SepiaTown: A New Historical Image Mapping Site
There is a new historical image website (mobile version coming soon) that lets people experience the past through a large and growing collection of user-submitted, mapped historical images. SepiaTown is just getting started with a collection of over 400 mapped New York City images, plus a growing collection from a host of cities around the world.
In the coming months they’ll be adding a number of new features to the site: a mobile version, filtering by date and media type, film and audio upload, plus individualized pages for registered users. Users can upload, map and share their own images; if you like, each image can feature a link to your own site.
Oldest Dutch Farm in Mohawk Valley Seeks Interns
The Mabee Farm Historic Site on the Mohawk River in Rotterdam Junction, Schenectady County, is considered the oldest house in the Mohawk Valley. The Schenectady County Historical Society is continuing to develop the farm site as a museum and educational center for the community and holds Colonial events, workshops, tours and educational programs which reflect the historical significance of this early Mohawk River farmstead. [Read more…] about Oldest Dutch Farm in Mohawk Valley Seeks Interns
Books: Historic Photos of New York State
Richard Reisem’s new book, Historic Photos of New York State showcases striking black-and-white images that take you on a journey through New York State during the unforgettable landmark epochs of the Civil War, Prohibition, and the Great Depression. Other historic subjects depicted include the 1939 World’s Fair, the age of the industrialists, the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo, European immigrants who disembarked at Ellis Island, the Grand Union Hotel at Saratoga Springs, the State Capital at Albany, Niagara Falls, and more.
Among the photographers represented in the Historic Photos of New York State are Matthew Brady, John Collier, Carl Dietz, Arnold Genthe, Lewis Wickes Hine, Listte Model, Arthur Rothstein, Alfred Stiglitz and others. The range of New York experience from 1850 to 1967 is covered in nearly 200 images drawn from around the state.
The author is a former trustee of the Landmark Society of Western New York, and has served on the board of trustees of the Rochester Historical Society. For sixteen years he served on the Rochester Preservation Board and was chair for four years; he spent 31 years at Eastman Kodak.
The book is published by Turner Publishing.
Abraham Lincoln Reurns to The Cooper Union
Widely considered the turning point for the still-obscure Illinois senator, Abraham Lincoln’s forceful appearance in The Cooper Union’s Great Hall 150 years ago is credited with helping him secure the nomination for president. Great Evenings in The Great Hall, The Cooper Union’s dynamic performance series celebrating its 150th anniversary, will offer a powerful finale by recreating one of the most influential presentations ever given: Lincoln’s pivotal Right Makes Might speech from 1860.
Academy Award and Golden Globe winner Richard Dreyfuss (Jaws, The Goodbye Girl, Close Encounters), Tony, Obie and Drama Desk honoree André De Shields (The Wiz, The Full Monty,) and Tony nominee and film actor Stephen Lang (The Speed of Darkness, Avatar) will voice the stirring words that changed a nation. Lincoln scholar and co-chairman of the United States Lincoln Bicentennial Commission Harold Holzer will introduce the evening filled with fiery oration and period music. Michael Unger will direct this free performance.
“Abraham Lincoln: Right makes Might” takes place on Thursday, February 25, 2010 at 6:30 PM at The Cooper Union, New York City. The event is free, however tickets are required. Distribution will begin at 4 p.m. in front of Cooper Union’s Foundation Building (East 7th St. b/w 3rd and 4th Aves) on a first-come, first-served basis.
In memory of John Jay Iselin, 10th President of The Cooper Union, this program is the second annual John Jay Iselin lecture, a collaboration of The Cooper Union and the New York State Archives Partnership Trust.
For more information, visit http://www.cooper.edu, call 212.353.4195 or email events@cooper.edu.
Photo: Photo of Abraham Lincoln taken February 27, 1860 in New York City by Mathew Brady, the day of his famous Cooper Union speech.
Queen City Review Seeks Black and White Photography
The Queen City Review, the yearly journal of art and literature published at Burlington College, has sent out a call for photographers working in black and white for submissions for their Fall 2010 issue. According to a recent announcement, the journal “accepts the work of new and established writers and artists in the areas of poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, memoir, photography, and fine art, as well as essays and criticism on all aspects of the aforementioned. We seek to publish high quality work that ranges broadly in topic and genre.”
The guidelines for submissions are on the web at www.burlington.edu. Submissions may be emailed to: queencityreview@burlington.edu.
