Women’s Rights Anniversary Events Begin Today

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The Women’s Rights National Historical Park program for the 164th Anniversary of the First Women’s Rights Convention begins today and continue through July 22, 2012 in Seneca Falls, NY. All events will be free of
charge.

Several programs are being offered during the Anniversary events. Artist Carol Flueckiger will present a program and several art workshops as a part of Women’s Rights NHP’s ongoing ARTS AFIRE! programs. Melinda Grube will portray Elizabeth Cady Stanton in two different programs on Saturday, July 21, and Pamela L. Poulin will portray Matilda Joslyn Gage in two different programs on Saturday, July 21, and Sunday, July 22.Paul and Mary Kuhn will present phrenology demonstrations, and Bonnie Breed will present lace-making demonstrations as part of the Anniversary events. The Hutchinson Family Revival will perform abolitionist, temperance, and women’s rights songs. Also, Women’s Rights NHP Social Media Coordinator Stephanie Freese will live-blog during the Anniversary events.

For more information about the program of events visit their website. A listing of the Convention Days events in Seneca Falls can be found on the Convention Days Committee website.

For more information, visit he Women’s Rights National Historical Park website or call (315) 568-0024. You can also follow the park’s social media sites for Facebook and Twitter to learn more about their upcoming programs.

A.J. Schenkman: Old Graveyards in Ulster County

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Many years ago, I was fortunate enough to meet the late historian Kenneth E. Hasbrouck, Sr., who at that time was the Executive Director of Historic Huguenot Street located in New Paltz, New York. I requested a meeting with him to inquire about a house that my aunt owned at that time. Read more →

Who Do These People Think They Are? at Knox’s Headquarters

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General George Washington knew exactly what he was about, in the summer of 1781, by trying to convince the British and his own soldiers that he would attack New York City. Unbeknownst to all, but trusted officials, he had agreed to move with the French Army south to Virginia. In Virginia, a French naval force from the Caribbean would join them to complete the encirclement of the British Army at Yorktown.ВThe soldiers of the 2nd and 3rd Continental Artillery Regiments, encamped at New Windsor, since the previous November, spent their time assembling and training on heavy siege artillery. Without the heavy guns to batter down the fortifications of British General Cornwallis’ Army at Yorktown, the decisive victory achieved there would not have been possible.В On Saturday July 28 from 7:00 to 9:00 PM costumed historians will think and act like they were the actual participants, at Knox’s Headquarters, in New Windsor, in July 1781, making the final arrangements for the movement of the artillery to the south.

As the evening progresses, the masking darkness gives the grounds a surreal experience, adding significantly to the authenticity of the setting. The residents will beguile visitors with tales of past glories, suffering, and share their hopes and aspirations for an uncertain future. Tour the grounds and mansion by the glow of tin lanterns and experience the tense days before Yorktown with the soldiers and civilians, who once made their homes in the area.В 

The “residents” have no knowledge of the fact that Washington wants to take them south instead of to New York. Visitors will meet few, if any, names that they recognize from history, but instead humble souls whose efforts combined with thousands of others, helped forge a nation. This type of presentation, called “first-person living history,” has developed into a very exciting way to make history more meaningful to visitors. This technique is used at Plimoth Plantation in Massachusetts and Colonial Williamsburg, in Virginia. For more information please call (845) 561-1765 ext. 22. Knox’s Headquarters is at 289 Forge Hill Road, in Vails Gate, New York at the intersection of Route 94 and Forge Hill Road, four miles east of Stewart Airport and three miles from the intersection of I-87 and I-84.Photo: New Windsor Cantonment Staff in Front of Knox’s Headquarters, the John Ellison House (provided).

Historic Local Recordings Now Available in Plattsburgh

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Access to hundreds of audio recordings that reveal the rich histories of Clinton, Essex, and Franklin Counties are now available at SUNY Plattsburgh’s Feinberg Library’s Special Collections.

Recordings include Adirondack Folk Music- Clinton, Essex, and Franklin County oral histories, including those by local residents born prior to the American Civil War- SUNY Plattsburgh concerts- a 1963 recording of Edward “Doc” Redcay on piano and Junior Barber on dobro- and four-time Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Frost reading his works.

The collection of recordings is the result of a collaborative effort by SUNY Plattsburgh Communications Professor Timothy Clukey and Feinberg Library’s Special Collections staff. According to a statement released to the press &#8220copyright restrictions require that researchers visit Special Collections during open hours to listen to any of these recordings.&#8221 The recordings are available as mp3 files on a new Audio Station computer kiosk.

