Abolition

Lincoln and New York Opens At New York Historical Society

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From the launch of Abraham Lincoln’s 1860 Presidential campaign with a speech at Cooper Union through the unprecedented outpouring of grief at his funeral procession in 1865, New York City played a surprisingly central role in the career of the sixteenth President—and Lincoln, in turn, had an impact on New York that was vast, and remains vastly underappreciated.

Now, for the first time, a museum exhibition will trace the crucial relationship between America’s greatest President and its greatest city, when the New-York Historical Society presents Lincoln and New York, from October 9, 2009 through March 25, 2010. The culminating presentation in the Historical Society’s Lincoln Year of exhibitions, events and public programs, this extraordinary display of original artifacts, iconic images and highly significant period documents is the Historical Society’s major contribution to the nation’s Lincoln Bicentennial. Lincoln and New York has been endorsed by the U.S. Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission.

Serving as chief historian for Lincoln and New York and editor of the accompanying catalogue is noted Lincoln scholar and author Harold Holzer, co-chairman of the Lincoln Bicentennial Commission. He has also organized the Historical Society’s year-long Lincoln Series of public conversations and interviews. Serving as curator is Dr. Richard Rabinowitz, president of American History Workshop and curator of the exhibitions Slavery in New York and New York Divided: Slavery and the Civil War at the New-York Historical Society.

Lincoln and New York brings to life the period between Lincoln’s decisive entrance into the city’s life at the start of the 1860 Presidential campaign to his departure from it in 1865 as a secular martyr. During these years, the policies of the Lincoln administration damaged and then re-built the New York economy, transforming the city from a thriving port dependent on trade with the slave-holding South into the nation’s leading engine of financial and industrial growth- support and opposition to the President flared into a virtual civil war within the institutions and on the streets of New York, out of which emerged a pattern of political contention that survives to this day.

To begin this story, visitors follow the prairie lawyer eastward to his rendezvous with “the political cauldron” of New York in the winter of 1860. Visitors will learn something of his background and of the rapidly accelerating political crisis that had brought him to the fore: the battle over the extension of slavery into the western territories.

Then, in the six galleries that follow, visitors will discover the interconnections between these two unlikely partners: the ambitious western politician with scant national experience, and the sophisticated eastern metropolis that had become America’s capital of commerce and publishing.

Campaign (1859—1860) immerses visitors in the sights and sounds of the city, then the fastest-growing metropolis in the world, while re-creating Lincoln’s entire visit in February 1860 when his epoch-making address at the Cooper Union and the photograph for which he posed that same day together launched his national career. The displays will cast new light on the lecture culture of the antebellum city, the political divisions within its Republican organization, the strength of its publishing industry and the bustling, somewhat alien urban community that Lincoln encountered. The video re-creation of Lincoln’s Cooper Union speech, produced on site with acclaimed actor Sam Waterston’s vivid rendering of Lincoln’s arguments, brings that crucial evening to life. Visitors will re-enact for themselves how Lincoln posed for New York’s—and the nation’s—leading photographer, Mathew Brady, whose now-iconic photograph began the reinvention of Lincoln’s public image. As Lincoln himself said, “Brady and the Cooper Union speech made me President.”

Objects on view will include the telegram inviting Lincoln to give his first Eastern lecture, the lectern that he used at Cooper Union, the widely distributed printed text of his speech, photographic and photo-engraving equipment from this era and torches that were carried by pro-Lincoln “Wide Awakes” at their great October 6 New York march. Also on view will be a panoply of political cartoons and editorial commentary generated in New York that established “Honest Abe” and the “Railsplitter” as a viable and virtuous candidate, but concurrently began the tradition of anti-Lincoln caricature by introducing Lincoln as a slovenly rustic, reluctant to discuss the hot-button slavery issue but secretly favoring the radical idea of racial equality.

The next gallery, Public Opinions (1861—62), registers the gyrating fortunes of the Lincoln Administration’s first year among New Yorkers—especially the editors and publishers of the city’s 175 daily and weekly newspapers and illustrated journals, who wielded unprecedented power. In the wake of his election, and the secession of the Southern states, the New York Stock Exchange had plummeted and New York harbor was stilled. Payment of New York’s huge outstanding debts from Southern planters and merchants ceased, and bankruptcies abounded.

