Paul Schneider Lecture

"This little jaunt turned out extremely agreeable..." was a very apt name for the Waterford Historical Museum and Cultural Center's final lecture to wrap up this year's winter lecture series.

After getting snowed out of our previous time slot, a great big thank you is in order for all those who made it to the lecture. We had a good crowd of interested learners and a spectacular lecture by Paul Schneider on early accounts of Waterford history.

Jumping into the diaries of these two Scottish immigrants required a bit of background to understand why these men came here and context for their observations. Luckily, Paul was able to do so with some great images to illustrate the history leading up to where these diaries begin.

The two men we followed through their daily entries were John Strachan who came to New York in 1819 and settled in Halfmoon in 1821 with his family on a plot of land that still has the buildings he had constructed on the property. The other, Alexander Stewart Scott, came to Halifax in 1815 and toured through Waterford as he sailed along the canals in 1826.

The burning of Buffalo by British forces during the War of 1812
in retaliation for the burning of York by American forces in 1813

Both men were Scottish immigrants who came with the wave of Scottish settlers -
~14% of Scotland's population - following the War of 1812. Most of the fighting for this war was in New York State and in Canada, namely along the Niagara Frontier and Lake Champlain. But the Napoleonic Wars also were ongoing for the British as they fought the French, with many looking for better economic opportunities by crossing the Atlantic.

The land in this area has always been desirable, as Paul spoke of with images of military roads that ran through here, early efforts at waterway management by the Western Inland Lock Company.

Travel books became popular with the construction of the canals, providing another reason for people to stop in Waterford for either business or sightseeing.

Strachan made a home for himself with a plot of land he'd managed to purchase, setting up a farm in which he planted several varieties of trees to make a profit.

A scan of one of Stachan's diary pages gives us a glimpse of his daily concerns, as he marks down plans for planting designs in addition to short-hand remarks about the weather and other small details.

Paul put together a great image using historical resources and Google maps to
plot out familiar points to help pinpoint the location of John Strachan's farm

Strachan made a note of some interesting events in Waterford - like the visit of General Lafayette when he made a tour of the United States in 1825, passing through Halfmoon and Waterford on July 1st of that year. He also had a humorous story regarding the misadventures of the Rensselaer and Saratoga Railroad that passed his lands-

A sketch of one of the first Rensselaer and Saratoga Railroad locomotive

The train with six cars and 300 passengers had an unscheduled delay when it crossed paths with a cow that had wandered onto the trains and damaged the locomotive, leaving Strachan very pleased with himself for not accepting the invitation to travel on one of the first trips the train made.


Some notable events that he didn't mention in his diary include the 50th Anniversary of the country, nor does he mention the passing of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.

The route Scott would have journeyed along, with the red circles
marking stops along the way - including Waterford

Alexander Stewart Scott, however, did make a note of that event in his diary as he traveled along the canals. Paul mapped out the routes he had taken as he traveled through Waterford, making a remark on it being a neat little village and of a certain guest that his boat had picked up at this stop. General Van Schoonhoven travelled the canal with him for a brief time and seems to have been happy to give Alexander a tour of his own as they passed by landmarks like Bemis Heights as they passed through Saratoga.

He also noted what travel was like on the canal with his own humorous anecdote read to us by Paul. Packet boats were known for being a bit...cramped...when it came to sleeping conditions that passengers experienced if they stayed the night aboard one of these vessels. During one night, Alexander wrote of how he'd inadvertently smacked the man in the bed next to him with his hand. The sleepy man responded as though under attack, falling out of his bed and roughing up the nearest body next to him before coming to his senses, luckily without hurting anyone even though it had woken everyone on board the boat. Alexander wrote of how difficult it was for him to keep from laughing aloud and giving himself away as being at fault, especially whenever he saw the other man who'd managed to bruise his face with his abrupt fall from his sleeping cot.

As a law student, it was impossible for Scott not to make some comment on the law system he observed here, noting how Americans didn't seem to have the same decorum he was used to in British North America, with -to him -  improperly casual attire lacking the fine coats and wigs all lawmen wore. But, aside from the nitpicking of our courts, Paul read out one of his final remarks about his travels in America, which was a pleasant surprise to the Canadian. He'd come to New York expecting far worse apparently if his comment was how he found Americans not to be not that bad.

