History, Natural History & the Arts
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The new book Lincoln scholar Michael Burlingame An American Marriage: The Untold Story of Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd (Pegasus Books, 2021) explores an often overlooked aspect of the sixteenth president’s life, the tragic story of Abraham Lincoln’s marriage to Mary Todd. [Read more…] about Lincoln Scholar Offers New Revelations About Mary Todd Lincoln
As the Town of Niagara Historian I’m researching the lives of those buried in one of our local cemeteries. Witmer Cemetery was originally the burying ground of the Witmer family, who settled here after arriving from Pennsylvania in 1811. The earliest gravestone in the cemetery is from 1828, but it’s estimated that about 200 people have been buried there since.
I began my research at the front row, where a toppled headstone marked the final resting place of George Martin and Jane, his wife. [Read more…] about Slave To Soldier: George Martin’s Fight For Freedom
George Waring was born in Pound Ridge, New York, the son of George E. Waring Sr., a wealthy stove manufacturer. Trained in agricultural chemistry, he began to lecture on agricultural science. In 1855, he took charge of Horace Greeley‘s farm at Chappaqua, New York. [Read more…] about George Waring’s Men In White
On the sunny morning of October 21, 1861 – to cheers from tens of thousands of citizens, with bands playing and the roar of cannons – Calvin W. Preston, Galway farmboy boarded a towboat-drawn barge at the Albany, NY docks with other soldiers of the Ellsworth Avengers regiment for the beginning of a dangerous and arduous journey that would lead to perhaps the most important battle of the Civil War: Gettysburg. [Read more…] about Calvin Preston: A Survivor of Two Calamities
Jacob Wynkoop was born in New Paltz, New York, in 1829, the child of two former slaves, Thomas and Jane Deyo Wynkoop. Wynkoop had an exceptional and varied life for any man of his time.
Among the first African Americans to buy land in the community, he also served in the Union Army during the Civil War, organized politically on behalf of African American citizens in town, and built a series of homes that today still define a neighborhood in the village of New Paltz. [Read more…] about Black Builder Jacob Wynkoop Exhibit Goes Online
For more than two decades, the US Colored Troops Civil War Digest has been published with the support of Hartwick College and the membership of the United States Colored Troops Institute for Local History and Family Research (USCTI).
[Read more…] about Latest US Colored Troops Civil War Digest Issued
The Ticonderoga Historical Society is set to present its first program of the year, “One Man’s Impact: U.S. Grant and Our Memory of the Civil War,” on Friday, July 31st. [Read more…] about Ulysses S. Grant Program Planned in Ticonderoga
During the American Civil War – which, despite attempts to argue otherwise, was in effect America’s crusade against slavery – several hundred thousand citizens from New York State enlisted in the United States Army.
Many from Saratoga County (and also some from Essex and Fulton Counties) joined the 77th Regiment, its unit number chosen to recall the 1777 Battle of Saratoga during the American Revolution. It was known as the “Bemis Heights Regiment,” the place so evocative of the “turning point” of the War of Independence. [Read more…] about The Life and Death of Saratoga’s Statue to the 77th Regiment
During the Civil War personal identification of soldiers killed and severely wounded in combat was daunting, because of inadequate record keeping in both the Union and the Confederate armies.
An early attempt to ID them was called “name discs” or “soldier pins,” but these met with limited success. Historians estimate that 50% of those killed in the Civil War were simply marked unknown. [Read more…] about To Identify The Dead: World War Two Student ‘Dog Tags’
This week on The Historians Podcast, Wanda Burch tells stories from her book The Home Voices Speak Louder than the Drums: Dreams and the Imagination in Civil War Letters and Memoirs (McFarland, 2017). [Read more…] about Dreams of the Civil War Soldiers (Podcast)