History, Natural History & the Arts
Book purchases made through this link support New York Almanack’s mission to report new publications relevant to New York State.
Ray E. Phillips’s new novel Laughing Rain and Awakens Corn: Look-the-Same Girls in the Land of the Cloud-Splitter (Self-Published, 2021) looks at how life in early America is experienced by twin girls, Laughing Rain and Awakens Corn from a Mohawk clan in an Adirondack village. [Read more…] about New Novel From Ray Phillips Tells Story of Native Twins
Throughout the nineteenth century, prostitution was rife in American cities. In 1820 there were an estimated two hundred brothels in New York, growing to more than six hundred after the Civil War. By the early 1840s the city was the nation’s whoring capital, its own Gomorrah.
Most houses of assignation before the Civil War were owned and controlled by women. Some madams made spectacular careers, nobody more so than Fanny White whose Mercer Street brothel was, from 1851 onward, a meeting place for Congressmen, dignitaries and diplomats – a Manhattan whoreocracy. [Read more…] about Manhattan ‘Flash’ Culture: Madams and Sporting Men
Book purchases made through this link support New York Almanack’s mission to report new publications relevant to New York State.
Between the 1760s and 1800s, Americans stopped thinking of the British past as their own history and created a new historical tradition that would form the foundation of what future generations would think of as “American history.” [Read more…] about American Revolution and ‘American History’
A pun is a fitting way to celebrate the birth of a child to a fellow newspaper editor.
“Editor G.A. Weller of The Granville Sentinel rejoices over the addition to his family of a feminine ‘supplement’ weighing over eleven pounds,” The Morning Star of Glens Falls reported on September 22nd, 1885. [Read more…] about 19th Century Birth Announcements: Elements of Style
When we think of important years in the history of the American Revolution, we might think of years like 1765 and the Stamp Act Crisis, 1773 and the Tea Crisis, 1775 and the start of what would become the War for American Independence, or 1776, the year the United States declared independence.
[Read more…] about 1774: The Long Year of Revolution (Podcast)
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
“Saturday was a sad day for all of us and I know that all of Fala’s friends will also be sad to know that he slept away, and the little dog’s story had come to an end.”
Eleanor Roosevelt wrote these words in her column “My Day” on April 8th, 1952. She was saddened by the loss of the famous Scottish Terrier that belonged to her late husband FDR. Both Fala and his grandson Tamas McFala, also a Scottish Terrier, were constant fixtures at Val-Kill in Hyde Park, the home of Eleanor Roosevelt after President Roosevelt died. [Read more…] about Fala, A Presidential Dog
Book purchases made through this link support New York Almanack’s mission to report new publications relevant to New York State.
The new book 1774: The Long Year of Revolution (Knopf, 2020) by Mary Beth Norton keenly focuses on the sixteen months during which the traditional loyalists to King George III began their discordant “discussions” that led to their acceptance of the inevitability of war against the British Empire and to the clashes at Lexington and Concord in mid-April 1775. [Read more…] about 1774: The Long Year of Revolution
Equestrian artist Philip Astley was a pioneering entertainment entrepreneur. His demonstrations of trick horse-riding at London’s Royal Amphitheatre in 1768 constitute the origins of modern circus.
Astley performed his routine in a circular arena which would subsequently be referred to as the ring. He interspersed his displays with a variety of additional acts. Both in Europe and America other producers copied and expanded his new style of entertainment. [Read more…] about Circus Artists and the Flying Trapeze Metaphor
For centuries people have been mixing potions, initially in a quest for medicinal elixirs, and later to produce exotic drinks. Punch was introduced from India to England in the early seventeenth century. The term, of uncertain etymology, was first recorded in 1632. [Read more…] about Masters of Mixology: American Showmanship & French Finesse