Author: Carl Johnson

  • The Sale of Hoxsie to Any Armed Persons After Dark Is Prohibited

    (With special thanks to an alert reader!) On July 15, 1863, the city of Troy was rocked by a draft riot, generally thought to be the second-worst riot against the Civil War draft (New York City’s riots being the worst). Rioters drove African-American residents out of the city in fear of their lives (and…

  • Pigeon Louis

    From a far less sensitive time, the Times-Union ran with this headline in 1903: “Aged Cripple Drinks Poison and Dies.” They were speaking of Louis Slyer, reported as 75, 79 or 80 years old depending on the edition of the paper you read. Slyer was “formerly a well-known resident and property owner of the…

  • Inventor of Gas Meters, and Possibly Soap

    We ran across this article from 1903 about the invention of Mr. James J. Mulhall, “the well-known resident of Catherine street.” “The invention is an improvement on gas meters now in use and Mr. Mulhall’s ideas have been approved by the patent department of the United States government. His meter is much smaller and…

  • Amelia Earhart Flies for Beech-Nut Gum

    Her lecture tour in 1935 wasn’t the only connection between Amelia Earhart and the Capital District, as evidenced by this May 29, 1931 edition of the Gloversville/Johnstown Morning Herald, which proclaimed “Miss Amelia Earhart Will Make Series of Tests for Beech-Nut Packing Company.” The sub-head said that the only woman to fly across the…

  • Adam Gander Sells Nothing But Legitimate Merchandise

    A 1935 ad for Adam Gander’s wine and liquor store at 435 Central Avenue. Really only notable for the interesting claims in what we take to be a cocktail glass behind the bottle: “Adam Sells Nothing But Legitimate Merchandise” “What Adam Recommends Must Be Good” Raises the question – did someone intimate that he…

  • Well, What Else Could They Talk About?

    A snippet from 1935: The women’s auxiliary to the Master Plumbers’ Association was having its annual Christmas social and donation party at the Master Plumbers headquarters, and the topic of the evening would be “Cleanliness Makes for Good Citizenship.” That is all. Well, except that it’s worth remembering that in 1935, indoor plumbing was…

  • Amelia Earhart in Albany

    While we’re talking aviation and Albany: In 1935, Amelia Earhart was one of the most famous people in the world, a pioneer in aviation and women’s causes. She was well-known even before her 1932 solo flight across the Atlantic, but that act propelled her into the stratosphere, so to speak. She wrote a book,…

  • Albany to New York by Dirigible!

    Glenn Curtiss and Beryl Kendrick helped put Albany on the map for motorized aviation with their record-setting (or attempted, anyway) flights from Van Rensselaer Island and the Hudson River. But just a little before that, there was another kind of aviation planned for Albany, and it was meant to be more than a novelty.…

  • The Arthur-Albany Connection

    The things you run across when you’re looking for something else … it’s a wonder Hoxsie ever completes a thought. In this case, it started with a simple question on Facebook – the question of why Chester A. Arthur, the President who is probably the most famous burial in Albany Rural Cemetery, is buried…

  • Another Attempt at Aviation History Takes Off from Albany

    Turns out Glenn Curtiss wasn’t the only early aviator to take off from Albany for points, well, not unknown, but a long way away, and it was Curtiss himself who inspired it. He had branched into both building airplanes and teaching pilots how to fly. He built on his ideas for enabling water landings…