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The World’s Fair Excursion and Hotel Association
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It’s 1893, and you want to visit the Columbian Exposition, the massive World’s Fair being held in Chicago to celebrate the 400th anniversary (plus a year) of Columbus’s stumbling upon what was not quite the Americas (among other things). But how are you to make your travel arrangements? There’s no internet, no 800 phone…
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Fastest Typesetter in the East (or West)
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Was Mr. George Dawson, eventually editor of the Albany Evening Journal, one of the fastest typesetters of his day? Well, the Printer’s Circular seemed to think so. Though he was much much more than that. In order to understand this, readers will need a little familiarity with the terms. At the time, all type…
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Is Printing a Healthy Business?
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While looking for more information on Churchill & Denison, an early pair of Albany photographers who were in partnership during the Civil War era, we ran across this odd little tidbit – not about photographers, but about printers. The journal “Western Medical Advance and Progress of Pharmacy,” dated December, 1871, reprinted at the top…
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Rensselaer Churchill, Daguerreotypist
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Our post yesterday had us curious about the photographer who may have noted the name of his subject (C. Adams Stevens), his political affiliation, and – and this is what we think least likely – his weight. The source for the photograph noted that on the back was the mark of one Rensselaer E.…
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Hoxsie by Email!
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Hoxsie has a new way to annoy you – the miracle of email! We get hundreds of potentially legitimate hits per day (and thousands of Russian spambots), but up ’til now the only way you could find out if Hoxsie had anything new to say about anything old was through our RSS feed (which,…
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Col. C. Adams Stevens, the Western Adventurer/Embezzler
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The Greenbush Bridge was the third bridge to cross the Hudson River between Albany and Greenbush (first was the Livingston Avenue, then the Maiden Lane), but practice did not make perfect, and this third crossing was not made smoothly. The first company chartered to build the bridge was led by a colorful character going…
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Troop 14’s Frog Drive
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While we’re scouring old copies of Boys’ Life (as one does), let’s take a look back at what the boys of Boy Scout Troop 14, composed of students of the Albany Academy, were doing back in 1914. They were very active in earning their own expenses and increasing their bank account through a mix…
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Albany Institute Mechanical Drawing
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Trying to solve one mystery always turns up at least three more. Searching around for something else, we came upon an advertisement in an old Boys’ Life magazine, of all things (the official publication of the Boy Scouts of America, for those who don’t know). It was for something we had never heard…
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The Albany Fire of 1793: A Racial Fire
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The memoirs of Henriette Lucie Dillon, Marquise de la Tour du Pin Gouvernet, touched on one of the most mysterious and unsettling events in Albany history, a mix of fear, fire and racial scapegoating. Her comments on this are enlightening as they certainly reflect the understanding given her by the Albany elites who hosted…
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The Resting Place of Séraphine
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A couple of eagle-eyed (or elephant-memoried) readers were already familiar with the story of Henriette Lucie Dillon, Marquise de la Tour du Pin Gouvernet, whose “Journal d’une femme de cinquante ans” has been the subject of our last several entries. And they were also familiar with an article about the Marquise and her former…