It Happened Here-- Some Lesser Lights and Supporting Actors

Popular history often focuses on the leaders, the great thinkers, the most important artists that shape  historical periods, but tends to ignore the less than great, the supporting artists and actors and thinkers, and in doing so ignores their contributions to the development of their "greater"contemporaries art, thought or actions. The thoughtful unheralded teacher, critic, supporter are often crucial to the development those people we remember as historically "important". Occasionally a NYSHM will recognize one of these people. Here are three of them.

NY Rte 49, Constantia

George Washington invited him to America and after his retirement corresponded with him regularly about "agricultural economy" as well as farm practices; Benjamin Franklin corresponded with him; Thomas Jefferson discussed via letters his ideas about the "ethical Jesus," independent of the trappings of religion and sought his advise about the consequences of publishing his ideas; John and Abigail Adams considered him a life-long, though distant, friend writing to them from the New York wilderness; and their son, John Quincy Adams valued his friendship, as well.  Dewitt Clinton, governor of New York (1817-1822),  met him by accident.  He was hunting small game when he chanced upon Francis Adrian Van der Kemp and a friend trout fishing near Barneveld in Oneida County. When he came to know the man, he would declare Van der Kemp  "the most scholarly man in the America," and would eventually commission him to translate the archaic colonial Dutch records housed in the state archives in Albany.*

Francis Adrian Van der Kemp was born in Holland in 1752 and educated as a theologian. He became involved in the "Patriot" movement trying to overthrow the Prince of Orange and bring democracy to the people of the Netherlands. The movement was crushed by an invading army from Prussia and other German states and Van der Kemp was imprisoned in 1787.  Ransomed by his supporters, he was given asylum in the United States. He settled outside of Kingston, then moved to Constantia on the shores of Oneida Lake, where he built Kempwyk.  Eventually he moved to Barneveld where he became involved in the creation of a new town and the development of land bought by a group of Dutch investors called the "Holland Land Co."

Dutchess Co. Rte 2, Leedsville Road, Amenia

Myron B. Benton was a farmer and poet who lived and wrote from his family farmstead, an old dutch farm built in 1761 in Dutchess county. A poet of nature and rural country life he became fast friends with John Burroughs.  Together they met Emerson and shared many discussions on his work.  In 1862 Benton wrote a glowingly supportive letter to Thoreau and Thoreau, though dying, wrote him back.  In corresponding with Benton, Burroughs founds a reader who critically appreciated his work and someone with whom he could hone his skills as a critical thinker. Before publishing an essay called "Science and Theology" Burroughs sent Benton a copy, asking him if he thought people might consider it offensive, "Too much nature;" "slighting theology." In Benton he found someone to share his great enthusiasm for Walt Whitman and although he could never arrange a meeting between Whitman and Benton he told Whitman about a camping trip he had with Benton in the Adirondacks and Whitman so enjoyed the story he commented he should 'make a leaf of grass' about it.

NY Rte 9N, Bolton Landing

The last figure may be important enough in her own right that the label of "lesser light" and "supporting actor" may be unfair, but in the sense she was a teacher, critic, and supporter of others she deserves to be associated with the first two subjects of this post. Marcella Sembrich, born
Prakeda Marcellina Kochanska in Poland in 1858 was a coloratura soprano of impressive musical talent who came to America in 1883, after years of struggling in the European opera scene that was marked by fierce competition and nationalistic politics, to join the fledgling New York Metropolitan Opera in its first season.  She continued with the Met until retiring in 1909. Thereafter she founded vocal training programs at both the Curtis Institute and Julliard, teaching and giving recitals, and summering in the Alps.  When World War I prevented her from returning to Europe she turned to the Adirondacks, vacationing in Lake Placid from 1915 to 1921.  In 1922 she came to Lake George, establishing her studio for vocal operatic training, in 1924. The best of a generation of operatic students were tutored by her with several becoming tutors of the next generation of opera stars that would become famous in the latter half of the 20th century.


*Unfortunately, most of Van der Kemp's work was destroyed in the State Capitol fire of 1911.

Marker of the Week -- On June 2, 2013 I wrote a post on the Pillbox industry in the early 1800's in the little hamlet of Knox. This week when I drove through the town I discovered
a new marker had been erected.

