Category: Miscellany

Newspaper used as insulation has been able to tell me what no civic records ever could: exactly when my house was built. For the most part, it was put together in 1939, by a family named Lodge that was living in Menands at the time. Mr. Lodge worked for the phone company, and parts…

If you have any love of Albany, cemeteries, or the past, look at Paula’s wonderful Albany Church Grounds Project. She’s putting a huge amount of effort into telling the tales of these denizens of the Albany Rural Cemetery. It’s just fabulous.

My grandfather, who was a carpenter among other things, was always missing his right thumb and forefinger. They were just stubs. He always said it was from playing with firecrackers, and he said it as an angry admonition that was supposed to instill fear. And it did — I never lit firecrackers in my…

Like the rooster says, follow Hoxsie on Twitter: @HoxsieAlbany. Nearly every day, you’ll get some little bit of useless information about the history of Albany, Schenectady and Troy! No ads, no spam, and the chance to share historical trivia with your slightly annoyed friends. What could be better? Dial it direct . . .

It is claimed that District School No. 1, now called The Little Red Schoolhouse, is the only one-room schoolhouse operating in New York State. Built in 1861, it’s just south of Troy near Hudson Valley Community College; this school is the North Greenbush school district. Its survival in the age of school consolidations is…

It figures that if I’d trip across such a thing as a water tower that has, inexplicably, bells, there would be some kind of local connection. It appears that in 1902, a millionaire in Scituate, Plymouth County, Massachusetts, wasn’t going to be pleased with the local water tower ruining his view, and so he…

Hoxsie has grown and grown since I launched it earlier this year as a (nearly) daily collection of pictures and snippets relating to the local history of Albany, Schenectady, and Troy, and a few other parts of the Capital District as well. I’m happy to have a few hundred daily readers who aren’t just…

“My first employment as an apprentice, beside cutting wood and making fires in the printing-office, was in ‘treading pelts,’ a duty of which the present generation of printers is growing up in ignorance. The balls, which have been succeeded by rollers, were made of green sheepskins, which had to undergo a sort of tanning…

Imagine a time (and that time was 1906) when people had to be convinced that having electric pumps to supply water for firefighting was a good idea. In case the advantages over handpumps or getting a steam-operated pump up to pressure weren’t obvious, The Insurance Press in 1906 felt the need to print the…

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