The court house in Kingston is one of the many historic buildings in an area commonly referred to as the Stockade District or Uptown Kingston. This court house has stood at the present location in some form for centuries. It is not only linked to the founding of New York State in 1777, but also to Sojourner Truth. It was in this court house that she successfully sued for the return of her son Peter. Read more
Month: June 2012
Historic Farm Tour Focusing on New Paltz Area
CIRCA, a tour of historic farmhouses this Sunday, June 10th, aims to highlight the rich and varied architecture that remains from the late 18th and 19th centuries, when the New Paltz area was part of the Nation’s breadbasket.
CIRCA will feature six local homes, all of which have strong ties to this pivotal period in America’s history. Also included on the tour is an 18th century Dutch-style barn, today home to Adair Vineyards, and an artist’s studio created from a unique early 19th century stone barn.
It was the bounty of the Hudson Valley and the industrious nature of our 18th and 19th century farmers that helped feed our young country – especially burgeoning cities such as New York.
Farming in this era involved individuals of all social strata, from the wealthiest of gentleman farmers, to the hardworking tenant farmers who made it possible for the prosperous to extract wealth from the huge tracts of land they controlled.
Among the homes included on the tour is early 19th century home of Thaddeus Hait. Hait, from a well-to-do Westchester County family of the time, moved to the then newly-formed town of Plattekill. By 1828, he had accrued 153 acres, some of which is still farmed today. His home is an interesting example of how the refined Neoclassical style was interpreted in a decidedly rural setting. The result is an otherwise modest home that endures as an example of the optimism and aspiration of its builder. Outside, the home features an unusual second floor “Juliet” balcony. Inside, high style mixes with exposed stone walls and brick floors. The current owners have lovingly preserved the home and the surrounding outbuildings.
Two short miles away, as Hait staked his claim, Josiah Hasbrouck and his wife Hylah Bevier lived in a striking Federal-style showpiece they completed in 1814. This home, known today as Locust Lawn, was at the heart of a massive 1,000 acre gentleman’s farm. Josiah and Hylah, who each were descended from the earliest Huguenot settlers of the area, presided over a home truly remarkable for its time. Lived in by three generations of their family, the home was shuttered in the 1880?s – in effect turning it into a time capsule of one family’s unique history. A preserved museum home today, the home has been closed to the public for the past two years and is normally open only by appointment.
On the other end of the spectrum is a humble home owned by DuBois Hasbrouck and dating to the late 18th century. This home, built for tenant farmers, represents the lives of the families who toiled to get a toehold on the American dream. This simple one-and-a-half story home, expanded over time, still sits along a gentle stream with views of the fields all around.
Capping off the tour will be a reception at the Maplestone Inn, a substantial stone house built by John L. Jenkins and Mary Catherine Broadhead in late 18th century. Innkeepers Sean and Patty Roche have generously agreed to open their renovated streamside barn for the reception.
CIRCA will be held on Sunday, June 10th, from 11am to 5:30pm. Advance tickets are $25 and can be purchased at www.casaulster.org or by calling (845) 339-7543. Day of tickets are $30 each. The event is presented by Court Appointed Special Advocates for Children (CASA), which works to ensure that foster care is temporary and that all children can grow up in safe, loving and permanent homes. CASA was founded in Ulster County in 1987 and is one of over 950 CASA programs across the country. More information about CASA can be found at www.casaulster.org.
Peter Feinman: The MANY / Museumwise Conference
On April 22-24, MANY and Museumwise held their annual conference in Albany. The two organizations are in the processing of merging which should be a good thing. Due to all the commotion over the NYS Regents, the Core Curriculum, and the state requirements in social studies for high school graduation, I have been delayed in posting about that conference. Read more
Stony Point Battlefield Offers Childrens Programs
This summer Stony Point Battlefield will offer a history program for children entering 5th and 6th grade in the fall of 2012. Each session will take place on three consecutive weeks on a Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. The program will repeat each week. The 3-day sessions will include interactive lessons that teach children about the colonial times, the American Revolution, and 19th century lighthouses. Children will enjoy hands-on learning and participate in exciting outdoor recreational activities.