NY 156, Knox

It Happened Here -- Blockhouses

    The Stillwater Blockhouse, Rte 4, was built as a Saratoga Battlefield Park visitors center

                                   

A quick glance at Wikipedia will tell you that blockhouses are defensive fortifications that have been around since medieval times and that the original terms comes from their role in blocking access to portages, roads, rivers, etc; not, as I had always assumed, from their "blocky" shape, being usually made of squared timbers, etc.

Because blockhouses small size and typical wood construction made them vulnerable to artillery fire, they had become largely obsolete and uncommon in 17th and 18th century Europe, but in colonial America blockhouses were the most common defensive fortification. In America's interior, few roads and dense forest made attack by artillery unlikely, but blockhouses were a potent defense against musket wielding Indians, or colonial troops.

A blockhouse could be constructed with as few as a half-dozen skilled axemen in a few weeks time and could withstand the assault of hundreds of attackers, if they were unsupported by large cannon.  At the same time it could provide a secure garrison for perhaps a hundred men from which they could patrol or sally forth to attack raiding parties along a trail, or groups of batteaux at a portage. Larger forts could be constructed by building a stockade which utilized three or four or more blockhouses as corner bastions.

French Blockhouse near Ft.Carillon

British Blockhouses

guarding the road

to Fort Edward

                                                                                                                                                            

British Blockhouse

at the Wood's Creek/

Oneida Lake Portage

                                           The Schoharie Valley

                                  Upper and Middle 

                                           Valley Forts                                            Incorporated

                                           Blockhouses into

                                           their Stockades

Square timbers, though more difficult and time consuming to make, were preferred because they provided more uniform protection from musket balls or small cannon fire and were presumably more difficult for attackers to scale. The overhanging sections of the second floor enabled defenders to shoot down  through musket ports in the floor of the overhang at attackers attempting to build fires against the blockhouse wall, or do other mischief.

       Fort Anne's several forts undoubtedly had blockhouses*




 Sir William Johnson  appreciated the symbolism of British Military Power that the blockhouse represented to the Indians with whom he negotiated treaties. He had two stone blockhouses built along side of his baronial mansion in Johnstown. They also provided actual security, incorporated into a stockade surrounding the house during the last French and Indian War.

Rte. 30A, Middleburgh

For much of the American Revolution blockhouses were mainly refuges for
farmers and their families from Indian
raids on the frontiers of New York,
but toward the end of the Revolution
the blockhouse at Fort Plain took on
a new mission.

















 Following the devastating raids
in the summer of 1780 a new unusually
tall three story blockhouse was built.
 
From atop  this blockhouse near the crest of a ridge above the village, the Americans had a commanding view far up and down the valley. Smoke from any house or barn torched by the Indians and Tories along a wide swath of valley could be quickly spotted and militiamen and continentals under Colonel Marinus Willett,   garrisoned at the fort dispatched to oppose the raiders. It was from here that Willet marched to repulse an Indian/Tory/ British Regular attack on Johnstown on October 24, 1781, pursuing them 
to a skirmish at West Canada Creek where Tory leader Walter Butler was killed.

                                                                                                                                                       Concern about Indian attacks on New York's frontiers did not end immediately with the end of the American Revolution. Fur trader Oliver Stephens built his own blockhouse/residence/trading post in 1794 at the outlet to Oneida lake, next to the derelict Fort Brewerton.  Willsboro constructed a blockhouse in 1797 as a place of refuge from Indian raids.

U.S. 11, Central Square, NY

The reconstructed Blockhouse--home
to the Brewerton Historical Society

Essex Co. Rte 22, Willsboro

   

The War of 1812 saw the last use of blockhouses in New York State, although blockhouses would be used in the U.S. on the frontier in the Indian Wars until the 1870's.

Blockhouses at Sacket's Harbor

*This reconstruction, at Fort Anne, built as a gift shop in the 1950's, now occupied by a local bank may have a couple firsts for a blockhouse--a night depository and an ATM machine!



