New York Almanack

History, Natural History & the Arts

This page includes all our stories about New York State history.

Oneida Nation Will Remember Battle of Oriskany

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The Oneida Indian Nationhas announced that they will participate in an memorial ceremony to remember the 1777 Battle of Oriskany this evening:

231 years ago, the Oneida Indian Nation became the first ally of the American colonists in their fight for freedom, at the Battle of Oriskany. On Wednesday, August 6, at 7 pm, a solemn remembrance ceremony will be held at the battlefield to remember those who fought and those who died at what history has called the ”bloodiest battle of the American Revolution.” The Oneidas will be represented at this community-wide event by Brian Patterson, Bear Clan Representative for the Nation’s Council, and members of the Nation’s reenactment group, First Allies.

The Battle took place in what is now Oneida County on the south side of the Mohawk River. According to the great wiki:

During his march down the Mohawk Valley from Oswego to Albany, Lieutenant Colonel Barry St. Leger besieged Fort Stanwix, then under the command of Colonel Peter Gansevoort. St. Leger’s force of British regulars of the Royal Artillery, 8th and 34th Regiments, loyalist King’s Royal Yorkers and natives of the Six Nations and Seven Nations of Canada laid siege to the fort.

Upon hearing reports of St. Leger’s advance, Brigadier General Nicholas Herkimer assembled the Tryon County militia at Fort Dayton to proceed to Gansevoort’s aid. On August 4, 1777, Herkimer, with 800 militiamen—mostly poorly trained German-American farmers—and 40 Oneida Indians, began the forty-mile (65 km) trek west from Fort Dayton to Fort Stanwix.

When St. Leger learned through Molly Brant that Herkimer and his relief expedition were on their way, he sent Joseph Brant, a Mohawk chief, with more than 400 natives, and Sir John Johnson, with the light infantry company of his King’s Royal Yorkers to intercept them. Their clash at Oriskany Creek was one of the key episodes of the Campaign of 1777.

On August 6, 1777, [the] American relief force from the Mohawk Valley under General Nicholas Herkimer, numbering around 800 men of the Tryon County militia, was approaching to raise the siege. British commander Barry St. Leger authorized an intercept force consisting of a Hanau Jager detachment, Sir John Johnson’s King’s Royal Regiment of New York, Native allies from the Six Nations, and Indian Department Rangers totaling at least 450 men.

The Loyalist and Native force ambushed Herkimer’s force in a small valley about six miles east of Fort Stanwix. During the battle, Herkimer was mortally wounded. The battle cost the Patriots approximately 450 casualties, while the Loyalists and Natives lost approximately 150 dead and wounded. It was a clear victory for the loyalists over the rebels.

But the Loyalist victory was tarnished when a sortie from Fort Stanwix sacked the Crown camp, spoiling morale among the Native Americans.

The Oriskany Battlefield is located on Route 69, two miles west of the Village of Oriskany.

A Week of New York Disasters

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This past week marks the anniversaries of quite a series of transportation disasters in New York History. Three of them have reached the media: the 1893 sinking of the Rachel in Lake George; the 1945 crash of a B-25 Mitchell bomber into the Empire State Building; and the crash of American Airlines Flight 1 into New York City’s Jamaica Bay in 1962.

The Schenectady Gazette has the story of the Rachel, which sank on Lake George killing ten (coincidently, the week also marks the anniversary of another Lake George sinking, that of the John Jay on July 30, 1856). On the night of August 3, 1893 the steamer Rachel was chartered by twenty nine guests of the Fourteen Mile Island Hotel to take them to a dance at the Hundred Island House.

The usual captain fell ill and went home early leaving the boat in the hands of a less experienced pilot. Under little or no moon light as the pilot steered unknowingly out of the channel and struck an old dock south of the hotel tearing a large hole in the side of the boat below the water line. Some of the passengers were caught on the shade deck and died quickly as the boat listed and almost immediately sank in 18 feet of water. “The shrieking, struggling passengers battled for life in the darkness,” one newspaper reported. With only her smokestack left above water, a number of men from shore had rowed boats from the two nearby hotels to the scene to rescue the survivors. A young man named Benedict, an excellent swimmer, dove for his sister Bertha but couldn’t find her. Nineteen-year-old Frank C. Mitchell, of Burlington, drowned while trying to save his mother who also drowned. Eight other women also drowned.

