New York Almanack

History, Natural History & the Arts

The Suffrage Movement in New York State

These are all the Almanack stories about the suffrage movement in New York State. Under separate tags you can also find more general stories about New York State women's history, related topics such as feminism, or the temperance movement. New York Almanack seeks to present history that’s inclusive of a variety of perspectives – in other words, history that is careful, considered, and complicated - but we can’t do it without your help. Please support this work.

 

Katharine Bement Davis & America’s First Sexual Revolution

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Matters of Sex: Katharine Bement Davis and America's First Sexual RevolutionDecades before Alfred Kinsey released his famous “Reports” on human sexuality, Katharine Bement Davis (1860-1935) conducted a pioneering study of female sexuality.

Published in 1929, Factors in the Sex Life of Twenty-Two Hundred Women was notable not only as the first major study of women’s sexuality and the first such study conducted by a woman, but also as the first published study of “normal” women’s sexuality ― what Davis defined as the study of women who were “not pathological mentally or physically.” [Read more…] about Katharine Bement Davis & America’s First Sexual Revolution

The Equal Suffrage League & Black American Women’s Vote

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Equal Suffrage League of BrooklynThe month’s episode of the A Minute in New York History podcast tells the story of the Equal Suffrage League, an organization founded in Brooklyn by Black American women.

The Equal Suffrage League was a pioneering late-1880s organization founded by Sarah J. Garnet and Dr. Susan Smith McKinney Steward. As a prominent Black suffrage group, it tackled both gender and race discrimination, later affiliating with the National Association of Colored Women, which also took on the evils of Jim Crow and lynching. [Read more…] about The Equal Suffrage League & Black American Women’s Vote

Village Preservation’s Women’s History Resources

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Learn Village Preservation logoNew York City has been home to a remarkable breadth of transformative women, and the scene of innumerable movements for women’s equality and empowerment.

Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation has numerous ways to celebrate and explore women’s history in Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo.  Many of the women in these collections have had statewide and national impacts. [Read more…] about Village Preservation’s Women’s History Resources

The Carnegie Library of Patchogue

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Patchogue Carnegie Library Children's Room, 1950s (Celia M. Hastings Local History Room)The story of the Carnegie Library in Patchogue in Brookhaven on the South Shore of Long Island is a great case study in library history. The village started with an association library in the late 1800s, a subscription-based collection of books that floated between stores and offices and languished for lack of funds.

Then the women’s suffragist organization Sorosis spearheaded the effort to turn the neglected collection into a New York State chartered public library by 1900. [Read more…] about The Carnegie Library of Patchogue

Elizabeth Cady Stanton: A Revolutionary Life

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Elizabeth Cady Stanton: A Revolutionary LifeElizabeth Cady Stanton was a singular leader, thinker, and organizer whose fight for women’s emancipation stretched from the 1840s to her death in 1902, a full fifth of America’s history. Yet her legacy is marked by controversy.

In a new biography, Elizabeth Cady Stanton: A Revolutionary Life (Basic Books, 2026) historian Ellen Carol DuBois paints a fresh portrait of this complex woman whose work helped make contemporary feminism possible. [Read more…] about Elizabeth Cady Stanton: A Revolutionary Life

A Revolutionary New York: 250 Years of Social Change

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Revolutionary New York: 250 Years of Social ChangeLongtime New York Almanack contributor Bruce Dearstyne has edited a collection of essays exploring how New York State understanding of freedom and liberty has evolved, and its relevance in American and world history.

Revolutionary New York: 250 Years of Social Change (SUNY Press Excelsior Editions, 2025) collects essays from several experts focusing on the struggle to fulfill the American Revolution‘s ideals of freedom and equality for all people over the history of New York. The State has often led the nation toward expanding its peoples’ rights. [Read more…] about A Revolutionary New York: 250 Years of Social Change

Mabel Ping-Hua Lee, Thomas Nast & Chinese American History

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Postcard of Mott Street, Chinatown late-19th century, published by Brown BrothersMigration from Asia to the United States was minimal before the 1800s, but facing poverty and political instability large numbers of Chinese residents began looking a better life in the West from the 1840s onward.