 Marker of the Week--

It started on a presumably hot summer's day in1820 when some of the locals were seeking refreshment, and trying to escape the heat in the old stone tavern at the north end of Schoharie.  It started when some wag made a humorous comment, now lost, at the expense of Josiah Clark, and Phillip Schuyler, the 2nd* roared out a riotous approval of it. As too often happens, the butt of the comment, Mr. Clark, took offense not at the comment or the wag who made it, but at Mr. Schuyler's degree of approval of it. Soon words were being exchanged between Mr. Clark and Mr. Schuyler, hotter than the day that brought the two of them together.  Before anyone could grasp its gravity, a duel was proposed and accepted; "seconds" were drafted among the crowd at the tavern; the rifles were prepared by these seconds; and presumably, the whole tavern emptied out, trooping down to the flats along the Schoharie Creek in back of the tavern.  Distances were paced off and counted as the two duelists marched away from each other, turned and fired. The valley, narrow at this point, echoed with the sound of the two rifles discharging simultaneously.  Clark collapsed, and Schuyler in shock and horror, still tinged with a residue of anger muttered 'He would have it so!  He would have it so!', and beat a hasty retreat from the scene of carnage to find composure in another tavern, in the center of town.  Some time later, from his vantage point in this second tavern, Mr. Schuyler looked out to observe a miraculous sight--Josiah Clark, walking down the street!  It seems that the seconds who prepared the rifles for the duelists had put an ample charge of gunpowder in each, but had neglected to put in lead balls, instead, holding the charges in with generous wads of soft natural paper taken from a wasp's nest.  Mr. Clark had probably been hit, full on, in the chest, with the wadding, and realizing he had received a "mortal wound" had fainted dead away!  Thus ended the Schoharie valley's most famous duel.**

Swart'sTavern,  Rte 30, Schoharie

*Phillip Schuyler, the 2nd was a scion of the venerable Schuyler family and grandson of the famous Revolutionary War general, Phillip Schuyler.


**You will probably not be surprised that this incident was reported in Jeptha R. Simms. The Frontiersmen of New York.
Vol. I, 348.

It Happened Here -- The Mohicans and the Moravians

By 1740 the Mohican village of Shekomeko, in present day central Dutchess county, was hanging on--but its future seemed precarious. Alcoholism/binge drinking, poverty and a host of social problems were rife in the small community. Most of the Hudson Valley Mohican villages had been abandoned and the land sold off to white settlers or land speculators, and it seemed likely the same fate would befall Shekomeko.

Seneca Co. Rte 89, Canoga

In Bethlehem Pennsylvania a religious sect from south eastern Germany, and what is today the Czech Republic had established itself with a mission to bring Christianity to unconverted Native-Americans. The Moravians had already had some success with the Delawares, among whom they lived. They would, in the next decade, send missionaries among the Iroquois. One of their number, Christian Henry Rausch had just landed in New York City when he encountered two drunken Mohican sachems Maumauntissekun (aka. Shabash) and Wassamapah from Shekomeko.  Having spent time in Holland, he could converse with them in Dutch, a language the Indians had acquired from the white settlers living around them. When they sobered up they agreed to allow him to return to Shekomeko and teach them about his religion. The next few years were difficult and sometimes dangerous for Rausch, and as both his hosts and other clan members swung erratically between support and condemnation of this Christian amongst them.

Strever Farm Rd., off Co.Rte 82, Pine Plains

Wassamapah, who took the name Tschoop, or Job, was torn between Rausch and his wife's mother, a clan matron who was the keeper of an ancient leather talisman and defender of the old religion.  White traders spread rumors that he had come to enslave their children, and once a drunken Indian tried to kill Rausch with a tomahawk. For safety, Rausch moved out of the village to the farm of a nearby Palatine settler, but he continued visiting the village, gradually wining over the people and arranging the first baptisms. In 1742 he was joined by Moravians Gotlob Buettner and his wife and Martin Mack; the following year they built their first church in Shekomeko using poles and bark--materials, they felt, the Mohicans would feel comfortable in.

Gradually the missionaries had a positive impact on the village, restoring among the villagers a degree of self reliance, making inroads against binge-drinking habits, and encouraging the Mohicans to avoid the traders and work their way out of debt.

 In 1724 a group of investors called the "Little Nine Partners" had struck up a tentative deal with the Mohicans of Shekomeko for their land, excluding a one square mile tract the Mohicans were to set aside. The Partners applied for a title from Governor William Burnet and he agreed to a meeting with the Indians with payment, to work out the details in the town of Red Hook. With one of the partners, Richard Sackett, the Indians waited in vain for three weeks for the Governor or his agents, and the payment that never arrived.  Sackett supported the Indians while they waited, eventually buying his farm directly from them.


