History, Natural History & the Arts
A 70-year-old Benjamin Franklin passed through upstate New York in the spring of 1776 on a mission to Canada that failed in the moment but helped shape the American Revolution.
Traveling north in poor health, Franklin traveled up the Hudson River, passing through Albany, Saratoga, and up Lake Champlain, reaching Montreal in April 1776. [Read more…] about Benjamin Franklin’s Travels Through Upstate New York in 1776
The New York Historical Society has digitized their Evert Wendell collection, including five account books in Dutch and English covering the period from 1695 to 1758 and one docket book (in English).
Evert Wendell (1681-1750) was a Dutch-descended Albany merchant, fur trader, and attorney, who conducted business with Native Americans in upstate New York and with colonists in Albany, Schenectady, New York City, and Boston. [Read more…] about Evert Wendell Account Books Reveal Life in 1695-1789
King George’s War and the Thirty-Year Peace:continues the contest for North America from the end of Queen Anne’s War in 1713, marking the beginning of the Thirty-Year Peace, through the start of King George’s War in 1744, to its conclusion with the signing of Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle four years later.
While there would be little fighting between the French, Spanish, and British colonies in North America during the Thirty-Year Peace — the Franco-Spanish conflict of 1719 being an exception — for the French and British it did not prove to be peaceful. [Read more…] about King George’s War and the Thirty-Year Peace
A new documentary by filmmaker Deke Richards spotlights the little-known story of American and Canadian exiles sent as convicts to the penal colony of Australia after their capture during the 1837-38 Canadian Insurrections against the British (also known as the Patriot War). [Read more…] about American & Canadian Patriot War Exiles Subject of New Doc
Richard Montgomery (1736-1775), son of Irish aristocracy, had become a professional British soldier who served in North America during the French and Indian War.
After that service, in which Richard had proven himself in combat and as a gifted leader of men, he was promoted to Captain. [Read more…] about Richard and Janet Montgomery and 1775 Invasion of Canada
The records I have found for my family in Ireland, England, and Montreal paint a picture of the challenges that all immigrants face. Arthur Sherry (1799-1846), my great-great-grandfather, grew up on a flax farm in Northern Ireland, his father Cornelius (1769-1869) struggling to make ends meet as cotton replaced Irish linen.
Arthur moved to Ireland’s port city Dundalk to become a merchant. He married Elizabeth Callan in 1821, having five children in nine years. A Dublin news source puts Arthur in Debtors Court shortly before his decision to immigrate. [Read more…] about Immigrant Stories: The Sherrys Arrive from Ireland in 1834
Faith healer André Bessette (1845–1937), who was later known as Brother André or Saint André of Montréal, was a frequent visitor to Plattsburgh, NY, especially after Clinton County residents, many of whom were distant cousins, told people about their cures. His special friends were Andrew Wilson and his wife, Mary Picotte, who lived at 33 Broad Street. Brother André would often take the train down from Montreal or friends would drive him down to spend a few days with them.
While he was in the area, he would visit relatives and people who were ill, and the Wilsons would open their home to people who wanted to see their friend. [Read more…] about Brother Andre: Faith Healer St André Bessette’s New York Connections
A small box of old documents at the Clinton County Historical Association Museum (CCHA) recently came to my attention. It contained items about the Saint Jean Baptiste Society (SSJB) affiliated with St. Peter’s Church in Plattsburgh: an early ledger of the SSJB dated July 17,1872, with as many as 80 members on the rolls, member applications from the early 20th century, plans to build a hall for the SSJB, financial records, and a proclamation concerning World War One.
The SSJB was founded in Montreal in 1834 by Ludger Duvernay (1799-1852) with the purpose of retaining the French language and culture in the New World. June 24, 1834, was the first celebration of Saint Jean Baptiste Day in Quebec and is now an established provincial holiday. [Read more…] about French Canadians in NY: The Saint Jean Baptiste Society of Plattsburgh
New data form Statistics Canada shows Canadians are avoiding trips to the United States amid tariffs and threats by President Donald Trump’s administration that have also taken American products off the shelves in Canada, seen spectators boo the American national anthem at sporting events, and threats of cutting of energy supplies from Ontario. Trump has repeatedly threatened to make Canada a 51st state. [Read more…] about Canadian Visits to United States Decline by 23 Percent
When Agnese, a Kahnawà:ke Mohawk woman, traveled through the Adirondacks in the summer of 1742, she connected two colonial centers of trade across imperial borders and through traditional Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) territories. Agnese carried a pack of beaver pelts down from Montreal and returned with red fabric and fine laces.