Many would escape the Taiping Rebellion, a large-scale civil war that had started in 1850. Lasting for fourteen years, violence and persecution encompassed much of Southern China, pushing citizens away from their traditional homes. [Read more…] about Mabel Ping-Hua Lee, Thomas Nast & Chinese American History

Amelia Bloomer: Journalist, Suffragist, Anti-fashion Icon

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Amelia Bloomer BiographyThose who recognize the name Amelia Bloomer (1818-1894) usually do so because of bloomers, the clothing item named after her.

While she was a rational dress advocate for a time — calling on women to abandon rigid corsets and heavy petticoats and opt for long trousers, shorter skirts, and sensible boots — it was “but an incident” in the larger story of her life and impact.

Bloomer edited and published The Lily, one of the first newspapers for and by women. Founded to promote temperance, it soon broadened to include some of the most important issues to women in that day, including the right to vote, and included contributions from thinkers like Elizabeth Cady Stanton. [Read more…] about Amelia Bloomer: Journalist, Suffragist, Anti-fashion Icon

Trump Seeks Increased Logging of Finger Lakes National Forest

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Finger Lakes National Forest Hector Ranger StationThe Finger Lakes National Forest is New York’s only National Forest.  “Whether to hike, ski, or admire the fall foliage, diverse recreation opportunities draw in visitors year-round,” says the U.S. Forest Service website.

The Trump regime is planning to cut down more of the Finger Lakes National Forest in order to reach a goal of increasing United States timber production by 25%. “All relevant agencies shall eliminate, to the maximum extent permissible by law, all undue delays within their respective permitting processes related to timber production,” Trump’s Executive Order says. [Read more…] about Trump Seeks Increased Logging of Finger Lakes National Forest

Rare Documents Highlight Temperance & Suffrage History

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1853 Womens New York State Temperance Society certificat signed by Susan B Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton (Raab Collection)Two documents which connect Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who helped women organize to secure the right to vote, are being offered for sale.

The newly discovered 1853 documents certify Mr. P.S. Kingsley and Mrs. Angeline Kingsley of Minetto in Oswego County, NY, as members of the first organization founded by Anthony and Stanton, the Women’s New York State Temperance Society, formed in 1852. [Read more…] about Rare Documents Highlight Temperance & Suffrage History

The Legacy of Belva Lockwood

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Belva Lockwood (Library of Congress)In the quiet farmlands of Niagara County, New York, a woman was born who would lay the foundation for some of the greatest achievements in American legal history. Her name was Belva Ann Bennet Lockwood (1830-1917).

While she never achieved the iconic stature of Ruth Bader Ginsburg — no Hollywood films or t-shirts with her face — Lockwood’s legacy is essential today, as we face growing threats to the integrity of our judiciary and the principles of justice she fought for. [Read more…] about The Legacy of Belva Lockwood

Corn Hill: Rochester’s Heartbeat of History, Culture, and Diversity

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The historic Third Ward - Corn Hill - neighborhood of Rochester Plat map, 1875Corn Hill’s name is wrapped in mystery, but its spirit is undeniable. While no one knows for sure how it came to be, three ideas stand out:

One theory suggests that Native Americans cultivated corn on the elevated land above the Genesee River, and as travelers headed north, they saw the “hill of corn” stretching out before them. [Read more…] about Corn Hill: Rochester’s Heartbeat of History, Culture, and Diversity

1848 European Upheavals & The Seneca Falls Convention

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Anonymous, “Revolutionaries Fighting the Military, Breite Strasse, Berlin, March 1848. (Colored lithograph published by Winckelmann Verlag, Berlin)The Revolutions of 1848 set Europe ablaze. The flames erupted in Paris on February 22nd and spread to the German states, the Austrian Empire, the Italian states, Scandinavia and beyond. In their geographical extent alone, these revolts were unique. From a historical perspective, this was the only truly European wide uprising that would – in the longer run – alter the Continent’s political and philosophical landscape.