A Soundscriber Recorder was used in the mid-20th century by Marjorie Lansing Porter, historian for Clinton and Essex counties. Porter recorded 456 interviews with elderly local residents telling stories and singing traditional Adirondack folk music.

Among the folk music examples, Granma Delorme sang more than one hundred folk songs for Porter, including a Battle of Plattsburgh ballad composed by General Alexander Macomb’s wife. Included also is &#8220Yankee&#8221 John Galusha singing &#8220The Three Hunters,&#8221 &#8220A Lumbering We Shall Go,&#8221 and &#8220Adirondack Eagle.&#8221 Francis Delong sings &#8220My Adirondack Home,&#8221 and &#8220Peddler Jack.&#8221

Many of the recorded songs deal with mining, lumbering, Adirondack folk tales, and other subjects, as well as traditional Irish and French folk music handed down through generations. The Porter Oral History Interviews cover many topics of historical interest in Clinton and Essex Counties, such as ferry boats, Redford glass, mining, and lumbering.

The Audio Station also includes 96 interviews conducted by William Langlois and Robert McGowan with elder Franklin County residents in the 1970s.Plans in the works for additions to the Audio Station include:

Rockwell Kent audio recordings (now on reel-to-reel tapes in Special Collections’ Rockwell Kent Collection)-

SUNY Plattsburgh Past President Dr. George Angell speaking on antiwar action in 1967—“Protest is Not Enough&#8221-The 1965 SUNY Plattsburgh Students for a Democratic Society and S.E.A.N.Y.S. teach-in, “The Vietnam Question,” with introduction by Dr. Angell- A1964 speech by Senator-Elect Robert Kennedy on the Plattsburgh campus- and a 1964 meeting between Senator-Elect Kennedy and Dr. Angell, discussing various local and county concerns and other topics.For more information, contact Debra Kimok, Special Collections Librarian (email: [email protected] telephone: 518-564-5206).

During the summer, the Feinberg Special Collections will be open on Mondays and Tuesdays, from 1 pm – 4 pm, and on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, from 10 am &#8211 noon and 1 pm – 4 pm. Saturday appointments can be arranged with the Special Collections Librarian.

Hudson River Greenway Offers Trail Grant Program

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Applications are now available for the 2012 Greenway Conservancy Small Grant Program from the The Hudson River Valley Greenway. A total of $50,000 is available for matching grants in this year’s program.The Greenway Conservancy Small Grant Program is an annual competitive grant funding opportunity available to communities and not-for-profit organizations within the designated Hudson River Valley Greenway area, which extends from Saratoga and Washington counties to Battery Park, Manhattan.
The program offers funding for trail planning and design, construction and rehabilitation, and education and interpretation. Emphasis is placed on trail projects that seek to implement the goals of the Greenway Trail Vision Plan, fill in identified gaps in the Greenway Trail System, and make improvements to designated Greenway Trails. Copies of the Hudson River Valley Greenway Trail Vision Plan may be downloaded online. This annual program has offered technical and financial assistance to municipalities and not-for-profit organizations since 1995.

Projects that will be considered for funding through this year’s grant program include:

· Education and Interpretation projects, including trail signs, kiosks, guides, maps, brochures, one-day conferences or workshop series. 

· Projects to construct, design or plan trail segments or trail links that further the goals of the Greenway Trail Program.

· Rehabilitation projects to improve trails/trail segments that further the goals of the Greenway Trail Program.

Applications can be requested by calling (518) 473-3835, by emailing the Greenway at [email protected], or by download from the Greenway website. All applications must be postmarked by 5:00 pm, August 17, 2012. Late, incomplete, faxed or emailed applications will not be accepted.

Odetta, Richard Wright Being Honored Today in NYC

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Today, Tuesday, July 17, 2012 the Historic Districts Council and the Historic Landmarks Preservation Center in New York City will unveil new cultural medallions for two pioneers in the fields of literature and music.

First at 11:00am, in collaboration with the Fort Greene Association, author Richard Wright will be celebrated with a medallion unveiling at 175 Carlton Avenue in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Then at 2:00 pm their will be an unveiling of a medallion commemorating the life of Odetta, the legendary singer, songwriter and political activist, at her longtime residence, 1270 Fifth Avenue, in East Harlem. The public is invited to both events.

