Drunk History has got to be seen. It is one of the funniest historical things you will ever see, and I'm not kidding. Created by Derek Waters and edited and directed by Jeremy Konner, these short films involve a narrator / host who gets drunk and then relates a fascinating bit of U.S. History. Among the topics these hilarious denizens of history take on are William Henry Harrison (who death was from an obvious cause - "with no coat on... cold as shit!"), Benjamin Franklin's time in London ("Franklin liked to F@*#" - featuring Jack Black), Oney Judge, George & Martha Washington's "favorite slave"), and more.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Drunk History: Drink A Bottle of History
By Editorial Staff
Friday, October 30, 2009
This Week's New York History Web Highlights
By Editorial Staff
- Old Salt Blog: Edge of NY Waterfront Photographs
- Upstate Earth: Ghosts of Beardslees Mills
- Lost City: No Disney Here [Times Square, 1970s]
- Inside the Apple: Washington Square Tombstone Unearthed
- Fenimore Art Museum: The Bones of Cooperstown
- Ephemeral NY: Successful Newsboy Strike of 1899
- Mashable: Happy 40th Birthday, Internet!
- Confessions of a Preservationist: Charles Mulford Robinson
- The Bowery Boys: Halloween Tours in New York City
- Walking the Berkshires: "Henry, Get Your Guns"
Thursday, October 29, 2009
New York And The American Jewish Experience
By Editorial Staff
The Milstein Conference on New York And The American Jewish Experience is a one day public conference celebrating history of Jewish life in New York, achievements of Jewish communal organizations, treasures of Jewish archives. Morning Sessions feature presentation on Jewish organizational archives and a roundtable discussion by Jewish agency leaders. Afternoon focuses on papers by scholars on a wide range of political, social and cultural issues and the evening session features a discussion by New York area archivists to discuss the rich resources found in New York and how to preserve them for the future.
Funded by the Milstein Family Foundation and the Howard and Abby Milstein Foundation. Organized by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in partnership with the 92nd Street Y, the Educational Alliance, F·E·G·S Health and Human Service System, NYANA and Surprise Lake Camp. Archival repositories participating: Archives of American Jewish Committee, Hadassah, HIAS, JDC, Yeshiva University and YIVO. DATE: Monday, November 2, 2009. 9:30 to 7:30 pm. Place: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, 15 West 16th Street, NY.
Full details about the conference are available at www.yivo.org
ADVANCE REGISTRATON REQUIRED: RSVP: milsteinconference@yivo.cjh.org or call 212-294-6157.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Books: Automats, Taxi Dances, and Vaudeville
By Editorial Staff
Cultural historian and journalist David Freeland has published his latest book,Automats, Taxi Dances, and Vaudeville: Excavating Manhattan’s Lost Places of Leisure, a rediscovery of the historic remnants of New York City’s leisure culture, including bier gartens in the Bowery, music publishers on Tin Pan Alley, jazz clubs in Harlem, and other locations throughout the city that remain partially intact, but obscured by the city’s development.
From the lights that never go out on Broadway to its 24-hour subway system, New York City isn't called "the city that never sleeps" for nothing. Both native New Yorkers and tourists have played hard in Gotham for centuries, lindy hopping in 1930s Harlem, voguing in 1980s Chelsea, and refueling at all-night diners and bars. The island is packed with places of leisure and entertainment, but Manhattan's infamously fast pace of change means that many of these beautifully constructed and incredibly ornate buildings have disappeared, and with them a rich and ribald history.
David Freeland serves as a guide to uncover the skeletons of New York's lost monuments to its nightlife. With an eye for architectural detail, Freeland opens doors, climbs onto rooftops, and gazes down alleyways to reveal several of the remaining hidden gems of Manhattan's nineteenth- and twentieth-century entertainment industry.
From the lights that never go out on Broadway to its 24-hour subway system, New York City isn't called "the city that never sleeps" for nothing. Both native New Yorkers and tourists have played hard in Gotham for centuries, lindy hopping in 1930s Harlem, voguing in 1980s Chelsea, and refueling at all-night diners and bars. The slim island at the mouth of the Hudson River is packed with places of leisure and entertainment, but Manhattan's infamously fast pace of change means that many of these beautifully constructed and incredibly ornate buildings have disappeared, and with them a rich and ribald history.
Yet with David Freeland as a guide, it's possible to uncover skeletons of New York's lost monuments to its nightlife. With a keen eye for architectural detail, Freeland opens doors, climbs onto rooftops, and gazes down alleyways to reveal several of the remaining hidden gems of Manhattan's nineteenth- and twentieth-century entertainment industry.
From the Atlantic Garden German beer hall in present-day Chinatown to the city's first motion picture studio—Union Square's American Mutoscope and Biograph Company—to the Lincoln Theater in Harlem, Freeland situates each building within its historical and social context, bringing to life an old New York that took its diversions seriously.
Freeland reminds us that the buildings that serve as architectural guideposts to yesteryear's recreations cannot be re-created—once destroyed they are gone forever. With condominiums and big box stores spreading over city blocks like wildfires, more and more of the Big Apple's legendary houses of mirth are being lost.
Cities in Revolt: The Dutch-American Atlantic Conference
By Editorial Staff
Deutsches Haus at Columbia University (420 W. 116th St., New York City) will be the location for "Cities in Revolt: The Dutch-American Atlantic, ca. 1650-1815," a conference on the relationships between the Netherlands and (mostly North) America in the long eighteenth century, that will take place November 13th and 14th, 2009. The main conference goals are 1) to create a scholarly discussion about Dutch-American interconnections in the eighteenth century and 2) help the general public gain a fuller picture of an understudied period in Dutch-American relations. Most of the conference will consist of panels of three presenters each, a comment, and time for discussion at the end.
The conference speakers and schedule is below, but more info about the conference is also available here.
Seventeenth-Century Histories, Eighteenth-Century Memories
Nov 13, 9:30-11:30
Chair: Karen Kupperman (NYU)
- Virginie Adane (EHESS): The Evolution of a New Netherland Narrative:
The Penelope Stout Story, 17th-19th Centuries
- Paul Finkelman (Albany Law): Jews and Other Minorities in New
Netherland and Early New York: The Beginning of Religious Freedom in
America
- Martine van Ittersum (U. Dundee): Filial Piety versus Republican
Liberty? The Cornets de Groot Family in Rotterdam and the Legacy of
Hugo Grotius, 1748-1798
Comment: Evan Haefeli (Columbia)
American Political Events in Dutch Atlantic Perspective
Nov 13, 1:30-3:30
Chair: Hans Krabbendam (Roosevelt Study Ctr.)
- Michiel van Groesen (U. A’dam): New Netherland vs. New York:
Contested Representations of a Colony, 1664-1673
- Megan Lindsay (Yale): Leislerian and Anti-Leislerian Political
Ideologies in an Atlantic Context
- Benjamin L. Carp (Tufts): Did Dutch Smugglers Provoke the Boston Tea
Party?
Comment: Ned Landsman (Stony Brook)
Keynote Address
Nov 13, 4:00-5:30
Jonathan Israel (Institute for Advanced Study):
The Dutch Cities, Radical Enlightenment and the ‘General Revolution,’
1776-1790
Reception to follow in honor of the publication of Four-Centuries of
Dutch-American Relations (SUNY Press)
War, Trade and Politics in the Dutch-American Atlantic
Nov 14, 10:00-12:00
Chair: Herb Sloan (Barnard)
- Christian Koot (Towson): Looking Beyond Sugar: Dutch Trade,
Barbados, and the Making of the English Empire
- Thomas Truxes (Trinity College): Dutch-Irish Cooperation in the Mid-
Eighteenth-Century Wartime Atlantic
- Victor Enthoven (Netherlands Defense Academy / Free U. A’dam): St.