In spite of the scale and ferocity of the upheaval, its immediate impact on the political status quo was relatively small as most of the short-lived struggles failed in their aims and intentions. In fact, one could argue that the real impression of 1848 was felt more strongly in the United States. [Read more…] about 1848 European Upheavals & The Seneca Falls Convention

Katharine Bement Davis: A Force for Women’s Rights and Social Reform

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Katharine Bement Davis in ca 1915Katharine Bement Davis (1860-1935) was a force for women’s rights and social reform.

As one of the first women in the U.S. to earn a PhD, she became the first superintendent of New York’s Reformatory for Women at Bedford Hills, Westchester County (now the state’s only maximum security women’s prison), and later, the first female Commissioner of Corrections for New York City, where she instituted critical reforms and quelled a major uprising. [Read more…] about Katharine Bement Davis: A Force for Women’s Rights and Social Reform

Sojourner Truth Day Declared in New York State

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Sojourner Truth from an albumen silver print c. 1870Governor Kathy Hochul recently signed legislation S1480-A/A6583-A to establish November 26th as Sojourner Truth Day in the State of New York, named in honor of the legendary abolitionist and women’s rights advocate who was born in Ulster County.

Sojourner Truth was born in the Hudson Valley in 1797 and was enslaved in New York until she escaped in 1826. [Read more…] about Sojourner Truth Day Declared in New York State

Central NY Activist, Utica Suffragist Lucy Carlile Watson

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Lucy Carlile WatsonLucy Carlile Watson (1855-1938) was born in Utica, New York. Lucy was educated at Young Ladies Seminary and Utica Free Academy in Utica, graduating in 1872.

Her father, Dr. William H. Watson, had an active interest in politics, something he handed down to his daughter. She dedicated her adult life to community service and women’s suffrage causes. [Read more…] about Central NY Activist, Utica Suffragist Lucy Carlile Watson

Warren and Washington County Suffragists

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Bessie Taylor of Granville at the Suffragettes Parade in Washington, DC, in 1917 (Washington County Historical Society)When you think of the Women’s Suffrage Movement in Upstate New York, you may conjure images of women in white with purple sashes marching through the streets of Albany or New York City, but rural Warren, and especially Washington County also played a major role in the fight for equal voting rights for women.

The idea of women’s suffrage resonated in agricultural regions where women worked the farm alongside men and shared equally the burdens and rewards. In fact, many of the members of Political Equality Clubs throughout New York’s rural counties were farm wives seeking to have their voices heard. [Read more…] about Warren and Washington County Suffragists

Spiritualism’s Place: Reformers, Seekers, and Séances in Lily Dale

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Spiritualism's Place: Reformers, Seekers, and Séances in Lily DaleLily Dale is a hamlet connected with the Spiritualist Movement in the Town of Pomfret in Chautauqua County, NY. It’s been a home for Spiritualists attempting to make contact with the dead, as well as a gathering place for reformers, a refuge for seekers looking for alternatives to established paths of knowledge, and a target for skeptics since the late 19th century.

Lily Dale was incorporated in 1879 as Cassadaga Lake Free Association, a camp and meeting place for Spiritualists and Freethinkers. The name was changed to The City of Light in 1903 and finally to Lily Dale Assembly in 1906. [Read more…] about Spiritualism’s Place: Reformers, Seekers, and Séances in Lily Dale

Railroads, Food, Economic & Cultural Diversification in the Finger Lakes

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Map of the Finger Lakes National Heritage Area Feasibility Study AreaCanals were the first transportation revolution in New York, but they were eclipsed in a few decades by extensive railroad development. Starting in the 1840s, railroads shipped goods faster than canal barges and provided additional inland routes to the Midwest as it emerged as the breadbasket of the expanding nation. [Read more…] about Railroads, Food, Economic & Cultural Diversification in the Finger Lakes

Susan B Anthony House Conserving Bessie Potter Vonnoh Statue

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Susan B Anthony Museum and HouseThe National Susan B. Anthony Museum & House in Rochester, NY, has been awarded a grant to support the conservation of a plaster statuette of a seated Susan B. Anthony by sculptor Bessie Potter Vonnoh (1872-1955). [Read more…] about Susan B Anthony House Conserving Bessie Potter Vonnoh Statue

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