History, Natural History & the Arts
Five men served on the Second Continental Congress’s Committee of Five, to produce the Declaration of Independence. We know three of them well: Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin. But who were the other two?
The latest episode of the Ben Franklin’s World podcast explores the lives and contributions of Robert R. Livingston of New York and Roger Sherman of Connecticut. [Read more…] about Robert R. Livingston and the Declaration of Independence
In many respects the American Revolution was a civil war pitting Americans loyal to the Crown against other Americans loyal to the vision of a new nation they sought to create. Neighbor fought against neighbor, brother against brother, father against son. One of the epicenters of this desperate struggle was New York’s Hudson Valley.
Suffering for the Crown: The Hudson Valley Loyalists and the Violence of Revolution (University of Virginia Press, 2026) by Kieran J. O’Keefe details the extreme violence, persecution, and displacement experienced by white, Black, and Native American Loyalists during the Revolution. [Read more…] about Hudson Valley Loyalists and the Violence of Revolution
Hot dry weather and lack of rain remains a wildfire concern around state. Since May 4th, New York State Forest Rangers fought two brush fires. In Saratoga County a wildfire began with ashes dumped outside, and a two-acre fire of unknown origin in Warrensburg damaged a structure.
Rangers also provided overnight assistance of two lost hikers in the remote Cold Brook Pass in the Adirondack High Peaks, and aided in locating another near Indian Pass Brook. On May 8th they participated in the search for a missing eight-year-old in Allegany County. Those reports and more are below, provided by DEC: [Read more…] about Rangers Respond: Missing Child, Brush Fires, Overnight High Peaks Rescue, Ill, Injured and Lost Hikers
The television series The American Revolution by Ken Burns and Sarah Botstein currently streaming on PBS gives a valuable overview of the founding era and may entice viewers to look more deeply at the personalities of some of the participants.
Richard Montgomery (1738-1775) has interested me because he was connected to the area of the Hudson Valley where I live. And he’s someone who emerges from the past as a distinct personality, someone who had been seared by war long before the Revolution. [Read more…] about America Wept: The Death of Richard Montgomery
Slavery in the North is a topic that not many understand. Researchers have only in the past decade or so begun to really take a deeper look at slavery in urban northern areas, such as New York City – whose enslaved population was second only in size to that of the South. [Read more…] about The Magnitude of Dutch Slavery in the Hudson Valley
Between 1839 and 1845 tenant farmers in New York State revolted against paying rents to the patroon system — a system of land ownership implemented by the Dutch in New Netherland that prohibited farmers from owning their land outright.
Disguising themselves in calico gowns and leather masks to demand change. Their struggle, known as the Anti-Rent War, helped shape the future of American democracy and land ownership. [Read more…] about The Anti-Rent War: A Second American Revolution
What follows is an excerpt from the diary of Francisco de Miranda (1750-1816), who traveled through the United States between 1783 and 1784. A Venezuelan who fought in the American Revolutionary War, the French Revolution and the Spanish American wars of independence, his diary was later published as The New Democracy in America: Travels of Francisco de Miranda in the United States, 1783-84 (University of Oklahoma Press, 1963). It has been transcribed by Hudson River Maritime Museum Contributing Scholar George A. Thompson and annotated by John Warren.