RICHARD SACKETT
FIRST SETTLER OF AMENIA,
ABOUT 1711, HAD FARM HERE                     An Original NYSHM  (missing)
AND IS BURIED ON HILL TO                          Location: NYS 22 AT S. AMENIA                       
NORTH. HE WAS COMMISSIONER
ON PALATINE SETTLEMENT.
 

Twenty years later the Mohicans of Shekomeko began to receive challenges to their title on the land from relatives of the original partners and from others claiming to have bought property from one or another of the partners.  The Moravians, while reluctant to get involved, helped the Indians obtain affidavits supporting their ownership. 

    Buettner's Memorial next to the Shekomeko
 Indian Cemetery--Bethel Cross Rd off Co.Rte 82

 
In 1743 rumors of war with the French, and Indian raids on New England settlements began to circulate. The kinship between Mohicans and the Algonquins of the St. Lawrence Valley made the Mohicans of Shekomeko suspect. The Moravians, too, as outsiders were subject to wild charges that they were in league with the "papist" French.*  And their pacifistic doctrines that prevented them from serving in any militia or swearing an oath of allegiance to King George seemed to confirm their disloyalty.  Fear escalated to a point that the townspeople of nearby Sharon, Connecticut contemplated a peremptory strike against Shekomeko, and the Governor of New York in June 1744 ordered a sheriff's posse to search Shekomeko for weapons and ammunition.  They found nothing, but the missionaries were brought in for questioning.  In November the legislature passed an act requiring 'Moravian and vagrant Teachers among the Indians' to cease preaching and to leave the Colony.**      Some stayed on and were arrested. Others left for the area around Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, encouraging their Mohican brethren to go with them. Emboldened by the new law, gangs of white settlers seized much of the Shekomeko Mohican's land.  Some Shekomeko Indians moved to Wequadnach, near Sharon, Connecticut but the colony of Connecticut was enacting similar legislation. While Sir William Johnson, on behalf of New York was actively courting its Iroquois Indians, only Massachusetts was solicitous of its Mohican population. Wnahktukook (Stockbridge) Indians had been evangelized by Congregational missionaries, so they didn't hold the pacifistic values of the Moravian Mohicans, and declared war on the French, providing scouts for Governor Shirley's expedition. Similarly, in the American Revolution, Stockbridge Indians scouted for and fought with distinction for American armies throughout the war. Upon returning from the war they discovered they were to be removed from their village. They found a home with the Oneida Indians,  but then were moved to Indiana in 1818 and then again to Wisconsin in 1822.    They were joined by displaced Mohicans and Munsees from Connecticut and New York.

Mohican Cemetery on  Co.Rte.56, Turkey Hill Rd.

This Week -- Is something of a milestone--the 100th post of  NYSHMs--It Happened Here.

Though I am finding it kind of difficult to keep up the pace of 1 post per week I look forward to continuing to research and write them. --Tom

 

*Ironically, as an early protestant sect in central Europe, the Moravians had suffered some of the worst persecution during the Counter-reformation.

**p.253 Shirley W. Dunn.  The Mohican World 1680-1750.  This and   Evan T. Pritchard. Native New Yorkers, The Legacy of the Algonquin Peoples of New York are the principal sources of material for this post.

It Happened Here -- The People of the
"River that Flows Both Ways"

Main St., Catskill at the Marina

They called themselves the "People of the River that Flows Both Ways", or the Mohicannau*, and that river, of course, is the tidal estuary Hudson.** The Mohicans, or Mahikans as the Europeans called them had lived for centuries in the Hudson River watershed and the adjacent Housatonic River watershed, having separated from the Delaware Indian peoples, perhaps a millennium ago.

They lived in towns from present day Schaghticoke to the mouth of the Catskill Creek, settling in smaller numbers, as far west as the Schoharie Valley. On the eastern side of the Hudson were important settlements at Kinderhook and Schodack, and farther east and south to Taghkanic and Gallatin in present day Columbia County. In eastern Dutchess County they settled around what became Pine Plains and Amenia. In the Housatonic Valley there were settlements near Sharon Connecticut and Great Barrington and Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

Rte. 23B, Leeds

In pre-contact days the Mohicans lived a balanced and successful life with their fields and forests adequately, if not abundantly providing all their sustenance and material wants. Their populations grew.

With the arrival of Europeans came stresses that would ultimately result in the Mohicans near- extinction, and, with the exception of a few families, their removal from New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts.