Eustatius: The Rise and Fall of an Emporium
Comment: Jaap Jacobs
Dutch and American Republicanisms
Nov 14, 1:30-3:30
Chair: Evan Haefeli (Columbia)
- Wyger Velema (U. A’dam): The Reception of Classical Sources in Dutch
and American Republicanism
- Arthur Weststeijn (European U. Inst.): The American Fortunes of the
Dutch Republican Model: De la Court, Oglethorpe and Madison
- Joris Oddens (U. A’dam): No Extended Sphere: Gerhard Dumbar and the
Batavian Understanding of the American Constitution
Comment: Andrew Shankman (Rutgers-Camden)
Travelers and Friends in the Age of Revolution
Nov 14, 4:00-6:00
- Annie Jourdan (U. A’dam): Théophile Cazenove, Jacques-Pierre
Brissot, and Joel Barlow: Three Transatlantic Actors in a
Revolutionary Era
- Nathan Perl-Rosenthal (Columbia): Revolutionary Epistolarity: J.D.
van der Capellen and Samuel Adams
- Joost Rosendaal (Nijmegen): A Dutch Revolutionary Refugee in the
United States: Francis Adrien van der Kemp and his Circle
Comment: Cathy Matson (U. Delaware / PEAES)
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Sound and Story of The Hudson Valley Event
By Editorial Staff
Eileen McAdam, Director of The Sound and Story Project of the Hudson Valley, will be the featured speaker during the Annual Meeting of the Friends of Senate House on Wednesday November 4th, at the Senate House Museum, 312 Fair Street in Kingston. Ms. McAdam has made it her mission to preserve and celebrate the history and culture of the Hudson Valley through recorded sound. Her Sound and Story Project includes oral history interviews, but it also encompasses many unusual sound recordings that portray this region, including the now-silenced bells of early American churches, or the sounds of bats in the caves of Rosendale. McAdam will talk about the art and method of capturing and preserving the sounds of the Hudson Valley, and the history they offer us.
The program will begin with light refreshments in the Vanderlyn Gallery at 6:30 pm, followed by a brief annual report, with the keynote address starting at 7:15 pm in the second floor gallery. The program is free and open to the public. For more information, please call (845) 338-2786, or visit www.nysparks.state.ny.us
This year the Friends of Senate House supported a diverse range of activities and events for the public, including 17th, 18th and 19th century living history events, as well as celebrations of African-American and Native-American contributions to our history, heritage and culture. The Friends of Senate House also help make possible the historic site’s many school programs, which serve schools in several counties. The November 4th event is a great opportunity for newcomers and current supporters alike to learn about the Friends’ recent activities and enjoy an entertaining evening.
Senate House State Historic Site is part of the Palisades Interstate Park Commission, which administers 29 parks, parkways, and historic sites for the Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation in New York as well as the Palisades Interstate Park and parkway in New Jersey. For more information about New York State parks and historic sites, please visit www.nysparks.com, for information about the New Jersey section of the PIPC please visit www.njpalisades.org, and for more information about the Palisades Parks Conservancy and the Palisades Interstate Park parks and historic sites, please visit www.palisadesparksconservancy.org.
Easier Access to Old New York State Museum Publications
By Editorial Staff
The New York State Library has a new web page that highlights and links to New York State Museum publications that have been digitized by the Library. These publications include links to the Museum Memoirs and Handbooks series, which have been recently scanned from print copies in the Library's collection.
To make it easier to find the digital copy of a specific Bulletin, Memoir or Handbook, the titles in each series are listed in tables which can be sorted in several ways, including by by Memoir, Bulletin or Handbook number; title of the publication; author; date; or general subject (anthropology, biology, geology, history, and paleontology). You can also click on any of the thumbnail images, taken from several of the Museum publications, to get a full view of that image, along with information about it.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Regional History Awards of Merit Call For Nominations
By Editorial Staff
Each year the Upstate History Alliance gives annual Awards of Merit to recognize outstanding work in the regional history and museum community, reward staff and volunteers, and provide encouragement for development of new and innovative projects. These awards will presented to recipients on Sunday April 11 at the opening reception of the 2010 Museums in Conversation Conference in Albany, sponsored by the Upstate History Alliance and the Museum Association of New York. Any organization or individual is invited to nominate an organization, person(s) or project that was completed in 2009 in New York State for an Award of Merit. Nomination of oneself or one's organization is permissible and encouraged.
The postmark deadline for submitting a proposal is December 11, 2009. Visit www.upstatehistory.org for nomination procedures and to download the nomination form.
Questions should be directed to UHA Program Coordinator, Stephanie Lehner, at 800.895.1648 stephanie@upstatehistory.org
Mastodon Tusk May Be Largest Ever Uncovered in NYS
By Editorial Staff
Research under way at the New York State Museum indicates that a huge mastodon tusk, recently excavated by Museum scientists in Orange County, may be the largest tusk ever found in New York State. The nearly complete but fragmented tusk, measuring more than nine feet long, was one of two excavated this past summer in the Black Dirt area of Orange County at the confluence of Tunkamoose Creek and the Wallkill River, on the property of Lester Lain of Westtown. Museum scientists believe that the other less complete tusk, about 5-6 feet long, came from the same mastodon, which has been named the Tunkamoose mastodon.
Glen Keeton of Mount Hope, N.Y. and Chris Connallon of Hampton, N.J. came across the tusks in November 2008 as they were canoeing down the Wallkill River. Keeton contacted the Orange County chapter of the New York State Archeological Association, which then contacted the State Museum. Weather conditions delayed the excavation until this past
summer.
Since then, Dr. Robert Feranec, the Museum’s curator of vertebrate paleontology, has been researching other mastodon excavations in New York State. Feranec believes that the Warren Mastodon tusk, which is 8 feet, 8 inches long, is the longest one uncovered to date. It was discovered in New York State in the 1800s and is on exhibit at the
American Museum of Natural History in New York City. The tusk of the Cohoes Mastodon, on display at the State Museum, is about 4-5 feet long.
Based on the age of similar fossils, Feranec suspects that the tusks are about 13,000 years old. However, carbon dating results to determine the exact age, will not be available until later this year. In the meantime, the tusks have been taken apart to be cleaned and conserved for their long-term survival. It is hoped that eventually the tusks can be made available for scientific research and exhibits at the State
Museum and at a museum in the area where the tusks were found.
Abundant mastodon fossils have been found in Orange County, especially in the rich Black Dirt area which Keeton calls “a gold mine for these fossils.” Other fossils have also been found including those of giant beavers, stag moose, ground sloths, peccaries and reindeer. Several Museum scientists will be involved in an integrative research
project in the Black Dirt area where they will investigate the ancient environment in which the mastodon lived, as well as how that environment changed over the last 13,000 years.
“From my perspective, this is a significant find,” said Feranec. “These fossils will tell us more about the ancient history of New York. We hope to be able to reconstruct the environment in which the mastodon lived, as well as to try to understand why they went extinct.”
In 2007, Feranec oversaw the relocation of the Cohoes Mastodon from the State Museum lobby window to its new location in the Museum’s Exhibition Hall, where temperature and humidity levels are more stable and more conducive to the skeleton’s long-term preservation. The iconic Museum treasure is now the centerpiece of an expanded exhibition.
Discovered in 1866 near Cohoes Falls, the Mastodon once stood about 8 ½ feet tall, was about 15 feet long, and weighed between 8-10,000 pounds. Its tusk weighs 50 pounds.
Photo: During the excavation process in Orange County, Dr. Robert Feranec, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the New York State Museum, poses next to part of the tusk of a mastodon. (Photo courtesy of NYS Museum)
Sunday, October 25, 2009
The Impact of New York State's Museums
By Editorial Staff
The Museum Association of New York (MANY) provides a fact sheet about museums in the state. Here are some interesting numbers, you can also check out their white paper, "Cultural/Heritage Tourism: Opportunity, Impact, and Implications" online here:
* There are approximately 1,900 public and private museums, heritage organizations, and historic sites in New York.
* That equals one museum for every 10,258 New Yorkers.
* 68 million visitors enjoyed New York State museums in 2007.
* 29% of all tourists visit museums, historic sites, or cultural events.