The 1962 American Airlines Flight 1 into Jamaica Bay was featured on last night episode of “Mad Men.” The series follows the lives of early 1960s Madison Avenue ad executives. If you haven’t seen it, you should, it’s an interesting portrayal of 1950s / 1960s consumerism – a time when people still smoked on TV. The storyline involves the ad guys dropping the small New York based regional airline Mohawk Airlines in an attempt to lure American Airlines in the aftermath of the crash. Mohawk had it’s own aviation disaster in 1969 when its Flight 411, a twin prop-jet commuter plane (a Fairchild-Hiller 227, a.k.a. Fokker F-27) flying from La Guardia Airport to Glens Falls in Warren County crashes at Lake George killing all 14 onboard.

The New York Times “City Room” has blogged the Flight 1 story extensively:

The real-life crash, which took place only five years after Pan Am became the first carrier to fly the 707, claimed the largest number of lives of any commercial aviation accident in the United States at that time [95]. (In the worst-ever plane crash on American soil, an American Airlines DC-10 crashed shortly after takeoff at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago on May 25, 1979, killing 273.)

The third New York disaster in the media this week comes from National Public Radio (NPR) which reported last week on the crash of a B-25 Mitchell bomber into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building (it swerved to just miss the Chrysler Building). The plane had been trying to make LaGuardia Airport in a very heavy fog. According to the blog History’s Mysteries:

Upon impact, the plane’s jet fuel exploded, filling the interior of the building with flames all the way down to the 75th floor and sending flames out of the hole the plane had ripped open in the building’s side. One engine from the plane went straight through the building and landed in a penthouse apartment across the street. Other plane parts ended up embedded in and on top of nearby buildings. The other engine snapped an elevator cable while at least one woman was riding in the elevator car. The emergency auto brake saved the woman from crashing to the bottom, but the engine fell down the shaft and landed on top of it. Quick-thinking rescuers pulled the woman from the elevator, saving her life.

NPR’s report (they also featured the Empire State building in their “Present at The Creation” series) includes audio of the actual crash and interviews with some of the survivors.

What a week – I’ve blogged before about disasters in the Adirondacks here.

Historic Central Park Concert Numbers Questioned

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The historical memory of recent Central Park concerts has been called into question in a recent New York Times article. Apparently the great concerts of central park weren’t so great after all, at least in terms of attendence numbers.

Here is an official history of attendance at great public gatherings in Central Park: James Taylor played in Central Park’s Sheep Meadow in the summer of 1979, and officials announced that 250,000 people came. A year later, Elton John performed on the Great Lawn, and the authorities said he drew 300,000 people. Then Simon and Garfunkel performed in September 1981, and city officials and organizers reported that 400,000 people had packed into the park. Ten years later, it was announced that Paul Simon drew 600,000. The biggest concert of all, it seems, was by Garth Brooks, on Aug. 7, 1997, at the North Meadow, with a reported attendance of 750,000 people.

This month’s Bon Jovi concert was actually counted and seems to have put serious doubt in these numbers.

Bon Jovi played on the Great Lawn, and the city’s official head count came to 48,538 people — a number tallied by parks workers with clickers at the entryways to the lawn. This total includes only the people admitted to the 13-acre oval that makes up the Great Lawn, and not any of those gathered in the walkways and swaths of ground to the east and west of the lawn.

Still, the Bon Jovi crowd was a fraction of the colossal throngs that are part of the city’s collective mythic memory. If fewer than 50,000 people were able to fill the oval, how could a half million more people get anywhere near the Paul Simon concert held in the same space?

Apparently, they didn’t. Former city parks administrator Doug Blonsky explained the previous numbers like this: “You would get in a room with the producer, with a police official, and a person from parks, and someone would say, ‘What does it look like to you?’ The producer would say, ‘I need it to be higher than the last one.’ That’s the kind of science that went into it.”

The record corrected?

Women’s Rights History Trail Bill In Congress

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The Hudson Valley Press Online is reporting that a bill is making it’s way through Congress to establish an Women’s Rights History Trail linking New York State sites, expand the National Register of Historic Places’ online database, and “Require the Department of Interior to establish a partnership-based network to offer financial and technical assistance for the development of educational programs focused on national women’s rights history.”

New York Senator Hillary Clinton will testify at a hearing in on July 30, 2008 in support of the National Women’s Rights History Project Act (S.1816), now before the Senate Subcommittee on National Parks.

