History, Natural History & the Arts
The Revolutionary War led settlers beyond the confines of the Palatine settlements in the Mohawk and Schoharie Valleys into what is today the Herkimer village area.
As early as 1776, seven pairs of brothers, from as many different families in Plymonth, in western Connecticut, enlisted under the command of Captain David Smith and were marched west into the Mohawk Valley. [Read more…] about The 1780s Settling of Clinton in Oneida County
Jordan B. Smith’s The Invention of Rum: Creating the Quintessential Atlantic Commodity (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025) is a complex history of distilled alcoholic spirit made from sugarcane byproducts, from its production to its consumption, and from its origins in the Caribbean to its impact on the Atlantic World.
It was strong. It was cheap. It was ubiquitous. Fermented and distilled from the refuse of sugar production, rum emerged in the seventeenth-century Caribbean as a new commodity. [Read more…] about The Invention of Rum: Quintessential Atlantic World Commodity
A farmer, community leader, and entrepreneur from Prattsburgh in Steuben County, NY, Raymond Fedderman established the Fedderman Wine Company in the early 1970s, creating New York State’s first Black American owned winery.
While working in the Finger Lakes region, Fedderman was encouraged to open his own winery by Walter Taylor, a member of the prominent Taylor Wine Company family and founder of Bully Hill Vineyards. [Read more…] about Conserved Wine Bottles Recall Fingers Lakes Black History
Consider the pickle. Whether sour or sweet, sliced or speared, it’s a seasoned veteran vegetable with a story to tell. New York City plays a big part in that tale, as does Long Island.
The latest Long Island History Project podcast reaches deep into the barrel of food history and talks with Paul van Ravestein, co-author along with Monique Mulder of The Pickled City: The Story of New York Pickles (Princeton Architectural Press, 2026). [Read more…] about Food History: Long Island’s Pickle Kings
If you live near a large meadow, hayfield, or grassland, you may have recently noticed some bubbly robotic noises emanating from those areas. It might sound like an overexcited android, but the real source is a medium-sized songbird, the bobolink (Dolichonyx oryzivorus).
One of the few avian grassland specialists in the Northeast, bobolinks have recently returned from their wintering grounds in southern South America and are now fully engaged in breeding activity. [Read more…] about Bobolink: The Grassland Bird in a Reverse Tuxedo
We brew it at home, we drink it at work, we socialize over a cup, or stop in at a café for its energy boost—never once reflecting on how the popularization of coffee literally changed the world.
It all began in Ethiopia, where coffee plants (Coffea) grew wild. It was discovered that the seeds of the coffee plant could be roasted and ground to yield a robust beverage with an unexpected effect. It seems to have become popular in the late-1400s and spread to Yemen quickly thereafter. [Read more…] about Coffee History: Enlightenment, Industry, Slavery & War
When most people think of archaeology, they might picture researchers digging in the dirt or trekking through a remote landscape searching for artifacts.
But on a recent morning outside of Lake Placid, a team of researchers traded shovels for handheld tablets as they watched a drone lift off from a bright orange landing pad, tilting forward and beginning its programmed flight over a dense stretch of Adirondack forest. [Read more…] about LiDAR Archaeology Reveals Former Black Adirondack Farmsteads
As the twentieth century dawned, precepts from the 1800s continued in many schools of thought and application, including the construction of buildings to house livestock. One tenet used was that of a round or multi-sided barn, thought to be more economically constructed than a rectangular structure, with good wind resistance and strength under snow loads.
By the late 19th century many round barns existed across New York State, though they have become a rarity in our time. [Read more…] about Farm Architecture & Saturday’s Preakness Stakes
When the Trees Came Back: The Great Battle to Save Vermont’s Forests by Robert A. Mello (Vermont Historical Society, 2026) chronicles the recovery of Vermont’s forests, which were 75% deforested by the 1880s due to farming and logging.
The book highlights how advocates, citizens, and lawmakers reversed this environmental disaster, restoring the state to roughly 75% forest coverage today. [Read more…] about When the Trees Came Back: The Battle to Save Vermont Forests
New York State was the birthplace of the American canning industry and grew to become one of the nation’s most prolific food processing hubs by the late 19th century. The state’s history is marked by early technological developments, massive growth during wartime, and the rise of major corporate processors.
Initially, canned foods were not widely accepted, however. The overarching factor that drove the prevalence and public acceptance of canned food was the symbiotic relationship between the evolving canning industry and the changing role of women, in particular their need or desire to work in the public sphere. [Read more…] about Women’s Role in Canned Food Consumption
Christianity banned beer from the sacred domain as the Roman clergy continued the Latin habit of drinking wine. The opposition: Christian wine versus pagan beer, was upheld even in the north of Europe. Believers accepted wine’s sacramental role, whatever their climates, social habits, or drinking customs.
