New York Almanack

History, Natural History & the Arts

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.

The Black History Matters Video Series for 2026

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Detail from "Proclamation of the Abolition of Slavery in the French Colonies, 27 April 1848," 1849, by François Auguste Biard (Palace of Versailles)The National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum, located in Peterboro, in Madison County, NY, has announced their 2026 Black History Matters video series, which this year focuses on Abolition.

Beginning February 1st, ten videos will address the Abolition movement in the United States and globally, including the role of women, the development of the Underground Railroad, the role of religion in Abolition, and the afterlives of slavery that exist today. [Read more…] about The Black History Matters Video Series for 2026

The Creation of the Postal Service & American Political Culture

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How the Post Office Created America: A HistoryThe founders established the post office before they had even signed the Declaration of Independence, and for a very long time, it was the U.S. government’s largest and most important endeavor — indeed, it was the government for most citizens.

This was no conventional mail network but the central nervous system of the new body politic, designed to bind thirteen quarrelsome colonies into the United States by delivering news about public affairs to every citizen — a radical idea that appalled Europe’s great powers. [Read more…] about The Creation of the Postal Service & American Political Culture

The Battle for Ulysses in Paris & New York

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James Joyce, Ulysses, published by Shakespeare & Co., 1922 (first edition)An outspoken critic of the National Socialist (Nazi) Party, Jewish photojournalist Gisèle [Gisela] Freund fled her native Germany in 1933 with Adolf Hitler’s rise to power. Having settled in Paris, she obtained her PhD at the Sorbonne in 1936 and would become the most talented chronicler of the vibrant and multi-national bohemian community of artists and writers that made its home in Paris during the 1930s.

By 1939, Freund had photographed many of the greatest writers and artists of the twentieth century, amongst them Henri Matisse, Samuel Beckett, T. S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Jean Cocteau, André Breton, Colette, André Malraux, Paul Valéry, Tennessee Williams, Peggy Guggenheim, Simone de Beauvoir, and Jean-Paul Sartre. [Read more…] about The Battle for Ulysses in Paris & New York

Mary Jemison: ‘The White Woman of the Genesee’

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Statue of Mary Jemison, by HK Bush-Brown, in Letchworth State Park in Castile, NYConsider the story of Mary Jemison. She was born in 1743 aboard a ship as her Scots-Irish family journeyed from Dublin, Ireland, to Pennsylvania. They settled on the frontier just north of Gettysburg. She and her five siblings enjoyed a happy childhood on the “little paradise” of the family farm.

One April morning, when Mary was fifteen, a party of six Shawnee and four French warriors attacked their isolated home. Her two older brothers escaped, but the raiders captured the rest of the family. They forced the prisoners to march westward. After two days, Mary was given a pair of moccasins to replace her shoes. [Read more…] about Mary Jemison: ‘The White Woman of the Genesee’

The Little Falls Textile Strike: New Scholarship Brings A New Book

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Women, Immigrants, and the Working-Class Battle in Little Falls, New York: The Textile Strike of 1912-1913J.N. Cheney, an independent historian focusing on the labor movement, radical politics, and community action where he lives in the Mohawk Valley has published Women, Immigrants, and the Working-Class Battle in Little Falls, New York: The Textile Strike of 1912-1913 (Algora Publishing, 2025).

This is the first non-fiction book to provide a comprehensive recounting and analysis of the largely forgotten Little Falls Textile Strike, one of the most important events in New York State’s labor history and one with national significance. [Read more…] about The Little Falls Textile Strike: New Scholarship Brings A New Book

Strike! 13 Strikes Every New Yorker Should Know About

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Strike Picket SignsToday 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

Swimming the Length of Lake George: Many Have Tried Since 1927

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Diane Struble entering the waters of Lake George in Ticonderoga for her lake-long swim“Marathon swimming is dominated by females,” says Scott Cotten, a fourth-generation member of a YMCA and Silver Bay family who tried unsuccessfully to swim the length of Lake George in 2024.

Bridget Simpson, Charlotte Brynn, Caroline Block and Karyn Scherer are among those who have swum the length of the lake in recent years. Dr. Colby Jones Brown joined their ranks over Labor Day weekend in 2025. [Read more…] about Swimming the Length of Lake George: Many Have Tried Since 1927

New LGBTQ Oral History: Assemblymember Deborah Glick

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Deborah Glick (courtesy Village Preservation)As Lower Manhattan’s elected representative for 35 years, Deborah Glick has been a leading advocate for civil rights, reproductive freedom, animals and environmental preservation, the arts, and tenants’ rights.

Glick was the first openly LGBTQ+ member of the State Legislature when elected in 1990 and a leader in the fight for marriage equality. [Read more…] about New LGBTQ Oral History: Assemblymember Deborah Glick

That ‘Other’ Massacre: Blood and Chocolate at Half-Way Brook

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Still from the 1992 movie Last of the Mohicans showing the surrender of Fort William HenryThe dramatic massacre at Fort William Henry on August 10, 1757 has been told in 18th century newspaper accounts, witness diaries, by historians, movie makers, and of course the famed novelist James Fenimore Cooper.

Another attack at Half-Way Brook a year later has been overshadowed by the carnage at Lake George. The events of July 28, 1758 were every bit as horrendous, bloody and gut-wrenching. That story has been largely overlooked. [Read more…] about That ‘Other’ Massacre: Blood and Chocolate at Half-Way Brook

A Revolutionary New York: 250 Years of Social Change

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Revolutionary New York: 250 Years of Social ChangeLongtime New York Almanack contributor Bruce Dearstyne has edited a collection of essays exploring how New York State understanding of freedom and liberty has evolved, and its relevance in American and world history.