* 55% of the museums offer standards-based programs for K – 12 students
* 4.461 million school children participated in classes at museums in 2006.
* 2.195 million students enjoyed museum outreach programs in their classrooms.
* 79% of the museums care for permanent collections.
* 1 million+ objects are added to these permanent collections annually.
* These museums currently employ more than 17,000 people.
* Museum operating expenses top $1 billion annually in New York State: the majority of this is returned to the state’s economy as wages, purchases, or taxes.
The Colony of New Netherland by Jaap Jacobs
By Editorial Staff
Cornell University Press has announced the publication of The Colony of New Netherland: A Dutch Settlement in Seventeenth-Century America
About The Colony of New Netherland
The Dutch involvement in North America started after Henry Hudson, sailing under a Dutch flag in 1609, traveled up the river that would later bear his name. The Dutch control of the region was short-lived, but had profound effects on the Hudson Valley region. In The Colony of New Netherland, Jaap Jacobs offers a comprehensive history of the Dutch colony on the Hudson from the first trading voyages in the 1610s to 1674, when the Dutch ceded the colony to the English.
As Jacobs shows, New Netherland offers a distinctive example of economic colonization and in its social and religious profile represents a noteworthy divergence from the English colonization in North America. Centered around New Amsterdam on the island of Manhattan, the colony extended north to present-day Schenectady, New York, east to central Connecticut, and south to the border shared by Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, leaving an indelible imprint on the culture, political geography, and language of the early modern mid-Atlantic region. Dutch colonists' vivid accounts of the land and people of the area shaped European perceptions of this bountiful land; their own activities had a lasting effect on land use and the flora and fauna of New York State, in particular, as well as on relations with the Native people with whom they traded.
Sure to become readers' first reference to this crucial phase of American early colonial history, The Colony of New Netherland is a multifaceted and detailed depiction of life in the colony, from exploration and settlement through governance, trade, and agriculture. Jacobs gives a keen sense of the built environment and social relations of the Dutch colonists and closely examines the influence of the church and the social system adapted from that of the Dutch Republic. Although Jacobs focuses his narrative on the realities of quotidian existence in the colony, he considers that way of life in the broader context of the Dutch Atlantic and in comparison to other European settlements in North America.
About the Author
Jaap Jacobs (Ph.D. Leiden University), an independent scholar and writer, has been Visiting Professor of Early American History at Ohio University and Quinn Foundation Senior Fellow at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies and Quinn Foundation Visiting Professor in the Department of History at Cornell University.
Praise for The Colony of New Netherland
"Jaap Jacobs's The Colony of New Netherland is rich, deep, layered, and authoritative. It puts its subject in its proper place both in American and in Dutch history. For anyone with an interest in the Dutch presence in North America, it is essential."--Russell Shorto, author of The Island at the Center of the World
"The Colony of New Netherland is the definitive modern study of the early Dutch experience in North America. Jacobs offers many important new insights derived from scrupulous research in Dutch-language sources and situates the story of New Netherland in a truly Atlantic context. This book marks a crucial step in the process of diversifying our understanding of early North American history."--Jon Parmenter, Cornell University, author of The Edge of the Woods: Iroquoia, 1534-1701
"Jaap Jacobs has read virtually everything about New Netherland, primary and secondary, in Dutch and English, and produced a model synthesis of social, political, and economic history for a colonial experience that has far too long been terra incognita. Jacobs is particularly strong in his ability to take a genuinely transatlantic perspective, detailing the many struggles within the Dutch West India Company over whether its North American interest was to be a colony of trade or a colony of settlement (or, indeed, a colony at all) as well as the efforts of the motley lot of a few thousand Europeans to recreate something resembling a society in New Amsterdam, Fort Orange, and points adjacent."--Daniel K. Richter, Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professor of History and the Richard S. Dunn Director of the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, University of Pennsylvania, author of The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Coloni!
zation
"The unique character of New Netherland has eluded many chroniclers of early America, but Jaap Jacob's first-rate scholarship and thoughtful analysis demonstrate how well he understands the intricacies and intrigues that marked the Dutch settlement. His book is a captivating treasure hunt for lovers of New York history and an essential, illuminating guide to an oft-neglected corner of our shared American past."--Elizabeth L. Bradley, author of Knickerbocker
"The Colony of New Netherland will convince specialists and students alike of the pivotal role played by the Dutch West India Company colony in seventeenth-century America."--Joyce D. Goodfriend, author of Before the Melting Pot: Society and Culture in Colonial New York City, 1664-1730.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
State Archives Launches New Tool for Educators
By Editorial Staff
Students, researchers, and lovers of New York State history from around the world will have a better sense of the types of records held by the New York State Archives with the launch of Document Showcase, a quarterly feature on the New York State Archives’ website that will highlight iconic records by investigating specific historical topics.
Quarterly Document Showcase submissions will feature a display of 3-5 hand-picked historical records on a selected topic, background information on those records, a link to educational activities for classroom use, and other related information. All learning activities are being developed by classroom teachers, are based on the New York 7th and 8th grade social studies core curriculum, and relate to New York State learning standards.
October’s edition of Document Showcase examines industrialization and child labor in New York State. The records include: a Factory Investigating Commission brief sent to the state Supreme Court supporting restrictions on the manufacture of goods in tenement houses; letters for and against child labor from Governor Lehman’s subject and
correspondence files; excerpts from chapter 529 of the laws of 1913 restricting child labor; and a union label from the Cigar Makers’ International Union of America expressing opposition to tenement-house manufacturing and other non-union labor. The records of the Factory Investigating Commission, created after the devastating Triangle
Shirtwaist Factory Fire in 1911, uncovered a range of substandard working conditions being experienced by low paid factory workers throughout New York State, many of whom were immigrants and/or women and children.
The Document Showcase is accessed from the State Archives website: www.archives.nysed.gov and select “Document Showcase” under "News and Events."
Lutherans And Albany Public Lecture, Discussion
By Editorial Staff
The public is invited to a public lecture and discussion entitled "Lutherans, Albany, And the Course of History" at 2 pm, Sunday, November 15th, at Wittenburg Hall, First Lutheran Church of Albany (181 Western Avenue in Albany), part of First Lutheran Church of Albany’s 360th Anniversary Celebration. Dating from 1649, First Lutheran is the oldest congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. It originated in the Dutch period and its services were originally held in Dutch. Over the centuries, the congregation has worshiped at four different sites in Albany. Its rich history parallels and interacts with that of the city and the State from the colonial period to the present. These presentations will draw on that history to illuminate important trends and developments and also make history “come alive” with stories that connect the church, its people, its city, and its state.
Four experienced historians will make presentations. There will be plenty of time for questions and comments at the end.
● John J. McEneny, Assemblyman, 104th A.D., “Religion and Government in Albany Over 300 Years”
● Peter Christoph, FLC Church Archivist, “Friendly Relations, Occasional Clashes: Christian Churches in Colonial Albany”
● Anthony Opalka, City Historian, City of Albany, “Albany’s Architectural History During First Lutheran’s 360 Years On the Move”
● Edward H. Knoblauch, Adjunct Professor, Schenectady County Community College, “Lutherans in the Atlantic World in the 17th and 18th Centuries”
Free parking is available in the Church’s two parking lots adjacent to its building.
Refreshments will be served after the presentation.
For more information, please contact the church office at 518-463-1326, or the event coordinator, Bruce W. Dearstyne, 518-456-0872, dearstyne@verizon.net
Friday, October 23, 2009
Weekly New York History Blogging Round-Up
By Editorial Staff
- Preservation in Pink: Historic Windows
- Walking the Berkshires: Civil War Memorial in Stanford
- Media News: The Decline of the Humanities
- The History Blog: 19th Cent Glens Falls Armory For Sale
- Fenimore Art Museum: Hansi Durlach’s Sharon Springs
- Virtual Dime Museum: The Great New York Aquarium
- EJ Forbes: Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1908-1979
- Ephemeral NY: Brooklyn’s Champion Hockey Team
- Past Is Present (American Antiquarian Society): Welcome!
