The deadline for nominations from the general public for the 2009 Adirondack Architectural Heritage Awards program is June 30th. Adirondack Architectural Heritage seeks nominations for projects that recognize exemplary historic preservation work throughout the Adirondack Park including examples of sensitive restoration, rehabilitation, and demonstrated long-term stewardship. Past winners have included projects as diverse as a 19th Century Irishtown school restoration, stewardship of Santa’s Workshop, restoration of the circa 1906 Stark Hardware Building in Saranac Lake, restoration of the Twin Pines boathouse on Loon Lake (circa early 1900s) and relighting of the Split Rock lighthouse, in Essex on Lake Champlain.

For more information about our awards program and to obtain a nomination form, contact Ellen Ryan, Community Outreach Director, Adirondack Architectural Heritage, 1790 Main Street, Suite 37, Keeseville, New York 12944, 518-834-9328 or visit their website at www.aarch.org.

Adirondack Architectural Heritage (AARCH) is the nonprofit historic preservation organization for New York State’s Adirondack Park. AARCH was formed in 1990 with a mission to promote better public understanding, appreciation and stewardship of the Adirondack’s unique and diverse architectural heritage. This legacy includes not only the nationally recognized &#8220Great Camps&#8221 and other rustic buildings but also the many other structures that embody the whole range of human experience in the region. These other structures include: a wide variety of homes and farmsteads- the churches, commercial buildings, town halls and libraries that make up most Adirondack settlements- bridges, railroad buildings, lighthouses and other transportation related structures- and industrial sites related to the region’s important iron, wood, quarrying and tanning industries. AARCH website, maintains a list of endangered properties in the Adirondacks.

Jeff Siemers: New York Indian Removal History Series

June 17, 2009admin

Jeff Siemers over at Algonkian Church History has finished his outstanding series of (nineteen!) posts on New York Indian Removal and written a summary post to put them all in perspective and to serve as an access to allow for reading the posts in the order they were written. Jeff is a Reference Librarian at Moraine Park Technical College (Fond du Lac Campus), he normally writes about nineteenth-century Wisconsin Native history so his series about New York is quite a treat and highly recommended reading.

Here is an excerpt from Jeff’s summary describing each of the parts:

Part I: The Stockbridges Attempt a Move to Indiana. A letter from Thomas Jefferson is not honored by officials of later administrations.

Part II: Eleazar Williams. A missionary among the Oneidas (see photo above), of mixed race (part Mohawk), is hungry for power, and envisions being the leader of a grand confederacy in the west.

Part III: Why did They Leave? (The answer, of course, has a lot more to do with the intentions of white Americans than with the Indians themselves.)

Part IV: Conspiracy of Interests. A book by Professor Laurence Hauptman describes the factors that led to the removal of New York Indians &#8211 he doesn’t, however, have a lot to say about the Algonkians.

Part V: Jedidiah Morse. A Congregational minster has some influence in Washington D.C.

Part VI: Negotiations and Arrivals. Good historians have gotten some of this wrong. If you need to know what-happened-when vis-a-vis the negitiations and arrivals of the New York Indians in Wisconsin, this is an important post.

Part VII: Metoxen Takes Center Stage. The New York Indians were set up against the Wisconsin Natives. This post includes a link to a remarkable speech John Metoxen made at the Council of 1830.

Part VIII: The Disaffected Party. Are the New York Indians going to be pushed further west? This question and other issues arouse tribal factionalism.

Part IX: Ellis Describes More Negotiations. If Andrew Jackson (pictured above riding a horse) wanted the Stockbridge, Munsee, and Brothertown Indians to move to some swampy land, how did they wind up on the good farmland east of Lake Winnebago?

Part X: The Need for a Constitution. Seeing how the U.S. government handles other tribes appears to have motivated John W. Quinney to write a tribal constitution for the Stockbridge Mohicans.

