History, Natural History & the Arts
Owners of historic barns (built before 1946) may be eligible for New York State’s new Historic Barn Tax Credit program for qualifying expenses to rehabilitate or maintain their barns.
The 25% credit, available to barn owners who pay New York State income tax, can be applied to qualifying barn rehabilitation and/or maintenance expenses incurred in the previous five years. [Read more…] about NYS Historic Barn Tax Credit Program Informational Session
California’s 8th Governor and long-time Senator Leland Stanford, namesake of Stanford University and one-time president of the Central Pacific Railroad, has a unique connection to New York State’s Capital District.
Leland was born in Watervliet in 1824, the son of Josiah Stanford and Elizabeth Phillips. Among his seven siblings were New York Senator Charles Stanford (1819-1885) and Australian spiritualist Thomas Welton Stanford (1832-1918). The elder Stanford was a wealthy farmer in the eastern Mohawk Valley before moving to the Lisha Kill in Albany County where Leland was born. [Read more…] about Leland Stanford, The Bull’s Head & Albany’s 19th Century Cattle Market
Few New York State farms had electric power in the 1920s. Even as late as 1930 ninety percent of farm families nationwide had no line-run electricity. On long winter evenings city dwellers could read and sew long past sunset, but farm families sat in near darkness and did chores, such as milking the cows, in the dim light of kerosene lanterns.
Some farmers used Delco-Light Plants made up of ranks of glass-jarred lead-storage batteries located in dirt-floored basements for electric power. As Delco’s slogan was, “Delco systems sell best by night,” Delco salesman cleverly arrived at dusk with small Delco systems to demonstrate to farmers how these DC-units, when sufficiently massed, could bring to the farm what folks in the cities enjoyed. But Delco systems were expensive, and the batteries had to be recharged with a generator powered by a gasoline engine. [Read more…] about The Night the Lights Came On: Electricity on New York State Farms
Historical research using old newspapers fascinates but also frustrates me. Had you read the March 5th, 1936 edition of The Cazenovia Republican you would have learned that the historic Gerrit Smith mansion in Peterboro, New York, burned to the ground two days earlier. [Read more…] about The Destruction of Gerrit Smith’s Mansion
The butter trade was once so important to dairy farmers in Orange County, NY that the bank in Goshen, the county seat, printed its currency on yellow paper. Popularly known as “butter money,” this currency symbolized how significant the trade in butter was to dairy farmers in dairy regions across the state prior to the introduction of refrigerated railroad cars to ship raw milk, first using blocks of ice and then mechanical cooling.
The original shipment of milk from Orange County to New York City is believed to have taken place in the spring of 1842 via the New York & Erie Railroad. Prior to this raw milk could be transported only short distances by farm wagon.
Butter, however, could be transported to markets many miles from the farm or factory where it was produced. As symbolized by “butter money,” blocks of butter were once as good as gold. [Read more…] about Crimes Against Butter: The Oleomargarine Controversy
I joined the faculty of Syracuse University in 1975. I was surprised to learn that my institution once had a farm and hopes for a college of agriculture.
To my chagrin, I learned that my school lost out to Cornell back in 1904 when Liberty Hyde Bailey (1858-1954) bested Syracuse University’s Chancellor James R. Day in getting legislation passed in Albany to provide Cornell with state funding for an agricultural school. [Read more…] about Cornell Agricultural Dean Liberty Hyde Bailey: A Man for All Seasons
The Daniel Parrish Witter Agricultural Museum at what is now known as the Great New York State Fair opened officially on April 30th, 1928. Daniel Parrish Witter, a long-time New York State Assemblyman representing Tioga County was born in 1852 at Richford. Witter assumed the greater responsibility for working the family farm after his father became disabled, one of his older brothers was killed in the Civil War, and two others were seriously wounded in the same conflict. [Read more…] about The Daniel Parrish Witter Agricultural Museum: A History
In 1933, during Franklin D. Roosevelt‘s first year as President, the Democrats launched a number of New Deal social welfare and economic recovery efforts to combat the Great Depression.
Among the more popular and successful of these was the creation of the Public Works Administration (PWA) and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), jobs programs which were modeled on similar programs in New York State. [Read more…] about Wall Street History: The Great Depression & A New Deal For Working People
On August 17th, 1929, the German airship Graf Zeppelin was attempting to encircle the world. Baseball fans were still marveling about how Babe Ruth had reached the 500 mark in home runs the previous Sunday at League Park in Cleveland, Ohio. The Great Bull Market of the 1920s was yet to crash.
None of these matters preoccupied Henry A. Strohmeyer, Jr., animal photographer, as he positioned himself and his camera to capture a picture of the man of the hour. Son of a famed expert in stereoscopic photography who made a career in capturing images of the estates of the wealthy, Strohmeyer had built his own reputation largely by taking pictures of cows and bulls. He was about to photograph Gerrit Smith Miller who at eighty-four was the oldest and most respected Holstein cowman in the country. [Read more…] about ‘Cradle of the Breed’: Gerrit Smith Miller & His Kriemhild Holsteins
Initially many thought the severe Wall Street crash of October 1929 was a temporary phenomenon and like many subsequent crashes (i.e. 1987, 2008) the stock market would recover in a few months or years.
Unfortunately, this did not prove to be the case. After some upward spurts, stocks on the New York Stock Exchange continued to fall for the next three years and economic conditions throughout the country continued to worsen, so that by 1932 the market closed at 41, a drop of 89% over its 1929 high of 381. Employment in Wall Street firms plummeted, as the once heady activity evaporated and the Great Depression took hold.
The response would require a great reset between Wall Street and working Americans. [Read more…] about The First Great Reset: Wall St, the Great Depression & the Pecora Commission