Category: Local history
Contributing writers will sally into archives and recover stories and voices from the past, from many communities in this independent stretch of hills between wide rivers and the Taconic and Hoosic ranges and the Green mountains.
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Issue: December 2025-January 2026
When a college taught homesteading skills
50 years ago, from 1975 to 1980, the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts ran the Center for Resourceful Living at a 52-acre farm in Clarksburg — By Kate Abbott read more
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Issue: October 2025
A life spent linking region and the wider world
William B. Eddy attended a Sunday church service in early 1883 with the help of a technological forerunner of contemporary live streaming — By Maury Thompson read more
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Issue: August-September 2025
Lengthy strike disrupted region’s slate industry
About 600 area slate workers walked off the job on May 12 a century ago.The skilled slate workers at quarries around Granville, N.Y., and Poultney, Vt., were demanding an hourly wage increase of 5 cents — the equivalent of 92 cents in today’s dollars. Even with the increase, their wages, after adjusting for inflation, would read more
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Issue: June-July 2025
From the Hudson Valley, a prolific orator
The regularly scheduled 8:30 p.m. broadcast of The Navy Band on Schenectady radio station WGY was pre-empted on Saturday, May 2, 1925 by the 91st birthday celebration of one of New York’s most prolific public speakers. “Chauncey Depew, nonagenarian, will address the audience of WGY, Schenectady, and WJZ, New York, Saturday evening,” The Glens Falls read more
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Issue: February-March 2025
Amid drought, a village runs dry
Some see Whitehall’s water crisis as a warning about climate risks Whitehall Mayor Francis Putorti stands inside the village’s water treatment plant in late January. The village water system shut down for two days in December after a combination of drought and a leaking pipe drew Whitehall’s reservoir down to dangerously low levels. Joan K. read more
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Issue: February-March 2025
A ’24 campaign transformed by radio
People gathered on the second floor of Wiley’s dry goods store in downtown Glens Falls to listen, via radio, to the inauguration of President Calvin Coolidge on March 4, 1925. It was another in a series of events through which Coolidge pioneered the use of this new medium in politics. “No one can contemplate current read more
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Issue: December 2024-January 2025
A Saratoga senator who led a governor’s impeachment
After 20 rounds of balloting, delegates from Washington, Saratoga and Schenectady counties remained deadlocked as they attempted to nominate a candidate for New York’s newly redrawn 28th Senate District, with each county’s delegates backing their own favorite son. Schenectady County, with five delegates, consistently voted for Austin A. Yates at the Republican nominating convention, which read more
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Issue: November 2024
‘Weather prophet’ was often cited — and sometimes accurate
Weather Prophet Brady was an often quoted, though not always respected, 19th century weather predictor in the Glens Falls area. The Morning Star of Glens Falls described his forecast for the upcoming days in its Aug. 3, 1895 issue:“’You may say it’s going to rain on Aug. 4,’ said Weather Prophet Brady last night as read more
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Issue: September 2024
Local shirt factories became focus of labor disputes
Employees at the Greenwich, N.Y., and Rutland, Vt., shirt factories of Tim, Wallerstein & Co. acted in solidarity with striking workers at the company’s factory on Liberty Street in Albany in 1891. The Greenwich and Rutland employees pledged not to complete any work transferred from the Albany factory — and if necessary, to walk off read more
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Issue: August 2024
19th-century editor tested libel laws’ limits
W.W. Bingham, the editor and publisher of the Salem Sun in the late 19th century, appears to have subscribed to a kind of yellow journalism that was more prevalent in major cities of the era.At least twice he was accused of libel by local public officials — a sheriff and a judge — and wound read more