Part XI: Munsee Removal and the Quinney’s Perspective. The arrival of roughly 200 Munsees prompt John W. and Austin E. Quinney to write a letter to the U.S. Secretary of War.

Part XII: The First Permanent Split in the Stockbridge Tribal Church. The Disaffected Party beaks away from Calvinist missionary Cutting Marsh’s church. They hold their own Baptist services.

Part XIII: More About the Munsees. The &#8220partnership&#8221 between the Stockbridges and the Munsees is an on-again-off-again kind of thing.

Part XIV: The Treaty of 1839. Half the Stockbridge reservation in Calumet County is sold to the federal government. Members of the Disaffected party and the Munsees head to what is now Kansas.

Part XV: They Left on the Sabbath. Puritan author Electa Jones describes the emmigration to Kansas.

Part XVI: On to Minnesota? The treaty of 1848 was supposed to provide a new reservation to a faction of the Stockbridge Indians &#8211 but details were never agreed upon.

Part XVII: Jotham Meeker and the Two Minute Books. We find members of the Disaffected Party and Munsees continuing on in the Baptist faith west of the Missouri River.

Part XVIII: Establishment of the Shawano County Reservation. The treaty of 1856 established a new reservation &#8211 but the land is not good for farming.

Part XIX: The Munseees: According to an Indian Party Brief. Munsee Indians came and went. How many Munsees were with the Stockbridge Indians in the late 1800&#8242-s? (hint: count them on your fingers).

Vermont Historical Society Seeks Your Input

June 16, 2009admin

The Vermont Historical Society is asking for participation in a survey to help them determine which aspects of the organization are most important. The survey allows plenty of opportunity to comment and they would appreciate hearing from you folks interested in Vermont history by June 23rd if possible. You can find the survey here.

CFP: Consortium on the Revolutionary Era, 1750-1850

June 15, 2009admin

The Consortium on the Revolutionary Era, 1750-1850 (CRE) is a venue for the presentation of original reserach on not only the revolutionary history of Europe, but also the Atlantic World and beyond. We welcome proposals from allied disciplines and comparative studies- in short, the conference offers a platform for research into the revolutionary era broadly defined.

The 2010 conference will be held February 25-27 at the College of Charleston and the Francis Marion Hotel, located in the center of Charleston’s historic district. The conference venues are within easy walking distance of Charleston’s eighteenth- and nineteenth-century urban core, its museums, waterfront, and many exceptional restaurants.

The program committee prefers proposals for complete sessions (three papers, plus a chair and a commentator). However, we will accept proposals for incomplete sessions and individual paper proposals. Session proposals should include name of presenter, title of paper, and brief abstract (no more than one page) for each paper- and brief CVs (no more than 2 pages) for each participant. The deadline for proposals is October 15, 2009. We welcome traditional presentations of new research as well as roundtable discussions and pedagogical panels. Proposals from doctoral students are welcome. Electronic submissions should be sent in Word format.

Send proposals to:
Professor Carol Harrison
Department of History
University of South Carolina
Columbia, SC 29208
[email protected]

Travel and accommodations:
Reservations should be made at the Francis Marion Hotel, located at 387 King Street, Charleston, SC 29403, which will serve as the conference hotel. To make your reservation and to obtain the group rate discount, call either 843-722-0600 or 1-877-756-2121 and state that you are attending the annual meeting of the Consortium on the Revolutionary Era. The deadline for reserving a room is January 26, 2010. The room rate for CRE participants is $169.00 per night, plus tax.

Charleston International Airport is served by AirTran, American Eagle, Continental, Delta, Northwest, United Express, and US Airways.

For more information about visiting Charleston, please see the Charleston Area Convention and Visitors Bureau (www.charlestoncvb.com).

The New Amsterdam Trail, Free Downloadable Audio Tour

June 14, 2009July 18, 2013admin

The Dutch and the indelible role they played in the formation of the ideas and ideals that shaped New York City and America is being celebrated by National Parks Service, the National Parks of New York Harbor Conservancy, and the Henry Hudson 400 Foundation with The New Amsterdam Trail. This free downloadable audio walking tour is the first of three in a series featuring the iconic National Park Service Rangers and an expert cast of historians, scientists, and other great storytellers.

