It Happened Here--"The White Woman                                                                                    of the Genesee"

"Tne Genesee"--the heart of the homeland of the Seneca, the largest, most  powerful people of the Haudenosaunee (the Iroquois confederacy), the "keepers of the western door," and in their midst lived Mary Jemison.

Mary Jemison statue 

 Her grave site was relocated near here in 1874 from Buffalo Creelk to the Letchworth State Park, Council Grounds. The statue was erected here in 1910.

Mary Jemison was born in 1743  on board

 ship when her parents were immigrating from Ireland to America.  Her family settled and prospered on the Pennsylvania frontier for over a decade. However, with French and Indian War raging, a raiding party of Shawnee warriors and four French soldiers captured the, then, twelve year old Mary and her family.  Two of Mary's older brothers  escaped capture.  The raiders, fearing they would be overtaken by militia pursuers killed and scalped Mary's mother, father and other siblings but took Mary to the Ohio country where she was sold to a Seneca family living there who were mourning the loss of a son/brother killed in the  the war. Gradually their care for her, sympathy and kindness  won her over  as she was formally adopted into the family. [1]  Formally adopted, Mary was re named "Dickewamis," (pleasant girl, handsome girl or a pleasant, good thing .) [2] After a few years she was married to a Delaware man,  Sheninjee  with whom she had a son, Thomas, who she named after her father. The couple moved in with her clan mother , her clan sisters and brothers in a Seneca  town on the Ohio River.

The extended family probably lived in a traditional bark longhouse similar to this one

(longhouse reconstruction in Ganondagan, Seneca village near Victor, New York)

On a visit to the British Fort Pitt during an apparent truce, Mary was observed by British colonists there.  Fears that  they might attempt to  take her from them contributed to the family deciding to return to their Genesee homeland, moving into "Little Beard''s Town.  With peace at hand,  in 1768  a bounty was offered for the return of white captives.  A dutch trader and a local chief the "Old King" conspired to capture Mary to collect the bounty.  She successfully hid from them .   Away on a hunting trip, Mary's husband  became sick and died.  She remarried a Seneca man, Hiokatoo with whom she had two sons and four daughters.  She settled into the quiet life  of a native-American squaw, raising corn,beans and squashes and ,  dressing skins,  preparing and preserving venison, occasionally accompanying hunting parties to help carry back game, but more often working in close society with her clan sisters.  "Our labor was not severe, [and our] cares certainly not nearly half as numerous nor as great [as white women's]." [3]  The Seneca's material culture, however, was changing fast with native -Americans becoming increasingly dependent  on goods available only from Europeans and European Americans. The Little Beard's Town Mary moved to was in many ways indistinguishable from "white" frontier towns on the edge of the wilderness with log cabins, plowed fields [4]  and orchards.

Mary reported greed for these things led their chiefs to support the British over the rebels.

Mary's daughter's house from the Gaudeau Tract, at Letchworth State Park.  Mary's house in Little Beard's Town would have been similar.

At first, the Revolutionary War little impacted Mary and her sister's lives, as their warrior husbands and brothers occasionally left and returned from distant raids.  A major exception to this was the Oriskany Battle to which the Seneca were invited to "watch." and "smoke their pipes" while "Regulars" and "Loyalists" punished the upstart rebels.  Instead,  the Senecas became fully involved, fighting for their lives.   Dozens of warriors from Little Beard's Town were killed and wounded.  [5]  Mary also frequently hosted visits by Colonels Butler and Bryant in their travels to Little Beard's Town. Her peace, however, was shattered in 1779 when Washington,  fed up with constant Indian raids  directed armies led by Generals Sullivan and Clinton to crush the Haudenosaunee.  Meeting at Tioga Point on the Susquehanna the combined armies swept up through the finger lakes burning every Cayuga, Tuscarora and Seneca village before them, destroying crops and food stocks, and cutting down orchards. At the head of Conesus Lake  the Senecas and Butler's Rangers set up an ambush to try to stop Sullivan's forces before they could enter Little Beard's Town.  But before they could effect the ambush, a scouting party sent out earlier by the Americans blundered into the ambush and in a running skirmish the party's commander, a Lieutenant Parker, and a Sargent Boyd were taken prisoner.  The enraged and disappointed warriors took their prisoners to the village where they were tortured and beheaded, before a council of chiefs decided that, with the element of surprise gone, their only option was to withdraw before this much larger army.  Little Beard's Town, it crops and orchards was utterly destroyed. 