This trade was illegal for Agnese’s trade partners — one a French widow, the other Robert Sanders (1705 – 1765), a future mayor of Albany, NY. [Read more…] about Shirts Powdered Red: Iroquois Gender, Trade, and Exchange
Simon Fraser (1776-1862), the Canadian explorer of British Columbia, had his roots in Hoosick, New York. He was born during the early years of the American Revolution in the small village of Mapletown in East Hoosick, Rensselaer County, NY, near Bennington, Vermont. [Read more…] about Hoosick, NY’s Simon Fraser: Explorer of British Columbia
What follows is a letter to addressed to Secretary at War Hon. John H. Eaton at Washington, DC, from Brigadier General John E. Wool in the Inspector General’s office (although that position had been vacant for many years).
Conformably to your wishes, expressed when I met you at Buffalo, in July last, I have the honor to present my views on the expediency of fortifying the Northern Frontier, and particularly in the neighborhood of Rouses Point on Lake Champlain. [Read more…] about General John E. Wool & New York’s Northern Defenses, 1830
The following eye-witness account of the 1832 Cholera Pandemic in Clinton County, NY, by Judge Winslow C. Watson, Sr. (1803–1884) was reprinted in Hamilton D. Hurd’s, History of Clinton and Franklin Counties, New York (1880).
In 1832 Plattsburgh passed through the most terrific ordeal and the most appalling and solemn scenes man is called upon to confront. About midsummer we learned that the deeply-dreaded pestilence, whose advent had long been feared, the Asiatic cholera, had traversed the Atlantic and been introduced into Quebec by a foreign ship. [Read more…] about The 1832 Cholera Pandemic in Plattsburgh
The Rebellions of 1837-1838 were insurrections against the oligarchic government of the British colonies of Lower and Upper Canada in 1837 and 1838. The rebellion began in Lower Canada but quickly spread to Upper Canada as well. [Read more…] about The Rebellions of 1837-1838: American Influence & The Formation of Canada
“Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes” remains one of the enduring, and most stirring, quotations of the Revolutionary War, and it was very likely uttered at the Battle of Bunker Hill by General Israel Putnam.
Putnam’s renown as a battlefield commander and his colorful military service far and wide are explored in The Whites of Their Eyes: The Life of Revolutionary Hero Israel Putnam from Rogers Rangers to Bunker Hill (Stackpole Books, 2023) by Michael E. Shay. [Read more…] about The Whites of Their Eyes: The Life of Israel Putnam
Louis Riel (1844-1885) a founder of the province of Manitoba in Canada and a political leader of the Métis people (mixed Indigenous and European ancestry) at a time when they actively resisted the Northwest Territories integration into the Dominion of Canada in the late 1860s and 1870s. [Read more…] about Louis Riel: A Canadian Rebel’s Exile in Northern New York
In the early 1750s, the French were establishing trading posts and building forts along western the frontiers of the British colonies. In the fall of 1753, in part to protect his own claims on Indigenous lands, Virginia Lieutenant Governor Robert Dinwiddie had sent 22-year-old George Washington (then a militia leader and surveyor) to deliver a letter to Fort Le Boeuf at what is today Waterford in northwest Pennsylvania, demanding they stop. [Read more…] about The French and Indian War: A New York Perspective
Peter Gansevoort Jr. was born into the Dutch aristocracy of Albany to Harman Gansevoort (1712–1801) and Magdalena Douw (1718–1796). His younger brother Leonard Gansevoort, was politically active, serving in the state assembly and senate, as well as the Continental Congress.
Gansevoort is also remembered today as the grandfather of author Herman Melville.
[Read more…] about Albany’s Peter Gansevoort, “The Hero of Stanwix”
Major General John Bradstreet, born Jean-Baptiste Bradstreet (1714 – 1774), was a British Army officer during King George’s War, the French and Indian War, and Pontiac’s War.
In 1756 he led a column to supply the greatly weakened Fort Oswego and issued ignored warnings to his superiors before Oswego was captured and burned later that year. In the spring of 1757 he helped assemble supplies and transports at Boston for the abortive attack on Louisbourg.
That December he was appointed Lt. Colonel and in 1758 he participated in the attack on Fort Carillon (now Fort Ticonderoga), where he led the advance guard following the death of General George Howe. When the Battle ended in disaster, Bradstreet attempted to organize a retreat. [Read more…] about Bradstreet’s Raid: A 1758 Riverine Operation
Did Canada almost join the American Revolution?
In this episode of Ben Franklin’s World, Bruno Paul Stenson, a historian and musicologist with the Château de Ramezay historic site in Montréal, joins us to discuss how the American Revolution played out in Canada. [Read more…] about Road Trip: Montréal, Château Ramezay
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