Campers can take part in 18th century fire making and cooking, secret message deciphering using quill pens and ink, and interactive demonstrations of 18th century medicine, clothing, and blacksmithing. Projects include making musket balls, 18th century food, candles, and lanterns. This program focuses on creating a fun and relaxed atmosphere for children to learn about history.
Session 1: July 18th, 19th and 20th: 9:00 AM – 1:00 PM
Session 2: July 25th, 26th and 27th: 9:00 AM- 1:00 PM
Session 3: August 1st, 2nd and 3rd: 9:00 AM- 1:00 PM
***Cost: $125.00 per 3 day session***
For more information, please call: 845 786-2521.
New Erie Canalway Map and Guide Issued
The Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor Commission has released its 2012 Erie Canalway Map & Guide to introduce residents and visitors to the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor. Copies can be obtained at 150 sites, including visitor centers, libraries, cultural heritage sites, and canal locks all along the New York State Canal System, and online.
The eight page newspaper-style guide includes a map of the National Heritage Corridor, as well as a list of canal-related cultural heritage sites, boat rental and tour companies, places to cycle on the Erie Canalway Trail, and more.
The map and guide, along with the website www.eriecanalway.org, are among the efforts by the heritage corridor commission to increase awareness about the waterway, trail, and national significance of the Erie Canal.
N-Y Historical Society Planning WWII & NYC Exhibit
The most widespread, destructive, and consequential conflict in history will be the subject of WWII & NYC, a major new exhibition planned for the New-York Historical Society from October 5, 2012 through May 27, 2013. The exhibit is expected to feature New York City’s multifaceted role in the war, and commemorate the 800,000 New Yorkers who served in combat while also exploring the many ways in which those who remained on the home front contributed to the war effort.
WWII & NYC will examine a metropolis massively mobilized for war, requiring unprecedented cooperation among government, business leaders, and average working citizens and affecting vast areas of the urban landscape.
A sprawling exhibition, installed throughout all floors of New-York Historical, is expected to include feature more than 300 objects, including artifacts, paintings, maps, models, photographs, posters, and other graphic materials, film footage, music, radio broadcasts, and newly recorded eyewitness accounts. Through these materials, themes ranging from the mobilization of workers to the struggles over civil rights, from the frenzy of rapid shipbuilding to the celebration of V-J Day in Times Square will be explored.
“If the American men and women who fought and won World War II can be described as the Greatest Generation, then New York’s unsurpassed contributions to the war effort can be said to have earned it the title ‘Greatest City,’” stated Louise Mirrer, President and CEO of New-York Historical. “What award-winning WWII & NYC curator Marci Reaven will show in this fascinating, and often astonishing exhibition, is how central the city was to a war whose battles were fought thousands of miles away—a story little known by most people today.”
The exhibition team for WWII & NYC also includes Kenneth T. Jackson, former president of the New-York Historical Society, who is chief historian for the project. The exhibition will draw upon New-York Historical’s extensive collections and on important loans from the U.S. Navy, Smithsonian Institution, the Mariners’ Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, among other institutions.
Plan of the Exhibition
WWII & NYC begins in the years before Pearl Harbor, when New York had already become the most important industrial metropolis on earth, the busiest port anywhere, the center of the world’s financial markets and the largest, richest city on the planet. As a result, New York was also at the center of both isolationist and interventionist sentiment as Americans debated whether to enter the war.
Among the materials in the exhibition bringing these debates to life are a 1941 “Wanted” poster produced by Fight for Freedom, Inc., an interventionist group, depicting Adolf Hitler as a criminal, and an October 1941 editorial cartoon in the leftist New York newspaper PM by Theodore Seuss Geisel—better known as Dr. Seuss—criticizing the isolationists.