                        Letchworth Park Rd., Castile

While most of Mary's people crowded into towns untouched by the Sullivan invasion,  even seeking shelter in the shadow of the British headquarters at Fort Niagara, Mary took her family south, along the Genesee to an old abandoned village that would become known as the Gardeau Tract.  There she met a pair of escaped slaves who had raised a large field of corn.  They  took her and her family in, feeding and sheltering them, in exchange for help in shucking and shelling the corn, through a severe winter that devastated  the Haudenosuanee people through cold and famine.  Mary stayed with her family, after the former slaves moved on. Reunited with her husband, she built cabins, farmed and raised livestock.  Peace came and she became surrounded by a scattering of white squatter-settlers. 

                                                                                                                     cor. U.S. 20 A and Mary Jemison Dr., Geneseo

 In 1797 Robert Morris  an extremely wealthy investor,  and a major financier of the Revolution bought the rights to be the sole negotiator to buy land owned/occupied by the Senecas and other tribes in western New York, (the right of Preemption).  Morris arranged for a meeting with the Senecas at the town of Big Tree (near present day Geneseo).  Mary attended the meeting, as respected clan matriarchs often did, advising their tribes' chiefs. The meeting was contentious, and unsavory, dragging on for over a month, with American negotiators using alcohol and bribes to win over individual Indian delegates and with Native Americans realizing  the flood of white settlers would continue unabated unless they made concessions,  surrendered land for payments and got (some-hoped-for) legal protections for their established towns and "developed" lands. Mary was an outspoken advocate for her people.  Morris' company bought the entire Seneca lands west of the Genesee to the New York western border with the exception of twelve "reservations"--mostly settled Indian towns and farmlands for $100,000 (roughly $5 billion, today). The money was  invested stocks in the Bank of the United States with the stipulation that $6000 or  up 6% of the earnings of the stocks be returned to the tribe as an annuity.  Mary's Gardeeau Tract was one of the reservations.

For the next thirty four years Mary and her family lived on the Gardeau Tract but it was not without stress and tragedy.  The Gardeau Tract, whose boundaries  set out by treaty were thought to encompass about two square miles but when surveyed were discovered they encompassed 16,927 acres! This gave her ample land to lease acreage to neighboring farmers so she could live comfortably but it was also large enough to attract the attention of land speculators and land hungry neighbors who developed repeated schemes  to take land from her.  The stresses of living on the edge of the white society also effected her family.  Her oldest son Thomas and middle son John  frequently clashed in violent alcohol-fueled altercations.  In July  1811 John killed Thomas.  Hiokatoo died later that year from advanced age and consumption and her youngest son Jesse died in a fight with John in 1812.    Five years later, John was killed in a brawl with two other Senecas in a neighboring reservation.

Despite her losses and struggles Mary bore her personal disasters with grace and good humor, never turning away persons who came to her in need. Her neighbors encouraged her to meet with James Seaver who interviewed her in 1823 to tell her remarkable story.  The following year he published A  Narrative  of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison.   

In 1831 she moved to the Buffalo Creek Reservation with her remaining daughters and their children, selling the remainder of her lands. She died there in 1833 at the age of 91.

[1]  It is important to remember that Iroquois (Seneca) families are matrilineal so their extended families center around the clan mother.  Husbands essentially marry into their mother-in-law's family, thus throughout most of her life, Mary Jemison's life would center around her clan mother's life and her adoptive sisters.

[2] Later english renditions of her name represent it as "Dehgewanus" and translate it as "two falling voices".  One can imagine her as a young scared girl speaking English and learning the Seneca dialect-- starting to speak, but having her voice trail off in fear and uncertainty.

[3]  A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison.  Chapter VI.  James E. Seaver.  1824.

[4]  Living along the Ohio, Mary reported they used a short sharpened stick as a hoe-like instrument to plant their corn, but moving into her own piece of land, the Gardeau Tract, she brought a pair of horses and plowed her fields to grow her corn. 

[5] see also "NYSHMs: It Happened Here.  Apr. 11., 2025."

--A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison   is available  on line in text at "Project Gutenberg" and as an audiobook at "Librivox"

--The online "Exploring Letchworth State Park History " by Tom Breslin and Tom Cook is a wealth of articles and time lines about the park, the Gardeau Tract and Mary Jemison

--all the usual internet suspects.

