The latest episode of the Crossroads of Rockland History turns attention to the complex story of Margaret “Peggy” Shippen Arnold (1760–1804), the second wife of America’s most notorious traitor, Benedict Arnold. [Read more…] about Peggy Shippen Arnold: Wife of the Famous Traitor
New York State Women's History
These are all the Almanack stories about New York State women's history. Under separate tags you can also find stories about related topics such as the suffrage movement, 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.
Manhattan’s St. Vincent’s Hospital: A Deeper Dive
A Monument of Charity: St. Vincent’s Hospital and Catholic Health Care in New York City (NYU Press, 2026) by Thomas F. Rzeznik provides the first comprehensive history of this remarkable institution, from its humble beginnings to its abrupt closure. What follows is a Q & A with the author: [Read more…] about Manhattan’s St. Vincent’s Hospital: A Deeper Dive
New Eyes on Alice Austen: Queering the Museum
Staten Island photographer Elizabeth Alice Austen (1866–1952) is best known for her street photography and intimate depictions of women’s lives and relationships in the Victorian era.
“New Eyes on Alice Austen,” a groundbreaking permanent exhibition at the Alice Austen House Museum finally puts her into an appropriate LGBTQ+ history context with respect denied her during her lifetime. [Read more…] about New Eyes on Alice Austen: Queering the Museum
Marlene Dietrich: Park Avenue’s Goddess of Smoke
Born in Berlin-Schöneberg in December 1901, Marie Magdalena (Marlene) Dietrich made an early career in her home city before achieving international stardom. Mentored by the legendary Max Reinhardt at his Deutsche Theaterschule (German drama school), she then joined his stage company.
Throughout the 1920s, she performed in Berlin and Vienna, including roles in Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew and Bernard Shaw’s Back to Methuselah. [Read more…] about Marlene Dietrich: Park Avenue’s Goddess of Smoke
Lesbian History: Eve Adams, Monocles, Tearooms & Deportations
Launched in July 1900, the transatlantic liner S.S. Vaderland (Flemish for fatherland) sailed the route between Antwerp and Hoboken on behalf of the Red Star Line. Catering for 340 first-class, 200 second-class, and over 600 third-class (formerly steerage) passengers, the liner was one of “mid tier” elegance rather than opulence and designed to compete with its rivals of the Cunard and White Star lines. She played a key role in the early history of mass emigration from Europe to the United States.
On May 25, 1912, the liner left Antwerp, arriving at Ellis Island for immigrant inspection on June 4th. On board was a talented twenty-year-old Polish woman keen to break free from traditional Jewish domestic constraints and find intellectual and sexual freedom in Manhattan. [Read more…] about Lesbian History: Eve Adams, Monocles, Tearooms & Deportations
Women’s Role in Canned Food Consumption
New York State was the birthplace of the American canning industry and grew to become one of the nation’s most prolific food processing hubs by the late 19th century. The state’s history is marked by early technological developments, massive growth during wartime, and the rise of major corporate processors.
Initially, canned foods were not widely accepted, however. The overarching factor that drove the prevalence and public acceptance of canned food was the symbiotic relationship between the evolving canning industry and the changing role of women, in particular their need or desire to work in the public sphere. [Read more…] about Women’s Role in Canned Food Consumption
Erie Canalway Launches “Revolutionary Experiences” Tours
As America marks its 250th anniversary, the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor is launching Revolutionary Experiences, road trips along New York’s historic waterways.
These self-guided itineraries invite participants to explore the people, places, and ideas that helped shape the nation. [Read more…] about Erie Canalway Launches “Revolutionary Experiences” Tours
Hidden Histories of Jazz Age New York
Hidden Histories of Jazz Age New York: From the Suppressed to the Strange (SUNY Press Excelsior Editions, 2026) by Jonathan Ezra Goldman offers a fresh look at 1920s New York City, unearthing stories of everyday life and marginalized communities.
In sections that intertwine entertainment, politics, art, technology, crime, shopping, eating, and recreation, the book portrays sweeping events such as the Harlem Renaissance, Prohibition, and immigration through anecdotes of individual experiences that counter the era’s popular conceptions of ballooning wealth and uproarious celebration. [Read more…] about Hidden Histories of Jazz Age New York
Women & The Hidden History of Delftware
Delftware is a renowned type of tin-glazed earthenware, predominantly featuring white pottery with blue cobalt designs, originating in The Netherlands during the 17th century to mimic Chinese porcelain.