Scarcely one docked ship hoisted the national colors to greet the new President-Elect in February 1861 when he visited on his way to Washington and the inauguration, and eyewitness Walt Whitman described his welcome along New York’s streets as “ominous.” Mayor Fernando Wood proposed that the city declare its independence from both the Union and the Confederacy and continue trading with both sides. Even New Yorkers unwilling to go that far desperately tried to find compromises with the South that in their words, “would avert the calamity of Civil War.”

Just two months later, though, in the wake of the attack on Fort Sumter, it suddenly appeared that every New Yorker was an avid defender of Old Glory. After war was declared, business leaders, including many powerful Democrats, pledged funds and goods to the effort. The Irish community, not previously sympathetic to Republicans, vigorously mobilized its own battalion in the first wave of responses to Lincoln’s call for troops to crush the Rebellion. But after the Confederate victory at Bull Run, the wheel turned again. From July 1861 onward for more than a year, the news was unremittingly bad. Battlefield mishaps, crippling inflation, profiteering among war contractors, corruption in the supply of “shoddy” equipment and clothing for the troops, the ability of Confederate raiders to seize dozens of New York merchant ships right outside the harbor, the imposition of an income tax and a controversial effort to reform banking, alarming New York’s regulation-wary financial institutions: all these led to relentless press and public criticism of Lincoln. New York’s cartoonists, as shown in the exhibition, found every possible way to caricature the President’s homely appearance and controversial policies. Even abolitionists and blacks despaired of the President’s reluctance to embrace emancipation and the recruitment of African-Americans into the Union war effort. Former allies such as Horace Greeley slammed Lincoln for putting reunification above freedom as a war goal.

In this gallery, the objects that tell the story will include colorful recruitment posters for the Union army, the great, seldom-lent Thomas Nast painting of the departure of the 7th Regiment for the Front, rare original photographs of the great rally in Union Square on April 21, 1861, and the bullet-shattered coat of Lincoln’s young New York-born friend, and onetime bodyguard, Colonel Elmer Ephraim Ellsworth, the first Union officer killed in the war.

Gallery 3, titled Bad Blood
(1862), illustrates the mutual animosity of New York’s pro- and anti-Lincoln forces by exhibiting bigger-than-life, three-dimensional versions of the era’s political cartoons. On one side are the Democratic Party politicians and their backers, caricatured by their opponents as bartenders in a political clubhouse, “dispensing a poisonous brew of sedition and fear.” On the other side, a caricature of Lincoln’s New York supporters—officials of the United States Sanitary Commission—shows them enjoying a sumptuous feast, celebrating the ethic of economic opportunity for the rich and the values of hard work, obedience, and self-discipline for the poor. Visitors will see how a powerful New York party of Peace Democrats, or Copperheads, portrayed Lincoln as a despot, warned against “race mongrelization,” and encouraged desertion and draft-dodging. At the same time, the gallery will show how some New Yorkers reaped the benefits of the war, given that their city was the principal home of many of the industries and services Lincoln needed: munitions, shipbuilding, medical supplies, food supplies, money lending and more. Interactive media in Gallery 3 will help visitors (especially of school age) explore the economic issues that so bitterly divided New York.

Gallery 4, Battleground (1862—1864), re-creates seven different conflicts in the city between 1862 and 1864. In each one, the visitor is invited to choose a side, listen to “the talk of the town,” and locate historic landmarks that survive from this era. Among the political and social flashpoints were Lincoln’s issuance of the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation- the suspension of habeas corpus and press freedom- the institution of a military draft- the promotion (by Lincoln’s elite Protestant supporters) of a new ethic of civic philanthropy, industrial progress, and national expansion- and the bitter Presidential campaign of 1864. Visitors will be brought into the setting of Shiloh Presbyterian Church (on the corner of Prince and Lafayette Street) on “Jubilee Day,” January 1, 1863, when emancipation was proclaimed- re-live the four-day Manhattan insurrection of July 1863 known as the Draft Riots, which claimed more than 120 lives before they were put down by troops from the 7th Regiment, recalled from Gettysburg- glimpse the crowded pavilions of the loyalists’ Metropolitan Sanitary Fair of April 1864- and see a multitude of cartoons, engravings, pamphlets, flags, posters, lanterns, and campaign memorabilia.