Following the passage of the Lend-Lease bill in 1941, which enabled the United States to supply the Allies, New York became one of the chief ports for war materiel shipments to Europe. A photograph from September 9, 1941 shows more than 100 British, Dutch, and Norwegian merchant ships passing through the Narrows to start their voyages across the Atlantic.
When the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor at last propelled the U.S. into the war, New York City’s maritime, industrial and transportation infrastructures would be entirely mobilized. The urban landscape took on a martial air, as defenses in the harbor were strengthened, old forts were updated and docks became high security zones. A painting by Thomas Hart Benton, Embarkation—Prelude to Death (Year of Peril, 1941-1942), was based on sketches the artist made in Brooklyn in August 1942, as the first American troops prepared to depart for Africa.
The presence of troops, refugees, and the wartime industries gave New York’s creative and commercial bustle a military tone. A photograph of Pennsylvania Station in August 1942 shows the concourse crowded with soldiers arriving from points across the United States, on their way to embark for North Africa and Europe. Also on view is Irving Boyer’s painting Prospect Park (ca. 1942-1944), which captures the raucous, sensual mood of the wartime city through a scene of soldiers and sailors enjoying a night on the town, which the artist glimpsed from a subway train at the Prospect Park BMT station.
The publishing and advertising industries instilled a sense of national purpose among Americans during wartime, convincing them to stay the course. Target No. 1 New York City, a 1942 poster designed by the influential graphic artist E. McKnight Kauffer, evokes the atmosphere of fear and urgency in the city after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Macy’s suspended its Thanksgiving Day Parade in 1942, consigning the balloon materials to a salvage yard to be used in the war effort, and a Macy’s advertising poster expresses confidence that the balloons will return in the future. A 1943 advertisement for Maidenform bras, created in reaction to threatened government restrictions on fabric and metal supplies, emphasizes that women workers are essential to the war effort and that brassieres are “a vital necessity to women at work.”
As husbands, sons, fathers, and brothers left their homes to serve, their wives, mothers and sisters mobilized for the war effort on the home front. Among other materials illustrating this theme, the exhibition will include recruiting posters, a dress uniform and photographs of the Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service (WAVES), established in June 1942 as the female branch of the U.S. Naval Reserve, its members serving on shore duty to free men for duty at sea. The WAVES’s training headquarters was at Hunter College in the Bronx (now Lehman College), where more than 90,000 WAVES were trained from 1943 to 1945.
Jobs stemming from the wartime economy helped many New Yorkers escape from poverty, offered new opportunities for minority groups, and inspired movements for fair employment and civil rights. An exhibition highlight is Jacob Lawrence’s painting No. 2, Main Control Panel, Nerve Center of a Ship (1944), one of a series of paintings inspired by his service on the USS Sea Cloud as part of the first racially integrated Coast Guard unit in the U.S. armed forces. The exhibition also will feature a dozen profiles of individuals from various backgrounds in the Armed Forces, representing the nearly 800,000 New Yorkers who served in World War II.
Public Programs and Publications
In conjunction with WWII & NYC, New-York Historical will present a range of evening lectures and conversations that illustrate the dramatic effect of the war on all facets of American life. Among the speakers who will be participating in the series are Madeleine Albright, on her new memoir of growing up in Europe during WWII- Ken Follett, on his new historical fiction novel about the experiences of five families during the war- and Robert Morgenthau, in conversation with Tom Brokaw, on his WWII experience.
In addition, the lectures and conversations series will be supplemented by musical performances and New-York Historical’s inaugural film series. Among the special guests who will deliver opening remarks before the film screenings are Adam Gopnik of The New Yorker- Ron Simon, Curator of Television and Radio at the Paley Center for Media- and Catherine Wyler, Producer of the film Memphis Belle.
An 80-page essay with the
same title as the exhibition, will be written by Kenneth T. Jackson and published by Scala Publishers Ltd (October, 2012).