Revolutionary New York: 250 Years of Social Change (SUNY Press Excelsior Editions, 2025) collects essays from several experts focusing on the struggle to fulfill the American Revolution‘s ideals of freedom and equality for all people over the history of New York. The State has often led the nation toward expanding its peoples’ rights. [Read more…] about A Revolutionary New York: 250 Years of Social Change

Annie Scott Sokalski: The Legendary ‘Mrs. Cats’

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The Champlain Canal at Mechanicville, NYOn 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’

New York City Monuments of Black Americans: A History and Guide

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New York City Monuments of Black Americans“New York City got its first monument of a real Black American in 1946 when the Hall of Fame for Great Americans in the Bronx dedicated a bronze bust to Booker T. Washington,” David Felsen writes in the introduction to New York City Monuments of Black Americans: A History and Guide (History Press, 2025). “Behind every first is a story of triumph over adversity and exclusion.”

A 2021 study of the nation’s monuments found that 50% of the top 50 most memorialized people enslaved other people and that only 10% of the top 50 most memorialized people are Black/Indigenous. Just six percent of the Top 50 nationwide are women. It wasn’t until 2007, that the city dedicated its first monument to a Black woman, Harriet Tubman. [Read more…] about New York City Monuments of Black Americans: A History and Guide

An Experimental Museum: Dreier & Duchamp in Manhattan

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Anne Goldthwaite's "Portrait of Katherine S. Dreier," 1915/6 (Yale University Art Gallery)Despite actively participating in art history, female artists tended to act in the shadow of their male contemporaries.

For well into the twentieth century, they were excluded from art schools, galleries and museums. Therefore, few platforms for the exhibition of their work were available. [Read more…] about An Experimental Museum: Dreier & Duchamp in Manhattan

Albany’s Ira Harris: A Women’s Rights Champion

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Ira HarrisAlbany’s Ira Harris (1802-1875) – judge, Senator, law school founder, confidant of Abraham Lincoln – was also an inspired father, who helped change New York’s future for married women in the mid-19th Century.

Harris graduated with first honors from Union College in Schenectady and in 1827 was admitted to the bar. Harris was elected to the state Assembly and eventually became a supreme court justice in 1847. [Read more…] about Albany’s Ira Harris: A Women’s Rights Champion

Winifred Goldring: America’s Female First State Paleontologist

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Winifred Goldring on an early motorcycle (New York State Museum Paleontology Collection)The latest episode of the A New York Minute in History podcast digs into the life and career of Winifred Goldring (1888-1971), an incredibly prolific scientist who overcame prejudice to become the first female New York State Paleontologist at the New State Museum.

Goldring was born in Kenwood, now part of Albany, NY, and she would eventually go on to become the fifth State Paleontologist of New York and the first female State Paleontologist anywhere in the country. She was also a highly successful educator and innovative exhibit designer and would spend 40 years as a scientist at the State Museum. [Read more…] about Winifred Goldring: America’s Female First State Paleontologist

Mabel Ping-Hua Lee, Thomas Nast & Chinese American History

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Postcard of Mott Street, Chinatown late-19th century, published by Brown BrothersMigration from Asia to the United States was minimal before the 1800s, but facing poverty and political instability large numbers of Chinese residents began looking a better life in the West from the 1840s onward.

Many would escape the Taiping Rebellion, a large-scale civil war that had started in 1850. Lasting for fourteen years, violence and persecution encompassed much of Southern China, pushing citizens away from their traditional homes. [Read more…] about Mabel Ping-Hua Lee, Thomas Nast & Chinese American History

Angelica Schuyler Church: A Woman at the Center of Revolution

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Angelica Schuyler Church bookAngelica: For Love and Country in a Time of Revolution (W. W. Norton & Company, 2025) by Molly Beer is a women-centric view of revolution through the life of Angelica Schuyler Church (1756-1814), the eldest daughter of General Philip Schuyler and Catherine Van Rensselaer.

The Van Rensselaers of the Manor of Rensselaerswyck were one of the wealthiest and most politically influential families in what was then the still heavily Dutch-influenced Province of New York. [Read more…] about Angelica Schuyler Church: A Woman at the Center of Revolution

The Sewards of New York: A New Biography

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The Sewards of New York: A Biography of a Leading American Political FamilyThe Sewards of New York: A Biography of a Leading American Political Family (Three Hills – Cornell University Press, 2025) by Thomas P. Slaughter shines a light on one of the most important and fascinating political families of the nineteenth century.

Through recently discovered family correspondence, Slaughter unveils the inner lives of the Seward family, tracing their joys and sorrows as the nation grappled with rapid expansion and deepening divisions on its path to the Civil War. [Read more…] about The Sewards of New York: A New Biography

New York State Prison Newspapers: Voices from the Inside

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The Auburn Collection Prison Newspaper, February 1975 (NYS Library)On March 24, 1800, Forlorn Hope was published within a prison in New York state, edited by an incarcerated person. In the intervening 200+ years, over 700 prison newspapers have been published from U.S. prisons in all fifty states.

The NYS Library has provided JSTOR with access to rare prison newspapers from their holdings. JSTOR has digitized those newspapers and made them freely available to the public as part of their collection, American Prison Newspapers, 1800s-present: Voices from the Inside. [Read more…] about New York State Prison Newspapers: Voices from the Inside

The Life & Legacy of Frances Perkins

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frances perkins lecture 2025Frances Perkins (1880-1965) was US Secretary of Labor in the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration for the entirety of his presidency from 1933 to 1945.

The first woman to serve in a presidential cabinet, Perkins was the architect of social security, a minimum wage, unemployment insurance, the 40-hour work week, bans on child labor, and many of the worker and fire safety standards we take for granted today. [Read more…] about The Life & Legacy of Frances Perkins

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