The Catholic Church was, at the same time, actively involved in the lucrative business of beer making. The Reformation was not just a schism that breached the unity of the Church, it was also a revolt against clergy-imposed customs that brought about a drastic change – from herbs to hops – in beer production and consumption. [Read more…] about Beer, Hops, Reformation & Prohibition
As I kneel digging in the dirt of the gently collapsing stone foundation, birds singing, knees aching, and dirt permanently embedded under my fingernails, I try to imagine life here in Vershire, Vermont, in the 1880s.
I’ve been excavating the bottle caches and midden (trash) heaps of this foundation for three years now, sifting artifacts from the soil. I’m trying to assemble the story of the people who lived here 140 years before me, to anchor myself and my partner within a broader continuity of relationship with this land. [Read more…] about Cellar Holes and Old Foundations
The Pickled City: The Story of New York Pickles (Princeton Architectural Press, 2026) by Paul van Ravestein and Monique Mulder, with a foreward by Sandor Ellix Katz, takes a deep dive into the history of the iconic brined cucumber by tracing the pickle’s journey from ancient Mesopotamia to Eastern Europe to Manhattan’s Lower East Side, unearthing a hidden world of family stories and economic contributions that helped shape New York’s cultural, culinary, and literal foundations.
With a wealth of photographs, historical images, documents, illustrations, advertisements, and more, this unique food biography includes a brief history of the pickle from 2400 BCE to 2026. [Read more…] about Pickled City: The Story of New York Pickles
Pineapples originate from the Orinoco River basin from where indigenous peoples spread specimens across parts of South America and towards the Caribbean and Bahamas. The early history of pineapple cultivation was a European, post-Columbus affair. The American passion for pineapple evolved from the eighteenth century when colonists began importing the fruit from the Caribbean.
Rare and restricted to the elite for some time, imports increased rapidly and the fruit became widely available. Such was its popularity that the pineapple became a feature of America’s cultural identity.
Flavor memories linger to this day (in craft beers for example), despite Donald Trump’s sworn deposition (October 2022) in which he labeled the fruit (as well as tomatoes and bananas) “dangerous stuff,” expressing anxiety that the pineapple had been weaponized by protesters. [Read more…] about Pineapple Mania & Manhattan Architecture
On December 24, 1920, the young fireman and future fire chief Richard Norris, who had recently returned from World War One, was nearly permanently injured trying to extinguish the last broom factory fire recorded in the history of Plattsburgh, NY.
Broom making was introduced to the Mohawk Valley in the 1830s, and a broom factory existed in Plattsburgh in Clinton County in the 1840s. Brooms were just another necessary consumer item that area entrepreneurs provided to the regional market. [Read more…] about Clinton County’s Broom Corn and Broom Factories
The United States Patent Commission was created on April 10, 1790, to establish a formal method for submitting and indexing patents. Its first three members were Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of War Henry Knox, and Attorney General Edmund Randolph.
As only three people made up the early patent office, the first applications were not closely examined. An inventor simply submitted a written description, a working model, and a $30 fee (equivalent to about $1,000 today). [Read more…] about Early Saratoga County Inventors & The Patent Office Fire
How much do we really know about the food systems and agricultural knowledge of the Indigenous peoples of North America?
In what ways were the Wampanoag people able to contribute to the “First Thanksgiving” harvest celebration—and what have we gotten wrong about their story? [Read more…] about Indigenous Agriculture and Native Foodways Science
The 1895 Champlain Canal navigation season was nearing its end. “The Morgan Lumber Company is hurrying large quantities of lumber to tidewater,” The Morning Star of Glens Falls reported on November 19th.
“Its boats are discharged of their up cargoes of coal as rapidly as possible, and immediately load lumber for the return trip.” There was evidence a few days later that, indeed, the remaining days of the navigation season were numbered. [Read more…] about Closing the Champlain Canal Season in 1895
When we talk about slavery in Early America, we often focus on plantations: their large, fertile fields, their cash crops, and the people who labored on those fields to produce those cash crops under conditions of enslavement.
But what about the ordinary objects that made slavery work? The shoes, axes, cloth, and hoes? What can these everyday objects reveal about the economic and social systems that sustained slavery in the early United States? [Read more…] about How Northern Manufacturing Fueled Slavery
An almanac (often spelled in the old days “almanack”), in its simplest form, is a book containing a calendar that includes notations for holidays and holy days, as well as astronomical information such as the rising and setting of the sun and moon, the phases of the moon, high and low tides. They also often include weather forecasts and agricultural tips.
The history of almanacs spans from ancient Babylonian cuneiform tablets to modern publications (including digital apps). The Oxford Dictionary of English says that the word comes “via Old French and medieval Latin from Spanish Arabic al-manāk (the calendar),” but there remains much discussion of its origins. The word itself, which has roots in the Middle East, seems to have been used in the West with something like its present meaning in the 1200s. [Read more…] about Almanacs: Remarkable Historical Resources
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