Category: Albany

You know what you don’t see much of anymore? Packers of pork, and makers of churns. In 1863 Albany, these were not exceptional businesses. Joe Cary and his boys were packing the pork down on Broadway, while Sam Harris was churning out tubs, pails, and, well, churns up on Washington Avenue.

The “Maria Theresa” made by Troy’s Waters & Sons isn’t the only Capital District boat somewhere deep in the Smithsonian’s collection. Famed Adirondack surveyor Verplanck Colvin, whose adventures measuring the wilderness certainly called for a lightweight method of travel, patented a portable canvas boat that was, like the Maria Theresa, displayed by the Smithsonian…

As has been explained before, this blog was named for an amazing advertisement featuring a charming rooster proclaiming “HOXSIE!”, the name of a local maker of various sodas,sarsaparilla, lager beer and cider. I was so smitten with that rooster’s simple message that I just had to name my local Capital District history site after…

I’d never before heard of White & Moore’s Celebrated Malt Coffee. According to a place in New Zealand that still makes it, “roasted malt coffee is made from the roasted grain of malted barley – a mild and nutty coffee-like flavour, the most flavourful of all cereal coffee substitutes.” I’m up for malt in…

In 1863 John McKnight’s Son (first name unknown) was a brewer operating the corner of Canal, Hawk and Orange streets, space currently occupied by the Sheridan Avenue steam plant (Canal was later renamed Sheridan). His unrivaled malt wine was available everywhere, bottled and in wood. Let’s assume that means barrels. He had agencies in…

Last week we wrote that we didn’t know anything about Benjamin Marsh, whose jewelry store passed into the hands of Henry Rowlands in 1869. But that’s not entirely true: we know that Marsh received this patent for an Albany-centric spoon design. Design patent 20,948 was filed and patented in 1891, and applied for only…

In 1869, future spoon-patenter Benjamin Marsh sold his store at 34 State Street, at the corner of Broadway, to Henry Rowlands. I don’t know anything about either of them, but I do know a little bit about the “observatory time” that Rowlands’s store received every hour. It was a vestige of an attempt to…

We’ve seen a simpler ad from J.W. Osborn, from 1858, before. When this ran in 1863, he was selling not only slate roofing but also kerosene oil, benzole, etc. He was also dealing in newfangled felt, gravel and cement roofing, not so different from today’s asphalt shingles in concept, and he listed a number…