History, Natural History & the Arts
In the days of our great grandfathers the occasional ancient coach and the heavy lumber wagon in which the freight transportation of the country was carried on were almost the only vehicles that rolled along the roads. The people did not own private carriages themselves.
When they traveled they took to the coach or rode on horseback, the latter being the more customary plan. [Read more…] about The American Coach & Carriage Industry in 1878
About 1768, New York’s first paper mill was established, but throughout the 1700s New Yorkers suffered from a lack of paper, no more so than during the American Revolution. The industry grew from the need for paper and owes its early history to the rise of printing in America. [Read more…] about Small & Scarce: Early New York Paper Making History
Major League Baseball’s annual all-star game (taking place Tuesday in Philly) invariably fosters debates. Who’s the more worthy first-baseman, Vladimer Guerrero Jr. or Ben Rice? Should Aaron Judge be on the roster if he hasn’t played in over a month? Why is Cody Bellinger starting in the outfield over Randy Arozarena?
Baseball fans love arguing these sort of questions every year as the midsummer classic approaches. They lead naturally to questions about who was the greatest of all time. Babe Ruth? Ted Williams? Barry Bonds?
I don’t have the answers, but I would like to recognize a class of players who are often overlooked in these debates: the nineteenth-century greats. [Read more…] about A New York State 19-Century Baseball All-Star Team
Due to shrinking congregations and finances, many abandoned church buildings in New York’s Hudson Valley have been reused for other purposes. Some are now apartments or condominiums, fraternity houses, museums, historical societies, businesses and vibrant art venues and community centers. [Read more…] about Old Hudson Valley Churches Now Community Venues
During the summer of 1869, four men would occasionally meet at Dutcher’s Boarding House in Troy, New York. All were experienced railroad men; Charles Conklin was a baggage man with the New York Central Railroad, while brothers George and William Harrison were railroad hands. The fourth man, William Allen, who had a room at the boarding house, had once been a railroad brakeman.
During one of these gatherings, the conversation turned to robbery, and more specifically, the idea of stealing the gold and silver often carried in the American Express car on Conklin’s express train. [Read more…] about An 1869 New York Central Express Train Heist
Barnum & Bailey’s Greatest Show on Earth opened their 1882 season March 11th with a torchlight parade to Madison Square Garden. Every foot of their route through the city was shoulder to shoulder with spectators. Those who braved the cool evening were rewarded with a two-and-a-half-hour circus parade.
Their next stop, Philadelphia on April 24th, was just the beginning of a busy season that would take the circus across 129 cities in New England, New York, and down the eastern seaboard. Also that spring, Barnum and Bailey purchased Jumbo, a 21-year-old African Savanna Elephant from the London Zoo. He soon joined the other elephants on the tour and was quickly given top billing. [Read more…] about Troy’s Great Elephant Rampage
The National WW II Museum in New Orleans is home to about 250,000 artifacts, including more than 100,000 photographs ranging from battlefield pictures captured by military and press photographers to individual albums full of wartime snapshots donated by veterans and their families. [Read more…] about Mechanicville’s WWII & Korean War Veterans Photo Collection
The emergence of the bottling industry in New York State occurred due to the rise of the leisure economy and the fashion for the kind of mineral waters available at natural spas.
Prior to the availability of chlorinated water, inhabitants of many highly populated areas of the world avoided unmixed water from most sources for fear of contamination. [Read more…] about The Water Cure, Bottled Water & New York’s Local Bottling Industry
The New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation (State Parks) have announced recommendations by the New York State Board for Historic Preservation to add 25 properties and districts to the State and National Registers of Historic Places.
The nominations include an intact 1905 metal casting foundry complex in Hudson, an 1873 house that reflects Syracuse’s layered history of immigration, urban renewal, and grassroots historic preservation, a cohesive group of Colonial Revival apartment buildings in Kenmore built during the 1920s and 1930s suburban housing boom, and an amendment to the 1971 nomination for Revolutionary-era Senate House in Kingston to include its 1920s commemorative museum annex. [Read more…] about 25 Properties Recommended to State, National Registers
Wesley Bintz was a Civil Engineer who received his training at the University of Michigan, earning a BCE in 1916 and MS in 1918. He moved on to municipal work in Flint, Michigan with two pools made of reinforced concrete, and funded by municipal bonds, which he designed as their City Engineer and completed in 1920.