- Old Salt Blog: Naval Defeat That Saved The Revolution
Candidate Forum For Historic Abenaki Election
By Editorial Staff
Denise Watso, a descendant of the legendary Abenaki Chief Louis Watso who lived in Lake George Village for a time and figures prominently in Native American life there in the 19th century, sent the following press release about an upcoming candidate forum in Albany tomorrow, October 24th.
This is a significant event in the history of the Abenaki Nation. It was only within this decade that the substantial membership of the Odanak Abenaki First Nation living in the Albany metro area have been able to vote for their chief and council members. This is the first election in which off-reserve Abenaki are able to run for office as well as vote.
Here is the press release:
The Capitol District will host one of three forums for Abenaki voters to hear directly from candidates for Chief and Council of the Odanak Abenaki First Nation. The forum will be held from 12-4 PM, Saturday, October 24 at the German-American Club, 32 Cherry Street, Albany, NY 12205. This is an exciting time in the history of the Abenaki people – all Abenaki enrolled at Odanak are invited and encouraged to attend with their families.
Two additional forums will be held during the election season at Sudbury, Ontario, and on-reserve at Odanak. Elections will be held Saturday, November 28, 2009, although voters may also cast their ballots by mail.
The Abenaki are the aboriginal people associated with homelands in much of northern New England and adjacent parts of New York, Massachusetts and Quebec, as well as with the Odanak (Saint Francis) and Wôlinak (Becancour) reserves in central Quebec (and historically with the Penobscot Nation in Maine, too). Abenaki derives from Wabanaki (“people from where the sun rises,” “people of the east,” or “people of the dawn”), and this latter term is often used in a general sense to refer collectively to the Mi’kmaq, Malecite, Passamaquoddy, Penobscot and Abenaki peoples.
While many Abenaki have been thought of as “Saint Francis Indians,” living at Odanak, in truth many Abenaki families have maintained part-time or full-time residence within their homelands south of the border continuously since the American Revolution. In fact, the first election held by the Odanak First Nation under the Indian Act, the legislation regulating aboriginal affairs in Canada, occurred January 18, 1876, after many Abenaki (and their Indian Agent) complained that the three chiefs serving the community at the time – Louis Watso, Solomon Benedict and Jean Hannis – were away from the reserve so often that two additional chiefs were required to ensure adequate representation. (The aged chief Louis Watso was actually living at Lake George, where a good deal of his family resided.) Samuel Watso and Lazare Wawanolett were chosen from a field of six candidates, and elections for office have been held at regular intervals ever since.
Abenaki history on the upper Hudson dates to at least the late 17th century when many ancestors of the modern Abenaki people lived at Schaghticoke, near the mouth of the Hoosic River. Continuing Abenaki presence in New York State is attested to by such notable 19th century Adirondack Abenaki as Sabael Benedict, Mitchell Sabattis, and the late 19th/early 20th century Indian Encampments at Saratoga Springs, Lake George and Lake Luzerne were primarily occupied by Abenaki. Despite a lack of recognition by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, these Abenaki families have persisted within and beyond their homelands: today, the Albany metro region is a major Abenaki population center. Other significant concentrations of Abenaki people are located in Waterbury, CT; Newport, VT; and Sudbury, Ontario.
This will be the second time that a formal forum for candidates for Chief and Council has been held in Albany. Approximately 60 people attended a similar event two years ago, and an even higher turn-out is expected this weekend. Off-reserve Abenaki were not allowed to vote in Odanak’s election until after the Supreme Court of Canada’s 1999 Corbiere ruling struck down the voter residency requirement of Canada’s Indian Act.
The importance of the off-reserve vote has been increasing with each passing election. This election, however, may bring about even greater change as it will be the first time since the Indian Act was enacted that off-reserve Abenaki will be eligible to accept a nomination for office (per the 2007 Federal Court of Appeals’ Esquega decision). The potential impact of this development places an even greater spotlight on the role of off-reserve voters in the civic affairs of the Abenaki Nation.
It is also a point of pride for many Abenaki who think of both Odanak and the Albany area as home. Susan Marshall, a lifelong resident of Albany and Rensselaer, is looking forward to attending the candidate’s forum and voting for her first time. “I just wish my mom (Mary Jane Nagazoa) was here to see this, knowing how proud she would be.”
Thursday, October 22, 2009
HDC Honors Thomas F. Pike With Landmarks Lion Award
By Editorial Staff
The Historic Districts Council will honor the many achievements of Rev. Dr. Thomas F. Pike with their 2009 Landmarks Lion award on October 28th, at the Players Club near his home on Gramercy Park. To learn more about the Lion ceremony, visit this site; to see one of the many things Reverend Pike is involved with currently, go to here. The following article is a preview from the upcoming issue of District Lines, the HDC's newsletter.
Rev. Dr. Thomas F. Pike
Reverend Thomas F. Pike has helped run so many organizations devoted to preserving buildings and landscapes nationwide that when he walks around a place where he has been proactive, people stop him to say thanks. During a recent stroll through Gramercy Park, for which he currently serves as a trustee and archivist, Arlene Harrison, head of the neighborhood’s block association, came through the glossily painted black iron gates and hugged him. “We love this man, he’s very special, he’s the real, real deal,” she said. “He understands what this park means spiritually to this community.”
For four decades, Reverend Pike has served as an Episcopal rector at Manhattan churches while finding countless hours each week to volunteer as a leader at city agencies and nonprofits, including the Landmarks Preservation Commission, The New York Landmarks Conservancy, Partners for Sacred Places, Preservation League of New York State and Partnership for the Homeless. On Oct. 28, he will receive HDC’s Landmarks Lion award at the Players Club near his home on Gramercy Park.
On a balmy afternoon in the park a few weeks ago, he was asked to reflect on his influence and quietly replied, “When I look back, I just wish I’d done more.” He attributes his lifelong interest in performing good works for historic architecture partly to his childhood in progressive intellectual circles. He grew up in Hastings, New York, where his father, Frederick, managed a newspaper and was friendly with African-American scholars including City College sociologist Kenneth Clark and newspaper owner Alger Adams. In the late 1950’s, as an undergraduate at SUNY New Paltz, the future reverend at first studied painting, then switched career tracks as calls for social change swept the United States.
“The fight for civil rights was in full swing and the peace movement was in its early days,” he recalled. Soon after he received his Yale divinity degree in 1963, he was at the frontlines of these causes. “I was arrested five times: that gives you a flavor of my life,” he said. He spent overnights in jail for alleged offenses committed while protesting workplace discrimination, giving antiwar sermons and leading marches demanding emergency housing for black families left homeless by suspicious fires.
In 1971 he was hired as rector for what is now Calvary/St. George’s—the congregation owns two 1840’s churches near Gramercy Park—and until his retirement last year he conducted numerous services there daily. In the 1970’s and ‘80’s, as he patiently dealt with repairs on those structures, fellow clergy kept plaintively telling him about their own buildings’ hefty maintenance bills and how they were occasionally resorting to demolition.
“So I became more and more revved up about preserving religious buildings,” Reverend Pike said. “I began to see the relationship between preservation and social justice.” Old churches and synagogues, he added, “enable a community to tell its story honestly, tangibly, and graphically, in a way that can’t be denied. And the diversity of American religious buildings celebrates the diversity of our whole society. If we erase the buildings, we’re rewriting history.”
Serving in his numerous pro bono posts and grants-giving roles, he has persuaded other religious leaders to adapt structures for outreach projects including food kitchens, alcohol abuse treatment programs and temporary housing for the homeless. He has also advocated for the preservation of secular buildings in struggling neighborhoods, like the humble row of freed slaves’ homes in Bedford-Stuyvesant now called the Weeksville Heritage Center. “Buildings do not have to be beautiful to have powerful storytelling capacity,” the reverend said. “Preservation is not an elitist pursuit, although it’s sometimes thought of as a rich man’s sport.”
