•
For at least 64 years, Patton and Hall was a well-known business name in Schenectady and beyond, and even today there is evidence of their success, in faded signs on the building that housed them from the start. Jesse Patton was born in the town of Florida in 1870, and was moved to Amsterdam…
•
What was going on in Schenectady on March 30, 1906? Well, not ragtime! This article from the Amsterdam Evening Recorder tells of Mayor Jacob Winne Clute’s displeasure with street musicians that were proliferating at the time. The headline was “No More Ragtime in Schenectady,” with a subhead of “Mayor Clute Passes on All Itinerant…
•
One of those odd little items that catches the eye caught our eye in going over an article from the Schenectady Gazette in 1948. “Barrows From Here Carried California Gold,” it proclaimed, apropos of pretty much nothing. (Well there were some other stories on local history in the section, but still . . .…
•
We were covering some of the ten original historical markers that were initially put up in Glenville through the efforts of its original historian, Percy Van Epps, in 1935. One was for Van Patten’s hotel, also known as “Upper Nickey’s.” The marker read: An Early Hotel Known as “Upper Nickey’s” Built and Kept by…
•
Just one last mention of Hoffmans Ferry – a story from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Oct. 31, 1894, in which our favorite largely lost community figures at least slightly. The Eagle tells the tale of the history of the Post Office, as it was related by Postmaster Andrew T. Sullivan. Part of the story…
•
So we talked about the entirely lost community of Hoffmans, and then then we talked about Hatcher’s greenhouses that used to be there. But there was another business that got its start in Hoffmans, and went on to be one of the Capital District’s legendary enterprises in certain circles. Thanks to Dean Splittgerber, who…
•
Last time, we talked about the completely lost hamlet of Hoffmans, née Hoffmans Ferry, née Vedders Ferry, and wondered at all the life and business it once held, where now there is barely a trace. One of those businesses was a complete surprise to us – we had no idea that a fairly major…
•
We posted this marker for Hoffmans on our Instagram account (@signsandmarkers) a little while back. Hoffmans is one of those places that, during our lifetime, always used to be a place, a name from history that probably couldn’t have been identified as anything, not even a hamlet, were it not for this historical marker.…
•
Where else do you get a triple threat, two NYS Education Department historical markers and a monumental plaque, and with it the story of an ambush and a corpse tethered to a crow? The first: SACANDAGA ROAD CUT THROUGH THE PRIMITIVE FOREST BY EARLY SETTLERS, ALONG AN INDIAN TRAIL LEADING TO THE SACANDAGA REGION…
•
Another of the historical markers placed in Glenville in 1935 through the efforts of Percy Van Epps, town and county historian for something like 25 years. This one was for Wolf Hollow, “A rent and displacement of 1,000 feet in earth’s surface rocks. Here in 1669 the Mohawks ambushed their Algonquin invaders.” As we…