Pine Plains-Silvernails Rd. Gallatin

                                                                       The first of these stresses were European diseases--Small Pox, Chicken pox, Measles, and Diptheria. These diseases devastated Native American populations, because they had no natural immunities built up against them. The Mohicans in closest contact with the Dutch and English--those living in the Hudson Valley were decimated. In 1690 the Mohican village at Schaghticoke  was nearly wiped out by small pox.

Rte 23B, Jefferson Heights, Catskill

The second of these stresses were Colonial wars and Indian-Colonial wars that disrupted hunting patterns, causing food shortages and took the lives of unknown numbers of Mohican men.  Even though the Mohican peoples often tried to maintain their neutrality, as in the Esopus Wars between their neighbors, the Esopus Indians from the Kingston area, and the Dutch, they risked becoming involved if they ventured afield to hunt. Too often they discovered colonial militias could be remarkably inept at distinguishing Indian friend from foe; and persistent fear of attacks on their villages discouraged hunting parties from venturing far from home. Villages were fortified with stockades, built around them,  which the Europeans  called  "castles".  Even if they were never attacked, building a stockade was a labor-intensive activity that took hunters from the task of providing for their village.

The fur trade, itself, became catastrophically disruptive for all the Indian peoples involved. Hunting which heretofore had provided sustenance and clothing was substantially replaced by hunting for the fur trade.  To be successful at this, native-American hunters needed European guns, shot and powder.

Montgomery Co.Rte 33, Hickory Hill Rd., Fonda

In the scramble to control the declining stocks of fur-bearing game, and gain direct access to Dutch traders, the Iroquois used the power of their confederacy and their early access to firearms to attempt to dominate/intimidate their native-American neighbors. Beginning in 1663 a coalition of eastern Indian tribes, provoked by the bullying of the Iroquois began hostilities against the eastern-most Iroquois, the Mohawks. A truce was negotiated in 1666 by the new English government at Albany, but by 1669 war had broken out again as Indians from Massachusetts, Connecticut joined the Mohicans forming an army of perhaps 300, and attacking the new village of Caughnawaga.  The besieged Mohawks sent runners to summon reinforcements from the towns of Canagora, Canajora and Tionnontogen; they repulsed an assault, then sallied forth to engage the Mohicans and their New England allies in a sharp but inconclusive fight.                                                                               

The Caughnawaga village site, excavated by archaeologists 1945-1956, had post mold locations marked with stakes.
The common areas, recently mowed, reveal the size and position of three of the longhouses.
The foliage in the foreground marks the location of a double palisade.

   Following the fight, the Mohicans and their allies, with their ammunition and supplies depleted, withdrew along an ancient east/west trail leading to New England. The Caughnawaga Mohawks, supported by reinforcements from the neighboring towns, raced ahead of the retiring invaders and set an ambush, along a natural breastwork, caused by a fault in the earth.  Details of the battle are sketchy but the coalition army was defeated and broken up. Thereafter Mohicans came under intense pressure from the victorious Mohawks, leading Mohicans  to abandon their villages on the western side of the Hudson, and sell their lands to Dutch or English speculators.

Schenectady Co. Rte 40, Glenville

The coalition army most 
likely retired along
this trail

Hoffman Hill Rd, Co. Rte 59, Glenville

Trade goods--clothing, iron implements
and weapons quickly replaced  materials  Native Americans formerly produced themselves. In years when food stocks
ran short, food too was traded for furs.
Credit was often extended to the Mohicans, and other native Americans, in part, because some traders were sympathetic to the Indians' increasingly precarious existence; in part because it made good business sense to obligate Indian hunter-customers to continue to hunt for their trader-creditors; and in part because many traders cynically knew the growing cycle of debt and dependence could eventually be settled for something Europeans prized even more than furs--land.

Into the mix of the fur trade was added another devastating element, alcohol. Native Americans appeared to have a genetic intolerance for alcohol. They craved it, and binge-drank it. Beer, rum, and among French traders, brandy, became important trade goods. Alcohol may have accounted for 1/3 the value of all items traded to native Americans.  Alcohol and alcoholism clouded judgement, robbed native Americans of the ability to engage in sustained purposeful activities. It upset the social order of families and contributed to the impoverishment of the Indian peoples.

