• Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to secondary sidebar

New York Almanack

History, Natural History & the Arts

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • Adirondacks & NNY
  • Capital-Saratoga
  • Mohawk Valley
  • Hudson Valley & Catskills
  • NYC & Long Island
  • Western NY
  • History
  • Nature & Environment
  • Arts & Culture
  • Outdoor Recreation
  • Food & Farms
  • Subscribe
  • Support
  • Submit
  • About
  • New Books
  • Events
  • Podcasts

Troy

Leland Stanford, The Bull’s Head & Albany’s 19th Century Cattle Market

May 11, 2022 by John Warren Leave a Comment

Leland Stanford portrait by Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier, 1881, courtesy Stanford MuseumCalifornia’s 8th Governor and long-time Senator Leland Stanford, namesake of Stanford University and one-time president of the Central Pacific Railroad, has a unique connection to New York State’s Capital District.

Leland was born in Watervliet in 1824, the son of Josiah Stanford and Elizabeth Phillips. Among his seven siblings were New York Senator Charles Stanford (1819-1885) and Australian spiritualist Thomas Welton Stanford (1832-1918). The elder Stanford was a wealthy farmer in the eastern Mohawk Valley before moving to the Lisha Kill in Albany County where Leland was born. [Read more…] about Leland Stanford, The Bull’s Head & Albany’s 19th Century Cattle Market

Filed Under: Capital-Saratoga, History Tagged With: Agricultural History, Albany, Albany County, Colonie, Gambling, Gold Rush of 1849, Horses, Political History, Transportation History, Troy, Vice

The Eddy Family: Capital Region Industrialists

March 25, 2022 by Guest Contributor Leave a Comment

Oliver Tarbell Eddy and Titus Egbert EddyWaterford, NY’s involvement in the Industrial Revolution was more significant than its geographical size would imply. Family-owned and operated business ventures were the norm and usually a first and second-generation operation.

Names that immediately come to the fore such families as brothers Hugh and Canvas White, the Knickerbocker, Kavanaugh, Button, Breslin, and King families all demonstrated the business model of the period; manufacturing firms that employed many hands from Saratoga County and surrounding communities. [Read more…] about The Eddy Family: Capital Region Industrialists

Filed Under: Capital-Saratoga, History Tagged With: Albany County, Cohoes, Industrial History, Iron Industry, Labor History, Publishing, Rensselaer County, Saratoga, Saratoga County, Saratoga County History Center, Saratoga County History Roundtable, Troy, Waterford

Radio Station WGY’s 100th Anniversary of Broadcasting

February 18, 2022 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

WGY Radio Players performing a scene from William Vaughn Moody's The Great Divide in 1923Capital Region radio station WGY, New York State’s oldest broadcaster, will celebrate their 100th year with a live afternoon of broadcasting on Sunday, February 20th.

WGY’s original licensee was General Electric (GE), headquartered in Schenectady. In early 1915, the company was granted a Class 3-Experimental license with the call sign 2XI. That license was canceled in 1917 due to the First World War, but 2XI was re-licensed in 1920. [Read more…] about Radio Station WGY’s 100th Anniversary of Broadcasting

Filed Under: Arts, Capital-Saratoga, Events, History, Mohawk Valley Tagged With: Cultural History, General Electric, Musical History, Radio History, Theatre, Troy, Union College, WGY Radio

1840s Troy: Blacksmith Dan, John Morrissey & Friends

January 6, 2022 by John Warren Leave a Comment

Bart Warren's Blacksmith ShopThroughout the 19th century the blacksmith’s shop was a central part of American life. Even the smallest forge was kept busy mending and making the variety of tools and implements for home and garden, for workshop and industry, and tack and shoes for mules, horses and oxen. Blacksmiths were critical to transportation, manufacturing and home life.  Like today’s auto garage, nearly every substantial crossroads had a blacksmith’s shop.

