History, Natural History & the Arts
Jan Van Hoesen House on Route 66, north of the City of Hudson, NY and just east of Claverack Creek in Columbia County, is a rare surviving house characteristic of the Upper Hudson Valley in the first half of the 1700s.
As both a site of enslavement and a site of freedom, the house is arguably one of the most significant historic sites in Columbia County.
[Read more…] about Slavery & Abolition Activism at the Jan Van Hoesen House
From the Hudson to the Taconics: An Ecological and Cultural Field Guide to Columbia County, New York (Black Dome Press, 2024) written by Anna Duhon, Gretchen Stevens, Claudia Knab-Vispo and Conrad Vispo with the support of The Hawthorne Valley Farmscape Ecology Program and Hudsonia features 36 discreet natural habitats in the Hudson Valley’s Columbia County and is beautifully illustrated with over 750 full-color photographs, maps, graphs, tables, and charts. [Read more…] about A Cultural & Ecological Field Guide to Columbia County, NY
Bordered by the Hudson River and the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts, few know Columbia County is noted for a mastodon tooth that rolled down a farmer’s hill in Claverack changing the world’s understanding of prehistoric times.
President Martin Van Buren lost his wife, Hannah, in Kinderhook and hardly mentioned her again. Hudson’s gallows were the scene of New York’s last hanging, as hundreds of ticket holders looked on. “Pondshiners” in the hills of Taghkanic made fantastic baskets.
Local author Allison Guertin Marchese explores these little-known stories of people and places in
Hidden History of Columbia County, New York (History Press, 2014). [Read more…] about Hidden History of Columbia County, NY
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