The evolution of Lincoln’s image—from Railsplitter to Jokester to Tyrant to Gentle Father—is the subject of Gallery 5, Eyes on Lincoln. Four iconic portraits, all enormously influential, mostly from life, and none ever displayed together in such a suite—one by Thomas Hicks, one by William Marshall, and two by Francis Bicknell Carpenter (of Lincoln alone and of the assembled family)—anchor the investigation. Interactive programs allow visitors to learn more about the creation and re-production of these images, their iconographic roots in western art, and the artists’ biographies.

The last major gallery, The Loss of a Great Man (1865), takes the visitor from Lincoln’s victory in the 1864 election to his New York funeral procession, perhaps the largest such event yet held in world history, involving hundreds of thousands of participants and inspiring an outburst of mourning among whites and blacks, Christians and Jews, that signaled the transfiguration of the late president’s heretofore-controversial image. A video documents the triumphant events of March and April 1865: the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment outlawing slavery, the delivery of the second inaugural address, and the surrender of the Confederate armies. In New York, a gigantic parade celebrated Lincoln on March 5, 1865. And then, after Lincoln’s assassination on April 15, the fierce political antagonisms surrounding Lincoln suddenly evaporated, and a new image emerged of a Christ-like, compassionate, and brooding hero who gave his life so that the nation would enjoy a “new birth of freedom.”

A superb collection of memorial material produced and distributed in the city is accompanied by artwork representing Lincoln’s apotheosis. Included will be the recently discovered scrapbook of a New Yorker who roamed the streets after Lincoln’s death sketching the impromptu written and visual tributes that sprung up in shop windows and on building facades in the wake of Lincoln’s murder. Perhaps the greatest memorial of all was New Yorker Walt Whitman’s poem “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.”

As a coda, the exhibition concludes with a brief tour of how New Yorkers have continued to memorialize Lincoln—in the names of streets and institutions- in the development of an egalitarian national creed- in a powerful sense of nationhood- and in a constantly evolving sense that this is the most representative and inspiring of all Americans.

Catalogue

The exhibition will be accompanied by an illustrated, full-color catalogue edited by guest historian Harold Holzer, who has also contributed an introductory essay and a chapter on the city’s publishers and the making of Lincoln’s image in New York. Additional essays have been written by historians Jean Harvey Baker, Catherine Clinton, James Horton, Michael Kammen, Barnet Schechter, Craig L. Symonds, and Frank J. Williams, with a preface by New-York Historical Society President and CEO Louise Mirrer, all featuring seldom-seen pictures, artifacts, and documents from the Society collections.

Support for Lincoln and New York

Objects in the exhibition come from the New-York Historical Society’s own rich and extensive collections- from the Gilder Lehrman Collection, on deposit at the New-York Historical Society- Brooks Brothers- and from other major institutions including the Library of Congress, The Cooper Union, Chicago History Museum, John Hay Library at Brown University, Union League Club, New York Military Museum, Cornell University, the University of Illinois, and the New York Public Library.

In addition to generous funding from JPMorgan Chase & Co., the U.S. Department of Education Underground Railroad Educational and Cultural (URR) Program, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, additional project support for the exhibition and related programs has been provided by The Bodman Foundation, public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the Motorola Foundation, Brooks Brothers, Con Edison, and the New York Council for the Humanities. Thirteen, a WNET.ORG station, is media sponsor.

About the New-York Historical Society

Established in 1804, the New-York Historical Society (N-YHS) comprises New York’s oldest museum and a nationally renowned research library. N-YHS collects, preserves, and interprets American history and art. Its mission is to make these collections accessible to the broadest public and increase understanding of American history through exhibitions, public programs, and research that reveal the dynamism of history and its impact on the world today. N-YHS holdings cover four centuries of American history and comprise one of the world’s greatest collections of historical artifacts, American art, and other materials documenting the history of the United States as seen through the prism of New York City and State.

Photo: Print by Currier and Ives &#8220The Rail Candidate, 1860&#8243- Lithograph. New-York Historical Society.

