100th Anniversary of the Harriman Gift

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On October 29, 1910, 18-year-old Averell Harriman, the future governor of the State of New York, represented the Harriman family in donating 10,000 acres of land in the Lower Hudson Valley and $1 million dollars to the Palisades Interstate Park Commission (PIPC). The young Averell stated &#8220it is the hope that through all the years to come the health and happiness of future generations will be advanced by these gifts.&#8221 The family’s gift created Bear Mountain and Harriman State Parks, which now encompass more than 50,000 acres, more than three times the size of Manhattan.

In recognition of this year’s historic anniversary, PIPC has initiated a fundraising effort to rebuild, repair, and restore the Harriman Group Camps, with a goal of $2 million. The effort hopes to build a new generation of philanthropy for the Harriman Group Camps so generations of children can share in the wilderness experience. Donations for the Harriman Group Camps can be made to the Palisades Parks Conservancy Group Camp Fund.

Photo: Women enjoying the serenity of Bear Mountain c. 1914. Photo Courtesy of PIPC Archives.

Slavery in New York, Slavery Today Event

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Teachers, librarians, local historians and teaching artists are invited to explore slavery in New York State, historically and today, with guest scholars, curriculum specialists, and front-line investigative reporters on Friday, December 3, 2010, from 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. at Heaven Hill Farm, on Bear Cub Road in Lake Placid, New York.

This conversation on slavery and human trafficking in the Empire State, will include special guests:

Margaret Washington, Professor of History at Cornell University and award-winning author of Sojourner Truth’s America, a groundbreaking biography examining the harsh realities of Dutch New York slavery that helped forge one of the nation’s greatest and most widely admired reformers.

John Bowe, prize-winning journalist and author of Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the Global Economy, an eye-opening look at labor abuse and cases of outright slavery in the U.S. today.

Cost: $55 per person includes a box lunch, lesson plans, and other resource materials. Reduced rates are available at $100 for 2 people or $150 for 3 people per institution. Books and other teaching tools will be available for purchase.

SLAVERY IN NEW YORK? SLAVERY TODAY? is part of the Anti-Slavery Convention in the Adirondacks on December 3-5, 2010 and is a joint program of John Brown Lives! and Center for Diversity, Pluralism & Inclusion at SUNY Plattsburgh.

For information and to pre-register contact Martha Swan (518-962-4758 [email protected]) or Lindsay Pontius (518-962-8672 [email protected]).

Early American Crime Site Launches Podcast

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One of the more interesting early American sites on the internets, Anthony Vaver’s Early American Crime, is now available as a podcast. Beginning with “Early American Criminals: Thomas Mount and the Flash Company,” you can subscribe to hear (as well as read) tales of America’s earliest criminals.

Early American Crime features stories about the criminal underworld of colonial America and the early United States including criminal profiles, cultural essays, features on early crime slang, and an outstanding series of posts on convict transportation including it’s evolution as a new form of punishment, the business of transportation, convict voyages, and the end of the system.

Vaver described his site when it launched in 2008 by saying: &#8220Crime and its punishment are among the top social concerns in the United States today. Over one percent of the adult population in the United States now lives in prison, and even though the United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population, it holds almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners. Stories of crime fill our newspapers and affect the elections of our public officials. Yet, we as Americans know little about the history of crime and punishment that has brought us to this point. My hope is that this website will help provide a more complete understanding of crime and punishment in America by focusing on its early appearance and practice.&#8221

The site is well worth taking a look at, and now also a listen to.

Museum Hosts Womens Civil Rights Panel

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Five of the six editors of Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC (University of Illinois Press), will join moderator Debra L. Schultz for a conversation about their own activist experiences and their ground-breaking efforts to preserve the personal stories of 52 women who fought for civil rights with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the 1960s.

The panel discussion, presented by the Brooklyn Museum’s Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, will take place on Sunday, November 14, from 2 to 4 p.m., in the Museum’s Glass Pavilion. This is the first New York City book party celebrating Hands on the Freedom Plow. A book signing, provided by MOBILE LIBRIS, follows. The event is open to the public and is free with Museum admission.

These accounts by women of various ages, races, and creed, document the many ways that women carried the southern civil rights movement and demonstrate how their stories have changed our historical understanding of one of the country’s most important democratic movements.

The Editors, who have all worked for SNCC include:

Faith S. Holsaert, a teacher and fiction writer from Durham, North Carolina, who has remained active in lesbian and women’s, antiwar, and justice struggles.

Martha Prescod Norman Noonan, a community organizer, activist, homemaker, and teacher of history including the civil rights movement, who lives near Baltimore.

Judy Richardson, a filmmaker and Movement lecturer from Cambridge, Massachusetts, whose projects include the PBS documentary series Eyes on the Prize and other historical documentaries.

Betty Garman Robinson, a community organizer who lives in Baltimore and is active in the reemerging grassroots social justice movement.

