New York Almanack

History, Natural History & the Arts

1876 Election

Revolutionary Veterans in New Lebanon’s Cemetery of the Evergreens

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John Bull, Capt., Stephens' Northern AP'T, Rev. War graveFormer New Lebanon resident George Clark, a member of the community’s Floyd Carlton Post of the American Legion, has been working to identify the graves of Revolutionary War soldiers for many years.

Helping him has been his friend Dale Ackley. Former town historian Sharon Moon and Cemetery of the Evergreens board members have been working at it, too. The undertaking has been immense, and, if they succeed in their goal to restore headstones, it will be very costly. [Read more…] about Revolutionary Veterans in New Lebanon’s Cemetery of the Evergreens

John Morrissey: Toward Setting The Record Straight

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Young John Morrissey detail from a painting held by the Saratoa History MuseumJohn Morrissey was born in Ireland on February 12th, in 1831.

As a result of bigoted attacks by his political enemies being carried forward by later writers like Herbert Asbury in Gangs of New York (1928), he’s been falsely accused of being in criminal league with Tammany Hall, for leading “the dead rabbits gang,” and for being involved in the killing of the nativist William “Bill the Butcher” Poole. [Read more…] about John Morrissey: Toward Setting The Record Straight

Local Newspaper Editor Ponders Election of 1876

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October 1872 ElectionPresidential elections can strain neighborly relations, as reiterated in Washington County’s Granville Sentinel in 1876.

“The one pleasant thing about it, when the cruel suspense is over, they’ll be less lying in the newspapers and less personal defamation in the streets,” the Sentinel quipped on October 29th. [Read more…] about Local Newspaper Editor Ponders Election of 1876

A New Biography of Plattsburgh’s Smith Weed

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Smith Weed BiographyRouses Point businessman, Mark L Barie, has written the first biography of North Country politician Smith Weed. In The President of Plattsburgh, The Story of Smith Weed (Crossborder Publishing, 2014), Barie paints a portrait of Weed – six feet tall, with piercing black eyes – a man who was said to smoke nine cigars a day.

Smith Weed was instrumental in the establishment of the Champlain Valley Hospital, the YMCA, the Plattsburgh Library, and the Hotel Champlain, but was perhaps best known nationally for his central role in “The Cipher Dispatches” voter fraud controversy during the fiercely disputed presidential election of 1876. [Read more…] about A New Biography of Plattsburgh’s Smith Weed