New York Almanack

History, Natural History & the Arts

Vassar College

Elverhoj: The Arts and Crafts Colony at Milton-on-Hudson

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Elverhoj Summer School 1914 CoverAmong the trio of turn-of-the-century New York State Arts and Crafts communities, Elverhoj is the least-well-known. The recent publication of Elverhoj: The Arts and Crafts Colony at Milton-on-Hudson (Black Dome Press, 2022; distributed by RIT Press), written by William B. Rhoads and Leslie Melvin, resolves the oversight.

Roycroft, in East Aurora (Erie County), and Byrdcliffe, in Woodstock, both began earlier than Elverhoj. Previously, each was the subject of a definitive scholarly text.

Elverhoj was established by Anders Andersen and Johannes Morton on the picturesque west shore of the Hudson River in 1912. Its Danish name loosely translates to “hill of the fairies.” Persisting until the 1930s, well outside of the Arts and Crafts period, it fell victim to the Depression eventually filing for bankruptcy like so many enterprises. [Read more…] about Elverhoj: The Arts and Crafts Colony at Milton-on-Hudson

Albany’s Ira Harris: From Rights Advocate to Lincoln’s Assassination

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Ira HarrisIra Harris was born at Charleston, Montgomery County, NY on May 31st, 1802 to Fredrick Waterman Harris and Lucy Hamilton. When he was six years old, his family moved to Preble, NY where his father became one of the largest landowners in Cortland County.

Harris attended Homer Academy and graduated from Union College in 1824. He studied law for one year in Homer, New York and then moved to Albany where he assisted one of that city’s most highly regarded jurists, Ambrose Spencer. [Read more…] about Albany’s Ira Harris: From Rights Advocate to Lincoln’s Assassination

John Philip Sousa’s Montgomery County Connection

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Painting of Sousa by Capolino courtesy the Music Division, Library of CongressJohn Philip Sousa, “The March King” who composed “The Stars and Stripes Forever”, unsuccessfully courted a woman from the Mohawk Valley and remained a close friend of hers through the years.

Jessie Zoller was born in 1856 in the hamlet of Hallsville in the town of Minden. Minden historian Christine Oarr Eggleston said Jesse was the daughter of egg farmer Abram Zoller and his wife Alma Tuttle Zoller. After the Civil War, Abram Zoller held a high post in the U.S. Treasury and his wife and daughter were living with him in Washington. [Read more…] about John Philip Sousa’s Montgomery County Connection

Women in Science: Gazing at the Stars Through History

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Debra Elmegreen and Professor Maria Mitchell by Suzanne Schnittman2014’s season of college graduations is winding down, but the questions to students persist: “What are you going to do now?” While some grads provide a satisfying answer to this bothersome query, many avoid a direct response.

Frequently, they are heading down a road that is not their first choice. In 1878 a well-known graduate from Vassar Female College in Poughkeepsie, New York, found herself in a similar situation. [Read more…] about Women in Science: Gazing at the Stars Through History

Joan of Arc’s Birthday: Reflections On NY Suffrage History

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Inez MilhollandPosterJanuary 6 is Joan of Arc’s 602nd birthday. Not many historical figures, very few of them women, are celebrated 600 years after their birth. But the French teenager who led her country to victory after a century of war, changed its history, and was captured and killed by her enemies is an exception. Inspired by angels and saints, she has become an inspiration to many others, and New Yorkers are no exception.

When New York suffragist Inez Milholland, for example, led the women’s March for the Vote in Washington, DC in March 1913, clad all in white and astride a white horse, she didn’t overtly claim to be impersonating Joan of Arc. The electrifying figure she presented was called “the Herald” or simply “the Woman on a Horse,” an evocation of women in the West who already had the vote or a nod to the moral purity of American temperance leaders who frequently dressed in white. But everyone knew who she really was.  [Read more…] about Joan of Arc’s Birthday: Reflections On NY Suffrage History