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Mohawk & Hudson Railroad

John Isaac DeGraff: Schenectady’s First Elected Mayor

December 11, 2022 by Guest Contributor Leave a Comment

John Isaac DeGraffJohn Isaac De Graff (October 2, 1783 – July 26, 1848) was a U.S. Representative from New York. Born in Schenectady, De Graff attended the common schools and Union College and engaged in mercantile pursuits and the practice of law in that city.

He served in the War of 1812 and was elected as a Jacksonian Democrat to the Twentieth Congress (March 4, 1827 – March 3, 1829). [Read more…] about John Isaac DeGraff: Schenectady’s First Elected Mayor

Filed Under: Capital-Saratoga, History Tagged With: Albany County, Erie Canal, Mohawk & Hudson Railroad, Political History, politics, Saratoga & Schenectady Railroad, Schenectady, Schenectady County, Schenectady County Historical Society, Transportation History, War of 1812

Stephen Van Rensselaer III: The Last Patroon

May 4, 2022 by Peter Hess 5 Comments

Stephen Van Rensselaer III (Natural Portrait Gallery)Stephen Van Rensselaer III (1764-1839), was orphaned at the age of ten. His father had died when he was five and his mother remarried Reverend Eilardus Westerlo, minister of the Dutch Reformed Church in Albany. She died five years later and Stephen was raised by Abraham Ten Broeck (later Brigadier General) and his wife (Stephen’s aunt) Elizabeth Van Rensselaer.

Stephen attended the John Water’s School in Albany, grammar school in Elizabeth Town, New Jersey and Classical School in Kingston. He then attended college at Princeton, but withdrew to Harvard because of the dangers in Northern New Jersey during the Revolutionary War. In 1776, Stephen’s grandfather Philip Livingston (who had married Ten Broeck’s sister Christina) had signed the Declaration of Independence. [Read more…] about Stephen Van Rensselaer III: The Last Patroon

Filed Under: Capital-Saratoga, History Tagged With: Abraham Ten Broeck, Albany County, Albany Institute For History and Art, Anti-Rent War, Battle of Queenstown Heights, Canada, Erie Canal, Legal History, Mohawk & Hudson Railroad, Rensselaer County, Rensselaerswijck, RPI, Schenectady County, Stephen Van Rensselaer III, Van Rensselaers, War of 1812, Williams College

Early Railroads From The Capital District To Saratoga

August 23, 2020 by Guest Contributor Leave a Comment

locomotive illustrationIt’s becoming popular to refer to our area as Tech Valley because of the nanotech facilities in Albany and Global Foundries in Malta (Saratoga County).

This is not the first time the region was at the forefront of a technological revolution. In the early nineteenth century some of the nation’s first railroads were built right here. [Read more…] about Early Railroads From The Capital District To Saratoga

Filed Under: Capital-Saratoga, History Tagged With: Ballston Spa, Mohawk & Hudson Railroad, railroads, Saratoga, Saratoga County, Saratoga Springs, Schenectady, Transportation History, Troy

Historian: America’s First Railroad Tunnel Located

August 14, 2008 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

Incredible news from the Schenectady Gazette this morning. Schenectady City Historian Don Rittner has apparently found the first railroad tunnel ever constructed, buried in the historic Schenectady Stockade District. The find includes a section of the original tracks:

“The 15-foot-deep tunnel snakes its way across what are now a dozen or more private backyards. But in 1832, that land was a major thoroughfare — the foundation of the city’s prosperity and growth for the next century.

“Hundreds of business owners and daring families rode through the tunnel on trains so experimental that they were considered too dangerous to be allowed on city streets. They could travel so fast and their engines could produce so many wild sparks that city leaders feared pedestrians would be run over and buildings burned down.

“So horses dragged the trains from the Erie Canal to the Scotia bridge along a safe, deep tunnel. It was an experiment that lasted just six years, but in that time it was guaranteed a place in the history books. Not only was the tunnel the first ever constructed for a locomotive, but the entrance was the first junction of two railroad companies, according to Rittner.”

Technically, the first railroad in the United States is believed to have been a gravity railroad in Lewiston, New York in 1764. The Mohawk & Hudson Railroad, of which the tunnel would have been a part, was the first modern-style railroad built in the State of New York; it was incorporated in 1826 by the Mohawk and Hudson Company and opened August 9, 1831.

On April 19, 1847, the name was changed to the Albany and Schenectady Railroad. The railroad was consolidated into the New York Central Railroad on May 17, 1853. In 1867, the first elevated railroad was built in New York.

Filed Under: Capital-Saratoga, History Tagged With: Albany, Albany County, Archaeology, Architecture, Engineering History, Historic Preservation, Mohawk & Hudson Railroad, New York Central RR, railroads, Schenectady, Schenectady County, Transportation History

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