First Of Several Local John Brown Events On Saturday

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This year marks the 150th anniversary of abolitionist John Brown’s anti-slavery raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia, his subsequent execution and the return of his body to North Elba, Essex County, NY.

Over at Adirondack Almanack I’ve been writing a series of posts &#8211 The Last Days of John Brown &#8211 to commemorate Brown’s struggle to end slavery in America, and both here and at the Almanack I’ll be reporting on events as the anniversary approaches. So far local activities include a lecture, a symposium, and a reenactment of the return of Brown’s body to North Elba. It all kicks off with a lecture this Saturday, October 10th, with a lecture by historian Zoe Trodd at 2:00 PM, at John Brown’s Farm.

Here is the event announcement:

A Living Legacy: John Brown in the Anti-Lynching Protest Tradition, a lecture by Zoe Trodd. Protest writers have long pointed to the abolitionist past as central to present and future social change. At the heart was of this living legacy was one figure: John Brown. This lecture will trace the presence of Brown in anti-lynching literature from the Niagara Movement to Langston Hughes. Trodd is the author of Meteor of War: The John Brown Story- American Protest Literature- and The Tribunal: Responses to John Brown and the Harper’s Ferry Raid. This event is presented by John Brown Lives!

Conference on John Brown and the Legacies of Violence

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Yale University’s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition will host John Brown, Slavery, and the Legacies of Revolutionary Violence in Our Own Time: A Conference Commemorating the 150th Anniversary of the Harpers Ferry Raid on Oct 29-31, 2009 at the university’s campus in New Haven, CT.

Discussions of the place of violence-its forms, its causes, its justice or injustice-in American history often begin with John Brown and his exploits in Kansas and at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in the 1850s. Brown’s image has been appropriated by groups from the left and the right. He is a historical as well as a legendary figure, and often the myth overshadows the reality. This conference will explore the meaning and memory of John Brown as well as the problem of violence in American culture, past and present.

The conference will open on the evening of Thursday, October 29 with a performance of John Brown: Trumpet of Freedom by actor and playwright Norman Marshall. On Friday, October 30 and Saturday, October 31, conference panels will focus on four major themes:

. John Brown: A Problem in Biography

. John Brown and the Arts

. John Brown and the Legacies of Violence

. John Brown and Abolitionism

. Concluding Roundtable: A Problem for Our Own Time

For information on the conference visit: http://www.yale.edu/glc/john-brown/index.htm

Annette Gordon-Reed Wins Frederick Douglass Book Prize

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Annette Gordon-Reed, Professor of Law at New York Law School, Professor of History at Rutgers University-Newark, and Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard University, has been selected as the winner of the 2009 Frederick Douglass Book Prize, awarded for the best book written in English on slavery or abolition. Gordon-Reed won for her book, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (W.W. Norton and Company). The prize is
awarded by Yale University’s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, sponsored by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.

The award is named for Frederick Douglass (1818-1895), the slave who escaped bondage to emerge as one of the great American abolitionists, reformers, writers, and orators of the 19th century.

In addition to Gordon-Reed, the other finalists for the prize were Thavolia Glymph for Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household (Cambridge University Press) and Jacqueline Jones for Saving Savannah: The City and the Civil War (Alfred A. Knopf Publishers). The $25,000 annual award is the most generous history prize in the field. The prize will be presented to Gordon-Reed at a dinner in New York City in February 2010.

This year’s finalists were selected from a field of over fifty entries by a jury of scholars that included Robert Bonner (Dartmouth College), Rita Roberts (Scripps College), and Pier Larson (Johns Hopkins University). The winner was selected by a review committee of representatives from the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and Yale University.

&#8220In Annette Gordon Reed’s The Hemingses of Monticello, an enslaved Virginia family is delivered &#8212- but not disassociated &#8212- from Thomas Jefferson’s well-known sexual liaison with Sally Hemings,&#8221 says Bonner, the 2009 Douglass Prize Jury Chair and Associate Professor of History at Dartmouth College. &#8220The book judiciously blends the best of recent slavery scholarship with shrewd commentary on the legal structure of Chesapeake society before and after the American Revolution. Its meticulous account of the mid-eighteenth century intertwining of the black Hemingses and white Wayles families sheds new light on Jefferson’s subsequent conjoining with a young female slave who was already his kin by marriage. By exploring those dynamic commitments and evasions that shaped Monticello routines, the path-breaking book provides a testament to the complexity of human relationships within slave societies and to the haphazard possibilities for both intimacy and betrayal.&#8221