The full story is here.

Underground Railroad Site Travel Grants to AASLH

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If you represent an underground railroad related site or organization, the New York State Underground Railroad Heritage Trail is offering Travel Grants to support attendance at this year’s AASLH Annual Meeting in Rochester.

The Underground Railroad Heritage Trail Travel Grants will provide museum staff members and volunteers, from URHT sites, the opportunity to expand their horizons by participating in the American Association of State and Local History Annual Meeting.

Organizations may apply for travel grants of up to $350. This travel grant can be used towards conference registration fees, travel expenses and accommodation fees associated with attendance at the 2008 AASLH Annual Meeting. For further information on the AASLH Annual Meeting visit: www.aaslh.org/anmeeting.htm

Applications for URHT Travel grants to attend the AASLH Annual Meeting must be postmarked by August 3, 2008. Applicants will be notified within 30 days of receipt. To apply, contact Catherine Gilbert directorATupstatehistoryDOTorg at the Upstate History Alliance for an application form.

According to New York State’s Underground Heritage Trail website:

New York State was at the forefront of the Underground Railroad movement. It was a major destination for freedom-seekers for four main reasons:

Destination & Gateway
New York was a gateway to liberation for freedom-seekers (often referred to as escaped slaves). Its prime location, with access to Canada and major water routes, made it the destination of choice for many Africans fleeing slavery along the eastern seaboard.

Safe Haven
Freedom-seekers knew they would be protected in New York’s many black communities as well as Quaker and other progressive white and mixed race communities. A large and vocal free black population was present after the manumission (freeing) of slaves in New York State in 1827.

Powerful Anti-Slavery Movement
Anti-slavery organizations were abundant in New York State – more than any other state. The reform politics and the progressive nature of the state gave rise to many active anti-slavery organizations.

Strong Underground Railroad Leaders
Many nationally-known and locally influential black and white abolitionists chose to make their homes in New York. Among them were: Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Gerrit Smith, Henry Ward Beecher, Sojourner Truth and John Brown.

A New York Veteran and Civil War Medicine

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There is an outstanding post over at the blog behind AotW [Behind Antietam on the Web]. The solider at left with the head wound is Private Patrick Hughes, Fourth Regiment, New York State Volunteers, whose story is detailed by Brian Downey.

Here’s a sample:

So Patrick and his mates [mostly from New York City] were still combat rookies [at the Battle of Antietam] when they crested the rise overlooking the sunken road at the far side of the Roulette Farm at about 9 in the morning of 17 September. The 4th New York were at the left front of the Division in line of battle, and were among the first to run into the concentrated fire of the North Carolina regiments of Anderson’s Brigade, hunkered down in the natural trench of that road. It was probably there that Patrick Hughes was shot.

Although dazed and in shock, bleeding heavily from the scalp, he dragged himself to the rear and received first aid from the regiment’s surgeon, Dr. George W Lovejoy, who reported his “patient was conscious and answered questions rationally.” He was then carried to a barn in Keedysville. He lay there until 20 September, when he was moved to a hospital in Hagerstown.

Brian Downey describes his blog as “a companion to Antietam on the Web, to catch some of the spin-off that comes from researching, writing, and coding for that site.”

Both sites are outstanding and can be found, along with a pile of other new Civil War blogs, on our blogroll at right.

2008 Museum Institute at Sagamore

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Upstate History Alliance has announced their 2008 Institute at Sagamore. According to UHA’s website, this year’s institute “will address the challenges and creative solutions for Interpreting Historic Spaces:”

Interpretation– the process of bringing about meaning, it’s what museums do best, or is it? What are the best ways to utilize our collections to illustrate connections and evoke thought amongst our visitors?

Participants will explore ways to tell their stories and engage their visitors through creative methods and practical applications. Experts will share their innovative thinking on interpretive planning and incorporating those plans, utilizing reader’s theater, employing interpretive technology, interpreting contentious stories as well as hearing from msueums with exemplary interpretive programs.

The Museum Institute at Sagamore is open “to individuals who are currently employed or serve in a leadership position with a museum or museum service organization.” Space is limited to 25, and their is a competitive application process.

The 2008 Institute is September 23-26; applications are due postmarked by July 25, 2008.

More information is located here.

