In 1949 and 1950, the New York State Freedom Train, inspired by the national Freedom Train, carried 83 documents from New York’s history to cities and towns statewide.
Governor Thomas Dewey inaugurated the train January 26, 1949 in Albany and it spent the next 13 months traveling the state, meeting capacity crowds all through the year. In the end, nearly one million people in 159 cities visited the New York State Freedom Train. [Read more…] about New York State Freedom Train Documents, Exhibit On View
“The Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.” These were 
The second Republican Party Presidential election was held in 1860. 
As the Town of Niagara, NY municipal 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.
Solomon Northup, who was lured away from Saratoga Springs and into slavery before the Civil War, wrote a book, Twelve Years a Slave, following his fortuitous rescue in 1853.
The dedication of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on November 19, 1863, is mostly remembered for the short speech that President Abraham Lincoln delivered there that day. At the time, however, most of the public attention went to a much longer, formal oration by Edward Everett, former Massachusetts governor, U.S. Senator and Secretary of State.
