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Collar City Crime, 1885
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So, what was crime like in the Collar City in 1885? Well, there was more than a smattering of assault on men, women, mothers and little girls. Harnesses, shawls and watches were being stolen. Peter Farrell dug his way out of the pokey (or perhaps the hoosegow) and remained on the lam. A vicious…
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Sturgess Governor Engineering Company
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John Sturgess was a British citizen working in Troy who developed a series of innovative hydraulic water wheel governors, devices that regulated the speed with which hydropower dynamos turned. Trust us, it’s important. Here is his 1907 patent diagram for one of the devices. “The principal objects of the invention, when used to control…
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Mrs. Hattie Stufflebeam
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Hoxsie interrupts the pursuit of interesting facts about local history to present what it believes is the greatest name ever to appear in the Troy city directory: Mrs. Hattie Stufflebeam. I don’t know anything more about her other than that she was a stitcher, likely in one of the collar factories, in 1916. And…
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State Street Methodist Episcopal Church
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We ran across this lovely drawing of Troy’s State Street Methodist Episcopal Church; for once we can report a building has hardly changed since it was opened in 1871. Still, it’s one of Troy’s lesser-noticed grand edifices, perhaps because from the street it’s almost entirely obscured by trees. This beauty was built of blue…
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The tomb that oil cans built
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Ran across this lovely tomb in Troy’s historic Oakwood Cemetery a few weeks back. It’s a monument to Elmer Strope, and it seemed to me that someone with a monument this grand ought to be better known to me. Usually there’s a town or a street or a park or something that you can…
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The Maria Theresa enters the Smithsonian
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After Nathaniel Bishop paddled a Waters paper canoe from its place of manufacture in Troy all the way to the Gulf of Mexico, he sent the craft, dubbed the “Maria Theresa,” to the Smithsonian Institution in 1876. (And of course we all know that Albany’s Joseph Henry was the first Secretary of the Smithsonian.)…
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The merits of the paper canoe
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Nathaniel Bishop didn’t originally set out to paddle from Troy to the Gulf of Mexico in a paper canoe. He had started from Quebec in a traditional wooden boat, but on arriving at Albany he decided that he needed to jettison both his paddling companion and his heavy boat. “After a journey of four…
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Down the Hudson in a paper boat
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On July 4, 1874, Nathaniel Bishop left Quebec in an 18-foot canoe, intending to paddle (with an unnamed assistant) to the Gulf of Mexico. “It was his intention to follow the natural and artificial connecting watercourses of the continent in the most direct line southward to the gulf coast of Florida, making portages as…
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What pencils and bridges have in common
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It’s back-to-school week, so we’re all thinking of school supplies, which means we’re all thinking of Dixon Ticonderoga pencils, whose graphite originally came from the historic town on Lake Champlain. But Dixon didn’t just make pencils; another example of his handiwork could be found on a painted bridge many miles south of Ticonderoga, in…
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William Young’s Troy buildings
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It tickles Hoxsie’s cockles that so many beautiful, important, historic buildings in Troy are seeing renovation and reuse. Not least of these is the building constructed by William H. Young, bookseller and stationer, which has stood somewhat neglected on First Street next to the Rice Building for too long. Young’s printing and bookselling business…