Gratitude for his organizations’ support, he added, has come from surprising sources. “I’ve been out to a Congregationalist church in Brooklyn where a young mother living across the street in an apartment building with every window broken came up to me and said, ‘Looking out every day and seeing that steeple repaired now—it gives us a sense of peace and a lot of hope.’ I’m absolutely convinced that architecture can change lives. I like to quote the philosopher Ernst Bloch, who said that architecture is an embodiment of hope. You only fix the roof of a place when you believe your community will be there for a long, long time. Every repair is a gesture of commitment to the future.”
The reverend’s retirement last year has allowed him and his wife Lys, a former director of the city’s Council on the Environment, more time to focus on their own landmark: a clapboarded 1790 farmhouse near Camden, Maine. They spend half the year there when not visiting their three children: Jean, an architect in New York; Nicholas, an assets manager in Boston; and Thomas Jr., an Army lieutenant-colonel about to be deployed on his second stint in Afghanistan.
Receiving a Lion award, Reverend Pike said, “feels comfortable, but I feel a little unworthy, too, since I know and admire so many past Lions. But I like being identified as a lion, a kind of radical preservationist. That brings together many threads of my life.”
John Brown Anniversary Exhibit at NY Historical Society
By Editorial Staff
When John Brown led his now-legendary raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in 1859, hoping to secure weapons for a slave insurrection, he failed in his immediate goal but succeeded in raising tensions to a fever pitch between pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces. The conflict he had intensified, and which he had now come to symbolize, would lead by 1861 to secession and civil war.
One hundred and fifty years after John Brown’s raid, the New-York Historical Society in partnership with the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History presents the exhibition John Brown: The Abolitionist and His Legacy, exploring the beliefs, activities and continuing significance of this critical figure, vilified by some as a murderer and venerated by others as a martyr.
On view from through March 25, 2010, this exhibition of rare materials from the Gilder Lehrman Collection and the New-York Historical Society also sets the stage for the culminating presentation of the Historical Society’s Lincoln Year, with the landmark exhibition Lincoln and New York, opening October 9, 2009.
"John Brown’s attack at Harpers Ferry convinced Southerners that their political and economic survival was threatened, while outrage over his execution rallied and unified Northern abolitionists,” according to Louise Mirrer, President and CEO of the New-York Historical Society. “As we continue our year-long celebration of Abraham Lincoln, we hope these extraordinary and seldom-seen materials will not only shed light on Brown himself but will help illuminate events that led to Lincoln’s election in 1860."
“John Brown: The Abolitionist and His Legacy examines Brown in the context of growing national divisions over slavery in the 1850s,” commented James G. Basker, President of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. “Most African Americans and abolitionists saw John Brown as a martyr for a noble and humane cause. Others saw him as a terrorist who attacked legal institutions and was willing to kill to achieve his goals. This exhibition invites people to examine the tension between these divergent views at the critical moment in American history, with repercussions down through the Civil Rights movement of the 20th century.”
John Brown expected that his attack on Harpers Ferry, carried out by both white and black raiders, would inspire enslaved people to escape from plantations across the South. According to his plan, the former slaves would join him in safe havens in the mountains, where he would arm and train them for guerrilla warfare. The loss of slaves and the fear of insurrection would destabilize the South and build political support in the North.
On Sunday, October 16, 1859, Brown led twenty-one men (sixteen of them white and five black) to Harpers Ferry, Virginia, where they captured the armory, arsenal and rifle factory. A local mob quickly surrounded the town, preventing the raiders from escaping, while federal troops led by Robert E. Lee rushed to the scene. On Tuesday, October 18, soldiers successfully stormed the stronghold, seriously wounding Brown. He was tried and convicted of inciting slave insurrection, treason against Virginia, and murder. Before being hanged on December 2, 1859, Brown wrote prophetically: “I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.”
Visitors to the exhibition will encounter manuscripts never before exhibited, including dramatic letters by John Brown to his followers; a letter by Frederick Douglass praising Brown but distancing himself from the raid; Brown's parting words on the eve of his execution; a letter from the mother of a Kansas murder victim, damning Brown on the scaffold; and reminiscences by Brown's children and other eyewitnesses.
Lending dramatic context to these materials are powerful images, such as the 1859 sculpture “The Slave Auction” by John Rogers; the heroic 1867 painting by Thomas Satterwhite Noble, "John Brown's Blessing"; photographs of Brown and his family members; photographs of his supporters, the "Secret Six"; and photographs of other key participants. Among the other important objects on view will be a "John Brown Still Lives!" broadside from 1859; a rare printing of the Emancipation Proclamation; a 1926 lynching poster; and other artifacts of the Jim Crow and Civil Rights eras.
The majority of the objects in the exhibition are drawn from the Gilder Lehrman Collection, currently on deposit at the New-York Historical Society.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
NYS Conference on Preserving Historic Barns
By Editorial Staff
The New York State Barn Coalition and Historic Ithaca will present the 12th Annual Conference on the Preservation of Historic Barns on October 24. This conference, open to anyone with an interest in historic barns and their preservation, will be held at Ithaca Foreign Car Service, 501 West State Street. Built in 2006, this new timber frame building houses an auto shop in the heart of downtown Ithaca. For his contribution of this extraordinary building to the downtown streetscape, owner Dave Brumsted is the recipient of a 2007 Pride of Ownership award from the City of Ithaca.
A copy of the conference agenda is online via pdf. Late registration deadline is 12pm tomorrow October 22; the cost for the conference is $40. Contact Kristen Olson at (607)273-6633 to confirm that space is still available.
James Tissot's Life of Christ Watercolors Exhibit
By Editorial Staff
The exhibition James Tissot: "The Life of Christ" will include 124 watercolors selected from a set of 350 that depict detailed scenes from the New Testament, from before the birth of Jesus through the Resurrection, in a chronological narrative. On view from October 23, 2009, through January 17, 2010, it marks the first time in more than twenty years that any of the Tissot watercolors, a pivotal acquisition that entered the collection in 1900, have been on view at the Brooklyn Museum.
The exhibition has been organized by Judith F. Dolkart, Associate Curator, European Art, and will travel to venues to be announced. It will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue of the complete set of 350 images, to be published by the Museum in association with Merrell Publishers Ltd, London.
Born in France, James Tissot (1836-1902) had a successful artistic career in Paris before going to London in the 1870s, where he established himself as a renowned painter of London society, before returning to Paris in 1882. He then began work on a set of fifteen paintings depicting the costumes and manners of fashionable Parisian society women. While visiting the Church of St. Sulpice in the course of his research, he experienced a religious vision, after which he embarked on an ambitious project to illustrate the New Testament.
With the same meticulous attention to detail that he had applied to painting high society, he now created these precisely rendered watercolors. In preparation, he made expeditions to the Middle East to record the landscape, architecture, costumes, and customs of the Holy Land and its people, which he recorded in photographs, notes, and sketches, convinced that the region had remained unchanged since Jesus's time. When he returned to his Paris studio he drew upon his research materials to execute the watercolors, concentrating on this project to the exclusion of his previous subject matter.
Unlike earlier artists, who often depicted biblical figures anachronistically, Tissot painted the many figures in costumes he believed to be historically authentic. In addition to the archaeological exactitude of many of the watercolors, the series presents other, highly dramatic and often mystical images, such as Jesus Ministered to by Angels and The Grotto of the Agony.
Tissot began the monumental task of illustrating the New Testament in 1886 and first presented selections at the Paris Salon in 1894 (before the series' completion), where they were received with great enthusiasm. Press accounts on both sides of the Atlantic reported emotional reactions among the visitors: some women wept or kneeled before the works, crawling from picture to picture, while men removed their hats in reverence.
In May 1901 the 350 watercolors, newly mounted in gold mats and reframed, went on view for the first time on Eastern Parkway; records seem to indicate they remained on nearly continuous display until the 1930s. Since then, in part because of conservation concerns, they have only rarely been shown, and then only small portions of the series, most recently in late 1989 through early 1990.
