Category: Albany

Around 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. In it, the Duke devoted substantial coverage to Albany. The Duke had,…

Munsell’s “Annals of Albany” gives us this description of Thanksgiving in Albany, 1847: [Nov.] 25. Thanksgiving day; dark and gloomy … A foot race at the Bull’s Head; principal competitors Steeprock and Smoke, two Indians: Smoke won the race by 50 yards, making 10 miles in 1h. 11s.; the track heavy after a rain;…

In the last couple of entries, we presented George Rogers Howell’s inventory of the papers that had been published in Albany up to the 1880s, and those that were still very much going concerns when he was writing his Bi-Centennial History of the County of Albany in 1886. Many of these newspapers (and others…

Last time around, we presented Howell’s catalog of major (and perhaps not so major) Albany newspapers going back to the very first in 1771. In his “Bi-centennial History of the County of Albany,” from 1886, he also described the then-current state of media affairs in the capital city: Newspapers Published in Albany at the…

George Rogers Howell’s “Bi-Centennial History of the County of Albany,” which covered the city and county through that bi-centennial year (dating to the charter) of 1886, tried to “give a list of all periodical publications of any importance issuing from the press of the county since the very first newspaper printed in the city…

We talked a little bit about Edward Delavan and his role in developing the temperance hotel that became Albany’s premiere gathering place for 50 years before it burned spectacularly, but his life deserves a little more examination. As noted before, Edward Cornelius Delavan was born in a place called Franklin in 1793. (One biography…

Remember how at the Delavan House “every possible care and attention have been paid to the means of escape in case of fire”? In the last days of 1894, that wasn’t enough. Gendisasters.com has a summary that was printed in the Fort Wayne, Indiana News, dated Dec. 31, 1894: FAMOUS HOTEL GONE Delvan [sic]…

We haven’t talked enough about the Delavan House, which was one of Albany’s premiere hotels for nearly 50 years. It was founded by Edward Delavan, who was born in 1793 in Westchester County. After his father died, the family moved up to Albany and Delavan apprenticed to a printer, then clerked in his brother’s…

Yesterday we read the exhortations of Samuel Ruggles, champion of improvement, for the establishment of a National University at Albany. So, what happened with that? The dream of a national university was as old as the dream of our nation itself. The idea was first attributed to Samuel Blodget (sometimes Blodgett), who was said…

19th century prose can be tough to get through, and exhortative speeches even more so. But sometimes if you can wade through the effusiveness you can find (perhaps to your dismay) that some things today are very much the same as they were 160 years ago. As an example, we present this impassioned plea…