Odetta: The Voice of the Civil-Rights Movement, 1930-2008

Odetta Holmes, born on December 31, 1930 in Birmingham, Alabama was a true activist, performance artist and musician. Her powerful image and robust voice was and continues to represent the politically driven folk-music of the 1950’s and 1960’s. As an African-American female performance artist during a time of political and racial upheaval, Odetta was a leader and voice for the civil rights movement- marching with Martin Luther King Jr. and performing a show for John F. Kennedy. The ability she had to convey meaning and life into her music inspired others to follow in her pursuit of fairness, equality and justice.

Author Richard Wright, 1908- 1960

Born in Mississippi, Richard Wright spent the majority of his childhood living in poverty in the oppressive racial and social atmosphere of the south. Wright escaped familial and social constraints by immersing himself in the world of literature, and became one of the first great African American writer’s of his time. Richard Wright relocated to Brooklyn’s Fort Greene neighborhood and was living here in 1938 when he drafted his first novel, Native Son. He wrote several controversial novels, short-stories and semi-autobiographical accounts that reflected the brutalities often inflicted on the African American people of the south during this period. Wright eventually left New York City for Paris. His grave is located in the Pere Lachaise Cemetery.

About the Ceremony and Cultural Medallion Program

Distinguished scholars, artists and elected officials will be participating in both of the cultural medallion ceremonies. The Richard Wright program will include Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, celebrated playwright Lynn Nottage, Paul Palazzo of the Fort Greene Association, musician and author Carl Hancock Rux, and Howard Pitsch will read a message from Wright’s daughter, Julia Wright, who currently resides in Paris. Pianist Dave Keyes will perform Odetta’s signature piece, This Little Light of Mine, at the Odetta ceremony.

The Cultural Medallions are a program of the Historic Landmarks Preservation Center. Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel, Chair of the HLPC, created the Cultural Medallions program, and will lead the ceremony. The HLPC has installed almost 100 medallions around the city to heighten public awareness of the cultural and social history of New York City.

Henry Markham: NYs Governor of California (Part 2)

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Henry Harrison Markham, a native of Wilmington, New York, expanded his California business connections beyond the Pasadena area’s mines. He was president of the Los Angeles Furniture Company, and a director on the boards of two banks and the Southern California Oil Supply Company. Others like him led a surge of financial prosperity and population growth in southern California. In the upcoming political campaign, the south was hoping to wrest control from the northern power base at San Francisco.Once again, the party turned to Markham, nominating him as the candidate for governor to avoid a party split. In a bitter, hard-fought battle, he defeated San Francisco Mayor E. B. Pond by 8,000 votes to become California’s 18th governor. The victory was attributed partly to Henry’s manner of personally greeting thousands of voters who became well acquainted with the “Markham Glad-hand.” It was his signature move—a firm, hearty handshake evoking sincerity.

While holding office from Jan. 1891–Jan. 1895, Markham did much to advance business in the state. When the Panic of 1893 struck (considered second-worst only to the Great Depression of the 1930s), he backed the idea for the California Midwinter International Exposition (a World’s Fair). With San Francisco as the host city, a massive parade was held. Represented were many businesses, civic organizations, and military groups. A work-holiday was imposed by the governor, to great effect. On the first day alone, more than 72,000 people attended.During his tenure, Markham also handled the effects of a national railroad strike- led the second-largest fundraising effort among states represented at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893- secured military facilities that brought millions of dollars to California- forced a railroad company to pay $1.3 million it owed the state- helped bring trolley service to Pasadena- backed the building of the Santa Fe Railroad- and worked towards establishing a harbor facility in southern California.Early in his tenure, an interesting meeting occurred when Governor Markham welcomed President Benjamin Harrison on a tour of California. The president was the grandson of another president, William Henry Harrison, and during the trip, California’s new governor revealed a personal connection to the First Family.The elder Harrison’s election platform in 1840 had included tariffs that were meant to protect American businesses. Nathan Markham, an iron manufacturer at Wilmington, was so delighted when William Henry Harrison won the election in 1840, he named his newborn son Henry Harrison Markham. (Unfortunately, the president died after a month in office, the shortest term of any US chief executive.)After a successful four-year stint as governor, Henry Markham decided not to seek a second term, returning to private life and the world of business, where he did well for more than two decades. He died of a stroke in 1923 at the age of 83, but was certainly not forgotten.

