Louisa Matilda Jacobs (1833-1917), daughter of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl author Harriet Jacobs (1813-1897), was born enslaved by Dr. James Norcom in Edenton, North Carolina, but spent considerable time in Upstate New York. [Read more…] about Upstate NY Incidents in the Life of Louisa Jacobs
Auburn
Albert Benton Pullman: Gilded Age Entrepreneur
Simon Cordery’s Gilded Age Entrepreneur: The Curious Life of Albert Benton Pullman (Cornell University Press, 2025) illuminates the fascinating and chaotic business world of Albert Pullman (1828-1893).
The influential but little-known older brother of George Pullman (1831-1897) and the craftsman of the family, Albert designed the first luxurious Pullman railroad cars and hosted promotional trips to show them off. In those heady early days, he met national business and political leaders and hired the first Pullman porters. [Read more…] about Albert Benton Pullman: Gilded Age Entrepreneur
New Yorkers Exiled to Tasmania for the 1837-38 Canadian Patriot Rebellion
On September 30, 1970, in a simple ceremony, a monument was unveiled at Sandy Bay Beach Reserve in Hobart, Tasmania, by the Honorable Douglas Harkness, the former Canadian defense minister. It was in honor to the ninety-two Patriot exiles, transported to what was then called Van Diemen’s Land who had been captured in the 1837-38 Patriot War insurrection in Upper Canada against British domination.
Listed as Canadian rebels, a majority were in fact from the state of New York. Although imprisoned US citizens captured in the various conflicts with England – from the American Revolution to the War of 1812– was not a novelty, it was to be the first time that American prisoners were shipped to a penal colony in Australia due to a confrontation with the Empire. [Read more…] about New Yorkers Exiled to Tasmania for the 1837-38 Canadian Patriot Rebellion
The Sewards of New York: A New Biography
The Sewards of New York: A Biography of a Leading American Political Family (Three Hills – Cornell University Press, 2025) by Thomas P. Slaughter shines a light on one of the most important and fascinating political families of the nineteenth century.
Through recently discovered family correspondence, Slaughter unveils the inner lives of the Seward family, tracing their joys and sorrows as the nation grappled with rapid expansion and deepening divisions on its path to the Civil War. [Read more…] about The Sewards of New York: A New Biography
The Cherry Valley & Great Western Turnpike: A Short History
In the early 1700s the Mohawk Turnpike and the Seneca Turnpike were improved from the rougher Indigenous trails whose routes they utilized into regular, if rough, wagon roads. But it wasn’t until the 1790s that New York State’s turnpike era took off.
This was good news to migrants and local travelers alike, as deep ruts along the former “Indian trails” made transportation impractical and slow. It took days just to go a few miles and the limited number of ferries, bridges and fords often caused wagons to go miles out of their way to get around a lake, river, or creek. [Read more…] about The Cherry Valley & Great Western Turnpike: A Short History
A History of the New York Gypsum Industry, 1790-1930
New York State has been identified with the American gypsum industry from its start. The deposits in the central counties, where the gypsum [calcium sulfate] outcrops in places on the surface, were noted by the early settlers who began to take active possession of the lands… during the closing years of the eighteenth century.
The settlers were mostly from eastern New York and New England. They had some acquaintance, no doubt with the agricultural uses of gypsum, which at that time was imported and employed quite· extensively in the farming sections along the coast. This material came from Nova Scotia and France, for there were no local sources of supply in the coastal area. [Read more…] about A History of the New York Gypsum Industry, 1790-1930
Birthplace of Sound Film Re-Opening for Public Tours
While attending Yale University, Theodore (Ted) Case explored his love of science through the transmission of light and the reproduction of sound, developing a method of photographing sound waves which he referred to as a “lightograph.”
Upon his return to Auburn, NY, Case would establish laboratories in the basements of the family homes on Genesee Street and Casowasco on the shores of Owasco Lake. When his father inherited the Willard Mansion, the two restructured one of the greenhouses on the property into a working laboratory: The Case Research Laboratory. [Read more…] about Birthplace of Sound Film Re-Opening for Public Tours
Pricing the Land: The Buying and Selling of Frontier New York
Pricing the Land: The Buying and Selling of Frontier New York and Cayuga Reservation (Cornell University Press, 2024) reconstructs the complicated history of buying and selling land along the New York frontier after the American Revolution.
Scott W. Anderson focuses on the prices bid for lots in Central New York that had been set aside for veterans of the war (the New Military Tract) and within the Cayuga Reservation created by treaty in 1789, comprising a hundred square miles of land on both shores of the northern end of Cayuga Lake. [Read more…] about Pricing the Land: The Buying and Selling of Frontier New York
The Great Seneca Turnpike
Today’s State Route 5 crosses New York State from Buffalo to Albany and parallels state Route 20 and the New York State Thruway. The part of Route 5 between Utica and Canandaigua in Ontario County, some 105 miles, is still called the Seneca Turnpike.
Originally a Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) path, the route has been referred to in various accounts as the Great Genesee Road, the Great Genesee Trail, the Genesee Turnpike, the Great Seneca Turnpike or Seneca Road. Previously it had been known as the part of the Great Indian Trail or Iroquois Trail. [Read more…] about The Great Seneca Turnpike
Sunday Baseball and the Titanic Game
Through the nineteenth century in the Empire State a system of “blue laws” at every civic level were enforced, prohibiting all types of activities on the Christian Sabbath. As the twentieth century began, these “blue laws” prevented Sunday baseball.
