• Schenectady’s first school

    •

    Carl Johnson

    Our discussion of just where George Westinghouse went to school in Schenectady made us curious about the history of the Electric City’s early schools. Happily, George Rogers Howell was also curious and gave us some of the story in his “History of the County of Schenectady, from 1662 to 1886.” There were, as in…

  • That other George Westinghouse of Schenectady

    •

    Carl Johnson

    It’s possible that the name of  Westinghouse would be a dimly remembered one, one of the legions of upstate New York manufacturers who rose and fell in the industrial boom that accompanied the Erie Canal. George Westinghouse Sr. started as a simple farmer who showed flourishes of mechanical genius and built an agricultural implements…

  • The first George Westinghouse of Schenectady

    •

    Carl Johnson

    Somehow we’ve never talked much about George Westinghouse. One of the all-time industrial greats, the man who did more than anyone to achieve the modern electrical transmission system (after having invented a way for locomotives to stop reliably), Westinghouse was also a private man who didn’t invite publicity, unlike his ally Nikola Tesla and…

  • The Colonial Governors of New York: The Good, the Bad, the Seditious

    •

    Carl Johnson

    Last time around we discussed George Rogers Howell’s comprehensive and descriptive list of the English colonial governors of New York, from his Bi-Centennial History of the County of Albany, 1886. He elaborated on some of his brief tabular descriptions with some more detailed evaluations of the shortcomings of several of the governors, whom Howell…

  • English Colonial Governors of New York: A Rogue’s Gallery

    •

    Carl Johnson

    Howell, in his “Bi-Centennial History of the County of Albany,” gave us an excruciatingly detailed listing of the English colonial governors of New York, running from Richard Nicolls in 1664 to the final military governor, Andrew Elliott, in 1783. We’re sure there are some stories to look at here (for instance, how many times…

  • The Peculiar Institution

    •

    Carl Johnson

    The Duke de la Rochefoucauld, an exile from revolutionary France who seemed to have a genuine appreciation for the post-revolutionary United States, was, as a foreign visitor, sometimes blunt in his assessments of what was going on. He found the inhabitants of Albany “extremely dull and melancholy,” and despite praising the hospitality of his…

  • Rochefoucauld visits the Saratoga Battlefield

    •

    Carl Johnson

    I have seen John Schuyler, the eldest son of the General; for a few minutes I had already conversed with him at Skenectady, and was now with him at Saratoga. The journey to this place was extremely painful, on account of the scorching heat, but Saratoga is a township of too great importance to…

  • Albany, 1795: “They live retired in their houses with their wives”

    •

    Carl Johnson

    As we were discussing yesterday, in 1800, François Alexandre Frédéric de La Rochefoucauld, under the title of Duke de La Rochefoucauld Liancourt, published his Travels through the United States of North America, the Country of the Iroquois, and Upper Canada, In the Years 1795, 1796, and 1797. Albany came up a few times. After…

Recent Posts

Social Media