Last Chance for 2012 Woman of History Award

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Time is running out to nominate your candidate for the Martha Washington Woman of History Award which will be bestowed by Washington’s Headquarters State Historic Site in March, 2012. The deadline to submit nominations is Friday, January 6, 2012. The nomination field is open to any woman who has cultivated interest and awareness of Hudson Valley history, either locally or nationally.

Previous award-winners include Janet Dempsey, local historian and author, Barbara Bedell, Times Herald Record columnist, Mary McTamaney, City of Newburgh historian and, most recently, Mara Farrell, community activist.

The nomination form is available online (pdf).

Illustration: Martha Washington

Lecture: Famous Murder Case at the Adk Museum

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The first program of the Adirondack Museum’s 2012 Cabin Fever Sunday series, &#8220Chester Gillette: The Adirondacks’ Most Famous Murder Case&#8221 will be held on Sunday, January 15, 2012.

It’s the stuff movies are made of- a secret relationship, a pregnancy and a murder. Over a century after it happened in Big Moose Lake, Herkimer County, the Chester Gillette murder case of 1906 is the murder that will never die. The murder of Grace Brown and the case following was the subject of Theodore Dreiser’s 1925 book An American Tragedy, and the Hollywood movie A Place in the Sun.

The story continues to be told today with a 1999 Opera at the Metropolitan Opera in New York and in a 2011 documentary North Woods Elegy. Author Craig Brandon, considered among the world’s foremost experts on the case, and author of Murder in the Adirondacks, will present and lead a discussion.

Craig Brandon is a national award-winning author of six books of popular history and public affairs and a former award-winning reporter.

Held in the Auditorium, the program will begin at 1:30 p.m. Cabin Fever Sundays are offered at no charge to museum members or children of elementary school age and younger. The fee for non-members is $5.00. The Museum Store and Visitor Center will be open from noon to 4 p.m. For additional information, please call (518) 352-7311, ext. 128 or visit
www.adirondackmuseum.org.

Fort Ticonderoga Adds Winter Lecture Series

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Fort Ticonderoga is introducing a Fort Fever Series of Sunday afternoon programs running from January through April. Presented by Fort Ticonderoga staff, the programs cost $10 each and are free for Members of the Friends of Fort Ticonderoga.

The program begins with a “Winter Landscape Snowshoe Trek” led by Curator of Landscape Heidi Karkoski on January 22. Explore the Fort Ticonderoga grounds and learn how to identify trees based on their winter (leaf-less) characteristics. Bring your own snowshoes (or hiking boots if conditions require).

On February 12, Curator of Collections Chris Fox will give attendees the chance to examine several original 18th-cenutry weapons from the Fort’s extensive collection in a program titled “The Roar of Musketry and the Cracking of Rifles: An Introduction to the Weapons of the 18th Century.”

In “Native Americans and the Patriot Cause” on March 25, Director of Interpretation Stuart Lilie will discuss the roles of Native groups that sided with the colonists during the American Revolution.

On April 22, Director of Education Rich Strum will talk about “Henry Knox: Beyond the Noble Train of Artillery.” Learn about the fascinating life of Henry Knox, from his first job in a book shop at age nine through his Revolutionary War career to his role as the nation’s first Secretary of War.

The Fort Fever Series is one of several new education initiatives at Fort Ticonderoga in 2012. You can learn more about these new programs, including Material Matters Seminar, the Garden & Landscape Symposium, and the Conference on Lake George & Lake Champlain, by visiting the Fort’s website at www.Fort-Ticonderoga.org and selecting the “Explore and Learn” button.

Photo: Fort Ticonderoga volunteer BR Delaney portrays a North East Woodland Native at a recent Fort Ticonderoga event (courtesy George Jones).

The Fame and Misfortune of Americas Signers

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With their first book, Signing Their Lives Away, authors Denise Kiernan and Joseph D’Agnese introduced readers to the 56 men risked their lives and livelihood to defy King George III and sign the Declaration of Independence. Some prospered and rose to the highest levels of United States government, while others had their homes and farms seized by British soldiers. Signer George Wythe was poisoned by his nephew- Button Gwinnett was killed in a duel- Robert Morris went to prison- Thomas Lynch was lost at sea- and of course Sam Adams achieved fame as a patriot/brewer

Now Kiernan and D’Agnese have turned their attention to the 39 men who put their names to the U.S. Constitution in Signing Their Rights Away: The Fame and Misfortune of the Men Who Signed the United States Constitution (Quirk Books, 2011).

