History, Natural History & the Arts
Yates Street in Schenectady runs north and south from Union Street to Liberty Street, from the Friendship Baptist Church on Union Street to the Katbird Shop at the corner of Liberty and Yates.
In the late 1840s it was regularly traversed by the only former resident of Schenectady and the only graduate of Union College ever destined to occupy the office of President of the United States. [Read more…] about Chester A. Arthur, The Spoils System & Civil Service Reform
The exclusion of “undesirables” to remote lands has a long history. The shameful attempts by contemporary governments to “solve” the refugee problem in that manner has had precedents.
During the mid-1930s Mussolini dumped socialists and anti-fascists in the inaccessible and malaria-ridden southern areas of the country.
The use of islands as off-shore detention centers has a parallel history. The government of Charles I locked up its opponents at Jersey, Guernsey, or the Isles of Scilly. Having lost the English Civil War, Charles I himself was incarcerated in Carisbrooke Castle on the Isle of Wight. Faced with continuing sedition and agitation, Charles II sent several former leaders of the Interregnum into island isolation. [Read more…] about Islands of Punishment and Exclusion
Rev. Calvin Cornelius Fairbank was born November 3, 1816 in Pike, Wyoming County, NY. He began his academic studies at a seminary in Lima, Livingston County, NY, and became a licensed preacher in 1840. In 1842 he was ordained an elder in the Methodist Episcopal Church, and he graduated Oberlin College in Ohio two years later. At Oberlin he met John Mifflin Brown (1817-1893), a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church and an Underground Railroad activist.
Fairbank was a radical abolitionist who not only spoke out against slavery, but actively worked to free as many enslaved people as he could. [Read more…] about Calvin Fairbank: Imprisoned 17 Years For Helping Enslaved People to Freedom
Alfred Billings Street was born in Poughkeepsie on December 18th, 1811. He was descended from an Englishman, the Reverend Nicholas Smith, who immigrated to Connecticut around 1659.
His father, Randall Sandal Street, was a general in the New York Militia and served in the War of 1812. A practicing lawyer, Randall Street was also active in politics; he was a two-term district attorney and a Democratic congressman from 1819 until 1821. His wife, Cornelia, was the daughter of Revolutionary War veteran, Andrew Billings. [Read more…] about Alfred Billings Street: Albany’s 19th Century State Poet
Early in the morning on Friday, July 13th, 1962 fire was discovered in one of the buildings at Hankin’s High View House, just outside Liberty, Sullivan County, NY in the Catskills. Firefighters were on the scene within minutes and were able to contain the blaze, while hotel staff and ambulance personnel attended to the injured, but before it was over five people would be dead and one of the heroes of the tragedy would be in jail, charged with multiple counts of first degree murder.
In the aftermath, local officials would try in vain to tighten the fire laws governing small hotels. [Read more…] about The 1962 Catskills High View House Fire
On this episode of A New York Minute in History, Devin Lander and Lauren Roberts visit New York’s oldest continuously operating courthouse, located in the City of Johnstown in Fulton County.
Built in 1772 by Sir William Johnson, the Fulton County Courthouse has seen the transition from British colonial rule to the establishment of the United States, and 250 years of legal history. Among the important judges to hold court at the courthouse include Daniel Cady, the father of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who was heavily influenced by legal cases which demonstrated how few rights women had in the 19th Century. [Read more…] about Fulton County Courthouse: Some History
The Nolan Family immigrated from Ireland and settled in Stillwater, Ballston, and after the Civil War, in Waterford, all in Saratoga County. The Nolan’s were a large family, a good many had served in the war, and most enlisted for the rewards of the bounty paid to the volunteers.
Michael Nolan, the father of the Nolan girls, had enlisted in the storied 77th Infantry Regiment based out of Saratoga. The 77th fought in many of the war’s epic battles. Michael had enlisted for three years and served out his full term. Prior to the war he resided in Stillwater and was employed as a farm laborer. [Read more…] about The Nolan Sisters: A Famous Waterford Poisoning Case
This week on The Historians Podcast, John Sweet is author of The Sewing Girl’s Tale, the story of the first published rape trial in American history. In 1793, Lanah Sawyer, a 17-year-old seamstress, charged she had been raped. The defendant was “a very great rake,” the scion of two wealthy Dutch families who lied about his identity and took her to a brothel and sexually assaulted her. Alexander Hamilton was among the many well-connected lawyers who represented the defendant in various aspects of the case.
Sweet researched Sawyer’s decision to charge Henry Bedlow with rape, leading to a raw courtroom drama in the city of New York, riots in the streets, and public debate over class privilege and double standards. [Read more…] about The Sewing Girl’s Tale: The 1793 Rape of Lanah Sawyer
Recent pieces in the Adirondack Explorer (see here and here) have attempted to assess the implications of the decision by New York State’s highest court in Protect the Adirondacks v Department of Environmental Conservation and Adirondack Park Agency.
The Court of Appeals found that these state agencies violated the state constitution in their efforts to build a network of new extra-wide snowmobile trails in the Adirondack Forest Preserve. These commenters have derided the decision because they say it’s focused on tree cutting, which they argue is a poor standard to evaluate the constitutionality of management actions by state agencies under Article 14, Section 1, the Forever Wild Clause. [Read more…] about Forest Preserve Decision Has Far-Reaching Implications Beyond Tree Cutting
The History Channel’s new special on Theodore Roosevelt describes his victory in the 1904 presidential election but doesn’t even mention his Democratic opponent.
That was New York Court of Appeals’ former Chief Judge Alton B. Parker (1852-1926), probably the most neglected major party presidential candidate in U.S. history. Yet at the time of the election Parker was the leader of one of the nation’s two major political parties and one of the nation’s foremost judicial statesmen. [Read more…] about Alton B. Parker: New York’s Neglected Statesman