The sport of baseball had swept the nation, and was popular since the Civil War; played anywhere a bat and ball could be put in use. Americans were baseball mad, they had the fever, and had it bad. [Read more…] about Sunday Baseball and the Titanic Game
Book About Daring Harriet Tubman Raid Wins Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize
The Gilder Lehrman Institute in New York City has announced the 2025 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize will be awarded to Edda L. Fields-Black for her book Combee: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War (Oxford University Press, 2024).
The book tells the story of the Combahee River Raid, one of Harriet Tubman‘s most extraordinary accomplishments, based on original documents and written by a descendant of one of the participants. [Read more…] about Book About Daring Harriet Tubman Raid Wins Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize
Auburn Prison: America’s Original Prison for Profit
In the early nineteenth century, as slavery gradually ended in the North, a village in New York State invented a new form of unfreedom: the profit-driven prison. Uniting incarceration and capitalism, the village of Auburn in Cayuga County built a prison in 1814 that enclosed industrial factories.
There, “slaves of the state” were leased to private companies. The prisoners earned no wages, yet they manufactured furniture, animal harnesses, carpets, and combs, which consumers bought throughout the North. Then one young man challenged the system. [Read more…] about Auburn Prison: America’s Original Prison for Profit
Finger Lakes Technology: From Agriculture to Auto Racing
In 1904, the New York State legislature passed a bill to create the New York State College at Cornell. The bill created a land-grant college with an agriculture focus within Cornell and guaranteed fields of study related to agriculture would receive significant public funding. [Read more…] about Finger Lakes Technology: From Agriculture to Auto Racing
Social and Religious Movements in Central New York
Central New York communities that flourished with canal-related development and rail connections throughout the 19th century also became hotbeds for religious and social movements of the early 1800s as the area’s population rapidly grew.
Religious freedom granted by the United States Bill of Rights combined with rapid societal and technological changes experienced by Americans living through western expansion fueled an American spiritual movement that was exemplified in the newly opened frontier of New York. [Read more…] about Social and Religious Movements in Central New York
Seward House Barn, Carriage House Rehabilitation Project Getting Underway
Seward House Museum in Auburn, Cayuga County, NY, is inviting the public to a groundbreaking ceremony for its Barn and Carriage House Rehabilitation Project on Wednesday, October 25th at 11 am in the Seward House Museum gardens.
Designed by William Henry Seward‘s son Frederick and constructed in 1860, the stone barn and carriage house are integral to the stories shared by the Museum. Once completed, the buildings will serve as a gathering place for events and groups, a new exhibit for William Seward’s carriage, and additional staff offices. [Read more…] about Seward House Barn, Carriage House Rehabilitation Project Getting Underway
Grants Support Cayuga County History Curator, Exhibit
The Cayuga Museum of History and Art in Auburn, NY was awarded a $50,000 Inspire! Grant for Small Museums from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). The grant will be matched 1:1 by a donation from Brad Schwartz, to fully support a Curator position for two years.
This Curator will have the task during this time period of developing an interpretive plan for a major new project: a comprehensive exhibit exploring the entire history of Cayuga County. [Read more…] about Grants Support Cayuga County History Curator, Exhibit
New Digital Resources for Underground Railroad History Research
Recently retired Cornell University Professor Gerard Aching will present on his research and coordination of the Underground Railroad Research Project, which highlights the extensive roots of the network in Central New York, Western New York, and the Finger Lakes Region. [Read more…] about New Digital Resources for Underground Railroad History Research
Euro-American Expansion Into The Finger Lakes Region
The Treaty of Paris of 1783 officially ended hostilities between the British and Americans; however, the treaty did not include the allied Indian Nations, leaving their legacy treaties with the Europeans unresolved and their future to be resolved through separate treaties with the new American government. [Read more…] about Euro-American Expansion Into The Finger Lakes Region
Deciding Vote: Film Tells Story of George Michaels Deciding NYS Abortion Vote
The Cayuga Museum’s Carriage House Theater will screen a new documentary from Wheelhouse Creative, “Deciding Vote”, which explores the story of former New York State Assemblyman George Michaels, a prominent member of Auburn, NY’s Jewish community and a veteran of World War Two.
Michaels entered politics in the tumultuous era of the 1960s, and became a central figure in paving the way for abortion rights in the US when his switched vote barely passed New York’s law legalizing abortion in 1970. [Read more…] about Deciding Vote: Film Tells Story of George Michaels Deciding NYS Abortion Vote
Annie Edson Taylor: Over Niagara Falls & Into The Poor House
Advancing into the later stages of life, some turn their thoughts to immortality, whether through achievement, offspring, or religion. Many more focus on simply having enough dough to sustain themselves with dignity to the end. Annie Edson Taylor took aim at both goals.
In 1901, she was approaching her sixty-third birthday. She had long fended for herself, an adventurous entrepreneur in an age when most women were still locked into dependency. But life offered scant opportunity for an aging free spirit. [Read more…] about Annie Edson Taylor: Over Niagara Falls & Into The Poor House