Ultimately it was this impoverishment combined with the Europeans insatiable desire for land that led to the Mohican's near-demise.  In a thousand land deals, large and small, Mohicans traded away their lands for food and European goods, and were often swindled, as well. Indistinct and often unsurveyed boundaries left room for interpretation. Land speculators and the colonial courts were only too willing to interpret in the white purchasers favor.  Robert Livingston***, the first Patroon's dealings were among the most egregious. Livingston purchased a tract of land along the Hudson from the Wappinger Indians and later another tract from the Mohicans in the Taconic hills. He applied for title  for both purchases and was given title for both and everything in between --nearly 2/3ds of all of what would become Columbia County!

 Along with Livingston,
and Jan Bronk were  
Abram Staats who had 
an early trading post at the
mouth of Kinderhook 
Creek and "Baron"Thomas

Ross who speculated in

land south of

Livingston's.There were

many others.


                                                                                                 
   *or Muhheakannuck. Because the Mohicans had no written language their words were often written down as Europeans thought they heard them. The result was there are often multiple spellings, recorded centuries before standardized phonetic conventions. With the exception of scattered phrases, object and place names the Mohican's language has been lost, so it is unlikely these differences will ever be resolved.

**The Hudson not only flows both ways as the tides surge in and out of it, but in some locations, as the tide is turning, may flow both ways at once, with the slower currents continuing to flow north, after the tide in main channel has turned and has started to flow south!

***see my post of June 30, 2013 "The Tough Wiley Scotsman and his Diligent Vrouw"


 Next Week--  (Part II)   It Happened Here--The Mohicans and the Moravians

Marker of the Week-- The "Comet-finder" and his Patron.

Castle Rd., Geneva

Since the first decades of the 20th Century we have become used to thinking of science as a big enterprise, funded by governments, research institutes or major universities, taking place in large laboratories, research centers, or observatory complexes.  But for most of the history of science, scientific observations have been largely a private affair, conducted by individuals in classrooms, basements, workshops, garages and backyards.  So it was when William R. Brooks began to study and observe comets, setting up his own observatory at his home in Phelps, NY, in 1881. That year he built his own telescope and discovered his first comet. In the next five years he discovered three more comets in his back yard observatory.

The Smith Observatory with Brook's home, in front

In 1886  he came to the attention of William
Smith a successful nurseryman and founder of Standard
Optical Company. Smith also dabbled in astronomy and astrology and had his own backyard observatory, in Geneva, New York.  In 1886 he had built for  him a much grander observatory equipped with a 10" refractor telescope.  Hoping to entice Brooks to join him, he offered the Phelps astronomer a position as Director of the Observatory, and built a substantial Victorian house for him (!) in front of the observatory.  Brooks accepted and came to Geneva. Working there he discovered sixteen more comets, a lifetime total of twenty seven--one short of the record number of twenty eight, discovered by French astronomer Jean-Louis Pons (1761-1831).                                                                       

It Happened Here -- The Physicians wore Petticoats

In the Fall semester of 1847 the faculty of the Geneva Medical School was confronted with a situation that had them in an uproar. A prestigious Philadelphia physician, Dr. Joseph Warrington   had recommended a candidate for admission to the medical college. Normally, such a recommendation would have been greeted with a sanguinary acceptance, both as it held forth the promise of gaining an excellent student, and because it flattered the college that it, as a small, upstate medical school should merit the confidence of an such an important physician.  But there was a problem--the candidate was a woman!  No woman in modern times had become a physician. Victorian morality generally frowned upon gentlewomen working outside the home, and in polite society, people were scandalized by the notion of a women studying the human body, examining patients and treating diseases. It would not be until the Civil War with its horrific medical demands, that women would  be commonly recruited even for nursing duties, outside of the home.

The faculty were loathe to offend Dr. Warrington by rejecting his candidate but could not imagine a woman at their institution, so touting the virtues of "republicanism" they offered to accept Elizabeth Blackwell as a student if the entire 129 all-male student body voted to accept her. When the vote was proposed to them, the "boys" treated the proposition with hilarity. Many thought it was a hoax, dreamt up by a rival medical school; others realized it for what it was, a ploy to shift responsibility for rejecting the candidate, because she was a woman, from the faculty to the student body.  So, whether in an act of high spirits to go along with the "joke", or in an act of the defiance, refusing to do the faculty's dirty work, the students unanimously voted to accept Miss Blackwell.*