His impressive home was torn down in 1939, but through the years, the Markham Mansion had played host to many grand social occasions, both during his tenure and after his death. The family name also remained a fixture on streets, buildings, and other locations in Pasadena.

In 1963, forty years after the governor’s death, Markham Place was honored by the Pasadena Beautiful Foundation as its first Banner Block. The neighborhood was near Henry’s former mansion and orchard, where many old, beautiful homes had been restored. In 2010, popular tourist destinations include the Governor Markham Victorian District.Was the old neighborhood really that impressive? Next door to Markham was Adolphus Busch (Budweiser, etc.). Nearby was the Gamble family (Procter & Gamble) and Bill Wrigley (Wrigley’s gum). Others locating in that vicinity over the years include the Maxwells (coffee), the Cox family (communications), and the Spaldings (sporting goods). The area was once known as “Millionaire’s Row” in the days when a million dollars suggested exclusivity.And what of that wonderful playhouse so lovingly built by Henry Markham for his daughters? In 1970, the California State Historical Society became aware that after 85 years, it still existed. The family had passed it down so that subsequent generations of children could enjoy it.Wishing to do the same, the owner contacted Governor Markham’s fourth daughter, Hildreth, 81 (born in 1889), obtaining permission to donate it to the Pacific Oaks Children’s School. Soon after, the house (which had been refurbished regularly in the past), was placed in a corner of the children’s play yard at the school, a memento of California’s governor from Wilmington, New York.Photos: Top?Henry Harrison Markham. Bottom?California Midwinter International Exposition, 1894.The story of Henry Markham is one of 51 original North Country history pieces appearing in Adirondack & North Country Gold: 50+ New & True Stories You’re Sure to Love (352 pp.), a recent release by author Lawrence Gooley, owner of Bloated Toe Publishing.

Tom Hughes: The Champlain Memorial Lighthouse Centennial

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What follows is a guest essay by Thomas Hughes, Director of the Crown Point State Historic Site on Lake Champlain in Essex County, NY. The site includes two National Historic Landmarks: the ruins of French-built Fort St. Frederic (1734-59) and the ruins of Crown Point’s British fort (1759-73).

Dedicated 100 years ago this month on July 5, 1912, and located at a prominent site that is steeped in history, the Champlain Memorial Lighthouse serves as a monument to the 1609 voyage on Lake Champlain by French explorer Samuel Champlain.

This Champlain Memorial rises from a small point of land just southeast of the Lake Champlain Bridge. In July 1609, Samuel Champlain was the first European to record seeing this majestic lake which he named for himself. Late that month, Algonquin, Huron, and Montagnais Indians in canoes guided Champlain and two fellow Frenchmen southward from the St. Lawrence River region onto Lake Champlain, so that the three Europeans might join the Algonquins in a military engagement against the Algonquin’s Iroquois enemies. A battle took place (perhaps near the present-day site of the lighthouse), the arquebus firearms used by the three Frenchmen proved decisive, and the Algonquins and French returned northward.

Over 100 years later, the French built a fortified windmill here (circa 1737), as part of their Fort St. Frederic military and civilian complex. The windmill ground grain for the fort garrison and for the nearby French civilian population but also served as an outer military defensive structure in that the windmill was fortified with cannons. The French blew up their windmill in late-July 1759, as the French military abandoned Fort St. Frederic to the advancing British army. In August 1759, when the British began to build a vast Crown Point fort, to be their primary fortification on Lake Champlain, the lighthouse site was chosen for one of their outer forts, the Grenadier Redoubt. Remains of part of the Grenadier Redoubt can still be seen today, immediately south of the lighthouse.

On May 12, 1775, during the outbreak of the War for Independence, a few British soldiers at Crown Point were captured by 100 “Green Mountain Boys” (from the Hampshire Grants) under the command of Seth Warner. In addition to taking the strategic location from the British, the rebels liberated a great prize: 111 British cannon.

In peacetime, commerce grew on Lake Champlain, as did the need for a lighthouse at the narrows at the point of the Crown Point peninsula. The Crown Point Lighthouse was built in 1858 as a 55-foot octagonal limestone tower. Trapezoidal windowpanes encased the lantern room, from where a fifth-order Fresnel lens beamed a fixed white light at a focal plane of eighty-three feet. The Crown Point Lighthouse faithfully served for over 70 years.

