History, Natural History & the Arts
Deborah Sampson was born in Plympton, Massachusetts, in 1760. She was hired out as an indentured servant to a family in Middleborough, MA. Upon gaining independence at age 18, she worked as a weaver and briefly as a schoolteacher.
In 1782, Sampson disguised herself in men’s clothing and enlisted in the Continental Army under the name “Robert Shurtliff.” [Read more…] about Call Me Robert: Deborah Sampson, Continental Army Soldier
In December 1777, early in the American Revolution, Baron von Steuben joined the fight against the British with the assistance of then ambassador to France Benjamin Franklin.
Appalled by the state of the Revolutionary army, Steuben began teaching soldiers military drills, tactics, and discipline based on Prussian techniques. [Read more…] about Baron von Steuben’s Oneida County Estate
On a cold, snowy January evening in 1874, Anna Elizabeth Dickinson became one of the first women of national prominence to speak on women’s suffrage in Clinton County, NY. Those gathering to hear her at the Palmer Hall, located upstairs at 60 Margaret Street in downtown Plattsburgh, were described as the most intellectual and cultivated in the community.
The crowd that night would have known her reputation. [Read more…] about Anna Elizabeth Dickinson: ‘America’s Civil War Joan of Arc’
Three men vandalized the Stonewall National Monument on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village over the weekend. According to surveillance video released by the New York Police Department (NYPD), the men were passing by the monument around 3 am on June 10th. [Read more…] about Stonewall LGBTQ National Monument Vandalized
In this episode of Ben Franklin’s World, Jen Manion, a Professor of History and of Sexuality and Women’s and Gender Studies at Amherst College and author of the book, Female Husbands: A Trans History (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2021), joins host Liz Covart to investigate the early American world of female husbands, people who were assigned female gender at birth and then changed their gender at some point in their lives to live as men. [Read more…] about Female Husbands: Transgender People in Early American History
The New York City AIDS Memorial has announced its upcoming season of free, public arts and cultural programming for May and June 2023, organized alongside artist, musician, and curator Nick Hallett. [Read more…] about New York City AIDS Memorial Spring Programming
The New York State Board for Historic Preservation has recommended adding 13 properties to the State and National Registers of Historic Places and submitting one request to the Columbia Turnpike East Toll House to the National Park Service.
The nominations include a key site associated with Rochester‘s LGBTQ+ history, a historic synagogue in Manhattan‘s Upper West Side, a public park in Ithaca, a church connected to Yonkers’s civil rights history, a re-built Lustron House in Erie County, the Oneida County History Center, and more. [Read more…] about NYS Nominates 13 Places for State, National Registers of Historic Places
Mapping the Gay Guides (MGG) relies on the Damron Guides, an early but longstanding travel guide aimed at gay men since the early 1960s. An LGBTQ equivalent to the African American “green books,” the Damron Guides contained lists of bars, bathhouses, cinemas, businesses, hotels, and cruising sites in every U.S. state, where gay men could find friends, companions, and sex. [Read more…] about Historical Travel: Mapping the Gay Guides
The preliminary design for a new gateway to Marsha P. Johnson State Park in Brooklyn was unveiled this summer. The park honors Marsha P. Johnson, a transgender woman of color who was a pioneer of the LGBTQ+ civil rights movement. [Read more…] about Marsha P Johnson State Park Gateway Design Unveiled
In 1943 Henry Alexander Murray, a psychologist at Harvard University, was commissioned by William Joseph Donovan (“Wild Bill Donovan”) – founding father of the CIA – to prepare an investigative report on behalf of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS).
Designated as the “Analysis of the Personality of Adolph Hitler,” it became a ground-breaking study in the fields of offender profiling and political psychology. The inquiry into the malignant and narcissistic personality of the Führer was an effort to understand the “charismatic” nature of his leadership and an attempt to “predict” patterns of his behavior and actions. [Read more…] about Bayreuth & New York; Wagner & Bernstein