Strange Maps to Strange Ideas

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One of the blogs we follow here at the New York History Blog, is Strange Maps, a blog of some of the weirdest, wackiest, and thought provoking maps in the world. Here is are some samples of some recent posts you may not have seen, they are not all New York History related, but they do point to unique uses of mapping that NY historians can appreciate:

Federal Lands in the US
The United States government has direct ownership of almost 650 million acres of land (2.63 million square kilometers) – nearly30% of its total territory. These federal lands, which are mainly used as military bases or testing grounds, nature parks and reserves and indian reservations, are managed by different administrations, such as the Bureau of Land Management, the US Forest Service, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the US Department of Defense, the US Army Corps of Engineers, the US Bureau of Reclamation or the Tennessee Valley Authority. [New York is tied with Iowa for 2nd from last at .8%; Connecticut and Rhode Island are tied for last with just .4% – of course they don’t count New York’s state lands (Adirondack, Catskills, and more), so the map is not really reflective of actual government ownership.]

Where News Breaks
Researchers extracted the dateline from about 72,000 wire-service news stories from 1994 to 1998 and modified a standard map of the Lower 48 US states (above) to show the size of the states in proportion to the frequency of their appearance in those datelines. New York is the largest news provider of the country, of course nearly all originating in New York City (pop. 8.2 million; metro area 18.8 million). Compare this to Illinois, home of the the nation’s third largest city, Chicago (pop. 2.8 million; metro area 9.5 million). Especially when considering metropolitan areas, Chicago/Illinois should be half the ‘news size’ of New York City/New York, while in fact it seems to be less than one fifth. Could this underrepresentation be down to another ‘capital effect’ (i.e. New York being the ‘cultural capital’ of the US)?

Area Codes in Which Ludacris Claims to Have Hoes
“In [the song “Area Codes”] Ludacris brags about the area codes where he knows women, whom he refers to as ‘hoes’,” says Stefanie Gray, who plotted out all the area codes mentioned in this song on a map of the United States. She arrived at some interesting conclusions as to the locations of this rapper’s preferred female companionship:

Ludacris heavily favors the East Coast to the West, save for Seattle, San Francisco, Sacramento, and Las Vegas.

Ludacris travels frequently along the Boswash corridor.

There is a ‘ho belt‘ phenomenon nearly synonymous with the ‘Bible Belt’.

Ludacris’s ideal ‘ho-highway’ would be I-95.

Ludacris has hoes in the entire state of Maryland.

Ludacris has a disproportionate ho-zone in rural Nebraska. He might favor white women as much as he does black women, or perhaps, girls who farm.

A World Map of Manhattan
This map celebrates that diversity by assembling Manhattan out of the contours of many of the world’s countries. Danielle Hartman created the map based on data from the 2000 US Census. In all, 80 different countries of origin were listed in the census. The map-maker placed the country contours near the census area where most of the citizens of each country resided.

The Comancheria, Lost Homeland of a Warrior Tribe
Under the presidency of Sam Houston (1836-’38, 1841-’44) the then independent Republic of Texas almost came to a peace agreement with the tribal collective known as the Comanche. The Texas legislature rejected this deal, because it did not want to establish a definitive border with the Comanche; for by that time, white settlers were pushing into the Comancheria, the homeland of one of the most fearsome Native American peoples the Euro-Americans ever had to deal with.

Thomas Jefferson’s Plan for the division of the Northwest Territory into 10 new states.

Regionalism and Religiosity

A Map of the Internet’s Black Holes

A Diagram of the Eisenhower Interstate System

Birthplaces of Mississippi Blues Artists

Ancient Mississippi River Courses

New Tenement Museum Reflects Irish Immigration

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From the New York Times comes a report on the newest Tenement Museum in New York City:

The [Joseph and Bridget Moore family] place will become the sixth apartment of former immigrant residents of 97 Orchard Street to be recreated. The apartments are all nearly identical in size at about 325 square feet. One represents the home of a German Jewish family soon after the father disappeared; another a Lithuanian Jewish family whose father had just died. Another is the remade home of Italian Catholics about to be evicted.

The museum was established in 1988 in 97 Orchard, an 1864 brick building, and attracts 130,000 visitors a year. The building is a time capsule of primitive bathrooms and windowless passageways. In 1935, the building’s owners sealed off most of the 20 units rather than make changes to meet new housing codes.

The fourth-floor apartment for the Moores — it is not known exactly where in the building they lived — will be the museum’s earliest simulation and the first to reflect the huge influx of Irish immigrants in the 19th century.

