April is the month when Spring weather typically calls out, “Ready or not, here I come,” and compels nature and humans of New York to come out from winter hiding.
“Happy is the farmer who has got everything ready for the active labors of the coming season. But no matter how thoroughly he is prepared there will always be plenty to do,” the agriculture columnist wrote in the April 25th, 1874 Ticonderoga Sentinel.
The task list was long and varied in the month of getting ready to make hay while the sun shines. [Read more…] about Small Farms in April in the Nineteenth Century
If a newspaper reporter witnesses it, then it has to be so.
In 1693, Leicestershire-born immigrant William Bradford was appointed public printer for New York. Living in Pearl Street, Manhattan, he published from his offices in Hanover Square the first book with a New York imprint, entitled New-England’s Spirit of Persecution Transmitted to Pennsylvania by Quaker author George Keith.
The NYS Historic Newspapers site provides access to over 10 million pages of content published in local papers over the last two hundred years. If newspapers are the first draft of history, this is the mother of all manuscripts, filled with stories and people from every corner of New York state. 
Before long it will be three hundred years ago that James Franklin started printing the combative New-England Courant, employing his younger brother Benjamin as an apprentice. It set a precedent for independent newspaper publishing in the English colonies.