Photo: James Tissot. Jesus Goes Up Alone onto a Mountain to Pray, 1886-94. Brooklyn Museum
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
New Perspectives on African American History and Culture
By Editorial Staff
The Fourth Annual New Perspectives on African American History and Culture Conference will be held at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill on February 26-27, 2010. Presented by the Triangle African American History Colloquium, the Conference Committee invites proposals for single papers or complete session panels from faculty and graduate students related to power and place in African American history across a range of time periods and areas. The Conference seeks to address the question: “How does location enhance, circumscribe, or otherwise shape power and power relations among individuals, groups, or organizations?” Location can be broadly defined as geography or status and could include specific communal, imperial, colonial, or national contexts.
Topics of exploration on power and place in the black historical experience might include: migration patterns across time and place, comparative models of Afro-Caribbean and North American slave resistance, rural and urban manifestations of black religion, gender and power in African American communities, modes of education in black-operated schools, the role of regionalism in black music, sexuality and power in black popular culture, urban black political ideology, transnational struggles for civil/labor rights, and black power on the international stage. Papers on a variety of other related topics that adhere to the conference theme are welcome.
Deadline: The deadline for proposals is Friday, November 13, 2009. Respond via email to rhfergus@email.unc.edu with your name, institution, title, email address, proposed paper title, a 150 word abstract, and curriculum vitae. Please put “Conference Proposal” in your subject line. The conference paper itself should have a historical focus and be a maximum of ten pages in length, not including endnotes and/or bibliography. Presentations will be limited to twenty minutes, inclusive of any time needed for audio-visual setup. Eligibility: Faculty and graduate students.
Contact Information:
Robert H. Ferguson
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of History
University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill
rhfergus@email.unc.edu
Photo: April 1943. Washington, D.C. "Pin boy at a bowling alley." Nitrate negative by Esther Bubley for the Office of War Information.
NYC Landmarks Commission Designates Underground Railroad Site
By Editorial Staff
The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission has voted to designate the Lamartine Historic District in West Chelsea [pdf]. This short stretch of 12 row houses on West 29th Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues possess a rare connection to the history of New York and American civil liberties. More recently, the Gibbons-Hopper House at 339 West 29th Street has been the site of an attempt by the landlord to build (illegally according to the the Historic Districts Council) a penthouse addition. A grassroots advocacy organization, Friends of the Gibbons UGGR Site and Lamartine Place, convinced the City to act to preserve the block and revoke the building permits.
Here is a description of the property provided by the Historic Districts Council:
Originally constructed between 1846 and 1847, no. 337 West 29th street was acquired in 1851 by James S. Gibbons, a banker and writer, and husband of renowned abolitionist Abigail Hopper Gibbons. It was at No. 337 that Isaac T. Hopper, father of Abigail and a staunch abolitionist widely acknowledged as a father of the Underground Railroad, died in May 1852. The Gibbons family occupied the house for two years before acquiring the house next door at 339 West 29th Street in 1853. In his memoirs, the American lawyer and diplomat Joseph Hodges Choate, who was also a friend of the Gibbons family recollects dining with the Gibbons and a fugitive slave at No. 339 in 1855, citing the residence as a stop on the Underground Railroad. This is the best-documented evidence of a still-extant site serving as a “station” in the Underground Railroad in New York City.
Abigail Gibbons later invited black and white guests to stay at the house during the 1856 Anti Slavery Convention, and she also later met with abolitionist John Brown there. The building was attacked by mobs in 1862 during unrest around the Emancipation Proclamation and again in 1863 during the New York City Civil War Draft Riots, when the Gibbons’ daughters were forced to escape the angry mob by climbing over rooftops to their uncle’s home at 335 West 29th Street.
Photo: Historic Lamartine Place, now West 29th Street. Courtesy HDC.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Have Dinner With Samuel de Champlain Oct. 24th
By Editorial Staff
Rogers Island Visitors Center in Fort Edward is hosting dinner with Samuel de Champlain on October 24th at the Tee Bird North Golf Club (30 Reservoir Road, Fort Edward). Local Chefs, Neal Orsini owner of the Anvil Restaurant in Fort Edward and Steve Collyer, researched the stores list aboard Champlain’s ship, the Saint-Julien, to develop a dinner menu using European, 17th century ship and New World ingredients. Some menu items were standard fare aboard 17th century ships, but the Saint-Julien was 500 tons, carried more than 100 crew and had a galley which meant that even livestock was brought on board aboard, if only for the captain and officers.
Don Thompson, who has spent this Quadricentennial year traveling throughout New York, Vermont and Canada portraying Samuel de Champlain, will serve as a special guest presenter bringing the story of de Champlain's North American explorations to life.
There will be a cash bar at 5 pm; and dinner served at 6 pm. The price is $22 for Rogers Island VC members, $25 for non-members and $8 for children under 12. Special prize baskets have been donated for a raffle.
For reservations call Rogers Island Visitor Center at 518-747-3693 or e-mail rogersisland@gmail.com. Proceeds benefit the Rogers Island Visitor Center.
Presentation On The Poesten Kill Thursday
By Editorial Staff
John Warren (yours truly) has written the first history
Sunday, October 18, 2009
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By Editorial Staff
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'Lincoln and New York' Opens At New York Historical Society
By Editorial Staff
From the launch of Abraham Lincoln’s 1860 Presidential campaign with a speech at Cooper Union through the unprecedented outpouring of grief at his funeral procession in 1865, New York City played a surprisingly central role in the career of the sixteenth President—and Lincoln, in turn, had an impact on New York that was vast, and remains vastly underappreciated.
Now, for the first time, a museum exhibition will trace the crucial relationship between America’s greatest President and its greatest city, when the New-York Historical Society presents Lincoln and New York, from October 9, 2009 through March 25, 2010. The culminating presentation in the Historical Society’s Lincoln Year of exhibitions, events and public programs, this extraordinary display of original artifacts, iconic images and highly significant period documents is the Historical Society’s major contribution to the nation’s Lincoln Bicentennial. Lincoln and New York has been endorsed by the U.S. Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission.
Serving as chief historian for Lincoln and New York and editor of the accompanying catalogue is noted Lincoln scholar and author Harold Holzer, co-chairman of the Lincoln Bicentennial Commission. He has also organized the Historical Society’s year-long Lincoln Series of public conversations and interviews. Serving as curator is Dr. Richard Rabinowitz, president of American History Workshop and curator of the exhibitions Slavery in New York and New York Divided: Slavery and the Civil War at the New-York Historical Society.
Lincoln and New York brings to life the period between Lincoln’s decisive entrance into the city’s life at the start of the 1860 Presidential campaign to his departure from it in 1865 as a secular martyr. During these years, the policies of the Lincoln administration damaged and then re-built the New York economy, transforming the city from a thriving port dependent on trade with the slave-holding South into the nation’s leading engine of financial and industrial growth; support and opposition to the President flared into a virtual civil war within the institutions and on the streets of New York, out of which emerged a pattern of political contention that survives to this day.
To begin this story, visitors follow the prairie lawyer eastward to his rendezvous with “the political cauldron” of New York in the winter of 1860. Visitors will learn something of his background and of the rapidly accelerating political crisis that had brought him to the fore: the battle over the extension of slavery into the western territories.
Then, in the six galleries that follow, visitors will discover the interconnections between these two unlikely partners: the ambitious western politician with scant national experience, and the sophisticated eastern metropolis that had become America’s capital of commerce and publishing.
Campaign (1859—1860) immerses visitors in the sights and sounds of the city, then the fastest-growing metropolis in the world, while re-creating Lincoln’s entire visit in February 1860 when his epoch-making address at the Cooper Union and the photograph for which he posed that same day together launched his national career. The displays will cast new light on the lecture culture of the antebellum city, the political divisions within its Republican organization, the strength of its publishing industry and the bustling, somewhat alien urban community that Lincoln encountered. The video re-creation of Lincoln’s Cooper Union speech, produced on site with acclaimed actor Sam Waterston’s vivid rendering of Lincoln’s arguments, brings that crucial evening to life. Visitors will re-enact for themselves how Lincoln posed for New York’s—and the nation’s—leading photographer, Mathew Brady, whose now-iconic photograph began the reinvention of Lincoln’s public image. As Lincoln himself said, “Brady and the Cooper Union speech made me President.”
