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.

  • Issue:

    A politician who said more with fewer words

    U.S. Rep. John Davis Long built his career as a politician and statesman in the late 19th century on his way with words. By Maury Thompson read more

    A politician who said more with fewer words
  • Issue:

    A populist campaign in the swing state of NY

    On the afternoon of Oct. 28, 1884, about 800 people, many from out of town, listened in a drizzling rain in the park at Sandy Hill (now Hudson Falls, N.Y.) as third-party presidential candidate Benjamin Franklin Butler delivered a 90-minute speech. Butler, the candidate of the Greenback-Labor and Anti-Monopoly parties, forerunners of the progressive movement, read more

    A populist campaign in the swing state of NY
  • Issue:

    In priest’s garden, Old World methods yield bounty

    The Rev. Alexis Hanna, never contrary, didn’t wait for a newspaper reporter to ask, “How does your garden grow?” Every year at harvest time, the Orthodox priest from South Glens Falls visited the office of The Post-Star to drop off a basket filled with “massive tomatoes,” some weighing more than 2 pounds, and other vegetables, read more

    In priest’s garden, Old World methods yield bounty
  • Issue:

    An editor unmoved by patriotic hoopla

    On March 3, 1876, the Methodist Episcopal Church in Cambridge, N.Y., served a “Centennial Supper” of pork and beans, rye bread and tea. D.R. Byrum, a sewing machine dealer from Whitehall, advertised his upcoming sale as “A Great Centennial Outrage!” Across the region, there was plenty of excitement about the 100th birthday of the United read more

    An editor unmoved by patriotic hoopla
  • Issue:

    From Vermont’s marble quarries to the halls of D.C.

    Redfield Proctor Sr., the 19th century Vermont politician, lawyer, marble industry executive and Civil War veteran, will soon find his place in 21st century sculpture. The Rutland Herald reported in July that organizers of the Rutland Sculpture Trail have chosen Proctor to be the focus of the 10th sculpture on the trail, a public arts read more

    From Vermont’s marble quarries to the halls of D.C.
  • Issue:

    From readers, care and food for local journalists

    How long does it take to make a newspaper editor smile? In one local case in the 19th century, the process took 14 years.In 1869, Harriet Wing of Glens Falls, the wife of Halsey Rogers Wing, received a packet of catalpa seeds in a letter from Kentucky. Perhaps, at the time, Harriet was still grieving read more

    From readers, care and food for local journalists
  • Issue:

    A statesman whose dairy cows were his pride

    Making the rounds of the late summer agricultural fairs has long been a tradition for politicians.But it’s not all that often that a prominent politician takes home a prize, unless it’s in a celebrity cow-milking contest, which typically is more of a stunt than a feat of skill. One politician from the region, though, served read more

    A statesman whose dairy cows were his pride
  • Issue:

    From Vermont, a White House hopeful hailed as a reformer

    Name a Vermont politician who served for more than two decades in Congress and mounted two unsuccessful presidential bids. If your first guess is Bernie Sanders, that would not be wrong. But there is more than one correct answer. U.S. Sen. George F. Edmunds of Burlington was a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in read more

    From Vermont, a White House hopeful hailed as a reformer
  • Issue:

    A leader known as a foe of slavery, friend of workers

    Vice President Henry Wilson, a former U.S. senator from Massachusetts known as “always the working man’s friend,” rode on the driver’s seat as he took a coach from Glens Falls to Lake George and back again on Aug. 6, 1874. Wilson went to Lake George to have lunch at The Fort William Henry Hotel, and read more

    A leader known as a foe of slavery, friend of workers
  • Issue:

    A fascination with all things natural

    GLENS FALLS, N.Y.When a large elm tree on the east side of the Glens Falls Insurance building was cut down in February 1912, Professor C.L. Williams counted the number of rings and estimated the tree was 75 years old. Williams at the time was writing a history of trees in Glens Falls, and he led read more

    A fascination with all things natural