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This Weeks New York History Web Highlights

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Each Friday afternoon New York History compiles for our readers a collection of the week’s top web links about New York’s state and local history. You can find all our weekly round-ups here.

Subscribe! More than 550 people get New York History each day via E-Mail, RSS, or Twitter or Facebook updates.

Lecture to Focus on Albanys Railroad History

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Although Albany remains a vital railroad junction, New York’s capital city was once a major hub of the railway industry. Can it become one again? On Sunday, October 24, at 2:00 p.m., the Albany Institute of History & Art welcomes Harvard University Professor John Stilgoe, who will give a lecture entitled, Albany’s Railroads: A Once and Future Hub.

Professor Stilgoe recalls the bustling railroad lines that once converged on Albany, examines how curtailment of passenger and freight service has affected our region, and imagines a visionary railway revitalization that transcends the now-dominant interstate highway network. He holds joint appointments to the Harvard faculties of Design and Arts and Sciences. He is the winner of the Francis Parkman, George Hilton, and Bradford Williams medals, the AIA award for collaborative research, and the Charles C. Eldredge prize for art history research.

This lecture is free and open to the public, and is made possible by a grant from the New York Council for the Humanities. Admission to the lecture does not include museum admission.

This Weeks Top New York History News

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Each Friday morning New York History compiles for our readers the previous week’s top stories about New York’s state and local history. You can find all our weekly news round-ups here.

Subscribe! More than 550 people get New York History each day via E-Mail, RSS, or Twitter or Facebook updates.

Hear Tales of Hauntings at The Farmers’ Museum

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During the most haunting time of the fall season, The Farmers’ Museum invites visitors to experience “Things That Go Bump In The Night.” Join museum interpreters as they lead you about the shadowy grounds and recount the many mysteries and ghostly happenings that have occurred within the buildings making up the Museum’s historic village. These tours will be held on three nights only: Saturday, October 23- Friday, October 29- and Saturday, October 30, beginning at 5:30 p.m.

Museum guides will lead visitors through the darkened 19th-century village by lantern, stopping at various buildings throughout, including the Blacksmith’s Shop and Bump Tavern, weaving ghostly tales adapted from the Louis C. Jones’ classic, Things That Go Bump In the Night, a timeless record of haunted history and restless spirits in New York State. Participants will hear stories associated with the museum’s buildings as in the tale of a young ghost sighted by staff and guests in Bump Tavern and the mysterious early morning strikes on the blacksmith’s anvil.

These hour-long tours will be held every half-hour between 5:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. Reservations are required. Admission is $10 per person (ages 3 and up). Please call Meg Preston at (607) 547-1452.

Iroquois Stories for Thanksgiving Season

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The Iroquois Indian Museum in Howes Cave, NY will present “Iroquois Stories for the Season of Thanksgiving” with writer and storyteller Susan Fantl Spivack on Sunday, October 24th at 2 p.m. Museum visitors will enjoy traditional Iroquois stories such as “The Brave Woman and the Flying Head” and “The Talking Stone.”

Ms. Spivack teaches poetry writing workshops to children and adults, and since 1991, has brought her program, &#8220Tricks of the Trade: Stories to Take Home, to libraries and scouting groups. Ms. Spivack conducted The Community Library Story Hour in Cobleskill, NY for thirty years, and has told Iroquois myths and tales at the Iroquois Indian Museum of Schoharie County where she has served as an adjunct educator.

For more information visit the Iroquois Indian Museum online at www.iroquoismuseum.org, e-mail [email protected], or call 518-296-8949.

Troys Little Italy Midwife Records Online

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Troy area researchers will be interested in the almost 200 midwife records covering 600 surnames that have just been added to the Troy Irish Genealogy Website. These records mostly are for infants born to Italian immigrants who lived in the little Italy section of South Troy. A number of the records, however, are for Syrian immigrants. The records, which range from 1909 to 1923, were completed by the midwife Alesandra Matera, a nurse who lived at 250 Fourth Street in Troy.

The Rensselaer County Historical Society in Troy, New York provided the Troy Irish Genealogy Society access to their copies of these records to develop this on-line database.

You can view these records by going to the Troy Irish Genealogy website at www.rootsweb.com/~nytigs/ and click on PROJECTS and then click on MATERA MIDWIFE RECORDS. There are three separate files for the records covering the child’s name, the father’s name and the mother’s name. Clicking on the alphabetical listing of names on the left side of the page will bring up the individual record for that name.

Illustration: 1880 Map of Troy’s Little Italy Neighborhood.

This Weeks New York History Web Highlights

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Each Friday afternoon New York History compiles for our readers a collection of the week’s top weblinks about New York’s state and local history. You can find all our weekly round-ups here.

Subscribe! More than 550 people get New York History each day via E-Mail, RSS, or Twitter or Facebook updates.

This Weeks Top New York History News

admin

Each Friday morning New York History compiles for our readers the previous week’s top stories about New York’s state and local history. You can find all our weekly news round-ups here.

Subscribe! More than 550 people get New York History each day via E-Mail, RSS, or Twitter or Facebook updates.

Champlain Maritime Museum Storytelling Festival Sat

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Gather in the museum’s intimate theater or in an Adirondack-style lodge to experience lake history in song and story at Lake Champlain Maritime Museum’s Storytelling Festival, Saturday October 16. Festival activities take place from noon to 5pm, rain or shine, at the museum’s scenic campus just west of Vergennes on the shore of Lake Champlain.

At noon, Russell Van Dervoort will share family stories from over a century of adventure operating tugboats on the Hudson River, Erie and Champlain Canals. Van Dervoort will also personalize autographed copies of his new book, Canal Canaries and Other Tough Old Birds, recently published by LCMM. At 1:30pm, the student actors of Burlington’s Very Merry Theater will lead theatrical activities, games, and present a performance of The Velveteen Rabbit.

Their presentation is a special occasion at “The Roost,” LCMM’s Adirondack-style lodge that served as a children’s theater for Camp Marbury in the 1920s. At 3:00pm, the traditional musicians of Atlantic Crossing team up with LCMM director Art Cohn to offer original songs and illustrated stories of life on Lake Champlain, interweaving narration, images and music to paint a picture of Lake Champlain and its people. Along the way, Art Cohn shares his personal adventures as a nautical archaeologist and his unique perspective on the lake. The show ends with a brief discussion of the current state of lake resources and the need for conservation.

Lake Champlain Maritime Museum is open daily from 10-5. Festival admission includes all performances, a day at the museum, a 20% discount at Red Mill Restaurant, and helps preserve Lake Champlain’s history and archaeology. Enjoy over a dozen exhibit buildings, antique boats in the new Hazelett Watercraft Center, and replica historic vessels at North Harbor. Find out more online at www.lcmm.org or call 802 475-2022.