Photo: Massed infantry units march up Fifth Avenue in June 1942.
History Speaks Costumed Tours of FDR Home
The Roosevelt-Vanderbilt National Historic Sites announce a new living history program allowing visitors to experience the FDR Home through the eyes of the Roosevelts’ staff.
“History Speaks” is a one-hour tour which introduces the visitor to the Butler, Cook, Maid, and one of FDR’s Secret Service agents. Visitors will step back in time to 1939 and be guided through the house by these costumed interpreters who reveal the inner workings of the Roosevelt household , including hosting a special visit of England’s King George VI and Queen Elizabeth to Hyde Park earlier that year. This marked the first time in American history that a reigning British Monarch had visited the United States.
Sarah Olson, Superintendent of the Roosevelt-Vanderbilt National Historic Sites, commented: “We’re excited to offer the public a unique way to engage with our national history, at a dramatic moment in Franklin Roosevelt’s Presidency.”
This first person costumed interpretive program will be offered on Saturday June 9, July 14, August 11, September 8, and October 8, 2012 throughout the day. Reservations can be made by calling 845-229-5320. Regular admission fee applies.
Doris Kenyons North Country Connections
A frequent visitor to Ausable Forks (and once a resident) Doris Kenyon starred in nearly fifty silent films, including 1924’s Monsieur Bocaire with living legend Rudolph Valentino, and 1925’s A Thief in Paradise with Ronald Colman. During her long career, she played opposite all the great stars of the day, among them Loretta Young, Spencer Tracy, Ralph Bellamy, John Barrymore, Melvyn Douglas, Robert Young, and Adolph Menjou. Her fame was such that newborn Doris Kappelhoff (in 1922) was named after Kenyon. Kappelhoff would gain great fame under her stage name, Doris Day.One of the leading men in several of Kenyon’s movies became the leading man in her personal life. Milton Sills was a major star of the era, and he and Doris had performed together many times. In May 1926, Doris announced she had purchased her brother’s camp, and a few weeks later came an update—she and Milt Sills would soon marry … on the shores of Silver Lake!
The ceremony took place amidst the October splendor of the leaf color change, creating a sensational backdrop at the camp Doris called “Moose Missie.” They honeymooned through the Adirondacks (two days in a suite of rooms in Agora at the Lake Placid Club), plus Niagara Falls, the Grand Canyon, and Yellowstone Park. Meanwhile, workmen were completing a beautiful mansion on their sixty-acre estate in Hollywood, California.The wedding had been announced in May 1926, but was delayed until October due to Doris being ill. (Seven months after the ceremony, she gave birth to a son, Kenyon Clarence Sills.) Following the wedding and lengthy honeymoon, Doris took some time off from acting, but returned soon to star in several movies with her husband. In effect, they were the industry’s “power-couple” of the day, starring in movies and receiving constant media coverage.In 1929, they passed the summer at Silver Lake, where Milton was recovering from illness. Doris spent several weeks at the camp, but she also did about a month of vaudeville performances before the two of them returned to making movies. And, upon special request, she served in August as a judge for the baby parade and pageant in Lake Placid’s summer carnival.
In 1929, Doris gave a concert performance in New York City, confirming that she still had a great singing voice. At the same time, unlike many other silent-film stars, she smoothly transitioned into the world of “talkies,” remaining one of Hollywood’s top stars.
