History, Natural History & the Arts
In response to a dramatic increase in canoes, kayaks, and stand-up paddleboards on the NYS Canal System, Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor has published the New York State Canal System Hand-Launch Facility Design Guide.
The free guide shares best practices for communities, businesses, and organizations looking to install or improve hand-launch facilities for paddlers. [Read more…] about NYS Canal System Hand-Launch Facility Design Guide Available
The Irish American Heritage Museum will host “Memory, Trauma, & Bloody Sunday,” a virtual program on the Bloody Sunday Massacre by Juliann Campbell set for Monday, January 24th.
Campbell has a personal connection to Bloody Sunday — her uncle, Jackie Duddy, was the first to be killed on January 30th — and she has spent the last decade documenting and archiving experiences of the day. [Read more…] about Memory, Trauma, & Bloody Sunday: A Virtual Program
The NYS Writers Institute has announced its Spring 2022 schedule of events featuring more than two dozen literary luminaries and creative artists, a series-within-a-series titled American HerStory, and a film festival coming to the Capital Region. [Read more…] about NYS Writers Institute Announces Spring 2022 Events
The 1609 voyage by Henry Hudson up the river that bears his name caused the Dutch to claim the adjacent land. In 1621 these lands, the home of the Mohawk and Mohican people, were granted to the Dutch West India Company. The company established the Patroon System to attract settlers. A Patroon was given a large tract of land to sponsor settlers to colonize their land.
In 1629 the new Patroon, Killaen Van Rensselaer, was granted land to create the Manor of Rensselaerswyck in exchange for helping settle the land with Europeans. It incorporated most of the area in Albany, Rensselaer, Greene, and Columbia counties. Fort Orange (later the city of Albany), became the center of the Dutch fur trade. [Read more…] about Berne’s West Mountain Methodist Episcopal Church: Some History
The New York State Archives Partnership Trust will host “Risk-Takers and Change-Makers,” an online conversation looking at the men and women whose efforts empowered the abolitionist cause and laid the foundation for today’s civil rights movement in the United States, set for Tuesday, February 1st. [Read more…] about Abolition, Civil Rights Talk With Underground RR Experts Mary Liz and Paul Stewart
The Irish American Heritage Museum will host Historian Turtle Bunbury, author of new book The Irish Diaspora: Tales of Emigration, Exile and Imperialism (Thames & Hudson, 2021) on Wednesday, January 19, 2022 who will share stories of Irish emigrants and their descendants.
Through the compelling stories of the great Irish pioneers who left their homeland and in the process profoundly influenced their adoptive countries, Bunbury takes some overlooked events and characters and weaves them into a history of the Irish abroad. [Read more…] about The Irish Diaspora: Tales of Emigration, Exile and Imperialism
Throughout the 1800s and into the 1900s, Saratoga Springs was a premiere travel destination and the D&H Railway Station would be a hub of activity welcoming tourists, business people, and college students.
One station that remains is located at 117 Grand Avenue. It was originally the Adirondack Company Railway office and station and later became part of the D&H Railway’s Adirondack branch. The Foundation preserved the building and used it as its office for many years. (Read more about it here.)
[Read more…] about Saratoga Springs Train Stations: Their Architecture & Impact
The Schenectady County Historical Society will host “Iroquois/Haudenosaunee Material Culture, 1700-1815,” a virtual program exploring the material culture of the Six Nations Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois, between 1700 and 1815, set for Thursday, February 24th. [Read more…] about Haudenosaunee Material Culture, 1700-1815 (Virtual Program)
In the early 1800s it was unusual for Americans to be interested in sporting matters on their own shores. News from Europe was the only sporting news of merit, and publishing an American sporting journal was considered a risky use of capital.
The first attempt along these lines may have been in 1829 Baltimore, where John S. Skinner published a monthly magazine which focused on race horse pedigrees called The American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine. Another early attempt was published in New York by the recognized writer and horseman Cadwallader R. Colden, whose organ was called The New-York Sporting Magazine and Annals of the American and English Turf, first published in 1833.
Among the most notable of the sporting press arrived in 1831, when William T. Porter and James Haw published the first issue of The Spirit of the Times, focusing on horse literature and sporting subjects. They had chosen the name for their broadsheet from a quotation in Shakespeare’s King John, “The spirit of the times shall teach me speed.” [Read more…] about The Spirit of the Times: A 19th Century Chronicle of American Sports
Along Plummer Road in the town of Milton in Saratoga County sits the Powell-Wiswall Cemetery, a peaceful rural cemetery where local residents have been laid to rest since the early 1800s.
Standing like a sentinel over it all is a large statue of Christ. On two sides are engraved the names Ella Frances Wood-Mann and her husband Enos Rogers Mann. This monument sits adjacent to Wood family plots, where over the years Ella’s parents and other family members have been laid to rest. [Read more…] about A Saratoga County Cemetery Mystery