The United States was on the verge of a vast political collapse. The Articles of Confederation were too weak to govern such a large new nation. Some citizens feared the idea of a strong central government. After Shay’s Rebellion, the wealthy feared anarchy and mob justice. Many predicted a civil war. But 1787, representatives from the states converged in Philadelphia to hammer out a governing system that would work. Many of them were battle-hardened militarists who’d served in the War- others were profound legal scholars. Many of them were just as quirky and flawed as the elected officials we have today.

• David Brearley of New Jersey wanted to erase state boundaries and start over.

• Rufus King of New York ran for president or vice president every few years, lost every time.

• Henry Williamson of North Carolina was said to believe in aliens.

• Robert Morris of Philadelphia went to prison and died penniless.

• John Rutledge of South Carolina attempted suicide twice.

• Gouverneur Morris of New York, a peg legged playboy, once set his sights on Dolly Madison.

With 39 mini-biographies, a Constitutional Cheat Sheet, and a dust jacket that unfolds into a facsimile of the Constitution, Signing Their Rights Away offers an entertaining and enlightening narrative for history buffs of all ages.

Note: Books noticed on this site have been provided by the publishers. Purchases made through this Amazon link help support this site.

CCNY Early-Career Historians Win NEH Awards

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Dr. Gregory Downs, associate professor of history, and Dr. Emily Greble, assistant professor of history at The City College of New York are recipients of faculty research awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The grants, announced by NEH December 9, will support book projects currently in development.

“The NEH fellowships are extremely competitive- only eight percent of applicants are successful. To have two early-career faculty members in the same department come up winners is remarkable,” said Dr. Geraldine Murphy, acting dean of humanities and the arts at CCNY, in congratulating them.

“Our department has undergone significant growth because The City College administration made a commitment to bring in energetic scholars and teachers,” said Professor Downs, who serves as department chair. “We’ve hired eight new faculty members in nine years and we are seeing that faith pay off.”

“We seem to have become a hotbed of new and innovative scholarship,” added Professor Greble. “We see the product of this intellectually stimulating environment in so many areas of departmental life, from the number of students we have been placing in top doctoral programs to the rigorous publication record of our faculty, to the winning of top academic fellowships like the NEH and the Rome Prize.”

Four Class of 2011 history majors are now in PhD programs at Yale University, Princeton University and University of Michigan. Associate Professor of History Barbara Ann Naddeo received the Rome Prize in 2010 for her scholarship on the city of Naples, Italy. Assistant Professor of History Adrienne Petty is conducting an oral history project on African-American farm owners in the South in collaboration with Professor Mark Schultz of Lewis University supported by an NEH award.

Professor Downs’ project, “The Ends of War: American Reconstruction and the Problems of Occupation,” examines the transition from Civil War to Reconstruction and asks why former slaves, loyal whites, Freedmen’s Bureau agents and northern emigres became disillusioned. The problems emanated not as much from free-labor ideology or racism as from a sharp reduction of military force in the region, which resulted in a power vacuum, he contends.

At the end of the Civil War, the U.S. government, fearing budget deficits, demobilized at such a rapid pace that within 18 months only 12,000 troops remained in the former Confederacy. As the military withdrew from different areas, hundreds of small wars broke out between former Confederates and organized freedmen.

Professor Downs attributes the situation to a naive belief among elected officials in Washington that they could expand voting rights in the South at the same time that the federal government was reducing its presence there to cut the budget. “What was needed was not an expansion of democracy, but an expansion of enforcement,” he says. “Both sides figured out that violence was the logical conclusion. By the time they had mobilized it was too late for the government to act.”

The project grows out of an earlier monograph, “Declarations of Independence: The Long Reconstruction of Popular Politics in the South, 1860 – 1908,” published in 2011 by University of North Carolina Press. However, Professor Downs says his thinking has been influenced by recent U.S. experience with occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“Seeing how difficult it is to change social power, create new lines of authority and disrupt societies makes me wonder why we were so confident we could do it in the post-war South. Rights need enforceability to make them real,” he adds, pointing to the intervention by federal troops in the Little Rock Central High School in 1957 as an example.

Professor Greble’s project, “Islam and the European Nation-State: Balkan Muslims between Mosque and State, 1908 – 1949,” examines how South Slavic Muslims adapted to six significant political shifts over a 41-year period. In each instance new governments sought – in their own way – to limit, secularize and shape Muslim institutions as the region went from Ottoman to Habsburg control, to liberal nation-states, to authoritarian monarchs, to fascist regimes and to socialist regimes.

Her initial research suggests Muslims proactively adapted the norms and customs of their faith to define Islam in their own terms. Additionally, they sought to become part of the international community of Muslims to confront being dispossessed of property, Sharia law, institutional autonomy and the right to define Islam.