The Frederick Douglass Book Prize was established in 1999 to stimulate scholarship in the field of slavery and abolition by honoring outstanding books. Previous winners were Ira Berlin and Philip D. Morgan in 1999- David Eltis, 2000- David Blight, 2001- Robert Harms and John Stauffer, 2002- James F. Brooks and Seymour Drescher, 2003- Jean Fagan Yellin, 2004- Laurent Dubois, 2005- Rebecca J. Scott, 2006- Christopher Leslie Brown, 2007- and Stephanie E. Smallwood, 2008.

Rochester Abolitionist John Doy

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American Heritage has an interesting article on John Brown associate John Doy of Rochester. Here’s an excerpt:

John Doy, a physician from Rochester, New York, heeded the call from abolitionist societies and moved to Kansas in July 1854. A full-bearded and serious-looking man, Doy helped found the town of Lawrence and built a house on its outskirts, where his wife and nine children joined him. As a bastion of free-soil sympathies, Lawrence became a target of pro-slavers, who sacked it on May 21, 1856. In retaliation, the abolitionist firebrand John Brown and his men murdered five slave owners near Pottawatomie Creek. Three months later Doy fought alongside Brown in a pitched battle at Osawatomie, 60 miles southeast of Lawrence.

Kansas became increasingly dangerous for African Americans, so on January 18, 1859, a group of Lawrence’s citizens raised money to help blacks move to safety. Brown offered to take one group north to Canada and did so without incident. Doy also volunteered to help by taking another group about 60 miles northwest to the town of Holton, the first step on the road to Iowa. His passage proved less fortunate.

Among the African Americans on Doy’s expedition were Wilson Hayes and Charles Smith, cooks at a Lawrence hotel. Doy knew that both of them were free men, although they had no papers. All the others had their “free papers,” including William Riley, who had been kidnapped once before from Lawrence but had managed to escape.

The piece offers an interesting look at one of teh many upstate New Yorkers who traveled west during the Kansas-Missouri Border War.

Underground RR Audio Tour at NY Historical Society

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The New-York Historical Society is presenting an audio tour exploring the Underground Railroad during the time of the Civil War, highlighting how issues of slavery and freedom influenced national politics and the actions of Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885), commander of the Union armies, and of Robert E. Lee (1807–1870), commander of the Confederate forces. The Run for Your Life audio tour adds a layer of interpretation to the current exhibition Grant and Lee in War and Peace and can be accessed when you visit the gallery and at nyhistory.org or on iTunesU.

Over the past five years, the New-York Historical Society has showcased documents, art and artifacts relating to the abolitionist movement and network known as the “Underground Railroad” by publishing the papers of the African Free School in print and on the Web and through the exhibitions on Alexander Hamilton– Slavery in New York– New York Divided: Slavery and the Civil War– and French Founding Father: Lafayette’s Return to Washington’s America.

This year, the N-YHS takes the story of the abolitionist movement and Underground Railroad through the Civil War, focusing significant attention on its role in the turbulent 1850’s through the time that the resources of the Underground Railroad were drawn on to assist four million freed people to participate in a new, unified democracy.

These activities, including the Run For Your Life audio tour, are developed with grant funds from the U.S. Department of Education Underground Railroad Educational and Cultural (URR) Program.

The tour is comprised of seven thematic stops:

Introduction

When Grant and Lee attended West Point, no men of color were allowed to enlist in the US Army, however by the close of the Civil War over 180,000 African Americans had fought for the Union – many of them recently escaped from slavery. The larger saga of escaping slaves and relentless political struggle show how the African American quest for freedom held the country accountable to the principles so forcefully stated in the Declaration of Independence.

Black Seminoles Flee South

As enslaved people in Georgia and Florida sought sanctuary with the Seminole tribe, the U.S. government became more and more determined to conquer (in three different wars) the various Seminole groups who received these fugitives. Some bands became known as Black Seminoles because of the massive influx of African Americans and subsequent intermarriage.