Marker of the Week  Fortnight (!)  -- Diners

  7550 N. Broadway, Redhook

The descendants of "lunch wagons" and modeled after railroad dining cars, these prefabricated light-meal restaurants were popular in the 1920's, and after WWII.   Completely pre-wired with appliances, plumbing, booths, counters, and "bar stools" these original fast-food restaurants were virtually ready for business as soon as they were  delivered and connected up to public utilities. Known as the Village Diner or Halfway Diner  (because it was said to be halfway between New York and Albany ) , this Redhook restaurant was fabricated in Paterson, NJ and brought to Redhook  by flatbed rail car and truck in 1927. 

After the Taconic Parkway was built it was moved to the intersection of Rte.199 and the Parkway,  then moved back to Redhook after the building of the  mid-- Hudson Bridge redirected a greater flow of traffic through Redhook.  Like many other diners an extended kitchen was added in the rear.

 One of about ten diner manufacturers, Silk City Diners was a division of the Paterson Wagon Company that produced about 1500 diners from 1926 to 1966.  

Another Silk City Diner exists in Albany.  Built in 1941 it had a number of owners and operated under several names, Lill's Diner, The Miss Albany Diner and currently, Tanpopo Ramen and Sake Bar.

In 1987 it was featured prominently in the film Ironweed.

 

 It Happened Here-- The Schoharie County                                                           Seminary Mania

"During the 'seminary epidemic'  of 1850 and 1854 that swept over the county and excited the steady minds of the people and made sad havoc with the accumulation of years of economy and industry, the citizens of this place (Carlisle) erected a fine edifice for the accommodation of 200 boarding pupils."          --p.291 the History of Schoharie County , New York.  William E. Roscoe  1882

                                                                    Crommie Rd.   Carlisle
Incredibly, at the beginning of the middle decade 19th century the  little towns and hamlets in the very rural county of Schoharie erected no less than six boarding schools for higher (secondary) education of students, hoping, presumably to attract students from across New York State and southern New England.     By 1867, all of them had closed and most of them had burned--most under suspicious circumstances!

It was not as if Schoharie county had had no experience with the  financial difficulties of building and maintaining academies/seminaries.  The village of Schoharie had incorporated its academy in 1837, receiving Regents certification in 1839. Beginning with a principal teacher, and three assistants, with French and German branches, it grew and broadened its curriculum  until in 1881 it awarded its first regents diploma, the ninth awarded in the state. In 1904 the old Academy was replaced by a brick public  high school on its site.

The Jefferson Academy, at a central crossroads in  the township of Jefferson predated the Schoharie Academy.  Herman Hickok, a local school teacher began advocating for and soliciting subscribers for a fund to build an academy in 1812,  succeeding in 1817 after he convinced a local landowner to donate land for an academy along with a village green.  With $4000 a building was raised but the Academy struggled financially for years, being forced to close in 1851.

                       cor. N.Harpersfield Rd.  and Park Ave., Jefferson

While local communities struggled to finance   and maintain academies/ seminaries  for secondary education,  a statewide organization with national ties announced its intention to build a seminary in the remote little hamlet of Charlottesville, Schoharie County.  In 1850 the New York State Methodist  Conference began soliciting subscriptions and donations to build a seminary to house 300 students, in the "healthy countryside" away from the  corrupting distractions and vices of towns and busy thoroughfares. Quickly erected and in business, after two years, the seminary was examined by a committee that reported to the Conference that the seminary had "a career of unexampled prosperity" with 350 students,  and had to turn many away for lack of facilities. Extensions were added on the building and, in 1852, a new  three story building was begun to hold an additional 500 students across  the plank road, in front of it! By 1852 there were, besides the principal and preceptress. a staff of 17 teachers.

                                                                                                          cor.  Charlotte Valley Rd. and Meade Rd., Charlotteville

This degree of success and growth could not help but attract the attention of surrounding communities and within months the "Seminary Mania" was beginning.  But what explains the popularity of the Charlottesville Seminary?  First,  long periods of relative prosperity had seen the growth of the middle class with increasing numbers of wealthy farmers, tradesmen, and businessmen seeking education beyond basic literacy for their children in a safe, moral environment.  The Methodist church could ostensibly provide that.  Additionally, there were Methodist churches in nearly every town in New York and beyond. This new educational project was reported and promoted  to the congregations with ministers to  vouch for the new seminary and perhaps provide some charitable support for promising students.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             W. Main St., Richmondville

In the spring of 1852 a group investors from Richmondville  invested "a few thousand dollars" to build a seminary in Richmondville described by Roscoe as "palatial" but in December 1853 "an incendiary laid the whole in ashes" but because the investors had been encouraged by its prospects they raised more money to build a second building in the fall of 1853, investing $60,000 on the two buildings.  It too burned in 1854!