To assert their influence, some Muslims formed political parties and cultural societies that promoted Muslim cultural agendas. More conservative members of the community sought to strengthen and protect local Muslim networks through codification of Sharia law and Islamic society. Others engaged in clandestine activities such as underground madrassas.

Much of Professor Greble’s research will examine the changing role of Sharia courts. Under the Austro-Hungarian Empire, these were codified and given jurisdiction over Muslim socio-religious affairs, such as marriage, divorce and inheritance. Muslim parts of the Balkans, particularly Yugoslavia, retained this legal autonomy between the two world wars and during Nazi and fascist occupation, but lost it after communists came to power and shut down the Sharia courts in 1946.

Candy, Nuts, and Fruit: Christmas Gifts of the Past

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Children’s Christmas wishes and expectations years ago were much different from today’s world of high technology. I was so struck by this—the simplicity and innocence—that I included a chapter entitled Letters to Santa in a recent book on the history of Churubusco, New York. The sample letters below were published in newspapers of northern New York from 1920–1940. They portray the sharp contrast to the modern holiday, where expensive gifts have become the disproportionate norm.

Churubusco was a farming community. Families were self-sufficient, and even small children had daily chores. This fostered teamwork and family unity, and gave children a firsthand understanding of the values of goods, services, and hard work. Those lessons were conveyed in their missives to Santa. And some of the comments in the letters are just plain cute.

1923
Dear Santa,
This year, money being scarce, my wants are few. I want a doll, set of dishes, ribbon, candy, and nuts. Don’t forget my brothers and sisters.
Your girl, Eva Lussier

Dear Santa Claus,
I want you to bring me a little serving set, ball, candy, nuts, and bananas. Never mind the sled this year because I am expecting one from my aunt. My Xmas tree will be in the parlor near the stove, so take your time and get good and warm before you leave.
Wishing you a merry Xmas, your little friend,
Louis Patnode

1925
Dear Santa Claus,
I would like you to bring me a little bedroom set, some candy, nuts, and bananas.
Your little friend,
Louise Recore

Dear Santa Claus,
I would like a flashlight, sled, gold watch, some candy, nuts, oranges, bananas, and peanuts. Please don’t forget my little brothers, Walter and Francis. Walter would like a little drum, mouth organ, candy, nuts, gum, and oranges. Francis would like a little wagon full of toys, and some candy, nuts, and bananas.
Your little friend,
John Brady

1938
Dear Santa,
For Christmas I want a bottle of perfume and a locket, a 59 cent box of paints that I saw in your sale catalog, a pair of skates, a nice dress, and candy and nuts. I am eleven years old, and Santa, I hope you have a very merry Xmas.
Your friend,
Anita Robare

Dear Santa,
I am writing a few lines to tell you what I want for Christmas. I want a toothbrush, and there is a set of 12 different games in your Christmas catalog for 98 cents. Some of the names of the games are bingo, checkers, and jacksticks. Please bring me this set. I hope you don’t forget my little sister and brothers.
Your friend,
Henrietta Matthews

Dear Santa,
Christmas is drawing near and I would like these things: a pair of ski shoes, pair of fur bedroom slippers, a dump truck, and banjo. I will leave some crackers and milk on the breakfast table.
Your friend,
Ann Elderbaum

Dear Santa,
When you come around for Xmas, I would like to have you bring me a pair of skates and a woolen shirt. It’s all I want for Christmas for I thought that you are getting old and those chimneys will be hard to climb. You will have some bread and milk at Christmas Eve.
Yours truly,
Theodore Leclair

Dear Santa Claus,
I wish you would bring me a sled and a ring. I don’t want very much for I know you are getting old and I don’t want you to carry too much. You will find my stocking near the stove, and on the kitchen table you will find some bread and milk. I want you to leave me some candy, especially peanut brittle. I am 12 years old.
Your friend,
Cecelia Louise Miller

Dear Santa,
I wish you would bring me a popgun, tractor, truck, and an airplane. You will find a bowl of bread and milk near the Xmas tree. You will find my stocking near the stove. I am only seven years old.
Your friend,
Clayton Miller

My Dear Santa,
I am eleven years old, and I wish you would bring me a cowboy suit and a sweater. You will find my stocking near the stairway, and on the kitchen table you will find some corn meal mush.
Your little friend,
Herman Leclair

Dear Santa,
Christmas is drawing near and I thought I would drop you a line and let you know what I want for Christmas. I would like a red sweater, western book, and a fur hood. I will leave you some bread, cake, peanuts, and milk. I don’t want very much because you are growing old and your bag will be too heavy. So I will close and hope to have all I want for Christmas.
Sincerely yours,
Rita Theresa Leclair

