak one night as one of the activities commemorating the 225th Anniversary of the Battles of Saratoga. He and his wife were very generous with their time. He mentioned that night that there were others in the room that knew more about the Battles. I remember thinking then that they may be knowledgeable, however there is not a better writer and storyteller of this history than Richard Ketchum. I know that my community and all those with an interest in the American Revolution will be forever grateful for the writing of Richard Ketchum.

To learn more about Richard Ketchum visit this The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer Transcript

A full obituary can be read in the New York Times.

Lessons From the French and Indian War Commission

January 9, 2012 by Sean Kelleher 1 Comment

In the past decade, the New York State Legislature desired to create three anniversary commemoration commissions. The Commissions were necessary to bring together persons qualified by experience to coordinate and facilitate commemorations and activities.

In 2002 and 2004, the Hudson – Fulton- Champlain Quadricentennial Commission, and the French and Indian War 250th Anniversary Commemoration Commission (FIW) were created. In the past three years, three bills to commemorate the bicentennial of the War of 1812 (1812) with a Commission have been vetoed by Governors Patterson and Andrew Cuomo.* [Read more…] about Lessons From the French and Indian War Commission