History Told by a Light Bulb and a Cannonball

Being an intern at a historical museum means you run into at least one interesting item every day. Lucky for me, that number has been closer to five or six, and the list has yet to stop.

You also quickly find out that seemingly mundane objects are far from such, even a light bulb. The antique electric light blub below featured at the Waterford Historical Museum holds an important piece of local history. Its faded GE logo symbolizes the Capital Region's engineering advancements at General Electric in Schenectady, New York.

Electric light bulb (c. early 20th century), at the Waterford Museum

General Electric was founded in 1892 after the Edison General Electric Company in Schenectady merged with the Thomas-Houston Company in Lynn, Massachusetts. Thomas Edison, leader of the Edison General Electric Company and, more famously, the inventor of the electric light bulb, combined forces with his competitor once realizing that neither company could run solely off their respective patents. In other words, they needed each other's technology and rights to technologies for production. The companies' merge became GE, which was sealed with an official monogram seen on many GE lightbulbs, both antique and current.

General Electric in Schenectady. To the left you can see the famous GE logo.

The Schenectady GE building served as headquarters for many years, meaning the company's innovation in energy and lighting took place right here in the Capital Region. This is why a GE lightbulb goes beyond scientific or practical significance - it represents the powerful contributions of Albany's surrounding towns.

Continuing on the theme powerful contributions, the Capital Region had a prominent military role during the Revolutionary War, as most residents of the area already know. The Battle of Saratoga in 1777 was a turning point for the colonists in their fight for freedom from the British Empire. As the name suggests, the pivotal battle took place in Saratoga Springs, just 35 miles north of Albany.

Map of Peebles Island State Park

Peebles Island has some great walking trails!

It is accessible by bridge at the Waterford Harbor Visitor Center

But what some people may NOT know is that Peebles Island in Waterford acted as a "plan B" fortress if the Battle of Saratoga went South (quite literally).


In 1777, British general John Burgoyne began putting his plan to capture Albany into action. His military advances prompted the colonists to fortify Peebles Island given its strategic location of where the Mohawk River and Hudson River meet.


The colonists' victory at the Battle of Saratoga put an end to General Burgoyne's advances, so the reinforcements at Peebles Island were not needed.


The Capital Region's significance in the American Revolution is perfectly captured by two cannonballs preserved by the Waterford Museum. They probably originate from the 18th century, the time of the French and Indian War and the Revolutionary War, and are made from cast iron, making them surprisingly heavy.

Two cast iron cannon balls, at the Waterford Museum

Cannonballs such as these were part of the artillery used by both the colonist and the British armies in the Revolutionary War. With cannons, the cast iron projectiles could be shot at distances between 600 and 1800 yards - that's up to eighteen football fields!

It is easy to assume that items such as light bulbs and cannonballs have only practical purposes, but as you can see, that assumption is false. Not only do they contribute to the larger historical narrative beyond their invention, but they also have direct ties to Albany history. To learn more about these stories, visit the Waterford Museum where material history, as well as local and canal history, is always appreciated and proudly on display.

Read more at:
http://www.ge.com/transformation/#leadership
https://www.ge.com/about-us/history/thomas-edison
http://thelessonlocker.com/materials/history/weapons_of_war.pdf
http://revolutionaryday.com/usroute4/peebles/default.htm
http://www.americanrevolution.org/artillery.php

Honoring Father's Day and WWI

This weekend, Americans will honor and celebrate the hard work of their fathers through gifts, cards, and time spent together. But did you know it wasn’t until 1972 that Father’s Day became a national holiday? Unlike Mother’s Day, which has been recognized as a national holiday since 1914, Father’s Day had trouble gaining official recognition. It took over fifty years since its inception for the federal government to legally recognize it.



Sonora Smart Dodd, Father's Day founder

As the daughter of a widower and Civil War veteran, Sonora Smart Dodd decided in 1909 that fathers like hers deserved their fair share of recognition. She petitioned for a Father’s Day celebration in her hometown of Spokane, Washington, and in 1910, the first Father’s Day was held.
 
At first, it wasn’t very popular, and some protested against having two separate Mother’s Day and Father’s Day instead of one combined "Parents' Day." What helped popularize the celebration of Father’s Day was World War II, as advertisers used the holiday as an opportunity to honor those in uniform, specifically fathers.