In September 1930, tragedy struck Doris’ life. Shortly after playing tennis with his family, Milton Sills, 48, suddenly collapsed and died of a heart attack. Doris, just 33 at the time, was devastated by the loss, burying herself in work to help ease the pain.She had been recognized in the past for other skills—writing, poetry, and as a pianist—but it was singing that Doris really missed. Plans had already been made for a return to regular concert performances, and after the death of Sills, Doris went on a world tour.After many successful European shows, she returned to the United States with a renewed interest in her film career. Through the 1930s, Doris remained a major movie star, appearing in at least fourteen more films. She was also quite busy on the marital front. First came Syracuse real estate broker Arthur Hopkins in 1933, a union that lasted only a few months (annulled). Next, Doris was married to Albert Lasker in 1938 for a year (divorced). Finally, she married Bronislav Mlynarski in 1947 (that one lasted twenty-four years, ending with Mlynarski’s death in 1971).Through the WW II years, Doris again supported the troops by singing with the USO. In the 1950s, she acted in television shows, sang on the radio, and performed two roles in radio soap operas. From silent films to the advent of television, she had done it all.It was an incredible career spanning the Metropolitan Opera, stage, screen, vaudeville, concerts, radio, poetry, television, and writing. She was a success at everything she tried (even marriage, in the end). One of Hollywood’s lasting stars, Doris Kenyon passed away from heart trouble in September 1979, just a few days shy of her 82nd birthday.Photos: Top?Poster from a Kenyon movie. Bottom?Doris Kenyon in A Thief in Paradise.The Doris Kenyon story is one of 51 original North Country history pieces appearing in Adirondack Gold: 50+ New & True Stories You’re Sure to Love (352 pp.), a recent release by author Lawrence Gooley, owner of Bloated Toe Publishing.
New York Archives Conference, June 6-8
The New York Archives Conference (NYAC) is an annual gathering of New York State archivists, curators, historians, and anyone else with an interest in the preservation and accessibility of archives and primary historical resources. This year’s NYAC meeting will take place at Nazareth College in Rochester from June 6-8.
NYAC provides an excellent platform for both new and established archives professionals to share their work, exchange ideas, learn about emerging trends, and become further involved in the professional archives community. This year’s conference will feature workshops and information sessions on managing digital collections, mobile apps for archives, facilitating genealogical research in archives, future plans for the New York Heritage Project, and much more.
Conference attendants will also have the opportunity to tour area repositories, including the Nazareth College Archives and the Cary Graphic Arts Collection at the Rochester Institute of Technology. The conference’s plenary speaker will be Marie Holden, Chief of Archival Services at the New York State Archives, who will offer advice on disaster preparedness for archival institutions based on success stories and lessons learned from 2011’s Tropical Storm Lee.
For those interested, the full conference program is available here. It’s also not too late to register!
Womens Rights NHP Has New Interpretation, Education Chief
Women’s Rights National Historical Park is pleased to announce that Noemi “Ami” Ghazala has been selected to lead the park’s Interpretation and Education division. Ghazala, a native of New York City with ten years of experience with the National Park Service (NPS), is expected to relocate to the Finger Lakes region in mid-August.
Superintendent Tammy Duchesne said, “Ami is a perfect fit for Women’s Rights National Historical Park. She is dynamic, creative, forward thinking and knows that for the NPS to be relevant for its next 100 years we must engage our local communities, become educational resources for schools and life-long learners, incorporate new technologies, and commit to reaching new and diverse audiences. Ami has been incredibly successful in doing this in several National Parks and we know she will bring this vision, leadership, and energy to the park and community.”
Ghazala’s NPS work began at the Statue of Liberty National Monument/Ellis Island Immigration Museum. In 2007, she wrote a children’s book called, “From Many Lands, The Ellis Story”. In 2008, she transferred to Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve, located in the Greater New Orleans area. As Education Coordinator and later District Supervisor, she focused efforts on partnering with local schools to bring urban children to their local national park, working closely with low-performing schools and communities-of-color.
Ghazala was promoted to Chief of Education and Resource Management at Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park in 2010. In Dayton, she worked closely with legislated park partners to reopen African American poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar’s home to the public.
A graduate of St. John’s University, Ghazala traveled overseas as a freelance photojournalist focusing much of her writing on women’s issues. Other private sector experiences include published writings and photo-essays in Egypt, managing a small business in New York City, and teaching overseas and in the United States.