Beaver Oil, Root Beer, and Orphans
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, […]
Troy
Troy’s Musical Koninsky Family
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 […]
Mr. Ford Builds His Dream Hydro Plant
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 […]
Tompkins Knitting Machines
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 – […]
If Crackers Counted, Troy Would Be Lansingburgh
Like a lot of cities in the 1800s, Troy grew through expansion, annexing neighboring areas whose names are often forgotten. But Troy’s growth wasn’t a foregone conclusion, and there was […]
R.S.V.P. to V.R.S.P.; or, the Young Lady Didn’t Invite Him to Skate
In 1870, the St. Lawrence Republican (of Ogdensburg) ran a story headed “R.S.V.P., or the Van Rensselaer Skating Park,” and promised that “The following ‘local story,’ taken from the Albany […]
Curious Accident
A singular accident happened on the Hudson River Railroad on Friday evening. The Express train which left this city on the above evening for New York, had not proceeded more […]
The Remarkable Darkness of Sept. 6, 1881
The remarkable darkness of Tuesday morning, September 6th, 1881, was phenomenal. A heavy yellowish mist obscured objects a hundred feet distant from persons out of doors, and dimmed to a […]
The Marshall Sanitarium
Again, poking around an old Sampson, Davenport map of Troy, say 1873 (they didn’t change much from year to year, and as we noted yesterday, sometimes included buildings that were […]
The College That Never Was
Imagine our surprise when we were looking at an old map of Troy (as we do) and suddenly saw something there we’d never seen before, and had never even heard […]