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The new Emma Willard School
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After almost 90 years in downtown Troy, the Emma Willard School moved out to Mount Ida, thanks to a $1 million gift from one of its graduates, Margaret Olivia Slocum Sage, also known as Mrs. Russell Sage. After two years of construction, the new campus opened in 1910 with stunning examples of what was…
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Mrs. Russell Sage
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One of the Troy Female Seminary’s most important former students was Margaret Olivia Slocum. She is best known as Mrs. Russell Sage, for as the second wife of the Wall Street titan and railroad executive, she ensured that significant chunks of his wealth funded philanthrophic efforts all over the northeast. In chronicling the history…
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The Seminary grows
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The original Troy Female Seminary was leased from the City of Troy for 50 years, during which time it had grown from the original three-story “coffee house” building to “a substantial brick pile, four stories high, and some two hundred feet long.” But the lease was to run out in 1872, when “many new…
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Not a fan
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Despite all the superlatives garnered by Emma Willard in her lifelong dedication to the education of women and the training of teachers, it must be said, there were those who were not fans of hers. The unnamed author of a “Review of New Books” in The Gentleman’s Magazine was definitely not a fan. Invoking…
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The Willard Farm
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In 1854, John Hart Willard was selling off the family farm on the Wynantskill in Troy. In 1838, John (with wife Sarah Lucretia Hudson) had taken over the Troy Female Seminary founded by his mother, Emma Willard in 1821. I’m not sure of the precise location, but it can’t have been far from the…
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Emma Willard and the Troy Female Seminary
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It’s rather extraordinary that the 16th child (out of 17) of a Connecticut farmer, a female born in 1787, would become one of the leaders in women’s education. But at 17, Emma Hart became a teacher, soon distinguishing herself and receiving offers from various schools, and becoming the head of the Female Academy at…
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If it quacks like a duck
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Again from an 1872 edition of the Troy Daily Whig, we have an advertisement for the “Old Established Hospital” at 5 Beaver Street, quite near Broadway, in Albany. “Hospital” didn’t necessarily mean then what it means today, and in fact this was the practice of a single physician, or maybe not even that. “Young…
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Get yer iron here!
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By 1872, when this advertisement ran in the Troy Daily Whig, Henry Burden had long been famous for his advances in iron work. He began in the nail business and later invented an automated horseshoe-making machine. He powered his factory with a gigantic water wheel on the Wynantskill. He built his iron works into…
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Collar City Oysters
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Once was a time (and that time was 1873) when you couldn’t throw a celluloid collar in Troy without hitting an oyster merchant. J.H. Goodsell, Lewis Thayer, H. Wait, Bailey & Hair and probably several more all offered large, sweet, fat solid meat oysters. The laws of Troy governed where boats carrying fish, oysters,…
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Van Dyk, not Van Dyke
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Not surprising that there was a grocery store going by the name of Van Dyk in Schenectady back in 1930, but in fact it wasn’t a local chain. James Van Dyk ran a chain of tea and coffee stores from Barclay Street in Manhattan, and as the ad notes, this location at 173 Jay…