Thanks again to Paul for a fantastic lecture about his ongoing research concerning these individuals' stories, as well as the story around the journals too.

The Waterford Historical Museum and Cultural Center has photocopies of Strachan's journal and this research is a great help to supporting our endeavor toward preserving and teaching the past!

Thanks to everyone who came out to join us!

March Lecture Rescheduled

Winter is looking to get in one more (hopefully) memorable storm for this year before the start of spring.

With so much snow and cold temperatures anticipated, there is a concern for maintaining safety.

The museum will reschedule its final lecture scheduled for March 14th at the Van Schaick Island Country Club. Paul Schneider will present his lecture "This little jaunt turned out to be extremely agreeable..." Little Known Accounts of Waterford  for the 28th of the month.

Mr. Schneider will be presenting his research to us in a fascinating lecture about Waterford history, based on the writings of two Scottish immigrants. One, a young Canadian law student who travelled through Waterford on a journey through New York State in 1826 and recorded his experiences in a journal that is now in the collections of the New York State Library. the other, a middle-aged immigrant who came to the United States in 1819 and permanently settled in Halfmoon in 1821. his extensive diary, now in the collections of the Rensselaer County Historical Society, offers unique insights into early Waterford.

Please keep checking our website and Facebook page for more details about rescheduling. Stay safe and keep warm everyone!

International Women's Day - Waterford Women

Taking part in this year’s International Women’s Day, the Waterford Historical Museum and Cultural Center is highlighting a couple of women who made it onto the “Wall of Characters” during its celebration of the town's bicentennial.

Emma Willard  

Emma was a leading advocate for women’s education, with a wide-reaching influence that can still be found today. She began conducting a school for girls in 1814 in Vermont, devising a new method of teaching and introducing new studies.  She wrote A Plan for Improving Female Education to share her ideas on education, proposing a women’s seminary be publicly funded like men’s schools were funded. Waterford businessmen developed a plan for a women’s school and sent a copy of the letter to Gov. DeWitt Clinton, who extended the invitation to Mrs. Willard to come to New York State. On March 19, 1819, an Act by the State of New York incorporating the Waterford Female Seminary or Academy led to Emma Willard opening her first school in Waterford, NY. According to historian Col. Sydney Hammersley, the original location believed to first house her school was the Demarest building on Broad Street (The Morgan House), and then at 77 Second Street where it introduced the study of higher mathematics to women. The first graduate of this first Willard school was a Miss Cramer, later known as Mrs. Curtis. Due to the funds she had been promised not fully materializing, Emma Willard moved out of Waterford in 1821 to set up a school in Troy, NY. There were attempts to keep an established female seminary in this Waterford location after Emma Willard left. This system of establishing an “Academy” had become very popular, and Waterford’s Academy was among others that New York State recognized  as being the gateway to learned professions for those who couldn’t afford a collegiate education. She left the Troy Female Seminary in the hand of her son and daughter-in-law, remarrying in 1838 for nine months, and spent her later years traveling across America and Europe promoting women’s education. She died April 15, 1870 and is interred in Oakwood Cemetery in Troy, NY. Her Troy school was renamed in 1895 to honor her as the Emma Willard School. She was inducted into the Hall of Fame for Great American in 1905.

Maria Rynders

Maria – and her brother Captain Isaiah Rynders- was a notable figure in Waterford. While his political battle and tactics weren’t well-received by Waterfordians, Maria was a character who gained quite a reputation. For those who made it to the museum’s exhibit, you learned that she made it into Ripley’s Believe It Or Not for her actions that were strange enough to merit such a distinction. What actions were these? No, not sword-swallowing or tight-rope walking over the Cohoes Falls. Maria did the bizarre in choosing to wear slacks, marry  repeatedly (okay, frequently), and vote long before women’s suffrage. She also was the resident firewoman, attending the fires with the men and working “on the brakes” (the hand-pumped fire engine) during Waterford’s 1841 fire. She smoked a clay pipe and apparently had some great aiming skill while chewing tobacco.