Dear Santa,
I would like a new pair of shoes for Christmas.
Ruth Demarse

Dear Santa,
I want a tractor and some colors for Christmas.
Henry Lagree

1939
Dear Santa,
I have been a very good girl this year. I thank you for the things that you brought me last year. For Christmas I would like a doll and a Chinese Checker game. I will leave a lunch for you on the table. I will clean our chimney so you can slide down it. I will hang our stockings near the Christmas tree. I would like to stay up and see you but I am afraid that I would not get any presents so I will go to bed. Well we will have to close.
Your friend,
Helen and Patty Smith

Dear Santa Claus,
I have been a good boy this year. I would like a car that pedals. If you couldn’t bring that, I would like something smaller. And don’t forget Carol my baby sister. And I would like some candy, gum, oranges, and nuts.
Your little friend,
Robert K. Smith

Dear Santa,
I have tried to be a good little girl this year. I am nine years old and in the fifth grade. I would like a pair of ice skates between my sister and I. And don’t forget my baby sister, because she wasn’t here last year and I through that maybe you would forget her. But I guess that you wouldn’t do that trick. And don’t forget the candy, nuts, oranges, and gum.
Your friend,
Helen L. Smith

Dear Santa,
I would like for Christmas a pencil box and drawing paper, candy, and nuts.
Your friend,
Beulah Perry

1940
Dear Santa Claus,
I want a train and candy.
Norman Lafave

Dear Santa,
I would like a box of colors, a teddy bear, candy and nuts.
Agnes Lagree

Dear Santa Claus,
I want a pair of shoes, dress, and Christmas candy and nuts.
Ruth Demarse

From Bloated Toe Publishing, Happy Holidays to all.

Photo: 1916 Christmas advertisement.

Lawrence Gooley has authored ten books and dozens of articles on the North Country’s past. He and his partner, Jill McKee, founded Bloated Toe Enterprises in 2004. Expanding their services in 2008, they have produced 19 titles to date, and are now offering web design. For information on book publishing, visit Bloated Toe Publishing.

New Book: The Race to the New World

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Doug Hunter’s just released The Race to the New World: Christopher Columbus, John Cabot, and the Lost History of Discovery (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), offers a new angle to the ubiquitous story of Columbus’ voyage- how John Cabot became his true rival in this search for the West Indies.

The final decade of the fifteenth century the Genoese mariner Christopher Columbus sailed westward on the Atlantic Ocean, famously determined to discover for Spain a shorter and more direct route to the riches of the Indies. Meanwhile, a fellow Italian explorer for hire, John Cabot, set off on his own journey, under England’s flag.

In Race to the New World Hunter tells the fascinating tale of how, during his expedition, Columbus gained a rival. In the space of a few critical years, these two men engaged in a high-stakes race that threatened the precarious diplomatic balance of Europe-to exploit what they believed was a shortcut to staggering wealth. Instead, they found a New World that neither was looking for.

Hunter provides a revealing look at how the lives of Columbus and Cabot were interconnected, and how neither explorer should be understood without understanding both. Together, Cabot and Columbus provide a novel and important perspective on the first years of European experience of the New World.

Note: Books noticed on this site have been provided by the publishers. Purchases made through this Amazon link help support this site.

This Weeks Top New York History News

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  • Expert to Assess Herkimer Downtown
  • Buffalo Central Terminal Wins $10k Competition
  • Noise Law Hurts NYC TOur Guides
  • Tahawus RR Plan Sparks Opposition
  • MacDonald, Pop Percussionist, Dies at 67
  • Lynhurst Cuts Staff, Hours
  • College Must Release Oral-History Records
  • Kateri Tekakwitha Rising to Sainthood
  • Fed Gov ’12 Funding and History
  • Battle Group Receives State Charter

    • 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.

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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 the previous week’s web links about New York’s state and local history. You can find all our weekly news round-ups here.

    Subscribe! More than 2,200 people get New York History each day via E-Mail, RSS, or Twitter or Facebook updates.

    Lost Cause: NY and Confederate History

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    The fact that New York State has no official celebration of the Civil War Sesquicentennial or the War of 1812 Bicentennial is no secret. The question that isn’t being asked is: Why not?

    To say that New York doesn’t have the money misses the point. Every state has financial problems but somehow other states are able to do something officially on the state level on behalf of these historic anniversaries. Why not New York? Hasn’t New York always generously supported historical anniversaries in the past? :) Read more →