Objects on view will include the telegram inviting Lincoln to give his first Eastern lecture, the lectern that he used at Cooper Union, the widely distributed printed text of his speech, photographic and photo-engraving equipment from this era and torches that were carried by pro-Lincoln “Wide Awakes” at their great October 6 New York march. Also on view will be a panoply of political cartoons and editorial commentary generated in New York that established “Honest Abe” and the “Railsplitter” as a viable and virtuous candidate, but concurrently began the tradition of anti-Lincoln caricature by introducing Lincoln as a slovenly rustic, reluctant to discuss the hot-button slavery issue but secretly favoring the radical idea of racial equality.
The next gallery, Public Opinions (1861—62), registers the gyrating fortunes of the Lincoln Administration’s first year among New Yorkers—especially the editors and publishers of the city’s 175 daily and weekly newspapers and illustrated journals, who wielded unprecedented power. In the wake of his election, and the secession of the Southern states, the New York Stock Exchange had plummeted and New York harbor was stilled. Payment of New York’s huge outstanding debts from Southern planters and merchants ceased, and bankruptcies abounded.
Scarcely one docked ship hoisted the national colors to greet the new President-Elect in February 1861 when he visited on his way to Washington and the inauguration, and eyewitness Walt Whitman described his welcome along New York’s streets as “ominous.” Mayor Fernando Wood proposed that the city declare its independence from both the Union and the Confederacy and continue trading with both sides. Even New Yorkers unwilling to go that far desperately tried to find compromises with the South that in their words, “would avert the calamity of Civil War.”
Just two months later, though, in the wake of the attack on Fort Sumter, it suddenly appeared that every New Yorker was an avid defender of Old Glory. After war was declared, business leaders, including many powerful Democrats, pledged funds and goods to the effort. The Irish community, not previously sympathetic to Republicans, vigorously mobilized its own battalion in the first wave of responses to Lincoln’s call for troops to crush the Rebellion. But after the Confederate victory at Bull Run, the wheel turned again. From July 1861 onward for more than a year, the news was unremittingly bad. Battlefield mishaps, crippling inflation, profiteering among war contractors, corruption in the supply of “shoddy” equipment and clothing for the troops, the ability of Confederate raiders to seize dozens of New York merchant ships right outside the harbor, the imposition of an income tax and a controversial effort to reform banking, alarming New York’s regulation-wary financial institutions: all these led to relentless press and public criticism of Lincoln. New York’s cartoonists, as shown in the exhibition, found every possible way to caricature the President’s homely appearance and controversial policies. Even abolitionists and blacks despaired of the President’s reluctance to embrace emancipation and the recruitment of African-Americans into the Union war effort. Former allies such as Horace Greeley slammed Lincoln for putting reunification above freedom as a war goal.
In this gallery, the objects that tell the story will include colorful recruitment posters for the Union army, the great, seldom-lent Thomas Nast painting of the departure of the 7th Regiment for the Front, rare original photographs of the great rally in Union Square on April 21, 1861, and the bullet-shattered coat of Lincoln’s young New York-born friend, and onetime bodyguard, Colonel Elmer Ephraim Ellsworth, the first Union officer killed in the war.
Gallery 3, titled Bad Blood (1862), illustrates the mutual animosity of New York’s pro- and anti-Lincoln forces by exhibiting bigger-than-life, three-dimensional versions of the era’s political cartoons. On one side are the Democratic Party politicians and their backers, caricatured by their opponents as bartenders in a political clubhouse, “dispensing a poisonous brew of sedition and fear.” On the other side, a caricature of Lincoln’s New York supporters—officials of the United States Sanitary Commission—shows them enjoying a sumptuous feast, celebrating the ethic of economic opportunity for the rich and the values of hard work, obedience, and self-discipline for the poor. Visitors will see how a powerful New York party of Peace Democrats, or Copperheads, portrayed Lincoln as a despot, warned against “race mongrelization,” and encouraged desertion and draft-dodging. At the same time, the gallery will show how some New Yorkers reaped the benefits of the war, given that their city was the principal home of many of the industries and services Lincoln needed: munitions, shipbuilding, medical supplies, food supplies, money lending and more. Interactive media in Gallery 3 will help visitors (especially of school age) explore the economic issues that so bitterly divided New York.
Gallery 4, Battleground (1862—1864), re-creates seven different conflicts in the city between 1862 and 1864. In each one, the visitor is invited to choose a side, listen to “the talk of the town,” and locate historic landmarks that survive from this era. Among the political and social flashpoints were Lincoln’s issuance of the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation; the suspension of habeas corpus and press freedom; the institution of a military draft; the promotion (by Lincoln’s elite Protestant supporters) of a new ethic of civic philanthropy, industrial progress, and national expansion; and the bitter Presidential campaign of 1864. Visitors will be brought into the setting of Shiloh Presbyterian Church (on the corner of Prince and Lafayette Street) on “Jubilee Day,” January 1, 1863, when emancipation was proclaimed; re-live the four-day Manhattan insurrection of July 1863 known as the Draft Riots, which claimed more than 120 lives before they were put down by troops from the 7th Regiment, recalled from Gettysburg; glimpse the crowded pavilions of the loyalists’ Metropolitan Sanitary Fair of April 1864; and see a multitude of cartoons, engravings, pamphlets, flags, posters, lanterns, and campaign memorabilia.
The evolution of Lincoln’s image—from Railsplitter to Jokester to Tyrant to Gentle Father—is the subject of Gallery 5, Eyes on Lincoln. Four iconic portraits, all enormously influential, mostly from life, and none ever displayed together in such a suite—one by Thomas Hicks, one by William Marshall, and two by Francis Bicknell Carpenter (of Lincoln alone and of the assembled family)—anchor the investigation. Interactive programs allow visitors to learn more about the creation and re-production of these images, their iconographic roots in western art, and the artists’ biographies.
The last major gallery, The Loss of a Great Man (1865), takes the visitor from Lincoln’s victory in the 1864 election to his New York funeral procession, perhaps the largest such event yet held in world history, involving hundreds of thousands of participants and inspiring an outburst of mourning among whites and blacks, Christians and Jews, that signaled the transfiguration of the late president’s heretofore-controversial image. A video documents the triumphant events of March and April 1865: the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment outlawing slavery, the delivery of the second inaugural address, and the surrender of the Confederate armies. In New York, a gigantic parade celebrated Lincoln on March 5, 1865. And then, after Lincoln’s assassination on April 15, the fierce political antagonisms surrounding Lincoln suddenly evaporated, and a new image emerged of a Christ-like, compassionate, and brooding hero who gave his life so that the nation would enjoy a “new birth of freedom.”
A superb collection of memorial material produced and distributed in the city is accompanied by artwork representing Lincoln’s apotheosis. Included will be the recently discovered scrapbook of a New Yorker who roamed the streets after Lincoln’s death sketching the impromptu written and visual tributes that sprung up in shop windows and on building façades in the wake of Lincoln’s murder. Perhaps the greatest memorial of all was New Yorker Walt Whitman’s poem “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.”
As a coda, the exhibition concludes with a brief tour of how New Yorkers have continued to memorialize Lincoln—in the names of streets and institutions; in the development of an egalitarian national creed; in a powerful sense of nationhood; and in a constantly evolving sense that this is the most representative and inspiring of all Americans.
Catalogue
The exhibition will be accompanied by an illustrated, full-color catalogue edited by guest historian Harold Holzer, who has also contributed an introductory essay and a chapter on the city’s publishers and the making of Lincoln’s image in New York. Additional essays have been written by historians Jean Harvey Baker, Catherine Clinton, James Horton, Michael Kammen, Barnet Schechter, Craig L. Symonds, and Frank J. Williams, with a preface by New-York Historical Society President and CEO Louise Mirrer, all featuring seldom-seen pictures, artifacts, and documents from the Society collections.