John Brown: Escapes and Revolt

Abolitionist John Brown not only fought pro-slavery militias in Kansas in the mid-1850s, he led a band of fugitive slaves openly through the territories up to Canada, trying to prove that the Fugitive Slave Law was blatantly defied by antislavery citizens. Fulfilling the nightmare that haunted the South, he then tried to spark a general slave uprising, after capturing arms at Harper’s Ferry. When Brown was sentenced to death he gave a farewell address in which he linked his Underground Railroad expedition to Canada with his attempted insurrection.

Lee at Arlington – Wesley Norris

Right before the Civil War, Lee inherited a large number of slaves at the Arlington estate through his wealthy wife. By the terms of her father’s will, the Arlington slaves were to be freed upon his death. Lee’s slowness in doing this, and his policy of breaking up families by hiring people out to distant plantations angered Mary Custis Lee’s slaves. Some fled, since they considered themselves already free. One such fugitive slave ended up living as a freedman on the very Arlington estate where he used to work.

Grant and the Davis Plantation

The story of Isaiah Montgomery is a startling window into the chaotic period of the war when the newly freed and the newly fleeing joined together to improvise new lives. From the beginning of the war thousands of enslaved people liberated themselves and fled to Union lines, as Federal forces secured pockets of Southern territory. Grant settled them in contraband camps or arranged for their protection on plantations of their former owners seized as punishment for supporting the Confederacy. The most notable of these were the properties of Jefferson and Joseph Davis in the Mississippi River, where the former slaves took control and successfully planted cotton and ran their own schools. Benjamin and Isaiah Montgomery, slaves only two years before, turned a profit of $160,000 in 1865 on the plantation of their former owners.

Lincoln, McClellan and Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass, the leading black statesman, condemned Lincoln’s policy of returning fugitive slaves and refusing to allow them to enlist in Union forces: “We are striking the guilty rebels with our soft white hand, when we should be striking with the iron hand of the black man, which we keep chained behind us. We have been catching slaves, instead of arming them… Slavery has been, and is yet the shield and helmet of this accursed rebellion.” Soon, however, Lincoln declared that slave labor was supporting the Rebel war effort. Then some of his more openly abolitionist generals, such as Benjamin Butler, could treat the escaping people as “legitimate contraband of war” seized from the enemy to prevent aid to the Rebel cause. The flight of thousands of slaves is called by some the Last Chapter of the Underground Railroad, as African American southerners added their efforts to the Union side, and subtracted their labor from the rebels.

About the New-York Historical Society

Established in 1804, the New-York Historical Society (N-YHS) comprises New York’s oldest museum and a nationally renowned research library. N-YHS collects, preserves and interprets American history and art- its mission is to make these collections accessible to the broadest public and increase understanding of American history through exhibitions, public programs, and research that reveal the dynamism of history and its impact on the world today. N-YHS holdings cover four centuries of American history and comprise one of the world’s greatest collections of historical artifacts, American art, and other materials documenting the history of the United States as seen through the prism of New York City and State.

27 Place Nominated for State, National Registers

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New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation Commissioner Carol Ash today accepted the recommendation of the New York State Board for Historic Preservation to add 29 properties to the State and National Registers of Historic Places. Property owners, municipalities and organizations from communities throughout the state sponsored the nominations.

A number of well-known locations that were recommended for listing on the State and National Registers of Historic Places, including the Fraunces Tavern in New York City- the Spitfire gunboat wreck on Lake Champlain (Essex and Clinton Counties)- the Sherwood Equal Rights Historic District (Cayuga County)- the Rushmore Memorial Library (Orange County)- the Cornell Steamboat Company Machine Shop Building in Kingston- and the 1932 Olympic Bobsled Run in Lake Placid.

The New York State Board for Historic Preservation is an independent panel of experts appointed by the governor. The Board also consists of representatives from the following state organizations: Council of Parks- Council on the Arts- Department of Education- Department of State and Department of Environmental Conservation. The function of the Board is to advise and provide recommendations on state and federal preservation programs, including the State and National Registers of Historic Places, to the State Historic Preservation Officer, which in New York is the State Parks Commissioner.