Jean Smith Young, a child psychiatrist who works with community mental health programs in the Washington, D.C. area.

Dorothy M. Zellner, a New York City consultant who wrote and edited for the Center for Constitutional Rights and CUNY Law School.

Moderator, Debra L. Schultz, a feminist historian and author, is Director of Programs for the Open Society Institute (Soros Foundations) Network Women’s Program, which works to include women in the development of emerging democracies.

Adk Museum Library Honored by State Archives

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The Adirondack Museum Library, Blue Mountain Lake (Hamilton County) has been selected as the recipient of the &#82202010 Annual Archives Award for Program Excellence in a Historical Records Repository,&#8221 by the New York State Archives and the Archives Partnership Trust. The award was presented to Director Caroline M. Welsh and Librarian Jerry Pepper at a luncheon ceremony at the Cultural Education Center in Albany on October 12, 2010.

The award commends the library for an outstanding archival program that contributes significantly to the understanding of Adirondack history. The award further recognizes the facility for well-organized and managed archives and for efforts to provide access to documentary heritage through extensive collections and excellent education programs for teachers and school children.

The Adirondack Museum Library is the largest and most comprehensive repository of books, periodicals, manuscripts, maps, and government documents related to the Adirondack region.

Supported by private funds, the library is administered by the museum and fulfills an independent mission as a library of record for the Adirondack Park.

Washingtons Headquarters Going Digital

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Matthew Colon, the 2010 winner of the Barnabas McHenry Award for Historic Preservation, is in the middle of a project that will digitize and catalog the entire slide collection of the nation’s first publicly-owned historic site, ensuring that the Washington’s Headquarters library and archives will be useful to the staff and public.

The scope of diverse images that make up the collection measures the value of this project. The range of time represented in the collection spans from the late 19th century to the present, documenting the changes undergone by Washington’s Headquarters through images of the historic house and environs, special events, important visitors, and interpretive programs. A favorite are images that document how the house interior looks in candle light. There are also slides documenting important acts of preservation on the historic house and other museum objects this project will make more accessible.

The biggest advantage, most of all to archivists, a digitization project offers are digital surrogates of the original material. Ideally, an infinite amount of copies can be made from the archival image and distributed to the public or for meeting museum interpretive goals. This ensures that the original material will be stored away from the environmental factors disrupting their condition.

Matt Colon has spent the past few months completing the collection index for about 5,000 slides before he can move onto the last phases of the project which include digitization, editing, and delivery. Matt has cemented his appreciation for the role of the librarian and archivist in a museum setting. Colon said, “’the methods of organization are the inner gears to the clock face viewed by the public.’ One issue with that statement is that today that clock face is typically digital.”

Illustration: Tower of Victory in &#8220Harper’s Weekly&#8221, 1887. Courtesy of PIPC Archives.

Buffalo and Erie Co. Historical Announces Awards

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The Board of Managers and Regents of the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society has announced that it has selected Wayne D. Wisbaum, and brothers Christopher T. and Finley R. Greene, as recipients of its annual Red Jacket award. Wisbaum is an an attorney and devoted public servant, as is Christopher Greene. The late Finley Greene was a fundraising professional who aided many non-profit causes and organizations over the course of his decades-long career. The board will present the awards at a dinner and ceremony at the Historical Society on Thursday, Nov. 18 at 6 p.m.

The Red Jacket Award is given annually in recognition of quiet, continued, unbroken devotion to civic progress. Created 53 years ago, in 1957, by the Buffalo & Erie County Historical Society, the award is based upon a medal presented in 1792 by President George Washington to the renowned Seneca orator and leader Red Jacket.

&#8220The selection of these three men to receive this award carries special significance, as we are living in a time when civic progress is needed more than ever. They and their work stand for the powerful effects that individuals can have in their communities, without drawing attention to themselves or asking for anything in return,&#8221 said Joan Bukowski, president of the board of managers of the Buffalo & Erie County Historical Society. &#8220It is a great privilege to honor these three Buffalonians.&#8221

During the ceremony, the board will bestow two additional awards. Charles LaChiusa will receive the Owen B. Augspurger award, which recognizes local historians devoted to the preservation of Erie County’s heritage. And the Grant Amherst Business Association will receive the Daniel B. Niederlander award for outstanding programming by a Western New York historical organization.

The Historical Society currently has on exhibit the original Peace Medal that was given to Red Jacket by George Washington, in its new and ongoing exhibit, &#8220Fact, Fiction & Spectacle: The Trial of Red Jacket.&#8221

The 2010 Red Jacket Awards dinner will be held at the Historical Society at 25 Nottingham Court at Elmwood Avenue in Buffalo. Tickets are $150 per person or $275 per couple. Table packages and corporate sponsorship opportunities are available. For reservations and more information, call the Historical Society development office at 716-873-9644, ext. 318.

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.

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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 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.