Park Place, Geneva

Gradually with studied seriousness, modesty, tremendous determination, and a keen intellect, the newest student won the respect of her fellow students.  The school itself was transformed as the ribald humor and general disorderliness in lectures was curtailed in the presence of this young women.  Even the physician-faculty were inspired to greater professionalism.  At the end of two years Elizabeth Blackwell was awarded her degree, passing every course with honors and finishing at the head of her class.**

Elizabeth would continue to be challenged by a skeptical profession that was reluctant to employ her and by an incredulous public that was reluctant to accept her. To complete her residency she was forced to seek employment in Paris at La Maternite, a hospital that normally trained midwives. It was there that an accident intervened to prevent Elizabeth from pursuing her goal to become a surgeon. While treating a child with an infected eye some of the infected material splashed into her own eye. Her eye became so inflamed she lost sight in it and eventually had to have it removed. Later she worked in London before returning to the United States to establish her own practice. With her sister Emily (the 3d woman in the U.S. to receive a medical degree) and Dr. Marie Zakrzewka, a German woman physician,  she opened the New York Infirmary for Women and Children. Within a decade it also had become a medical college offering training and medical clinical experience for women doctors and nurses entering the profession.

Church Street, Cortland

A few years after Elizabeth Blackwell received her degree in Geneva, NY,  Lydia Strowbridge received a medical degree in Cortland.  Unlike Dr. Blackwell who traveled to London and Paris and established her practice in New York City,  Dr. Strowbridge worked doggedly to establish herself in her own community, serving women and children.  In later years she became an outspoken advocate of a women's right to vote, traveling to conferences at Seneca Falls and heading the Women's Rights movement in Cortland.



*A lone student attempted to reject her but was forcefully prevailed upon by the others to change his vote.

**Even then, some of the faculty questioned if they needed to confer a degree upon her, but other faculty members came to her defense, reminding them she had paid her tuition, and completed all the required coursework with honors, and threatened that if they refused to matriculate her they would go to the medical journals and report their colleagues duplicity.

Marker of the Week -- 

With its quaint nickname, this little
stone cottage along along the
Hudson (Rte 9G, Clermont) looks
like it could have stepped out
of the pages of Knickerbocker's 
History of New York from the
Beginning of the World to the End
 of the Dutch Dynasty, ostensibly
 written by Washington Irving                   

Wait-- do I see old Deidrich K. skulking
around back there among the trees?

It Happened Here -- In a "Cockpit" of History

In Albany in the late 1950's (and for many years before, and one and a half decades afterwards) there was a small park at the base of State Street hill, where it merged into lower Broadway. This park served as a major transportation hub in the city.  People would take a Traction Company bus to "The Plaza" and could transfer to one of a dozen or more buses going to different parts of the city, Schenectady, Troy or the suburbs. On nearby side streets were the terminals for the Adirondack Trailways Bus Company and Greyhound. Up until the first years of the 1950's, Union Station, on Broadway a block up from the Plaza provided passenger rail service. Up until a decade before that, travelers could purchase tickets at a ticket house at the end of the Plaza and board the Hudson River Dayline boats--side paddle-wheel steamers that plied the river providing overnight service to New York.

The park itself was a narrow elliptical island with Broadway running south in front of it, and a              smaller northbound road running a few feet from the imposing D &H  Railroad Headquarters                  building--a modern office building dressed with Gothic towers, windows and gargoyles to replicate a medieval guildhall in Ypres Belgium.  The park had the usual complement of medium size maple trees, park benches, tulip beds, pigeons, squirrels, etc.

• HENRY HUDSON
  EXPLORER, HERE ENDED THE
  VOYAGE OF THE HALF MOON
  IN QUEST OF THE INDIES
  SEPTEMBER, 1609
  Location: PLAZA, BROADWAY AT FOOT OF STATE ST.*
• FORT ORANGE                                                                                                                                                                SITE OF WEST INDIA COMPANY
  COLONY 1624. HERE WAS BORN
  SARAH RAPELJE, FIRST WHITE
  CHILD IN N. Y. STATE, 1625
  FORT STOOD S. E. BY THE RIVER 

            Location: PLAZA, BROADWAY AT FOOT OF STATE ST.

What was unusual about this little  park was the sheer number of New York State Historical Markers it held.  Lined up from one end of the island to the other they even overflowed onto  the street corners opposite the park.

