History, Natural History & the Arts
America’s founding generation drank a staggering amount of alcohol by today’s standards. It influenced their politics, built and sustained their relationships, and drove the economy.
Booze was not a small part of colonial society, nor covertly consumed in private spaces — it was integral to American life. [Read more…] about An Intoxicating History of the American Revolution
Jordan B. Smith’s The Invention of Rum: Creating the Quintessential Atlantic Commodity (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025) is a complex history of distilled alcoholic spirit made from sugarcane byproducts, from its production to its consumption, and from its origins in the Caribbean to its impact on the Atlantic World.
It was strong. It was cheap. It was ubiquitous. Fermented and distilled from the refuse of sugar production, rum emerged in the seventeenth-century Caribbean as a new commodity. [Read more…] about The Invention of Rum: Quintessential Atlantic World Commodity
Canadians continue to curb their enthusiasm for American booze and travel, with no end in sight.
Canadian travel to the U.S. is down for the 15th straight month, when President Donald Trump began his tariff war against Canada, and his rhetoric about the country becoming the 51st state. [Read more…] about Canadian Travel to US Down for 15th Straight Month
Whitehall‘s Patrick J. Harvey was lucky when it came to fishing and foraging. In late February 1928, spring-like weather had already arrived. With the milder temperatures, Harvey was fishing from a boat on Lake Champlain. Beneath lay the sunken wreck of the British battlecraft Confiance from the War of 1812.
The once-mighty warship lay near the mouth of the Poultney River. [Read more…] about 1928 Angler Catches Jug of Liquor Fishing Lake Champlain
People have gathered in taverns to drink, relax, socialize, and do business for hundreds of years. For just as long, critics have described taverns as sources of individual ruin and public disorder.
In Accommodating the Republic: Taverns in the Early United States (University of North Carolina Press, 2023) Dr. Wood argues that men integrated taverns into the nation’s growing transportation network and used them to raise capital, promote businesses, practice genteel sociability, and rally support for favored causes — often while drinking staggering amounts of alcohol. [Read more…] about Taverns in the Early United States
The accomplished tavern-keeper of New York, as well as of London, knew how to welcome his guest and from long experience instinctively knew how to reach his heart. After receiving him with the most unbounded cordiality, occasionally dropping him a piece of news which he knew would interest him, or one of his newest jokes, he soon made him feel glad to be in his house.
When the dinner was ready he was on hand to place the first dish on the table and to give him his company if he saw that it was desirable. [Read more…] about The Taverns of Old New York
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the American Academy of Pediatrics all recommend drinking only pasteurized milk and eating dairy products made with pasteurized milk. Even organic milk is only safe to drink if it was pasteurized.
The safety of drinking unpasteurized milk and dairy products made from unpasteurized milk is in the news because Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert Kennedy Jr. advocates drinking raw milk and is critical of federal regulations. [Read more…] about ‘How We Poison Our Children’: The 1850s Swill Milk Scandal
At 11:56 on the morning of November 7, 1918, the United Press Association in New York City received a cable from its Paris agent. “Urgent. Armistice Allies Germany signed, eleven morning. Hostilities ceased.” Three minutes later the message passed the censor, and minutes after that the news hit the street. “WAR OVER,” screamed the New York Evening World in its biggest type ever. [Read more…] about The False Armistice of World War One
At Tony Pastor’s Opera House, one of the more respectable establishments on The Bowery in 1872, the impresario sang of the gulf separating the city’s Upper Ten Thousand and Lower Ten Thousand. But whether blue-blood on Fifth Avenue or down-and-out in Five Points, everyone in New York City could enjoy a good party. [Read more…] about Partying in New York’s Gilded Age
New York State’s Finger Lakes region attracts over 25 million visitors every year, making it one the state’s largest tourist destination behind New York City.