Bintz subsequently accepted an Engineering position with the City of Lansing, Michigan whose citizens also desired an ovoid swimming pool, and saw their aspiration fulfilled with another a Bintz designed 80 x 120 foot pool constructed during 1922-23. Other communities saw the need for such facilities, which caused Bintz to patent his design, and specialize in his own swimming pool enterprise. Many Blintz pools were built in New York State. [Read more…] about New York Historic Pools Designed by Wesley Bintz
Today the state of Minnesota is engaged in the first General Strike in nearly 80 years. There have been thousands of strikes in American history, but only about a dozen General Strikes. One of the first strikes took place in the city of New York in 1677. Afterward a dozen cart-men (one-horse cart operators) were criminally prosecuted “for not obeying the Command and Doing their Dutyes as becomes them in their Places” and fined.
About 80 strikes in the U.S. have involved over 100,000 workers. Here are 13 strikes every New Yorker should know about: [Read more…] about Strike! 13 Strikes Every New Yorker Should Know About
What follows is a report made by the directors of the Northern Inland Lock Navigation Company of the country between the Hudson River and Lake Champlain. The expedition during which this survey was conducted was led by Philip Schuyler in September 1792 to establish a route for the Champlain Canal.
By the act of incorporation, the navigation of Hudson River, from the mouth of the creek on which the grist mill occupied by Colonel Rensselaer [Nicholas Van Rensselaer, 1754-1848, or Colonel Kiliaen van Rensselaer, 1717–1781] is erected in the town of Troy [possibly the Poesten Kill or Wynants Kill] to opposite the house of Mr. Tibbets [George Tibbits, 1763–1849] in Lansingburg is to be rendered navigable for boats drawing four feet water when loaded. [Read more…] about Surveying The Champlain Canal Route, 1792
On January 5th, 1789, a group of colonial settlers living along the east side of the Hudson River north of Albany in an area known as Vanderhyden gathered at a local tavern. Their purpose? To select a new name for their old Dutch community – Troy.
From the Mohican lands were Troy grew, the Hudson River and Atlantic seaboard, the Hoosac River, Lake Champlain, the St. Lawrence River, the Mohawk River, the Great Lakes, and were all within reach – even in prehistoric times. [Read more…] about Vanderhyden & Troy: A Dutch Community Becomes English
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
On a cold December night in 1906, when the Champlain Canal still bisected the village of Mechanicville, in Saratoga County, NY, a 61-year-old woman living alone in a second-floor apartment on Canal Street heard a cry for help.
Going out onto her porch overhanging the not-yet-frozen waterway, she saw a man floundering in the stagnant water. She leaped over the railing into the canal below and swam to the man’s side. Her cries for help, along with his, did bring help and the man’s life was saved. [Read more…] about Annie Scott Sokalski: The Legendary ‘Mrs. Cats’
In New York private social clubs for men were modeled after the clubs in London, which date back to the late 1600s and early 1700s. Men could dine, read the papers, take part in entertainments such as card games or bowling, and build social networks.
There were strict membership rules and most private clubs were only open to elite white Christian men. Some allowed limited dining access to member-accompanied white Christian wives or widows. [Read more…] about Upstate New York Gentleman’s Clubs: Some History
The navigable portion of Hudson River provides a unique ecosystem with highly diverse habitats, despite being dramatically impacted by 200 years of dredging, retaining walls, and industrial development.
More than 85% of the river’s islands have been eliminated and most of the river’s side channels have been filled in. About half of the river shoreline between Troy and the Mario Cuomo Bridge (formally Tappan Zee) has been engineered. [Read more…] about The Ecological Impacts of 200 Years of Hudson River Dredging
The latest episode of A Moment in New York History podcast follows the trail of the Marquis de Lafayette.
He was the orphaned member of one of France’s oldest and wealthiest families who became a trusted confidant and military leader for George Washington during the American Revolution. [Read more…] about Tracking Lafayette: America’s Favorite Fighting Frenchman
Troy, New York became a stove manufacturing hub in the 19th century due to its location at the confluence of the Hudson River and Champlain and Erie Canals, and therefore also its easy access to raw materials. A dominant force in the cast-iron stove industry from the 1830s to the 1870s, it was one of the wealthiest cities in the U.S. at the time. The following was published in Scientific American on March 9, 1872.
There are in Troy fifteen stove foundries, whose annual consumption of pig iron is about 20,000 tuns, and of coal, 10,000 tuns.
They make 150,000 stoves a year, and give employment to over 1,000 moulders, about 250 mounters and fitters, 300 laborers in different departments of the business, and about 200 skilled pattern makers. [Read more…] about Cast Iron Stove Makers in Troy in 1872
Cattle drives have had an enormous impact on popular culture. The cowboy is a uniquely American icon that came to be widely admired and imitated in sensational newspaper reports, cheaply produced books and later in motion pictures and television shows.
Driving cattle across great distances was not something found only in the western states however, up until the mid-1850s New Yorkers organized cattle drives too. [Read more…] about Cattle Drives in New York State: Some History
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