In the Fall of 1852 investors around Carlisle formed a joint stock company promoted by a "Colonel Sellers" raising  $32,000 for a 300  student seminary a short distance from the Great Western Turnpike that ran through Carlisle, with a large chapel, several recitation rooms and "all the conveniences of a first rate institution." By the end of 1854, however, it had become a financial failure, with the institution amassing unpaid bills. It would struggle on for over a decade. with the trustees blaming the investors for not supporting them; the investors blaming the trustees for profligate, unauthorized spending. Expensive litigation followed expensive litigation.  Several local businesses went bankrupt and their owners left for better prospects in the west; others labored on, mired in debt for years.  Eventually the building was sold, taken apart and re-assembled to build two hotels in Rockville and East Worcester, Otsego County.

NYS Rte. 7, Cobleskill

In the fall of 1853 at a cost of $30,000 the Warnerville Union Literary Seminary opened with accomodations for 200 students and a faculty of one principal and twelve assistants, but closed a short time later.  It would open, under a different principal as the Union Literary Institute in November 1861 but close  in a year and a half.  And again it would open in 1870 headed by Professor Dean Smith, as Dean's College,  closing after eighteen months.

                                                                                                       CharlotteValley Rd., Charlotteville

Meanwhile, Charlottesville Seminary soldiered on, buoyed by its popularity and aided by church donations. In 1855  a grand new building was built on the south side of the road.  Four  hundred and eighty feet long , four stories high with additional basement rooms, it was built to house 800 students and slated to transition into a college, "People's College".

But in 1856 tragedy struck.  The north complex of buildings burned. Twelve years later, the south building burned as well.  After the fires Professor  Solomon Sias continued the seminary with  small groups of about 120 students operating out of a local hotel until 1875.                                                            

The problem with seminary boarding schools was, that though popular, they were beyond the economic range of most middle class parents, and in the competition for pupils the seminaries of Schoharie were unprofitable.  The $3 per week, or so, generally charged students could not cover the room, heat, 21 meals,  washing and ironing services and salaries for a principal, preceptress, and dozen or more assistants, and cooks and maintenance personnel required to run such  institutions.  

While their fundamental unprofitability explains their ultimate demise, left unanswered are questions surrounding the fires that destroyed four of the six Schoharie seminaries.  Accidental fires were a constant threat to large  buildings in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries.  Large hotels, and resorts were always burning!  In nineteenth century Saratoga, for example, Broadway was lined with hotels, each one larger and more opulent than the last,  but today, only the Adelphi survives the frequent fires of the past.  Wooden construction, wood and coal burning stoves--vented with smoke pipes running up walls and across ceilings, the absence of smoke detection and sprinkler systems made large buildings vulnerable.  The  absence of fire companies, effective fire fighting equipment, and hydrants meant that any small fire would likely result in total destruction.  But beyond accidental fires, Roscoe clearly lays the blame for some of the fires on "incindiarists" but does not elaborate.  Besides Roscoe there appears to be few if any secondary sources/histories which relate the stories of the Schoharie Seminaries and their demise.  Perhaps this article will arouse some interest in  answering  the unanswered questions of  Why? and by Whom? were the disastrous fires started.

        Marker of the Week  Fortnight -- The Prize Fight        that Changed the Shape of New York!

Undermountain Road, Boston Corner  (marker lists the wrong date)

