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Our American Girl Visits Troy
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Remember when Troy was all excited because Winona Ryder had come to town? Remember when Troy was all excited when stars of “The Gilded Age” came to town? Well, Troy got just as excited when Kay Gordon came to town, in 1929. While researching the stories of the airports in Albany and Troy, we…
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Hope Eden To Do Her Shopping In Albany Stores
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While working on the history of Albany’s airports, we were struck by the role celebrity played in bringing attention to the promise of air travel so early on. It wasn’t just the daring early aviators who captured the public’s attention – though many of them, with names largely now forgotten, figured in the early…
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Troy Airport
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Last time around we talked about aviator Ruth Nichols’s devastating crash at Troy Airport. While nearly everyone in the area would be familiar with Albany’s airport and even Schenectady’s, the airport in Troy seems nearly forgotten about. It had a long history – and despite decades of dreams, it never really grew into anything of…
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Ruth Nichols and A Tragic Plane Crash in Troy
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Back in the early days of aviation, our area saw its fair share of famous flyers. After all, Glenn Curtiss launched a record-setting flight from the island that is now home to the Port of Albany; Amelia Earhart gave a lecture tour here and flew for Canajoharie’s Beech-Nut Gum; Lindbergh visited, as did A.F.…
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A Visit from St. Nicholas
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On December 23, 1823, the Troy Sentinel made cultural history, as the first newspaper to publish Clement Moore’s Christmas poem, “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” now perhaps better known as “‘Twas The Night Before Christmas.” It was written by Clement Moore of New York City, read aloud in his home in the Christmas season…
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Thomas H. Sands Pennington, Black Pharmacist
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I started out to write a little bit about Dr. Thomas Elkins, one of the most remarkable and accomplished African American residents of Albany. I was challenged by two things: there is so much to say about Dr. Elkins, and much has already been written elsewhere. I may well come back to him, but…
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Beaver Oil, Root Beer, and Orphans
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Looking up these old local stories is nearly always a venture down a rabbit hole, and it’s usually a question of where to stop. One little detail catches the eye, and I start to find out more about that, and it leads to another detail, which leads to a huge revelation, which leads to…
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Troy’s Musical Koninsky Family
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Andrew Mace hepped us to one of those fascinating facts that we can’t believe we didn’t know. One of the Troy Facebook groups posted the cover of sheet music for Uncle Sam’s Boys, composed by Jerome Hartman, “composer of the famous ‘Beneath the Starry Flag,’ ‘On to Victory,’ etc.,” and published by the Koninsky…
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Mr. Ford Builds His Dream Hydro Plant
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Way back when, Green Island was an island, separated from the rest of what is now Colonie by the Mohawk River (a separation reiterated by the Erie Canal), and separated from Troy, as it is today, by the Hudson River. In the late 19th century, it had a bit of industry in the form…
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Tompkins Knitting Machines
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This is the Tompkins Upright Rotary Knitting Machine, one of a number of inventions of Troy’s Clark Tompkins. Incredibly, his business is still in business, still making knitting machines – but in the Salt City, instead of the Collar City. Weise’s “The City of Troy and its Vicinity” (1886) tells the story of this…