One hundred years ago, the maker of the embroidery below sought to honor her own father in uniform through a personalized gift – on it, written "To my dear father." It features the British, French, and American flags, and was created sometime during World War I (1914- 1918).


Embroidery c. 1914- 1918, featured at the Waterford Museum 

In addition to fathers on Father’s Day, it is important to remember our troops: 2017 marks the 100th anniversary of America's official entry into WWI. In Europe the war began in 1914, when the Archduke of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Franz Ferdinand, was assassinated by a Serbian nationalist. Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia in response.

Franz Ferdinand

After countries began taking sides, Europe was thrown into a full-fledged war, with Austria-Hungary, Germany, and the Ottoman Empire (the Central Powers) against France, Britain, and Russia (the Allied Powers). The United States debated on whether or not to join the Allies and break its policy of isolationism, but in 1917 it did.

While World War I was an international phenomenon, it should be noted that Waterford made significant contributions to war efforts both at home and abroad. Pictured below is a roster of the Waterford soldiers who fought in WWI and a sugar ration used among the people who stayed at home.

Waterford's American Legion Roster, featured at the Waterford Museum 



 A customer's sugar ration card c. 1915, also at the Waterford Museum

Both efforts were needed and important. Sending ground troops to Europe helped turn the war around since the Allied Powers had reached a stalemate. They needed the help of American soldiers to claim victory over the Central Powers, which was achieved in 1918. Food rations were used to conserve resources so that extra food and supplies could be sent overseas. As you can see, Waterford’s local history truly expands beyond state and country borders!

Father’s Day and the 100th anniversary of WWI, though seemingly unrelated, are linked by history, as most things tend to be. Father’s Day was founded by a woman who wanted to show respect for her father's work as a widower and as a veteran. It was later popularized by advertisers who used the holiday as an opportunity to commemorate soldiers. This historic connection to the military shaped Father's Day into the nationally recognized celebration we know today. It is only fitting that we remember our troops in light of these events.

　
For more reading see:
http://www.history.com/topics/holidays/fathers-day
https://www.livescience.com/10697-father-day-turns-100.html
http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-i/outbreak-of-world-war-i#
https://www.britannica.com/event/World-War-I



　
　


 


 
 
 


  

 

The Erie Canal and its Forgotten Relative

This year, New York celebrates its 200th anniversary of the building of the Erie Canal! In recognition, I chose to showcase a 1967 button from the Waterford Historical Museum that honors the sesquicentennial, or 150th anniversary, of the canal’s building. Fifty years later, it still represents upstate New York’s continued celebration of the Erie Canal and canal history.

Erie Canal Sesqui Celebration button, on display at the Waterford Historical Museum

Construction on the canal began in 1817 and ended in 1825, a feat made possible by New York politician Dewitt Clinton and innovator Canvass White. After losing the presidential ticket in 1812, Clinton devoted himself to local politics.

DeWitt Clinton

But his loss was New York’s gain! He served as mayor of New York City from 1803 to 1815 and as governor from 1817 to 1822. During Clinton’s time as mayor, he publicized the Erie Canal’s necessity to legislators and wealthy merchants in an effort to receive backing and potential funding for the project. New York State, not the federal government, would have to pay for the Erie Canal, so Clinton worked hard to convince New Yorkers to support the canal since the federal treasury wasn’t going to. His hard work paid off and formal construction on the canal started just as Clinton was elected governor of New York.

Canvass White

While Dewitt Clinton was an important figure in realizing the goal of building the Erie Canal, it was Canvass White who was important to the actual building process. White (whose brother Hugh White is commemorated by the Waterford Historical Museum and the Hugh White Homestead) is credited with patenting hydraulic cement. His cement was used to make Erie Canal masonry structures. Without White’s engineering, the canal could not have been built.

The Erie Canal is well known among most New Yorkers and Americans. The canal was a turning point in U.S. history for significantly decreasing shipping costs and facilitating settlement in the Midwest. However, there is another 200th canal anniversary worth noting – the anniversary of the Champlain Canal.

In addition to the Erie Canal, the New York State legislator authorized the building of the Champlain Canal in 1817, which links Lake Champlain in the Adirondacks to the Hudson River. During the nineteenth century, it connected Vermont and Northeast trade to the Midwest, and thus deserves recognition as a chief waterway in the New York Canal System.