Tired from the toil of the trip [from Philadelphia, through New Jersey] and having formed some acquaintances in New York, I thought I would visit Boston and then return to New York, whence I would embark for England. The harshness of the winter held me suspended for some time and finally made me change the plan. The sound and the rivers remained frozen for a long time, obstructing all navigation, and the roads, although covered with snow, became impassable with the frequent thaws — neither sledge nor wheels could attempt them. [Read more…] about Up the Hudson River: New York to Stillwater in 1783
From the Hudson to the Taconics: An Ecological and Cultural Field Guide to Columbia County, New York (Black Dome Press, 2024) written by Anna Duhon, Gretchen Stevens, Claudia Knab-Vispo and Conrad Vispo with the support of The Hawthorne Valley Farmscape Ecology Program and Hudsonia features 36 discreet natural habitats in the Hudson Valley’s Columbia County and is beautifully illustrated with over 750 full-color photographs, maps, graphs, tables, and charts. [Read more…] about A Cultural & Ecological Field Guide to Columbia County, NY
Online registration for the 2024 New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Summer Camps program will open Sunday, March 24, 2024, at 1 pm. [Read more…] about DEC Summer Camps Registration Opens March 24th
Land policy in colonial times in what is now New York State favored nobility and prominent men with connections to the Crown. This involved several countries (The Netherlands, England, and France), several explorers, several early pioneers, and appointed officials who oversaw the disbursement of land by land grants or patents. [Read more…] about New York Land Grants: Some History Until The American Revolution
In the 1890s as the Catskills was becoming a very popular summer resort, in part due to the service provided by the New York, Ontario and Western Railway (O&W), the people of Sullivan County sought to have their own fish hatchery. [Read more…] about Catskill Fish Hatchery: Home of Historic Trout Fishing
Robert Fulton did not invent the steamboat. There were perhaps 20 others who worked toward the same goal before the North River Steamboat, later known as Clermont, left the dock in the city of New York for Albany on August 17, 1807. [Read more…] about August 1807: Robert Fulton’s Steamboat Makes History
William Alexander was born on December 25, 1726 in the city of New York to well-known lawyer James Alexander and his wife Mary. Mary and James had emigrated from Scotland in 1716. When they married, Mary was already a widow with six children and she and James had seven more. William was the second son of Mary and James, but when his older brother died in 1731, William became the male heir to the Alexander clan. [Read more…] about Major General William Alexander, Lord Stirling: A Short Biography
Women’s inexorable march toward equality in politics and government in this country has been one of small steps, and there have been many obstacles to overcome. Sometimes in looking back, it is difficult to believe that certain milestones along the journey took so long to achieve. For example, it wasn’t until 1937 that women were eligible to serve on juries in New York State. [Read more…] about Not Until 1937 Could Women Serve On Juries in New York
In this episode of Ben Franklin’s World, Nicole Maskiell, an associate professor of History at the University of South Carolina and the author of Bound By Bondage: Slavery and the Creation of the Northern Gentry (Cornell Univ. Press, 2022) joins Liz Covart to investigate the practice of slavery in Dutch New Netherland and how the colony’s elite families built their wealth and power on the labor, skills, and bodies of enslaved Africans and African Americans. [Read more…] about Wealth and Slavery in New Netherland
From their early days on the North American continent, the Livingston family were a prominent sex-trade family. In a nutshell, they were landlords to brothel-operators from at least as early as the 1810s.
New York State Chancellor Robert R. Livingston, who reluctantly joined the patriot side of the American Revolution in 1776. Chancellor Robert was one of many Livingstons who profited from the sex trade in the aftermath of the unrest. [Read more…] about Pirates, Prostitution & The Livingston Family
The Columbia Inn in Pine Tree, Vermont did not bear much of a resemblance to a Catskills’ hotel of that era, and Dean Jagger’s General Tom Waverly was definitely not much like a Sullivan County hotel owner, but the movie “White Christmas” has a strong local flavor nonetheless. [Read more…] about Sullivan County’s ‘White Christmas’ Connection
The Town of Rhinebeck in Dutchess County, NY celebrated the installation of a historical marker at Quitman House on May 28th.
The building served as the Parsonage for the minister serving St. Peter’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, better known as the Stone Church, located next door. The parsonage is known today as Quitman House and was built in 1798 to house the minister, Reverend Frederick H. Quitman, D. D.
[Read more…] about 1798 Quitman Parsonage Historic Sign Installed in Rhinebeck
Many people – even those with more than a passing interest in Sullivan County history – are surprised to learn that the Ku Klux Klan was once fairly active in parts of the county. And yet, throughout the 1920s and early 1930s, there were several chapters in the Catskills, most set up by recruiters from the Binghamton area.
These Klan chapters, whether in Livingston Manor, Jeffersonville, Liberty, Woodbourne or some other hamlet, often started out as social organizations, and it was not unusual to see newspaper articles and even advertisements about their charitable activities or their clambakes, sometimes in conjunction with the Kamelias, the organization’s women’s auxiliary. [Read more…] about Catskills Klan: The KKK in Sullivan County, New York
The third patroon was Kiliaen Van Rensselaer II (1655-1687) son of Johannes, who was the first patroon to live at Rensselaerswyck, the van Rensselaer Patroonship in most of what is now Albany and Rensselaer Counties, along with parts of Columbia and Greene Counties.
Kiliaen II was only seven years old when his father died however, so his uncles continued to manage the colony. Jeremias was director in 1664 when the English seized New Netherland and renamed Beverwyck “Albany.”
Jeremias’ constant conflict with Stuyvesant and his possible establishment of overland fur trade with the English in Massachusetts, avoiding Peter Stuyvesant’s tax collections in New Amsterdam (New York City), may have facilitated the English take-over. [Read more…] about The Third Patroon & The English Take-Over of New York
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