“We take these dynamic, compelling family stories, and use them to draw people into the greater historical context of immigrants in America,” said Stephen H. Long, the vice president of collections and education at the museum. Members of the staff began researching the Moores five years ago.

The Moores’ experience, Mr. Long added, also made for teachable moments about the history of medicine and public health. “When the Moores lived here,” he said, “the mortality rate for Irish immigrant children was 25 percent.”

Only four of the Moores’ eight children, all girls, reached adulthood. Mrs. Moore died in 1882, when she was 36, shortly after giving birth to her eighth daughter. Curators speculate that the malnutrition that killed Agnes was brought on by drinking swill: milk from diseased cows, which street vendors ladled out of dirty vats and sometimes adulterated with chalk or ammonia.

A Virtual tour of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum is available on the web.

3rd Annual Pethick Archaeological Site Open House

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The 3rd Annual Pethick Archaeological Site Open House will be held Monday, June 30th, and Tuesday, July 1st, 10am – 2pm on Smith Road in Central Bridge (directions below).

The Pethick Site is in its fifth season of excavation as an archaeological field school co-taught by the University of Albany, SUNY, and the New York State Museum. It is a rich and important Native American site, and to date has yielded almost 200,000 artifacts and 350 soil features. Evidence recovered in the excavations suggests that this location has been used for several thousand years by the indigenous people of the Schoharie Valley.

According to SUNY Archaeologist Sean Rafferty:

The Pethick Site is a newly discovered village and campsite located on a terrace overlooking Schoharie Creek, a major tributary of the Mohawk River. The site was discovered by the class of the 2004 summer field school based on information provided by local artifact collectors. A shovel test pit survey of the site indicated that there were extensive and rich archaeological deposits present. These were concentrated at one end of the site on a small rise in the local topography. Initial excavations were concentrated in that area.

Our excavations first uncovered a dark black organic layer, believed to represent a decomposed trash midden dating from the most recent occupations of the site. Based on artifacts recovered from the midden layer, the most recent and most extensive occupation at Pethick dates from approximately AD 1000 to AD 1400, a period archaeologists refer to as the “Late Woodland Period” in northeastern North America. The occupants of the Schoharie Valley at that time are generally believed to have been the ancestors to modern Iroquois cultures, including the Mohawk. Remains from that period at the site include numerous hearths, fire cracked rock deposits, storage pits, and post-mold patterns. Artifacts from the site include numerous chipped stone waste flakes, stone tools including projectile points, and potter sherds. Preliminary analysis suggests the presence of at least one longhouse.

While the discovery of a possible early Iroquoian village site is a major occurrence, there is more to Pethick than this. Soil stratigraphy and artifacts indicate that Pethick is a multicomponent site, which was repeatedly occupied over thousands of years of prehistory. Artifacts recovered during the 2004 season indicate occupations during the pre-agricultural Early and Middle Woodland Periods, from approximately 1,000 BC to AD 200. Also identified were artifacts indicating occupations during the preceding Transitional Period, from approximately 1,500 to 1,000 BC. During these early periods the site probably served as a seasonal encampment where occupants could take advantage of locally gathered plant and animal resources, including fishing in the nearby Schoharie Creek.

We have been informed by local collectors that the site may also contain remains from the Early Archaic Period, dating to as early as 8,000 BC. If true, this would be a very rare occupation, dating to one of the earliest periods of New York State prehistory, just following the end of the last Ice Age. Surveying the areas purported to contain this evidence will also be a priority of the next field season.

Visitors to the site will be given tours by university students, but they are welcome to explore at their own pace and stay as long as they would like. Professional archaeologists, including State Archaeologist Dr. Christina Rieth and Dr. Sean Rafferty of the University at Albany, will be on hand to look at private artifact collections, which visitors are encouraged to bring. The site is fairly easily accessed (in a farm field). For safety reasons, guests will not be allowed to excavate.

Visitors of all ages are welcome! There is no cost for this event.

For more information, email or call: Jaime Donta, jm141615@albany.edu or (413)237-2822

From Albany: Take I-88W to Exit 23– Schoharie/Central Bridge. At the end of the ramp, turn right. At the flashing red light, turn left onto 30/7A. Cross the Schoharie Creek, then take your first left onto Smith Rd. Follow to the end– the site is visible on the left.