In time for the 300th anniversaries in 1909, the States of New York and Vermont each established tercentennial commissions to organize events to celebrate Champlain’s lake voyage. The festivities that the commissions organized commenced at Crown Point on Monday, July 5, 1909 with an address by New York State Governor (Glens Falls native and future U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice) Charles Evans Hughes, Indian pageants, and fireworks.

Besides planning the week-long celebration, the commissions from New York and Vermont also desired to erect a suitable and permanent memorial to Champlain. One suggestion that appeared in a local newspaper as a Letter to the Editor was to convert an existing lighthouse into a memorial. Incorporating the memorial with a lighthouse seemed a fitting way to commemorate an explorer and navigator of Champlain’s stature. Various sites on Lake Champlain (including Cumberland Head, Plattsburgh, Isle La Motte, Bluff Point, Split Rock, Rock Dunder, Ticonderoga, Mount Defiance, and Juniper Island) were considered for the memorial before the two commissions, with the blessing of the U.S. Lighthouse Service, agreed in 1910 on Crown Point.

According to the Ticonderoga Sentinel (page one, October 13, 1910), “The Memorial Committee of the Lake Champlain Tercentenary Commission, appointed from New York and Vermont, announced [on Wednesday, October 5, 1910] that the permanent memorial to Samuel Champlain, discoverer of Lake Champlain, would probably be a lighthouse instead of a memorial statue or monument …The expense of the memorial is $76,000. … The members of the committees were guests … Wednesday on board the steamer Vermont, and the members of the association viewed the proposed site that day.”

With $50,000 in funds set aside from the Tercentennial Commissions, work began on the memorial to Champlain and his exploration of the lake. The memorial was designed by Dillon, McClellan, and Beadel. The Champlain Memorial is classical and French Renaissance in style, with heavy stone columns, entablature, ornamental frieze and setbacks. The limestone exterior of the lighthouse was replaced with eight Roman Doric columns resting upon a conical base made of Fox Island granite from Maine. An ornate cornice, parapet, and lantern room were also added to complete the memorial. Parts of the foundation, the interior brick, and the cylindrical shaft holding the spiral stone staircase remain from the 1858 lighthouse.

In another page one article on June 27, 1912 the Ticonderoga Sentinel announced that “The Champlain memorial, erected on the site of the lighthouse at Crown Point, N.Y., by the states of Vermont and New York jointly through the commissions of the two states, will be dedicated Friday, July 5th. The Hon. H. Wallace Knapp, chairman of the New York commission and Dr. John M. Thomas, president of Middlebury College, a member of the Vermont commission, will present the memorial to the States …, and it will be accepted by Vermont Governor John A. Mead and by New York Governor John A. Dix [Glens Fallsnative]. &#8230- The exercises will begin with prayer by the Rev. Dr. Lewis Francis, of Port Henry. [In addition to the Governors’ remarks,] it is expected that representatives from the British and French embassies atWashington will also be present and make addresses.”

On the side of the memorial that faces Vermont, are bronze sculptures, the largest of which was crafted by German-American Carl A. Heber (1875-1956). It depicts, above the prow of a canoe which appears to be filled with furs, Champlain standing in the center, flanked by a crouching Huron guide and a French Voyageur. These larger-than-life-size figures were cast at the Roman Bronze Works in Brooklyn.

Two months before the July 1912 dedication, France had donated a bronze profile bust (for which sculptress Camille Claudel had been the model), sculpted by the great French artist Auguste Rodin, to be incorporated into the monument. At the dedication of the memorial, the leader of the visiting French delegation remarked “The United States is raising a monument to a Frenchman, and France sends you, through us, her tribute of gratitude.” The Rodin “La France” sculpture remains visible, as located on the memorial exterior, below the larger-than-life sculpture of Champlain.

The construction of the lighthouse memorial was a joint effort of the States of New York and Vermont (two small monuments flanking the lighthouse are inscribed with the names of the tercentenary commissioners) as part
of the 1909-1912 observance of Champlain’s voyage on the lake. On each side of the monument are coats of arms: New France (French North America, 1609-1763), the State of Vermont, France (at the time of Louis XIII), the United States of America, the State of New York, and Brouage (Champlain’s birthplace in France).