Better shops included the blacksmith, a fireman, a helper, and sometimes a furrier. In 1850 there were more than 150 blacksmiths in Troy, NY, a city of about 30,000 people, including one woman, Canadian Cyrilla Turcott. About half of these smithies were born in Ireland. More blacksmiths of all skill levels could be found in the city’s wagon, carriage and wheelwright shops, or employed in the city’s booming iron industry. [Read more…] about 1840s Troy: Blacksmith Dan, John Morrissey & Friends

Filed Under: Capital-Saratoga, History Tagged With: boxing, Gambling, John Morrissey, Labor History, Rensselaer County, Sports History, Troy, Vice

Rensselaer County Industrialist Albert Fox: A Short Bio

November 10, 2021 by Peter Finn Leave a Comment

Albert R FoxAlbert Rodmond Fox was born on February 10, 1810, and came of age during a dynamic period in American history, as the new nation found its footing. Fifty years after the Declaration of Independence there was a new generation of leaders. It was a time of internal improvements (infrastructure) – new roads, canals, railroads and, eventually, the telegraph – and the industrial revolution. Fortunes were made.

It was also a time of social reform: circuit-riding preachers; new schools and churches; missionaries of all sorts; temperance and abolition advocates. Albert Fox of Sand Lake, Rensselaer County, was in the middle of it all. [Read more…] about Rensselaer County Industrialist Albert Fox: A Short Bio

Filed Under: Capital-Saratoga, History Tagged With: Abolition, Agricultural History, Architecture, Charles Nalle, Colgate University, Durhamville, Erie Canal, Industrial History, railroads, Religious History, Rensselaer County, RPI, Sand Lake, Sand Lake Historical Society, Troy, Troy and New England Railway

Taffy Dumbleton: Troy’s ‘Terror of the Town’

October 10, 2021 by John Warren Leave a Comment

19th century riot illustration detailYou could see Charles F. Dumbleton coming for blocks. Although he wasn’t exactly well-dressed, he held his head high and had a swagger that said “I’m coming to YOU.” This despite his uncertain gait, a limp supported by his ever present crutches, which confirmed from a distance it was Taffy – the name given to one of the most notorious men in the city of Troy in the mid-nineteenth century.

He wasn’t always notorious. He had built that reputation over years of street fights, petty thievery and bullying his betters. He was a frequenter of bawdy houses, a bartender, a saloon operator, a gambler and political operative. He was one of the leaders of a band of men. Newspapers and night watchmen called them a gang – “a terror of the town,” but loyal friends on the make is a more accurate description. [Read more…] about Taffy Dumbleton: Troy’s ‘Terror of the Town’

Filed Under: Capital-Saratoga, History Tagged With: clinton correctional facility, Crime and Justice, Gambling, John Morrissey, Political History, Rensselaer County, Troy, Vice

‘Wild, Picturesque and Beautiful’: Mount Ida, Poestenkill Falls and Troy’s Prospect Park

October 2, 2021 by John Warren 1 Comment

Henri Gaugain, Amerique Septentrionale - Etat de New-York No 15, pl 3 Falls of mount Ida, above the town of TroyIt’s likely that the early farmers, millers, colliers, lumberers and teamsters helped spread the word of the springs and waterfalls on the Poesten Kill, but it was the early artists and travelers whose record remains.  One of the first depictions of the beauties of the Poesten Kill High Falls was an engraving made in Paris in 1817.  As the 19th century wore on, changing attitudes about nature combined with regional guides and maps led to increase in American travel for travels sake. [Read more…] about ‘Wild, Picturesque and Beautiful’: Mount Ida, Poestenkill Falls and Troy’s Prospect Park

Filed Under: Arts, Capital-Saratoga, History, Nature, Recreation Tagged With: Art History, Geology, Poestenkill, Tourism, Troy

The Poestenkill: Mountains, Waterfalls and Waterworks

September 26, 2021 by John Warren 7 Comments

Mills at Lower Poestenkill GorgeOn the Hudson River along upstate New York’s eastern border, within the natural boundaries of river and mountains, lies the rough rectangle of Rensselaer County. It is bisected by the Poesten Kill,* a powerful stream that scours its way from the mountains to the sea level flats of the Hudson River at Troy.