Using a backdrop of period music and special sound effects, the audio with map can be downloaded from the Harbor Conservancy’s website or on the Henry Hudson 400 website. Visitors travel through the streets of downtown Manhattan to 10 historically significant locations, cueing commentary from their mobile phone, mp3 player or ipod. As they stand at the tip of the Battery, they can visualize Manhattan in the hours before Henry Hudson arrived and when he first navigated our waters and then listen to the stories of the life and times of New Amsterdam’s most famous and infamous settlers.

The New Amsterdam Trail features Steve Laise, Chief of Cultural Resources for Manhattan’s National Parks- Eric Sanderson, author of Mannahatta, Natural History of New York City- Andrew Smith, editor of The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, and Russell Shorto, author of Island at the Center of the World.

The family-friendly walking tour takes about 90-minutes&#8211 however, you can walk the trail at your own pace during lunchtime and pause the recorded commentary at any point. For more details and to download the free tour, visit www.nyharborparks.org or www.henryhudson400.com.

The Harbor Conservancy is the official partner of the National Parks of New York Harbor and together they champion the 22 National Park sites that call New York Harbor home by helping to preserve the environment, promote economic development and create the finest urban waterfront recreation and educational park system in the world.

Henry Hudson 400 New York is a foundation created to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s legendary voyage for the Dutch to the Hudson River and New York. The unique character of New York City, originally New Amsterdam, has been shaped by the legacy of the multiethnic and tolerant culture of 17th century Amsterdam. Henry Hudson 400 is producing a series of special events in 2009 to celebrate the spirit of freedom, enterprise, and diversity shared by Amsterdam and New York.

CFP: 1763 and All That, The Decade After The Seven Years War

June 13, 2009admin

1763 and All That: Temptations of Empire in the British World During the Decade After the Seven Years’ War &#8211 a call for papers for a conference to be held on February 25th and 26th, 2010, at the University of Texas at Austin, sponsored by the Department of History’s Institute for Historical Studies.

The focus of the conference is the British Empire during its &#8220decade of crisis&#8221 between the end of the Seven Years’ War in 1763 and the passage of the Tea Act ten years later. Over the course of this decade, Britons drastically transformed the way they viewed themselves and their empire. For the first time, British imperial policy extended to the governance of the French Catholic inhabitants of Canada, the Native people of the trans-Appalachian interior of North America, Africans in the new colony of Senegambia, and the twenty million inhabitants of Bengal subject to the authority of the East India Company.

In Britain itself, the governance of this vastly extended empire engendered an enormous amount of bitter debate and anxious discussion in the halls of power as well as in the popular press. Among historians of each of the different parts of the British World, this decade has long been seen as one of crucial importance.

However, while invaluable work has been done to examine British and indigenous relations and exchanges in specific colonial contexts, as well to examine connections between the metropolis and specific colonial regions, there has been as yet few attempts to interrogate the links across and between the colonial regions and to set developments in particular regions into the context of the transformation of the British Empire as a whole. The organizers aim to address this need by bringing scholars working on various aspects of the British World into dialogue and debate over the causes and character of the imperial transformation of the 1760s and early 1770s.

Submissions are invited for individual papers on these themes. Note that the conference will be organized around the discussion of pre-circulated papers. Accepted papers must be submitted for circulation to participants no later than February 1, 2010. Each proposal should include a brief precis of the paper topic and a clear indication of how the paper will undertake to connect the specific research subject to larger events and processes taking place across the British Empire. The deadline for receiving proposals is September 1, 2009.

Paper proposals (as well a brief C.V.) should be submitted via e-mail to the conference organizers, Robert Olwell and James Vaughn, at: [email protected]. Send all queries to the same address.