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A grim reminder of “the peculiar institution”
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Another reminder that yes, there was slavery in the Capital District. This handbill from 1809, part of the Albany Institute of History and Art collection, calls for the return of a slave to Abel Whalen of Milton. A Runaway Negro. RAN AWAY From the subscriber on the night of the 11th inst. a Negro…
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Slavery at Albany
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As northerners, sometimes we’re a little bit smug about our home region having seen the light on slavery well before the rest of the country. But, still, it had to see the light. Slaves were part of Hudson and Mohawk valley households from the earliest European settlements. As noted last week, several perished in…
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The Roll of the Dead
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Tonight is the anniversary of the Schenectady Massacre, which took place over the night of February 8 and 9, 1690 – 323 years ago. And so now, the roll of the dead. The most thorough and reliable account is Pearson’s “History of the Schenectady Patent,” and so we can’t do better than his account…
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The Schenectady Massacre
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On the night of February 8, into the morning of the 9th, 1690, 60 residents of the frontier village of Schenectady were massacred by a raiding party of French soldiers and their native allies. Monsieur De Monsignat, identified as “Comptroller General of the Marine” in Canada, wrote an account of the massacre that is…
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An Unguarded Moment
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So how did Schenectady, a stockaded community, come to be unguarded at a time when it was known the French and their allied tribes were looking for opportunities to retaliate? The answer is unsurprising to any New Yorker: politics. In 1689, New York and New Jersey were governed as part of the Dominion of…
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King William’s War
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The French and Indian Wars, which stretched out from 1689 to 1763, were a series of conflicts in the colonies of New Netherlands, New England, New York, and New France that very much reflected European political disputes. The first of them, King William’s War, was the New World theater of the Nine Years’ War,…
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Preface to a Massacre
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Amidst a war between France and England, tensions between rival bands of Mohawks, and a rebellion within colonial government, the residents of the stockaded community of Schenectady found themselves on the pointy end of international and colonial politics on a cold winter night 323 years ago this week. In 1661, Arent Van Curler (also…
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The limekilns of Glenville
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Over on Flickr we’ve been having a little discussion about Glenville’s Dawson family and their connection to a lime kiln in the western part of the town, a decent distance from their family home on Saratoga Road. I always think of Glenville as lousy with shale, but it turns out there’s some significant limestone…
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