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Geology is Destiny
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Our views of history are, to be certain, shaped by our perspectives. Whatever background we come from, whatever origin stories we tell about ourselves and our families inform our understanding of the events the past. And to an extent, even our training and careers can inform what we learn, and create interesting perspectives to…
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A Home for the Faculty Cows
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Again, the Encyclopedia of Union College History provides a view of a time unimaginably long gone: when cows grazed on the campus pasture. Before the current West College was built in 1953, the campus was open to the west, and the lands west of the wall were called the Pasture. Professors long had the…
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The Union College Burial Ground
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So here’s an interesting side note that we uncovered while digging through the highly useful Encyclopedia of Union College, dated 2003 and apparently written by Wayne Somers. Apparently, if you’re a faculty member at Union College, you’re entitled to a free burial plot in the College cemetery in Vale Cemetery. “About half way between…
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Union College freshmen: No top hats or canes for you
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We’d be remiss if we left The Encyclopedia of Union College without sharing this delightful entry: Canes. Although little is known of the protocol of cane-carrying at any period, it was long fashionable for able-bodied college students to own these appendages; at Union, canes remained in vogue until at least 1924. Jonathan Pearson (who…
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The Life of Eliphalet Nott
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It’s safe to say that we wouldn’t still have a Union College had it not been for the efforts of its longest-tenured president, Eliphalet Nott. He was born in 1773 on a farm in Ashford, Connecticut, one of nine children. “There was no neighbor’s house nearer than half a mile, and he was thus…
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Union College
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Since we were recently talking about the earliest schools in Schenectady, we should focus on the institution of higher education that grew out of those early efforts, Union College. It was founded in 1795 as an outgrowth (always anticipated) of the Schenectady Academy, which had started 10 years before. Originally, the college conducted classes…
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Albany’s Lancaster School
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Recently we wrote about Schenectady’s Lancaster School, which pretty much controlled the shape of what would be thought of as public education in that city in the early 19th century. Schenectady wasn’t the only area city that signed on to the Lancasterian fad, which applied some definite ideas about how students were to be…
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The Lancaster School System in Schenectady
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After the establishment of the Schenectady Academy, there came another type of public school, known as a Lancaster School. George Rogers Howell, again in his History of the County of Schenectady, N.Y. from 1662 to 1886, gives some of the background of Lancaster schools, which were developed in England by Joseph Lancaster, and relied…
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