•  ALBANY

        CALLED FORT NASSAU 1614,
        FORT ORANGE 1624,
        BEVERWYCK 1652, ALBANY
        1664; CHARTERED 1686
        Location: PLAZA, BROADWAY AT FOOT OF STATE ST.

• COLONIAL WARPATH

          RENDEVOUS OF TROOPS IN
          FIVE WARS. HERE ARMIES
          UNDER ABERCROMBIE, LOUDOUN
          AND AMHERST MOVED TO THE
          CONQUEST OF CANADA 1756-60
           Location: PLAZA, BROADWAY AT FOOT OF STATE ST.

• IROQUOIS TREATY

           BASIC PEACE BY GOV. DONGAN
           GOV. HOWARD OF VA. AND
           FIVE NATIONS AT COURT HOUSE
          WHICH STOOD 100 FEET WEST
          Location: PLAZA, BROADWAY AT FOOT OF HUDSON AVE

• GENERAL BURGOYNE 

            OVER THIS ROAD ENTERED
            ALBANY WITH HIS STAFF AFTER
            THE BATTLE OF SARATOGA
            GOING TO SCHUYLER MANSION
            AS PRISONERS OF WAR - 1777
            Location: PLAZA, BROADWAY AT FOOT OF STATE ST. 

• CLERMONT   
                                                                                                                                                                                             NEAR THE FOOT OF MADISON
  AVENUE ROBERT FULTON IN
  AUG. 1807, COMPLETED THE
  FIRST SUCCESSFUL
  STEAMBOAT VOYAGE
  Location: PLAZA, BROADWAY AT FOOT OF STATE ST.

• BIRTHPLACE OF
                                                                                                                                                                                    AMERICAN UNION
  NEAR THIS SITE, BENJAMIN
  FRANKLIN PRESENTED THE 1ST
  FORMAL PLAN OF NATIONAL
  UNION; CONGRESS OF 1754
  Location: PLAZA, BROADWAY AT FOOT OF STATE ST.
  

 
 For a certain nine or eleven year old boy the prospect of spending time in this park reading the signs and imagining the events that could have been witnessed from here, while he was awaiting  the bus home at the conclusion of a successful shopping trip with his mother was almost as exciting as the prospect of tearing into the cellophane wrapping enclosing the latest much-coveted plastic model airplane kit--a bribe for exhibiting patience and good behavior, on the trip. If the bus was late, and immediate interest waned in the historic signs, the history-charged youth could always imagine himself in the cockpit of a World War II fighter, defending his island-aircraft carrier from hoards of red and cream colored** enemy planes, dropping down the State Street Hill or coming in low, roaring down Broadway. Most would circle his island-carrier and return from whence they came, some slowing down to make their torpedo runs, before speeding up to make their escape; others hanging suspended along the curb as their bomb-bay doors, fore and aft, burst open and they disgorged their deadly ordinance in rapid regular succession. Usually, however, it wouldn't be long before a maternal hand would descend on the young aviator's shoulder--a reminder that spinning around and uttering airplane or even machine gun noises wasn't exactly acceptable public behavior.

In 1973 the D&H building was bought by the State University of New York at Albany and given an extensive renovation. The landscape architects determined the building needed a more suitable landscaped setting. No longer would the building's doorways open out onto the bare sidewalk, a  dozen feet from the curb.  The northbound lane was torn up and landscaped; ornamental trees replaced the native maples; the old park benches and old tulip beds disappeared.  And the New York State Historical Markers disappeared as well. To the University planners they probably seemed as quaint and unaesthetic as the rows of Burma Shave*** signs that sprung up along old route 20.

To my way of thinking, Albany is a little poorer for their disappearance.


*This, and the following seven markers are listed in "New York State Historical Markers,
www.nysm.nysed.gov/historicmarkers/hisaction.cfm

**Traction Company buses were painted red and cream colors, not the blue and white of today's CDTA bus fleet. 

***Burma Shave was a company that manufactured a brand of brushless shaving cream from 1927 until 1963. They advertised by posting series of roadside signs with a few words on each sign that taken together spelled out a short bit of doggerel that ended with the product name "Burma-Shave."  Often, each series promoted the Burma Shave product, or a traffic safety message. "If you think/ she like your bristles/ try walking barefooted/ through some thistles./ Burma-Shave" and "Dim Your Lights/ Behind a Car/Let folks see/ How bright/ YOU are./Burma-Shave" are two of several hundred produced.