New York State Canal System (Champlain Canal far right)

For Waterford residents and the Waterford Historical Museum, the Champlain Canal is particularly special because it officially begins in the town of Waterford! The photo below from the 1910s depicts one of the locks on the canal that enabled boats to pass through different levels of water. When celebrating the 200th anniversary of the Erie Canal, it is important to remember the Champlain Canal as it tends to be overshadowed by the Erie Canal.

Champlain Canal in Waterford, on display at Halfmoon Public Library “Glimpses of Waterford” exhibit

Read more at:
http://www.lcmm.org/shipwrecks_history/history/history_war1812.htm
https://eriecanalway.org/learn/history-culture
http://champlaincanal.net/

Canal Conversations

Have you stopped by the museum recently? We’re nearing the end of our opening month and the museum’s been busy lately!!

The museum has a few new things for visitors to explore on their visit. The Waterford Historical Museum and Cultural Center is joining the statewide events to celebrate the beginning of the Erie Canal Bicentennial with our new exhibit, “Always Know Your Pal”.

Join us as the lyrics of the iconic “Erie Canal Song” guide you through canal history and culture in a fun and musical way. See how well you remember that song from when you last had it stuck in your head – you’ll be sure to be humming along with our exhibit!

Kids can check out our activity booklet and our coloring areas too! We definitely would love to have some of that artwork up on the walls for visitors to enjoy:)

     





And don’t forget to sign our “Canal Conversations” community exhibit. We’re encouraging visitors to be more involved in the exhibit by sharing their own stories!

Fill out a post-it note with a story of what makes the canal memorable to you -  was it growing up alongside the canal, hearing family tales about life on the canal, maybe trips you’ve taken on the canal or visits to events like Tugboat Roundup or through a school trip like the museum’s Canalways program! What has you interested in the canal? And if you’re not up for storytelling (you can be anonymous with your story too) you can leave your mark just by signing your name to one of the star notes and putting it up on our board to be a part of the celebration!


Here’s a few quotes from some of the stories already on our wall:

“My first journey on the Erie Canal was during the summer of 1997…I remember most how serene the trip was, and the view of urban communities…”

“My JoJo would take me on a nearly daily walk to the ruins….It was like exploring the ruins of some ancient civilization or that I was Indiana Jones scaling that wall of the canal…”

“When I was in elementary school we did a school wide presentation on the Erie Canal. My grade did a song and dance routine to the song, “The Erie Canal Song”…”

Our Canalways school program was also a part of the celebrations this year too! The students were able to get some great hands-on experience with interacting with the history of the canal and Waterford. The lieutenant governor was there on Friday and students got to be a part of the big kick-off bicentennial event down at the harbor visitor center and Lock 2-E park area.

And guess which song they sang? If you can’t guess, you can always stop by the museum for a reminder…

April/May Newsletter Extras

Here's a sample  - and extras - of some of the articles in the museum's newsletter that members can enjoy:

The Waterford Historical Museum’s collection includes items both historical and anthropological.  These items are examples of archaeological pieces of the Native American history of Waterford.

Items like these stone arrowheads
of varying styles are examples of
stone tools of native tribes

The Native American culture in Waterford that early settlers to the area came into contact with were the Mahican, an Algonquin-speaking tribe that had occupied the banks of the upper Hudson River, extending north almost to Lake Champlain. The Mahicans were bordered to the west by their Iroquois neighbors, the Mohawks, with whom they clashed periodically.  Like the waters, these tribes’ lands met at Waterford. As such, when Europeans made their way up to this area, both groups recognized potential allies as well as trading partners. The Dutch, wanting a sustainable trade environment, often were responsible for Mahican-Mohawk peace agreements.

The Mahican - one of the few tribes to side with the Americans during the Revolution and also acted as American negotiators with tribes in the west - became known as the Stockbridge tribe and sold their remaining lands in New York in 1822 to relocate to reservations in Wisconsin. The Mohawks were forced to give up their lands in New York following the Revolution, until the Treaty of Canandaiga in 1794 gave them rights to some land; today, the Mohawk live on reservations in southeastern Canada and northern New York.

Shawna's amazing photos
of our images include this piece -
read our newsletter to find out
what this quirky little item is!

The museum also wants to show off some of the great work our fantastic interns have been doing for us over the spring semester!

Thanks to Catherine Sharkey of SUNY Albany and to Shawna Fitzsimmons of Hudson Valley for making significant contributions to updating the museum's database records of its collection.

Become a member today to read more about the items featured in our "History Highlights"  and "From Our Interns" pieces!

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!