Besides its beautiful lakes and stunning foliage, the Finger Lakes has long been known as one of the country’s great winemaking regions. And, beyond Rieslings and Chardonnays, IPAs, ciders, gins, and whiskeys have risen the ranks in Central New York. [Read more…] about The Finger Lakes Drinking Guide
Local residents have been complaining for some time now, and Protect the Adirondacks (Protect) is now urging the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) and the New York State Adirondack Park Agency (APA) to take action to compel a whiskey maker to control emissions from its storage facilities. [Read more…] about Adirondackers Urge End To Distiller’s Whiskey Fungus Contamination
The 21st Amendment ended national Prohibition and the question of alcohol control and regulation was left to the individual states. Each state created its own unique regulations. According to the National Alcohol Beverage Control Association, 17 states, including New York retain direct control over wholesale or retail operations. [Read more…] about Last Remnants of Prohibition May End in New York State
What follows is an article reprinted in Frederick Douglass’ Newspaper from the New York Herald on November 25, 1853.
Drunkenness in New York. The whole number of where alcoholic liquors are sold this city, in this city, is 7,103 says the Tribune — Unlicensed, 1,222; reported disorderly, 1,058; with grocery shops, 3,789; larger beer shops 1,088; exclusively wholesale , 183. [Read more…] about Drunkenness in New York, 1853
New York State history is full of exciting characters who made a real difference in our historical development.
One of the most colorful is Fiorello La Guardia (1882-1947) who served in the Army air corps in the First World War, and later as a member of Congress (1923-1933) and Mayor of New York City (1933-1946). [Read more…] about La Guardia’s Stunts: Prohibition, His Airport, and the Sunday Funnies
During Prohibition the social life of so many Americans was made criminal overnight. Here’s a little nugget from the July 2, 1931 Ticonderoga Sentinel.
One wonders if the men arrested here ever served any hard time. I suspect they did. [Read more…] about July 1931: Prohibition Agents Seize A Still Near Lake George
How and when did doctors become respected professionals in American society?
The answer lies in early Americans’ fascination with delirium tremens, or alcoholic insanity, and the Temperance Movement of the early-to-mid 19th century.
In this episode of the Ben Franklin’s World podcast, Matthew Osborn, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and author of Rum Maniacs: Alcoholic Insanity in the Early American Republic (University of Chicago Press, 2014), leads us on an exploration of early American medical history and reform movements. [Read more…] about Alcoholic Insanity in the Early Republic
In 1869, alarming news about the dangers of drinking absinthe swept north from the city of New York, through Albany, all the way to Malone, near the Canadian border. A “brilliant writer” from the New York press and a “talented lady” had ruined themselves physically and mentally by drinking absinthe.
Comparing the drink to opium and morphine, the article warned readers that absinthe “obtains an all-powerful control over its votaries, deadens the sensibilities, and is, indeed the guillotine of the soul.” [Read more…] about Absinthe: ‘The Guillotine Of The Soul’
During Prohibition – which ended on December 5, 1933 – my grandfather’s brother Denis Warren, a veteran of some of the bloodiest American battles of the First World War, was left for dead on the side of Route 9N south of Port Henry on Lake Champlain. He was in the second of two cars of friends returning from Montreal, both “heavily loaded with Canadian ale” according to a newspaper account.
Going through Port Henry, Essex County, local customs agents gave chase and the car he was in hit a rock cut and he was badly injured in the accident. Figuring his was dead, or nearly so, and worried he would go to prison, one of Denis’s best friends rolled him under the guardrail, climbed into the other car, and sped off. [Read more…] about Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition
In March 1791 Treasury Secretary and Federalist Party leader Alexander Hamilton shocked the western frontier when he proposed a domestic excise tax on whiskey to balance America’s national debt.
The law, known colloquially as the “Whiskey Act,” disproportionately penalized farmers in the backcountry, while offering favorable tax incentives designed to protect larger distillers. [Read more…] about The Whiskey Rebellion: A Distilled History
On a wintry walk in the woods, the glossy evergreen leaves and bright red berries of American Wintergreen make a pretty sight against fallen snow. Plentiful in the northern U.S. and Canada, the low-growing Gaultheria procumbens is known for the pungent aroma and mint-like taste of leaf and berry — pleasing but hard to define.
Native Americans used the leaves to treat pain and fever, and introduced colonists to the custom of drinking wintergreen tea. This “teaberry” carried them through the Revolutionary War, when British tea was scarce. [Read more…] about Wintergreen Oil: Local Employer to Bootlegger’s Subterfuge
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