Support for Lincoln and New York
Objects in the exhibition come from the New-York Historical Society’s own rich and extensive collections; from the Gilder Lehrman Collection, on deposit at the New-York Historical Society; Brooks Brothers; and from other major institutions including the Library of Congress, The Cooper Union, Chicago History Museum, John Hay Library at Brown University, Union League Club, New York Military Museum, Cornell University, the University of Illinois, and the New York Public Library.
In addition to generous funding from JPMorgan Chase & Co., the U.S. Department of Education Underground Railroad Educational and Cultural (URR) Program, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, additional project support for the exhibition and related programs has been provided by The Bodman Foundation, public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the Motorola Foundation, Brooks Brothers, Con Edison, and the New York Council for the Humanities. Thirteen, a WNET.ORG station, is media sponsor.
About the New-York Historical Society
Established in 1804, the New-York Historical Society (N-YHS) comprises New York’s oldest museum and a nationally renowned research library. N-YHS collects, preserves, and interprets American history and art. Its mission is to make these collections accessible to the broadest public and increase understanding of American history through exhibitions, public programs, and research that reveal the dynamism of history and its impact on the world today. N-YHS holdings cover four centuries of American history and comprise one of the world’s greatest collections of historical artifacts, American art, and other materials documenting the history of the United States as seen through the prism of New York City and State.
Photo: Print by Currier and Ives "The Rail Candidate, 1860" Lithograph. New-York Historical Society.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Hyde Collection To Present 'Andrew Wyeth: An American Legend'
By Editorial Staff
The Hyde Collection in Glens Falls, Warren County, has announced that its major 2010 summer exhibition will be "Andrew Wyeth: An American Legend" will be on view from June 12 through September 5, 2010. The exhibition, organized by The Hyde Collection, will cover a broad span of Wyeth's work including sections devoted to early coastal watercolors and landscape paintings, as well as a look at Wyeth’s models, his interest in vernacular architecture, and his connection to both the Regionalist tradition and Magic Realism.
The exhibition will comprise approximately fifty works, with the core coming from the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine. Featured in the exhibition will be examples of the artist’s works created in dry brush, watercolor, pencil, and tempera - including The Hyde’s own Wyeth watercolor – The Ledge and the Island, 1937- as well as works on loan from museums and private collections.
The exhibit will be curated by Hyde Executive Director David F. Setford and Deputy Director and Chief Curator Erin B. Coe and will be the first opportunity since the Wyeth's death earlier this year to begin to critically reevaluate his contribution to American twentieth century art.
The Museum will produce a catalogue to accompany the exhibition and also hopes to collaborate with other arts organizations in the Glens Falls region in coordinating a series of lectures, exhibitions, and performances with Wyeth-related themes.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Weekly New York History Blogging Round-Up
By Editorial Staff
- Fenimore Art Museum: A 17th Century Calling Card
- Ephemeral New York: The Rustic Cabins of Manhattan
- Brooklynology: Brooklyn And The Atomic Age
- Bowery Boys: Walt Disney's 7 Big Apple Moments
- Cafe Hayek: Paul Krugman’s Faux History
- Carole's Thoughtful Spot: Walkway Over the Hudson
- Peeling Back the Bark: Bringing Ski Jumping to Chicago [1930s]
- The Uncataloged Museum: Ten Ways To Be Better
- Ephemeral NY: Mabel Dodge’s Bohemian Salons
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Symposium: Early Transportation in The Mohawk Valley
By Editorial Staff
The 2009 Western Frontier Symposium, "Moving Frontiers: Early Transportation in the Mohawk Valley," will be held this weekend, October 17 - 18, 2009, at Fulton Montgomery Community College in Johnstown. This year's symposium will explore the ways that transportation changed the culture, economy and social life in the Mohawk Valley from 1700 to 1890. As turnpikes, canals and railroads made it easier to move people and goods, New York¹s colonial frontier became the central corridor into America's midlands.
The events keynote speaker will be Daniel Larkin, noted author of books on railroad and canal engineering, and editor of Erie Canal: New York's Gift to The Nation
Other symposium scholars will present fascinating insights into various aspects of the region's transportation history - from native American trails and early canals, through the glory days of the Erie Canal and into the railroad age and the first bicycle craze.
Participants can learn about early roads, the businesses that served merchants and travelers, and the impact of these movements on the Palatine and Dutch settlements of the Mohawk Valley and then spend a day at historic sites throughout the region, viewing special exhibits related to transportation history and discussing specific topics with additional speakers in the field.
All presentations are free and open to the public, thanks to the generosity of the New York Council for the Humanities a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities
Tickets for Special Events & Packages are available for a fee. (Pre-registration required.)
The event is sponsored by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, Fulton-Montgomery Community College, NYS Archives Partnership Trust, Mohawk Valley Heritage Corridor Commission, Arkell Museum at Canajoharie, Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor & related Mohawk Valley historic sites
For additional details visit the website: www.oldfortjohnson.org/symposium.html
CFP: Berkshire Conference of Women Historians
By Editorial Staff
The Berkshire Conference of Women Historians is holding its next conference at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst on June 9-12, 2011. 2011 marks the 15th Berkshire Conference on Women's History and the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day, which was first celebrated in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland and is now honored by more than sixty countries around the globe. The choice of “Generations” reflects this transnational intellectual, political, and organizational heritage as well as a desire to explore related questions such as:
* How have women’s generative experiences – from production and reproduction to creativity and alliance building – varied across time and space? How have these been appropriated and represented by contemporaries and scholars alike?
* What are the politics of “generation”? Who is encouraged? Who is condemned or discouraged? How has this changed over time?
* Is a global perspective compatible with generational (in the genealogical sense) approaches to the past that tend to reinscribe national/regional/racial boundaries?
* What challenges do historians of women, gender, and sexuality face as these fields and their practitioners mature?
To engender further, open-ended engagement with these and other issues, the 2011 conference will include workshops dedicated to discussing precirculated papers on questions and problems (epistemological, methodological, substantive) provoked by the notion of "Generations."
The process for submitting and vetting papers and panels has changed substantially from previous years, so please read the instructions carefully. To encourage transnational discussions, panels will be principally organized along thematic rather than national lines and therefore proposals will be vetted by a transnational group of scholars with expertise in a particular thematic, rather than geographic, field.
All proposals must be directed to ONE of the following subcommittees (listed below) and should be submitted electronically. Please list a second choice for the subcommittee to vet your proposal but do not submit to more than one subcommittee. Instructions for submission will be posted on the Berkshire Conference website (www.berksconference.org) by November 1, 2009.
Preference will be given to discussions of any topic across national boundaries and to work that addresses sexuality, race, and labor in any context, with special consideration for pre-modern (ancient, medieval, early modern) periods. However, unattached papers and proposals that fall within a single nation/region will also be given full consideration.
As a forum dedicated to encouraging innovative, interdisciplinary scholarship and transnational conversation, the Berkshire conference continues to encourage submissions from graduate students, international scholars, independent scholars, filmmakers, and to welcome a variety of disciplinary perspectives.
Paper abstracts should be no longer than 250 words; panel (2-3 papers and a comment), roundtable (3 or more short papers) and workshop (1-2 precirculated papers) proposals should also include a summary abstract of no more than 500 words. Each submission must include the cover form and a short cv for each presenter. If you have questions about the most appropriate subcommittee for your proposal or problems with electronic submission, please direct them to Jennifer Spear (jms25@sfu.ca).
DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION: March 1, 2010.
SUBCOMMITTEES:
* Beauty and the Body, Stephanie Camp
* Migrations: Race, Gender and Activism, Annelise Orleck
* Economies, Labors, and Consumption, Tracey Deutsch
* War, Violence, and Terror, Madhavi Kale
* Youth and Aging, Jennifer Spear
* Race in Global Perspective, Marilyn Lake
* Health and Medicine, Julie Livingston
* Sexuality, Kathy Brown
* Religion: Belief, Practice, Communities, Madhavi Kale
* Politics and the State, Margot Canaday
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