You may have never noticed,  but the border between Massachusetts and New York State runs  from  a point northwest of North Adams to a point  southwest of  Sheffield, MA  in nearly a straight line until it joins with the Massachusetts--Connecticut border at what you might expect to be about an 80 degree angle.  But about two miles north of that intended junction the borderline veers abruptly a few degrees to the east to give to New York a neat little triangle of land in which lies the tiny hamlet, Boston Corner.  Originally part of Massachusetts, the Corner was perhaps the most isolated hamlet in the Bay State, walled off by the Taconic Mountains.  While isolated from the rest of Massachusetts it became conveniently tied to New York City,  Troy and Albany by a spur of the Harlem River Railroad, providing regular  freight and passenger  service to the town.  It didn't take long for individuals pursuing  criminal business to see the Corner was a convenient locale for their shady enterprises--difficult for the local police from Great Barrington, MA  to reach, and thus often ignored, but easy for perpetrators to get to.  The hamlet often became a stash  for stolen livestock and other property, a discrete meeting place for wanted criminals and a venue for duels. Both states forbade dueling by this time. (One story has it that a successful racehorse was shipped to the Corner to be given a dye-job to disguise  it so when it was run again it would get better racing odds for its owner.)  The residents petitioned both states to get their town annexed to New York to get a measure of law enforcement.

 In New York City in the 1850s powerful Irish gangs competed with each other for prestige and power and  one source of bragging rights was the claim of who had the toughest gang members.  Bare-knuckle boxing matches were the preferred method of making and defending such claims, and though illegal,  boxing matches  were avidly followed and were the source of much small and high stakes betting.  In 1853, a young tough, John Morrissey challenged an older experienced battler, reputed to be the champion,  "Yankee Sullivan," a career criminal who had been convicted of theft in Great Britain and sent to an Australian penal colony but escaped and had made his way to NewYork.  A match was arranged; a prize of $2000 set for the winner; and Boston Corner was selected for the fight, where it was  expected no police would arrive to break up the event. 

 Overnight, on October 12, 1853 the little hamlet of some 200 souls was swamped with thousands of "sportsmen" carousing and camping in the streets.  The one local hotel and bar was overrun and drained of its spirits.  (But of course, "fortunately" the visitors had the foresight  to bring plenty of booze along with them.)   The boxing match was held in an abandoned brickyard in a natural bowl with sloping sides. The fight started when both fighters  "threw their hats in the ring", signaling they were ready to fight. The fight lasted an incredible 37 rounds. Each round lasted until a fighter was knocked down or fell to a knee.  The fight continued when each fighter swiped a starting line with his foot. The winner was declared if one fighter was unable to "toe the line." Throughout the fight, fist-fights broke out between spectators. Yankee Sullivan showed early on that he was a better fighter but according to some, Morrissey was declared the winner when Sullivan jumped out of the ring to come to the aid of a friend he saw being attacked on the sidelines, and could not get back to "toe the line" in time while Morrissey's supporters virtually carried the young contender to "toe the line".  When the fight was declared, intoxicated overjoyed supporters of Morrissey joined outraged indignant supporters of Sullivan  to essentially sack the town, stealing whatever valuables and food they could lay their hands on. There were reports of even pigs being stolen from farmers' barnyards, butchered on the spot, and roasted along the roadsides!  And then, the "sportsmen" were gone on the next train.  

The town picked itself up;  redoubled their efforts to get themselves annexed by New York, where they hoped to get better local law enforcement, and this time in 1855 they finally succeeded.  

--A quick perusal of the "Google Machine" will reveal there are a surprisingly large number of pieces written about this historical incident, each with their own set of "facts".  I particularly liked the pieces published  the Poughkeepsie Journal,  Sports Illustrated and The New England Historical Society.

 

               It Happened Here--  The Learning Continues:                                                                         Academies &  Seminaries

                                                                 The Academy in Clermont

                                                                       U.S. Rte 9 Germantown

                              Rte 9H, Claverack

In their earliest years the first Academies and Seminaries [1] provided a "classic education" emphasizing languages, especially ancient languages --Greek and Latin, and mathematics to prepare students to attend one of the few colleges in the northern colonies/states--Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth or Kings (Columbia) but soon they were offering more practical instruction, as well. Clinton Academy in East Hampton. for example, offered courses in surveying and navigation.  And for their female students (as yet, a rarity) courses in ettiquette, social graces and household management. Some schools offered an "ornamental education" for the "fairer sex" and many offered what today might be called

remedial education to insure students of both genders had basic literacy.

In 1787 New York State established a board of Regents to recharter Kings College (now Columbia University) as Columbia College and to encourage the development of schools. In 1787 they were given the authority to charter academies, though some schools would be chartered by the legislature, itself. By the end of the 19th century over  400 Academies and Seminaries would be chartered. A blend of private and public, most academies would be privately financed through tuitions charged to their students but would be administered by public trustees selected from the communities in which they were located. Many operated as live-in boarding schools.