The Poesten Kill splits the county across the middle into two pieces of roughly equal size, north and south. From its source at about 1,600 feet in the Petersburg Mountains, to the village which bears its name, it’s a smaller steam tumbling over forested rocks and ledges, and forming pools and small waterfalls.  At the village of Poestenkill it begins to meander across a 10-mile wide plateau of farmlands before falling abruptly through a series of steep gorges at Troy to settle into the Hudson. [Read more…] about The Poestenkill: Mountains, Waterfalls and Waterworks

Filed Under: Capital-Saratoga, History Tagged With: Brunswick, Cultural History, Eagle Mills, Environmental History, Grafton, Hudson River, Industrial History, paddling, Poestenkill, Quacken Kill, Rensselaer County, Rensselaerswijck, Social History, Troy, Urban History, Wynantskill

Jermain Family Philanthropy Helped Shape The Capital District

September 20, 2021 by Peter Hess 1 Comment

John Jordan-JermainJohn Jordan left Edinburgh, Scotland in 1755 arriving in White Plains, colony of New York, the same year. Edinburgh had been the family home since Jordan’s father and grandfather fled France for Scotland following the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre of French Huguenots in the late 1600s. John struck out on his own and decided to immigrate to America.

John married Mary Ann Daniels, a young woman of Dutch descent, and in 1758 they had a son, John Jordan, Jr. With the outbreak of the American Revolution in 1775, John Jordan, Sr. and his wife left New York and helped found the loyalist colony of St. John, New Brunswick, just across the Maine border. Their 19-year-old son, John Jr., stayed behind. [Read more…] about Jermain Family Philanthropy Helped Shape The Capital District

Filed Under: Capital-Saratoga, History Tagged With: Albany, Albany and Northern Railroad, Albany Rural Cemetery, Cooperstown, Genealogy, Menands, railroads, Rutland & Washington Railroad, Social History, Troy, Troy & Rutland Railroad, Van Rensselaers, Watervliet, womens history

The Palatines Along Hoosick Road in Rensselaer County

August 27, 2021 by John Warren 4 Comments

account and depiction of the Palatine refugees’ sufferings in Germany from The State of the Palatines for fifty years past to this present time (London, 1710) courtesy the British LibraryDuring the turmoil of the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714), many Protestant Germans from the Middle Rhine region of the Holy Roman Empire fled to England, with the largest group of refugees – some 13,000 – arriving there in 1709.

The arrival of these “Poor Palatines” caused a rise in opposition to immigration in England. Most were quickly sent to Ireland, but nearly 3,000 were sent on 10 ships to the colonial Province of New York (a group about a third the size of the population of the city of New York at that time). [Read more…] about The Palatines Along Hoosick Road in Rensselaer County

Filed Under: Capital-Saratoga, Hudson Valley - Catskills, Mohawk Valley Tagged With: Brunswick, Fort Massachusetts, French And Indian War, French History, German-American History, Hoosac River, Immigration, King George’s War, Livingston Manor, North Adams, Palatines, Pittstown, Queen Ann, Queen Anne's War, Rensselaer County, Rensselaerswijck, Schagticoke, Troy

  • Go to page 1
  • Go to page 2
  • Go to page 3
  • Interim pages omitted …
  • Go to page 13
  • Go to Next Page »

Primary Sidebar

Help Support Our Work

Subscribe to New York Almanack

Subscribe! Follow the New York Almanack each day via E-mail, RSS, Twitter or Facebook updates.

Recent Comments

  • Gordon Mason on NYS Historic Barn Tax Credit Program Informational Session
  • David G Waite on Ellis Corners: Before Saratoga Spa State Park & SPAC
  • Eric braverman on Wall Street History: The Politics of New York’s First Banks
  • N. Couture on Haudenosaunee Creation Story & Sculptures with Emily Kasennisaks Stacey
  • Lee on The Mysterious Death of the Angel of Sing Sing
  • Elisa Nelson on Replica Canal Schooner Lois McClure Being Retired, Dismantled
  • Julie O’Connor on James Eights: An Albany Artist-Scientist Who Explored Antarctica in 1830
  • Bob Meyer on Geo-Musicalities: Jessika Kenney & Eyvind Kang in Saranac Lake
  • John Tepper Marlin on John and Vida: The Other Milhollands
  • Brandon Braman on The Two Hendricks: A Mohawk Indian Mystery

Recent New York Books

Spaces of Enslavement and Resistance in Dutch New York
ilion cover
Spare Parts
new yorks war of 1812
a prison in the woods cover
Visitors to My Street
Greek Fire
Building THe Ashokan Reservoir
ilion book cover
Bryan Jackson the Titanic Was Dooomed

Secondary Sidebar

preservation league
Protect the Adirondacks Hiking Guide