History, Natural History & the Arts
The Champlain Canal turns 200 this year and the Erie Canal will celebrate its 200th anniversary in 2025.
The Champlain Canal between the Hudson River and Lake Champlain at Whitehall was the first to open. Worked started on the Champlain Canal in October, 1816. The first boats operated in November, 1819, and was fully completed in 1823, two years before the Erie Canal was finished. [Read more…] about New York State Canals Bicentennial: Some History & Plans For Celebrations
The 1947 Utica Blue Sox laid the foundation for the team that would go on to become the 1950 National League baseball champion, the Philadelphia Phillies.
A new book, The 1947 Utica Blue Sox: A Season To Remember (self-published, 2022) is a detailed account of the players and personalities that captivated Utica, NY, a slice of life that takes the reader back to a nearly-forgotten time, viewed through a lens of reverence, respect, and a genuine love of the game. [Read more…] about 1947 Utica Blue Sox: A Baseball Season to Remember
Central New York is renowned as one of the snowiest regions in the world. In the past, major snowstorms have crippled cities, towns, and farming country for weeks at a time.
From the Lake Ontario port in Oswego to the busy streets of Syracuse and Utica, every community in the region has found themselves buried from brutal snowstorms. [Read more…] about Historic Snowstorms of Central New York
The New York State Board for Historic Preservation has recommended adding 11 properties to the State and National Registers of Historic Places.
The nominations include a twentieth-century piano player factory in Syracuse, a rare nineteenth-century stone general store in Millville, a historic cemetery in the Town of East Hampton and a historic district in Lansingburgh. [Read more…] about 11 Nominations for State and National Registers of Historic Places
After achieving his railroad dream and completing his Nehasane wilderness refuge – reachable using his own luxury rail car – William Seward Webb found himself in a major conflict with the State of New York.
Inlet historian Charles Herr tells this part of the story expertly, in his history of the Fulton Chain. My map here highlights that land aquisition by the State in yellow, totaling 74,585 acres of Brown’s Tract and in the Totten & Crossfield Purchase. Webb retained ownership of lakes like Twitchell and Big Moose because he intended those for later cottage and hotel sales. [Read more…] about Central Adirondacks Lumbering Operations (1880-1900)
Rev. Robert Everett was a Welsh-American who came to Oneida County, NY in 1823 from Wales. He very quickly became involved in the anti-slavery movement. In 1835, Utica was selected as the site for the first New York State Anti-Slavery Convention.
The meeting was broken up by an angry mob. From Utica Everett was forced to move several times as his church services were often interrupted by people who continued to support slavery. He was physically assaulted while preaching and had his horse injured and home burned down by pro-slavery activists. [Read more…] about Beaten & Burned Out: Welsh Anti-Slavery Hero Robert Everett
The War of 1812 began on June 18, 1812, when President James Madison signed a declaration of war which began: “Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That war be and is hereby declared to exist between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the dependencies thereof, and the United States of America and their territories.”
The causes of the war are quite clear. [Read more…] about The War of 1812 in the Capital District
This essay by John Nicol, PhD, first appeared on July 12, 1878 in The British Journal of Photography.
Utica, intersected by the Erie and Hudson Canal, is really a beautiful place. Free from the geometric regularity of most of the American cities, its tree-lined streets impart to it the truly American sylvan character, while the size and elegance of its suburban residences show that its people are prosperous to a degree unknown in similar cities in the old country.
But their commercial prosperity is not the only, or even principal, quality on which the Uticans pride themselves, as they rank only second to Boston in their opinion of their culture and appreciation of science and art; and, so far as I have been able to judge, with quite as much, if not more, reason. [Read more…] about A Photographer Visits Utica, Saratoga & Albany in 1878
One of the earliest written accounts of Jock’s Lake in the Adirondacks (about twenty-five miles east of Boonville) was given by Jeptha Simms in his 1850 book Trappers of New York: A Biography of Nicholas Stoner & Nathaniel Foster:
“Jock’s Lake, so-called after Jock (Jonathan) Wright, an early trapper upon its shores, is a very pretty lake, five or six miles long, though not very wide; and is situated in the north-eastern or wilderness portion of Herkimer County, some ten miles from a place called Noblesborough. Its outlet is one of the sources of the west branch of West Canada Creek.” [Read more…] about Jock Wright & Dut Barber: Honondaga Lake History
The adventure began with an exchange of letters in the spring of 1877 between a sportsman in Syracuse, NY, and Byron P. Graves of Boonville, a town on the western border of the Adirondacks. The purpose of this correspondence was to hire a guide and transportation for a two-week hunting and fishing trip into the Fulton Chain of Lakes for the man and his 11-year-old son Ned.
The sportsman was Ansel Judd Northrup, a 43-year-old attorney who would later write the book, Camps and Tramps in the Adirondacks (1882), where this story was first told. The final communication from Northrup, in the form of a telegraph, simply read, “Engage Brinckerhoff, will reach Boonville, morning train, July 5th.” [Read more…] about Through The Fulton Chain of Lakes in 1877