When over seventy-five pieces of 17th and 18th century Delftware were rediscovered in an historic Manhattan townhouse, decorative art advisor and writer Genevieve Wheeler Brown recognized the pieces could tell an amazing story. [Read more…] about Women & The Hidden History of Delftware
The Equal Suffrage League & Black American Women’s Vote
The 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
The Revolutionary War’s Home Front
For thousands of civilians living in cities during the American War for Independence, the home front experience included quartering British officers and interacting with soldiers.
Wartime quartering and occupation reshaped daily life, upended household hierarchies, and revealed a side of the Revolution that battlefields alone can never show us. [Read more…] about The Revolutionary War’s Home Front
Two Kettles Together: Sarah Martin Tyonajanegen
Tyonajanegan, who Europeans called Sarah Martin Tyonajanegen or Two Kettles Together, was a mother of four who took up arms alongside her husband as their Oneida Nation chose to support the colonists in the American Revolution.
Almost nothing is known about her early life, although at least one family historian reports that she was “taken prisoner with her sister Katy from the Shawanoes, & remained with the Mohawks.”
However, she and her husband and his family had significant roles in early New York history. [Read more…] about Two Kettles Together: Sarah Martin Tyonajanegen
The Grove: Abolitionist Congregations in Rye, NY
Spring sun warmed the air early Saturday morning, May 12, 1855, when the famous abolitionist and orator Frederick Douglass and his associates started their ten-minute walk from the New Haven Railroad Station in Mamaroneck to their destination in Rye Neck, an inconspicuous corner of Rye, in Westchester County, New York.
Leading the group was the Reverend Levin Tilmon, president of the First Colored American Congregational Grove Company of Rye Neck, the formal dedication of the “Meeting Grove” being the reason for Douglass’ visit. [Read more…] about The Grove: Abolitionist Congregations in Rye, NY
Village Preservation’s Women’s History Resources
New 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
Anne Vanderbilt: Three Husbands, Four Children, and One Sutton Place
On July 22, 1920, with his wife, daughter, and two sons at his bedside, railroad tycoon and financier William Kissam “Willie” Vanderbilt I, grandson of the legendary Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, died in Paris at the age of 70. His widow soon set out to make a new life for herself. For the third time.
Anne Harriman Sands Rutherfurd Vanderbilt (1861 – 1940) had a knack for choosing husbands and an independent, public-minded spirit – in the words of author Alfred Allan Lewis, “a dutiful Victorian daughter, who, through successive widowhoods, married better and better.” But a simple gold digger she was not. [Read more…] about Anne Vanderbilt: Three Husbands, Four Children, and One Sutton Place
The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire & The Little Falls Textile Strike
National tragedies have historically been the catalysts for massive shifts in matters such as culture and law. One such tragedy in the twentieth century was the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of 1911.
An example of the gross negligence from factory owners so prominent in the industrial field and disregard for anything but profit, the Triangle Fire’s impact was so immense that it would ultimately serve as one of the primary catalysts that resulted in a massive labor strike in New York’s Mohawk Valley over a year later. [Read more…] about The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire & The Little Falls Textile Strike
Elizabeth Cady Stanton: A Revolutionary Life
Elizabeth 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
Long Island Women During the Revolutionary Era
Women are almost invisible in most accounts of the American Revolution on Long Island, although they experienced more than seven years of British occupation, skirmishes, and calculated humiliations.
Before the outbreak of the war, it was women who made the boycotts against British goods effective by weaving homespun and devising substitutes for tea. [Read more…] about Long Island Women During the Revolutionary Era
Zoe Anderson Norris: A Queen of Bohemia
Zoe Anderson Norris (1860–1914) was a woman ahead of her time. A Kentucky-born belle turned fearless Manhattan journalist, she used her pen as a weapon in the fight for justice.
From exposing slumlords and corrupt politicians to advocating for impoverished immigrants, she captured the injustices of her era with a wit and tenacity that still resonate today. [Read more…] about Zoe Anderson Norris: A Queen of Bohemia
The Home Front: Domestic Disorder in British Occupied America
Prior to the American Revolution, the urban centers of colonial North America had little direct experience of war. With the outbreak of violence, British forces occupied every major city, invading the most private of spaces: the home.
By closely considering the dynamics of the household — how people moved within it, thought about it, and wielded power over it — The Home Front: Revolutionary Households, Military Occupation, and the Making of American Independence (Omohundro Institute and University of North Carolina Press, 2025) by Lauren Duval reveals the ways in which occupation fundamentally upended the structures of colonial society and created opportunities for unprecedented economic and social mobility. [Read more…] about The Home Front: Domestic Disorder in British Occupied America