                                                                                           cor. Crown St, John  St. Kingston

                                                                                          Kingston Academy located in a solid two-story 

                                                                                                            stone building, would survive the British burning of the city,                                                                                                                 relocating to Academy Park in 1830, continuing until 1916                                                                                                                      when it would be replaced by Kingston High School

                                                                             Albany Av. (Co. Rte 21) Kinderhook

                                         Kinderhook's Columbia Academy developed from its early Dutch common school

The Regents would  administer grants  to academies from time to time and a " Literacy fund" was created in 1813 to provide subsidies on a more regular basis.

                                                                                                                                                                                                           Rte. 28 Milford

Hartwick Seminary developed out of the work of John Christopher Hartwick who spent his life while a frontier missionary amassing land to establish a christian utopian settlement but died before he accomplished this, but he left a request that a theological seminary be established. Three pastors, Dr. John Christopher Kunze, a leading Lutheran theologian, Rev. Anthony Braun a teacher of sciences and languages from Albany and Rev. John Frederick Ernst a primary school teacher established their school on the Hartwick patent in 1815 with a theological department for training for the ministry, and a classical department  for college preparation.  Beginning with 60-70 students, by the 1880's the student body regularly exceeded 100.  A freshman year of college courses was added in 1888 and  in 1927 it moved to Oneonta and became Hartwick College a four year liberal arts college.

Like Hartwick, some academies would grow and become colleges while others would survive only by re-trenching, becoming primary schools.

Spencertown Academy was housed in an impressive building. It was opened in 1847,  the work of the indefatigable blind pastor of St.Peter's Church,  Timothy Woodbridge. It was opened as a teacher training academy but closed after only a decade .  Taken over by the Spencertown and Austerlitz school districts it operated as a two room school.  Later it became part of the Chatham Central School district  until 1970 where today it is a community arts center hosting exhibits, performances and events.

                                          NY Rte 203, Spencertown

Some academies appear to have come and gone rather quickly, while  a very few evolved into colleges and even great universities.

                                                                                                                                                                             Livingston St., Saugerties

                                

   College St., Lima

Founded in 1831 [2]  by the  Genesee  Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, this seminary began  with 341 students, growing steadily until 1849 when Genesee  College was formed out of it. Seeking to become more centrally located in a transportation hub, the  administration attempted to re-establish the college in Syracuse in 1869 but was blocked by  the town of Lima which didn't want to lose its college.  In 1870 Syracuse University got its own charter and finally in 1875 the faculty and student body of Genesee College, in effect, transferred en masse to the new university. 
Genesee college closed but the Genesee Wesleyan      Seminary (prep school) continued until the beginning of World War II.

Though some schools (like the Charlotteville Academy, featured in the next post) sought out remote locations to protect their students from the dangers and vices of cities and transients on the open roads and turnpikes, most sought out and benefited from the easy access to towns and turnpikes.

                                                                                                                         Albany Tpke at Co.Rte.  13  Old Chatham

 

                                                                                        

            

Adjacent villages or hamlets or sections of a town often quarreled over where an academy or seminary would be located.  

                                                                                                                      Co.Rte. 68,  White Creek

"Site of 

Cambridge Washington Academy

Incorporated by Regents 1815

Merged with Union School,1873"

  --Academy St., Cambridge--sign missing

The dispute between the village of Cambridge and the hamlet of White Creek went on for over a decade. In 1799 the citizens of Cambridge  and North White Creek (part of Cambridge) decided to build an academy but at a vote to determine its location the Cambridgers dominated, locating the new academy in the western end of town.  The Whitecreekers revolted, withdrawing their support, eventually building their own academy in the hamlet of White Creek. Cambridge was able to build an academy with the support of the Presbyterian congregation in Coila, a hamlet on the northern border of Cambridge but only after it was agreed that        students would be required to attend religious services twice a week.

By the first decade of the 20th century most communities would decide that the growing needs for higher education could not be met by the random collection of private tuition-based academies that occasionally received public support.  Instead there needed to be publicly funded high schools, free to all.

[1]  Today, Seminaries are most often thought of as theological schools for training priests and clergymen but throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the terms were used pretty much interchangeably, a seminary being a place where knowledge was "disseminated."

[2] Several written sources cite 1831 as  Genesee Wesleyan's founding date.

--Besides the usual internet sources I would like to point out some pieces I found useful.