The State and National Registers are the official lists of buildings, structures, districts, landscapes, objects and sites significant in the history, architecture, archeology and culture of New York State and the nation. Official recognition helps highlight that state’s heritage and can enhance local preservation efforts. The benefits of listing include eligibility for various public preservation programs and services, such as matching state grants and federal historic rehabilitation tax credits. There are nearly 90,000 historic buildings, structures and sites throughout the state listed on the National Register of Historic Places, individually or as components of historic districts.

During the nomination process, the State Board submits recommendations to the State Historic Preservation Officer. The properties may be listed on the New York State Register of Historic Places and then nominated to the National Register of Historic Places where they are reviewed and, once approved, entered on the National Register by the Keeper of the National Register in Washington, DC. The State Historic Preservation Office and the National Park Service, which is part of the U.S. Department of Interior, jointly administer the national register program.

For more information about the New York State Board for Historic Preservation and the State and National Register programs as well as a complete list of the properties recommended in June, contact the Historic Preservation Field Services Bureau at (518) 237-8643, or visit the state parks web site at www.nysparks.com.

The recommended properties listed by county:

Albany County

1. St. Agnes Cemetery, Menands – the property was acquired in 1867 to accommodate the Albany Dioceses, it is the largest Catholic cemetery in the region.

Cattaraugus County

2. Beardsley / Oliver House, Olean – constructed c. 1890.

Cayuga County

3. Sherwood Equal Rights Historic District, Sherwood – a collection of 24+ buildings and sites associated with numerous social reform movements during the mid- to late 19th century, including abolitionism, the Underground Railroad, women’s rights and education.

Chemung County

4. Jacob Lowman House, Lowman – the farm was acquired in 1792 to Jacob Lowman (1769-1840), early settler, trader, farmer and founder of the hamlet of Lowman.

Cortland County

5. Cortland Free Library, Cortland – early 20th century library building.

Delaware County

6. Rock Valley School, Rock Valley – the one room school building was constructed in 1885 to meet the needs of a substantial population increase.

Dutchess County

7. Pulver – Bird House, Stanfordville – built in 1839 for Stanford farmer Henry Pulver by builder Nathanial Lockwood, Jr., a well known carpenter/builder active in the Hudson Valley.

Erie County

8. Concordia Cemetery, Buffalo – founded in 1859 as a collaborative effort by three German Lutheran churches and represents important aspects of Buffalo’s heritage of German immigration.

9. Trinity Episcopal Church, Buffalo – built between 1884 and 1886, Trinity Episcopal Church is the second oldest Episcopal congregation in the city.

Essex and Clinton Counties

10. Spitfire, gunboat wreck, Lake Champlain – the shipwreck site represents the last intact vessel of Benedict Arnold’s Revolutionary War fleet from the Battle of Valcour Island and has remained untouched at the bottom of Lake Champlain since 1776.

Essex County

11. 1932 Olympic Bobsled Run, Lake Placid/North Elba – the bobsled run at Mt. Van Hovenberg was one of the prime construction projects for the 1932 Winter Olympics and the first and only one and one half mile long bob run ever designed and built for Olympic competition.

Fulton County

12. Knox Mansion, Johnstown – built in 1898 for the prominent manufacturer Charles P. Knox (Knox Gelatin Company).

Herkimer County

13. South Ann Street – Mill Street Historic District, Little Falls – constructed between 1827 and 1911, the district represents industrial and commercial development that occurred in Little Falls adjacent to the Mohawk River and Erie Canal.

14. General Walter Martin House, Martinsburg – constructed in 1805 as the residence of financier, substantial landowner and civic leader General Walter Martin.

Monroe County

15. East Main Street Armory, Rochester – built in 1904-07 to house a local unit of the New York State National Guard.

New York County

16. Fraunces Tavern – constructed in 1719 and converted to a tavern in 1763 it was here that General George Washington gave his famous farewell speech to his officers on December 4, 1783. The building is a pioneering example of an early preservation movement and restoration project that used the most sophisticated techniques available at the time.

Onondaga County

17. Hotel Syracuse, Syracuse – the hotel was designed by George B. Post & Sons, one of the leading hotel designers of the day- ground was broken for the hotel in 1922 and it opened on August 16, 1924.

Ontario County

18. Smith Observatory and Dr. William R. Brooks House, Geneva – built in 1888 and equipped with a 9.5&#8243- refracting telescope crafted by the Warner & Swasey Company of Ohio, it is a rare surviving example of a private, mid-size professional observatory.

