History, Natural History & the Arts
This week on The Historians Podcast, Stephen Riegel discusses his book Finding Judge Crater: A Life and Phenomenal Disappearance in Jazz Age NY (USRYC, 2021).
Judge Joseph Crater was a New York State Supreme Court Justice who disappeared in New York City in 1930. [Read more…] about Finding Missing Judge Joseph Crater (Historians Podcast)
“Here is a good dirt farmer gone wrong” is how Harry James Carman described himself.
He started out as a farm-raised country boy in Saratoga County, NY and rose to the position of Dean of Columbia University in New York City. [Read more…] about Harry James Carman: Farm Boy to Columbia University Dean
Frances Steloff was the daughter of a Russian immigrant and itinerant rabbi who, in an age of rising anti-Semitism, was one of the early Jewish settlers in Saratoga Springs. The large family lived in dire poverty.
After the death of her mother, Frances was “informally” adopted by a wealthy Boston couple. Having run away from her foster parents, she made her way to New York, worked in a Brooklyn department store selling corsets, before establishing a tiny bookshop in Midtown Manhattan. On her death, after eighty-one years in the business, she was revered as one of America’s most influential booksellers and bibliophiles. Founder of the Gotham Book Mart, she turned her establishment into a center for avant-garde literature. [Read more…] about Saratoga’s ‘Fanny the Flower Girl,’ Gotham Book Mart Founder
By the mid-1800s, almost 200 years after her death, Anneke Jans Bogardus was one of Albany’s most famous people, having been the subject of many books, newspaper and magazine articles. The popular story was that Anneke was a daughter of William the Silent, who was later crowned King William I of Holland.
Nineteenth-century rumor had it that unbeknownst to Anneke, her father had left a large fortune to her and her sister and that her heirs should undertake legal action to claim it. Another rumor was that Anneke had owned a large portion of Manhattan Island worth billions that had been illegally deeded to Trinity Church and should be reclaimed. There was some truth to the story. [Read more…] about Albany’s Anneke Jans Bogardus, Indecent Exposure, Trinity Church & The Bowery
On November 30th, St Louis-born entertainer and civil rights activist Josephine Baker became the first Black woman to be inducted into the Pantheon in Paris, the highest honor that France bestows.
Baker had started her career as a young dancer in Vaudeville shows where her exuberant talent was quickly spotted. When she moved to New York City she joined in the festival of black life and art now known as the Harlem Renaissance, but segregation and racism drove her away from home. [Read more…] about The Cabaret Trail: 1920s Urban Nightlife in New York, Paris & London
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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The new book Finding Judge Crater: A Life and Phenomenal Disappearance in Jazz Age New York (Syracuse University Press, 2021) by Stephen J. Riegel is a fascinating chronicle of the life, times, and notorious disappearance of Judge Joseph F. Crater in Jazz Age Manhattan. [Read more…] about New Book Sheds Light on Jazz Age Disappearance of a NY Judge
Washington Irving was the son of immigrants. His father was a Presbyterian Scot, his mother Cornish. He was born on April 3rd, 1783, the same week that New Yorkers celebrated the ceasefire that ended the American Revolution. His parents named their son after George Washington. They had settled at 131 William Street, Manhattan, and were part of the city’s merchant class.
Washington began writing letters to the New York Morning Chronicle in 1802. He gained recognition as a satirical author in 1809 with A History of New York using the pseudonym Dietrich Knickerbocker. He riveted readers with his irreverent combination of fact and fancy. [Read more…] about Andalusian Allure: From Washington Irving to Thomas Edison
Every year in October the Lower Manhattan Historical Society holds its Saratoga/Yorktown celebration in Trinity Churchyard to celebrate the American victories at the Battles of Saratoga and Yorktown.
At that ceremony wreaths are lain on the graves of Revolutionary War figures associated with those battles — Horatio Gates, Alexander Hamilton and Marinus Willett. [Read more…] about Marinus Willet, Tammany Hall & The Treaty of New York
At noon on November 25, 2014 about 25 people gathered at the flag poles at the north end of Manhattan’s Bowling Green to raise a specially designed flag with 13 stars and stripes.
It was a replica of the flag which was raised at the same spot on November 25, 1783 (Evacuation Day) when George Washington’s Continental army had marched into New York City officially ending the American Revolutionary War. [Read more…] about A Short History of New York City’s ‘Evacuation Day’