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The Peculiar Institution
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The Duke de la Rochefoucauld, an exile from revolutionary France who seemed to have a genuine appreciation for the post-revolutionary United States, was, as a foreign visitor, sometimes blunt in his assessments of what was going on. He found the inhabitants of Albany “extremely dull and melancholy,” and despite praising the hospitality of his…
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Rochefoucauld visits the Saratoga Battlefield
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I have seen John Schuyler, the eldest son of the General; for a few minutes I had already conversed with him at Skenectady, and was now with him at Saratoga. The journey to this place was extremely painful, on account of the scorching heat, but Saratoga is a township of too great importance to…
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Albany, 1795: “They live retired in their houses with their wives”
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As we were discussing yesterday, in 1800, François Alexandre Frédéric de La Rochefoucauld, under the title of Duke de La Rochefoucauld Liancourt, published his Travels through the United States of North America, the Country of the Iroquois, and Upper Canada, In the Years 1795, 1796, and 1797. Albany came up a few times. After…
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Albany Shipping, 1795
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Around 1800, François Alexandre Frédéric de La Rochefoucauld, under the title of Duke de La Rochefoucauld Liancourt, published his Travels through the United States of North America, the Country of the Iroquois, and Upper Canada, In the Years 1795, 1796, and 1797. In it, the Duke devoted substantial coverage to Albany. The Duke had,…
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Thanksgiving, 1847: Albany Invents the Turkey Trot
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Munsell’s “Annals of Albany” gives us this description of Thanksgiving in Albany, 1847: [Nov.] 25. Thanksgiving day; dark and gloomy … A foot race at the Bull’s Head; principal competitors Steeprock and Smoke, two Indians: Smoke won the race by 50 yards, making 10 miles in 1h. 11s.; the track heavy after a rain;…
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Where to find old Albany newspapers
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In the last couple of entries, we presented George Rogers Howell’s inventory of the papers that had been published in Albany up to the 1880s, and those that were still very much going concerns when he was writing his Bi-Centennial History of the County of Albany in 1886. Many of these newspapers (and others…
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Albany Newspapers, 1886
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Last time around, we presented Howell’s catalog of major (and perhaps not so major) Albany newspapers going back to the very first in 1771. In his “Bi-centennial History of the County of Albany,” from 1886, he also described the then-current state of media affairs in the capital city: Newspapers Published in Albany at the…
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Albany: Newspaper Town
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George Rogers Howell’s “Bi-Centennial History of the County of Albany,” which covered the city and county through that bi-centennial year (dating to the charter) of 1886, tried to “give a list of all periodical publications of any importance issuing from the press of the county since the very first newspaper printed in the city…
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Edward C. Delavan, Temperance Advocate
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We talked a little bit about Edward Delavan and his role in developing the temperance hotel that became Albany’s premiere gathering place for 50 years before it burned spectacularly, but his life deserves a little more examination. As noted before, Edward Cornelius Delavan was born in a place called Franklin in 1793. (One biography…
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The Delavan House Fire
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Remember how at the Delavan House “every possible care and attention have been paid to the means of escape in case of fire”? In the last days of 1894, that wasn’t enough. Gendisasters.com has a summary that was printed in the Fort Wayne, Indiana News, dated Dec. 31, 1894: FAMOUS HOTEL GONE Delvan [sic]…