History

New York Folklore Society Latino Artists Gathering

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The New York Folklore Society, in collaboration with Go Art!, will hold its second Latino Artists’ Gathering on March 19, 2011 At the Homestead Event Center, Batavia City Center, Batavia, New York.

Supported by funds from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts, the gatherings provide an opportunity for Latino artists residing in non-metropolitan New York State to come together to discuss issues and solve common problems. March’s theme will be &#8220Challenges and Opportunities for Traditional Artists in Rural New York&#8221, and we will hear of some of the current initiatives being tried to link artists across distances.

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30,000 Rensselaer County Marriage Records Online

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The Renssealer County Clerk’s office and the Troy Irish Genealogical Society (TIGS) have joined forces to put more than 30,000 early 20th century marriage records online. The Marriage Index Automation took five years to complete. The online records include a 10-volume set of indexes to marriages in Rensselaer County between 1908 and 1935. The records, which cover every person married in Rensselaer County, not just those with Irish surnames, are available online through the TIGS website.

Rennselaer County Clerk Frank J. Merola lauded the efforts of TIGS members in bringing the project to fruition, including former TIGS president Donna Vaughn, current president Kristin Cooney Ayotte, project coordinator Bill McGrath and webmaster and librarian Jeanne Keefe.

“I am very pleased to have been involved in this partnership with TIGS, and I commend them on taking the time and effort to open our historical records to the widest audience possible,” Merola told the Troy Record newspaper.

“We have made tremendous progress in restoring county naturalization records with the help of organizations like TIGS, and I am thrilled about our future projects and the future of genealogy in Rensselaer County,”

he was reported to have said.

La Escuela Electronica / The Electronic Schoolhouse

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The New York State Archives and Archives Partnership Trust have announced La Escuela Electronica/The Electronic Schoolhouse, a bilingual website for teachers focusing on the Latino experience in New York. Using historical records such as photographs, letters, flyers, broadsides and more dating from 1861 to the present, the website combines historical records and technology to promote the development of critical thinking skills, reading and writing skills, understanding historical content and context. Read more →

Tammis Groft and Museum and History Advocacy

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One of New York’s museum leading lights, Tammis Groft, was recently mentioned over at Suzanne Fischer’s Public Historian blog in a post calling for more blogging about museum and history advocacy:

Among AAM’s projects is museum advocacy on a national level. Recently, they sent Tammis K. Groft, deputy director of collections and exhibits at the Albany Institute of History and Art [above], to Washington as a “citizen-lobbyist” to speak to a committee about the importance of NEH Preservation and Access Grants. She wrote a few blog posts on the subject on the AAM’s advocacy blog. PAG grants are a major way museums of all sizes fund collections stewardship projects, and the funding for the program is slated to be cut by 50% next year. Contact your elected officials to advocate for NEH conservation programs!

The Humanities Advocacy Network is also a great resource for humanities advocacy, including preservation and history programs. You can sign up to get action alerts and email your representatives from the page.

I’d love to see more blogging from AAM or other organizations on museum and history advocacy issues. The wrangling over appropriations can be very opaque, and a human voice really helps to clarify issues and make advocacy work seem much more possible for small museum professionals and those without much lobbying practice. (My occasional posts about Minnesota cultural legislation don’t cut it.)

Native American History: 1922 Everett Report Online

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The Everett Report, officially known as the Report of the New York State Commission to Investigate the Status of the American Indian Residing in the State of New York has been made available online by the New York State Library. The Commission was chaired by Assemblyman Edward Everett (R-Potsdam). Here is a link, though the viewing system is archaic, so make sure you allow pop-ups for www.nysl.nysed.gov.

The New York State Indian Commission (1919-1922), whose purpose was to investigate the status of Indian welfare and land rights in New York State, was presented to the legislature on March 17, 1922 &#8211 and then promptly rejected. It wasn’t until 1971 that the report was finally released. In 1980, Helen Upton published The Everett Report in Historical Perspective.

According to the folks at the New York State Library:

Lulu Stillman, a stenographer for Assemblyman Edward Everett, was credited for preserving the only remaining record of the report, from which the 1971 transcript was made. As Everett’s stenographer, Stillman retained copies of most of the material produced by or related to the commission. (Many of the original documents are either missing or unavailable.) The published report released in 1971 and Stillman’s annotated draft have both been digitized.