19. Farmers’ and Merchants’ Bank, Geneva – built ca. 1914-1915, example of early 20th century commercial architecture in Geneva.

Orange County

20. Rushmore Memorial Library, Highland Mills (Town of Woodbury) – constructed in 1923-24 as the first public library in the town of Woodbury and financed by New York City attorney Charles E. Rushmore, recognized for his work in the Black Hill of South Dakota, Mount Rushmore was named after him in 1930.

21. Woodlawn Farm, Slate Hill – the earliest section of the house dates to c. 1790-1810 and was subsequently expanded and updated during the course of the 19th century.

Schene
ctady County

22. Enlarged Double Lock No. 23, Old Erie Canal, Rotterdam – constructed in 1841-1842, associated with the transportation history of the Old Erie Canal.

Steuben County

23. Hammondsport Union Free School, Hammondsport – the earliest section of the building was built as a private secondary school in 1858, converted to a public union school in 1875 and was expanded by three additions over the next 38 years.

Suffolk County

24. Jamesport Meeting House, Jamesport – the history of the meeting house dates to 1731, the building dates from 1859 when the original meeting house was rebuilt and served one of the first religious groups established in the town of Riverhead.

25. Brewster House, East Setauket – with a portion dating from c. 1665 and acquired that year by the Reverend Nathaniel Brewster, the first ordained minister in Setauket, the house is the oldest extant house in the town of Brookhaven.

Ulster County

26. Cornell Steamboat Company Machine Shop Building, Kingston – the machine shop was built about 1901 by the Cornell Steamboat Company to accommodate maritime industrial transportation between the Erie Canal and New York City along the Hudson River.

Washington County

27. Town – Hollister Farm, North Granville – first developed by noted educator, author and Freemason Salem Town (1779-1864) and sold to Captain Isaac Hollister in 1833.

Westchester County

28. Hadden – Margolis House, Harrison – the house preserves architectural characteristics that spans three centuries (c. 1750-1930) associated with growth and patterns of settlement in Westchester County.

Wyoming County

29. First Universalist Church of Portageville, Portageville – built in late 1841, the church served as a meeting house.

Underground Railroad Site Travel Grants to AASLH

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If you represent an underground railroad related site or organization, the New York State Underground Railroad Heritage Trail is offering Travel Grants to support attendance at this year’s AASLH Annual Meeting in Rochester.

The Underground Railroad Heritage Trail Travel Grants will provide museum staff members and volunteers, from URHT sites, the opportunity to expand their horizons by participating in the American Association of State and Local History Annual Meeting.

Organizations may apply for travel grants of up to $350. This travel grant can be used towards conference registration fees, travel expenses and accommodation fees associated with attendance at the 2008 AASLH Annual Meeting. For further information on the AASLH Annual Meeting visit: www.aaslh.org/anmeeting.htm

Applications for URHT Travel grants to attend the AASLH Annual Meeting must be postmarked by August 3, 2008. Applicants will be notified within 30 days of receipt. To apply, contact Catherine Gilbert directorATupstatehistoryDOTorg at the Upstate History Alliance for an application form.

According to New York State’s Underground Heritage Trail website:

New York State was at the forefront of the Underground Railroad movement. It was a major destination for freedom-seekers for four main reasons:

Destination & Gateway
New York was a gateway to liberation for freedom-seekers (often referred to as escaped slaves). Its prime location, with access to Canada and major water routes, made it the destination of choice for many Africans fleeing slavery along the eastern seaboard.

Safe Haven
Freedom-seekers knew they would be protected in New York’s many black communities as well as Quaker and other progressive white and mixed race communities. A large and vocal free black population was present after the manumission (freeing) of slaves in New York State in 1827.

Powerful Anti-Slavery Movement
Anti-slavery organizations were abundant in New York State &#8211 more than any other state. The reform politics and the progressive nature of the state gave rise to many active anti-slavery organizations.

Strong Underground Railroad Leaders
Many nationally-known and locally influential black and white abolitionists chose to make their homes in New York. Among them were: Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Gerrit Smith, Henry Ward Beecher, Sojourner Truth and John Brown.