--The New York Almanack's  recent"Guest Contributor" article of March 30,2025, "Education in NewYork:   Academies and Common Schools" (newyorkalmanack.com) gave me a basic framework and orientation on a subject I heretofore knew very little.

--Ken Gotty, "History of Cambridge Schools" (csindians.com) illustrates some of the kinds of territorial disputes that could happen between towns/villages/hamlets looking to create new schools/academies.

--History of ______County.  In the 1870's-1890's several publishing houses produced large county-wide local histories for subscription sale, featuring lots of granular, local historical detail including generous amounts of historical stories/myths etc. Though often difficult to navigate through, most are available in PDF on line.  I have used volumes from Schoharie, Columbia, Ulster, Rensselaer, and  Oneida counties with varying degrees of success.

                                                                          ********

 Next Time--  The Schoharie County  "Seminary Mania" and How seminary failures and fires devastated the small towns and hamlets of Schoharie

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 Marker of the Week  Fortnight (!)  -- The Marker that started it all.

It's just perverse to take a 12-14 year old boy, who has spent his whole summer back in the early 1960's engrossed in reading  Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans and  Edmonds Drums Along the Mohawk  to Lake George and to show him this sign without explanation.

If you don't know the backstory, I'm not going to tell you!  At least YOU have the internet!  :)

  It Happened Here-- America learns to Read & Write                                                               American*

                                                                 (*the New York experience)                                           

Spurred on by the Calvinist belief that the Faithful needed to be guided/inspired/directed by the "word of God" itself the early Dutch communities along the Hudson began organizing schools to teach their children to read the Bible  soon after  the Reformed Church in Holland began assigning "Dominies" to communities.  Likewise, the Palatine-German and French Huguenot  (Protestant) communities did the same.

A year after they arrived in East Camp the Palatines built their first school, in 1711,  undoubtedly before many homes were finished.   Co. Rte. 33 cor. Amber Lane, Germantown.

Co. Rte. 402, Westerlo

The Huguenot first church/school was built  eight years  after the settlement was founded in 1675.  Huguenot St. at cemetery, New Paltz.

Most colonial school buildings, like most of  the common houses, barns, shops and miscellaneous buildings of ordinary people did not survive the hundred and twenty five or so years of the colonial period, through the next two centuries to today, and were abandoned, repurposed (and surprisingly often) broken up with their component parts used in other buildings.  Except where some historical incident occurred at them, their sites are not generally recognized by the NYSHMs                                         

                                                                                                                                                                                 Co. Rte. 80, Port Jervis                                                                                                     

Rte. 30, Schoharie

. 

Though the Adsit cabin (1778?, 1794?) was never used as a school, many of the earliest New York schools probably looked like this. 
Co. Rte 27, Willsboro

                                                                                                       Co. Rte 31, East Springfield  

As the American Revolution drew to a close with the British defeated at Yorktown and Americans waiting anxiously month after month for the diplomats to hammer out a peace treaty, Americans had time to reflect on what their new society and government should become. Even the "king's English" came under question.  Should the language of their former oppressor continue as the language of a free people?  In some predominately German areas the notion that German, a "people's language", should become the official language was considered.  In Boston there was even discussion about making Hebrew the              official language for government and business, to be taught in schools. Generally, it was believed                American English grammar should be simplified and American spelling reflect more the ways words were pronounced. Everywhere was the belief that the moral education taught in schools needed to be supplemented with civic education for a new republic.  Nowhere were these ideas more frequently discussed than among the officers of the Continental Army in cantonment at New Windsor. A friend of several officers and frequent visitor to the cantonment was one Noah Webster, who taught school in a small private academy to the children of wealthy townsmen in Goshen, a few miles from New Windsor.      Webster would live in Goshen only two years but in those two years he would find a cause and a project that would dominate most of the rest of his life, and make him famous.  He would write a little book known after its first editions by its blue back (cover) that would outsell every other book in 19th century America, except the Bible!  This"American Spelling Book" that taught children how to read phonetically simplified common words and would be followed in later years by a more complete grammar,  and a book of readings that was also popular until surpassed by Mc Guffy's Reader in the 1830's. In 1801 he began work on an American Dictionary of the English Language which he would continue to enlarge and improve upon until 1828. New American words like chowder, skunk and hickory were included. Webster continued 

his crusade to simplify and rationalize American language.  Musick became music;  plough became plow;  centre became center; and the silent u in colour and favour was dropped. Other changes were rejected over time.  Tung never replaced tongue and wimmen never women, though clearly wimmen  is phonetically more accurate.