With the opening of the nearby Lake Champlain Bridge on August 26, 1929, the usefulness of the light as a navigational aid was short-lived. The lighthouse was taken out of active service circa 1930 and deeded to the State of New York. The light keeper’s wooden Cape Cod-style cottage, attached to the memorial lighthouse, was eventually removed. Today the Champlain Memorial lighthouse is part of the Crown Point Reservation Campground and is open to the public. The lighthouse is under the stewardship of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.

A few years ago, government funds were used to repair the covered steamboat pier that was added during the 1930s and to restore the historic lighthouse, a symbol of Crown Point’s history. The restoration of the lighthouse exterior was completed in time for the 2009 quadricentennial celebration of Champlain’s historic voyage and the “La France” sculpture by Rodin was cleaned. On September 19, 2009, this Champlain Memorial was publicly re-dedicated by the states of Vermont and New York. Four weeks later, the Lake Champlain Bridge closed and during 2010 and 2011, a replacement bridge was constructed beside the lighthouse. The Champlain Memorial is visible from a sidewalk on the popular new bridge.

As a monument, the Champlain Memorial is a handsome and fitting tribute- as a lighthouse, the structure is extraordinarily ornamental and unique- as sculpture, the edifice enjoys an abundance of great works of art in bronze. This month, the Champlain Memorial begins its second century of proudly honoring Samuel Champlain, “The Father of New France.”

The Civil War And The Adirondacks: 1861-1865

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One hundred fifty years ago this country was torn apart by a great civil war. The Adirondack Museum will host a weekend dedicated to remembering the Civil War in the Adirondacks, the men who fought it and their loved ones at home, this Saturday, July 21 and Sunday, July 22.

Visitors will be able to meet the members of the 118th Volunteer Infantry (the &#8220Adirondack&#8221 Regiment&#8221) and President Lincoln at a Civil War Encampment and learn the fate of Adirondack Civil War soldiers of the 118th themselves at a specially produced  presentation by author Glenn Pearsall on Saturday (7:00 p.m.) entitled &#8220The Adirondacks Go To War: 1861 &#8211 1865.&#8221

In the Adirondacks many young men, boys really, left their hard scrabble farms and small towns for the first time in their lives to enlist. Learn what their thoughts were as they marched off to war and how they reacted to the horrors of war. Hear what it was like for the wives, children, mothers and father that they left behind, as well as the lasting impact of the war on the small towns in the Adirondacks following the war.

Pearsall spent two years researching the Civil War veterans from Johnsburg in the southeastern Adirondacks before preparing this special program based on letters and journals (which will be read by a Civil War re-enactors in uniform). The presentation will also include over 100 historic photographs of soldiers and battlefield scenes. &#8220Each member of the audience will be given a name of a soldier from the Adirondacks who fought in the war and will ultimately find out if they survived the war,&#8221  he told the New York History.

Pearsall’s presentation will focus on men serving with the 22nd New York (one of the first to respond to President Lincoln’s call to arms and recruited in Warren and Saratoga Counties), the 93rd (recruited from Essex, Fulton, Hamilton and Warren Counties who suffered horrific losses in the contest between U.S. Grant and Robert E. Lee), the 96th or &#8220Plattsburgh Regiment&#8221 (recruited primarily from Clinton County), the 115th (recruited from Hamilton and Fulton Counties) and the 118th or &#8220Adirondack Regiment&#8221 (recruited from Clinton, Essex and Warren Counties, the first regiment to enter the Confederate capital in Richmond on its fall). Pearsall will also explain a special Adirondack link to the capture of John Wilkes Booth, assassin of President Abraham Lincoln.

The &#8220Adirondack Regiment&#8221 will also be the focus of the weekend-long encampment at the Museum.  Mustered into service in August 1862, over one thousand North Country men served in the unit. Re-enactors will camp at the museum and share stories of camp life, and what it was like to be a soldier in the Civil War. Visitors will learn about the 118th assignments and movements, the battles they fought in, and the historic moment when General Robert E. Lee surrendered at the Appomattox Court House.

President Lincoln will be portrayed by John R. Baylis, who has appeared as the 16th President of the United States at Gettysburg, Antietam, Cedar Creek, Ottawa, and as far south as Key West.

Pearsall’s presentation will be held in the Auditorium at 7:00 p.m. The program will be offered at no charge to museum members- the fee for non-members is $5.00. For additional information, please visit www.adirondackmuseum.org or call (518) 352-7311.


Photo: A volunteer infantry soldier of the  118th &#8220Adirondack Regiment&#8221 (circa 1863, courtesy Adirondack Museum).