Great Lakes Underwater Event Adds Speakers
New York Sea Grant, the Oswego Maritime Foundation, and the Great Lakes Seaway Trail have added to the March 6 Great Lakes Underwater conference program at SUNY Oswego. The added presentations for the 9am to 3pm event at the SUNY Oswego Campus Center in Oswego, NY, include:
· Dr. Henry Spang and “Building the OMF Ontario – “a floating maritime classroom”
· Skip Couch and the “Lost Fleet of the 1000 Islands,”
· James Sears and four New York State Divers Association “Two-Tank Tips,” and
· Brian Prince of S.O.S. – the Save Ontario Shipwrecks program preserving Ontario Canada’s maritime heritage.
Oswego Maritime Foundation (OMF) Director of Education through Involvement Dr. Henry Spang will talk about the volunteer effort that is completing the construction of the OMF Ontario. Spang says, “The OMF Ontario will be dedicated to public service and is designed to educate the public about our Great Lakes maritime history, heritage, resources and ecology by hands-on involvement in the experience of sailing this fabulous re-creation from our sailing era.”
Spang says the 85-foot-long schooner will be the only ship of its kind of US registry on Lake Ontario when shipboard classes begin in two years. The last schooner built in Oswego, NY, launched 131 years ago.
Raymond I. “Skip” Couch’s ancestors include Connecticut shipbuilders that settled in Clayton, NY, and a Great Lakes Seaway Trail Rock Island Lighthouse keeper. A Clayton Diving Club founding member, Couch participated in an underwater survey for iron cannons believed abandoned by the British before the War of 1812 near Carleton Island in 2009. Couch, co-author of the Diver’s Guide to the Upper St. Lawrence River, says, “At Great Lakes Underwater, divers and maritime history buffs will hear fascinating details about the more than three dozen ships stranded or lost to natural disaster or human error in the Narrows of the Thousand Islands.”
James Sears of the New York State Divers Association will share four destinations where divers can easily dive on two different shipwrecks. Two of the sites are in the St. Lawrence River with one each in Lake Ontario and Lake Champlain.
The keynote presentation of the 2010 Great Lakes Underwater is deep wreck explorer Jim Kennard’s presentation on the “Discovery of the HMS Ontario,” a British warship that sank in Lake Ontario in 1780 during the American Revolution. Kennard, who might easily be called the “Great Lakes Seaway Trail’s Jacques Cousteau,” will share a video and the exciting story of how he and diving partner Dan Scoville located this “Holy Grail” of diving. Kennard’s 200-plus discoveries have been featured in such publications as National Geographic and Sea Technology.
Brian Prince, president of S.O.S. – Save Ontario Shipwrecks, will highlight Canadian efforts to preserve Ontario’s shipwrecks and maritime heritage. The nonprofit organization conduct underwater archaeology and side scan surveys, collects oral histories, maintains an historical archives, offers diver training, and installs maritime-theme interpretive signage.
New York Sea Grant Coastal Recreation and Tourism Specialist and conference co-organizer Dave White, says, “Great Lakes Underwater provides divers and non-divers who enjoy maritime heritage with a fabulous day of discoveries with speakers who offer an inside look at our history and fascinating details of shipwrecks, the underwater landscape, and the technology now used to explore the underwater landscape.”
Great Lakes Underwater 2010 will be held in the high-tech SUNY Oswego Campus Center Auditorium. Registration for Great Lakes Underwater is $25 ($20 for students) payable to Cornell University and includes the program, buffet lunch, and refreshments. For more information, contact New York Sea Grant, SUNY Oswego, Oswego, NY 13126, 315-312-3042, www.oswegomaritime.org/glu.html.
Photo: Oswego Maritime Foundation’s Ontario undertest sail.
The 1920s: America’s Golden Age of Sports
A new book by Michael K. Bohn, Heroes and Ballyhoo: How the Golden Age of the 1920s Transformed American Sports, profiles the great American sports heroes of that era and highlights their roles in turning their sports into the kind of large spectator events they are today. Among them are the standards like Babe Ruth, Bobby Jones, Jack Dempsey, and Knute Rockne, but also those from the fringes of modern sport.
Swimmers like Johnny Weissmuller, who turned Olympic success into a seminal role as Tarzan, and Gertrude Ederle, the first to swim the English Channel are profiled. Helen Wills is here, the winner of 31 Grand Slam tennis titles who the New York Times called “the first American born woman to achieve international celebrity as an athlete.” Heroes and Ballyhoo also considers the role of tennis player Bill Tilden and golfer Walter Hagen in bringing large audiences to their sports.
Arena sports became a cornerstone of modern American life in the 1920s, after Americans, freed from the burden of World War I and Victorian traditions, seemed to seek out everything that was modern, from bobbed hair, bathtub gin, jazz, Model Ts, movies and radio to fads of all kinds.
The author goes further to explore the people behind the scenes: press agents, and over-the-top sports writers and journalists that helped establish what the publisher calls “the secular religion of sports and sports heroes, and helping bond disparate social and regional sectors of the country.”