                             41 Webster Av., Goshen

       Goshen Town Hall                         

In 1784 Governor George Clinton appointed a state Board of Regents to study education in New York State.  In 1787 it was given the power to re-certify New York's Kings College (now known as Columbia College) and to charter additional colleges and academies.  By the first decades of the 19th century some 400 academies had been chartered. (More on this in a future post.) By 1795 sale of state lands (product, largely of the expulsion of Indian populations) enabled a fund to be amassed for public education.  Towns were encouraged to establish schools, which based on their populations would receive matching funds. By 1800 the state fund was exhausted and state legislators led by Jedediah Peck led a 12 year fight to get State support for common schools reestablished. (see NYSHMs:It Happened Here--"A Man of Public Usefulness and Private Worth, Aug. 13, 2016.) Each township was required to       establish                                                                                                                                                         local schools, with state matching support, to hire teachers and provide facilities, administered by local school boards. With rural populations so scattered  and transportation difficult, it was necessary to set up many local schools

Rte.443, Berne

Most cities had a patchwork collection of schools providing primary education--private, tuition schools for wealthy families, congregation-based religious schools and a few charity schools. In 1805 New York City led the way for urban public schools by forming the Free School Society, for years scraping by on public donations and by employing the Lancasterian

system, teaching a core of older student "Monitors"to instruct large numbers of younger students.  As large numbers of immigrants came to the cities of New York State they began to object to the Protestant biases of the public educational systems. Extensive parochial school systems developed. By the 1840's large numbers of Catholic parents whose children were still in the NYC Free School Society system continued to object to the Society's biases and the city Board of Education reorganized the system to a series of Ward based schools similar to rural township-based schools which gave local ethnic communities a measure of greater local control. (Unfortunately the vast number of urban primary school came, served their purpose and were replaced overtime with few public markers or plaques to record their existence, or their passing.)

Public, yes, but privately funded by the Patroon's family, the Livingstons.     U,S.,Rte 9, Clermont

By the end of the first two or three decades of the 19th century, rural and town  school houses were being built and taking on the features we would all recognize as the classic "one room schoolhouse."   One story, post and frame buildings with clapboard siding painted white or barn-red and multiple windows on both sides and ends for light, they occasionally had a small cupola mounted on them with a bell to summon children to school.

                                        Potter's Hollow School, Potter Hollow Rd., Co Rte 354. Preston Hollow

Of course, there could be a great deal of variety:

NYSHM for the "OldStone Schoolhouse"   Rte 28/30  Margretville                         

                                                                    Cobblestone Schoolhouse, cor. Center and Elm St.  Geneseo

A shingled schoolhouse, Rt. 85A Voorheesville

                                                      Huguenot School, made from  local Neversink River Valley Bricks

                                                                                    Rte 203, Huguenot, NY

Inside, a separate cloak room  helped keep out winter drafts from the class room and provided  space for hanging outer garments.  In the classroom, the rude benches of earlier years were being replaced by rows of "school desks"-- chairs or sometimes, backed benches, with desk-writing surfaces attached to their backs for students sitting behind them.  Most would be  all wood, of local construction.  Not until later would cast iron framed commercial school desks be available.  Most classrooms would be heated with a small, centrally located box stove, likely produced in Albany or Troy.  

Young unmarried men would often teach school in winter and before and after the growing season.  Women often taught more in summers, late spring and early fall  when there would be fewer older boys who would be working during these seasons, in farming activities. Gradually women would come to predominate the one room school when penny-pinching school boards believed they could pay them less than men.

          Garfield Rd., off of NY Rte 2, Eagle Mills

          President Garfield taught school here when 

          he was a college student.

Perhaps the most famous New York one room school teacher in literature is Ichabod Crane, the character  based on Washington Irving's friend,  Jesse Merwin who taught school in Kinderhook.   This schoolhouse is a replacement for the one Jessie Merwin taught in. Merwin mentions the original school's destruction in an 1851 letter to Irving.

--Besides the usual "internet suspects" rounded up for this post I found Joshua Kendall's The Forgotten Founding Father: Noah Webster's Obsession and the Creation of the American Culture.  New York, 2010 fascinating.  (I cite the whole title to give you a hint about the personality and purpose of the difficult and compelling Mr. Webster. presented in this book.)

Next Time--  The Learning Continues: Academies & Seminaries