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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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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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Schenectady’s first school
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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…
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That other George Westinghouse of Schenectady
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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…
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The first George Westinghouse of Schenectady
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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…
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Erie Canal in Schenectady, 1834
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These maps of the Erie Canal from 1834 are so beautiful, we couldn’t resist sharing another one from the NYS Archives Digital Collection. Click on it to see it much larger. The path of the canal through downtown Schenectady should be familiar to anyone who knows Erie Boulevard and, conveniently, most of the street…