Reporters like Grantland Rice and Damon Runyon, are found here, along with modern era promoters like C. C. Pyle and Tex Rickard and agent Christy Walsh, a founder of sports marketing.
Photo: Parade for Gertrude Ederle coming up Broadway, New York City in 1926.
A Fugitive Slave Rescued: Paintings of Charles Nalle
150 years ago, on April 26, 1860, escaped slave Charles Nalle was kidnapped from a Troy bakery and taken to the District Circuit Court at State and First Streets, in Troy where he was to be sent back to Virginia under the Fugitive Slave Act. Hundreds of people, including Harriet Tubman, rushed to the site where a riot ensued, allowing Nalle to escape across the Hudson to West Troy and ultimately to freedom.
On February 27, 2010 from 5-8 pm, the Rensselaer County Historical Society opens a major new exhibit, A Fugitive Slave Rescued: Paintings of Charles Nalle by Mark Priest, which will kick off an examination of this nationally important event. Artist and University of Louisville professor Mark Priest worked with RCHS staff to research the history of the Nalle rescue. His dramatic narrative paintings and drawings depict the events of April 26, 1860, immersing viewers in the emotions and issues of the day. This exhibit is presented in partnership with the Sage Colleges, which also host part of the exhibit through April 26, 2010.
Mark Priest is an Associate Professor of Art at the University of Louisville. He received his MFA in painting from Yale University and has exhibited his work at museums and galleries throughout the United States and internationally. His Underground Railroad series developed from an interest in Harriet Tubman:
“I began my research in 2003 and in May of 2004 I followed the routes on which Tubman took passengers to freedom. Forever etched in my memory are an infinite number of untold stories of individuals who toiled tirelessly to attain freedom. Many events were recounted to me by noted historians, genealogists and descendants while I traveled through, Maryland, Delaware, New York, and Canada; retracing the steps of many who went before me on this route to freedom. The wealth of personal experiences and detailed information I obtained is the foundation of this series or artworks. I strive to create dramatic compositions to portray the intensity of each moment. The life Tubman chose was one of uncertainty. Every moment could have been her last. She carried on undaunted and these are the ideas that I strive to portray in this series. Figures are tugging and heaving, hoisting and dragging. Figures depict the mental, emotional, and physical prowess needed to succeed on the UGRR. Every muscle is strained to the limit. Vibrant color and light are used to lead your eye through the composition.”
Exhibition-Related Events:
Russell Sage College Reception with Mark Priest
Thursday, February 25, 2010, 4-6pm
Schacht Fine Arts Center Gallery
Division & Front Streets, Troy
Free & Open to the Public
(518) 244-2248
High School Student Artist Gallery Talk with Mark Priest
How does Mark Priest get inspired to create his art? What is the life of a professional artist like? High School artists are invited to attend a free workshop and gallery talk with artist Mark Priest and get answers to these questions and more. This workshop is offered as part of the 2010 Art of History Competition, however students need not be preparing work for the competition to participate in the student workshop. Pre-registration is required – call or email Mari Shopsis at 272-7232, x17 / mshopsis@rchsonline.org or register online at http://artofhistory.eventbrite.com/ .
Thursday, February 25, 2010, 5-7 pm
Rensselaer County Historical Society
57 Second Street, Troy
(518) 272-7232, x17
Exhibition Opening & Book Signing
Saturday February 27, 2010; 5-8 pm, remarks at 6 pm
Rensselaer County Historical Society
Join RCHS and the Underground Railroad History Conference attendees for a reception at RCHS celebrating the exhibit of artist Mark Priest’s Charles Nalle paintings and the release of author Scott Christianson’s new book, Freeing Charles, The Struggle to Free a Slave on the Eve of the Civil War. Freeing Charles is the culmination of 18 years of research into Nalle’s life, escape from slavery, and the operation of the Underground Railroad. In this book, Christianson follows Nalle from his enslavement in Virginia through his escape via the Underground Railroad to his experiences in the North on the eve of the Civil War. Christianson also presents a richly detailed look at slavery culture in antebellum Virginia, and probes the deepest political and psychological aspects of this epic tale. His account underscores fundamental questions about racial inequality, the rule of law, civil disobedience, and violent resistance to slavery in the antebellum North and South. Both Scott Christianson and Mark Priest will speak briefly at 6pm and will be available for discussion and book signing afterwards. Light refreshments served.
Photo: “The Altruist,” Mark Priest, 2008, Acrylic on canvas, 7.5’ x 7.5’ – shows Charles Nalle struggling to break free from a mob at the corner of Second and Congress Streets, Troy. Portions of what is today the Russell Sage campus are visible in the background.
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