History, Natural History & the Arts
New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has announced the grand opening of the Central-Finger Lakes segment of the New York State Birding Trail to highlight the state’s world-class and wide-ranging birding opportunities.
The Central-Finger Lakes segment includes 54 locations throughout 15 counties, providing a variety of quality birding experiences for New Yorkers and visitors to enjoy. [Read more…] about Central-Finger Lakes Segment of Statewide Birding Trail Opens
Tjerck Claeszen DeWitt immigrated to New Amsterdam (now New York City) from Grootholt in Zunterlant in 1656. Grootholt means Great Wood and Zunterland was probably located on the southern border of East Friesland, a German territory on the North Sea only ten miles from the most northerly province of the Netherlands.
By 1657, Tjerck DeWitt married Barber (Barbara) Andrieszen (also Andriessen) in the New Amsterdam Dutch Church and moved to Beverwyck (now Albany). While in Beverwyck, he purchased a house. At this time Albany contained 342 houses and about 1,000 residents, about 600 of whom were members of the Dutch Church. [Read more…] about Simeon DeWitt: America’s Surveyor General
During Black History Month, it is useful to recall well-known Black Americans and also some not-so-well known. Jermain Loguen (1813-1872) fits a category of those who deserve more recognition and attention.
Born into slavery in Tennessee, he escaped to Canada (where slavery was outlawed) in 1834 and moved to Rochester in 1837 and then to Syracuse in 1841. He became a teacher and then a minister with the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. An eloquent speaker, he used his sermons and public presentations to advocate abolition and resistance to slaveholders and to urge enslaved people to escape. Loguen had an apartment in his Syracuse home for freedom seekers and identified himself as “Underground Railroad Agent.” Loguen assisted more than 1,500 enslaved Black people to freedom, earning the informal title “King of the Underground Railroad” in Syracuse. [Read more…] about Syracuse Hero Jermain Loguen, Abolition & The Jerry Rescue
The Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation has awarded SUNY distinguished professor of history Michael Leroy Oberg, the SUNY Geneseo Center for Local and Municipal History, and a consortium of six other colleges and universities, a three-year grant of more than $300K for American War of Independence Semiquincentennial student fellowships.
Several of the institutions in the fellowship program have committed $150K of matching funds for the project, bringing the total to over $450K. [Read more…] about America’s 250th Student Fellowships Funded In Western NY
The St. Mary’s Band of Glens Falls played a quickstep the evening of October 26th, 1887 as the musicians paraded from Church Street to Glen Street to escort U.S. Senator Frank Hiscock from the Rockwell House hotel to the Glens Falls Opera House, where the freshman senator from Syracuse was to be keynote speaker at a Republican rally. [Read more…] about Gilded Age Syracuse Senator Frank Hiscock: ‘We Will Bury Free Trade’
Green Lakes State Park’s outstanding features are its two glacial lakes, each nearly 200 feet deep. These blue-green lakes are surrounded by old-growth forest of enormous hemlocks and tulip trees. [Read more…] about Watchable Wildlife: Green Lakes State Park in Onondaga County
Thurlow Weed was born on November 15, 1797, the son of Joel and Mary (Elis) Weed, in Cairo, Greene County, NY where his grandfather settled after the Revolutionary War. His father was a farmer who was apparently hard working but never prosperous, occasionally spending time in jail for debt.
In 1799, the family moved to Catskill where young Weed received a small amount of schooling. His first job was pumping a blacksmith’s bellows while the blacksmith formed heated iron. He made six cents per day. At nine, he got a job as a cabin boy on a Hudson River sloop. [Read more…] about Thurlow Weed, Stephen Van Rensselaer III and the Disputed Election of 1824
Recently, volunteers from the bike group CNY D.I.R.T. worked together at Morgan Hill State Forest in southern Onondaga and northern Cortland counties to build an additional 1.3 miles of single-track multiple-use trail. The forest now hosts 10.8 miles of designated multiple-use trail, with another 4+ miles planned in the next few years. [Read more…] about Volunteers Improve Trails at Morgan Hill State Forest
A planned escape? An outing to visit family and friends? Or just for fun?
One spring day in 1937, Louis must have decided it was a time for a change of scenery and maybe the opportunity to get back to city life and family he once lived with.
But to travel off of Onondaga Hill, there are several ways. Unfortunately, all down hill. [Read more…] about Wheelchair Downhill Pioneer Louis’s Twists and Turns
As Rich Miller remembers, it was sometime around 1984 that a colleague at the bank where he worked first mentioned Onondaga’s Split Rock Explosion of July 2, 1918.
This was not the first time that Rich’s interest was piqued by the Split Rock Explosion. He had read former newspaper columnist Dick Case’s columns on that event, but this was the first time someone offered to take Rich up to explore Split Rock.
Over thirty years later, his research has lead him to write a four volume series about Split Rock – before, during and after the explosion that changed the lives of the people who worked there and the communities nearby. [Read more…] about Remembering Onondaga’s Split Rock Explosion